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How the GED Test Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-ged-test-works | The GED test was once part of a non-profit organization. That all changed in 2014, when it was privatized, made more expensive and more difficult to pass. But that also brought about a couple of more testing options. Learn all about how high school dropou | The GED test was once part of a non-profit organization. That all changed in 2014, when it was privatized, made more expensive and more difficult to pass. But that also brought about a couple of more testing options. Learn all about how high school dropou | Tue, 23 Dec 2014 14:19:08 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=23, tm_hour=14, tm_min=19, tm_sec=8, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=357, tm_isdst=0) | 31210758 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetofworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's. Charles W. Chuck Bright. And this is stuff you should know. The podcast. Good day. Oh, there's Terry. She snuck up on us. Yeah. This one is a part of our, I guess, law enforcement suite. No. Military suite? No. All sort of addiction suite. Yes. Okay. Because people are addicted to knowledge, buddy. And here in the United States, and I believe in Canada, if you don't graduate high school and then later on you say, you know what? That was a mistake. I'm just going to go back to high school. And they say, you can't do that. You say? Well, what do I do? And then they say, Get your GED, dummy. And you go, oh, that's great, because that's my general equivalency diploma, right? And they say, no, that's not what it stands for. No, you should have stayed in high school. Although I don't think they teach this in high school. No, of course they don't. GED. A lot of people do think it stands for General equivalency diploma, but I always did. It stands for General Education Development, which is a company, a brand name, like Seeing Eye dogs. Brand name heroin. Yeah. Brand name Kleenex. Brand name barbecue. No. Very nice. Xerox, though. Yeah. Those are called genericized trademarks. Yeah. Band Aid. Yeah. Things that were a trademark name, or still are, but have become so widespread and so dominant in their market, they become the name for all of the other versions of themselves. Petroleum. No. Vaseline, though. Yes. Which should be called petroleum jelly. Yeah. No one says that, though. Weirdo say that. They just say Vaseline or lube. Do you have any petroleum jelly for sale? Yeah. People say, I don't know what you mean. You say? Well, I mean vaseline. And they say, well, why didn't you just say that? And then you just get quiet. And then they say, yes, we have some Vaseline for sale. And then you buy the Ride Aid brain because it's cheaper and it's the same thing, but it just does petroleum jelly. That's right. All right, this is off to a bang and start. That was a horrific story, about 850,000 people in the United States in 2013. This has got a lot of stats in it, by the way. Was it just 850? I'm surprised. I thought it was, like, a million. No, I've got the stats right here, my friend. Okay. Under Key Findings in 2013, more than 848,000 adults worldwide took at least one of the five content area tests. So that's our first point, is the GED isn't a single test, but it is five sub tests, or what they call them. Well, it was in 2013. That's right. It switched in 2014. This is a heck of a time to be talking about GED. It really is, because there's been some big changes lately, and not only but 743,000 completed the entire test battery in 2013. And the reason why was because that change usually is fewer than that. Usually the proportion of people who take the GED to the people who take and finish the GED the same year is much different. There's a huge difference. This year or 2013, it was close because everybody wanted to complete it, because it was about to get a lot harder in 2014. Yeah. And 75% of those who took the complete battery of test passed it. And it's pretty cool. The way they established the passing score is they give it to high school graduates and the top 60% of high school seniors, they compare that against the test. They use that as the norm. I did not know that. Yeah, that is very clever. Yeah, I thought so. I mean, that's a high school equivalency test. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. You kind of said it like why people drop out of high school and then years later they say, yeah, maybe I should go back an average of nine years. By the way, is it nine now? Yeah, nine years later. And they had statistics from, I think starting from many, many years ago, and they remain pretty consistent as far as racial divide and men are women, and then people who pass or people who fail. Reasons people take it, it's fairly consistent over the years. It's pretty interesting. But the reason people take it ultimately is so they can get gainful employment. But it seems to flip flop depending on the economy, whether they're going to go on and go to college afterward because you need your GED to get into college, or because, as the general education development people say, there's roughly 4 million jobs out there that are just waiting for people to prove that they can fill them. And one way to prove that is to have a GED. It basically says, I am qualified for most of your unskilled labor, at least. And so going and getting a GED is, for a lot of people, a huge investment in their future. Sure. So that's pretty much why the GED provides, quote, proof of readiness for higher education or the workplace. That's the whole point. It's proof that you're ready to move on. Yeah, and they actually have statistics, too, on why people take it. 63% said they took it for educational reasons, and it's not just one or the other. I think it could be multiple reasons because more than half, and I thought this was pretty neat 53% said they tested for personal reasons, such as being a positive role model and for a sense of personal satisfaction, and then 53% said for employment reasons to get a job, basically. Although those findings are interesting, I like the role model thing. Even though only 4.5% of the people who take it are over 50 years of age. I say hats off to that. 4.5%, because that's probably personal satisfaction or role model reasons right there. You're never too old to get educated. Don't give up. That sounds like an ending, but this is just the beginning. Well, maybe we can cut and paste it onto the ending. I'll say it again at the end. Okay. So people have pretty great reasons for this. It also helps the economy. If you have a bunch of unfilled jobs out there in your economy and you have a bunch of unemployed people, and all that you need to get the two together is proof that this group of people is qualified to fill these unfilled jobs, then you have a real need to get those people qualified as easily as possible. And for many years, the GED was a state sponsored, nonprofit way of making that happen. That's right. If you want stats to back that up, sir. Okay. The net lifetime fiscal contribution of a high school graduate or GED holder is almost $300,000. Wow. And you're going to have about a $10,000 difference in annual salary if you get that GED or do not. And with 1.2 million college dropouts each year, people should encourage people to take the GED, and I'm going to go out and say and people are probably going to be mad. Some people. I think it should be subsidized. If you want your Ged, I think you should be able to take it for free. Well, in a lot of states it is some states, but a lot of people have a big problem with that. Shouldn't have dropped out of high school to begin with, but that doesn't make any sense because what we need are more educated people so they can get better jobs and not be a tax burden in other ways. Right. You know what I'm saying? So the whole idea of the GED initially was basically a compromise between the military and the Ace, the American Council of Educators, I believe. And apparently when World War II broke out. Or when the US. Entered the Second World War, there was this idea of just handing out wartime diplomas. Yeah, if you came aboard, you got drafted, you enlisted, whatever, you can just have your high school diploma. And the Ace said, that's a really bad idea because you're going to have some people coming back afterward who are unqualified, but people will think they're qualified. It's just bad for the economy to do that. Let's come up with something else. Military said. Fine, do it. And the AC said, Fine, we will. And they went off and they came up with what is the GED? Yeah. For five years, it was just for military. Right. Like, you had to be a military service member to take the GED, and then after that, they're like, you know what? This is a pretty good idea, so let's expand it to everybody. Yeah, it's a great idea. And they did expand it, and over the years since then, it has gone through now five iterations previously to 2014. The last one was in 2002 and it's changed quite a bit over the years. Like all standardized tests, I guess previously, like back in the 1940s and 50s, it was pretty much just reading and writing skills, social studies, science and math, but like basic skills. They didn't try to make it like a real world test. Does that make sense? Like real world applications? Later on, they started putting things like newspaper articles that you could read instead of just like, read this text about Johnny and his dog. Right, yeah. I think it was definitely also geared toward people at high school level maturity, too. And then later on they were like, well, we've got a lot more adults taking this than we realized, so let's change it. It just took them like 30 years to make that change. Yeah, it took on a lot more of a conceptual evaluation over the years as well, and showing people examples from, like I said, real world, their home life and their work life, so they can say, hey, that's me in these test examples. I get it. And it's more humanized, I think. Right. Plus they instituted a big one, the writing test. An essay section. Yeah, that was definitely new critical thinking skills. And all of a sudden GED got a little harder. Yeah, but it wasn't over then. And we'll talk about more after this. So, Chuck, they revamped the GED in 1978 for the first time seriously in 30 years. And it's a little more real world, a little more reflective. And they just missed the cusp of a real change because in 1982, the world became a little more aware of the fact that it was globalizing. And so six years after that, 1988, the GED said, we need to make some changes as well. Right. And they revamped again. Had they just waited until 1988, they could have skipped the whole 1978 revamp. That's true. And 88 is when they added that essay component, which makes a lot of sense to me. Did they thought they added it in? No, 78 is when they separated the reading test and basically said, we're not going to do any more of this. Just straight up like fact recall stuff. Got you. And at this point, 1988, only 30% of the takers were taking the test for employment. 60%, we're taking it to basically go to college. Yeah. And that's reflective of the larger thing where the premium or the rebate you get for a college degree was much higher and that fluctuates over time. And I read this paper where you can basically look at it like supply and demand, where if employers are saying, we need more skilled labor, so you need to go to college, but if you do, we're going to pay you more, then more people who took the GED would go on to college or whatever. Right. But if not when the premium was lower, say like unions were in charge, and they were like, our people don't need college education, but you're still going to pay them. Well, sure. People would take the GED just to get into industry. Interesting, they're all very closely aligned now. People are like, do you even need a college education? Which to me, I think is a separate episode that we should do. I totally agree, do, because the whole notion of there's a lot of people challenging the validity of college these days, and especially the stupidity of taking out exorbitant amounts of student loans that are going to cripple you and cripple the economy of the United States. Well, yeah. I mean, especially if you're not going to be able to make that back. Yeah. There's some people that say that the student loan problem is the biggest problem facing our economy. They're called Occupy Wall Street now. They're called Mark Cuban. Like a lot of smart people, businessmen are saying, this is just getting out of hand. Yeah, I think we should definitely do an episode on that. Yeah. So before you can go to college, though, you need that GED or your high school diploma. So let's say you do want to take the GED. These days you can prep yourself. You don't have to just go in cold. There are all kinds of materials you can get online if you go through the official GED site, because there are now three things you can do. There are three tests you can take. GED isn't your only option. No. It used to have a monopoly in the United States. Yeah. But since Pearson Education, a private company, basically, I guess, bought it out. Right. Yeah. The Ace. The American Council of Educators, right? On Education. Okay. They were the ones that owned GED. Right. And they were running it as a nonprofit. That's right. And they said, we need to revamp this, so we're going to take on a for profit educational publisher, Pearson. And Pearson came in and said, okay, thanks for bringing us on. Do you know what a hostile takeover is? And the Ace said, not really. And then they were pushed out of the door. Here's the bankers box. Exactly right. So Pearson took over and is running this as for profit. Yeah, but there are other options now. I think Pearson and the official GED is the only one available in all 50 states, but most states. Now, you can also take the TASC, which is run by also known as Task Mcgrawl Hill or H littlei Big Set HiSET, which is administered by ETS, most states. Now, you can have your choice of all of those. Yeah. What happened was in 2014, the GED, which was basically NGO run, nonprofit testing resource, became privatized, and now there's competition among private businesses. That's right. So where I started with all this gobaddygook was how to prep. Depending on which test you take, you will probably want to use their testing materials although they say that any kind of preparatory materials that you can find are probably going to be good for all three of the tests because while they're not exactly alike, they all have the basic standard five components or four. Oh, are there only four on some of them? Yeah. So apparently the GED went from two Language and Language Arts and Reading modules to one. Okay. But basically they're covering language arts or reading science, math and social studies. Right. Before it was Language Arts and Writing, and then Language Arts and Reading, and now it's just one. Yeah, it's called Reasoning Through Language Arts and the GED Battery. Nice. The whole kit and caboodle is going to take you close to 8 hours. It's all parsed out into time, but if you do need more time, if you have some sort of learning disability or something, or if you want to be in a room by yourself, most of these testing centers will accommodate that. Yeah. Visual learners are easily distracted by other people in the room. Yeah, I am. So that's why they stick. Does that make sense? You can have your own room. Dude, I never thought about that. That makes total sense. Like I do my best studying for the podcast when I go in one of our office rooms and just lock the door. Right. And also because Jonathan Strickland is super loud. He was pretty loud. Yeah, he loves telling stories really loudly. Okay. So also if you're interested in taking the GED, a lot of information you're going to want is it depends on the state, like where you can take it, how much it's going to cost. It all varies by state and the guidelines of your state are going to dictate sometimes which one you have to take. I think State of Washington signed a deal with Pearson to make that the only one for the state. Yeah, I think there's twelve states where you have a choice of all three. Oh, is that all? Just twelve? But the GED is available in not all 50 states. I think some of them dropped it. Interesting. I think Pearson really ticked off a lot of companies by basically saying, you remember these fees? That before it was the state was subsidizing it to an extent. Some states were saying, okay, so this is how much the test people charge. Right. And then we can add fees on to that. So that's how it stands still today. That's to run the center. Where they take it is where those fees come from. Right, exactly. Some states said we're not adding any additional fees and we're going to subsidize the actual cost of the test. So when GED doubled basically their rates, they were passing it along to the states and basically saying, pass it along to the test takers if you want. Right. The thing is, these are disproportionately low income people and doubling the rates. Even if we're talking like 50, $60 suddenly being like 100, $120. Sure. That's a significant increase in cost. Yeah, that's prohibitive in some cases. Right. That's just for the test, too. That's not for prep materials and that kind of thing, which a lot of states also subsidized as well and gave up for free. Yeah. So I think Pearson ticks some people off with the sudden for profit model. But Pearson, in its defense, says, we really kind of updated this thing for the 21st century. Yeah, they moved it to a computer based test, not an online test, but it has to be taken the GED brand test, pearson test has to be taken on a computer now, whereas the other two you can still take with pen and paper or on a computer. Right. But Pearson says in the long run, this is going to save money because it's cheaper to do things on a computer. But that also came with some controversy because while it seems to us like computers are ubiquitous and everybody in 2014 knows how to use one, maybe a really poor 50 year old person has never touched a computer. So they have to learn how to use a computer before they can even take the test. Right. So, Chuck, we're talking about the controversy, right? Because I put it kind of flippy earlier, like the GED was privatized and it is essentially as simple as that. But there's so much more to that. It doesn't just exist in a vacuum. It's still loaded concept these days to take education and privatize it. Sure. Add a for profit model to education. It has brought a lot of criticism. Again, Pearson is saying, we kind of need these people to take this test on computers because that's where the jobs are. Like you have to know how to use a computer to work almost anywhere these days. That's a good point. So it's a good thing to make these people learn to use a computer first. What's the problem in that? A lot of people would respond and say, that's great, maybe this is something we could have implemented a little more slowly. Right. Maybe you could have given the states, and then hence the state funded testing centers, a little more of a heads up that this is where it was going to go. Right. Or provide the computer as an option. Because not every job involves a computer. No, it's true for now, but Task and Hisset both offer computer and paper versions, right? Yeah, like you said. Again. Pearson says, well, that's great. The state still has to pay for grading of the pen and paper versions. With the computerized version, we have it all built in. People don't have to wait around for their scores. They get it immediately. Sure. Since it's on a computer and it can be graded by the computer, apparently you can take a module, you can find out that you didn't pass the module immediately and take it two more times before having to enter like a 30 or 60 day waiting period. You can just sit there and take it two more times right there. Yeah, that's pretty handy. So, I mean, it's not entirely like evil co came in and took over GED, but I think the sweeping changes they made were so abrupt that it caught a lot of people off guard. They're suffering as a result. Some states have just entirely dropped the GED. It's not even an option. Wow. The official GED. Right. So you brought up a good point. You don't have to take the entire test at once because some people can't afford $160 or more. You can break it out into modules and pay as you go. And like you said, if you don't pass one, you can retake just that module. It's not all or nothing, which is great. You can take it in Spanish. You can take it in French, I think, too. Yeah. You said at the very beginning that around the world, 850,000 people took it. Yeah. You can be elsewhere in the world to get your US. High school diploma. Yeah, that's interesting. Or equivalent of the diploma or GED. They have Braille versions, they have large print and audio versions and don't show up and expect that, though. That's the kind of thing that when you're registering, you have to let them know and make sure that they can accommodate you. It's also interesting that some people say this whole computer thing is a mess, but most of the information you're going to have to go to online to find out this stuff. Right. I mean, it's available too. I mean, you can go to the learning center and stuff like that and get a pamphlet, I'm sure, still. But everything I saw was like, hey, go online and check out this, go online and check out your state's guidelines. Go online and check out study courses. Yeah. So it helps to have that capability. But you can go to a public library and get online. You can you can also get all that printed stuff at your library, too. One of the big changes to that Pearson took a little heat for was they were revamping everything so much, from five modules to four. Scoring went in completely different directions. I think it used to be something like 22, 50 was the minimum. Now it's 150 score is the minimum. No total, I think. What? Yeah. So overall, they just completely revamped everything. So they said if you are taking your GED in 2013 and you've got like three or four of the five modules, you might want to finish the fifth one because come 2014, you are going to have to take it all over again. Which is why there was this huge rush to go take it. But I read this one article and a guy named Jose Ortiz of Fort Myers, Florida, said that he was waiting to take it in 2014 because he heard it was going to be harder and he looked forward to the greater challenge of it. Nice. Hats off, Jose. Yes. That's awesome. I think the math section got considerably more difficult because now you are expected to be able to pass up through algebra two. Yeah. And apparently that is higher that's more math and is required at the community college level in a lot of cases, algebra. So they've taken a lot of heat. I was interested in taking the GED, actually. If it was free, I would have taken it to see how I did. There's no, like, a free sample test online. I don't know. I can see them having it locked down now. Maybe if you're going to take the test, it is still at a testing center. There are over 3200 of those across the US. And they're going to be at community colleges, public schools, adult education, continuing ed centers, adults, stuff like that. Adults education, maybe. Oh, yeah. I love how they're like the hipster band now. Are they? Oh, yeah. Hipsters are all like yeah. Holo notes is so awesome. It's like, where were you in 1087? Man, that was my first show. Made fun of. Oh, yeah. I wish I was Holland oats until Tuesday. They're still great, man. Holland. Oats. Sounds awesome. Still. Yeah. That live from Darryl's house. Have you ever seen that? No. He has a studio in his place and he's a show on Paladia, I think, where he has musicians come in and like, everyone from Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top to Hootie Darius Rucker. Yeah, he's country now. Yeah, that's what I heard. He's a country guy. And they'll just come in and do like they'll do, like a Hollow note song and then like a Z Top song or whatever they want to do. It's pretty fun. Did you ever see The Guard at the AV Clubs live concert series? Oh, and they did the cover series. Yeah. That's one of my favorite things, is the AV Clubs Undercover. Yes. That's what it is. Yes. Every year they take I think it's like 20 songs, put them on a board and then one at a time, bands choose them and mark them off. And so as time goes on, you have less and less choice. Who did they do? Man, I don't remember what they did. Oh, man, it was really good, too. And they've been on once before. The only one I saw was their second appearance. I can't remember. It's worth just look up guarantee AV Club. Yeah. I highly recommend the whole series. They've been doing it for a few years now. It's pretty cool. I saw Ted Leo and the Pharmacist did an awesome version of Everybody Wants to Rule the World. Man, that is a good that whole record from beginning to end is amazing. Songs from the big chair. Yeah, agreed. El Cheapo does Shout. It's a good one. Yeah. And it's super easy. Oh, the one I saw was Billy Ocean. Oh, that's right. But apparently guard. Also, they've covered Kansas. They've covered the pet Shop boys. Yeah. The Kansas one I've seen. They did carry on my wayward son, didn't they? Probably, yeah. That's pretty cool, man. How do we get on that? From GED. Hollow notes. Adult education. Yeah. I don't think I have anything else. I don't either. So, like I said before, I would say it again, it's never too late. You can inspire your kids, your grandkid. Maybe they're thinking about dropping out of high school. You go out and take that test and show them that education is valuable. Yes. That's from your Uncle Chuck. Nice, Chuck. And Uncle Josh. Your Aunt Jerry. Aunt or aunt? I say aunt, but people say aunt, so I do. Aunt. You say aunt, right? Yeah, I say aunt. Yeah. It's supposed to be guttural and clipped like German. As a 43 year old. I still call my aunts and uncles like Uncle Jimmy. Uncle Steve. Yeah, it'd be weird. My nieces are in their early twenty s now. They call me Uncle Chuck and Ann Emily, and it'd be weird if they just call me Chuck. I have mine. Call me Mr. Clark. Very nice. Well, since we got into the Vs ant debate, that means you can type in GED in the search bar@housetofworks.com and get your foot in the door. Get started at learning how to use the computer to prepare to take the Pearson based GED test. And I think I said search bar in there, right? Yeah. Which means it's time for listener mail. This is from Yokim and Denmark and it's about goats licking feet. Oh, yeah. This is serious. Hey, guys. I'm sitting here listening to your Salt podcast, re listening to it and suddenly remembered why that episode annoyed me last time I listened to it. Yeah, I didn't see why he had to say annoyed him, but I think he's from Denmark. I don't think they're annoyed. It's like our annoyed. Oh, got you. Hey, you're off the hook, Joaquin. Joaquin, you mentioned a particular type of torture called goat's tongue and categorize. It as kind of a tickle torture. What you need to know about goats is they can eat and digest about anything, including you. Me? The thing you live in, the thing you drive in, the thing you're married to, and the thing that pays you money. Really? Like that. Goats will very slowly but very doggedly lick the flesh clean off the soles of your feet. If you ever had a small cut underneath your feet, you'll know that we're actually quite sensitive down there. Having the flesh licked off will expose all your nerve endings, which the goat will then proceed to lick through. Think of it like having the soles of your feet sandpapered off and then just keep sandpapering until there's nothing left but bone. That is from, like I said, Yokim and. Denmark. That was it. It just kind of stopped right there. He gets a total break because no, he had other stuff to say, like what a big fan he was, and he's reloaded to a lot of these, so he can say whatever he wants. Oh, awesome. Because he re. Listens. Yeah. And who on earth would do that? Some people do, like, relistened to the whole thing. My eyes bleed as a thought. Are you okay? Everybody? Are you okay? Yeah. People who are listening to this for the third time well, you QA the podcast before their release. Yeah, I listened to them after the release to make sure that nothing got through that shouldn't have. Oh, really? You didn't know that? Yeah. I didn't know my QA was being QAED. No, not that. There's been a few times where we've been like, there's a little mess up in there. Aunt Jerry. Aunt and Jerry. Oh, wait, yes, that's right. We say aunt when we're angry. All that is to say that it's all I can do to say this stuff and listen to it again. I'm sure you feel the same way. Yeah, that's like, one of the worst parts of our job. Yeah. And Happy Thanksgiving to us. One and all. Right. Right. So if you want to get in touch with Uncle Chuck, mr. Clark, or Aunt Jerry, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffycheanow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstoughfworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web. It's called Stuffyoushorenow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer school's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. 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 looking listening to all your favorite true crime podcast. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today." | ||
How Wills Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-wills-work | Whether it's oral, scrawled in blood or signed on a deathbed everyone should have a will. But how do they actually work? Join Chuck and Josh as they explain that "of sound mind" thing in this episode on wills. | Whether it's oral, scrawled in blood or signed on a deathbed everyone should have a will. But how do they actually work? Join Chuck and Josh as they explain that "of sound mind" thing in this episode on wills. | Thu, 21 Apr 2011 20:09:24 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=21, tm_hour=20, tm_min=9, tm_sec=24, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=111, tm_isdst=0) | 36496261 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. With me, as always, is Charlie is w chucker. Chucktran Bryant. Chucktran is so weird to me. I don't get it. Yes. I have no recollection of where that came from. Oh, no, wait. It was from a show, though. You didn't just make that up? Not just now. It's was in relation to something we were talking about at the time. Yeah, someone went it made sense once. Okay. I was on our Facebook page. I was looking for discussions. Like, sometimes I like to go on and read. Like, what's your favorite line? Really? Have you ever read this? I didn't know the word. It's just like a trip down memory lane. Really? Yeah. There's a whole discussion threads. There's like, 40 different threads that people have created, but there was one that was like, what's your favorite stuff you should know line of all time? And I can't find that thread any longer. It's a good one. Did you go through and count on how many you had and how many I had? I did not count. I kept a running tally, but I didn't count. Just mentally. I didn't write anything down, as it were. Chuck? Yes. 1979 was a pretty good year for movies. Yeah, sure. Allow me. That year the Muppet movie came out, kramer versus Kramer was number one at the box office. One of my personal favorites. Amityville Horror. The first one. The Woody Allen's. Manhattan. The Jerk. That's my favorite all time movie. Manhattan is yeah. I've not seen it. What? I have not. Okay. The Jerk is awesome. Oh, wait. The jerk or Manhattan? I said Manhattan. You said yeah, Manhattan. I was changing the subject. OK all right. I like The Jerk. Alien, rocky Two. Alien, so far ahead of its time. Moonraker, so behind the times. But none of these held a candle to, in my opinion, overlooked movie by director Michael Schultz, a classic called Scavenger Hunt. Really? Have you ever seen it? No. You've not seen Scavenger Hunt now? Is it kind of a riff on It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, mad world? I can see how some maybe some elitist might make that distinction or that comparison. Okay. I personally think that it's a great movie and it's about Vincent Price while it begins. Vincent Price is this aged video game magnet. Was he ever young? No. Okay. He was born, like, wrinkles and gray and suave, though. Yes, he was much more suave than he let on. He is dying, and he actually does die playing one of his video games. And then he cut to his former home, and his lawyer is executing his will, which his estate is worth $200 million. And it turns out we learn very quickly, as all the characters assemble, that the whole thing is up for grabs. To a single team who go on a scavenger hunt. Did you really see this or is this just I grew up on this one. Okay. Yeah, it's a great movie. Have you really not seen it? No, I never heard of it. I strongly recommend it, and I found it just to get myself in the mood. I found it on YouTube in parts, I think eleven parts, like ten minute segment. So if you're a very cheap person or can't find it, it's up on YouTube. Sweet. I think if you search Scavenger Hunt and then in parentheses, it'll bring it up. Awesome. So the whole point of that was, number one, Scavenger Hunt is a good movie. Okay. And number two, people do some wacky things with wills. That scenario wasn't that far off from things that people have done with their wills. We're talking about wills. Chuck, let's get ready to talk about contract law. I know this is one of the first articles I wrote, and it was a little rigid, but there's not a lot you can do. I mean, I try to make it a little fun in the end, but I was fully planning on complimenting you on this article. It's a good article. It's comprehensive. It's got everything you need. I mean, you don't get into, like, any of the legal mobile jumbo, but that's not the role of the site. And you know what? Let's just go ahead and say I'm glad you brought that up. We are not attorneys. You should not take this podcast and base your will and life on it. Please do not do that. No, but that being said, you can get all the documents you need to create your own will for $6.95 at Staples. Really? Yeah, they have everything. Well, that brings up one of the first points, which is a will isn't super complicated to draw up, and it varies from state to state. So you can do it yourself, but you should get an attorney to look over things. But if you want to save a few bucks, you can always go to Staples. Well, we should probably say that again and again through this podcast, as you did again and again through this article. Really, you should have, at the very least, an attorney look at your will if you're going to do it yourself. Yeah, right. Let's talk about some of the specifics. Man, if you have ten minutes to write this thing, a piece of paper and a pen, what are the high points that you want to hit to make your will as close to legal as possible? And by the way, state law governs wills, right? Yeah. And you always got to check with your state if you want to call it up and be like, State, I got some questions for you. And if you have a will in one state and you move, it'll still be valid, but you still should check your state's laws and stuff like that. Right. Because is it the state you die in that is the state that your will is executed in jeez because it seems like if you were going to move, it would seem like that's the way it would go. I guess so. But what if you die on vacation? Hawaii? Your will wouldn't be based on I think it pertains to the state in which it was drafted and approved. Check with your lawyer. Check with your lawyer or at least call the state. I don't think you'd stumped me so early. Sorry. All right, so what you want to have at the very bare minimum is your name, your spouse's name, if you have one, and when you were married yeah. Your children's name so they can make sure they're not confusing your other spouse with your spouse in the will. That's right. Your children's names, and I love this part how you want any step children or foster children to be treated. You could be like, well, yeah, please treat them well. A statement revoking any other wills, if you have one. You got to name your executor in an alternate you should name an alternate list of powers that you want that executor to have special gifts, personal property, and instructions for distributing paying debts. Or actually, you can't decide whether or not you want to pay your debts, but after debt has been paid, how you want your stuff to be doled out. So I'm officially founding a movement that if your debtors can't get the money they need out of you while you're alive, that's that. Yeah. Didn't you look that up? What's the law? Well, it varies by state again, but generally, if you have enough money to pay, say, like a credit card debt, you have to pay that credit card debt. But there are owners'on, credit card companies, like, they have to notify your executor within 60 days or something of this outstanding debt. Okay. And if it turns out that there's not enough money, then you can basically say, like, sorry, that's that, and the credit card company has to write it off, and then we all pay for it with our outrageous financing fees in the end. Burial instructions. You can sometimes put in a will, but you should. What instructions? Burial. I just got picked on burial. And you probably want those somewhere else, though, because sometimes the will isn't immediately accessible. If you've got it locked in a safe and your family doesn't know the combination, they're just going to leave you laying around on the floor of the kitchen for days. You don't need to sweat your pension plan or life insurance or annuity, stuff like that, because that's all taken care of. The beneficiaries are in those documents. So that needs to be in your will. Right. And it can actually screw things up, right? Not screw things up. It can slow things down because you can say, I want my life insurance policy to go to my estate. Yes. And then divvy it up. Yes. But that just adds a lot more time to the process, correct? Absolutely. You should probably, in most states, have to be at least 18 years old to have a legal will. And everyone knows you have to be of sound mind and body or I think it's just sound mind. Yeah. Because, I mean, what is your body of duty? As long as you can make an X or draw a whale like quickwig, you're fine. So what does that mean, legally speaking, mentally sound? Well, I'm glad that you brought that up, or I'm glad that you put this in the article because I think it's a good idea. Basically, you have to know that you own property. You have to know about it. Right. If you don't know that you have like, 100 acres in Montana, then you're not probably a sound mind. Or you did at one time know that you had it and just don't remember any longer. Yeah. That could be a problem as well. And it's sad. It is. I don't know. It is kind of sad to not be of sound mind if you're not suffering from a mental illness, which I remember I saw a remake of Psycho, which wasn't Psycho, too. It was made for TV, and it was kind of a spoof comedy. And the thing starts with the execution of Norman Bates will, and it gets to the point where it says, I Norman Bates being of sound mind. And everybody in the room is like but it kind of brings up a point, like, what do you do if you are mentally ill and you have a bunch of assets and you've never created a will and you want to create one? Do you die in testing? No. That's a good question. Interstate. I do know that if you become mentally ill later on, then it doesn't matter as long as you are sound mind when you first wrote the will. Right, okay. You also need to be aware of the people who are related to you. Again, not like you fathered a kid back in 1962 that you didn't know about. That's not what they're talking about. They're talking about the kid that you had in 62 and raised into an adulthood is still recognizable to you. And also, you generally probably shouldn't hold conversations with leprechauns that tell you to burn things. That's usually a big red flag that you might not be a sound mine. That's right. So Chuck, that's sound mine. And let's say you've got that check, check. You know about your lane in Montana, you know your kid's name, you don't suffer from mental illness, and you are ready to create your will. Right. Boom. The executor. Yes. That is the most important person in your will, because that is the person that is going to make an inventory of all your junk. They're going to pay your debts. They're legitimate debts. That is not vinny who comes over and says, hey, you owe me $10,000. Although you may want to pay that, too, if you're smart. Distributes the assets under the terms of the will. So it can be anybody. But you want it to be someone you really trust, someone who's probably pretty smart, maybe has a little business experience, and someone who is thoughtful because it can get ugly. You want someone this is a tough time for a family, usually, and you want someone that's got a good bedside manner. They're going to execute your will. Right. Not some jerk. Right. You also want somebody who has a lot of time to go to your house and inventory stuff. Yeah. I remember when I found out my sister is my dad's executive tricks. And I was like, what about me? And I read about all the dude, you're just like cutting the check. Yeah. I actually think my dad likes me more than I thought, now that I know what an executor has to do to let you off the hook. Yeah. So, Chuck, let's talk about the different kinds of wills. There's obviously the standard, like ironclad will, it's been drafted by an attorney or whatever, which will talk about in a second. But there's some kind of interesting wills, because death doesn't necessarily happen when you're counting on it. Exactly. That should be stuff you should know the new model, new slogan. Death doesn't happen when you're counting on it. Yes. Death doesn't necessarily happen when you're counting on it. Just to add that extra. I like it. That it's suspense. So you're talking about probably a couple of things. One can be an oral well, which is a lot of times in the old days, it might still happen because soldiers are still very young and might not think that they need a will because they're young and they're bulletproof. But a lot of times, soldiers on the battlefield would execute an oral well to their buddy there as they are dying in the trenches. You want to do two buddies? Oh, two witnesses. Yeah. That definitely helps the case that it's legal. Yeah. And the scenario I just mentioned, which is the dying soldier on the battlefield, is one of the more common ways that an oral will will be upheld. Right. Because I imagine they have a lot of compassion for something like that. Yeah. And if they can find your buddies and get them to sign an affidavit, or they can actually come to probate court and say, yes, this is what he said. He said to leave it all to me? Yeah. No, he said to leave it all to me. Then it turns ugly. But if they both agree that it is what you said, then it's probably going to stand up in court. Right. So what's a death bed will? A deathbed will is virtually the same thing, but say rather than dying young and being of sound mind, you might be on your deathbed and are suffering from Alzheimer's or something like that. Right. So the deathbed will, it also can be written, too. It's more of like the time rather than the type. Right. It can be written, it can be oral, and you can have several witnesses, but it's also the most commonly challenged one because mental capacity is frequently argued. Like this person didn't know what they were talking about, or somebody had their feeding to kink, so they did it under duress. Right. Yeah. There's a holographic wheel. Josh very informal handwritten. Usually this is the coolest looking will. That's right. It's not a hologram. Not all states recognize these as valid. So as always, check with your state. But scenario where this might happen is you wreck your car on a snowy road in the middle of nowhere, and you're like, I'm going to die and I'm going to scratch out my will. Or you pee it into the snow. That would be awesome. Or if you're James Franco or that real dude and you're stuck in a boulder, you could probably videotape it. Although I think holographic is strictly handwritten. So that would be an oral deathbed will sort of commonly written in blood. But he lives in one's own blood, right? Yeah. That's a pretty cool one. I said it was cool. Yes, I think that's the coolest one. You think so? Yeah. The impending death by oneself. Yeah. And you just scratch it out on whatever paper you have and then succumb to the elements. I think it's neat because think about it, you're thinking about the people you love, and in some way they're there with you. Right then. Yeah. But what if you're saying, I don't want to leave any of those no good nerdy wells, anything, well, then you deserve to freeze to death. Okay. There's the DIY well, which you mentioned you can get on the Internet, or I guess it's staples. Yeah. You can get the forms. Self probating wheels can save you a little time. Well, this is the ironclad will, right? I think so. This is the one where you hire a lawyer to draft it, at the very least review it, but probably you've hired a lawyer to draft your will. A couple of $100, from what I understand. Oh, really? And the witnesses sign affidavits ahead of time that are part of the will saying, like, yes, this guy did say this. So these witnesses don't have to appear in probate court to testify that this is the correct will. Right. So it expedites the whole process. It makes it more difficult to challenge, and basically it's the bada booming but of being of wills. Don't contest me, baby, is what it says at the bottom. And since we're talking about contesting and changing, that happens all the time. Totally legal. The only person that can change a will is the testator. Is that funny? That's like Hodgman says, complainant and defendant does. Judge John Hodgman tested or the testator is the only person that can do this. It's very common, a lot of reasons. You might have a new kid, you might get divorced, you might get married, you might start hating your kid. Start hating your kid. The tax laws might change in your favor. She can tweak it a bit. You might all of a sudden you might win the lottery and think, you know what? I might want to rethink how my will is read at this point. Or you might just feel like, you know what, I'm kind of old and my kids are doing okay, so I'd rather just leave my money to some great charities. That's a nice thing to do. Yeah. Bill Gates, he's leaving the line share of his dough to charity. Oh, yeah. While he's alive, even. That's right. Okay, so let's say that your elderly parent dies and you decide that he or she is obviously crazy because he or she left his or her money to charity. Right. You can challenge this, right? That's right. And there are a number of ways to challenge it. But first of all, it's a very difficult, long and expensive process. Unless you have a real solid evidence of one of may be several points that could possibly overturn a will, it's going to be you're not going to win. And not anyone can challenge, like, Joe Schmoe off the street. Or let's say I couldn't challenge your will and say, but Josh was my podcast partner. It doesn't matter. I don't know. You could technically be a person of legal standing, which is what you have to be to challenge a will. You either have to be someone who is in the will and you're challenging. It like I got ream. This is terrible. I want more money than this. What is your problem? But you can't challenge unfairness. You can do it, but you won't win. Thank you for correcting me. Yeah, you could be like, somebody was holding this guy's feeding, too. So that's when you could challenge. Or you could be someone who should have been in the Will e. G. Podcaster. I would think it's usually a family member, though. You probably have to be a blood relative. Blood or maybe marriage. But I'm sure if you're a blood relative, it helps make you helps your position as a person of legal standing more. I'm going to challenge your will, like when we're in our eighty s. And this is going to be like some sort of proof that I agree you should be a person of legal standing. At least we'll be like the Sunshine Boys. Like, we haven't spoken in 30 years and our children are trying to get us together for one more show. Did you ever see that? No, that was good one, but I laughed anyway. And by the way, I'm leaving all my stuff to Yummy so you can challenge it all you want, pal, but I just contradicted your challenge. And this is going to stand up because this is a very public thing. I would think that this would work. Yeah. I wouldn't challenge she can have it all. Okay. She can have your junk. You do Josh, have a good chunk. If you do challenge it, which you can either rewrite it completely, revoke the original, or add something called a cottesal to your existing well, it's just like an addendum, basically. Oh, that's if you want to change your will. Yeah. But if you wanted challenge it well, there's very good turnaround. The will is forged is one. Yeah. That it didn't meet the requirements of the state. Like, maybe the state requires two witnesses and there's only one. Right. The person was coerced. The testitor was coerced with the kink in the feeding tube. The testitar was a victim of fraud. What would that be? I don't know. Like, maybe the person who drew up the will wasn't really a lawyer, but charged lawyers fees. Okay. And then lastly, the beneficiary doesn't approve the executor. And this could be like the executor is maybe the fraudulent attorney. Yeah. It can't just be like, she borrowed my pearl necklace once and never gave it back. There's no way she can execute this estate. Right. I didn't get stats, but the general feeling I get is that wills are pretty tough to overturn. Unless, like you said, there's some pretty blatant egregious errors or fraud going on. And if it is rejected, then they just go to the state law, which is your wife gets this percentage, your firstborn gets this percentage, and on down the line. Okay. And that's as if you had died without a will. That's how they treated, which is called dying intestate. Yeah. I never heard that word. Okay, so let's say that your kid just really turns out to be a jerk. You did everything you could, but you just don't like your kid. You nurtured, you nurtured. You nurtured. And then natured one out. It's like Sean Penn in the game before he went through the game. Oh, yeah. Like that kind of guy. Okay. All right. Okay. You can cut your kid out of the will, but you have to follow a specific guideline, and that guideline is you officially have to disinherit your kid. Yeah. And I was surprised. It's easier to write your child out of your will than your spouse. Yeah. And you brought the child into the world. You married the spouse. I was surprised by that, too, chuck yeah. Like you said, you disinherited a child unless you have some sort of ironclad prenup, then your spouse, husband or wife is going to be getting some dough. A third to a half generally is the way to go. Yeah. So spouses are tough, kids are easy. Right. But most lawyers will be like, don't do that. Do not just disinherit and don't try to cut your spouse out. It's going to make you look like a jerk. It's going to make a judge overturn your will. Here's what you do. You give them each fifty cents, okay. Right. Pretty horrible, right? That doesn't make you look like a jerk. No, it doesn't. But you put in an interwarm clause, right, that says that if they challenge the will that they forfeit everything. And you know what that means in Latin? It means in order to frighten. So basically it's saying it's trying to scare someone off. Right. So the $0.50 thing wouldn't work. Right. You want to leave them enough so that they're going to have what they need, but they're still offended. Exactly. Right. So they're like, well, I could buy $5,000 worth of crack with that $5,000. Maybe I should just stick with this. Divorce can complicate things. Obviously, some states renders the will invalid, but most times just the parts where the spouse is in there will be addressed. So the bequest is what the people get. The beneficiaries are the people who get bequests. I actually figured out like a pretty good sentence to explain all this. The beneficiary receives a bequest from the testedder's will in probate court at the behest of the executor. That's so clever. Thank you. Look at you. So the beneficiaries are all going to get slapped with what is called a death tax. Really? It's called an estate tax. But opponents of the estate tax, the rich basically created this other name for it called the death tax, which is like you're being taxed to die. You're not actually being taxed to die. Your estate is not even being taxed. Your beneficiaries bequests are what are taxed? The thing is, it's a lot. You know what I call it? One final little from the government, from Uncle Sam. Like you paid your whole life, you paid your whole life, you died on the battlefield and then we're going to get some more tax. And it's hefty. Yeah. Well, I mean, part of the reason why the estate taxes around is to prevent dynasties from taking place. But the problem is with all the loopholes, tax shelters, that kind of stuff, the rich are the only ones who can afford to get around from paying estate taxes. So that kind of goes under the middle class and it prevents middle class dynasties from being formed. But, you know, it's really weird, but I cannot describe to you how severe the level of deja vu I have right now is. Really? Have we had a conversation about the state taxes in that same vein? I don't think so, but we've done a podcast on deja vu. Well then prepare for some really vitriolic listener mail from that one. Oh, really? Because in my deja vu memory yeah, that tick people off. What? Because you said that only the rich people can know about these loopholes. Well, they can afford accountants that can figure out these loopholes lawyers, that kind of thing. It's like, you ain't going to get that at the 695 Staples package. No. Okay. No, it actually says, good luck with the death taxes, pal. So, Chuck, if you are a person living in, I think, 2006 in the United States, and you inherited over $10,050, what did you pay? 25.96. Close to $3. That's just for inheriting $10,051, right? Yeah. Well, that's the base thing. Then you have to pay an additional 35% over and above the $10,050. So let me ask you that. Is that 35% on the whole thing or 35% on the whole thing minus $10,050? That's a good question, and I don't know, and I'm sure some smart attorney will say, here's how it is. Yeah, but if you're inheriting a million dollars, who cares? Yeah, well, that's a lot of change, though. It's like $350, right. On $10,000. Yes, Josh, you're indeed, right now, who cares? So there's the death taxes. You can set up a trust. That is one good way to maybe pay fewer taxes. If smart people often set up trust. Rich people often set up trust. Well, it also keeps your you don't have to be rich, though. I've looked into trust. About two grand to set up a trust? Yeah. And this number one, it's very speedy. It keeps it out of probate court. Like when you die, you're dying wishes that are a part of your will that are incorporated into this trust. That's that right. So all of this stuff gets divvied up right away. It stays out of court. Yeah. And if you have a minor in your family, a lot of times you'll set up a trust, because if you don't set up a trust, the court is going to assign or there will be a conservator who will oversee the assets of the miner in 18 to 21, generally in most states, as when a minor can all of a sudden handle their own finances. But if you set up a trust, it's managed by the trust or and they'll handle it for your kid, whoever that person is. I would imagine someone just as trustworthy as the executor, maybe one in the same you're right. And then, Chuck, of course, there is the living will, right? Yeah. And there's a whole article on living wills, so we won't get into it too specifically, but a living will have nothing to do with your money and properties. It is hey, if I'm ever in a serious accident on a ventilator, here's how I would like you to pull the plug or not pull the plug. And it's more complicated than that. Yeah. Because that's line one. And line two is if I'm ever attacked by a dog and I need a heart that's coming that my family can afford to pull the plug and then down the line. Right. Yeah. And these need to be signed and witnessed, and power of attorney is usually. Included. Because if you can't cover every scenario, obviously. And the power of attorney would be, let's say, you know what, I want Emily to be in charge of making this decision and not my mom, let's say, because my mom would be like, no, he'll pull through. And then we'd be like, he doesn't look too good. She wouldn't do that. I'm just kidding. It's still funny, but yeah. Living well is very important, though, for anyone of any age. It can get real messy. We've seen it in the news time and time again. So, yeah, get your living well taken care of. And I think you can also just do, like, a blanket. Like, don't take any heroic measures to save me. And I don't want to be on any kind of life support. Mine says, Never, ever unplug me. Really? I want to be a burden on my family for the rest of my life as long as that machine can keep me alive. I want to be shaved once a week from top to bottom. All right. That segues nicely into odd things that can happen. Stipulations with your will. Nice. Is that how we should finish up? Yeah, totally. You can have requirements of your Quest stores. No, the Beneficiaries. Beneficiaries? Yeah. Like, hey, wrote this article I know, a long time ago, like, hey, I want to give my son the majority of my fortune, but he's got to finish college first or quit smoking. I saw. Were you thinking of me when you wrote that? I was not. You were smoking a ton back then, though, if you were. So let's talk about some funny and odd things in history with Wells. Josh finished on a lighter note. Well, there's Portuguese Aristocrat, Luis Carlos de Norona, Cabral de Mars. Terrible. And it sounded like I took a bite of peanut butter toward the end. Do you want to do that one? Well, now that you said his name, I'll tell you what he did. He picked 70. So you don't want to try that one? No. Okay. He picked 70 strangers, random strangers from a phone book in Lisbon and 13 years before he died and said, these are the people, but don't tell them. It's going to be just a big surprise. Yeah. And some people thought they were being conned. If I did that and I died, everybody there would be 70 strangers, each getting a $1 bill. But I put in my will that it had to be, like, crisp from the bank. Never circulated $1 bills to make them feel good. I thought you were going to save, like, a roll of quarters or something. That's another way to go. But that's more than a dollar. Yeah, you're right. McNair Illgren Fritz was an unsuccessful but wealthy composer, and he said, you know what, Metropolitan Opera of New York, I'll leave you 125 grand if after I die, you put on this opera I've written and the Met said we could use that money, but nothing. Which is like, ouch. Yeah, but they said the music, it was workable, not like they said, this is awful. I think I guess it just wasn't in their plan. Yeah. Josh, what else do we have here oni Nurmi? Yeah. Finished businessman. This is my favorite one. He apparently laid in life, made some friends at the rest home where he was dying and died, I imagine. And he said, you know what, I'm going to leave everybody here. 780 shares of a rubber boot company that I imagine I had something to do with at some point, maybe. And that rubber boot company went on to become cell phone giant Nokia. And all of those people became millionaires, I imagine all of those people's children or grandchildren became millionaires. Because I don't think Nokia went from a boot company to the cell phone biz, like overnight. But it was still very nice. It's a good story. If you ask me. These are pretty cool. Josh Ed. Hedrick the inventor. Well, not the inventor of the Frisbee, but he's credited with perfecting the modern frisbee. He took it out of its original square feet. Exactly. He worked for Waymo, obviously, and he said, you know what, I want my ashes to be molded into memorial versions of the frisbee and sell those and use the money from those to open up a Frisbee museum. And then another guy, a Marvel comic writer, Mark Brewingwald, said, I would like my ashes to be mixed with ink and be on a comic book. And when he died young at 42, there were 4000 ink and ashes issues of Squadron Supreme printed. Yeah. Wouldn't you be disappointed if that was the one you got printed in? I would. Well, that would I want to be in the Punisher. It was probably his comic, though. He still want to be in the Punisher. Okay. I want to be in a better comic. Yeah. And who else? Dusty Springfield. Should we mention her? Hers is kind of neat, I guess. It's kind of silly. She had a cat named Nicholas, and Nicholas had a favorite meal, which was imported baby food. So she left the singer of Son of a Preacher Man. She said, you know what? Nicholas is going to lay on my nightgown for the rest of Nicholas'life and my music is going to be played and lifetime supply of that cat food for Nicholas. Yeah. And then Leona Helmsley left 15 million to a dog for the care of her dog. You can't actually leave money to an animal. Yeah. You can stipulate in your will that this money is for the care of this animal or something. Right. And she left a couple of grandkids. Nothing. Yeah. And then there was the tree that owns itself in Athens. The elderly couple that died, or the elderly woman that died and left this piece of land, apparently set up a trust for the tree so that it can never be cut down or removed. And actually, if you drive along the street, you have to go around the roundabout that's built around the tree that owns itself and it's got a little placard and a little chain around it. And that tree grows up to the center of city hall. And that tree grew up to be Roy Comb. I got nothing else. I don't either. If you want to read a fine article written by a young, strapping Charles W. Bryant when he first came to housestepworks.com, just type how wills work into the handy search bar@housetofworks.com. That, of course, brings up listener mail. All right, Josh, I know you're going to balk at this because we have another request from a boyfriend trying to get his girl. No. I feel so bad for Timmy, though. All right, go ahead. All right, Timmy, before we read this, dude, if you don't get back in touch with us and let us know what happened, we will find you. Yeah, you're dead to me. Even though we can't find the other guy, we will find you to me. Since we mention it other guy who we propose we don't like you anymore. What happened there, dude? People are clamoring to know. All right. To my beloved Josh and Chuck and Jerry since 2009. Let me skip ahead to the interesting part. Okay? Jerry is cracking up. Today guys have been a big fan since 2009. One big thing that has changed since that time was I found an absolutely brilliant girlfriend. She also loves you guys. We would spend our nights together, falling asleep, listening. Stuff you should know. She would fill me in on bits I missed. Sounds like a very sweet thing. Unfortunately, recently we were having a rough time of things. Sort of lost perspective and the spark faded. Let me go ahead and tell you that spark always fades. You got to have something else going on there. Substantial model airplanes is a good one. So we both amicably agreed that it would be easier to split after 18 months together. And the best thing, we both do the same university. We have the same courses at times. Where is this guy? He must be English or something. We still chat a lot. And I really miss her, though. And I know she misses me, too. You don't know that, Timmy. You're about to find out. We were great together and just needed this time apart to sort out our heads and commit back to one another. What I would like to do, guys, is for you to say to Elaine, would you please get back with Penny? Go back out with him. He's boyfriend again. I'm sorry, girlfriend. I know she'll be listening. It would be a great way of me showing her how much I still care. Or just talk to her. That's another thing. Or that he's watching her. I don't think we'll do any more of these. I love her. I want to spend my future with her. I would be really grateful for this. So that's the deal. Timmy says, much love, Elaine. Take him back. Or don't. Either way, Timmy, please let us know what happens so we can follow up and tell people what happened with the two new Lanes algae. And that is it. That is as dead as Haiku and Disco. We are not doing that anymore. Never again. No. All right. Agreed. Okay. Thanks a lot, Timmy. Good luck to you forever. Chuck, are you okay with that? No, I'm fine. Because it just gets out of hand, and then we're asking people out on a first date all of a sudden. Hey, can you tell my friend Joe to pick up the tab every now and then? I'm okay with that one. Okay. Yeah, that's fine. You know how I feel about freeloaders. All right, well, then let's call for that in the email. We'll do that. They'll send them anyway. Okay. All right. So if you know a story about a crazy will, a crazy stipulation and a will, I love those. I can't get enough of them. So let's hear them, right? Yeah. Real ones. Yeah. Don't make them up, jerks. We want to hear it. You can put it on Facebook. Stuff you should know. Facebook facebook.com stuffyoushouldnow. S Yskpodcast. That's our Twitter handle. And you can send us an email at 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 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, 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 in Kilgara and Georgia Hardstart, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | ||
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-08-01-sysk-public-broadcasting-final.mp3 | How Public Broadcasting Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-public-broadcasting-works | Public broadcasting works a bit differently depending on where you are in the world. American TV made the leap more toward commercial broadcasting in the early days, yet PBS and NPR still remain a vital part of our national fabric. In England and many oth | Public broadcasting works a bit differently depending on where you are in the world. American TV made the leap more toward commercial broadcasting in the early days, yet PBS and NPR still remain a vital part of our national fabric. In England and many oth | Tue, 01 Aug 2017 14:50:57 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=1, tm_hour=14, tm_min=50, tm_sec=57, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=213, tm_isdst=0) | 54320982 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetuffworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry. Which means it's time for stuff you should Know about public private. How are you feeling? Good. Full of beans. Today the last thing I wanted to hear. You're stuck in here with me for a couple of hours, buddy. Oh, dear. It's the musical fruit. Yeah. Sort of here. Yes. I've been here since I was six years old. Is it musical fruit? I thought it was magical fruit. Musical fruit breaks, probably regional, like soda and coke and pop and all that. Musical magical. Sure. Don't talk about it at all. Actually. I grew up it wasn't even musical. I just grew up with beans. Beans good for your heart. Oh, well, that's real. Yeah. So that's how I rolled into Atl. Yeah, you did. So you're feeling pretty good? Yeah, I think it's a very wonderfully, disrespectful way to open up a show about one of our finest institutions. I know. I really feel on edge because you know that every single NPR personality is going to hear this one. You think every single one? No. Guy Ross right now is sitting there like these two idiots. Well, Terry Gross already thinks for idiots. She is my hero. Buddy, I don't think that there has ever been a finer radio program than Fresh Air. Yeah. I mean, she's the best. She's a legend. She's awesome. You ever heard an interview with her? No. I recommend it. She's a pretty sharp tack. Yeah. So I'm sure they're pretty fun. In fact, you know what? Perfect time to shout out our buddy. Jesse Thorn of Bullseye with Jesse Thorne has a short run series called The Turn Around where he interviewers legendary he interviews legendary interviewers. Okay. Like IRA Glass. Carol Morris. I think Terry Gross is in there. I'm not sure. Got to be. I don't think hers is out yet. I'm not going to promise that because I'm not positive. Okay. But I can hold my breath, though. Right. But it's a really cool show. All right. It's real interesting to hear because I think Jesse is a great interviewer, and then to hear him interview the great interviewers about interviewing. Right. It makes your head just turn 180 degrees. It's really cool. All right. Chuck. Yes. So we're talking public broadcasting, which, depending on how you okay. You're a big fan. Sure. So it probably doesn't sound a little dull to you, talking about public broadcasting, but I'm sure there are people out there who just walked right past this one, and hopefully some of them said, you know what? No. I'm going to give the dudes chance. I'm going to listen. Those people will be richly rewarded by this episode because it turns out the public broadcasting, it's history, it's present, it's future, hopefully all very interesting. Yeah. And if you are not a fan of it, then, well, you're in the minority, technically. Yeah. They've got some big numbers. Bigger than I realized. Yeah. More than half of the US population tunes into public TV or radio or online. So we're talking PBS and NPR generally. Right. That's 170,000,000 Americans. And it says here that PBS has more viewers than our dearly beloved Discovery Channel, even HGTV. Right. And an E, which are all thought of as well. They are very big networks. Juggernauts. Yeah, but I think people here PBS, I think some people think it's the treasure that it is. Some people might be a little bored by it without realizing. Oh, but wait a minute. I saw Monty Python and Benny Hill on PBS. I'm so glad you when I was a kid, to think of Benny Hill. I sure love Downton Abbey and oh, wait a minute, that was PBS, too, right? Or Antiques Road Show. I mean, Mr. Rogers, some of the more legendary shows in American history. Right. And it's not like All Things Considered in Morning Edition and Fresh Air and wait, wait, don't tell me American Life or any slouches at all. If you step back and put the rosters of NPR and PBS together, it makes up a pretty big swath of the American fabric. Totally agreed. Yeah. Well, thank you. I agree with myself on that one as well, so I didn't realize how new they were, though. Did you? Yeah, I think I thought it was seventy s. Oh, well, you were dead on. Yeah, it started in 1970. Actually, it goes back a little further than that to the Public Broadcasting Act. And actually we should go back even slightly further than that to set this whole thing up. Right, okay. So radio comes up, starts to become a mass medium. Right. And the UK and Europe and America at the time were basically faced with this thing, like, we've got this huge new technology. Up to this point, it's been newspapers and dudes on horseback running through towns. It's how we got the word out. Yeah. Now everybody's starting to get radios. We've got this really powerful thing. What do we do with it? And over in Europe, in the UK, they said, this is a public good and we need to treat it as such. We need to take it seriously. We need to make sure that public affairs programming gets onto the air and they don't have to worry about competing for ad dollars or anything like that. We're going to fund it publicly. In the US. We released two acts. There was the Radioactive 1927 and the Communications Act of 1934, and both of them set up the current competitive capitalist market that we have for broadcasting in the country. Right. Yeah. And it worked. From what I've seen, one of the reasons why it worked was because there was also this kind of tacit understanding among journalists who were part of these broadcast networks that they had a responsibility to inform the public yeah. And there were also only three of them at the time. Sure. But over time, broadcasting in the United States went more and more and more toward entertainment because that could get more people, and that meant you could get more advertising money. So we got further and further away from public affairs programming and news and got more and more into entertainment. And by the 50s, it became evident to some people that we needed something in addition to or to replace the commercial model that we had in the US. Yes. And this was even pre cable TV. Oh, yeah. These are just the big three prefox. Even ABC, CBS and NBC starting to show things like The Honeymooners and realizing people are way more into The Honeymooners sure. Than Walter Cronkite. Well, maybe not. People were into the news back then. Yeah, but even if you do have people who are into the news, there are some certain things that have to do with the commercial model when put up against the public broadcasting model that inherently make public broadcasting more appealing if you're trying to get public affairs programming across. And one of the big ones, Chuck, is if you are a program director for NBC and it's prime time, when you know everybody's home, are you going to put on one of your big money makers like The Honeymooners that you can charge top dollar from advertisers for? Or are you going to put on the McNeil Laird News Report news where you're not going to get as many people? But there's some really in depth investigative journalism because they don't have to worry about attracting advertisers. Ideally, they can just focus on the journalism. Which one are you going to do? Well, you're going to do both, but it's a matter of when you do both. Right. So are you going to do the one time, like, at 530? Right. Or are you going to do a prime time and at 530 not everybody's home from work yet, so overall, you have a less informed citizenry just from when you choose to put the news on. I don't watch the news anymore at all. Not even cable news. But I can't remember the last time I watched, like, local news or a news program on a network. Right. I don't even know. I guess when I lived in La. I didn't have cable. I would watch the news sometimes. I got you because I don't think I had Internet yet. I had, like, an antenna. My news junkie dumb has come and gone over time, wax and wane. It feels pretty gone this time. Just getting used up by cable news. Used, abused. Yeah. Just being done with it is pretty freeing, isn't it? Yeah. Even networks, I like, I don't want to hear it anymore. And the way people ingest news these days is just so different. Yeah. I get most of my news honestly from Twitter. Yeah. Social media. That's how it's done these days, but going back to La. I used to sit around and watch local news in La. It was pretty great. I have to admit. There's a lot of talk about yes. It was just weird. And the personalities were kind of interesting. But yeah, I think it was, like, starting at 430 and then ran all the way up to whatever the big nightly news programs were. What, like seven? Yeah. Cobble takes over hours and hours of weird Southland news. I got you. Yeah. Told to you by a man wearing a cape. Maybe. Yeah, it was that weird. Yeah. Or I don't know. It was strange. But then I kind of missed the old Atlanta news because I grew up watching it's. Pretty. Stayed with giant helmet hair. That's Atlanta local news. Yeah. I think most cities have these stalwarts that have been around forever. Sure. Yeah. Monica Kaufman. Yeah. Who is married now. She's not even Monica Kaufman anymore. What's her name now? I don't know, because I'm new in 20 years. I got you. But I think someone told me she has a married name now. I was like, what that's? Monica Kaufman? Yeah. Or you would see one of them. I worked at the laser show, and I would see, like, Ken Burns the weatherman at the laser show. And it's like a legit celebrity sighting. Oh, yeah. He gives you the wink and everyone is crowding around getting his autographs. Sure. It's the anchorman thing. Right. It's like the salad days. Yeah. Which are now gone because of cable news and the Internet. Well, yeah. The salad days for them. Sure. Now it's our salad days. It's our time. Yeah, that's true, too. And that applies not just to local news. It applies to news in general, including NPR and including PBS. That there's this huge shift I don't know if you've heard this, but there's a big shift to the Internet now. That's true. People are starting to consume, like you said, news in different ways. Public broadcasting is having to keep up just as much as anybody, but it occupies this weird niche that we'll get into. But you want to take a break first and regroup? Yeah. We'll come back here and talk about Linda Johnson. I can't wait. All right, Chuck. LBJ. Yes, LBJ. Did you know that he owns some, I think, TV stations back in Texas when he was a senator? I don't think I knew that he was so he was really in favor of public broadcasting. Well, that kind of makes sense. Yeah. In 1967, he signed the Public Broadcasting Act in the law. But previous to this, there was something called the Net. National Entertainment Times. What was it? Yes, waka waka what was it? I'm sure it was national education television. Yes, national Education Television. They were the precursor to what would eventually become CPB Corporation for Public Broadcasting. But at the time, the Net, they would run things that could be critical of the government and its foreign policy. And some say I don't think it was entirely due to that, but some say that that did play a part in the government eventually funding, via the Public Broadcasting Act, public television. So maybe they could get a little bit more favorable coverage. Right. It's pretty North Korean in mentality, if you think about it. If you step back and look at it, the idea of public broadcasting, government funded public broadcasting, should terrify everybody. Yeah, but the way that it's always been treated is very scary. Right. But the way that it's always been pitched and sold is no, it's taxpayer funded, so it belongs to the people, not the government supposed to be insulated. It's a different estate. It's a fourth estate. It's not the government. It's its own thing. It's supposed to be kept separate. So I was surprised to see that. But it makes total sense, the idea, we'll bring you into the fold, we'll fund you, but you owe us big time. Yeah. I mean, I wonder what kind of real talks were had over that, if any, or if it was just sort of like understood, like, hey, here's, who's writing your checks now? Well, I think it was also a convergence of different interests. Right. So the government wanting to get rid of criticism or clamp down on criticism, coincided with people who wanted more public affairs broadcasting. And then you had some endowments that were well healed, well money, and they all kind of came together to create this Corporation for Public Broadcasting that came out of the Public Broadcasting Act. Yes. Like you said, you set it up nicely with radio, but radio started to decline with the advent of television. And so one of the main reasons they signed the Public Broadcasting Act was trying to get this non commercial radio going in a legit way. Yeah. So Johnson signs the act, the federal government creates CPB, as we mentioned, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and they don't produce TV now. They basically dole out money. They're the gatekeepers. Yeah, in a way. They say, here, get yourself a nice little radio transmitter. But no, that's what they do. They do a lot of money. They cover licensing fees or copyright fees. They cover a lot of the technical infrastructure, and they give a lot of money directly to smaller market MPR or PBS stations. Yeah, I mean, they created the CB, let me say that the whole time. CPB created NPR in 1970, and before that, PBS in 69. They basically said, we need a TV wing and a radio wing going to create these, and we're going to dole out money. This year, actually 20 16, 20, 17, 20 18, and then projected, or at least asked for, for 2019, they've requested the same amount of money. But you don't even see that very often where they're not asking for a raise or whatever. Right. Increased funding of $445,000,000, which amounts to 1% of the federal budget. Yes. And there's a lot of debate that we'll get into when we talk about some of the controversies and criticisms of public broadcasting, and believe me, we're talking about those, but a lot of people say that's pretty disingenuous to point out what a minuscule amount of the budget that is, because it's still $445,000,000, still half a billion dollars. Yeah. And then on the other side, which we'll hear a little bit more about too, a lot of people who are on the public broadcasting side say, just forget just get rid of that. We don't need that money, let's go without it. There's so many strings attached to that $445,000,000, it makes up such a small portion of, say, like MPR itself, operating budget that we just don't even need. It's not even worth the trouble. It's a big debate, which is weird because some people on the public radio side and some ardent critics of public or public broadcasting agree government funding for public broadcasting, right, yeah, agree. Yeah. It's a little weird. I mean, trust me, I found myself reading some of this thinking maybe you should just be free from those shackles because sometimes the public will step up and you might get more funding when something is threatened. Right? Yeah. At least at first. The question is whether that could be sustained for the long term. Yeah, well, we'll get into that. Okay. All right. You mentioned NPR, they actually get less than 1% of that for their operating budget. So the 445,000,000, it's not like they say, all right, NPR, you get 220 something million in PBS, you get the rest. NPR gets less than 1%. And they actually have a mandate CPB of 95% of their spending has to be on local public media stations, content development, community services, and then what they call other related needs. Right. Toilet paper, I guess, and stuff like that. Keeping the AC on. Yeah. So, Chuck, here's how the whole thing works. You ready? Yes. You and I pay taxes. Boo. Some of it goes to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in the form of about $445,000,000 a year. Yeah. In the form of about $4 per taxpayer. I saw one group found a dollar $35 a person. That's for every person. I don't think for every tax paying person. I see. Okay, well, then for every taxpaying person, it's about $4. Okay, so Texas go to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and then the Corporation for Public Broadcasting spends like 95% of that on the small local stations, right? Correct. Well, and the other stuff concept development. Okay. And then you've got the small local stations subscribing to NPR and PBS, who have shows that they create, produce MPR, very famously, All Things Considered in Morning Edition. Right. Started in 1971 and then Morning Edition in 1979. Okay. Long running. So all that money goes taxes Corporation to Public Broadcasting, smaller affiliates, and then it goes back up. So it goes down from the top to the smaller affiliates and then back up to MPR and PBS for the programs that they're developing. So rather than the taxes going directly to NPR or to PBS, it goes to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. But even still, rather than going directly to NPRs, it goes to the smaller affiliates who then give it to NPR and PBS. And by give it, you mean they pay licensing fees to play those shows on their site, right, exactly. Yeah. I think they subscribe and they pay like, a yearly fee to carry that show. Yeah. And when it first started, NPR, we'll cover NPR first, largely, and then get into PBS. But in 1970 is when NPR started. And at the time, there are only 90 member stations, and now there are close to 1000 member stations all over the country licensing these legendary shows. Right. And then for the smaller local affiliates, if you have All Things Considered on, you're going to attract a percentage of your town's listeners. Sure. The more listeners you have for that, the more pledges you'll get during your pledge drive. Correct. Right. And then you also the more listeners you have, the more contributions you can get through underwriting, too. Yeah. But also you'll have to pay more money to license these shows too. Right. The more listeners you have. Yeah. Well, I guess we should go over where they get their funding largely, and then how they charge. The member stations. In 2016 says 39% was from fees and dues from member stations. So close to 40%. Corporate sponsorship, 24%, which has risen over the years, I think. I think that was kind of a controversial thing for a while. Whether or not they wanted to take on any of that, I think it's silly. Is it? Yeah. Like how much they're beholden to that. Sure. Yeah, that makes sense. Grants and contributions, 14%. And then, like you've mentioned, foundations, endowments, colleges and universities, stuff like that. We'll pitch in some dough. Right. What's the big one? That it's. Always the John D. And Kathryn T. McArthur foundation. Exactly. It's like, drilled into your head after all these years. And the Chub Group for PBS. Oh, yeah. And members like you. Yeah. So Morning Edition and All Things Considered, they are stations are charged based on the volume of their listeners, plus a multiplier. And then things like Fresh Air apparently are priced in proportion to that station's revenue. So smaller stations don't have to pay as much as bigger stations. Which is great, because, again, the whole idea behind Public Broadcasting is that you have stuff that's supposed to be, like you said, not beholden to advertisers. Right. So if Company X is screwing over this town's water supply, but they advertise with all of the broadcast networks that are commercially driven, those networks, news might not mention it, but Public Broadcasting will probably do that story. And will let everybody know. Yeah, that's the idea. So it's important for everybody to have public broadcasting, and that's why the smaller ones are supported by the larger ones. Yeah, exactly. PBS on the other side, you mentioned Mr. Rogers Nova growing up. That was a good one. Was it Cosmos on PBS. I think so. I think it was originally it seems like a very Pbsy show. Sure. That turtleneck Masterpiece Theater. Of course. This old house. The Frugal Gourmet. Who was that? Was that Julia Child or Jacques Peppin? Oh, immediately thought Julia Child, but now you have me wondering. We'll find out. Okay, I'll get to the bottom of this. Chuck, you mentioned McNeil Air Report, Evening at the Pops, Sesame Street, probably the most legendary not probably the most legendary kids show of all time. And PBS gets about 200 million viewers annually, representing 82% of US. Television households. So they're big. I know you think of PBS as, like, the sweet little publicly funded thing, but that's big stuff. Like, if they took in ads, they probably wouldn't have to sweat it at all. No, but that's a double edged sword, because then they lose their public value if they start taking an ads, allegedly. Which, again, is why some people have really stuck in their crawl that they have underwriting at all. Yeah, it's Jeff Smith, by the way. Never heard of him. Frugal Gourmet? Yeah, well, not in the 70s, it wasn't, was it? Yeah, it said he released a book in 1984 called The Frugal Gourmet. He's the only person associated with it. Jeff Smith. It sounds like an alias to me. It really does. Maybe Jacques Papa is French for Jeff Smith. Yeah, it says Jeff Smith. You said chef, right? The chef. Chef Jeff. He was the frugal gourmet. He was, according to the Seattle Post Intelligencer, TV's original celebrity chef. Oh, wow. He wasn't that big of a celebrity, apparently. How about that? So PBS has 350 member stations as of now, and they are in all 50 states, plus Guam, Puerto Rico, US. Virgin Islands and American Samoa. Yeah, they got their own member stations. Pretty neat. And they, for the record, get about 7% of their funding from CPP. Right. But just like with the NPR model, local affiliates pay to carry Antiques Roadshow as they should. And if you want to get some viewers, just have an Antiques Roadshow marathon. Do you watch it? Have you ever seen it? Yes, I have seen it. So good. It's like how it's made you just get sucked in. It lulls you into a strap. Well, that's like our own article at How Stuff Works as a little sidebar about the sound of NPR, how it was parodied with delicious dish on Saturday Night Live so famously. But that's the thing, I used to listen to public radio on the radio during my commutes before I even really knew what I was listening to, because I didn't want to wake up to a lot of noise. Oh, yeah. And it was just so soothing. It just kind of eased you into the day, huh? Yeah, absolutely. And it still does. I still listen to it for news, but largely because I want to hear the voices. Yeah. Man, are you into AMSR. The second cup, is that still around with Lois Ritz? Oh, God bless her. Second cup concert. You ever looked up pictures of these people? I know people freak out about us. Sure. Yeah, it happens. But you should see these people. I looked at Lois rights, and I think I expected her to be, like, 400 years old. Yeah. She's not. No. I guess I've never seen her. She's 27. No. Diane ream is 30. Yes. They like to hang on to folks. Here he goes. She's been doing that show since the 80s. Amazing. Yeah. We should be so lucky, right? Hey, your lips to god's ear. Okay, so, Chuck, there's a couple of things going on here. Okay. Getting into the sides. Yeah. So one of the things that congress likes to do every about five years is say, you know that public broadcasting, that left leaning commis drivel? Yeah. Why are we paying for that? Yeah. Why? I was reading this dude named David Boaz or boz B-O-A-Z. Okay. Take your pick. He's one of the higher ups at the cato institute libertarian think tank. He hates public broadcasting in America. Yeah, most libertarians do. It really gets to this guy. And he makes a couple of pretty decent points. Right. Like, to him, it's a transfer of wealth from the average taxpayer up to produce entertainment that the upper middle class typically consumes. Okay, sure. Even though it's intended for everybody. Right. And so from like, a taxpayer standpoint, I can kind of understand where if you didn't agree with if you thought that this was leaning against you ideologically and taking your taxpayer money, I could see how something like that would drive you bonkers. Yeah, sure. To me, though, I think everybody kind of assumes that public broadcasting in the US. Leans a certain way, typically leftward. But supposedly study after study find that they may be slightly left leaning, but they're typically a lot closer to neutral then they're given credit for. Yeah. Overall. Yeah. There've been some things that have happened over the years, notably, in 2011, NPR president at the time and CEO Vivian schiller had to resign or did resign, at least when there was a undercover video in the meeting where one of the executives called tea party members seriously racist. Racist people. Right. It was a big deal. Right. In fact, most of the stuff, when you look up NPR controversies, is all dated in 2011. For that reason. It was a big stink. Well, when they got rid of Vivian schiller, they specifically said that under her watch, some controversies had really gotten out of control, and they just no longer thought she could lead any longer. Yeah. And so there was a study, researchers at Duke University did a study of the Twitter network of NPR and basically did all this Duke University style math that I won't bore you with, but to analyze whether or not NPR was left leaning or not. Right. And it wasn't just NPR. They did this with a lot of news outlets, and I think they never actually posted the New York Times didn't there was a blog about all this, never posted where NPR fell, but they were asked. And one of the researchers said NPR resides somewhat to the left of center, but further to the right than Katie Couric, the Washington Post, the La Times, or Brian Williams, and that was using their algorithm. And then NPR kind of hit back and said, in fact, Steve way further left than Brian Williams. Stevensky wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal and said, in all these surveys, most listeners consistently identify themselves as the middle of the road or conservative. So a lot of people are like, oh, wait a minute, that can't be true, right. And so they got the actual numbers from those surveys, and 28% of NPR's audience said that they were conservative or very conservative. 25% middle of the road and 37% liberal or very liberal. So 53% or middle of the road or conservative, 62% or middle of the road or liberal. It's not as heavy. And this isn't their programming. This is their audience. Right, but it's not as heavy left as some might have you believe. Yeah. And just because that's their audience, I mean, that kind of suggests that it is a little more left leaning because people tend to go seek out stuff that supports their own beliefs rather than challenges. It probably hats off to the middle of the road conservative ones that listen. Yeah, sure. You want to take another break before we get back to it? Yeah, okay. I think it's almost really just kind of more a matter of perception as we were talking about whether NPR is less leaning or not, right, or public broadcasting in general. I think it's probably a little bit left leaning, but it's not how it's not like the infowars of the left, right? You mean CNN? The thing about criticizing NPR, though, is you can go one way you can say it's a little left leaning, but if you look on the other side, you'll find people like Noam Chomsky who say you're getting mired down in the details. He said if you really listen to NPR or you watch PBS and you listen to the stuff they're saying or the people they're having on as experts, it's the same that you're going to find on cable news. And I think one former NPR correspondent basically said that NPR runs press releases for the Pentagon. Right. Noam Chomsky was saying it was basically structurally there to support the status quo. Where if they're presenting a debate and both sides of the debate, it's all still very structured within the status quo. They're not bringing in somebody who's like, well, all of this is Moot point. We need to completely redo the structure of our economy, or something like that. They don't bring in outside voices like that. They bring in voices that exist within normalcy or whatever. So there's a whole camp out there that tend to say, remember that thing that Lyndon Johnson originally did? The reason why he founded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to kind of keep a clamp down on criticism, to keep things within a reasonable spectrum? Well, he succeeded. I kind of tend to agree with that. Yeah. I feel like they usually provide counter points. Right, they definitely provide counter points, but that counterpoint is something that's still within the bounds of normalcy. There's not somebody coming in and saying, like, forget those. Either point, we just got to throw everything away and start over again. I think the point is that it's lacking really outside viewpoints. Right. You know what I'm saying? Outside the status quo. So this has all come up in the news more recently because this year, when Trump proposed his budget proposal for which is not settled or anything by any means, in fact, NPR people are like, let's just settle down. Like, this is round one. But the proposal at least called for the eventual complete abolishment of public funding for PBS and PR or for CPV. Right. And again, you've got people on both sides saying, good, great, let's just get it over with. Yeah. And eventual meaning they wouldn't just pull it would be gradually overtime. Right. Which of course makes more sense than just, like, doing it all at once, tearing the bandaid on. Yeah. And like I said. I've always been a big supporter of public broadcasting. But I thought maybe just be free from those shackles finally. Maybe the public would step up where you get hurt. And apparently where PBS and NPR both kind of trying to voice most of their concerns. Is that of course your big cities are going to be fine. But it's the smaller market member stations that rely way more on the CPB funding that are going to be most hurt. And these are the people that need this stuff the most. These rural communities need public broadcasting. Right. So it's hard to argue at that point. It is for sure. There's actually a historical lesson in here. You can look to New Zealand for this. Like, back in the late 80s, they tried a deregulation experiment, but they had one channel, TV and Z in the whole country, and the government said, you know what? You guys are done with the teeth of the government. Go sell some ads. And they tried this experiment. TV and Z actually came out. I believe it survived, but it was worse for the wear as a result. And ironically, this deregulation opened a space for a true nonprofit, non commercial television called New Zealand on air that actually came and thrived in the wake of this transformation for TV and z from public broadcasting to commercially driven. Interesting. So it's not necessarily going to work out well for the people who listen to NPR or watch PBS if they go to completely commercially driven programming. The whole reason that you have the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, ostensibly, is because commercially driven journalism wasn't getting the job done before, right? And it certainly isn't now. Newsrooms being cut, news that is on cable being more and more polarized one way or another, just shouting match after shouting match. If you really watch the news, the only people, aside from some of those old died in the wool news people on like NBC or CBS is like Nightly news. The only ones really doing real journalism are the ones who are working for public broadcasting. At the very least. They're the ones who are trying the hardest, for sure. Yeah, you could totally make that argument. But at the same time, we're in a weird limbo state where everybody's ticked off, right, because PBS and NPR are not just not fully publicly funded and they're not just advertising driven, they're a combination of the two that compromises them two different ways. Right. Which is why both sides are saying one of the other. I tend to feel like they should just go completely publicly funded and we should adopt something like a British model where it's like, you're funded for the next five years, go do the public some good, and you can't have any underwriting whatsoever. Yeah, well, I mean, it's interesting in that most of Europe and Britain definitely went that other direction, like you mentioned at the beginning, and in that one article you sent over, talking about ways it's done public broadcasting in other countries as a whole, and we're talking about the BBC, and they said, who is the average can't remember who they asked, but who's the average BBC viewer? And the answer was every British citizen. It's a much different deal. Sure. And the BBC is criticized too, for being a government mouthpiece in a lot of ways too, but they're also critical of the government in ways that other people aren't. And they'll also put news on at a time when everybody is home to watch it, right. That kind of stuff. So the future of broadcasting, public broadcasting, isn't as simple as, like, are they going to be publicly funded or not? It's whether or not they're still viable. In 2015, the median audience age was 54 years old and in 20 years before that, it was 45. It's a pretty big age. Yeah, at least it wasn't 74. They stayed exactly the same. The same people just got 20 years older. Right. So they are getting some younger listeners, but the way that especially people under 35 years old consume media is radically different than their parents. Yeah. And there's plenty of people out there who are younger who qualify as, quote unquote millennials sure. Who are, like, listening to stuff that NPR puts out. They're listening to the huge slate of NPR podcasts. Right. There's a ton of podcasts that NPR puts out. A lot of their radio programs are repurposed into podcasts, and so there's a lot of younger people who are listening to it. The problem is that poses a conundrum to the public broadcasting model as it stands in the US. Though, right? Well, yeah, I looked at the top 20 today on itunes just to kind of see an NPR had eight of the top 20 shows as of today. Stiff competition for us. Hidden brain, this American life. Planet money, I guess. S Town and cereal both. They would qualify because they come out of this American Life stable, and that's where it got its start. Their highest rank show today was Ted Radio Hour at number five. Incidentally, we were number four. Oh, good to know. Yeah. I mean, eight shows in the top 20. But it does pose an interesting conundrum for them. I know when they started to dip their toe into podcasts, and then once podcasts started generating revenue via ads, they weren't quite sure how to handle all that stuff. No. And part of the problem is if you're a small local affiliate, you've paid a lot of money to get fresh air on your airwaves. You don't want some 20 year old going and listening to it on the new Whiz Bang MPR that the City Slickers came up with. You want them listening to your station so that you can get their donations. So for a while, NPR had an embargo on even mentioning the fact that there were podcasts out there on air. Yeah, right. Now, I think they say it's okay to mention that an announcer hosts a podcast, but they don't say, like, hey, go download the podcast. Go to itunes or Apple. Right. They say that they hosted well, it's a legit concern, but my whole thing is you can't fight on demand listening, poor viewing. No, you just can't fight it. You can't tell a 26 year old, no, you need to tune in from seven to 09:00 A.m. To listen to us. They're like, what is this tune in that you speak of? What is seven to nine speak of? Yeah. No, it's true. And if you're fighting against it, you're going to lose. Yeah, because that's the beauty of podcast. What's that is, looking at it from the outside, it looks like PBS. Get this, because MPR has its own apps. PBS has an on demand video app as well. Yeah. It looks like the larger institutions get this. But I don't see what anyone is doing to save the local affiliates. The small town ones that are really going to be the first to suffer. Or if they're just being sacrificed as canaries in the coal mine. In which case that's just the way it's going to roll because the kids in those small towns are still going to listen to NPR. They're just not listening to it on the radio any longer. Well, but then there's a segment of people that would say, well, you know what? Them's the breaks. And if your little member station goes out of business, then that's called changing times. Okay, but let's take this back. Do you remember my example where Corporation X was poisoning the water in your small town? No one outside of the town knew about it. Incorporates the Next advertised on the networks, the local news. So the local news weren't going to take them on. That's why you need that small, tiny affiliate who not have to worry about funding and advertising so that they can do good journalism and expose that corporation to the rest of the town. Well, if that small radio station or that small PBS affiliate dries up because of the NPR app, corporation Next gets away with poisoning the whole town, nobody knows. Town dies, get blown over by dust, and it's like it was never there. I wonder. And certainly there are people in NPR corporate that are way more knowledgeable in trying to solve this Peter Falconflict than me. But I wonder if they could like on the podcast Peter Overby, David Folk and Flick, I combine the two into one super host. It's one super correspondent super group. They're like, damn Yankees. I was on a plane flight with them one time, by the way. Were they rowdy? They weren't in first class, but I remember being like however old I was when that came out, 15 or 1617, something like that. Were you really? And Jack Blade was sitting on one side of me. Ted Nugent was in front of me. Tommy Shaw was behind me. Right. And it was like I was part of the band. I was sitting in the middle of these that's really cool music legends, and I thought, man, I love Night Ranger and I love Sticks. Right. But I hate you. Ted News. He's reading I remember specifically him reading a hunting magazine. Yes. I can believe that. And just fantasize it. Yeah, I'd rather be hunting. Well, I can tell you Tread Nugent is not listening to this particular episode. Certainly not. So my idea was maybe like I wonder if they could encourage via the podcast, say, hey, we know you enjoy us on your podcast, but why don't you donate money to your local members affiliate even though you don't consume it through there to keep the calls alive? Right, yeah, I mean, that's just my dumb outsiders opinion. Well, what if you turn local affiliates from broadcast based? Like you got to spend a lot of money on a transmitter and uplinks and all that kind of stuff. What if you just turned them into news bureaus? Like they were for investigative journalism and reporting for local and then that local stuff could be kicked up the line. Some local reporting appears on the national edition of Morning Edition or whatever. What if you just turned them all into news bureaus instead, and then they just went completely to online consumption? What if, like, the head of NPR just swerved off the road? Oh, my God, he's kind of figured it out. So getting back to their new models, MPR one is the app, and about 40% of their users are under 35. That coveted demo. But here's the thing. They did some surveys and they said a third of those users seldom listen to traditional radio. But 25% said, because of the app, we're starting to listen to more terrestrial radio. Right. Which I'm not sure I get how that works. Well, I could see just being like, oh, I didn't know this was here. Wait a minute. There's like a whole radio station that has this I'm going to go check that out. And I could see that. And then there is Passport, which you mentioned was, I don't think my name, but that's the PBS video on demand service that you get if you donate to your local station. I think $5 a month donation will get you access to Passport. And that's if you wanted to binge Downton Abbey, you could have done that via Passport. Right? Did you watch that? I saw an episode or two. I just never tickled my gizzard. Okay. I loved it. Big fan. Yeah, I know a lot of people then I didn't hate it or anything and shoot the TV when it came on. Yeah, you didn't go shoot my Passport app. And then the other big shake up in recent years. Last year in 2016, sesame street made the big jump over to HBO after 46 years on PBS. And there were a lot of mixed feelings about this. Some people saying, oh, man, what a drag. You're now on a pay station and these kids that can't afford cable TV and HBO, maybe that really need Sesame Street can't watch it anymore. Or these new episodes, at least. Big Bird said, TS, I got some money. Big Bird said, you want Sesame Street to stay on the air and this is the only way it's going to happen. And you can watch these episodes nine months after the air on HBO. So to me, it's kind of a win win. Sure. I thought that was cool that Big Bird went in and negotiated that. PBS still got episode two after a certain time. Yeah. Good for you, Big Bird. Elmo to me, Chuck, this is my thing. I think public broadcasting should be 100% public. Originally, the idea was when you bought a television set, there was a tax on it that went specifically to fund public broadcasting. I think I knew that. So it got looped into the appropriations process. So they have to go beg for the money every year if it were publicly funded through some sort of tax that was designated just for it. And this is a really big point, too. This is how it was originally supposed to be. They were shielded from government meddling by a nonpartisan board of directors whose entire job it was to keep the government out of public broadcasts, and they could just focus on good, unfettered journalism. That would be the ideal. And I don't think it's too late to go to that model. I think commercial broadcasting shows that there's a huge need for it, but that in the US. It's in this weird limbo state. Is it commercial? Is it publicly funded? There's so many easily fixed problems with it, but you have to go all one way or all the other to me. Do you know what would be great and also a disaster now that I've thought about it for a half a second, is if you could, like, when you go to pay your taxes, you could select a box that says, I would like a portion of my taxes to go to funding public broadcasting or to funding schools. That wouldn't work. Well, if it was just what they relied on. It might not work, but why not add it on there? It could do it as well, in addition to less public broadcasting. I got a few little facts here, though. Oh, we got some more public broadcasting. I just looked up NPR's own, like, interesting facts about NPR All Things Considered. Their very first episode was covering the 20,000 person protests of the Vietnam War. Featured a 24 minutes sound portrait of the protest. Wow. The very first thing they ever did. Yeah, it's pretty ballsy. When you say ballsy. I don't know. We'll find out how many balls. Sure. We're not NPR, I heard Terry Gross, she was on a Mark Marin episode, and she talked about kind of a bit of a desire to be free from the shackles of the restrictions of being on NPR. Oh, yeah, yeah. Mainly, she said when they do, like, readings from an author and they have to really go in ahead of time and say, hey, you can't say this word from your reading on the air, and stuff like that. She doesn't want to get up there and just feel floor and feel foul. That's not Terry Gross's style. No, but she also doesn't want to be like, by the way, you can't say the B word. Yeah, exactly. NPR had a lot of first. One of them, Susan Stanberg All Things Considered hosting 1972, was the very first woman to be an anchor for a national news broadcast. The Simpsons a special love for them. Harry Gross, Bob Boyland, Robert Siegel and Carl Cassell have all been Carl Castle. What did say, Cassell? You're thinking of Howard Cosell. I was Carl Castle. They were all on the Simpsons. Yeah. And then Morning Edition had some other names before they settled on that morning air. First things first. It's not bad. That is pretty good. Very NPR. And then this sounds so NPR. It's probably why they didn't do it. Tweed Jacket Starting Line. Yeah, that's not too bad. I think morning edition is good. I think it's the best. And then finally bob Boyland's Great show. Tiny Desk Concerts. Do you ever listen to those? No, but I'm familiar with them. It's just the best. He had a band called Tiny Desk Unit, and that was why he named the show Tiny Desk Concerts. Thank you, music shows, for clearing that up. I had no idea why. Well, I mean, it's named that because they perform in his NPR office. Right near that's what I thought. But it's still yeah, sure. It's his desk. Like, miniature. Right? I've got one more for you. All right. So there's a 2011 study that found that of 14 Western democracies, the United States was the only one to rely almost entirely on commercial broadcasting to inform its citizenry. That's precarious. Interesting. I know that same article you sent did a lot of studies that found that those other countries are generally much more well informed about news events. Yes. Traffic accident or by nose. Yes. If you want to know more about public broadcasting, go listen to NPR, watch PBS, and decide for yourself what you think about them. And in the meantime, you can also type those words in the search bar. Has tofirst.com since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. This is from Aaron in Miami. A-R-O-N-I think it's Aaron. I don't know. Okay. Aaron the great Keen Fields kit yeah. Hey, guys. Just got into podcast a couple of months ago, and I'm a ketchup fan. We did remember that ketchup podcast? Sure, yeah. Good one. I'm a firm believer it belongs in the pantry, not the refrigerator. But many debates about this, mostly while intoxicated. But that's beside the point. Many things work well in contrast, like a frosty beverage, buffalo wings, or crunchy potato chip alongside a softer sandwich. But who wants to dip a hot French fry into cold ketchup? I totally agree with this guy. Yeah, he said, to be clear, my claim is based solely on memory. However, I recall Hines introducing their Fridge Fit ketchup bottle in 2006 during a debate about pantry versus refrigerated. Someone on the other side pointed out it was not either to refrigerate after opening for best results. Refrigerate after opening. It was like, not either or. I'm not sure what he's saying there. Who knows? Still confusing. I was completely for it. I've never seen such verbiage on a Hinds bottle before. And then it dawned on me. Heinz had just hit and released the Fridge Fit bottle. Of course they will direct you to keep this in the fridge. It's part of the marketing strategy. There's nothing to do with the best way to enjoy the ketchup. This guy was wasted when he wrote that. It's becoming clear. It's a little confusing in the middle there, but he said that. Thanks for the information, entertainment. And remember, say no to refrigeration of ketchup. Aaron thanks for that. Aron, can you read the sentence? Maybe it's me. No, I heard you say it and it sounded like you were reading it correctly. Yeah, okay. Well, thanks, Aron. We hope you feel better in the morning. If you want to get in touch with us, like Aron did, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffysheno. You can send an email to stuffpodcast@howstepworks.com. As always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshtnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetepworks.com. Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's Criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | |
8a2cc736-4a58-11e8-a49f-e70e7a43e98f | SYSK Selects: Was there a real King Arthur? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-was-there-a-real-king-arthur | The legend of King Arthur is very old and very established. By the time the king who saved Britain and united it was first written about, his story was already hundreds of years old. | The legend of King Arthur is very old and very established. By the time the king who saved Britain and united it was first written about, his story was already hundreds of years old. | Sat, 02 Jun 2018 11:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=2, tm_hour=11, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=153, tm_isdst=0) | 41809388 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody, this is Chuck. Welcome to Saturday Selects. Hope you had your poptarts and your breakfast cereal and you watched your morning cartoons, because now it's time to learn a little something I'm going to pick. Was there a real King Arthur? From January 14, 2014, as my select pick this week? You know, I love my history podcasts and all the episodes we do about history, and one of my favorite things is to take a look at these figures from literature and lore and think, wow, were they real people? Is there a basis in reality? In fact? And that's what we did with King Arthur. So I hope you dig it. I certainly did. Here we go. Was there a real King Arthur? Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry Waves, everybody. Quiet. Jerry. That's stuff you should know. Yeah, that's us. That is us. The legend. You know, it was impossible for me to research this without only thinking of two things. Two movies, five Owens. No, didn't see that one. That's good. Was that? The one called King Arthur? Okay. It was good. I thought so I'll check it out because I dig this character, and I've seen a lot of the movies that tackle Camelot, but Excalibur and Monty Python and the Holy Grail, of course. I surely have seen Excalibur because I had show time when I was a kid. It was a big hot movie when you were twelve. Right. In the early 80s. Yeah. And then, of course, the Holy Grail. How do you not see that it's the Holy Grail of somebody? Yeah, I could see that. You should check out a cabler. It actually holds up pretty well because it's somewhat notable for having a couple of early appearances by actors that went on to be much bigger. Oh, yeah. I love movies like that. Yeah. Gabriel Byrne is in it and just barely. And Liam Neeson. Oh, really? And I think both of them, it was their first roles. Wow. And they're, like, hardly in the movie. Who played King Arthur? Was it anybody? Like, I've heard of or they had to have been big at the time. Right. Who was it? Richard Burton. You know, when I was, like, 13, I saw Richard Harris do Camelot the Fox Cedar in Atlanta. So is that pretty neat? Is that based on the Arthurian legend? What the musical? Camelot. Yeah, sure. Okay. But I mean, it's a musical. Yeah. And it's from the 60s, so you can never tell. Like, it could have just been named Cam a lot. That's what I was asking. Oh, yeah. Now it's about the Arthurian legend, but out of all of them, I would say, hands down, monty Python and the Holy Grail is the best of the Arthurian Legend movie adaptations. Yeah. I haven't seen it in years, but it's like one of those that I saw so many times, I can still quote most of it. It has it all. It has the killer rabbits, the killer bunnies. Yeah. It has the coconut carrying swallows. It has the knights who say knee. It has the black knight who merely has a flesh wound. Yeah. It has everything. It has singing, dancing. Yeah. Great. Graham Chapman as Arthur. Yeah. And bring out your dead. Yeah. So many things that are in the lexicon all came from that movie. Yeah. Nigel Terry played Arthur in the Excalibur movie. I don't know who he is. You'd probably recognize him. Helen. Mirren was Morgana, though. Oh, wow. But yeah, small roles. Oh. Patrick Stewart was the other guy. Got you. He played was he bald like he always been bald? One other I'm sure he had hair at some point. I bet he looked weird with hair. I can't imagine him with hair. What if he was born with, like, a full head of hair and that was it? He started losing it after that. Right. For two days. And then it all came out. All right. So, anyway, I started to disrupt this early on, but those two movies, every time I saw Utopian Dragon this is a cool name. That's a great name. I couldn't help but just kind of say those lines in my head. You raise a good point. There's so many Arthur movies out there. Sure. Arthur books. Sword in the Stone was pretty good, too. Yeah. Everybody has a kind of a basic idea of the King Arthur legend, the Arthurian myth, or romance. It's sometimes called Too. Sure. But what I think probably a lot of people don't know is that it is a synchronized meaning. The Catholics got their mitts on it and threw a bunch of Christianity on top of something that was already extant. And in this case, what was extent was a group of myths that arose from the Celts, the Celtic people, which is pretty substantial that we have this because the Celts never wrote anything down, mainly on account of the fact that they didn't have a written language. Their tradition was entirely oral, which is why we have very little of an understanding of the Celts. Most of our understanding of the Celts comes from outside observers, like Plying the Elder. Thank God for Plying, or else we might not even know that Celt ever existed. But the Arthurian legend is very clearly based on Celtic mythology. But even more enticing to me is the idea that it's possibly that Celtic legend, that Celtic mythology is rooted somewhat in fact. Like, Arthur may have been a real person. Yeah, that's sort of the age old question. Yeah, but I mean, I find that astoundingly fascinating. Like, there's places that are part of the Arthurian legend that do exist in real life, but whether or not they actually were a part of Arthur's life, if there was a real Arthur I mean, each spot generates awesome debate for the anthropologist, the history major in me. I'm fascinated by the whole thing. Agreed, sir. So let's go over the basic legend of Arthur. Killer king, legendary hero, saved Britain when Britain needed saving. Yeah, because the Roman Empire had crumbled and the Saxons were all over Britain. The Germanic tribes. Yeah. And he defeated them. Yes. And brought great peace to the land and built a castle called a camelot, gathered up knights together around a round table, which we'll get into. There's a lot of round to help bring peace to the land. And he did, and he did so very successfully. In fact, in 2002, the BBC voted King Arthur as number 51 in the poll of 100 greatest Britons, even though he might not even be a real dude. And the Britons are smart folks and they still voted him that. They are pretty sharp. Yeah. So those are the broad strokes, but depending on what version you're reading, it's going to be different. Did he pull a sword from a stone? Was it Excalibur? Did he get it from the lady in the Water? Was his undoing Mordrid? Or was it Guinevere and Lancelot? Yeah, depends on which version you're reading. And we'll go over those versions. Right. You can kind of trace these back to you can see layer after layer being added. So when you look at the Arthurian legend, as we understand it now, you can kind of peel back layer by layer and get to the original stuff, which is pretty old. Indeed. They think that we'll get to that. Okay, let's talk about the Arthur story. Okay, so you've got Arthur, he comes along at a time when Britain is in its greatest need. There were some great kings, possibly relatives of Arthur, like Uther Pendragon. His father supposedly would have been one of the rulers. Yeah, right. But you're smiling because you like that name. All I can think of is, I am off the son of Pendragon. Okay, so you just say that anytime you want, man. But he arrives at a time when Britain is being overrun by the Saxons. It's being ruled by the Saxons like there's no British king on the throne. And there's a legend that comes up that there is a sword in stone and only the rightful king, meaning only the line of Luther Pendragon. I'm not going to say it again. We'll be able to remove the sword from the stone and when that person comes, he will be dubbed the king of Kings and will restore the rightful lineage to the British throne. Yeah. And in some stories, like I said, a young man, a young Arthur, pulls the sword. It's a sword from the swan, and in other legends, it does come from the lady in the Lake. He rides out on a barge and the hand stretches up with the sword in it. All you see is the arm coming from the water and he gets the sword that away. Well, and then I think a third way, he pulls the sword from the stone, proclaiming himself Arthur. Yeah. And everyone goes, the ruler, Britain, everyone's like, he's the dude. Right. Like, we got one of our own back in power now. And then that sword breaks and that's when he gets excalibur from the lady of the Lake. That's right. The most powerful magic sword in all the land. It's what you call a bitch and sword. Sword Merlin in some stories, comes around right about this time, and he appears when Arthur is a teen, generally associated with the lady of the Lake there in Avalon. They're both from the same neck of the woods. Avalon is a magical mystery place even outside of the Arthurian legend. As far as the Celts go, it means Appleland. Really? Yeah. And I guess apples were super magical to the Celts, but Avalon itself is almost in other worldly after lifey kind of area, even though it's a physical place you can go to in Britain. Right. Still interesting. It's interesting that the apple has always been a strange fruit. Yeah. Like, I know it probably wasn't an apple in Eden, but I wonder southern Baptists called it an apple. Yeah. And I wonder what it was originally in, like, Aramaic, and when it was converted to apple, where's the apple indigenous? I don't know. What was the children's was it not Snow White? Was it Snow White? Yeah. With the poison apple. Poison apple again. I saw a video today that we've been eating apples wrong. Did you know that? I've seen that. I can't bring myself to eating an apple like that. There's a middle spindle, aka the core, that is not to be consumed. That is not true. I won't do it. It's just too weird. But you can eat the core. There is no core. There is a core. I show it. Just like a sculptor reveals the sculpture within a slab of stone, so too do I reveal the core and an apple. Let me ask you this. If you cut the apple up into the eight pieces and get the seeds out, you can just eat that's. The whole apple. You have to shave off, like, the inner part, the core. For those of you who don't know, there's a video of a dude eating an apple from the bottom end forward, and he just eats the whole thing because he's a psychopath. Okay. Sorry to get sidetracked by the history of the apple. Well, no, I think you do raise a really interesting point. I wonder when the apple started getting a bad rep. When the apple stood in for other fruit. Yeah, I think that's an excellent thing to look up. Okay, let me know what you find. All right. So Arthur, like I said, he builds camelot. That's his castle. Once he restores peace. Yeah, well, no, no, I think that was he went out and got all the knights to help them restore peace. Okay. So he built Camelot in anticipation of restoring peace. Exactly. And recruited nights for the Round Table. And we might as well go ahead and leak that the Round Table was supposedly round because we're all equals and there's no head of a Round Table. Makes sense. Yeah. And it was either fashioned by Merlin or it was a gift from Guinevere, who we haven't gotten to yet. A wedding present from Guinea Vir's father, even though he got it from Arthur's father, Uther Pendragon. Yeah. And her father was King Leo De Grant. Who? I think that was Patrick Stewart. Got you an excellentr so the nights go out, they defeat all the outsiders there. Peace reigns. And that is why Camelot to this day has the connotation of and especially with the Kennedys, like, this peaceful, idyllic situation. Right. That's Camelot, although it was a place, you know what I'm saying? It sort of represents more than a place. Right. It represents the piece that he brought with these Nights. Okay. Then he meets Guinevere, falls in love with this little hottie, and then, depending on what story you read, there might have been an affair with Lancelot or Mordred, who was either his nephew or depending on what you read, or his son, which technically he could be both because supposedly yes. He had Mordred with his half sister Morgana yeah, that makes sense. Who is translated into Morgan le Fay, who's like this kind of enchanting temptrous evil woman who helps Mordred try to take over Camelot, tries to take over the throne, and Arthur says nay to you. We will do battle at a place called Camlon. That's right. Mordor dies. That's where Mordor is killed and Arthur is wounded. And depending on the version of the story, arthur is either mortally wounded or just kind of wounded. But either way, he gives his sword Excalibur, to Bedavier and says, you need to return this to the lady in the lake after kind of waffling, because Bedavier is like, I can use Excalibur. Yeah. He throws Excalibur to the lake, and this arm comes up and goes, Ching. And catches it and then goes back down and he's like, There was a lady of the lake. Yeah, that's the Excalibur movie version. Okay. They follow that version because I remember distinctly him chunking the sword out there and the arm coming up. That's cool. I have some vague mental memory of that as well. Sure. And then Arthur's taken to Avalon to either die and be buried, or he recuperates and hangs out there to come back to reign over Britain. And it's next time of greatest need. Which is why Arthur is frequently referred to. And there is a book titled The Once and Future King because he will return again when Britain needs him. Which makes him, like, kind of the British superman. Yes. Before we go any further, my friend, I think it's a good time for a message break. 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 slash podcast. That's K twelve.com Slash Podcast and start taking charge of your future today. Okay, now we're back. So that's the basic legend. We just basically condensed thousands of pages of different books and thousands, not thousands, but hundreds of years of folklore into a few minutes. But you get the gist of it. Sure. You know the story. And if this ignited your fancy and you're like, I want to know more, man, you could dedicate the rest of your life to researching and reading Arthurian legends somehow, because there's tons of it. Like we said, it's a literary tradition, but it's rooted in an oral tradition among the pagan Celts. But this literary tradition itself is really old. The first mention of Arthur is from, I think, the fifth century. Right. The fifth century Welsh poem. 6th century Welsh poem. But when you're off by 100 years back then, yeah, it's no big deal, especially with a man who may or may not have existed. Yeah, true. But Arthur pops up in one line in this Welsh poem called the Gododin godin. Godin. Yeah, it's a great word. And this poem eulogizes the Welsh warriors, maybe Britain's oldest poem. Yeah. Because the Celts would have started to have become Christianized around this time, hence things would have started to have been written down. So this poem would have popped up, really right around that cusp between the end of purely Celtic culture, because the British Isles were the last stronghold of the Celts, which swept all the way to Asia. They covered Europe, parts of North Africa. The Celts were everywhere. But it was the British Isles that were the last holdouts until about like the fifth, 6th, 7th, 8th century, when they became Christianized. All right, so they're Christianized at this point. Yeah. By the time this poem came out, the very fact that there's a written poem shows you that they're writing their way in this area, in the Celtic just telling stories, looking their wounds and telling stories. Still not writing stuff down. They're like, are you familiar with mistleto? Yeah. Do you know about knocking on wood? Look at you, utilizing all your information. So some other references in literature. The Historia Brittonum History of Britain, ad. 800 and the analysis cambrya the Annals of Wales a few hundred years after that. They were basically history books, the main history books of Britain and Wales. Right. But they themselves were just compilations of other books and can't be factually verified. Yeah. But nevertheless, they were used, and Arthur was mentioned in both the Arthur we Know and Love Today. You can trace back to Jeffrey of Monmouth. He was a priest who wrote Historia Regum Britannier, the History of British Kings and the Eleven Hundreds, but he based his stuff on the Historia Britonum, but it just became really popular. Right. So he kind of based it on the other thing. Some people even say he plagiarized, but it became so popular, he was kind of golden. Right. Most histories are based on previous histories. Sure. So that in and of itself isn't a bad thing, but yeah. I don't know what this article is implying. That he stole work or he fabricated it? Well, he was accused of fabricating some of it. Well, either way, he gave the world the Arthurian legend. That's right. Arthur existed before this, as we've seen, but he was the one that said, there's a great story here and I'm going to bulk this up. Yeah. So he started naming places, he started contemporarying things. He took this legend and put it into a context that the people who lived in his time would understand and be fascinated by. Yeah. And he introduced Christianity for the first time to the story. The French got a hold of it and then they're all about a good romance novel. So they sort of introduced the love elements, or not introduced, but emphasized the love elements a little bit more. Yeah. About 50 years after Jeffrey of Monmouth made his history, christian Detroit came up with some stories that added that romantic part and a lot like, I think the Grail stuff, too. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He was the one who came up with the romance between Lancelot and Guinevere and the Grail Search For the Grail, which wasn't a part of the story up until the 12th century. And most of the stuff had been, like, history books and poems, starting with the Vulgate cycle, or prose. Lancelot is when you started getting these great prose stories, and Christianity is woven in even more. And this is between 1210 and 1230. Right. Just to give you an idea of where we are. And they don't know if these stories were, like, maybe part of a popular literary trend at the time, where a bunch of people were writing them. Yeah. Like chilvery was a big thing to write about. Right. Or if it was one author writing a series of stuff, and they're not attributed to any single author, but they're collected together as a body of work. The Volga Cycle. Yeah. And those ones focus a little more on, like, lancelot and the Chivalrous knights and all that. Yeah. In the Grail, too. Yeah. With Galahad. Yes. They said that Joseph of Arimathea, in the Bible, he was the one who gave Jesus his tomb after Jesus was crucified and brought back. And he said no. Well, he didn't say that, but they said Joseph ormethey brought the Grail to Britain. But then Galahad, Sir Lancelot's illegitimate son, was said in the Vulgate cycle that he discovered the Grail because he was pure. Of course. Yes. Until he went to the castle. Anthrax remember that scene? The pure and chase goes to the castle. All the ladies that are, like, tempting them. Michael Palin just, like, wide eyed. That's such a great movie, man. And then the big one that most of our modern stories are based on is Thomas Mallory's Lamonte Darth The Death of Arthur. And I read this in college. Oh, yeah. And it was tough. It was sort of like a bit of a modernized Middle English. It wasn't quite chaucer. It wasn't that tough. But it was still a tough read. And I remember thinking at the time, can I just watch Excalibur? And it turns out I could, because that movie was specifically based on the death of Arthur. Right. Yeah. And so you're kind of seeing, like, each new century, each new author is adding their own thing to it. Yeah. He didn't actually write it. I should say that he compiled the stories together. Oh, okay. Surely he cleaned them up. Well, yes, but he didn't create a new work. It's known as a compilation. Well, he did add some new stories about some other nights, sir Gareth and Sir Tristan. He also kind of took the focus off of the Celtic pagan mythology and really focused it onto the Christian mythology. And at this point, the idea that this whole thing is based on Celtic ideals and myths is lost largely to history. Yeah. At the very least, it doesn't become nearly as apparent. Was he the one that added The Lady in the Lake, though? Oh, no, that was the Volga cycle. Yes. Which is surprising to me, because I would think that would be ancient Celtic mythology. But that wasn't added until the 13th century. Oh, yeah. The lady in the Lake and the idea of Mordred as Arthur's son by his sister. You'd think those two would be real old. Yeah. No, it was part of the preoccupation of the weirdos in the 13th century. Well, I think Mallory did add, after Guinevere and Lancelot are busted, they go their separate ways to become a nun and a monk. Oh, yeah. Respectively. Right. So after Mallory, you have Alfred Lord Tennyson, who wrote The Idols of the King. Yeah. That creepy looking dude. And great poet, though. Yeah. But scary looking. And I love his name, too. Yeah. And then T. H. White wrote the Once in Future King, and that was the basis of the sword and the stone. Yeah. Disney action. That was a good movie. If I remember correctly, Merlin was kind of like a cookie. I mean, it was weird, right? In that story? Yeah. In the Sword and the Stone. I don't remember that one that much. Was that the animated okay. Yeah. Where he's like a young King Arthur pulls the sword from the stone. I must have seen it. But I was all about the Jungle Book. That came out about the same time. I know, but I was probably so obsessed with the same exact animators and everything. Yeah. I can't pay attention to this. All right. Lend my fascination to all right, so we should talk a little bit about the real ties to real history and whether these people were real or these places are real. So let's get to that after this message break. 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. Okay, buddy, so what's the deal? Was there a camelot? Was there an Arthur? Were these nights real? Dudes? Probably. Take Marlin, for example. Okay. He seems probably the least likely to have existed because he is a magician. A sorcerer? Magical wizard. Yeah, a wizard. That's a great word, actually. Is he a wizard or is he just a magician? Well, I mean, come on. The two are fairly interchangeable. Oh, you just wait, my friend. There will be some lawsuits. Emailing, right? Yeah. It is not nearly the same. Let me explain to you the difference between a cleric and a mage. He was apparently based on one or two people that really did exist, and both of them were holy men. They would have been druids. At least one of them would have been Druids. Yeah. One was named Murdin Wilt, and another one was named Emirates Wooleedig. Yeah, that's a tough one. W-L-E-D-I-G. So there's two vowels in both of those names. Combined. Right. Yeah. It's almost like Russian. It's tough to read. And both of them lived in the late 6th century, and one was the first one, Merden. He was this wild man who went into war and saw too much and went crazy and fled into the jungle I've seen too much. Yeah. Wow. Apparently suffered from some sort of PTSD and went and fled into the jungle. Well, not the jungle, because this is the British Isles, but the woods will call them, and lived as a wild man for many years. And he was apparently a famous local, like magic wild man. The other one, Emirates, was like a full on, straight up Druid. He was a prophet and advisor and he definitely lived. So they think that possibly one of them was Merlin, or folklore, combined the two together and made them Merlin. I think that's what most of this stuff is. Yeah. Possibly based on real people. Add a dash of this and a dash of that and mix it up and you come up with a literary figure. That's just my take. Camelot, supposedly, if you read the Historia Regum Britannia, he wrote that it was Cornwall at Tintingale Castle and they actually found a stone there in the 1980s inscription that said descendant of Arthur, father of a descendant of Cole in Monmouth. Actually, the writer of that history book named King Cole, as in Mary old soul. Was he that same King Cole as one of Arthur's ancestors? But there's a little bit of a rub, because that castle was built in the early eleven hundreds, so many hundreds of years later, after Arthur was supposedly living. Right. And the author of this article accuses Joffrey of basically using Tidy Jill Castle as a way to please his patron, who had a cousin that lived there at the time. Yeah, but some archeological excavations have found that this tinted gel area was settled from at least 300 Ad and was definitely in full swing, was a trading post, basically, and a fortified castle around the time when Arthur would have been conceived. So it actually is archaeologically possible that this was a place where he was born, at the very least. If there was a real Arthur and he was born in the time frame that we're talking about, ten and Joe Castle was settled and in full operation in that area. Oh, really? Yeah. So it wasn't built hundreds of years later. The castle, as it stands now was okay. Settlement was built upon settlement upon settlement, and as they've excavated down where they found that at that time yes, there's plenty of so that stone could, in fact be real. Wow. All right. Busted. Yeah. Thomas Mallory said Camelot was Winchester Castle, and for many hundreds of years, there was a wooden round table that hung on the wall with all the little names of the nights of the round table there. But when Chester Cast was built in the 11th century and they carbon dated the table to 1340 and said it was probably painted during the 1500s under King Henry VII because everyone was way into chivalry and medieval history at that point. Right. Are you going to bust that one or is that one? No, that. One makes sense. That is busted, unbust. I mean the cadbury castle. The fort that's in Somerset. It's mentioned in here, too, that one. If anything was Camelot, it would have been that place. Oh, yeah. Is that the leading? Yeah. But it wouldn't have been Arthur's. It would have been one of the rulers that basically handed over Britain to the Saxons that Arthur had to come in and whose mess he had to unmake. It would have been that rulers. And there's a 16 foot thick fort fortress made of timber and stone that is apparently unique to this castle that's from the fifth century, that was written about from that time frame, from that period of time, was supposedly built around that period of time. So you have documentary evidence in the literature, and then you also have the actual physical evidence of this castle that's built in a way that's just unique to it sure. That supposedly belong to this guy that Arthur may or may not have come in and taken over. If he were ruling in this area at the time, that would have been the castle that he would have taken over. Got you. Because they were most heavily fortified and it was just like a prime castle in the area that he would have been in. So if there was a castle that he ruled from, that probably would have been it. All right. So you're going josh boats for Cadbury Castle in Somerset. Yes. Okay. Avalon is supposedly Glastonbury, where they have the music festival now. Oh, yeah. I think they have a big, nice vessel there, my TV tells me. And here's the deal there. That was the Glastonbury Tour, which is sort of, I guess, for that area. Is it a mountain? It's like a hill. It's a little hill, yes. Like the Englishman who went up a hill and came down a mountain. Right. The Glastonbury Tour had the ruins of St. Michael's, which was an abbey built in the 12th century, which replaced an earlier abbey that was burned down. And while they were building the newer abbey, these monks said, you know what? We found graves containing bones. Look at the bones. Man and a woman. And this is King Arthur because there's a cross there and it's described in Latin and it says it's King Arthur and Guinevere. So there's your proof. Even though the cross doesn't exist anymore. The bones don't exist anymore. They did read the inscription that was supposedly copied verbatim from the monks, and they said some smart dudes said, no, that's twelve century Latin, my friend, not six century Latin. Silly people. Yeah, so I guess there's a difference. And they knew. So that was quashed. Or are you about to debust that? debussing. That sweet. So Glastonbury Tour, this conical hill, used to be an island, and at the top of it is Glastonbury Abbey, which was built in the 12th century, but was built on the ruins of an early one. So that thing actually did happen. It did burn down. Apparently in the 1980s, they excavated and found a pair of six century graves, stone line graves. The bones are gone. There's no markers or anything like that, but they would have been the kind of graves and they were dated to Arthur's era. Okay. Yes. Furthermore, there was evidence that these graves were disturbed in the 13th century, in the 1200s or is it the 12th century? Sorry? That they were disturbed in the 12th century. So there's evidence that these graves are from the 6th century and that these twelve century monks did find them and open them up. So whether or not they were Arthur and Guinevere, or if this crossover existed and what it said, it still remains to be proven true. But it's very possible that these monks were just trying to drum up patronage to rebuild their abbey. They're like, hey, we found Arthur, so they may have forged the cross, but it's still entirely possible that that was Arthur. Right. And Guinevere. Just because they beefed up the story with the story of a cross doesn't mean it wasn't truly their final resting place. Yes. At the very least, they were a pair of six century graves there with bones. No bones. Where the the bones go? I don't know if they moved them in the 12th century or if they just dissolved. Okay. We're talking a while. Yeah, sure. All right. So is that your vote? Yeah. All right. Josh votes for the Glastonbury tour. Right. Which I want to go to. All this makes me want to go to the English countryside and just find all this stuff. Yeah, it's pretty neat. I like old things, and it's hard to get anything super old in the country. Yeah. 1600. Maybe one $500 if you go down to St. Augustine. Let's go to Rome, see some old stuff. Go to Rome. I have. Yeah, I have, too. Neat. It is neat. It's kind of neat to stand there in the Coliseum and think, holy cow. Yes. This is the oldest thing I've ever seen. That was the one that got me and Yumi, was the Coliseum. Yeah, me, too. Everywhere else, we're like, yeah, this is pretty cool. Something about the Coliseum. Yeah, I was pretty blown away, too. And boy, the people, man. Good looking. The Romans. Yeah, just all over Italy. The dudes, the chicks, they were all, like, models. Yeah, very stylish. Very stylish. And cats everywhere were there. Yeah. Street cats in Rome. They're known for it. I don't remember seeing too many cats. Oh, you saw some cats. Don't they live in, like, all of the ruins and everything? They're everywhere. Yeah. I like the Trevi Fountain there. That was something else. That one kind of took my breath away. We should start a travel show. I think we just did. And finally, maybe some of these knights were real dudes. Serbetovir, he was one of the earliest knights to appear in the Arthurian legends and one of his right hand dudes. He has appeared in other writings, historical writings, that have nothing to do with the Arthurian legend. Exactly. And he was known as Bedridant, member of the Royal House of Fendu, which rose to power in Wales in the 6th century. And then Cirque was also possibly a real dude. Yeah. Both of them appear in a Welsh collection of warrior poems called the Mabinogon. Take your pick. Yeah, I'm not Welsh. You're not Welsh. So either one we get crap for not pronouncing things. Right. But this stuff is tough when you've got, like, 13 letters and one vowel, what do you do with that? And, I mean, I'm looking at the alphabet that I recognize. My brain just won't put it together. Agreed. And finally, Arthur himself. My vote is on a compilation of real people. Like I said earlier, some folks say he might have been a Roman leader named Lucius Artorius Castus, or maybe a Roman named Aurelius Ambrosius. See, I saw that Aurelius Ambrosius was his uncle Pendragon's brother, and Utah and Aurelius had to seize power to start to restore their lineage, and Arthur followed after that. Okay, see, well, I guess it depends on who you're reading. Some folks say he was a British historian named Alan Wilson, says he was a Welsh King Arthur in the 7th century. I think everyone wants to claim a piece of it. I think that's what's going on here. I think they're saying, no, he was this Welsh king, or no, he was this Roman king, when I think he might have been all of them. Well, the idea that he was sent by the Pope to basically restore order or take the British Isles back from the Saxons definitely is length credence by the idea that he kind of comes out of nowhere and pulls the sword from the stone is like, I'm arrived, I'm the king of kings now. So the idea that he came from somewhere else, that would suggest that he could have possibly been some Roman commander. Yeah. And there were Roman commanders who did come to Britain and fight the sex and successfully. Was one named Arthur? Yes. One was named Artorius. Well, there you have it. Yeah. And then some people say that Arthur wasn't a name, but a title, arthur, which in Latin means bear. And if that's the case, it could just be, like could be anybody. Yeah. Could be short for Arthur. Yeah, it could be bear. So why does the story persist? Because it's got romance, it's got chivalry, it's got all the classic elements of drama and literature and fiction. So there you have it. Plus Monty Python's take on It doesn't hurt in perpetuating everything. What kind of a man can summon fire without flint? Or Tinder Man? You know that movie Inside now, don't you? I watched it a lot at one point in my life. I think that's my favorite part of the movie. The none shall pass when they have to pass. The guy that spits tells him about the rabbit. I remember. The nun shall pass. I don't remember the spitting. Yeah, when he's talking, he's got a listing all over everybody. You got anything else? I got nothing else. All right. If you want to learn more about King Arthur, you can type in King Arthur in the search bar. We also recommend you go just look up stuff about King Arthur. There's plenty of stuff out there. It's fascinating. Let's see. I said search bar, right? You did, sir. Okay, well, then that means it's time for listing in the mail. I'm going to call this tribute to my father for Megan, Josh, Chuck and Jerry wanted to write to tell you thank you immensely for the show. My dad, Howard, passed away nearly a year ago, and while I don't think he listened before he passed, I think he would have really enjoyed it. He was a tinkerer and loved learning new things. In fact, when I was younger and visited him during the summers, I'd be alone most days at his apartment while he worked and he would encourage me to search random things on the Internet and read about them to learn something new. He would even leave me lists like the planet Jupiter, the state of Wyoming for the year 1845. I thought at the time it was pretty silly and only did it a few times, but now as an adult, I've since found your podcast a few months ago and I find it really fascinating and it reminds me of my dad and has been really helpful to me. When I get down about him being gone, it makes me happy to know that he would probably think it's awesome that I spend my days learning about things now. So, Megan from Plano, Texas, thank you for that in memory of your father, Howard. I think he would like the show, too. That's pretty cool. And I'm sorry he's not around to hear it. No, but, I mean, we're carrying on his legacy exactly. Nice. So I guess we need to do a show on the year 1845 over the state of Wyoming. Never. Not Wyoming. Thanks a lot for that, Megan. That was nice of you to share that. If you want to get in touch with me and Chuck to tell us anything you like, you can tweet to us at xyskpodcast. You can join us on facebook. Comstepyshadow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com, and you can join us at our super dope home on the web stuffyoushouldnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun's shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music. My favorite murder from exactly right media. My favorite murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarra and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will shift or 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." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2016-10-27-sysk-unsolved-german-murder.mp3 | The Hinterkaifeck Axe Murders | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-hinterkaifeck-axe-murders | In 1922, a little farm in the woods of Bavaria became the site of what would become Germany’s most famous unsolved murder, when six people were brutally killed with a pick axe. What led up to it and followed is nothing short of bizarre. | In 1922, a little farm in the woods of Bavaria became the site of what would become Germany’s most famous unsolved murder, when six people were brutally killed with a pick axe. What led up to it and followed is nothing short of bizarre. | Thu, 27 Oct 2016 07:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=27, tm_hour=7, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=301, tm_isdst=0) | 44842161 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry. Oh, yeah. I would say this is a bonus Halloween episode in a way. You can all look forward to our regular ad free Halloween show on Halloween. The real bonus episode. Yeah, exactly. Where we do our traditional reading. It's all gussied up by Jerry, but you were like, hey, since this is hello weekend almost, why don't we just tell the story of an ex murdered family? Yeah, I hope I didn't spoil it. I don't think so. I think we probably would have gotten to that point eventually, right? Yeah. So we decided to just do a little creepy episode. This one. If you have your children, you may want to vet this one because it's definitely about an ex murdered family. Don't be a sicko. It's up to you whether or not you want to expose them to this kind of treachery. This is bad stuff. Are you ready for it? You get your German pronunciation down, by the way. So we'd talk about Chang. Yeah. More specifically. Right? The irony of all this why should I ever get it right at all? The irony of all this is I was almost right when I first said it and said, I don't think Chinese pronounces the X right. But this one is just a little more stings. A little more because we made such a big deal about it being correct and the pronunciation wasn't correct, but we were misled on the Internet, and that happens. Still got everything else right. So dixia. Chang is really dichyachung. Sort of. Okay. And Hinter kafekaife. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I looked over these. My German is rusty, but I think I got them all. Yeah, most of them. I bet you're going to stumble on one, but hold on to that. I don't even know which one you're talking. I know. That's what's going to make it exciting. Oh, man. Maybe we should have a sound effect when it happens. Like a boring line. Sure. Okay. That'll disrupt the spookiness. Well, let's get spooky, Chuck, shall we? Yes. Because there's a little town in Bavaria that's correct. It's between the towns of Ingallstott and Schroben housing. Is that either one of the ones you thought it was going to stumble on? No, I mean, technically, you should say, like, stot instead of stot. Oh, well, I didn't realize we're getting technical. But you're not from Germany. That's how an American might say it. Right. And by God, I'm an American. That's right. Although it's much closer to Vidhoffin. Is that the one? I'm just going to ask. Every time I say something in German, you'll hear the sound effect. But there's a little tiny village, a town called Kifeck Hinter Cafe. No. Well, the village is called Kaifec. Yeah. There was a ranch, basically. You'd call it in America, a dude ranch, maybe even. But not really. It's just a farm called Hinter Cafe. It was located a little bit outside of this village, in the Hinterland, you might call it. Right. So the name of this farm was Kaifek. And on this farm lived a man, a woman, another woman, some little kids. This is going terribly, isn't it? No, I think it's great. So the family who made up the tendency of this farm, they were the Grubers. Yes. Andreas Gruber was the father, his wife. Okay. All right. Let me do this then. Are you ready? Yeah. The wife's name was Kazilla at sigelia frank. No, if I'm not mistaken, if you begin a word with C in German and it's pronounced like ATSTs for me, I think that would be tatsilia. What? That's not fair. I know, right? Come on. Germany. Tetsilia. Okay, well, let me ask you this. So tetsilia. Yeah. Am I saying it right now? Tetslia. Oh, that's Italian. It does sound so tazelia is his wife, that's to be determined. Their daughter, Victoria. So if there's a K instead of a C, is it something else entirely or is it Victoria? Victoria. Okay. And there's two grandchildren. The oldest was a granddaughter. Now she has an UMLA over her name, even though it's spelled otherwise, the exact same as her grandmother, Tatsilia. How would you say that it would be so it wouldn't be like Tatsilia and Tatsilia Jr. I don't know. I mean, I've never seen anyone name there. It just seemed unusual to me. I didn't know if the first name was missing the Oomlout or if they really named her after her grandmother, but added the Oomlout. Maybe there's a story there. Well, you know, Chuck, as we'll find, a lot of the details and facts of this case have been lost the time. That's right. Lastly, there was a little boy, two year old named Yosef. That was Victoria's son. And Victoria was widowed. She was 35, I believe, at the time that we come into Hinter, Kyfek. And they all live together, relatively isolated, actually, because the Groobers, although they were wealthy and from what I saw, held in somewhat high esteem, or at least treated with respect to their station, they were very much disliked as a family. Yeah. And there's quite a few reasons for this. One is that the Patter families, Andreas, he was not friendly. He liked to keep to himself. And apparently he was very abusive to his wife and children. Yeah, children. He only had one living child still at this point, which is Victoria, and we're in the way back machine, by the way, and it's 1922. We didn't say that. I don't think so. He was abusive. I don't know. The story of the passing of his other children lost the time. Lost the time. My immediate reaction was like, if he was abusive and they're no longer around, maybe he had something to do with it. Maybe. But this is a leap, a total leap. Also the time when people routinely died from the flu. Sure, that's a good point. So he was a loner. He was abusive. There was the matter of Joseph, the two year old daughter of Victoria son's daughter. I know where I was going with that. And he was rumored to have been born from an incestuous relationship with her father, Andreas. Right. That was the rumor in town, which smacks up to me of small town 1920 stuff. I'm not sure if I bought that. No. But that was definitely the rumor in town. There was a significant number of people in town who either believed that or were very much aware that other people believe that. Yeah. Because he apparently was very controlling of Victoria, kind of to the level of being characterized as obsessed with her. Yeah. So it could very well be true. Could lost the time, could also have not been true. And there's other reports that Joseph was the son of another man in town who will meet later on, who at one point claimed paternity, but later on said, no way. Right. Especially, I think, when the concept of alimony payments was brought up. That's right. He's like, no kid, was a product of incest instead. So Victoria was the only one, supposedly, that kind of spent a lot of time in town and that people seem to care for much because she sang in the choir. Apparently, he's a very good singer in the church choir. So this is the scene here in semi rural Bavaria. Yeah. And we want to give a shout out. We found some other articles about the case itself, but the main one that we started with was from MysteriousUniverse.org. Not a normal place where we would get our stuff, but it's a good article. Yeah. And everything else I read about it, it sort of all checked out as being the same way to go MysteriousUniverse.org. Good job. Thanks for it. So things start to get a little weird on the farm when the maid at the farm, whose name may or may not be Maria, we don't know. She said, I'm out of here. I quit because this house is haunted. Yeah. I'm hearing weird noises in the attic. Hearing weird sounds all around the place. I'm hearing footsteps. I'm out of here. Yeah. And apparently she left pretty quickly and suddenly. And the family, so much so, was like I think she was mentally disturbed. Sure. That's an easy way to quiet the townspeople. If you don't want to cuckoo. Yes. You don't want people thinking, like, A, I'm abusive, and B, I also live in a haunted house. Right. Yeah. You don't want that. That's where you draw the line. Incest abuse. Sure. That's allowable. But you don't want people to think you got ghosts. Right. So the maid leaves, and that kind of sets the tone. Like, that kicks off this season of dread. That settles over. Hinter, Kayak, that'd be a good name for the movie version of this season of Dread. Yeah. I can't believe there's not a number of blockbuster movies about this. Yeah, I looked it up. Apparently there were a couple that weren't very big, but nothing that ever started. Ray Fines. Well, if it doesn't have him, he would clearly be one of the dudes in this. Sure. Maybe even Andreas Gruber, who I keep wanting to call Hans. I'm going to go ahead and admit, yeah, I see the name Gruber, and that's what jumps to mind. So the mainleads and like I said, this weird things start happening a few months later. Andreas is wandering around his property. Around. Wandering around, right. Yeah. Just looking aimlessly for something to do. I just remember to punch. There was a snowstorm, and he was looking around to see if there had been any damage, anything that need repairing. And he noticed that there was a set of tracks in the snow. Human tracks. Footprints, I guess is a better way to call them. Sure. Leading to the house. And they went right up to the house. But he looked around and he could not find any tracks leading away from the house. Creepy. Super creepy. Just a single set, though, right? Yeah. It wasn't like the footsteps, like God carried him from there. Well, that would be a single step set. Well, that old adage. Sure. There were two sets of footprints, and then when there were only one, it wasn't like God left you. It was when he was carrying you. You're sorry. Yes. That's a great story. Even if you're not religious, you got to see that and be like, man, that makes me feel good. Yeah. Because any time you get to that point, jesus goes, zing. Doubt me, will you? The footprints leading to the house, not leading away. Creepy, creepy, creepy. Right. He was a little creeped out, so he said, let me wander around more and see if I can find well, at this point, he wasn't wandering. He had purpose. Okay. So let me not wander aimlessly, but let me go from room to room and barn to barn, room to barn room, and find out this person that is clearly on my property somewhere. Yeah. He did, like a hard target search looking for somebody, either somebody hiding out on his property or evidence that whoever left those tracks leading to his house had left looking for other tracks away from the house. And he didn't find anything. He found nothing. No evidence of anybody. Certainly didn't find anybody. There was just nothing. One thing, though, that he did find that was kind of off putting to him, enough so that he mentioned it to neighbors. Was that on his toolshed, which is separate from the barn, the tool shed had a lock on it, and the lock had scratches or evidence that somebody had been trying to either break it or pick it. Correct. And they were trying to get into the tool shed, and he did not like that. So, again, this is following on the heels of their maid leaving sighting ghosts is the reason she left. Somebody has come to their farm and not left. They tried to get into the tool shed. The things are getting a little creepy. So in that case, it was a ghost sighting citi. Right. Sure. Another accidental pun. Yeah. Was that accidental? Sure. Okay. You didn't mean that, did you? Did I say that? Yes. You said that she saw ghost sightings. Oh, wow. Yeah, I guess so. Nice. Yeah, that happens. Yeah. I wondered, by the way, really quickly, if these footprints if whoever did that did the old Shining trick. Danny was so smart, he doubled back in his footprints. Right. And it worked. Oh, it worked big time. Anyone's seen the end of the Shining? Can tell you. It sounds a lot like I've been drinking today. I haven't at all. I've seen what you're drinking or drinking water. And that's not the only weird thing that happened. So that was in March. I'm sorry. Two more weird things happen. Okay, so a set of keys go missing in March. Yeah. And I don't know that one. To me, people lose keys. Yeah. But if you're suddenly, like, is there somebody, like, hanging around a property, trying to get into the tool shed? Now there's keys missing. Yeah, I could see that. The scratchy lock. And then the other final weird thing in that month in 1922, they found a strange newspaper on the porch. And I looked up because I didn't know what strange newspaper meant, so I tried to find out what the deal was, and everywhere I went just said it was a newspaper that I couldn't get if it was like, was it from Russia or was it from yeah. And all I found was that I could gather it was a newspaper that they did not expect to be there for some reason or another. Right. Either they didn't subscribe to it, wasn't in their town, or just some just random newspaper being on their porch. What matters? Yeah, I couldn't find anything beyond that as well. Yeah. There was one other last thing, and all this is now starting to take place over just the course of a couple of days. Things are getting, like, weirder at a much faster pace. Andreas himself, who I've not taken to be a very superstitious person, started to notice sounds coming from the attic, the same kind of, like, disembodied footfalls that the maid had sighted as a ghost sighting. So he's sitting there like, okay, keys are missing. Somebody's trying to get in a tool shed. Those tracks are really messing with me. And now I'm hearing things. I'm hearing people in my own house. And there's a Chicago Tribune from 1999. Right, exactly. Things have gotten weird. All right, so we take a break. Yeah. All right. Things are weird. This is in march 1922, the last day of March 1922, the 31st. All right. A new maid comes on the scene named Maria, for sure. Yeah. This one's confirmed. Okay. Maria balm gartner. She on her first day on the job. It proved to not be a very good first day at work. No. For one really good reason that we'll get to in a minute, we'll tease it out a little bit more. Okay. So she comes to work. She's working. Everything is totally normal as far as anyone around the hinter kyfeck farm is concerned, like the neighbors and all that. It's just a totally normal day. But in a few days, they would realize that this day, march 31, 1922, was the last day anyone could say for certain that they had seen any of the grubers alive. Correct. So flash forward a few days, April 4. People were a little weird. They were like, you know what? Cecilia is not in school, which is unusual. No one's been to church. We missed that sweet voice of Victoria up there. Yeah, that was highly unusual, as well. Like, Victoria did not miss church, did not miss choir, I'm assuming. Not only did she love to sing, but this is, like, her one weekly excuse to get out of the house. I could see that for sure, they said. And also, the mail had been piling up, supposedly at the post office, because they didn't use stamps.com. Right. They would have if they'd had the technology. Believe me. That's right. That was free. So the neighbors say, no, let's go check on them. Apparently, they went, I bet other neighbors were like, really? Like them that much? And finally someone was like, yeah, we really should just let it go. It's a neighborly thing to do. We're bavarian. Exactly what we do. So this little search party goes to the house to go check on things, and the house is just the whole farm is just eerily quiet. Everything's just kind of there's not a sign of life. There's a dog barking. The gruber dog was a Pomeranian, actually. And this is a time of pomeranians were a little bigger and stockier, but barked nonetheless, just like any other pomeranian. Are they bigger back then and stockier? Yeah, german stock. Sure. And the pomeranian was barking its head off. It was well known to be pretty just kind of a jerky little watchdog, but it was good for that. Okay, but what was odd was that it was tied up in the barn. This is a house dog that the groupers kept. That was a little weird, but otherwise, it seemed okay. The horses and the other livestock seemed okay and well fed or whatever. And then somebody looked a little further into the barn, and they made what would be the first of a couple really gruesome discoveries. They found some of the groomers bludgeoned to death. That's right. Andreas, the papa daughter. Victoria and dear old Cecilia, the granddaughter, in the barn, stacked one on top of the other, bled to death, bludgeoned to death. Only in the head area. Largely in the head area. Like, the attacks were definitely concentrated on their head and face. It. Okay. And they were covered with hay. Not completely covered. There are pictures of this, by the way. Did you look at the crime scene? Creepy. Oh, yeah. And see them in the barn with the hay. Right. Very graphic. So beware if you're googling that right now. So they were dead and had been dead for a little while, which we'll get to. They go inside, and they find poor little Joseph. Just horrific. Two year old was found dead, also bludgeon to death, and is caught in Mom's bedroom. And then the maid, on her first day on the job, was killed in her bed as well. Andreas's wife said Celia, she was in the barn as well. Oh, did I miss that? Yeah. Okay, so four of them in the barn, two in the house, all killed in the same manner and all covered up in some way. Yes. Whether it was hay or sheets or clothing, which is a weird thing to do. Yeah, it's very weird. Although it would become evident why in a little bit once they started questioning the neighbors. Sure. So the day after the bodies were found, dr. Johann Armuler performed the autopsies in the barn, and he decided that what had been used as a murder weapon was a type of pickaxe called a matic, although the murder weapon wasn't found for another year. Actually, after that, the doctor concluded, quite rightly, that it was a magic that had been used. And if you've ever seen, like, a pickaxe but the other end is, like, blunt and wide, that's a matic. And whoever killed the groomers and the maid did it with that. Right. Which is horrific. It is even worse than that, though. They found in hands clenched in her fists, tufts of her own hair. So there was evidence that she had survived for, I think, several hours after she was attacked and watched her other family members attacked and then pulled out her own hair for whatever reason. I'd say that was a good enough reason. Sure, Victoria showed signs of strangulation, but they determined that was not the cause of death. And by all accounts, everyone else died pretty much immediately upon receiving that pickaxe to the head. Right. Most of the victims were in bedclothes except for Victoria and Citilia. They were in the regular clothes, which seemed to indicate that it probably happened in the evening. Some people were already getting ready for bed. Some people had not yet. Right. And they also think that the groupers were lured one by one out to the barn kind of Scooby Doo fashion. Yeah, because clearly it wasn't all them killed at once because there was no signs of struggle. Maybe one person went out and died, and then the other person was like, hasn't been back for a while. Right. And then they died, and then again and again. Horrific. So there was weirdness beyond that, beyond just the horrificness of the crime and the fact that the bodies were covered up. This is April 4. Right. They figured out that the bodies had been killed or the people had been killed on march 31. That was the last time anybody had seen them alive. But the neighbors said, oh, wait a minute, that's really weird because we saw signs of life coming from the farm all weekend. Yeah, there was smoke coming out of the chimney the whole weekend. The livestock has been fed, the dogs clearly eaten. Like, if they hadn't been fed or cared for in four or five days, they'd be showing signs of it by now. But you can tell that they were tended to this whole time. So what is that? Yeah, even the house itself, it showed evidence that someone had eaten a meal there recently or more recently than four or five days ago. The bed looked like it had been slept in since that time. And as we mentioned earlier, that pomeranian was tied up. I saw different accounts on whether the dog was somewhat injured or not. I did, too. So let's just say the dog might have been hurt some, but ultimately was fine and wasn't killed or anything. Yes, it was not injured, I think. Right. So what this all signs point to the fact that someone killed this family and then hung out there for a few days. But even more stirring is the idea that the person who killed them may have been the one who left the footprints and stayed in their house waiting to kill them, perhaps killed them and then stayed in the house for a few days after taking care of everything. Yeah. Just living the life. Very strange. Yeah. So the police started looking around pretty quickly for suspects and realizing, well, first we got to go with motive, I think is what they said to themselves. Sure. Occasionally it happens if there's a vagrant that comes through and kills for money and robs. And the thing they found out was that there was a little bit of folding money taken from the bodies, but there was a lot of valuable jewelry and gold coins and other money in the house that was not taken. So things weren't quite adding up on the robbery front. Yeah. And especially if the person who killed them, if they were planning on robbing them, they had four days to look around and amuse themselves by robbing the whole house blind. They certainly wouldn't leave this stuff behind. No. They also found out in the investigation that victoria had emptied her bank account and had left a donation to the church, but there was also a substantial amount that just wasn't accounted for. Who knows what that was never turned up. Lost the time. So robbery was kind of discarded as a motive. But another one would come to light soon. We'll talk about that after a break. Starting your own business can be a difficult thing, especially small business. But developing your online presence is the one thing that doesn't have to be difficult. Yeah. Thanks to Google and Squarespace, who've teamed up to give small business owners what they need to succeed online. A custom domain, a business email, and a beautiful website all in one place. That's right. With Google and Squarespace, you can stand out, you can look professional, you can increase your team's productivity. All you do is you create your Squarespace business website or an online store, and you're going to receive a free year of business email and professional tools from Google. It's that simple. Yes. So visit Squarespace.com google to start your free trial. Use offer code works for 10% off your first purchase. Google and Squarespace make it professional. Make it beautiful. All right, so to me, it's this guy first, is it? Yes, I think so. We'll go ahead and talk about this, too. There was a neighboring man, a neighbor, as you might call it, or a neighboring man. You're a normal human. Hello, neighboring man. How are you today? By all means, if you're a professional broadcaster, you should say neighboring Maine. All right, so his name is Lawrence Schlitinbawa, and he was, like I said, live nearby. He was a suitor for Victoria, and she had always said, this guy who knocked me up, this is Joseph's father. Right. And like you said earlier, he was like, for a little while, I think he claimed paternity, but then when he found out what that meant, he had to pay for that. He's like, that's an English word I didn't understand. Exactly what is this pattern of so he backed off of that claim, and later it was emerged that she was about to sue him for paternity before this murder took place. Right. So some people say, oh, well, that probably set him off. Yes. Because he was remarried and had a kid that had died, sadly, by that point. So he didn't want this kind of scandal on his household. Sure. And he didn't want to make the payments. Right. Yeah. Especially if he wasn't 100% sure it was his kid. Right. So if you look at the Schmidt and Bower guy, some really weird stuff starts to emerge. In addition to that motive of not wanting to pay alimony for little Yosef, the way he behaved in the immediate wake of the discovery of these murders was very bizarre. He was part of the original search party that searched the house. Suspicious first thing. Yeah, because a lot of criminals like to do that. They like to go to the scene of the crime as part of the search party. Right. Next on TV. They do? Sure. Everything I learned from the Flintstones points to this guy being suspicious. He also immediately started disturbing the crime scene. Right? Like he unstacked the stacked bodies. And when he did it, apparently there are a couple of other guys there, and the other guys were real shaken up by just being in the presence of these horribly mangled bodies. Sure. Apparently Schlippen Bower was totally fine handling them. Yeah, he's like, I got the head, you get the legs. One of the men was quoted as saying he disturbed everything there was to disturb. So he had no qualms about going in there and just having his way with that crime scene. Apparently, he was super familiar with the house itself. Right, which isn't necessarily especially if he was dating Victoria. Yeah, well, true. I would call this part of the body of evidence, though. Okay, so he apparently went into the house from the barns, which meant he knew they were connected. He unlocked the front door from the inside, which is like, did he have a key or did he know where the key was? Remember the missing keys? And then he also apparently knew the maids room handle was unusual, and he had to lift it up to enter and not press it down. And apparently he just went right to it and lifted it up again. Maybe he spent some time over there with Victoria and knew these things. A lot of this can be explained away in some ways. They also said that the dog went nuts when he was around. Yeah, like it's him. Exactly. Here's the murderer. Take or leave. That that seems like local folklore to me. The dog called out the murderer, and he said it was because he had blood all over his shoes from disrupting the crime scene. And the dog was barking at that, which, by the way, the two other searchers who were with him while he was disturbing the crime scene asked him what he was doing, and he said he's looking for his son. Yeah. Joseph, a couple of things weird about all this. Right? So if he's disturbing the crime scene to cover his tracks, if he was the killer and the killer stayed behind for several days, he had all the time in the world to cover up his tracks. Why would he do it in the presence of a couple of fellow searchers? Weird. Yeah. And then secondly, if he was the killer and he was not trying to act unaware, why would he be looking for his son in the stack of bodies when he knew full well his son was in his room in the house? Misdirection, I guess. This guy seemed like he was not very good at misdirection. He had no alibi for the night. Apparently, his family said and this is where it gets I want to say obvious, maybe not obvious. It gets really suspicious to me. His family said, oh, no, the night they were murdered, he. Spent the night in the barn because he knew that there was weirdness going on over there and he was looking out for burglars. So he spent the night in the barn that night. Okay, so he spent the night in the Gruber's barn is what they're saying. No, their own barn. Oh, okay. Got you. So he apparently, though, had asthma, so people were like, why would he spend the night in the barn if he has asthma? Smarty. Right. But that was his alibi, which is pretty weak. He only lived 350 meters away, which I think that's like, 19 miles. Just kidding. What is it? It's like three football fields, right? Yeah. I looked up the conversion. Three and a half. It's not too far. So he could have been the one coming back and forth. Like, the fact that there were footprints leading one way doesn't, to me, signify that someone spent six months hiding there. It could have been he could have come and gone as he pleased and not been, like, away from his house too long that anyone noticed. Sure. And maybe he walked in the same footprints. Maybe he did do the Danny. Maybe he was the one who originated the Danny. He was Danny before Danny was even born. That's true. Or maybe he was Danny. Oh, man, this place keeps getting weirder and weirder. Yes. The more we make up about it. That's true. The other thing that he said that I thought was just I don't even know if I believe this. Apparently, many years later, when the murder was talked about in, like, the bars and the beer gardens, he would talk about it in the first person when he speculated about the killings. I don't buy that necessarily. I don't either. That sounds like something that people would make up in a pub. Yeah. He used to say, I killed them. Right. No one ever cared. Sure. I guess. Yeah. So he was the main living suspect. There was another suspect who was brought back from the dead to be paraded around as a suspect in this case? Yeah. Not literally. In some ways, yeah, but no, not literally. Right. This guy's name is Carl Gabriel, and he used to be married to Victoria, but he died in World War One in the trenches. And the reason that he was brought back as a possible suspect is that people said, well, his body was never shipped back home. We don't actually know that he really did die. Maybe follow me on this is what they said. Yeah. Maybe he came back to reclaim his wife, found out that she had an incestuous relationship. He snaps, he kills everybody. Yes. I don't buy this at all. Well, no, they started the police, I think, and the Munich Police Department really apparently went to town trying to get to the bottom of his murder over the years. Yeah. And one of the other things that pointed to him supposedly was that in World War II? Another whole war later, supposedly, some people came forward and said, you know what? We met this Russian, german speaking Russian soldier that used to claim to be the Hens, a cafe killer. And we think that that's Carl, right? I guess. Okay. Yeah. The thing is, the Munich police apparently spoke to some of the men who were there when he died, and they described him being died. People witnessed his death, okay. Even though his body didn't make it back, it wasn't recovered. People saw him die. All right, so it was verified that he was dead, I guess, at least the satisfaction of the police. And that was a pretty weak link anyway, because supposedly the reason that he fled for the war, it was to fake his death, not why he fled for the war, but that he faked his death to get out of the marriage. Right. So why would he fake his death, get out of the marriage, come back years later, and kill them all? Great question, Chuck. Yeah, I think the answer that is he wouldn't. Or maybe it's the perfect crime. Yeah. So nonsensical. He's listening right now. Laughing is the perfect crime. What else? People talking about paranormal, that it was ghosts and these strange noises in this mysterious newspaper and all these footprints is because there was some supernatural force out to get the family. Well, that would account for the ghost. You could say that accounts for everything. Sure. That's why it's bunk. Yeah. No, that one is not a big one. Although the Munich police, very early on decapitated, had the family decapitated, and their schools were sent for forensic analysis and were handled by clairvoyant, who apparently was not able to come to any conclusions about their faith or the killer. Yeah. And those bodies were buried headless because those heads eventually went missing. Yeah. Apparently they kept them in the Nuremberg, I guess, in one of their city government buildings, and it was leveled in World War II. Got it. I think that's where the skulls were lost. They think that was mixed in with the other skulls. It's either that or the ghost that did it. So for the cops part, they interviewed over 100 suspects over the years, including the Clear Killer. To me, the neighboring man, Lawrence Schwittenbauer, I just think it all points to him. Apparently, years later, too, was like, God did the right thing with his family, like they were awful people. And he didn't say, except for my possible son, the two year old. He just said, all of them. They deserved it. Yeah. So it just kind of seems obvious to me that it was him, because someone stayed there, someone knew the house, someone took great care of covering the bodies. It just doesn't seem like a random burglary. No. That is a very bizarre thing to do, to stick around afterwards, unless you feel like you're within your own safe zone. And if you lived 350 meters away, maybe you would feel safe there. Well, you could retreat very quickly. Yeah. Or know that I know no one comes by here. Whereas if it was a burglar, they probably wouldn't feel so comfy hanging out for days on end. Right? Yeah, right. It probably was him. But no one will ever be able to prove it one way or another. No, they didn't have any hard evidence. No. And the evidence they did take, a lot of it was lost. This is a lot of forensic techniques hadn't been invented yet. We're still being developed elsewhere in the world. So in 2007, a police academy in Munich got their hands on the case. Some students did. The Gutenberg Police Academy. The first installed brook. Yeah, why not? Let's throw in another syllable. Students from that police academy investigated this crime. And in Germany, this is an enormously famous crime. Yeah, it's huge there. It's there, jack the Ripper for sure. It will never be solved. It's not possible being solved. And this is the conclusion from the students at the first info brook Police Academy. They said, we think we know who it is. Since this is unsolvable, they will never be able to be proven. We're not going to name the person because they still have relatives alive. But you can guess, right? It's the one living suspect that anyone's ever really raised. It was probably him. Yeah, they didn't say that. That was my conclusion of their conclusions. And then they said, thank you, police Academy, for your findings. And where's the guy that makes all the funny noises in his mouth? You know. Steve Guttenberg follows us on Twitter. No way. Yeah. Really? Yeah. At Steve Gutbuck. Really? Yeah. And he is in like a sharknadoesque movie. I'm not sure what the name of it is, but he's in it with the guy who does the voices. Oh, really? His name? Michael something, maybe. Yes, Michael something. I will say that. And I think I mentioned this on the show, maybe that's why he follows this. Steve Guttenberg was in one of the very best episodes of one of my favorite TV shows, party down. And did you ever see that show? No. It was good. Yeah, it was really funny. I had the great Adam Scott and Lizzie Kaplan. And one of my heroes, ken Marino from the state. And Martin Star. Megan Malale. It was great. Good episode, huh? Well, they were caterers, like cater waiters, all actors and writers and stuff in Hollywood. And each episode was its own thing on catering event. And they had one where they showed up to Steve Gutenberg's house for his birthday party, and he pulled up and he was like, oh, man, I forgot to cancel. I really had the party a couple of days ago with my friends. He's like, but since you're all here, why don't we just have a party? And so the waiters end up having a party with gutenberg, and he, like, does some scene acting with them and gives them great wine, and he has great art, and he's just really, really funny in it. Yeah, I can imagine. He seems like an awesome dude. He seems so awesome. After watching this episode, I was like, man, Goots is the best. And I think they called them Goots in the show even. Sure. Yeah. Anyway, goot boot shout out to party down. Great show. And Steve Gutenberg. Yeah. Do you have a listener mail or is this too spooky for one? He did great work on that bible. Yeah, I got a listener mail. Okay. Well, if you want to know more about Henry KYC, you can go listen to stuff you missed in history class. I think they did an episode that covered it as well. You can search MysteriousUniverse.org and all sorts of other places for it. And since I said get your kay tech, it's time for listener mail. Before we do listen to mail, we want to give a very special thank you to Margaret and Mike in Jacksonville, Florida. Yeah. Thanks, guys. Yeah. They step forward and help Jerry out in a big way as the stuff you should know, army often does. Sure. And it's all we're going to say other than big thanks to you guys for helping out. For real. How about that? All right, I'm going to call this listener male squirrel shooting. Hey, guys. Been listening for about a year. I love the show. I was listening to the polar bears episode, and I stopped dead in my tracks when Chuck told the story about shooting a squirrel when I was about 13. I, too, thought I was a tough guy and wanted to hunt animals. My grandparents lived on some land and agreed to let my cousin and I shoot a swirl as long as we agreed to skin it and eat it. They like, they'll never do it. Yeah, you got to love those depressionary grandparents. Sure. It's all yours. I haven't visited them as hippies, like, passing a joint, like, joking about how stupid their grandkids were. Wow, depressionary. Sure. I see that one, too. All right. So we were very excited. We dressed up in camo, walked the property. Because you got to dress in camo if you're not squirrel. Eventually found a squirrel in a tree. I should note that we were using a pellet gun, not like a real bullet gun. I took the first shot and hit the squirrel, fell from the tree, and much to my chagrin, he did not die. He made a noise I hope to never hear again. It was that awful. I had to hand the gun to my cousin. I just could not do it and take the other shot. We ended up skinning it, needing it, though alive. He said, it tastes like chicken, so why bother? Like we promised that we would do. That was the last time I considered killing an animal for sport. I've always loved animals, so I'm not sure where this urge came from to begin with. Actually run a small online candle company now that sells dog themed candles. They donate 10% of all profits to animal shelters and rescues. Stephen, I'm going to plug your company over my wife's candle company even Whoa, which is Mama Bath and Body. And you can go to www. Dot knoxfavorite. Knoxs. Noxesfavourite.com. And Knox was their dog. Named the company after that's. Sweet. These are soy candles. I looked it up. They're good. Made from dogs. No. Made from soy dog. Thanks again for everything. You do your daily listen for me. I hope you continue for years to come. That is Steven. Way to go, Steven. Thank you for that. We appreciate you letting us share your horrible story with everybody. If you have a horrible story you want to share, I'm going to regret saying that. You can tweet to us at fyskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffyshno. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast athowstepworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffysheaknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's Criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Erkart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | |
8a4edc54-4a58-11e8-a49f-8f53a0887330 | SYSK Selects: How Miranda Rights Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-miranda-rights-work | Back in 1966, the Supreme Court decided that suspects in criminal cases had the right to be reminded that they didn't have to talk to the fuzz if they didn't want to, as stated in the 5th amendment. | Back in 1966, the Supreme Court decided that suspects in criminal cases had the right to be reminded that they didn't have to talk to the fuzz if they didn't want to, as stated in the 5th amendment. | Sat, 04 Aug 2018 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=4, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=216, tm_isdst=0) | 28608559 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everyone. It's me, your buddy. Josh. And for this week's, SYSK selects, I've chosen for you guys, my buddies, how Miranda rights work? It's a pretty great episode. It's full of stuff like irony, interesting history, and sometimes unpalatable, but important civil rights. So I hope you all enjoy it. It's one of my favorites. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetofworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. This is stuff you should know. Jerry just told us right before she pressed record, don't forget to be clever. Yeah. What is that about? I don't know, man. I'm a little thrown off right now. Well, I think maybe because you said Miranda, right? Sort of named after the Sex and the City character. Is that what you're talking about? That was, like, 45 minutes ago. It's a callback. So I guess that was clever. Cherry's book. That's the thing. I didn't even consider that clever. Right. Juvenile, maybe. So Miranda from Sex and the City. So what was your response to that one? I don't remember what I said. I thought it was fairly clever. We'll just skip over that. You said you have the right to remain fabulous. Oh, yeah, that's right. So that's the recap of a conversation we had a little while ago, everybody. Well, people always say they want to know what happens behind the scenes. It's just tomfoolery. There you go. Chuck. Yes. I know that you and I have both been arrested many times, and we've done some time in the stir and all that, so we know what Miranda rights are. Yeah. Not true. But the average person also knows what Miranda rights are, because they're so ubiquitous on every cop show, every lawyer show, every show. I think they show up on Er. It's still on. It's on, right? I have no idea. Is it on season 27? I have no idea. I don't think it is. I had a pretty good long run. Sure, but Miranda rights are just this thing that have become totally ingrained in our culture. We can all say it. Let's say it together. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. But hey, buddy, don't fret. You have the right to an attorney, and if you cannot afford one, one will be appointed to you. Right. And then over time, apparently, some agencies have added, and if you waive these rights, you can invoke them at any time. Yeah, I hadn't heard that one. They hadn't made it to TV yet. Really? Right. Yeah. He goes, like, short and sweet. I'm not even going to tell you that. Yes, Castle. He's all business. Yeah. Is he a cop, though? I think he's a private investigator. I got you. Although I'm not sure. So he wouldn't have to Mirandize anybody? No, but he's just Castle, so he does. I've never seen it I love Nathan feeling, though. Oh, he doesn't. Yeah, he's a nice guy. But this idea that Miranda rights are everywhere and everybody knows them and knows that they exist. Sure. But first of all, the case behind them, I think, is probably unknown. And then secondly, what they're designed to do, really, the real nuts and bolts of it, it hadn't really occurred to me, even though it's pretty self evident once you think about it. Yeah. And it seems really straightforward. But it can get a little tricky, which we'll discuss how that happens. Well, so the idea of the Miranda rights is fairly recent. It goes back to a case called Miranda versus Arizona v. Arizona. Yes. Which is like the legal provision can't be bothered to include the s when they abbreviate versus and we should also point out that it wasn't just this one case. Miranda v. Arizona gets all the press because the name Miranda, but it was actually four cases that they consolidated. But we want to give Vignera v. New York West over the United States and California v. Stewart. They're due as being part of this thing. And basically all the cases were similar in that there were confessions after interrogations and those confessions were used against these various people. Right. But we're going to stick with Miranda, though. The lawyers of these well, not just us. I mean, everybody does. Well, yeah, exactly. The Miranda case, the Miranda laws, they're Miranda rights, you're mirandized. Yeah, but the whole point behind these and all of the cases that the complaints had was that the people who committed these crimes and made these confessions and were later convicted for them were not aware that they didn't have to talk to the police. Right. And this is actually the Miranda case goes back to 1966, but the American right guaranteed by the Bill of Rights in the Constitution. Yeah. Fifth Amendment to refrain from self incrimination. That goes back to 1791. Like I said, the Fifth Amendment basically says that you don't have to tell on yourself. The cops can't make you talk. Right, is what that is. Yes. But until 1966, I guess you just needed to be up on your constitutional knowledge. And then in 1966, they eventually will get to the case. They said, maybe we should start telling people this when we arrest them. Right. So let's go back in time to 1963 in Phoenix, Arizona. The cops picked up Ernesto Miranda for questioning in a kidnapping and rape case. His car was spotted near the scene of the crime. He was called in. When he got there, he was like, I didn't do this, man. He was completely cooperative. He's like, I didn't do any of this. 2 hours later, an interrogation. He was not identified in a line up, but the cop said, the girl identified you in the line up. And he went, oh, well, I think his direct quote was, well, I guess I ought to tell you about it, then the cops lied to him. And this is a clear case of not doing things the right way. Well, no, the Supreme Court has upheld the use of deception by police and interrogation. They can lie their tails off to you. Right. But not if you're not Mirandized. Right. That was the point is, he didn't know that he could just be quiet and not say anything, so he just volunteered the information, signed a written confession. And that's the whole point. And that's what the justices in the Supreme Court who heard the Miranda case and all the other cases that combined to make it we're getting at was that when you are being interrogated by the place you're in their custody, they are allowed to use deception. They are allowed to use all sorts of tactics to coerce you to talk. But if you're not aware that you don't have to talk, then what you're saying amounts to an involuntary confession and hence shouldn't be able to be used against you because you have a constitutional right against self incrimination. If you're informed that you have that right, then you are making the decision to go ahead and confess against yourself. And you're waiving that. Right. Yes. And that can be used in court. Exactly. So they give you the option, essentially. So this is what the whole case was about in 1966, like we said, the Supreme Court heard this case and ruled yeah. He was convicted, we should say, right. Based on that confession and sentenced to 30 years, I believe. 20 to 30. Yeah. And the Supreme Court case was part of an appeal. That's right. From that conviction, three years later, they heard this case. Yeah. And apparently the other three people probably represent even more than just those four cases total. Sure. Usually when the Supreme Court hears something, there's a lot of it going on in the courts. Yeah. And they said in a five to four decision, you know what, the suspect has to be read his rights. Which one? They'll call it Miranda rights. Yeah. And they specifically said prosecution may not use statements stemming from custodial interrogation of the defendant unless it demonstrates the use of procedural safeguards effective to secure the privilege against self incrimination. But the key there is custodial interrogation right. And established a couple of things. One, you can't self incriminate from the moment you are in custody. It's not like you're on trial or something. And then any confession is involuntary, basically. And again, the reason that they're differentiating between in custody and not in custody is because once you're in custody, the cops can do things like lie to you or something like that. That's right. And in custody is the three keywords taken into custody is where all the gray area has been since then. Right. And still is today. Yeah. Because they were pretty clear in their ruling, like, yeah. This person has to be read their rights. Let's even print some cards for police officers to carry around with them so they can read off of the card if they have to. Yeah. And we should point out that Miranda actually they retried him without his confession and his girlfriend said, he confessed to me. That was used in court. So he was found guilty again since the 20 to 30 years, again paroled after five years and then sold those little Miranda cards with his autograph on them for a while, for like a buck 50. And then he was stabbed to death in a bar fight in 1976. Yes. And the suspect who stabbed him was read his Miranda rights and so he never talked and he walked. Really? Oh, my God. The irony. Definitely irony. Wow. Yeah. In like the truest form of the word. That's right, man. So custodial interrogation is one of the keys here in custody is where it gets a little hanky. Like if you're in the back of a police car and you got your handcuffs on, then you're in custody. Right. That's pretty straightforward. Or even if you don't have handcuffs on, if the cops lock you in the car and it's understood by you that you're not allowed to get out, you're in police custody. Right. The official definition of custody and the Miranda decision is, quote unquote, denial of complete freedom of action. Right. But that's open to interpretation. It is, because if you're handcuffed and you're put in the back of a locked police car, you're obviously denied freedom of action. You obviously have to be Mirandized. Right. You can bang your head on the little clear glass in front of you. Right. What were you saying? In police chases, like, you can defecate or urinate or whatever, do whatever you want back, but that is not freedom of action. Right. It's been brought up, though, that because of the legal authority that cops represent, with their uniforms and their outwardly worn guns and tasers, all that stuff, they're mirrored sunglasses that they have some sort of they project just talking to a cop, a person might feel detained. Yeah. I think it's like an implied detention. If a cop came to my front door and said he had some questions for me regarding a crime, I don't think I would feel even though it's within my right, I don't think I would feel like I was able to say, no, actually, I'm going to go to the grocery store right now right, exactly. And just walk past them and get in my car or even I'm going to have to ask you guys to leave. Yeah. Which again, you said it is your right to do. They haven't placed you into custody, but you don't have to be Miranda's in the situation because you can tell the cops to leave. If you are in an interrogation room and you tell the cops to leave, they're not going to listen to you if they're on your front door step and you tell them to leave, they are supposed to listen to you. And because of that, you have freedom of movement. You can go back in your house. You can go to the grocery store. You can tell the cops to leave. So even though the perception might be that you are being detained by the cops just by their very presence, and you don't feel like you can tell them to leave, this law isn't designed to let you be slippery, right? Like, a traffic stop, for instance, is kind of not weird. But if you get stopped by a cop and you say, I've got \u00a35 of weed in my trunk, by the way, Mr. Officer, you caught me, that can be used in court because that is a non custodial situation. Right. Which is weird, though. I didn't realize that a traffic stop is considered noncustodial. Does that mean you can just drive off? Then that's a custodial situation. So does that mean that you can drive off legally, or does that mean that it is a gray area that the courts have never no, that means you're evading. Evading what? Arrest a traffic stop. Okay, well, then that means you can't leave. You don't have freedom of movement, therefore, that's a custodial situation, and you should have to be Mirandized when you're pulled over. Well, hey, talk to the Supreme Court, my friend. I've been trying, but I do have a question. If there are any constitutional lawyers or any kind of lawyer, really, who knows what they're talking about? Defense attorney. I'm very curious about that. Are you allowed legally to just drive off once a cop pulls you over? Since it's a non custodial situation? My answer is no. I would imagine no, too, because every time you do well because you have committed a crime and the cop has pulled you over, that's where the language gets tricky. You're not in custody, right? Maybe you're temporarily detained. I bet you there's some specific language that allows for this. And I would never, like, argue this with a cop who pulled me over. That's not what I'm getting at. I'm genuinely curious. If you can't drive off, then how is it a noncustodial situation? That's my question. Yeah, that's a good question, but that shows the slippery slope in the gray area, right? And like you said, if you say, hey, I've got \u00a35 of weed in my trunk, and the cop never Mirandized you, and then after they said, well, you're under arrest, and then he Mirandaizes you, and you shut up, from that point on, they can still use that initial exact confession because it was noncustodial. Yeah, and here's the other thing. A lot of people well, not a lot of people. Some folks may be confused by if you're not read your Miranda rights, then you get released or whatever, right? Not true at all. That just means that they can't use what you have said in court, and any ancillary incriminating evidence that came from that confession can't be used either. Right. Like, if they arrest you and you say they tell you you're placed under arrest, and then they're like, so we're going to get some tacos rather than, here's what we have to tell you about your Miranda rights. And then you say, I've got a bunch of weed on me. They can't use that confession about the weed against you because you hadn't been Mirandized. You've been told that the cops wanted tacos. Yeah. I wonder what keeps someone from voluntarily talking about evidence so it won't be able to be used. Man. We are criminal minds right here. I'm sure there's workarounds for all this. Mandy Patinkin and like, the rest of the cast right here at this table in Yentl. No. Is it? He in Criminal Minds. No, he's in Homeland. I watch that. He's also in the princess pride. He's in Ego Montoya Monday. Patenkin. He was also the alien cop in Alien Nation. A lot of people don't know that. With Jimmy Khan. You never saw Alien Nation? Now, is that good? That was a great movie. It always looked silly to me. I'll tell you what, when you're 13, it is a great movie. It was Crow. Do you see that one? Yeah. It was nothing like crawl. I had, like, a good plot. It was like to live and die in La. With aliens. Right. Or enemy mine on Earth. Yeah, I never saw that one. It was just kind of the same deal. It's like it's luke Gossett Jr. And an alien suit. And Dennis Quaid. Right. Randy Quad. Dennis Quaid. It definitely wasn't Randy. I'm pretty sure. All right, so Miranda rights here is the requisite meandering tangent. So there's an important thing we haven't covered yet in regards to Miranda rights, and it was recently got a lot of press with the bombings in Boston. Right. And that is the public safety exception in the case of the Boston bombing. What was his name? Jocar Sarnayov. Okay. Joe Carr. There's a lot of ways to say it that are wrong. And then there's one right one, which I may have had in there. So he is in the hospital. Everyone knows what happened. The bombings went off. The one brother was killed. They caught the other one, and he was wounded until he was in a hospital. And they had what they called an urgent public safety interview in the hospital without reading him his rights. He's asking for an attorney. They're like, you're not getting an attorney. Why don't you tell us what's going on? And he did. Yeah, he did. He confessed to the bombing. He told them about possible other bombs. I think that's how they found out that the apartment was possibly rigged with explosives, or at the very least, there were explosives in his apartment, his brother's apartment. And they found all this out by denying him his right to keep quiet. And a lot of people were saying, well, you guys just blew the case. Why didn't you miranda's them? And it was because of this public safety exemption that came about that the Supreme Court ruled on in 1984. Yeah. New York v. Quarrels. Benjamin Quarles was in custody at a grocery store in 1980 and a rape victim had identified him and the cop thrust him and said, hey, you've got an empty gun holster here? Is there a gun nearby? And he was like, yeah, it's right over there. Cop went, got the gun unloaded. It obviously secured the scene. And that became a court case because the gun evidence was thrown out. An appellate court agreed, and then later on the Supreme Court said, no. You know what that's called? Securing the scene. That's a public safety exception. You can't have a gun, a loaded gun in there. You can't have bombs waiting to go off potentially somewhere else. Right. So forget the merindizing. You need to secure everything. Right. And once that threat to public safety is secured, then you have to Miranda them. Yeah. In which the boss, in case he just shut up after that. Right, so it's too late. Yeah, exactly. The Feds had gotten all they wanted out of them. They were like, sure, whatever. And apparently a judge ordered the Feds to Miranda's the guy after two days of this questioning. I bet that was a pretty satisfying reading of the rights at that point, I'm sure, because they knew they were covered. But I mean, this is such a Gestapo tactic too. Like we'll just question you about everything we want for two days until a judge ordered us to Miranda's. That means that some attorneys are going to have to go through all two days of that confession to pick out at what point the public safety exemption was basically exhausted. Right. And I mean, you can argue that any question that has to do with possible future true terrorist attacks is protecting public safety. Yeah, but it's just like I don't know, it definitely skirts the spirit of the law, I would think. Yeah. And I found an article written by the guy who originally, I think wrote the Corals Verdict, and he was like, you know what? In the case with the Boston Bomber, they shouldn't even done that anyway because there was so much evidence, they didn't even need these confessions. Right. And it was in the true spirit of trying to secure public safety to find out if there was other explosives. But from that point on, they were like, it was completely unnecessary because the guy was convicted just from the evidence was so strong that they didn't even need that confession. Exactly. So after they found out about the bombs or whatever, whether there weren't bombs, then it seems to me like the public safety exemption would have been exhausted and they would have had to have Mirandaised him. It's a slippery slope. But, I mean, it's not like the CIA has to have admissible evidence in court to go after all the people that Joe Carr named, if he named anybody. Right. Or whatever he gave up. Sure. I don't know. Yeah. I'm coming to trust, like, Obama's security policies, like, less and less. Really? Yeah. That's my opinion. Now I get it. It's a very fine line between, like, hey, this guy is a terrorist and get that information, or, People still have their human rights. Right. Exactly. And it's such a difficult thing to swallow to the concept that some little punk who him and his brother blew people up in Boston and took people's lives and legs, that they did this. The concept that they have any rights whatsoever is pretty unpalatable. But we as a society have decided that, yeah, you do have rights. You're an American citizen. You have certain rights that are guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and court interpretation of those rights. And that's the law of the land. And I guess to just routinely skirt around those whenever it's determined to be called for by whoever is in charge and power, that's equally unpalatable to me. Because also, the courts judge a criminal suspect. When you invoke the public safety exemption, it's not that that person doesn't have any rights, it's that the safety of the public trumps that person's constitutional rights. Right then. Right. But just for that narrow window of time right. And then after that, it's exhausted. That's right. And this is not the first time. It was just three years ago that the Feds did the same thing. They invoked the public safety exemption for the Times Square bomber. Yeah. And he sang like a canary. Which is, if they just did it to Joe Carson, I don't think I would have a problem. But just the fact that it popped up three years ago, too, that's starting to indicate a pattern to me. Yeah. Terrorism, I think, is the key agent there. Sure. Got anything else? I'm done. We're going to get so much mail for that one. Hey, buddy. You have the right to remain fabulous. Thank you. That's my takeaway. Thank you. If you want to learn more about being fabulous, you can type that word into the search bar, how stuff works.com. You can also type Miranda rights. M-I-R-A-N-D-A. Rights. And since I said search bar somewhere in there, it's time for Message Break. Now it's time for listener mail. Yeah. Before listener mail, we have a quick shout out. And we don't usually do this because we get inundated with requests for shout outs. Yeah. So every once in a while, they caught you at the right time. Exactly. This is an anniversary shout out from Josh Underwood. He and his wife are teachers in Robertson County, Kentucky, and they've listened to our show incorporated in their classrooms and they are celebrating their ten year anniversary. And he said if we could say happy anniversary to Amanda, I can't think of anything that would make her smile more. So on June 14, he said, if it's late, don't worry about it. So this is probably going to be late, but I hope you guys had a great anniversary on June 14. Happy 10th, josh and Amanda Underwood. Yeah, happy anniversary, you guys. Or I don't know if Amanda took your name, whatever her name might be. Yeah. So the real listener mail. Speaking of taking names is a good one. I'm going to call it Royal Tan and Bombs Theory. Oh, I like this already. Yeah, it's one of my favorite movies. It has to do with losing a finger in a wood chopping accent. Right. Hi, guys. My wife Molly and I have been listening for about three years. We both love it. I've always wanted to email you, but I didn't have a reason and I didn't want to sound like a twelve year old girl talking to NSYNC or something. I guess. Pretty out of touch. Yes. I guess it's 1994. I wanted to say something interesting. So here are two interesting things. One. My name is Josh Bryant. Pretty interesting. It's like the two of us together. That's right. I appreciate you taking my name. And number two, he actually had three things, but one wasn't so interesting. Number two is I watched Wes Anderson's, Royal Tannin. Bombs was amazed at how different and unique all the characters were and how well they all work together as a family. After reading other theories about the movie, I think the one I love most is that every character represents a different stage of grief. So denial. I collect fan theories. Oh, I love it. That is a great one. Have you seen room 237 yet? No, have you? No. I'm dying through that. Yeah. They didn't release it in Atlanta. I know. All right, so denial is Margot Tannbaum, her unknown smoking habit, numerous marriages, secret crush on Ritchie. Totally. Denial. Yes. Anger. Chaz tanbobaum. Need to say more. Pretty much throughout the whole movie, he's angry and full of resentment. Bargaining. Royal Tannin bomb himself. He lies to get out of bad gambles and gambles to cover up bad lies. This is like pretty good. Yeah, and he didn't make this up. He got off the Internet, but that's still good. But Joshua bright. You get no credit. It's like that kid who stole that haiku from a T shirt. Depression. Richie Tanner. Bong. Again, very obvious. See when he tries to commit suicide. Great scene. And acceptance is ethylene. Tanninbaum. Her role is more subtle. Her acceptance is seen when she accepts Mr. Sherman's marriage proposal. It's a little thin there. It's also seen when she finally moves on from her old marriage and accepts her new life with her new husband. So that's sort of the most tenuous. Yeah, but he asked what we think and I think that's pretty good. I love fan theories like you. Yeah. Five stages of grief. I doubt if that's the case. Well, that's what makes fan theories so great. If you just unlocked the director's secret sure. Then it's done. Why not? You figured it out. One of the great things about fan theory is if it rivals what the director was trying to do or the writer was trying to do. Yeah, it was like English class. Remember back in English class? It was always and I had a problem with it back then, but now I love it. I would always be like, well, this teachers just interpreting this like, who knows what the author meant. Oh, yeah. But that's kind of the point now. In my old age, I realized yeah, I remember feeling my brain unfurl and start to get like yeah, there are specific interpretations of things that kind of fit within a framework, but still it's pretty wide. Yeah, agreed. Nice. Pretty cool fan series. I'm writing a blog post on them right now. I'm collecting them. Oh, yeah. So that's from Joshua Bryant. Joshua, I guess, is the result of some weird stuff you should know in breeding. Yeah, he's an experiment. That's right. Yeah. Formed an entry dish. Let us know where you are right now. You escaped? Yeah. If you escape from our lab, we want to hear about it. Especially if you have some cool fan theory, man. Send us fan theories. Like good ones. Yeah, I mean, like good ones, not like stupid ones. Yes. I've been on feral children lately. What? That's been my obsession lately, reading about feral children. I might try and write a thing for fan theory. Feral children? What does that have to do with fan theory? Nothing. That's my obsession. Yours has been fan theory. Oh, I got you. I've just been obsessed with feral children. Yeah, because there have been actual ones in the Emerald Forest. Many cases. Okay. If you have a good fan theory and or a good feral children's story thank you. We want to hear about it. You can tweet to us at Sisk podcast. You can join us on stuff you should know, which is prior to that, Facebook.com. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com and you can join us at our home on the web stuffyoushouldnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. Hey everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite. True crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today." | |
438ab1fe-53a3-11e8-bdec-033513155b4c | How Narcolepsy Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-narcolepsy-works | Narcolepsy is one of those amazing rare disorders that everyone thinks they understand – people just fall asleep at random times, even in the middle of doing something. But there’s a lot more to it and – even better – we actually may be able to explain it. | Narcolepsy is one of those amazing rare disorders that everyone thinks they understand – people just fall asleep at random times, even in the middle of doing something. But there’s a lot more to it and – even better – we actually may be able to explain it. | Thu, 28 May 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=28, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=149, tm_isdst=0) | 50174818 | audio/mpeg | "Hey everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon Music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or you're brave enough late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. Hey, everybody. If you want a great website, you want to do it yourself with no must, no fuss. Turn to Squarespace. They have everything to sell anything. They have the tools that you need to get your business off the ground, including ecommerce templates, inventory management, a simple checkout process, and secure payments. And if you're into analytics, hold on to your hats, because Squarespace has everything that you need. Just head to squarespace. Comsysk and you can get a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code s YSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of Iheartradios How Stuff Works. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles w chuck Bryan over there and don't know Jerry. Chuck, wake up. Huh? We're going to get some mail for that right off of the bat. I feel quite refreshed. So, Chuck, you might have an arcolepsy then if you just fell asleep. Were you able to resist that urge to sleep just now? No, as soon as I heard, hey, welcome to the podcast, I went lights out. I think that happens to a lot of people. Have you ever known anyone with narcolepsy? I haven't. The closest I've come to that is watching my Own Private Idaho. Do you find that sleep inducing? No, it's River Phoenix or Kiana Reeves has. I forgot about that. I thought you were saying it's so boring you can't stay awake. No, that's Cats. Did you see that? No. Don't you remember that I tried to make myself go to sleep in Cats in the Middle? Oh, that's right. I have not seen the movie now. Yeah, that's what I was wondering about after having been on Movie Crush. Now I can't tell what's what anymore. What? I said, where? So my great aunt Laura had narcolepsy, which is my paternal grandmother's sister, and I only met her a few times. This is from my dad's side of the Mississippi clan. I only remember going to Mississippi like once when I was a kid and visiting her. And I just remember my brother and I this is my only memory of the visit is Scott. And I sitting in a room talking with her and her being in the middle of a sentence and then her head falling down, and then 10 seconds later, she would pick her head up and continue that sentence. Wow. Like, without missing a beat? Or was there like was she aware that she had just fallen asleep and woken up in my memory from being, like, ten years old? She didn't miss a beat and just finished her sentence, like, right in the middle of a sentence and didn't mention it. And my brother and I were just like, what is going on here? Your dad didn't prepare you for it? I don't remember. I purposely blocked out a lot of my childhood. Right, sure. So, I don't know, I folded into the shuffle. That's the only thing I remember. It may be a child's memory that is a little trumped up, but that's how I remember it. Wow, man. Well, yeah. I've never known anybody with narcolepsy. And based on that, going into this whole episode, I was just basically going in. Like, I'm sure most of our listeners are where it's just like, yeah, somebody falls asleep in the middle of the day, they can't help it, and then they wake back up and who cares, basically. But the more that I've researched this, the more I'm like, even if it were just that alone, it would be pretty disruptive to your normal life, depending on how often it happened to you every day. But the fact is, it's not just that alone, and there's a lot of extra symptoms to it that make it frightening or terrifying or depressing or just completely disruptive or make it so that you are maybe unable to hold down a job or go to school. It's a much sadder condition than I think most people think of, because it seems innocuous. It's just like, hey, you fall asleep here or there, it's fine. And it's not. There's a lot more to it than that. Yeah, for sure. I should also mention, too, that something that should not be confused with narcolepsy is something that Emily's family has. And I saw this when we would go to visit when they lived in Ohio, when he would stay at her parents house in very much Turkey. Well, eating, drinking during the day, such that by seven to 08:00 at night, every night, Emily and I would look around, we're watching TV, and there are four, usually three sleeping adults. And I dubbed it the gas leak, which everyone in their family thought was hysterical. Right now, that's just plain old funny. Yeah, that's not narcolepsy at all. That's just, you know at what age does that start happening is what I want to know, because I'm creeping up there, 21, because I can still jam late into the night. I might be sleepy the next day, but that's my only time when I don't have a five year old, so I use that time. I can stay up still until midnight, one in the morning, if I am doing something that's really neat. You must have a lot of testosterone left. I don't think so. Like, to have energy after a certain time of day is I think you have a lot of testosterone, Chuck. I would bet. We're going to take you in for a test after this. Well, I feel like it takes money. I feel like it kicks back in. Like I'm sleepy sometimes during the day, but then when the night comes and my daughter's asleep, I'm like, all right, this is my time to shine now. That's very fortunate man that you're not just like, this is my time to Netflix and chill like you're getting stuff done. I'm envious of you for that because I get a little tired, but I definitely don't have narcolepsy. I'm somewhere between you and Emily's family. The gas narcolepsy, it's a chronic disorder. It's a sleep disorder. And I know we've talked a little bit about this in some of our other sleep disorder episodes, so much so that I thought we might have actually covered this, but I quadruple checked and we have not. But it's characterized by a few things. One of the main tenets, basically, everybody that has narcolepsy has what's called excessive daytime sleepiness. Right. That's what everybody thinks about when you think of narcolepsy, somebody just falling asleep, they can't help it, they're just suddenly out. That's right. Yeah. They also call those sleep attacks, which is pretty cute. And no matter what variation of narcolepsy you have, you have excessive daytime sleepiness eds, right? That's right. And this is nothing new. We're just now sort of figuring it out a little bit since the 90s, which we'll get to. But obviously this has been happening since there have been people they've probably been suffering from narcolepsy, a small percentage of people. But it was first described in 1880 by a French physician named Jean Baptiste Eduard Gillanell. Not bad. How's geostetic jean Baptiste duo Gelino jellino. You have to put that little uptick on the end. I think that's called an accent ago. Right. So, yeah, that's how I would have said it. But either way, I think we basically got it across. He was a French physician from 1880. That's the original. That's right, yeah. And the origin of the actual term is from Greek narca, which is numbness or stupor. Stupor is one of my favorite words. And Lepsis, to attack or to seize. Right. So it's an attack of stupor, basically, is what he meant when he coined that term. And the reason Sean Baptisted Warren came up with this is because the 36 year old wine cask maker came to him and said, hey, I think there might be something wrong with me. I fall asleep suddenly out of nowhere for one to five minutes, 200 times a day, every day. What do you think Angela knows? I think I'm going to make my career on you, buddy. I did the math there. If you average about two and a half minutes between the one to five. That's about 8 hours of dozing. Okay. I'm really glad you said that, Chuck, because this was something that I had no idea about. But if you take over a 24 hours period, somebody with narcolepsy and put their amount of sleep next to somebody without narcolepsy over 24 hours, it's going to wash out to roughly the same. Did you know that? I didn't know that. But does that mean that this guy dozed 8 hours a day and then stayed up all night? Or did he sleep another 5 hours at night and just slept alive? No. So that's one of the key reasons that there is such a thing as excessive daytime sleepiness as part of narcolepsy is that your sleep is so disrupted that it's basically spread out over 24 hours rather than concentrated over 8 hours at night. So they're up and awake in the middle of the night for very long periods. Just like they fall asleep suddenly during the day. But if you put all those bouts of sleep together even when they're trying at night and then when they can't help it during the day, it adds up to about the same that a person without narcolepsy will sleep. That's my understanding. Now that's pretty remarkable. It is like the brain's like I'm getting sleep. Whether you like it or not, we're making this happen. At least by 24 hours we're going to have had enough. And of course since this has been we're talking about the 1880s, there have been a lot of explanations over the years. Everyone from Freud to I was about to say legitimate doctors that probably would offend certain people. I like Freud too, but I meant like never mind. Sure. But Freud of course said that sleep is an escape and he said narcolepsy is a lot of times triggered by really intense emotions. So here's what I think. It's just an extreme defense mechanism that lets you escape from those emotions. I love it. It's pretty Freudian. It's about as Freudian an explanation for anything as I've heard. It's just classic, right? Of course it's just utterly wrong. But I just think Freud's attempts at explaining the world were great and valuable in the way that preserving classic art is. Yeah, I've been to his house. Where? In Texas? Sigmund Freud house in Tyler, Texas. There are a lot of Germans in Texas, although I know he was Austrian. Yeah. I mean, I believe I saw it in Vienna, if I'm not mistaken. That's neat. That is very neat. Was this when you were backpacking? Yeah, of course. Chuck, you need to do a memoir of that time in your life and call it Backpacking to Freud's House. Okay. And the book could just be shaped like a penis. Sometimes a book is just a butcher. That's right. So Freud missed the mark a little bit, but still again, it's worth mentioning. Just like appreciating art, it wasn't until the 60s where they're like, okay, I think we're starting to get some real clues here. And that was when they first established that people with narcolepsy enter REM sleep during these bouts of narcolepsy, which you are not supposed to do under normal sleep patterns, which we talked about many times before. Like you said, when you fall asleep it should take you a little while to enter REM sleep. That's a deeper phase of your sleep pattern. Right. With narcolepsy they're out and into REM sleep so quickly. That a different way to characterize it that narcolepsy researchers put it is that REM activity, it intrudes into wakefulness, the line between being awake and being in deep REM sleep. Is that blurred for people with narcolepsy? Yeah. And I feel like I've occasionally in a really intense power nap, had a dream and I don't get to nap anymore, but that's when I've just been so tired that I just nap and fall asleep like immediately. That's neat. I bet you do you feel refreshed when you wake up? I tend to nap longer when I would nap. So when I say power nap I don't mean the 20 minutes disco nap. I mean you really power through for a couple of hours. Right. I thought you were recounting some of your cocaine using days. No, I got you. So that was in the 60s. So they say, okay, REM and narcolepsy, they go together like chocolate and peanut butter. Right. We're onto something here. But finally in the 90s they're like really have started to figure it out and they've zeroed in on the hypothalamus and specifically a small cluster of cells in the rear of the hypothalamus that we'll talk about later. And if you learn about that as far as narcolepsy goes, you can find it pretty convincing that we have begun at least to finally truly understand the cause of narcolepsy. Yeah, I totally agree. They make a great case. So if you want to talk to some initial stats, it occurs in all ethnic groups. It has equal incidents on the gender spectrum, evidently. Yeah. That's interesting because usually you would see it tilted one way or the other. Yeah, for sure. And then as far as how often you're going to see this, it's in about three to 16% of gen pop or about one in 2000 people. Yeah. Which classifies it as a rare disease which by the way shout out to, among several others, raretizes.org for their take on narcolepsy. It was very instructive. Is it a disease or a disorder or is it a fine line? Jeez, I think because there's a brain dysfunction that it would be characterized as a disease, wouldn't you? I don't know. I still don't know the difference. After all these years when it was considered an rec sleep disorder, and maybe it still is, it was considered a parasomnia like sleepwalking or whatever. So it would have been considered a disorder then? But I think it's a disease now. Okay. Okay. You want to take a break and come back and talk about what narcolepsy is? Yes. Okay. We'll be right back, everybody. 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, we're back. And it turns out, Chuck, that there are two types of narcolepsy. And just from all of the research that we've done over the years on interesting health stuff, this smells a lot to me like something that's going to be broken out into its own thing over time. Yeah, I agree, because we've seen that happen time and time again. We have narcolepsy type two, which is what we were talking about, sort of the more like when you think of narcolepsy, this is probably what you're thinking of aunt Laura falling asleep during the middle of a sentence. Right. And it's type two because it's by far less prevalent than type one. And type one is narcolepsy, like you'd think of with the excessive daytime sleepiness. But on top of that, there's something called cataplexy, too. And cataplexy can exist on its own. It's the sudden loss of voluntary muscle function. Like you can't keep your head up because your neck muscles just went limp or your arms go limp or something like that. And cataplexy can exist on its own. It can exist in conjunction with other diseases, too, or disorders, but it very frequently coexists with narcolepsy. And one of the hallmarks of it, from what I understand, because it gets kind of confusing, and I couldn't fully find this out, Chuck, but I think that it can exist in a person with narcolepsy in conjunction with a sleep attack or separately to where you just suddenly can't hold your head up anymore. The key is you're still conscious. Conscious? Oh, my God, I just turned into an illiterate 7th grader. You're still conscious. You might look like you have just fainted or something like that, depending on the severity of the cataplexic attack. Yeah. It's almost like a fainting goat, right? Yes, very much like that. Almost exactly like that. Because remember with the fainting goats, they would basically just fall over because they were startled. I think pretty much the same thing with cataplexy in humans, although it seems to be more associated with positive emotions. Yeah, it's so interesting. Yeah. We're going to get into that. There are four symptoms of narcolepsy, which we're going to break down in a second, but they are excessive daytime sleepiness, like we've talked about. There is the cataplexy, there's sleep paralysis, and then hypnogic, hallucinations. And if you have narcolepsy, well, there's about 20% to 25% chance that you have all four. And I don't think there's any rhyme or reason which ones you do have, but like we said, everybody has the excessive daytime sleepiness. And they're also talking about a fifth beetle. I was going to say that, too. Clarence, was that his name? Yeah, or a poof that he was too. The fifth symptom, which is disturbed nocturnal sleep, which about 50% of the patients have, but they haven't. I think that will end up in there at some point. And technically there may be a 6th one, too, which is called automatic behavior. Or have you ever been driving and you're suddenly like five exits further than you thought you were, and you realize you just zoned out and were just driving just fine, but you were basically on autopilot. Is that like the same as just daydreaming maybe? I think so. But there's like no recollection of anything? You didn't note any landmarks that you just passed or let's say you're gardening or something like that? You don't remember finishing digging the hole with a trowel? You've just completed a task that you have no memory of undertaking? I don't think that happens. Okay, that's happened to me before, but that's a symptom of it's an additional symptom. It's not a classic symptom, but they're starting to figure out that it is a symptom of narcolepsy. Yes. So you're like, I went in my garage one day and I had built a penny farthing. No memory of how it got there. So it usually starts out in adolescence, which surprised me. I did not know that. Just maybe because my Aunt Laura characterized it as something you got later in life, but they do worsen with age, so maybe that does make sense after all. And sometimes your symptoms can be very steady, sometimes it can be months or years in between changes, and sometimes the symptoms change a lot very quickly. Right. But the symptom that, again, 100% of people with narcolepsy have is excessive daytime sleepiness. And in almost every case of narcolepsy, that is the first symptom that starts you almost never start with the other ones. It's that one first. And that's exactly what you think of where somebody just falls asleep and they're out for a few seconds, to a few minutes, depending. And it's not going to be the same amount of time every time. They're not going to have the same number of sleep attacks every time. A lot of it has to do with just how tired they are, like how poorly they slept the night before. That's going to make them more susceptible to sleep attacks during the day. And this is not the same as hitting the wall at 03:00 because you ate lunch and all of your coffee from the morning wore off. I mean, it bears some resemblance to it, but it is irresistible, this urge to sleep or just sleep, it just comes on. So that's the main characteristic of narcolepsy. But anybody who's kind of dozed off, like sitting in a comfortable chair when it was a little warmer than normal at work or something like that, right. It bears a resemblance to that specific symptom of narcolepsy. It's the other ones that you have in conjunction with that that really make narcolepsy like its own disorder. Have you ever slept at any job you've ever had? It doesn't sound like me, but probably I'm sure I have here or there. Why are you? Well, I mean, when I worked the midnight to 07:00 a.m. Shift at the Golden Pantry in Athens, I had a regular routine of sleeping. Yeah, because you're allowed to close up the store and mop and do things for like, an hour. So I would close up the store, go back in the back, and lay down on a little pallet I made on top of a freezer. Nice. Did you get some good sleep? I would. It was pretty hard sleep, and I will admit that when I had a baby, I took a nap or two right here in our own office. Oh, nice. Can you tell me where is it still a secret? In one of the private telephone rooms. Oh, that would be a good place to take a nap. If you've ever gone in there and seen a pillow in a camp stove sleep machine. Yeah, there's an open bag of our smell isn't a stick. No. I took a couple of cat naps here at work and such that I was like, you know what? Some countries and companies embrace this, and there's a lot of value to knock it out for 20 or 30 minutes during a workday. Is that what that one HR email they sent out was all about? Maybe. Did you try to convince them of that? Did you go to them and say, some countries really embrace this? Why don't you guys be more continental? At least don't fire me. Right? This is akin to that, falling asleep. But the key here is that it's unplanned, and with narcolepsy, it is straight up irresistible. You know how when you sit up and you open your eyes a little bit, you're like, Well, I can't fall asleep I got to stay awake because I'm being paid right now. If you have narcolepsy, you can't do that. You just fall asleep and you're out. And the other key is you feel really good and refreshed right after one of those sleep attacks. Yeah. It's weird to think that 10 seconds of that can refresh you. I know, it is very weird, but that's part of it, for sure. So, cataplexy, which we talked about, the fainting goat like thing you mentioned, positive emotions can trigger it being surprised, laughter, elation, sometimes anger, which is not positive, but intense emotions like that can trigger this. And it can be everything from, like you said, your head just sort of nodding down to full on just collapsing. Yes. Which is called a drop attack, which are kind of dangerous. You can get banged up pretty bad because this is not necessarily you falling asleep or fainting or as a matter of fact, it's not that. Yeah. You're up, you're awake, totally conscious. You just can't control your muscles all of a sudden for a very short period of time. Yeah. And interestingly, which is good news, is that as you get older, cataplex amount actually improve. Yeah, that is good news, because taking a fall in the hallway at 80 years old is much different than at 18. For sure. Let's see. Oh, there's also sleep paralysis, which we did an entire episode on. Yeah, it's not fun. It frequently is accompanied by hallucinations, which is another symptom we'll talk about next. But sleep paralysis was first described by a physician who had a patient that presented with narcolepsy, and this guy figured out there was such a thing as sleep paralysis. But it's basically when you're falling asleep or waking up, there's like a few fleeting moments where you can't move at all. You're paralyzed and it's not pleasant one bit. So if you are having a sleep attack and you're coming in and out of sleep a bunch of times a day and you feel paralyzed that you're coming in and out of sleep and you don't know what's going on, it can make the whole narcoleptic experience a lot more terrifying. Yeah. As will hallucinations. These can come at the onset of sleep or at the end of sleep. They can be really scary. Sometimes it could just be hearing a noise. What was the one thing we talked about, the time where you hear a loud noise? Exploding head. That's right, exploding head. Somehow all this seems to be related somehow. Oh, yeah, right. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I think a lot of it has to do with the neurons that we'll talk about in a little bit. So the hallucinations, when they happen, when you're waking up, they're called hypnopompic. And when you're falling asleep, those are the hypnogogic that we mentioned earlier. Yeah. And again, they very frequently accompany sleep paralysis and that like you can't move and you're hallucinating a demon standing on your chest. Right. That's why you can't move. And again, this is happening to you many times a day against your will, and it makes it unpleasant. And then there's also something called disrupted night time sleep, which is basically the exact polar opposite of excessive daytime sleepiness, where during the night, when everybody else is sleeping, when you wish you were sleeping, you might be wide awake. So that, again, your sleep pattern is not concentrated into 8 hours at night. It's spread out in about 8 hours throughout a 24 hours period. That's right. So we talked a lot about the various sort of explanations for this over the years, what they thought was going on, and that it wasn't until the 1990s that they kind of zeroed in on what they think is going on now, which to me and you, holds a lot of promise. But 1998 was the year that they finally discovered and isolated the chemical in the brain that seems to be the cause of all this, and it's called hypocretin. Hippocretin, I want to say hypocritin. I do, too. So let's do okay. What hypocritin? Yeah. So they isolated that, and we have our cousins, the rats, to thank for this because they did a lot of rats tests and figured out from those tests just how this whole thing works. But what they figured out is that hypocritin has a few different functions, but its main function is maintaining wakefulness in us humans, and it's a peptide. It also has another name, Chuck, called erection. And it's the exact same neurochemical, but it just happened to be discovered independently by two different groups at about the same time. So it has two names still. They haven't settled on one, but it basically goes around and says, hey, Serotonin, you're looking good. Here's a little boost. Hey, Norepinephrine, you're looking great yourself. Here's another little boost. And so all of these neurochemicals that keep us awake and alert get a boost from hypocritin so that they can do their job better. And what they found is that people with type one narcolepsy have about 90% to 95% fewer of the very specialized cluster of neurons in the brain that are responsible for producing all of the hypocretin in our bodies. That's case closed, right? Basically, yeah. I think the only thing left to explain is twofold. One, exactly why the hypocrite is the neurons that produce hypocritin are so diminished. And it seems like they basically explained that one. And then two, what to do about it. That's the big one. Yeah. And we should mention, too, that there are about 86 million I'm sorry, billion neurons in the brain, and only about between 100 and 200,000 neurons produce hypocritin. So it is a very specialized cluster of neural cells. Yeah. But it also makes it really vulnerable, too, and they're all in one space in the rear of the hypothalamus. So it's really weird that evolution was like, it's fine. This is a really important chemical, but we're just going to localize it right here in this one spot to just 100,000 neurons. Yeah. And it's also really weird that if you only have type two narcolepsy, you don't show any decrease in hypocretin. Right. That's just the one where you have sleep attacks and not cataplexy. And it is really weird. And that's why I was saying, like, I wonder if that's going to be broken out eventually in the future into its own disorder or disease. But the current thinking for that is that that is a less pronounced or less advanced case of type one narcolepsy to where you're probably going to eventually get cataplexy, or you may never get cataplexy, but your case of narcolepsy just stopped progressing at some point. That's what they think. Currently, a lot of the sleepiness of narcolepsy, it's a theory, at least from researchers, is that it's a consequence of sleep state instability. And that's something I know we've talked about before, that threshold between being awake and being asleep and those lines getting blurred and crossing over. And I guess that must have been sleep paralysis that we talked about that I think so, because that is like an example of that is like wakefulness intruding on REM sleep. It's almost like the opposite of narcolepsy. People experiencing sleep paralysis without narcolepsy. It's kind of like that, but it's ultimately that it's a consequence of your brain no longer able to be able to hold the switch down between the on off switch between sleep and wakefulness. Right. So it's like hypocritin is the thumb that holds the on off switch in place. Without it, that switch is kind of hair trigger so that it just kind of can shift back and forth between on and off really easily and really quickly. And so without that hypocrite and that's that you can just kind of go in between wakefulness and REM sleep with no transition and just at the drop of a hat, basically. So they think that that's it that it is a lack of hypocritin that is responsible, at least for type one narcolepsy, which is narcolepsy with cataplexy. Should we take the break now? Sure. All right, let's take a break because we're going to get into our third act here with a very what I think is the most interesting part of all this, which is what it has to do with your genes and your immune system right after this. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office when you could be using stamps.com? Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need right. From your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process. With Stamps.com easy to use software, all you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. So I promised talk of genes in your immune system. This is super interesting to me because I feel like they're really zeroing in on what's going on here with this research. Dude. How many episodes have we done on stuff like this where they think maybe this or studies or stuff come in? We have caught this at, like, peak ripeness right before. Everybody knows that. It's just so plain and obvious, and it's been talked about so much. But right after all of these important advancements in the study of it have really kind of come together and gelled, I mean, it is perfectly fresh. Yeah. It is a very rare, satisfying feeling. Right. I feel satisfied myself. So they think there's a genetic basis for narcolepsy, but the genes that are involved in narcolepsy really aren't involved with sleep. It's about your immune system. So how it goes is a little something like this. All right, man. There are genes that code for these T cell receptors and the HLA gene, human leukocyte antigen. And not everyone has this variant, but if you do, you're going to have about a 25% greater chance of having narcolepsy. Yeah, that variant of the HOA gene, very important. That's a big increase. Yes. 25% is for real, because a lot of those show, like, the relative increase, it increases your risk 80%. But if you look at the absolute increase, it's like, well, you have 1.5 times the chance or something like that. 25 times, likelier, is definitely a huge increase. For sure. My hat is off to that one. Yeah, but so what they're thinking is that it's actually the basis of narcolepsy is an autoimmune disease. And that is what's killing off your immune system, is killing off those Hypocritin producing neurons. Yes. Just like Crohn's irritable bowel syndrome or rheumatoid arthritis. It's your body turning on itself. It's mistaken. So it attacks itself. Your immune system attacks your own body. And in this case, in the case of narcolepsy, they think that something about those Hypocritin producing neurons, I guess, are producing something that seems like an antigen to your body. If you have that specific variant of the HLA gene and it attacks them, kills off those neurons, you don't have any Hypocretin any longer. And so you can't maintain wakefulness and so sleep and wakefulness just toggle back and forth throughout your day. Are you going to drop the streptococcus bomb? I think you should. I think I understand it, but just after the onset of narcolepsy, it looks like you have an increased level of antibodies against streptococcus and that's like strep throat and there are other infections involved. And so they've also tied that to the time of year. Narcolepsy usually begins in late spring and early summer, which would kind of make sense that there's an autoimmune attack going on against those neurons triggered by strep throat or some other kind of infection you get during the winter. Yeah. Like your immune system just goes bonkers because of stress and it's like, what else can I go after? I'm really primed and pumped. And if for some reason it goes after your hypocritin producing neurons in your hypothalamus, that's nuts. So your immune response is triggered by an actual infection. They think. And the reason why they think this. And it greatly pains me to reveal this. I know. But there is a vaccine called pandemrix that is no longer available anywhere in the world. But it was hot and heavy as a vaccine against H one N One swine flu. And it was a really potent vaccine against H one N One swine flu. And some northern European countries, during the 2009 to 2011 swine flu, pandemic chose to use this to inoculate their population with. Right. Yeah. Well, there were reports that have been backed up by studies, not just in Finland, which is a big place where this happened, but in other places like the UK did studies too, that found the same results, that there was a link between pandemrix and narcolepsy, that the pandemrix triggered that immune response that ultimately led to the immune system attacking the Hypocritin producing neurons. So that H one N One vaccine brought on a lifelong chronic case of narcolepsy. Yeah. I thought that was hard to say. Yeah, it really was. I really hate saying stuff like that. I know, but you know what? We got to preach the science, and the science appears valid here. Agreed. Yeah. Dozens of kids in Finland developed narcolepsy and I think the new rate of cases of narcolepsy and kids increased eight to twelve fold. I think out of the 54 kids who are diagnosed with narcolepsy, 50 of them had the vaccine. So 54. Yeah. And I mean, these numbers are really small, but if you think about it, so four kids apparently, in 2010 would have been diagnosed with narcolepsy right. Had that pandemic not happened or that particular vaccine not been administered, but because it was, the number was 54, not four. So even though the numbers, again absolutely are rather small percentage wise, that's an enormous mind boggling increase in the number of narcolepsy diagnoses. And it was linked directly to that vaccine. Yeah. And they caught it. I keep saying that. And they caught it and it is no longer being given anywhere. It was never available in the United States. So Finland just sort of got the brunt of it, it seems like. Yeah. Finland, the UK had a bunch. Their rate was one case of diagnosed narcolepsy for every 550 inoculations in children, I think six months to 18. But that washed out to 16 people, which still, if you're one of those people, you're like, well, son of a gun, that really sucks. But here's the key and this is really important and this is how we will be able to still use a vaccine that is viable and potent and works against swine flu without giving somebody narcolepsy. And that is personalized drugs based on gene tests. Yeah, DNA tests. Because of those 50 kids in Finland that received the vaccine in 2010 that developed narcolepsy, every single one of them carried that specific variant of the HOA gene that is tied to narcolepsy. So if you just did a simple DNA test, which hopefully will be widespread in just a few years, you'd say, oh, no, I'm glad we did this, you can't have pandembrix, you might get narcolepsy, or basically, there's 100% chance you're going to get narcolepsy. We'll give you this other vaccine instead that has been shown not to produce narcolepsy and people like you. That's right. And you can refer to our episode on personalized medicine. Yes. Right. We should do a follow up on that one. Yeah, I agree with that. On the list for six years from now. Basically, you've got these genes that predispose you to your immune system, mistakenly attacking that part of your hypothalamus. There has to be some sort of trigger, either an infection or pandemrix, something like that. Typically an infection with strep. And then there seem to be two age windows where you're particularly vulnerable around 15 and around 36. They have no idea about any of that. They're starting to put this data together. Yeah. I bet you they'll figure that out too. Agreed. I really feel like narcolepsy is going to be totally and completely figured out in the next decade and I could not be more jazzed about it. Really? Yeah. Love science. Just figuring things out, just doggedly working and building on somebody else's work. It's a beautiful thing when it's done. Right. Agreed. So if you are going to be diagnosed with narcolepsy, there are a couple of tests that they're going to give you. One is called an overnight polysomogram. That's right, a PSG. And that is a test when you it's one of those tests, it's like a sleep study is when you go in and sleep for them, basically. And sleep for me, baby. Yes. And they measure a lot of things. They measure your brain waves, they measure your heart rate, eye movements, limb movements, muscle tone, respiration. Get a lot of info there. And then they'll say, now, this is going to be followed by the multiple sleep latency test, which also sounds kind of fun because that measures how quickly you fall asleep for a nap every couple of hours during the day. I know when you have to go in for one, you're like, I got to go to a doctor's appointment. Somebody goes, oh, sorry, and go, no, it's great. It's going to be the greatest day of my life. Yes. Those rooms make me sleepy. I could see some people being like, oh, I can't go sleep in a room. But I was well known as a child for falling asleep in, like, a dentist chair, waiting for the dentist to come in, or in a waiting room, or not a waiting room, but in the exam room for a doctor. I still get sleepy in those just super clean, super cool, quiet rooms with fluorescent lighting. It just zaps me. Yeah, that's very odd. So four or five nap opportunities during the day, they're going to see how fast you fall asleep. And if you have narcolepsy, you're going to fall asleep super easy compared to someone without narcolepsy. Right. So that's a pretty big giveaway if they're still like, I don't know, all this patient history that we've taken and these tests are inconclusive. They might test your cerebrospinal fluid because Hypocritin levels are very easily tested through that not as fun. No, not nearly as fun because they're going to go through the base of your skull, that hole in your skull where your spinal cord is. Yeah, I know. I hope that that never befalls either one of us and anyone who's ever had to go through that, we are very sorry. Yes. But that also is looking like a place where they're trying to figure out how to cure narcolepsy. Because as it stands right now, if you are diagnosed with narcolepsy, you've just been given a lifelong chronic diagnosis. There's no cure for narcolepsy as it stands right now, but there are treatments. And from everything I read, if you are actively treating your narcolepsy through a doctor, usually with prescriptions and also like behavioral modification, not like hooking you up to a car battery and changing your behavior like that. More like making sure you stick to a good sleep pattern. Right. You can very much keep your symptoms in check for sure. It doesn't have to ruin your life. The trouble is that it's very frequently misdiagnosed and it's under diagnosed. And I think it's because it occurs with so many comorbidities, like depression, where the doctor is like, sure, you're falling asleep all day because you're just sitting around on the couch because you don't have any low energy, because you're depressed. Really, it's possible that you have developed depression because of the narcolepsy. They haven't figured out if they're comorbid or if one causes the other, but they're pretty sure that an arcolepsy causes the depression. Yeah, you're probably going to get a prescription for something or it's probably likely to be modafenil these days. And we talked about that in our science phasing out sleep episode. Yeah, we've done a bunch of sleep ones. I forgot about that one. Ritalin, you might get it says in the old days, methamphetamines, but they still prescribe a variation of speed for I'm not sure if it's narcolepsy, but I know an individual that was diagnosed with, I guess, just extreme daytime sleepiness. Not doing chores fast enough. No, for falling or just feeling really sleepy during the day and did the sleep study and all that. And they were prescribed kind of whatever the version of speed is these days. When was that? When were they prescribed that? Was it back in the 90s? Last year. Oh, really? I'm surprised, because from what I saw, medaffinil is like, no, don't need anything else. Just take modafinil. You don't get addicted to it. There are very few side effects. It's supposed to just be like a wonder drug. Basically, any time I hear that, I get dubious. Right. I think that's pretty smart, actually. They might also prescribe you antidepressant, like an SSRI, which inhibits Reuptake of serotonin which means you have more serotonin in your brain, which would make sense because what hypocritin does is boost your levels of serotonin and other neurochemicals. So this is kind of going around that problem and just making you have more serotonin than before which apparently helps maintain REM sleep. The barrier between that and wakefulness a lot better. Yeah. And then the final thing, which is really interesting and promising is they did the sort of logical thing which is, hey, maybe we can just get some more hypocritin in your body. Because if that's the problem, why don't we just do that? They cut out fat hog legs of it for you at the doctor's office. There are different methods. Cell transplantation, which is just implanting cells. Maybe implantation of the gene, like gene therapy. Maybe just giving it through your nose or injecting it into your body. That's what I'm saying. Or work interest, which is, again, through the base of the skull and the back of your head where your spinal cord goes up to your brain. They can inject into your cerebral spinal fluid like that too. Probably the least fun of all of them. But they're on the case, basically, is what that means. Yeah. And we've talked sort of off and on throughout this thing about your quality of life with narcolepsy. It's obviously a serious thing. Besides just, like, holding a job and socially and not being depressed because you don't want to hang out with people because you may be embarrassed by it. There's also, like, the very real chance of accidents. Some people are not allowed to drive. Some people are allowed to drive. It kind of depends on, I guess, your diagnosis. School is tricky. Work can be tricky. Although they do they do with the Americans with Disabilities Act. They provide for letting people take naps and stuff like that. Which is kind of cool. It is. Yeah. If you have narcolepsy and you're at work, you can say, hey, employer, I need a place to take a nap. And they'll say, okay, that's great. They'll say right in here. And they're like, oh, my God, chuck's in there. Right? Chuck. Sorry. It gets even sadder, though. There are people who die by suicide from narcolepsy. There's a girl named Katie Clark who got pandemrix and developed narcolepsy as a result, and she ended up taking her life because it just completely derailed things for her. She was in no way, shape or form prepared for it, although I don't know that anybody is prepared for it. And then also, like you were saying, an accident can happen. And from what I read, the risk of death and injury among people with narcolepsy is almost twice that of the general population, man. Through things like car accidents or cooking or going up a ladder or something like that, if you suddenly develop cataplexy or a sleep attack or something, that's a bad time to fall asleep or lose control of your muscles. Well, and at the very least, you're going to have to really arrange your life to accommodate for this stuff. Right. But again, if you are managing your symptoms, you can lead a pretty normal life. I think it's just a question of, like, getting diagnosed correctly. Yeah. Well, that's it for narcolepsy. Hopefully we'll have it all figured out, and when we revisit it in five or ten years, we'll be like, it was all right. Everything was correct. It was all right. And since I said it was all right, it's time for listener name. I'm going to call this Soul Train feedback. That was a fun show. And this is from Julia. Hello, guys. We really enjoyed your Soul Train episode. You did a great job capturing the feeling and cultural significance of the show. You depicted a brilliant flawed Don Cornelius without negating his profound contribution. There was a monthly black teenage magazine named right on this publication gave names to the dancers and dancers. We would read the ink off of the pages being black in America then and now. We watch mainstream America love the culture while devaluing the people and criminalizing the young. Thank you for this episode. And that is from Julia Pierce, the president of the Taiby MLK Human Rights Committee. Nice. Taibi Island, I guess. Down in Georgia. I don't know. I guess so. I hope so. That's great. Thanks a lot, Julia. Much appreciated. Agreed. If you want to get in touch with us, like Julia did, give us props. Or just say, hey, you guys are doing this too much, or be quiet. We never will, but you can still say it. You can send us an email to stuff. Podcast. 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 are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. A summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Erkart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Load the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | |
8a81f378-4a58-11e8-a49f-f7f484b90084 | SYSK Selects: How Pizza Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-pizza-works | Sure it's everywhere and there's a more-than-90-percent chance you eat it once a month. But we'll bet you don't know the full history of that pizza (or tomato pie) you're about to chow down on. Join Chuck and Josh as they explain it to you, bite by bite. | Sure it's everywhere and there's a more-than-90-percent chance you eat it once a month. But we'll bet you don't know the full history of that pizza (or tomato pie) you're about to chow down on. Join Chuck and Josh as they explain it to you, bite by bite. | Sat, 10 Nov 2018 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=10, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=314, tm_isdst=0) | 49251973 | audio/mpeg | "Mom, dad, you should shop Amazon for backtoschool and save some money. See, I'm currently obsessed with superheroes. I need all the superhero stuff. Superhero lunchbox, superhero backpack. But next year it'll be something else. Maybe dinosaurs. I don't know. I'm not a fortune teller. But I can tell you not to spend a fortune and shop low prices for school on Amazon. Okay, good chat, Amazon. Spend less, smile more. Howdy, everybody. Happy Saturday. Chuck here to introduce my pick for the stuff you should have selected this week about pizza. Boy, oh, boy, do we have fun on this. 1 October 11, 2012 shall live in infamy because we talked all about pizza from its origins to where it stands today. Where to get the best pizza. Oh, my goodness. It was so much fun. It's going to make you hungry, too, so please enjoy it. Everyone. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. I'm a little under the weather, little run down, but I feel better than I sound. I am over the weather. Yeah, whatever that means. It means you're in great spirits. Good shape. Sure. Put your hand through that wall next to you. I probably could, actually, on certain days, but not today. That's a good chunk. You're doing okay? Yeah, great. Okay. Glad you're feeling better, even though you sound crappy. And I really do, don't I? It's always reminiscent of the six month period that you're sick early on. Now, I'm healthy. I don't smoke. I exercise, I eat right, I juice. Isn't it remarkable how you don't get sick as often when you live? Right. When you treat your body correctly. Exactly. Well, Chuck, that's an excellent segue because in my opinion, one of the best ways to treat your body is to stuff it full of really good pizza. Yeah. Have you had pizza before? Yeah. Dude, I love pizza. I don't eat that much of it. Oh, really? No, I mean, I don't know how much. I mean, we have stats on the average American and stuff. May I spell one out? Sure. Everyday Americans eat about 100 acres of pizza. I guess it would be Sicilian, because an acre, it would be squared. Although it doesn't have to be square. No, you can have a round acre. Yeah, I guess you could just forget what I said. I've never seen a round acre before. I imagine an island, if it's round oh, yeah. Would be round acreage. There's not really any real round island. There's no such thing as a perfect circle. Sure. Gilligan's island was so round. No, just a circle. Yes. I love pizza. I don't know how much I eat of it, though. Compared to most people, I'd say we order a pizza, like, maybe once a month. What? We'll order a pizza are the only pizza you have every month? Yeah. We'll order a pizza delivery and then probably we'll throw in one visit to Antiko, which a month. You got me beat there. I need to get out there more often. Yeah, once every six weeks to two months. For Antico? Yeah. Here in Atlanta, chuck and I have a pizza place. I guess everybody in Atlanta has it, but we're very fortunate to have a place called Antiquo Pizza. It's really good. And now I understand the name after researching this article. Yeah, it's kind of close to the original pizzeria. I think that's the point. Is it? I would imagine. I don't think they follow the traditional rules, though. Okay. We're spoiling all our man. Well, for my part, you, me and I are crazy about pizza and we eat it like all the time. Everything from frozen pizza to Domino's to pizza out by the slice. It's good. I ate a lot more pizza when I lived up in the New York area. Yeah. Because I would like, get it after class. Just a single slice, which is a big huge slice. Yeah. And you fold it in half and it's just great. Did you want pizza while you're researching this? No, I did. Did you? Oh yeah. All right. Antiko though, is really good pizza. The best pizza in Atlanta most people agree on. And judging by the line out the door every single day, then I would say we're right. I've even gotten into an argument with them on the phone, which I don't do very often about whether or not you can order a pizza without cheese. And I'll still go back there after hanging up on them in anger. Wow. Yeah, they do it their way. They definitely do. Oh man. They also have the big dressing station which is like the basil plants. They don't even have like it's not dried basil or even leaves. It's like the plant. You pick the leaves off there and they got the big chunks of garlic and it's just so good. Yeah. I can hear your food. Go now. I want pizza. OK, good. Alright. That's what I was going for. Chuck, you got me. It worked. So everybody, I'm sure, is familiar with pizza. I don't think there's going to be too many huge surprises there. No, but there is a lot about pizza that I would imagine you don't know. We're going to tell you that kind of stuff. Agree. Like for example, at its core, pizza really is bread, cheese and sauce. Yeah, that's it. Tomato sauce. Right. Unless you're getting funky, but you can't get funky and still call it pizza customarily. Yeah, it's one of those things where it has to be made a certain way or else it's not really pizza. It's like a tomato pie. I don't know though. I would call like a pesto pizza pizza. But you're born American. Yeah, sure. What do you think I was speaking as like a native Sicilian? Well, no, but I'm saying like, maybe as a citizen of the world. Okay. All right. We're in the midst of globalization, Chuck. Let's do this. All right. Let's talk pizza history then, huh? Yeah. I used to hear from uninformed people, like, you know, pizza is really American. It didn't even come from Italy. Right. They're talking about chop suey. Just not true at all. Yeah, pizza did come from Italy, in a way. We need to back up even further, probably to Greece, where some people attribute, like, the original flatbreads that they would decorate with things as, like, the first pizza style thing. Right. You're talking, like, third century BC. Yeah. Long time ago. Right. But they didn't call it pizza until about 81,000 in Naples. Yeah, of course. Well, Naples is like the cradle of pizza. Yes. I didn't realize I didn't notice that it went back that far. That's pretty interesting. Well, that's what was first named pizza, meaning pie. Okay. So I also saw a discrepancy here. I saw pizza also can mean to pinch. Oh, really? Or slice. That's what I got. Pizza, but not necessarily pie. Well, that's what this person says. Okay, so we're at Ad. 1000, right? Yes. This is such a cool date. It is. And the reason pizza started to take off was because the peasantry didn't have that much money, and this stuff was kind of easy to come by. You made your bread, you had some cheese, maybe some kazumarzu with the maggots and maybe some seasonings and some olive oil. That's about it. Yeah. It wasn't until one of the biggest main ingredients, it wasn't until the Colombian exchange started to take place that tomatoes were introduced to Italy, because those are a new world food. Yeah. I did a little tomato research, because that's kind of fascinating on its own, I think. Tomatoes come from Peru, they believe, originally. And because the fruit of the nightshade, the deadly nightshade, looks like a tomato, a lot of people thought it was poisonous over the years, many years ago. Yeah. And actual stems and leaves of a tomato plant do contain a toxic dotine. A lot of it. But what will happen to you? Well, I think there's been one reported death for me. Tomato stems and leaves. Yeah. Crazy. Supposedly. I don't know if that's true, though. They figured out, well, the stems and leads are kind of gross. Anyway, let's eat the tomato. So thank you, Spain. And also interestingly, even though it came from South America, you would think it made its way up through the States via Central America and Mexico, but it didn't. It took the circuitous route via European immigrants, probably through the Philippines, too, if you're interested in that, dude, you should really read 1493. It's all about that stuff. Is that guy going to just keep writing books? Is there going to be a 1494? There is a benevolent God, yes. Okay. So anyway, tomatoes people discovered, hey, they're not poisonous. They're really delicious. Let's start throwing them on the spread. Exactly. Then now we have pizza. So we're talking like, the 17th century, I think, was when the term no, it wasn't. Okay. Yeah. That goes against that research, too. I think I saw somewhere that the term was coined in the 18th century, like 1738. They started making pizzas as we know them today. You know, I think there's some discrepancies just in pizza lore. Yeah. Because that long ago, I don't think they were necessarily keeping track of all the stuff like we did today. Okay. So possibly in Ad. 1000 or in 1738, about 750 years later, the word pizza was used to describe this flat bread. Right. Consisting of now, tomatoes, sauce, cheese, bread. Right. But the one thing that is not disagreed upon was that both of these took place in Naples. That's right. And Naples was the center of it. Like we said, the peasantry was really hip to pizza because it was cheap and it was abundant street food. Yeah. And so if you wanted to go find pizza, you basically had to go into the peasant districts of Naples, and there it was in abundance, being sold from streetcar's. Now, is that where the first pizzeria was? Yes. Okay. The peasant land. Yeah. Okay, so antique pizzeria portalba. Yeah. So antiqua. I wonder if that's the same as antique. Who know? The difference is I don't know. Someone will probably explain it to us. Hopefully an Italian. Yes, they're an authority on that. All right. So that's 1830, the first pizzeria. Right. And also I didn't see it in here, but I came across it. A pizzaioli was a pizza maker. That was the name of a pizza maker. Yeah. So the peasantry in Naples, and probably it's starting to spread a little bit beyond that, but the peasantry in Naples has been eating pizzas for well over a century, almost two centuries by the time Queen Margherita and King Almberto. Queen? Queen who? Margarita. Yeah. Does that name sound familiar in regards to pizza? Yeah, especially when you see it spelled out right. You're like, oh, wait a minute. That's where it came from. Exactly. Reportedly. So Queen Margarita was apparently like a pretty hip queen. She was down with the common person, and she and, umberto, went and toured the country in 1889. And one of the places they went was Naples, and one of the things they did was eat pizza. And she was like, I love this. I want more of this. Bring me Raphael Esposito. Her personal chef. Yeah, I don't know if it's a personal chef. It was a personal pizza chef, at least. And he said, queen, I'm going to make you some good pizza, including one of the Italian flag. And that is the legend, at least, of how we got Margarita pizza, because you have the red tomato, the white mozzarella, and the green basil, and there's your Italian flag. Yeah. It's a great story. Hopefully true. So supposedly he made her that one, the margherita pizza, which she liked the most and is named after her. Another one with pork fat, cheese and basil. That sounds pretty awesome. Yeah. And then another one, garlic oil, olive oil, and tomatoes. All of them sound great, but she chose the margarita, and that's the one that was named after her. But the upshot of all this is that the queen was suddenly eating peasant food. The queen is the most popular person in all of Italy all of a sudden. And now all of a sudden, in places, other parts of Italy where pizza wasn't heard of or eaten or whatever, people are starting to make it. That's right. And that's like 1880, 918, which is a great time for pizza to be coming into its own because there was a little country called America coming into its own. And with the arrival of Italian immigrants in the late 19th century, in places like New York and Chicago and Philly, new York light, they would eat pizza. And it was, again, sort of like street food at the time, at least, right. So about the time, I guess, when margarita was extolling the virtues of pizza, I guess her this wave of immigration had such a tangible connection to the old world that almost immediately they were making pizzas in these cities, like you said. Yes. Apparently New York was the first city with an actual pizzeria. I believe that Lombardi, janara Lombardi, apparently opened his shop in 19 five at 53rd and a half spring street in New York. I wonder what's there now. Lombardi. Oh, is it still there? I believe Lombardi is still functioning. Wow. That's pretty great. Yeah. And did we say that antico pizzeria in Naples is still in the same spot, still selling pizza since 1830? But we did not. But that is true. Yeah. And that is very cool. That makes me want to go to Naples quite badly. Yeah. I mean, you could get an original pizza from the original pizzeria. Yes. That's pretty cool. And we'll get to this in a little bit, but you may be kind of surprised when you eat a pizza, a neapolitan pizza, at the place where it all started, compared if you're used to like papa John's. I had pizza in Italy once I was there, and I figured, why not? I guess I'll do as the Italians do. Exactly. Okay, so that's pretty much oh, no, we didn't finish the history. Yeah. United States is coming into its own, italian immigrants coming in, bringing in pizza. Then after world war II, of course, with a lot of things, GI's came back with these flavors for different countries foods and drinks. Right. And they said, man, this pizza stuff is really great, so let's start building chains and degrading the product. And we did so with shaky. In 1954 was the first pizza chain in the United States. The California chain pizza hut was founded in Kansas of all places, for pretty cool. And the reason, apparently, as legend has it, that they're named Pizza Hut is because the building kind of looked like a hut and there was only room for nine spaces on the sign. No pizza Hut. That makes sense. Yeah. Shakey, have you ever been to Shaky's? No. As a matter of fact, no. The only time I've ever seen Shakey's was in the movie License to Drive with the two cores. Yeah. They're all over La. And sort of pizza huddy and feel like a family joint. Pictures of beer, not so great pizza. But apparently Sherwood Shaky Johnson got that name because of some, like, affliction he had that made him Shake. No. Goodness. But I guess he embraced it. Well, yeah, he named his very popular chain after it. They're still around, huh? Oh, yeah. I'm surprised it hasn't spread by now. There's pizza Huts everywhere. Yeah, I think they have them outside of California, although I'm not positive. I didn't get to look that up. Got you. But I know they don't have them over here. Down south. Over here in the southeastern bible belt. All right. Dough. Yeah. So that's pizza history. Yeah. We should probably get to the basics. Yes. And there's nothing more basic than dough. No. And there's an art to this. There are three ingredients that are demanded flour, water, and yeast. Everything else is just icing on the cake. Yeah. But you probably are going to throw a little salt in, little sugar, little shortening to make it do the things you want it to do. Perform like you want it to perform. Yeah. And you can go to Mellow mushroom Pizza and get a gluten free pizza. I myself have not had one because I don't have celiac, and I'm not about to just no. Yeah, but if you are gluten free, you are sol in a lot of ways, because the flour used in pizza crust pizza dough is high gluten, high gluten flour. That's why gluten free pizza tastes like crap. I've not had it, so I can't say. Yeah, well, that's just my opinion. Yeah, you've had it. Yeah, I've tried it. It's not the same. I'm sorry, everybody. They need gluten in the flour because gluten makes the crust tough and it won't crack apart. It makes it stand up to the water, keeps it ropey. Yeah, it keeps it nice and ropey. And I guess we need to talk about water at some point, anytime, because water is the old saying about New York pizza is because of the water. Oh, yeah, that's like the old saying. I don't know. They have, like, water you can drink right out of the tap. Did they change their water? Oh, yeah, man. They overhauled their sewer system. There's a bottled water you can buy now it's just New York City tap water and stuff is so, like, clean and pure. Well, it's because it comes from, I think, 90% of it comes from two aqua ducks in the catskills, ship it into Manhattan. We should do a podcast on how Manhattan gets water. It's pretty amazing. Oh, okay. Now, can we wait until we research it? Yeah, it's pretty amazing now, but I read this Wired article that kind of broke down the pizza water New York thing, and they got in touch with Mario Batali, very famous Italian chef. Yeah. And asked him, and he said, well, one of the reasons before we get the water is that the oven, he said, captures the gestalt, or if you're German, the gestalt of a beautifully cooked pizza. So basically, over time I totally did say that to me. Well, it makes sense. Over time, you're going to get particles, like volatile particles kicking onto the walls and the roof of your oven, and then the convection process will just work that into whatever you're cooking over the years. Right. So because they've been making pizza for so long in New York, some of these old ovens, like, have this gestalt that can't be matched anywhere else. No, he says, okay, in Chicago as well. But then with the water, he says, yeah, the biggest problem with California pizza is the water. It's just not the same poop water. Although he doesn't he doesn't use New York water at his restaurant, del Posto. He actually clones water from Italy. No, he doesn't. He does. No. Yes. Clones it. That's what he said. He's created his own mineral water composite working from a chemical analysis of Laqua Italiana, and it said that basically it's a clone of this Italian water. It sounds kind of pretentious. We should go sell home some, like, real estate or something. But that's why I think the food detective show did a test, a blind test on New York water and pizza crust, and everyone picked the New York pizza in a blind test. So there may be something to it, the mineral composition. Oh, I'm sure there is. Yeah. I mean, if you have even the slightest belief in molecular gastronomy, sure, it makes sense. Which would explain why New York bagels are the best too, because bagels are boiled. Everyone else or if you make it the right way, it's boiled. Where do you go? Chuck. That's my waterside. Chuck water. Well, I've always heard that New York pizzas because the water is because the water from the catskills. Yeah, I had heard that. I didn't know it was from the cat skills or it had anything to do with just stalt or anything. Yeah. All right. If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just listen up to rush and Chuck stuff. You should know the third vital ingredient is yeast, and yeast basically creates the precursor to beer. Remember in the beer episode? Could you imagine if there was no yeast? We'd be in big trouble. No pizza, no beer. What's the point? No bread. This world would be sad. Actually, there's yeast free bread, I think, but still. Yeah. No, I know. What's the deal with yeast? Well, basically, the yeast goes in and it eats the sugars found in the flour. And then you may also add your own sugar to increase the fermentation, but it causes the dough to rise because it expels gas as a byproduct. And that gas gets trapped in the dough and it causes it to rise. It makes it more malleable and makes it tastier. The texture of it is softer. It's just basically yeast. It's the happy fungi that you add to the whole the magic ingredient. Yeah. If you add a little salt, it's going to add some flavor. Obviously. It's going to slow the fermentation. Shortening is going to make it more pliable by providing lube. And shortening would be like olive oil. You're not going to use crisco unless you're some sort of heathen. No, you can use canola oil, but olive oil is what I would go with. Sure. Yeah. Crisco. Crisco is great, though, for some things. Oh, yeah. For like, sugar cookies. Especially the kind that's like just the shortening, the thick, solid shortening. This stuff is crazy. That's what I thought. That's the only way I thought you could cook growing up, because of, like, my grandmother's. Yeah. I thought, well, when you cook, you get out that big can and big ice cream scoop, and you go to town with that wadded up piece of wax paper in there that you used to scoop it out. Yeah. It's completely covered in crisco now. Yeah, either that or the grandmothers also used they saved all their grease, so they would be cooking with grease that they've been using for the past year. Yeah, it's really good. That's nice. Sugar changes the fermentation rate. Yeah. It can accelerate it. It can increase the amount of gas released, and it also causes the crust to brown. Oh, yeah. That's the sugar. So what if you don't put sugar, you get a glowing yellow crust. Oh, really? It doesn't brown as much. Doesn't brown. Okay. You want to bottle it up, use your hands. Yeah. I think you should say here, like, you're teaching people how to make legitimate, real pizza dough here. Yeah. I mean, gold in rough strokes. Okay. I don't think anyone could like we're not providing measurements. You know what I'm saying? No, but I'm saying once you've created this dough, now you're about to tell them what to do with it, how to make it. You want to ball it up with your hands. You don't want it all cracked. You want it tight, and you want to put it on an oil sheet pan and then proof it, which means you cover it with wax paper and let it sit and let the yeast do its thing until it, like, doubles in size. Yeah, because the yeast is just sitting there eating sugars and pooping out gas. Gas. Then you need to retard it. You need to put it in the fridge for about 12 hours, and then this slows the yeast down, but it's still doing its thing. They're like, this sugar is so good, it's cold. And then if you do this, you've got pizza dough that you can use for, like, three to five days. Yeah, I would imagine most people who are really into pizza would be like, you can't save that for three to five days, you think? I would think so. I bet. Fresh. You think it's almost all the same day. No, I'm not saying that, but I'm saying, like, a pizza purist. You can't use five day old dough for a decent pizza. True, but I buy the dough sometimes, like Trader Joe's or the farmers market, like the pre made dough balls. And those are not necessarily that day. Are you at the oven? Well, you left out the sauce. Most of the time, it's tomato sauce. But if you're still worried that tomatoes are poisonous and that the aristocracy is trying to kill you by giving them to you, you can eat garlic butter sauce, which will give you a white pizza. You don't like white pizza? I love white pizza. And if you go to Felines, we're going to name every single pizza place in town. If you go to Fellinis and order a white pizza slice, they use the pre made slice, and then they build the white pizza on top of it. So you get a little tomato sauce with your white pizza. It's really good. But it's not white pizza then, right? No, you're the one who calls, like, everything pizza. You run around, and that's a pizza. Look, there's a pizza over there. I don't want to hear from you, all right? I'm not a fan of white pizza. I like some tomato sauce on that. Yeah, I'm with you, but I like white pizza, too. Okay. And the cheese mozzarella, traditionally. Right. And the way you build it is actually kind of important, too. Yeah. Depending on where you are. It's not just the ingredients, it's the amount and the distribution. Yes. Where they are in relation to one another vertically. Well, let's go ahead then. New York is sauce, then cheese from the dough up. Yeah, dough, sauce, cheese. Right. And then not that many toppings. If you're a purist again, a cheese slice is what you're going for. I'm not big on just cheese. What are you, pepperoni guy? No, not anymore. Not since I was a kid. No, I'm just kind of like pepperoni. I like a good homemade Italian sausage. Oh, yeah, that's good. Yeah, that's really good. I like sliced tomatoes on it, not sundried fresh. Yeah. Basil. Black olives. Yeah, basil. Always ham. Not into olives. I like sausage. I don't like the green olives. I like black olives. Do you like the Hawaiian pizzas? I've only, in the last couple of months, gotten into pineapple, and I'm still feeling my way around it. Pineapples and strawberries. I used to eat strawberries when I was a kid, and I've rediscovered them recently. Yeah, when we were in the suite at the Marriott, when we were doing interviews at Comic Con. Yeah. I ate, like, \u00a315 of strawberries. They were so good. The chocolate covered or regular? No, they're regular. Okay. Yeah. I don't even need chocolate covered anymore. It's like I'm free. Strawberries are delicious. Yeah. But Hawaiian, I'll tell you in a month or two. I'll try it. Emily likes that. She's big on mushroom, green pepper, and pineapple together. Yeah. She doesn't do the meats at all, just as food. While we're talking about wives and pizza preferences yeah. You may have this place in DC. She used to go to, and she'd get, like, a huge slice of pizza. And this place also sold Indian food, so she'd get chicken SAG and put the SOG on the pizza, and she said it was really awesome. Wow. Yeah. We have to do the half in half, and I get, like, sausage on one half, and she does veggie, and then it's like, your sausage juice got on my half. I'm like, well, your mushroom got on my half. You like a cheeseburger pizza. I love cheese. I'm not too big on beef on the pizza. I'll give you one more tip. Okay. Get yourself some complete seasoning. I can't remember what it is in Spanish, but complete seasoning, it's like a Mexican blend. Okay. And put it on your pizza. It doesn't matter what kind of pizza it is. It works on popcorn, too, but on your pizza, it'll make you smile. Well, my friend Eddie, who would say, get a bottle of ranch dressing and you're all set. Oh, yeah, that's good too. All right, so, man. Wow. That was a sidebar. So you were saying New York, you build from the dough up dough, dough, sauce, cheese, and then maybe a couple of toppings. Yeah. Chicago, it's the opposite. Yes. And this is apparently a tomato pie, the way it's built. Yeah. Super deep dish baked in a pan. And then you've got the cheese on the bread itself on the dough. Right. And then the toppings, and then they put this, like, ungodly, thick, delicious sauce on top. Yeah, I've not had it. Really? And I love Pizza Hutspam. Pizza? Well, you should definitely have, like, a true Chicago style pizza. It's great. You eat it with a fork and knife. I'm a New York pizza guy through and through. I like it too, but every once in a while, it's like, when in Chicago. Well, this is like when in Italy. Exactly. This is one of those things where I don't think you have to choose sides. No, let's just all eat all kinds of pizza all the time. Yeah, but people get really passionate about their pizza. I know, but these are it's like, man, it's pizza. Enjoy all pizza. If there's one. Thing we can all just settle down about it's pizza? Even Mexican pizza. Come on. Yes. What are you crazy? You can't just run around saying that what you eat is not pizza unless it's exactly what the Neapolitans are making. It's not pizza. It's not Neapolitan pizza? No, it's not pizza. All right, so now the ovens, I guess I thought this was an odd little thing that they put in there. What about the different kinds of ovens? Yeah, it just seemed intuitive to me. Well, sure. Well, you use appeal. Not many people know that big spanking paddle is called appeal, I have to say. Okay, so you slide it in there. They can be electric. They can be cooked right on a conveyor belt. Like if you're in a big pizza chain or if you have a conveyor belt oven at home. That's true. But the king daddy of all is the brick oven pizza cooked with wood, and your crust should have little bits of black char on it, if you ask me, for the best taste, which is actually soot, it's spent carbon. Yeah. Little spoiler there for an upcoming show. Yeah. And then here in Atlanta at Antico, I think they brought those three ovens over from Naples, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, I can see that. So a lot of gestalt going on there, man. There is tons of gestalt. Neapolitan pizza. Yeah. So Neapolitan pizza is extremely thin crust. It's bubbly crust. You put on sauce and then maybe basil and mozzarella. You don't cover the sauce. It looks like pretty much equal parts. Just visibly looking down over the pizza, it appears like equal splotches of basil, mozzarella, and sauce. Yeah, kind of spare. They don't overdo it. And to be a true Neapolitan pizza, as of December 2009, the European Union issued a protection. That regional protection. That like champagne. And what was the other thing we talked about recently? Was it a cheese? I had to have been, probably, yeah. And also, I think New Chatel has regional protection as well. Okay. But basically, it has to be produced in the area under these certain guidelines to be considered that Neapolitan pizza enjoys the economic protection now as well. And to be Neapolitan, it has to be round. It can't be ostentatious, no more than 13 and a half inches in diameter. It can only be a 10th of an inch tall, which is thin at its center. Yeah. The crust has to be no more than three quarters of an inch thick. So this is a really thin crust pizza, man. Yeah, but not ultra thin. I got taken to task on Facebook today oh, yeah? Because they said it was ultra thin. They were like, that's not ultra thin. Ultra thin is a tortilla, I guess. So, Mexican pizza, you have to knead the dough by hand, right? Yeah. And I got a couple of more that weren't in the article, supposedly. It has to be in a wood fired oven above 905 deg. Only San Marzano, plum, tomatoes. Okay. Which to me, that's the only tomato if you're going to be cooking Italian style. Is that right? I think so. Is that canned? Yeah. Okay, now I know what you're talking about. I mean, I'm sure you can get them fresh, obviously, but yeah, the canned San Marzano are like what I use in my spaghetti sauce. Have you been to the Italian market by five seasons on the West Side? I have not. It is like, right like, half a block down, and it is authentic. Really? Yeah. You should check it out if you're into that. I am into that. We'll check it out. All right. And I think that's all to by law. And of course, they pointed out in the article I read that no one's going out and, like, punishing anybody. It's just a set of standards that they like to hold dear. They're not going to throw you in jail for calling something in neapolitan, right? Yeah. Although they should. So that's neapolitan. We talked about New York and Chicago. California pizza. That is super thin crust. Yeah. Usually made with what vegetables are in season. I like California Pizza kitchen. It's okay. It's pretty good if you like barbecue sauce on your pizza. No, they have a toastada pizza that's really good, too. Man, you got to expand your horizons. It's not just New York and Chicago. There's a whole world of pizza. I've been to CPK. It's fine. The black bean salad there is delicious. The guacamole is pretty good, too. And then Greek yup. That's also in a pan like Chicago. It's just feta. I'm not big on feta. Feta and spinach. Sometimes olives. Yeah, I like feta. And then Sicilian and there's American. Sicilian and italian. Sicilian, that's right. And if you're an American, you're making a Sicilian pizza. It's rectangular, square, thick crust, not a fan. The reason it's thick is in Sicily, they bake the ingredients into the crust. Yeah, I'd like to try that, actually. It's like they heard about stuffed crust pizza and started mimicking it. Oh, man. Pizza drives me nuts with all those things like the rope of cheese in the crust. And then they had the one crust. There was the one the pizza e backwards. They just come up with all these things that are completely unnecessary. There was the pizza that eats you. Yeah. The pizza that eats you. Yeah. And speaking of Soviet Russia, there's some pretty crazy toppings around the world. What do they eat there? In Russia, they eat something called makba, which is a blend of tuna, mackerel, sardines, onions, and salmon, which I have to say sounds kind of good. You know what I thought was good? The Japanese. The mayo yaga. Yaga? Yeah, mayonnaise, bacon, and potato mixture. They cook their hot dogs in there, too? Oh, my gosh. Yes. Check that out. In India, little pickled ginger and tofu maybe. And little minced mutton so good to me. You don't like mutton? No, I had a pet goat. This is a lamb. I know. Totally different amino. They can't even mate, I don't think. Oh, I bet they could. Well, they can, but they can't reproduce. Okay. Brazil, you might get some green peas on your pizza. Yeah. Costa Rica. You might get a little coconut equally woof. Yeah, I think so. I'm not big on coconut. Pizza anchovies are generally regarded as the least favorite pizza topping. What's the number one pizza topping in America? Pepperoni, of course. Wrong. Really? It got toppled this year. Wow. Chicken. As far as protein goes. Chicken, really? Yeah. And how do they calculate that? Is that like in restaurants? There's actually a surprising amount of pizza industry marketing and lobby groups and trade groups. And that's true of the pizza. And this owners association. Yeah. I ran across the blog post and I don't remember I followed it to this press release from some pizza association and I don't remember which one it was, but they said that chicken topped pepperoni as far as pepperoni toppings goes. So that means that Americans consume more than \u00a3250,000,000 of chicken on their pizza. Yeah. Which makes sense because chicken is heavier than pepperoni. That's true. It's a lot of pepperoni. Maybe they go by weight. Yeah. We've got some awesome stats here, don't we? Yeah, go ahead and fire some of those out. So the number of pizzas sold in the US. Each year? 3 billion. I'm responsible for at least a million and a half of those 350 slices sold every second. Yeah. Not bad. And every year, the average American eats 46 slices. That's child's play. 93% of Americans eat pizza at least once a month. Yeah. That's a lot. That is a lot. That means like, almost every American eats pizza at least once a month. That is pretty staggering. I can't imagine that there's any other food like that except maybe a cheeseburger. I bet pizza tops that even I would think so. It's just such an easy because vegetarians can eat pizza. Cheese pizza. Yeah. And if you go to McDonald's or something like that and you have a family of four, you're going to spend more than you would on a piece that will feed that family of four, too. And you don't get the cold breakfast leftovers either. Exactly. With McDonald's. You do, but what else? Was there anything else? There was a guy in my elementary school, actually. Remember the little rectangle elementary school pizzas? There was one dude, Brett Standish, that did not eat pizza, and he was like the only kid I ever knew that didn't eat pizza. So every time we had pizza, it was like there was a battle royal to find out who would get Fred sandwiches. Pizza. Yeah. And he would, like, up his asking price each week when it was like a valuable commodity. Yeah. Smart kid. Yeah. What was the most you ever got for it? I have no idea. Probably a bunch of pringles and, like, a little time behind the school, you know what I'm saying? No. My imagination is racing right now. Okay. Yeah. There's this little sidebar in this article that said that more than 30 pizzerias in New York are operating under the name Raise. That sounds like a lot until you realize there's 9000 pizzerias in New York alone. New York City. Well, I thought this is pretty interesting. Should we talk about raise? Sure. If you've ever been to New York or Atlanta's, got four raised pizzas. Is that right? Famous original race. Atlanta has raised New York Pizza and says since whatever year since 1990. Right. In Atlanta, that's not too bad. But yeah, by the count, I got there are 49 pizzerias in New York that use some form of the name Ray. And here's the story behind it. Ralph Cuomo opened the first race on Prince Street. He's grandfather to Rivers and father of Mario, we're going to say, and his nickname. He claimed to be Ray because he said it was Ralphie, then Rayfi, then Ray. I'm not quite so sure about that. Okay. He opened a second one in the 1960s, and then someone named Rosalino mangano. Mangano. But the second race changed the name to Famous Original Rays, even though that wasn't true. So things start getting a little messy. The Manjano now goes by Ray, which is also bogus, opened several more famous Original Rays all over the city. Sold that to new owner who began using other variations of the Rays. So it kind of just spread. But ironically, three quote unquote Rays got together to trademark the name. None of them are named Ray. They have all gotten together to try and trademark the name Ray. Right. And to shut down, at least in name places like Atlanta's. New York Pizza's. New York, pizza in Atlanta. You just probably got in trouble. I don't think so. They know about them. You don't know that. That sounds like a cartel. I think it is. Speaking of cartels chuck the big three. Pizza Hut, Domino's, Papa John's. Yeah. Of those three, the one that has the most urban legends associated with it is Dominos. I had heard, I think one of these, the 30 minutes or less went away because they killed some kid in a car. A delivery person did it's. Such a ready made urban legend. Supposedly there were lawsuits from people being hit. At least one person was hit, but they didn't say it had anything to do with 30 minutes or less. One person was killed. Yeah, that's right. One person killed. At least. So then at least one person hit was kind of right. But they did do away with that. There was also a rumor that the owner of Domino's contributed a lot to anti abortion groups, which may or may not have been true, but he didn't know Domino's probably at the time because the guy who founded the company, Tom Monahan yeah. He sold it in 1998 for a billion, which is pretty tiny. But he is a staunch Catholic and obviously a supporter of pro life and is building his own little Catholic town outside of Miami. Yeah, I've heard of this before, where basically like, I'm going to build my own little town filled with people that are like me. Exactly. Because I'm incredibly wealthy. Exactly. So I don't know what the status is on that now, but supposedly more than 30,000 residents will occupy this town and eventually they'll go to war with Celebration, Florida. And then there's all these goofy pizzas. I don't get into all this stuff. Like the 3000 Euro pizza with cognac, marinated lobster and edible gold. Okay, so that holds the renter's soaked caviar for the most expensive with gold. There's actually two categories in Guinness as far as most expensive pizza with edible gold and without. Apparently if you just want to throw some edible gold on your pizza, you can just tip the scales. But if you want the most expensive pizza in the world without gold, that record was recently broken in Stevenson Pizza Company in Vancouver, which apparently is affiliated with the guy from Hell's Kitchen. Shut it down. Yeah. Gordon Ramsay. Yes. They have a $450 pizza called the C Six pizza. It has lobster, thermidor black Alaskan cod and caviar on it. It looks kind of good. They do stuff like that to get press and get people in there. I get it. What about the largest pizza ever built and eaten? I like that they have that caveat. Yeah. Agreed. Havana, Florida from 1987. I'm surprised no one has tried to break it since then. \u00a344,457 of pizza over 94,000 slices. Yeah. Devoured by at least 30,000 people hanging out. How do they bake that thing, I wonder? I don't know. That's a great question. That's the one I want listener mail on. Not your favorite pizza topping. No one cares about that. How did they bake that thing? Maybe it was sun baked, I don't know, in Florida. Or maybe they're like, wow, this is really chewy. Like they make it and they're like, oh wait, yeah, because it says Eaton. Or maybe there's another record tied to it for the largest pizza oven and then the longest pizza delivery. 2004, a Domino's franchise owner named Lucy Clough delivered a pizza 10,532 miles, 16,950 km from London to Melbourne. It was a vegetarian pizza as part of the make a Wish Foundation. I was about to disparage it. I know, that's why I got all that out in one breath before you could break it. Yeah. Okay. I was saving you from yourself. Make a wish then. I support it. Waiting for Chuck pizza. Yeah. You know what's awesome about pizza? I guarantee you there's dark corners to all this that we didn't even hit. Sure that we're going to hear about that we want to hear about. This will be one of those which I love. Yeah. I love pizza. If you love pizza, you can read more about it@houseofworks.com. Type the word P-I-Z-A into the search bar at our belovedhousoforks.com website, which is now two words, I think, as far as AP goes. What website? Yeah. I thought a long time ago. No, I was taught when I was hired here. It's capital W-E-B. Separate word. Lowercase site. Right now it's lowercase. All one word. Oh, it's all one word now. I thought you were saying it's two words now. No. Got you. Yeah. No, it's one word. Okay. This is great. And if I did say two words, I was wrong. We'll find out anyway. I think I said search bar in there. So it's time for the listener mail. Chuck? Yes. We should tell everybody about something very special and dear to our hearts. New York City. That's right. We are going to Comic Con, and we will be doing a live podcast on Friday, October 12, at Comic Con at the Jabit Center. It's like a new thing. We did San Diego. Now we're doing New York. That's right. Next up, Albuquerque. So if you are going to Comic Con, you should come by and see that. But after Comic Con, we have one of our famous, famous to us all star trivia nights. Right. Where is it going to be? The Cutting Room. It is at the grand reopening of the Cutting Room in the Flatiron District, which is what's the address? It is in New York, and it's in the Flatiron, you said? Yes. And doors open at 730. Trivia goes down at 830. And what is first come, first serve, right? Free. First come, first serve. We will have a bar there that you can buy drinks. Yeah, you can buy us drinks. That's right. We're going to basically be having a really good time. If you're not familiar with our trivia nights, just come out and check it out. It'll be worth your while. Absolutely. And stay tuned for info on Facebook and Twitter about the makeup of the allstar team. We are filling that out as we speak, but we will have some special guests that you will want to meet. Yeah. And at the very least, you can come take on me and Chuck, right? Yeah. Okay. It's just fun. So what is that? That's Friday, October 12, right? Yes. The panels at when the panel is at, I believe, 645. Okay. And then we're going to be at the Cutting Room starting at 830. Tribute starts at 830, doors at 730. Be there, be square. You're good at this. Thank you. All right. Is it time for listener mail? Yes. I'm going to call this accidents. Thanks to us. We caused an accident. A good one. No one got hurt. Okay. This is from Annie. And Annie was going off to college which was several states away. So her family decided to road trip with her to the college as a little mini vacation. That is very sweet. Depending on how Annie feels about her family. Well, you're about to find out. It may sound fun, but it's not easy to agree on music when you're James Blunt loving mom, miley Virus loving younger sister. She is just hanging off in college. Yeah. And weird European loving older brother are all crammed into a car together. After a few hours of me wondering if I could get a refund on my soundproof headphones, they agreed to let me pick the music, and I picked Stuff you should know. Nice. Turns out everyone loves doesn't hate Stuff you should know. That's good. We were all interested. More importantly, not yelling or throwing CDs out the window. Plus, it was fun to go back through. My favorites. Jack the Ripper, for instance, made my mom a little green. That's a good one. However you know what? We heavily edited that one. Yes. It was worse. It was way worse. I think. Yeah. I remember going through there and being like, dude, we can't do this. It was factual. No, it was. However, during a time when it was my goofy brother's turn to drive parentheses, I really can't stress how weird he is. At the end of the cast about genius, you were reading some other listener mail from a lady truck driver and told her to honk her horn, which my brother did really loud, like a truck would do. It wouldn't have been a problem. But we are in one of those curvy two lane highways behind a senior citizen, and basically this old lady thought that they were honking at her. Oh, no. She slammed on her brakes oh, no. And caused the person riding behind her to butt into her rear end. Oh, no. No one was hurt, but I was laughing because over the screech of tires, I actually heard Chuck say, I hope we didn't just cause an accident. Wow, this is I know. Everyone is fine. There was no damage to either car. But my mom made my brother give them both info because my mother thought that he was liable. Thanks, mom. Yeah, exactly. She just drove him straight to jail. And she says I was the one to awkwardly explain to the old lady what a podcast was. PS. I hope my dorm mate likes you guys. That's from Annie. Thanks a lot, Andy. That was really nice. I'm glad everyone's safe. Me, too, man. That's crazy, Chuck. It sounds a little made up. Yeah, we followed for it before. Sure, man. Either way, the marriage, the wedding proposal. Yeah, I still have to egg on my face about that. That's all right, man. We all do. If you have a great story about how your family has been brought together by Stephanie Snow, we want to hear it. We also want to know how the citizens of Havana, Florida, baked their 94,000 sliced pizza. Yeah, we really want to know that degrees and how delicious it was. Yeah. You can tweet to us all of this information to SYSK podcast. Seriously, our Twitter is killing it. Yes. That's great. It's one of the best Twitter feeds on the Internet. Wow. It's got it all, man. It has wacky news. It has important news. Criticism of Twitter when they suspend people's accounts. We talk to people back and forth. Sometimes we pester hodgman for no good reason. There's just all sorts of great stuff on Twitter. Or we'll see a tweet from the Jim Henson Company that they like the Muppet podcast. Yeah. So, like, pretty cool. Stuff like that is going down. Yeah, it is. It's very cool. So you can follow us on Twitter. It's the at symbol. And then syskpodcast at S-Y-S kpop. We're also killing it on Facebook. Our Facebook page is awesome. That's Facebook.com stuff you should know. Yes. Right? 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. 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." | |
SYSK Selects: Gesundheit! How Allergies Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-gesundheit-how-allergies-work | In this week's SYSK Select episode, about 30-40 percent of humans suffer from some sort of allergy. The big joke, though, is that every sufferer is the victim of mistaken identity. Allergies are the result of a hypersensitive immune system mistaking a har | In this week's SYSK Select episode, about 30-40 percent of humans suffer from some sort of allergy. The big joke, though, is that every sufferer is the victim of mistaken identity. Allergies are the result of a hypersensitive immune system mistaking a har | Sat, 13 May 2017 20:42:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=13, tm_hour=20, tm_min=42, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=133, tm_isdst=0) | 25244412 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody, this is Chuck, and welcome to this week's SYSK Select episode, all about allergies. And the reason I picked this one is because although I think I'm on record in this episode, even as saying allergies don't tend to affect the to me. They bit me this year and I've had a rough time with the pollen. So kind of got me thinking about allergies again and I thought maybe you all could learn a little something to enjoy. 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 looking particularly smart today's. Glasses. Check the one with the beard, by the way. That's right. Kind of boggles of mind after making video content, having an entire season of a television show that people still say, wait, I thought it was the other one. Yeah. It's not like this is the radio days of the 1940 when you really didn't know what people look like. Orson Wells is a baby face. Yeah. Used to bearded up back in the day. Yeah. I think of him as like the in Citizen Cain. Early on, he was clean shaving babyfaced, right? Yes, I think so. What are you saying? How's this? Like citizen cane. It's not. Okay, good one. Thanks, man. How are you doing? I'm good. A little under the weather, are you? But not because of allergies. Sure. Well, it's funny you said that, because Emily was like, you know, you may have some allergies, but it's possible sometimes you think you're getting sick and it could just be allergies. It definitely could be. Yeah. Well, she's super allergic to all sorts of stuff. Yeah. Just really bad allergies. Not like food allergies. Seasonal. Yeah, seasonal. Pollen, dust mites, ragweed and all that stuff. Yeah. Venom. Yeah. And I grew up I grew up with allergies. I think I've mentioned this before. Like asthma and all kinds of stuff. And I just grew out of it because of that faith healer. Yeah, I guess so. I got bit by that rattlesnake and everything was all good. Yeah. Venom. It works both ways, right? Actually, it does, because there's anti venom. Remember anti venomous? Didn't we do one on what's the most venomous or poisonous animal in the world? Yeah, that was a good one. It was the country of Australia. It was a dangerous place. Well, Chuck, I specifically remember one time when we were at work and you were attacked by a bee and I had to deliver an EpiPen shot to your thigh. Remember? The whole gang was there. The whole gang. They carted you off in an ambulance. It was really kind of traumatic for us. Scary. But I got my Magnum Pi. Plate that day, so everything balanced out. Every all's well that ends well. But what's mind boggling is that you don't even have an allergy to be so, like, what happened there? Well, that was just TV. It was a TV show. Yeah. I'm having trouble distinguishing reality from fiction these days. Other people are too. Had you had a B allergy, though, after reading this article, you would know what was going on. Yeah. And I think we even covered that in the B podcast, didn't we? We covered, like, anaphylactic shock a little bit, but this is like what we're about to talk about is allergies. The cellular basis of what constitutes an allergy, how they're created, where they come from. It's pretty cool. Yeah. I tried to stump Emily this morning because I thought I was being a smart guy. And even though she has bad allergies, I was like, I bet you don't even know what they really are. Oh, yeah. She's like, yeah, it's an overreaction from your immune system to a perceived invader. Nice. Almost exactly like that. And I felt really stupid. I was like, oh, to a perceived invader. Emily, she loved it. She called me smart guy and followed me around the house, brow beating me. Yeah. So she's absolutely right, though. I mean, an allergy is basically a case of mistaken identity as far as your immune system is concerned. Yeah. You've got all sorts of forensic veterans coming at you all the time. Sure. And we have an immune system to handle these things, but every once in a while, and it depends, they think probably that you are genetically unfulfilled if you have allergies. Oh, it's not a complete genetic code or something? Yeah. Like, you have a little bit of information missing. Your immune system has a little bit of information missing. And so, for example, in the article, they use the example of shrimp. You can eat shrimp. Sure. And there's maybe a protein attached to it that your body is like, did he eat this? Or Where did this come from? Or he's being attacked by shrimp. Exactly. Yeah. And they think probably that all. Allergies are triggered by proteins, but it's a case of mistaken identity. Yeah. So let's talk about this. Let's get into the immune system a little bit. How the immune system handles foreign invaders, perceived or otherwise. That's right. Well, I guess we could start with something called lymphocyte. And you've probably heard of things like T cells and B cells. Those are lymphocytes. Yeah, t cells. That's how they determine whether you have HIV, I believe. Like, if your T cell count is low, because HIV is an immunodeficiency disorder. So they are both white blood cells, and they are really important to the immune system. But they make mistakes sometimes. Right. And I love the way this who wrote this, by the way? Steve beach, freelancer. Never heard of him. I thought he did a great job, though, because he likened the B and T cells to custom agents, customs agents, just like, they go anywhere they want in your body, and they investigate cells and basically are like, let me see your papers. Where are you going, what's the purpose of your visit? It's like Arizona and your body. Yeah. Like they show up anywhere. Like you said, they can make it anywhere. They can pass through membranes and blood vessels and just pop up and they go, who are you? Lymph nodes. Yeah. Very important for them to visit the lymph nodes. It is very important because that's where they go back and start producing antibodies. Right? That's right. When they see something and they discover a cell and they say, hold on a minute, you'll pay plus not in order, then there's trouble and they launched. Basically, they start the attack at that point, and we haven't quite figured this out basically, what happens when a B cell especially encounters a foreign body, which is called an antigen, because they generate antibodies, they trigger the generation of antibodies in your body. So that's where antigen comes from. That's right. The B cell basically takes down all of its data and then goes back up into the lymph nodes. And that B cell, that white blood cell, turns into a plasma cell and starts churning out antibodies that are specifically tailored to counteract that antigen, that foreign invader that it encountered. That's right. And our bodies have five types of antibodies, and they're called immunoglobulins. I love that word. It's tough to get out, but it's a great word. Yeah. We'll call them IGS, and Ige is the one that's responsible for allergic reactions. Yeah. And the reason that that one is responsible for allergic reactions, as we understand them is because Ige immunoglobulin E's. Right. They attach to mast cells and bazophils. Yes. And those are two different types of cells. A mass cell is found in a connective tissue. Bazephil is a type of white blood cell, but they share the commonality. Both of them contain histamine. And when they are hijacked by an Ige antibody, they basically become little ticking time bombs. So think about this. When you come in contact with an antigen and your body goes off, that white blood cell goes off and starts producing antibodies, that first moment of contact creates what's called the sensitizing exposure. Right? Yeah. And it's basically a mistake. It is. In the case of allergies. Yeah. Because there's nothing inherently dangerous about ragweed pollen, and your body can handle bee venom and shellfish. Right. But there's some protein in each of those that certain people's bodies, if they don't have the genetic code for their white blood cells to say, oh, you pass, you're fine. Then there's that case of mistaken identity, like you said. That's right. So once you have that sensitizing exposure, the first time your body comes across this protein and there's that mistaken identity, it starts producing antibodies. And those antibodies attach. In the case of Ige, two bazephils and mast cells, and they start circulating throughout your body, just waiting for the next time it encounters that antigen that it's been specifically designed to interact with. That's right. And what happens then? They say, hey, I know you. You're not supposed to be here. I'm going to release something called histamine, which can be a great thing in your body because that's basically your arsenal fighting this invader. But it can be a bad thing, too, if too much of it is released, as we will see in a little while. Yeah. So when an antibody and Ige connects to an antigen, it's already connected to a mass seller, basil fill. Remember, those things are loaded with histamine, so they're basically taking them along for the party. Right. Yeah. So when it connects, it sends a signal to something called complement proteins, I believe. Yeah. And those complement proteins come along and say, oh, cool. The chain reaction we can start to fulfill. And they start locking on and locking on and locking on, and once a certain amount of them have kind of locked together along into this antibody antigen mast cell basilfil joint, the mast cell or the basilfill, goes kabooe and all of a sudden you have histamine floating through your body. That's right. It basically destroys those original cells such that the histamine is just released and unduly released. And this is called the allergic cascade. This is what we think of. So you may have come in contact with shrimp, and then ten days later you ate shrimp. I know I had an allergic reaction. Shrimp. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Okay. Boiler. And it takes maybe seven to ten days for that sensitizing exposure. From that time to the next time, you could have the allergic cascade because that's how long it takes for your body to produce the antibodies. But when that allergic cascade is kicked off and the histamine is released, that's when the symptoms that we associate with the type of allergy come about. Yeah. So, like, if you inhale it, your mucous membranes are going to flare up. Sure. You might get hives. Yeah. Hives, which are basically like histamines cause your blood vessels in that area to leak, which makes it swell. That's a hive. Sneezing, wheezing all that I could wheeze right now if you let me, but it would be really gross. I don't want to these people would say, oh, man, Chuck, get to a sanitarium. Yeah, but I'm sick, I don't have allergies. A sanitarium? Yeah. Like the Kellogg's thing. Yeah, sure. Battle Creek. Nausea, diarrhea, a little vomiting, maybe. Yeah. I think that's the scale from least reaction to most. If you're vomiting, then you've ingested something that you're really allergic to. Yeah. You can become swollen, usually the part of your body or the type of reaction you have. Right. Like where if your skin swells, if your arm swells yeah. You probably didn't inhale or ingest that. It probably came in contact with your skin. Like a break in your skin. Yeah. It depends on how you ingest it and how your body reacts to it, because it's different for everyone. Right. And severity, obviously. But speaking of severity, it can get really bad, which we talked about in the B episode. If this cascade of this allergic cascade is allowed to continue and you have enough of a reaction to it, you have enough antibodies attached to mast cells, and bazafils with a ton of histamine is released, you can be in big trouble. You can go into what's called anaphylactic shock. Yeah. And preceding that, you can have anaphylaxis, which is not quite as bad. It's a bad reaction, but it's not the full blown shock. If you're in full blown shock mode, then you could die easily and within minutes, even if you have, let's say, like a peanut allergy and you accidentally eat those peanuts, unless you get that injection of epinephrine that's going to open those airways and restrict the blood vessels back to their normal levels, then you could be a goner, like, really soon. Right. That's called a systemic reaction where your whole system is involved in this. And since histamine dilates the blood vessels, your blood pressure can drop. It also causes swelling. So, like, if your airway is swollen, that tends to close it off, which means it's tough for you to breathe. Yeah. You could starve your brain and kidneys of oxygen and organ failure can happen. And I think what they say, several hundred people die in the United States alone each year. Yeah. Because we didn't cover this in the TV episode about bees where I delivered that epinephrine pen and saved your life, if you'll remember. I do remember, but apparently the effects of the EpiPen last ten to 20 minutes. Yeah. I didn't realize it was that short. Yeah. So we should have had you outfitted with, like, a whole belt of those things. I thought you were just good to go once you had it on the EpiPen shot. Apparently not. So I think it's just like, hey, let's stave off death until we can get you to a hospital. I think so, too, but you have to do it early enough so that it can have the effect of counteracting the allergic reaction. And if it's longer than ten to 20 minutes to get to the hospital, you should probably have more than one pen. But even if you survive your brain and your kidneys being starved of oxygen, you can suffer long term damage from going into anaphylactic shock. Yes. I would be a freak if I had this possibility existing in my life. I would have an EpiPen in my car, in each room of my house. I would not take any chances. And what about, like, a peanut allergy, too? It's going to be so easy to come in contact with that. Yeah, well, we'd mentioned that time on the plane when they said you can't even open peanuts on the flight, and we had people right. And they were like, yeah, dude, that could seriously happen. Right. And I understand that what's crazy to me is like, if you fly Delta, they'll give you peanuts all day long. Well, not if someone says that they're allergic. That's the point. Yeah, I guess so. This is a Delta flight, and I said, I'm sorry, everyone, no peanuts today. Because what's the Delta southwest Chinaman in Twelve e is allergic for peanuts. Yeah. Everybody's like, oh, God, I want my peanuts. I hate you. I guess I'll just eat pretzels and Biscott cookies. Yeah, and dirt. Dirt. Okay. 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. 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Take charge at K. Twelvecom podcast. That's K twelve.com podcast. And start taking charge of your future today. All right, let's say you have allergies, or let's say you think you have allergies, and you want to go in and find out for sure. There are a couple of ways that they can test this out and run into a beehive. No, you would do what's called a scratch test. And I've never had one of these. Emily's had one. And she also does immunotherapy, which we'll get to, but they apply a diluted extract of different kinds of allergens to your back or your arm, and then they scratch you with a needle, and they see what happens. And if it becomes swollen and red, and they say, you know what? I think you're allergic to rag lead. Right because we just put some on your body and scratched it. They can also do blood tests and search for specific antigens. Yeah. That's better for kids, I think. Yeah. Because it can cause a sensitizing event in a kid if you expose them to it. Because everybody knows their genes are just stupid. Yeah. They're, like, very susceptible to influence, I guess, which is weird to me. So here's the thing. Does that mean that it's impossible to die from your first beasting? That at what is possible or possible? Because if there has to be a sensitizing event, how would you come in contact with B venom other than to be stung? How would you become sensitized? I was looking all over the Internet, for sure, and I think one of the things I kind of found while doing additional research for this episode is that we have a pretty good idea of how allergies work, but it's definitely not complete yet. Yeah. When you're on the cellular level, I'm sure there are still some mysteries to be had. Yeah. Because one of your questions was how do they identify the foreign invader? And I was happy to just say they identify a foreign invader. Right. How do they take down its information and then go back to the lymph node and start producing an antibodies? I assume they had a pen and pad and they had a little golf cart. They did a police sketch. Yeah, that's the way I see it. So you've got scratch therapy, blood tests. They both work. They're okay. If they say, you know what you are you're allergic? Yeah. To something. There's basically three things they recommend. The first is to avoid that thing, whatever it is. Sure. And if that's shellfish or peanuts, then you're in pretty good shape because it's pretty easy to avoid in most cases, you would think. Have you ever had a shrimp allergy? Shrimp is pretty delicious. No, but it's easier to avoid than pollen, let's say. Okay. Because pollen is everywhere right here in the south. So if you're allergic to pollen, there's no avoiding it. I mean, there's cars that all the cars in the spring and the south are yellow. Every car is painted. Streets run yellow, literally. Yeah. So you would take medication, corticos, steroid? Sure. You might walk around with an epinephrine, depending on what you are allergic to, that kind of thing. Then the third one is what you said Emily was doing and what I've done before, too, which is immunotherapy. You've done this? I think so. I mean, I undertook the process of immunotherapy by myself, and it seems to have worked. I was about to say, did a doctor give you injections? No. Tell me about Emily's experience. Well, she does the standard immunotherapy where she goes in to get her allergy shots once a month, I think, and they start you out on a low dose. That's like, basically a weak dilution of these antigens right. And they injected in her body and just build that up over time to increase her immune response, I guess. Right. And then over time so this is what they think happens over time. Either the body possibly gets its genetic information filled in enough so that it's like my face red, because this wasn't actually a foreign invader. It's just shrimp protein. Right. Or they believe that another antibody, IgG, which acts as kind of like a blocking antibody that prevents an allergic reaction, starts to build up as a result of immunotherapy. Yeah, we should say. I think immunotherapy is still fairly controversial. Is it? I believe so, because it's introducing a potentially dangerous thing into a human being. And it's not like if you ask somebody if honey as a good immunotherapy, logically, it should make sense. If you use local honey, very local honey, it's going to contain some of the same pollen that you're exposed to, that you're allergic to in it. And so when you eat it, when you ingest it, it's like taking that low level, and it should be doing the same thing as taking injections from the doctor. Sure. But it's more delicious. Yeah. And it takes a long time. Emily's been at it she was at it for a couple of years without virtually no success. Right. So it takes a while. Has it been helping, though, at all? I think so, because she still has bad allergies, but they used to be way worse. But she's been on these shots now for, like I mean, she did it when she was a kid, and then she's been on it again for, like, five years, probably. Yeah. So it's been a while. So I had one serious it wasn't even serious, but it was a distinct allergic reaction. It was shrimp once, and I ate it, and Yummy is like, Why are you red? And like, what are those red dots all over you? What's going on? And I figured out I was having an allergic reaction to shrimp, which I'd never had before. Right. I love shrimp. And I tried it the next day, try a little bit of shrimp, kind of had a similar reaction. So I was like, Something's going on here. Wow. So I decided that I was going to get myself over my shrimp allergy. Have you ever had a $15 copay? Right. Have you ever had shrimp chips? Yes. They're delicious. They are delicious. They're like little kind of potato chip french fries that they're shrimp flavored because they have shrimp dust on them, like sexual powdered shrimp. Shrimp dust. So I started eating little amounts of shrimp chip, and then over time, I would eat more whole bags of them at a time, and then finally I get to the point where I could eat shrimp again. I don't know if that really cured me or if there was just a fluke, like, maybe that shrimp was just a local type of shrimp in Carolinas or something like that. Shrimp? But that's my Immunotherapy story. Well, you can eat shrimp now. Like gangbusters. Yes, and I do that's good. Do you really? Yes, whenever I can. I like shrimp. I'm trying to make up for a lost time because I spent like three years, two years without eating shrimp. So beware prawns and shrimp of the world. Josh got your number. I will eat you live. Will you? No. Okay, that's gross. No, it's not. People do that. And I guess that's it. Yeah, that is allergies. And I bet the reason I quizzed Emily is because I think a lot of people who have allergies don't even understand the core concepts. Yeah, hopefully now you do. But it's a case of mistaken identity. It's so awesome. And your DNA is dumb or incomplete. Okay, if you like this, you should go check out how allergies work. You can type in in the search bar. HowStuffWorks.com. You can also look up another article I wrote about using honey for Immunotherapy. That's pretty interesting. Probably like honey allergies maybe would be too good for us in the search bar for that one. And I said search bar twice, which means we're going to have two listener mails. No, just one. Oh, well, first, before we do that, how about a word from our sponsor? 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. 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Guys, I just listened to your cast on stunt women used to say stunt people, and I was reminded of a story I thought you might like to hear. My dad is an actor, and way back in the 90s, he was in a film called in the Name of the Father. Remember that? Oh, yeah. With Daniel Day Lewis. Right. Great movie. Is that his dad? No, he said it stars Abraham Lincoln or Daniel Day Lewis in the film he played. And this is one of my favorite movies from that year, by the way. It was about the IRA, wasn't it? Yeah, it was about like a wrongfully imprisoned group of friends, basically, that they suspected as being like bombers. I don't want to get away too much, but there is a prison in the film. He played a prison guard who gets set on fire by some pretty nasty inmates. So I guess there's a fire, too, in the guard. What happens next? Surf is a warning for any actor who decides they're up for performing their own stunts. The director decided my dad could do some flailing and running with his arms on fire. And then a stunt professional would do the more intense full body fire shots. Like we said in the stunt person podcast, like the fire thing, you're always running with your arms going, well, what are you doing? You're on fire. Do you stand there? Can someone put me out? Some people do. Buddhist monks just sit there? Well, yeah, that's different. I'm ready. They wrapped up his arms, covered them in jelly, and set them ablaze. But what my dad had failed to realize is that the stuntmen do not wait for anyone to say Action. As a result, he just stood there on fire, waiting for someone to say he could go while it's getting hotter and hotter with each passing second. Fortunately, the director eventually realized what was happening and hastily yelled, Go. But by this time, my dad was way too hot and just kind of sidestepped into the shot, waving his arms like a half baked ballerina. If you watch the scene carefully, you can actually see the shots. He was really on fire and by the genuine fear and panic in his eyes. I hope you guys carry on making these for as long as humanly possible. That is Freddy Turner from Oxford, England. Hi. And I guess Freddy SR jr. Was on fire. And I think Jim Sheridan was the director of that movie, if I remember correctly. So Jim Sheridan was the one who said go. Yeah. That's a pretty great listener mail. Yeah, it's good one. Was the dude's name? Freddy. Yes. Freddy Turner and Oxford, England. Cool. Well, if you have. A great story associated with something we've talked about. As always, we want to hear it. You can tweet to us at SYSK podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffycheanow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com and check out our website, Stuff You Should Know. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseoffworks.com. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out. The sun is shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgaref and Georgia Hardstarkk, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | ||
2d889150-78fc-443a-8984-ae7401675a78 | The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-mystery-of-the-toynbee-tiles | If you've ever been to Philadelphia then you've probably walked right by a Toynbee Tile embedded in the street. But what's the meaning on these mysterious installations, and who is doing it? Listen in to find out.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | If you've ever been to Philadelphia then you've probably walked right by a Toynbee Tile embedded in the street. But what's the meaning on these mysterious installations, and who is doing it? Listen in to find out.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Tue, 12 Apr 2022 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=12, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=102, tm_isdst=0) | 41921808 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody. If you want a great website, you want to do it yourself. With no must, no fuss, turn to Squarespace. They have everything to sell anything. They have the tools that you need to get your business off the ground, including ecommerce templates, inventory management, simple checkout process, process, and secure payments. And if you're into analytics, hold on to your hats, because Squarespace has everything that you need. Just head to squarespace. Comsysk and you can get a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code SYSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that we mean your dog. Halo Elevate is natural sciencebased nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leading brands. Find Halo Elevate at Petco, pet supplies plus, and select neighborhood pet stores. 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 Jerry's here, too, which makes this stuff you should know the podcast. You know what? Say small talk while I look up. Who gave me this idea? Why do you keep doing this to me? I have to entertain everybody. You once did this to me on stage. Get this, everybody. We were on stage at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn, and Chuck said he had to go to the bathroom all of a sudden, and I was left on stage having to entertain everybody while he just hung out backstage. I don't think you even went to go to the bathroom. And long story short, I ended up showing off my Moonwalk. Yeah, but I totally went to the bathroom. You think that was all a bit yeah, maybe you went and took some drugs to keep going back on stage, but I'm sure in the green room, you didn't even need to go do those in the bathroom. No, I genuinely had to pee such that I didn't think I could make it through the show. I've felt that way before, too. San Antonio. I had to run off the stage once because of that. That's right. All right, I got you this idea. Initially, this is on my list, but I forgot about it. But then was reminded by Alexander or Alex Ramos in State College, Pennsylvania. All right, well, thanks a lot, Alex Ramos. This is a great idea. Twin b tiles. Have you ever heard of this? Sure. OK. You not well, no, I just said it had long been on my list. Okay. That's right. Where did you hear of it? It just one of those things. It pops up on the Internet, and you're like, oh, let me read about this. This looks interesting, for sure. And it is definitely interesting. And it would have been, I think, even more interesting ten years ago before the mystery was virtually solved. True, but it's still interesting if you ask me. Yeah. And I think this is one of those where you should very clearly tell everyone what we're talking about right now. Okay. So what we're talking about is a phenomenon called the Toy Bee tiles. Where in the asphalt. On the street. On street corners and crosswalks and intersections all over the Northeast. Seemingly concentrated in Philadelphia. But also going as far west as. I think. Kansas City. And then also strangely down in Chile. Argentina and Brazil. These tiles. Bearing some really bizarre messages cut out of linoleum and again embedded into the asphalt of the street. Started appearing and have appeared mysteriously. No one has any idea or any demonstrable proof of who is actually doing this, but they have been doing it since at least the mid eighty s and conceivably still going on today. Right. And they are known as the twin B tiles. They're about the size of a license plate. And the general main message that you see on most of these is as follows, and it's in a very distinct script. It is generally all caps. Yeah. Cut out letters made of linoleum. Cut out linoleum. And it says this toynbee that is T-O-I-N-B-E-E. Toynbee idea. Underneath that it says, in Kubrick's 2001. Underneath that, it says Resurrect dead. And underneath that it says, on planet Jupiter. And then a lot of tiles will have these little tags underneath a much smaller script that say all kinds of things. We'll just read a few examples here. Media will be reduced to ash. You must make plus place tiles. You I like that one because you have three exclamation points after I'm only one man, which turned out to be a clue. And when I caught a fatal disease, they gloated over its death. This is my favorite. Can I read? Sure. Now, Galileo Cult of the Helen is now searching for more than one hell Ideologies to get more reward, right? And then one final one, I think, because it's instructive to the story. Murder all journalists, I beg you. So these are the little smaller messages underneath the main four I guess you would call tenants of this individual. And one thing we should point out and ed, help us put this together, is apparently, and this is something I didn't even realize until yesterday, when this person refers to hellions, apparently he's talking about Jewish people. I don't know if it's proven. I think specifically he's talking about like a Jewish conspiracy, a Jewish cabal, usually a Jewish media conspiracy is seemingly what he's referring to by Helen. Okay, so there is, in some of these tiles an antisemitic bit to them. And it also points out that this person perhaps may have some sort of mental illness, but it's also not right to even say that because we don't even know who this person is. Demonstrably. As for proof, like you said. So it's also not great to project that when you really don't know anything. No. And depending on where you look on the Internet, what sites you visit, I think there's one called Toydia.net or.com or something like that. It's an authoritative site. It's by one of the main investigators of these twin B tiles who ended up working on this documentary that basically solved the case. He refers to the Toybi tiles like an art project, basically. So it could be the ravings of a madman or the ongoing project of an artist, or it could be somebody who legitimately wants to make a crazy idea happen. There's a lot of different interpretations, like you said, because we can't say for sure who it is that is doing this. You can't really get to the genuine like you can't prove, oh, well, this person has a mental illness. This is how they're communicating that mental illness. You just can't say that. But it is worth putting in the back of your mind as you kind of hear the rest of it, you know? Yeah. And that documentary, by the way, is called Resurrect Dead. It is available on YouTube. But the reason I mention YouTube is I didn't find that you could pay for it anywhere and watch it. But that's where I did you can pay for it. I did pay for it like a chump. I couldn't find it on YouTube. See, I was trying to do the right thing. Where did you find it? Voodoo. See. I looked all over. I used my handy app that tells you where you can stream stuff and it was unlisted. And then I looked on a few streamers and it was unlisted. So I went to YouTube and it's just sitting right there. So I'll watch, I looked at YouTube and all I could find were those stupid previews. Did you type in Toymby Tiles documentary? Yes, I typed in the name of it resurrect Dead. It's weird. It's the first hit. I don't know what happened. Well, regardless, it's about an hour and a half long and it's worth watching. I think it's a good doc. It's not great, but I think for when it was made, I think they did a pretty good job with it. Yes, I think it's got like a six plus maybe even a seven on IMDb. And I would agree with that. It was worth the $4 I paid to rent it. I'm fine with that. So we should talk a little bit about the message, I think, and break down what that means because there are a lot of components to this mystery, from what the message means, where it came from, to who is doing this, how they're doing it. And it's a pretty interesting little multi pronged mystery, I think. Yeah, and thanks to those three investigators who worked on the documentary, who are bigtime kind of portrayed on the documentary, we basically understand everything there is to understand about what the Toy beat tile makers ideas are and what they mean. But that's fairly new. For years, basically from the advent of the Internet, the Toy tiles were taken up as like something to commemorate and discuss and talk about from the very beginning. And so there's a lot of time for this mystery to brew. And it was fairly recent that it's kind of been settled. But what they figured out is from the outset, the Toybee that was discussed or mentioned in the tiles is Arnold J. Toynbee, who is kind of a popular historian. He wrote about civilizations and the history of civilizations and the history of politics and how it all kind of banded together and how the civilizations that rose and fell over time were all part of the same kind of current, that they were all related to one another and that they rose and fell in predictable ways. Usually they would rise when a group of very smart, creative people would kind of lead the charge in creatively addressing a problem. And civilizations would fall when people stopped responding creatively to problems and were overwhelmed by those problems. And he was really, really popular for a while, but then he started to really kind of take an increasingly Christian view, a world view of history and politics and placed a greater emphasis on the role of religion and Christianity, I believe in particular than historians in general we're comfortable with. And his views kind of fell out of favor. Suffice to say, he was a genuine original thinker who is definitely worth reading about if not reading directly. And it's a good thing his name was Toin B. Yeah, it really made it a lot easier to narrow down the first mystery, basically. Definitely. Which is who is Twin B? Yeah, if it was the Smith tiles, it's a lot harder. But that is certainly the twin B. And it seems like the idea that and we'll refer to the person as the tile maker, as Ed does Twin B's book experiences, it seems to be the centerpiece of the crux of the idea that the tile maker is, let's just say, fixated on the concept of the soul and the possibility that you could resurrect after death down to the molecular level. And that's sort of what resurrect dead means in this case. And then as far as on planet Jupiter that comes, it seems like at least and again, they were people that pieces together because they've never interviewed the tile maker. But it looks like that's from Stanley Kubrick's 2001 a Space Odyssey because it mentions Kubrick. And in that novel, the star Child is reborn on Jupiter. Yes. And that's where the astronauts are being dispatched to, is Jupiter to figure out what's going on with some weird signal coming from that planet. Right? That's right. So if you put all those things together, then these four ideas as the 20 B idea makes sense. It does kind of make sense. You cannot say like the tile maker does that Toy B had the idea of resurrecting the dead on Jupiter and that 2001 was about that Toy idea. That's the tile makers interpretation of all of that stuff. Yeah, but Toy B was talking about scientifically resurrecting people or whether it was possible. And the tile maker took that idea and ran with it and basically came to believe that science was meant to carry out the project of creating the afterlife that God promised and that to resurrect everybody who had ever lived you would need a plane at the size of Jupiter. Which is a gas giant that you would need a plane at the size of Jupiter to fit all those people. So it makes sense in all sorts of different ways once you understand all of it. But even still if you step back and think about what they're saying the tile maker is saying it's a genuinely bizarre idea. Especially if you stop and realize that they legitimately were trying to make this idea happen. Well and again that's an assumption in and of itself. Like one day the tile maker could come out and say hey, this is all a joke. Basically Banksy meets the Max Headroom incident and meets Andy Kaufman and I've been punking you guys all these years. Sure, of course I know that that's not possible but I don't know, it seems like this is something that this person believes and that they're trying to get this message out. Because another way that this message was gotten out is in a neighborhood in Philadelphia in I guess the 1980s was when people would be watching television and all of a sudden their signal would be interrupted by this twin B message coming through the TV. And they figured out that it was and I hope I'm not getting too far ahead but we'll keep the mystery intact but it was coming from someone driving around their car with a highpowered antenna that could cause this kind of interference. Right. And this is pre tile. So this would have been the very early 80s because they think the first tiles that were laid down were laid down in the mid eighty s and then even before the first tile. So basically around the time no, I think even before the driving around interrupting people's TV watching yeah, the posters. There were posters around Philadelphia that were placed up that had very odd messages on them but they were all generally like the same stuff the tiles were talking about which again was the idea of resurrecting the dead on Jupiter. That was a Toy idea that was depicted in 2001. That's generally the bulk of the message. But also there's a weird little kind of side tangent that happened. David Mammoth plays a role in this because in 119 83 Mammoth wrote a play called 04:00 A.m. And he said later that it was an homage to Larry King who back in the early, early 80s was a late night radio talk show host long before he had his TV show, long before he bought suspenders. Yeah, and Mammoth used to listen to that and he wrote a one act play based on it. And in the one act play, the caller who calls into this radio show talks about resurrecting the dead on Jupiter and how people are dead molecules that you could bring back to life. And Mammoth basically said, I guess this guy got the idea from me. But if you step back and look at the timeline of everything that call apparently went in in 1980, and Mammoth didn't write the play for three years later. So David Mammit probably wrote a play based on a call he heard of the tile maker who called into Larry King in 1980 to explain his views on resurrecting the dead on Jupiter. Right. And everywhere I've looked, I haven't really seen that anyone is accusing Mammoth of being dishonest. I think the general consensus is if that were the case, that he probably didn't realize that he had heard it and probably remembers it as an original idea and not that he just stole this thing and lied about it. No, but it is impossible that it's a coincidence because of the language that's used in the one act, like resurrect dead molecules just resurrect them. On Jupiter. 2001 is mentioned, twin B is mentioned. It's just not possible that it's a coincidence somebody influenced somebody else. But yeah, it does seem to be honest from what I can tell to you. Alright, good. Time for a break. I think the mystery is mounting. I think so. I think people have their popcorn out and they're ready for part two. Okay, well, let's give it to them. We'll be right back. 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 josh, my friend, do you know where your passport is right now? Well, you better dig it up because Adventure is around the corner and there's a card that's going to get you closer. With the city Advantage Platinum Select Card, every swipe earns you Advantage miles and loyalty points, and two times Advantage Miles at restaurants and gas stations so your everyday purchases can take your travel to new heights. Plus, card members get access to built in travel benefits. For example, your first check bag is free on domestic travel, so you and your family have room to pack for every possibility, like coming home with extra souvenirs. And with preferred boarding, you'll be in your seat sooner, ready for take off. Into Adventure. 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And what you need is to make this refreshing crowd pleaser the star of your next party or gathering, because Martha Shar just might be the perfect summer wine. So come on. Let's work hard, play hard, and drink. Martha's Shard, available at a wine aisle near you. And on 19 crimescom. That's one. Nine crimescom. Please drink responsibly. All right, so you mentioned at the beginning Philadelphia is the centerpiece. And it is. I mean, I feel like we can almost certainly say that the tile maker lived in Philadelphia, perhaps still does. Not only did Philadelphia have the most concentration of tiles, and then it sort of spread from there boston, DC. Maryland, New York, again, sort of on a direct westward band out to Kansas City, like, through Cincinnati, but never anything south in this one neighborhood where they end up thinking they pinpointed the tile maker. They found all these little test tiles all over the place, just little bits of tile, little letters here and there, but the same script and the same technique. So it's pretty obvious that this is where it originated. Yes. I mean, that, to me, is like, well, there's your answer right there. Yeah. The people who were reporting having their TV interrupted by somebody driving down the street with their shortwave radio, that happened in Philadelphia, in the same neighborhood where those test tiles were later found by the documentary investigators. And that wasn't a mystery. Right. They were like, we know who that is. Stop doing it. Yes. And that became clear once those investigators visited that neighborhood and started talking to neighbors. Right. And one of the reasons they were able to link it was because the radio broadcast that was coming through their TVs from the guy driving down the street was talking about resurrecting the dead on Jupiter, an idea of Arnold Toynbees that was depicted in 2001. So, basically, this tile maker got this idea starting about 1979. They pin it down and was trying to figure out creative ways to spread this publicity and one of the first ways that they tried to do it was to turn to the press. And they called the Philadelphia Enquirer and tried to relate their ideas to one of the journalists there. A guy named Clark Dalian. And in very much the same way that they called Larry King three years before. Clark de Leon took the call and then wrote up a very unflattering piece about the idea and I think kind of set off that disdain for the media that the tile maker displays in some of the additional tiles. Yes, absolutely. So at some point, there was a group formed by the TM called the Minority Association. Upon further investigation in this documentary, it seems that it was not a group or an association at all. It was just this one person. And there are some little clues that we'll get to later on about that, but that was this group that was formed. And there were these radio broadcasts where the tile maker would say, I will send information if you want it to anyone who wants it. And someone did, because they had this stuff 20 years later, all these materials sent from the quote, unquote, Minority Association that the documentary filmmakers eventually got their hands on, which was a big find for them. Yeah. And it was really interesting to watch it in the documentary, how they managed to come across that. It was actually I was like, this is some really weird filler that they're using. And it finally led to finding these documents and turning up people who knew this guy back in the day. But when they got these documents, that's when a lot of the questions were filled in, because it was that minority associations like press materials, and it explained everything. Like anything, anything you had a question about before was basically answered in this. And most of the documents were signed by somebody named James Morasco, which, like you were saying, they believe now that the minority associated was just one person, the tile maker. And that the tile maker was using aliases to make it seem like there were more people than just one. And James Morasco was one of those aliases. It just so happens there was a James Morasco in Philadelphia who seems to have had nothing to do with this. It was just, again, an alias. Right. So that was a bit of a red herring. But elsewhere in the document, there was only one other name mentioned. It's these three dudes, basically, that became I don't know about obsessed, but it became like a fixation for them to solve this mystery. And this was at the very beginnings of the Internet, is when they started off there was no information when they first started looking on the Internet about the twin B tiles. Yeah, we should say their names, because they really did some good detective work. Justin Dur, Steve Weineick and Colin Smith are the three investigators. And then John Foy made the documentary and they all seem to have worked together for that. Yeah. And these guys did not know each other previously. They met online through their individual interest in the Toy tiles and got together and seemingly became friends as they investigated this. Which I think could have flushed out a little more in the documentary but that's fine human element to it. Sure. Well, yeah, they seem to really focus on Justin. Yeah, they did. He seems to be the guy that sort of ran with it the most. But the only other name in this Minority Association set of documents was Severino Verna. A-K-A sevy S-E-V-Y verna. And they tracked Sevi Verna down to this neighborhood in Philadelphia and they said, Well, Sebi Verna is the guy that rode around in the car broadcasting these ideas. And they were like, well, that's got to be him then. And they were like, he's a reckless. You don't see him much. He does his shopping in the middle of the night. There was this incident where because all this stuff happened some people broke in, like, held a knife to his throat because he was interrupting everyone's TV and all that stuff. And especially after that, it seemed like he became even more of a recluse. And they said, but he had this old car with this huge antenna and didn't have a passenger seat and had a big hole in the floorboard and it was just a mess. And they're knocking on this guy's door in the documentary and he's just not coming to the door. And in the meantime, they're exploring these other side roads either figuring out the deal with Morasco or there was another candidate named was it Railroad Jim? Which had a little bit of I can see why they went down that road but it became pretty clear that it wasn't Railroad gym. Yeah. And then same with James Morosco. He lived in Philadelphia at the time, but he died in, like, I think, 2003. And some of the tile makers, a lot of the tile makers tiles continued on after that time. That can be pointed as like no, these are definitely the original tile makers tiles. Because one of the things that clouds this mystery is there have been plenty of copycat. Of course. Some of them are just kind of following up like picking up with the tile makers laying down kind of thing. Other people seem to be actually trying to actively confuse people by making tiles that look as much and seem as much like the tile makers tiles. But these three Investigators, among others, have gotten so good at examining the tiles they can tell what's the tile makers and what's not and have even pointed to different periods. Do you know how artists like Picasso at a Blue period and all that? The tile maker has had periods over the years and some of them are so different that it wasn't until years later that these investigators have gone back and been like, actually, that was the tile makers. We thought he stopped for a while and this is a copycat. It was actually him all along. So it definitely was not James Morasco. His widow says, I have no idea what you guys are talking about with Jupiter or 2001. My husband had nothing to do with any tiles. Please stop calling. And then same thing with Railroad Jim. He died and the tiles continued on, so it couldn't have been him either. So it definitely seems to be Severino Verna. And there's just so many things that point to him, it's pretty much conclusive. Yeah. And we also should mentioned, beyond the regular kind of license plate size tiles, there was one sort of massive information dump tile set of tiles that just had a bunch of, like I mean, you can go online and read this one. It's really long. They talk about a lot of things from there seems to be an obsession with the Soviet Union, which during the Cold War, it sort of makes sense that this might be a thing. The media again, the tile maker talks about the Mafia breaking into his house to kill him, which is probably a reference to the people in the neighborhood who broke into threatening him. And it's just sort of a long, rambling info dump. I think when you talk to these three investigators or anyone that's in the 20 B tiles, there like, this is the real sort of Magna Carta, I guess, of the tile maker. And this has the most clues in it. I think we also forgot to mention that the reason they even found Verna was, I think it was one in Brazil, had an actual street address in Philadelphia that turned out to be Vernon's address. Oh, okay. I thought the address turned out to be a dead end, but there was definitely one of the earliest tiles, maybe the earliest tiles were those with the address in Philadelphia. So it turned out to be his, huh? Yeah, but I think that the only place that was on one tile in Brazil. Okay, I got you. Those were tiles from the mid eighty s. And they think that those tiles were put down before even one started appearing in Philadelphia. Yeah, and that's sort of like one of the mysteries of the documentary is that they eventually talked to Verna's mom because he's not answering the phone or the door. And she was like, Sebi doesn't travel, he's got a lung condition. And he wouldn't have traveled to South America or even outside of Philadelphia, really, because of this condition. Yeah, that's a puzzler because if you look at those tiles and the fact that it's a Philadelphia address in the same neighborhood, at least, as Sea Verna, it's definitely one of Verna's styles. It could have a proxy, I guess. I guess so. For sure. And they also say, like, why South America? There's apparently something in that book experienced by Arnold Toy. It's a bit of an autobiography as well. And he talks about going to these places that these tiles appeared in the 80s. So I guess it's possibly could have had a proxy do it, right? But here's the thing, and we'll leave you with this before our break. It seems very much 100% short savvy, but no one has ever seen this happen, these tiles that are embedded in asphalt. So the question for a long time remains still, how was this happening without how are these hundreds and hundreds of tiles getting embedded in the street without anyone ever seeing this guy do it? And we'll talk about that right after this. 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I remember what you're talking about, but I didn't read them. Kind of like Hardy Boys type thing. Sure, they were great. And every time I say Three Investigators, I keep thinking of that. It's very nostalgic for me. There's, like, a little portion of my brain that's really enjoying things right now. Not to say the rest of my brain isn't, but it's enjoying it in a different way. Your horse played it. I think I did, too. But these Three Investigators I can't even remember what I was talking about. We were talking about the fact that he had never been found doing this. Oh, yes. These Three Investigators, they narrowed down how this actually happened, and then further, they pieced together how Sevy Verna in particular would have done it, too. And it's pretty ingenious. Yeah. So the way they figured out how it was happening was a near miss, which was and this is crazy coincidence, but the lead investigator guy, Justin, was in Philly looking around, doing investigating. And a lot of this investigation at the time was literally walking around city streets looking down for these tiles. It was, like, kind of the hard way before the Internet was truly filled up with information about this. And they're some of the first guys that filled the Internet with this stuff. But he happened upon a fresh tile that had just been laid down that he said was not there when he passed by before. And he was like, it happened within minutes of when I was there. And it's in the documentary. It's pretty thrilling that this guy, he starts yelling around and saying that he's, I believe, then toying the idea is, where are you? Come out. Come out. And it's like, oh, my God. This guy's just, like, almost solved the case. But what they found was these tiles were and this is really pretty ingenious, actually, how it's done. They use, like, asphalt crack filler, like this black tarry stuff. And the key, though, is the tile is wrapped in roof paper, tar paper, which is black. So it's laid down, and it just looks black on top. And then over time, this thing is run over by cars and walked over and gets embedded further and further, and eventually the tar paper just wears away to reveal the tile. Yes. Isn't that amazing? It's amazing. So over the course of weeks, maybe even months, as this is being pushed down and melting into the asphalt, apparently on one of the tiles where he instructs people on making more tiles to do it themselves, he says, put them lay them in the summertime so that the sun will bake them into the asphalt. But he never provided any other really detailed instructions aside from that and said, Use asphalt, crack filler, and then that's it. So these guys managed to pieces together from that one tile, that fresh tile they found. But even still, the mystery remained on how they were appearing in some really strange places, like the middle of the street, like a busy street, the middle of a highway, the entrance of the Holland Tunnel. It would be, like, really dangerous for a person to be squatting down, like, trying to install one of these tiles, and they piece together by something. One of the neighbors told them that you had mentioned earlier that Chevy Vernon had a car that didn't have a passenger side seat and that had no floorboard or a huge hole in the floorboard. And what they figured out once they found this fresh tile is that he might pull up to a stoplight, might stop in the middle of the road, put his hazards on. Who knows? But he could lay down one of these pre made tiles with asphalt filler, crack filler on the bottom and tar paper on top, smooth it down, and then drive off and just wait for it to be revealed over the coming weeks or months. This is the part that I love more than any other part of this whole mystery, is the ingenious, elegant, yet simple way that this tile maker would do this. Yeah, I love it. And didn't even necessarily have to stop for too long. I get the impression that this thing is tarred on the bottom, such that you can just kind of drop it there and it will stay in place, I would guess. Drive over it with that back tire and it's in there. Yeah. And the idea that it's protected until it's revealed, like people walking on it, people driving on it, not paying any attention to it whatsoever, and then in doing so, they're actually helping anchor this piece. I just find that just like Chef's Kiss. Then the other part of it, too is it's ephemeral. Like, these things are made of linoleum embedded in the asphalt, and they're being driven over there, being walked over even after the tar paper is gone. So they're not meant to last very long. I saw, like, a lifespan of usually about a year. Oh, really? Yeah. And that's if the road crews don't happen to be repaving that street. In the meantime, in some cities, they actually go dig these things up when they're reported. I think Chicago and New York do that. But for the most part, they tend to just kind of linger along until they slowly like kind of get trashed and then are eventually repaved over. So it's an Ephemeral project as well that he's just constantly updating and doing and has been since the mid eighty s. Yeah. And you get a sense of the real delight from these three guys and then just other people in general of finding these and it's almost like a scavenger hunt and then when they find them assessing and appreciating and reveling in its condition like, oh, this one's pretty new, it's still in pretty good shape. Or look, there are only fragments of this one left. It's pretty neat. I mean, I'm going to New York in two days for the first time in two years and you can bet your bottom dollar I'm going to be trying to find one of these and get a picture. Well, you'll probably find there's a lot of copycats these days. Some, like we said, are trying to confuse the issue. Others are just kind of vibing on the tile makers vibe. It won't be suckered by any copycat. The most prolific is the House of Hades. They don't seem to care at all about resurrecting the dead on Jupiter, but they really like the idea of reducing all media and journalists to ash, which is kind of a side thing. Like we said, the Toy B tile maker is into. There's a good chance you will see some, but it's not necessarily a tile maker unless you actually go actively seek them out and you can find that on Twainb.com or not. Whatever it is, they have them like archived so you could go look for sure. Yeah. I mean, I'm going to cheat. I'm not just going to randomly walk around. Oh really? Three days trying to find tiles, looking down the whole time? Yeah, I got other stuff to do but people to see. But the other thing I want to mention too before we close is just I found myself watching this documentary and sort of exploring the idea of anonymity and how I feel about that in a case like this where you have someone who. Let's say this person has some sort of mental condition and this is their outlet and instead of standing there with a bullhorn on a street corner. This may be their messaging system. And when I saw these guys banging on the door and making phone calls to his mom, I was like, leave them alone. Yes. It kind of hurt to watch, huh? Yeah. And they even talk about that and they're trying to be respectful, but they do talk about the fact that they think they saw someone upstairs clearly at home not answering the door when it sort of hit them that like this person may be up there really scared. When the documentary came out there was a lull in activity from the tile maker. But then I thought, but then why are you going out and putting these things all over the place and seemingly trying to start a movement or attract attention. Although I don't know about the start of movement because it's not like that ever genuinely was the goal, I don't think. Yeah, it was. I don't know, it didn't feel like it to me. Because it seems like if that would have been the case, it would've been here's who I am and here's where we'll meet. I don't know. I'm not convinced that this person wanted other people involved. So imagine if you felt like you were the only person who understood what God wanted science to do, and you were a reckless who was not at all comfortable interacting with other people, what would you do? Well, when someone came knocking on your door saying, hey, listen, I think you're a great, brilliant thinker and I believe in this movement, I can help you get your word out, then you take them up on it. It seems like this person did not want to be discovered right. And thus did not want to start a movement to be at the center of yes. I don't think that he wanted to be at the center of it. I think he wanted this movement to start. Yeah, I don't know if I agree with that. So one of the things that was in that press kit that the guy wrote off for in the early eighty s and still kept for 20 or so years, it says as the most unusual scientific movement in the USA, the group wants the world to put all other affairs aside in order to scientifically colonize the planet Jupiter. If he believed that, and that's what his genuine aim was, but he felt totally ill equipped to actually publicize it himself, like making tiles and embedding them in a clever way, and asphalt actually kind of makes sense to me. See, I think that's the final mystery is the purpose of this to begin with. Yes. If you take it on face value, then he was trying to make resurrection happen, knowing he couldn't do it himself. He needed science to do it, but he had to rouse everybody to do it on his behalf, basically. Yeah. Who knows? Maybe it is just an ongoing art project. Who knows? I don't know. I think that's a mystery we'll never solve. In the documentary, it sort of closes on an interesting thing where I think the main guy tells the story of was it on a bus or something? Yeah, he thinks they're on a bus together. And it's sort of a mutual acknowledgement and eye contact of I know who you are, you're the guy that's been knocking on my door that did the documentary, and I know that you're the tile maker, but no words were exchanged. No. And he concludes like, I need to leave this guy alone forever. I just have to accept it and move on. That he doesn't want to be a part of this. Yeah. Very interesting. Yeah. Well, if you want to know more about the twin b tiles, there is a lot on the Internet that you can read about it. You can watch resurrected. It was pretty good documentary. Definitely worth $4. And since I said definitely worth $4 is time for listener mail. I'm going to call this phantom kidney. Hey, guys. You've been my go to for audio entertainment since 2012 when I was working to finish my forensic science graduate research. I finally have something to email about, though. Four years ago this May, I donated a kidney to my friend's mom. Technically, my kidney went to someone else directly because we were in the paired exchange program, which I learned about from you guys. Wow. And I actually experienced phantom kidney sensation. Wow. I know, right? Luckily, the phantom sensation was not painful, but almost a weird specific awareness and feeling. I mean, because who can actually feel their kidneys, right? But it was on the same side of the one that I lost and lower back. Who knows? It could have been placebo because they warned me that it was possible. But it was fascinating to learn of phantom organ pain firsthand and from you guys, yeah, just figured that was unique enough and sort of a fun learning experience. If you have an opportunity to emphasize the paired exchange program, please add it in again. Just by me jumping in to donate, three transplants were able to be performed. While every donation program is different, my experience was absolutely wonderful and I would gladly do it again if I had another despair. And if anyone were interested in more information, I would gladly share it with them. I love what you guys do. It's been fun going through life alongside you both. That is McKenzie from Maine, currently in Pennsylvania with one kidney. And yeah, definitely check out the paired kidney exchange program. If that's something that you are able to do, if you have a good, healthy kidney that you can helpily donate, then someone would be glad to take it off your hands. Emphasis added. Also, Mackenzie, I mean, hats off to you for doing that. That's an amazing thing that you did, and you deserve to be canonized. So congratulations. And if you want to be like Mackenzie and basically say, hey, you want to hear about this cool thing I did, you can send us an email, wrap it up, spank it on the phantom kidney and send it off to Stuff Podcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Shady Rays is an independent sunglasses company that gives you the features of $200 sunglasses for a fraction of the price and the strongest protection program in all of Iowa. Every pair of Shady Rays includes lost and broken protection, meaning if you lose or break your shades at any point, they'll send you a brand new pair, no matter what happened. Exclusively for our listeners, head to shadyrays.com and use code stuff for 50% off two or more pairs of polarized sunglasses. That's code stuffed. For 50% off two or more pairs only@shadyrays.com. 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 hey, everybody. If you have extra space or maybe you travel a lot, you should consider hosting on airbnb. Just think about all that extra income. You could contribute more to your retirement or pay for a big trip. And if the thing that's holding you back is that you're worried about your stuff, well, don't be. Airbnb gives you air cover for host damage protection that's free every time you host. Learn more and host with peace of mind@airbnb.com. Slash air cover for host." | |
Do zombies really exist? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/do-zombies-really-exist | In movies and stories, zombies are undead menaces that lurch around mindlessly, in search of flesh -- and braaaaaains! Where did the idea for zombies originate? Do they exist outside of fiction? Tune in to this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com to find out. | In movies and stories, zombies are undead menaces that lurch around mindlessly, in search of flesh -- and braaaaaains! Where did the idea for zombies originate? Do they exist outside of fiction? Tune in to this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com to find out. | Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:25:02 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=24, tm_hour=15, tm_min=25, tm_sec=2, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=267, tm_isdst=0) | 34991352 | audio/mpeg | "Are you looking for? An escape? An immersive getaway experience? Well, there's a place for all your wildest dreams. Perhaps you enjoy wrapping along the paperboy. Or you believe that blessed be the fruit. Or you dream of one day smashing a glass while stealing. Who's. Ah. Whether you're sworn to Team Kim or you just want a good old fashioned mysterious murder, there's a place that has it all. From Atlanta to only murders in the building, it's all on Hulu. So check into your obsessions. Hulu subscription is required. Terms apply. Visit hulu.com for plan details brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry it's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Chief McClellan. How's everything going? Things aren't going too bad. Men are taking it pretty good. Do you think we'll be able to defeat these things? Well, we killed 19 of them today, right in this area. It was last three we caught trying to claw their way into an abandoned shed. They must have thought somebody was in there. We heard them making all kinds of noise. We came over and beat them off, blasted them down. Chief, if I were surrounded by six or eight of these things, would I stand a chance with them? Well, there's no problem. If you had a gun, shoot them in the head. That's a sure way to kill them. If you don't, get yourself a club or a torch, beat them or burn them. They go up pretty easy. Well, Chief McCullen, how long do you think it will take you until you get the situation under control? Well, that's pretty hard to say. We don't know how many of them there are. We know when we find them, we can kill them. Are they slow moving, chief? Yeah, they're dead. They're all messed up. And with that, Mr. George A. Romero pretty much set the scene for all zombie movies to follow. Thanks for tuning in. This is stuff you should know. I'm Josh Clark. This is Charles W. Braineater Bryant. Hi. And welcome to the podcast. Yeah, thanks, Chuck. Somebody had to say it, right? Yes. So how are you doing? I tried to get one of those zombies to say it. That'd be pretty cool. I'm still wet. It's still raining in Atlanta. Good Lord. I feel like we have remember that picture of the supercell I printed out for the webcast? I feel like one of those is hovering over the perimeter. That picture in your wallet with you and show it to people like yourself. Did you know that in, I believe, Ecuador, once a year there's a heavy storm and after about 2 hours, the storm subsides and everybody goes out and there's fish. There's fish laying everywhere. Well, some still alive. The rain of fishes. The weird thing is that they aren't found in any surrounding body of water. Nor are they saltwater fish. Crazy. They are blind underground dwellers. Zombie fish? Yeah. Let's use that as their segue. Cool. Chuck, let's talk zombies. Alrighty. Let's go with the real stuff first. Did you know that there may be such a thing as real zombie? Yeah, I didn't know until I read this. And where are you going to go if you want to find a real zombie? You go to the source, man. You go to the horse's mouth, you go to Haiti. Yes. That was serpent in the rainbow, right? Yeah. West. Craven flick mid High School for me. Very scary. Bill Pullman. Yeah. And the weird thing is Wes Craven's not known for making movies based on true stories, but that one was one of my heroes, the ethnobotanist and anthropologist Dr. Wade Davis, who is Harvard grad, I think he has a doctorate and two bachelors from Harvard, two more than me. Right. And he went down to Haiti in the early 1980s for what was called the zombie Project. Yes. Because of a certain man. Drew his attention. Right. Yeah. How do you pronounce that? Clarvius Narciss. Yeah, that's how I pronounce it. Yeah. He started poking his head around in 1980 in a Haitian village and said, hey, I died 18 years ago. Yes. And apparently the similarity to his original self sure. And the facts that he knew about his former life passed a battery of test questions. Yeah. It was enough to make his friends, family, I guess, the estimates about 200 people who saw him say that guy is a zombie. Right. And claimed a boqr brought him back to life. Or brought him back to the undead state. Right. Chuck, so Clairville shows up in the thing that makes him significant is that he had been pronounced dead by American doctors who apparently carry more weight in the field of medicine and science. Was documented. Yeah. They documented his death. Sure. So when he showed up in 1980, he presented a substantial case for the existence of zombies and a guy named Dr. Lamarck Duan, who's a Haitian psychiatrist, interviewed him, started interviewing Bocore and got his hands on some zombie powders. Right. And then entered Dr. Wade Davis. Right. Now, he wasn't the guy that originally said to go get these powders, right? No. That was Nathan Klein. Right. He wanted some of these powders to see if they could be used as anesthetics and surgery. Yes. Which I don't get that. Why not just use anesthetic? Unless I guess you found some cheaper, safer, maybe anesthetic. Sure. Well, I mean, if you come up with your own anesthetic, I imagine there's some dollar amount attached to that. That's true. So let's talk about this. He sends Dr. Davis down to Haiti and Dr. Davis kind of takes up where Doctor Duan left off or maybe kind of takes over his research. And he himself interviews Bokor, which are, again, those voodoo priests, and interviews some of the zombies, some of these undead people. Right. Yeah. And he comes to find that he concludes that there is, in fact such a thing as zombies. Right. They're specific to Haiti, though, as far as he can tell. Sure. And it's a two step process, Chuck, and how to make someone a zombie. But first they have to die, I would think. No. Or is that a three step process? No, I thought zombies had to be dead first. We're talking Haitian zombies. We'll get to the Hollywood zombie soon. Okay. Well, the Bokor has to capture their soul. What's that? Tibonash? Sure. I suppose it's French, right? Yeah. That's apparently part of the soul directly connected to the individual, and once he captures that they are a zombie. Right. That's Haitian folklore. Yes, sure. Dr. Davis, being a scientist, tried to get beyond that. He found that most educated Haitians, we should say, in those who live in the city, don't tend to believe in zombie ism, even though it's part of law. It is there's. Interesting what? Back to 1835. Right? Yeah. Article 246 of the Haitian penal code basically says that you can't make someone a zombie. Right. That you'll be charged with attempted murder or murder if the person actually manages to get buried. Even if they're not dead yet, for all intents and purposes, it's still considered murder under Haitian law. Thank God. Okay. So Dr. Davis gets past this belief that's mainly held by rural, uneducated, poor Haitians right. That the Bocor are capable of sorcery that can steal your soul. What do they get out of this? That's what I could never peg. Is there some money on the back end or something? No, there's precisely no money involved, and it's not for any personal gain, their status as a Bokor? No. What it is is there is a secret Haitian society called Bazango. The Freemasons. No, they're not the Freemasons, but they might as well be. Basically, this is the group that de facto runs the country, supposedly. But, I mean, this is documented. This is from Davis's Research. Right. So the Bizango, there are not necessarily voodoo priests, but there are voodoo priests who are part of the Bizango. And Zombification is only used in cases of punishment where a member of the Bizango, say a family member, got you, has gone against the will of his or her family or the will of the Bazango community as a whole. It's just a severe punishment. So you would have been Zombified in our house works culture over and over again. And actually, Clairvius yes, Clairvius Narcissus said that he was Zombified because at the behest of his brothers, Got You, because he wouldn't go along in selling the family land with them. Right. Another documented zombie named T. Fem, she's a woman. She said that she was zombified by the will of her family because she refused to marry the man they wanted her to marry, and she had a baby by another man. So generally it's retaliation. It's punishment for transgressions against Bizango society or a person's family who is a member that is a member of Bazango society. Yeah. It's got to be a little money in the back end for the owner. You would think so, but Davis was adamant in his research that that's not the case. Right. Right. Okay. So let's get to how you make somebody a zombie. Well, you got the powder. Right. You have the powder and magic powder. What Davis found was that this powder he took, I think, eight samples and found that seven of them had some ingredients in common. Right, Chuck? Yes. Let me go over those. Yeah. He found the puffer fish, which contains a deadly neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin. Found a marine toad, which also has a bunch of toxins, numerous toxins. You don't want to lick this, don't want to lick that one. A hilar tree frog, which secretes an irritating but not deadly substance. Some human remains in all of these. Those are the common ingredients. And then things like skin irritants, they figured, like, spiders and lizards ground up in there would irritate your skin. Same with the highlight tree frog. So basically, the reason you would want to have a skin irritant is because the zombie powder is traditionally applied on the skin. Sure. It's topical, right? Exactly. So what happens is it's applied to the skin, it creates cracks and breaks in the skin, and then it seeps in through there. Right. And then it produces this Zombified person. Basically, you start to have trouble breathing. Do not respond to stimuli. No. You become paralyzed. You have a glassy eyed stare. Right. But you're still maintaining your normal mental state. You're still aware of what's going on. You just can't do anything right. Sharpen the rainbow. Exactly. You know, you're getting buried alive and having the sheep pulled over you. Right. That's actually what Narci said. He said that he remembered and saw the doctors pulling the sheet over his head after they pronounced him dead. I wonder if that's what that felt like. How was that for you? I imagine it probably wasn't very good. Right? Yeah. So you know what's going on. You can't do anything about it. And this truck, Davis, is particularly interesting because what does it check? The tetra detoxin. Davis started researching and found that in Japan, there's a stuff called fugu. Right. Which is a kind of sushi delicacy that's made from the pufferfish. It's very dangerous, but it apparently tastes like a twinkie. Right. Nice. Yeah, a raw twinkie. But if you make the cut wrong and too much of this tetradotoxin ends up in it, you get your poison. And the symptoms were virtually the same as what people who were Zombified reported. Right. That's awesome. Should we trust our sushi chef and order some up? I guess. I imagine that with fugu, you get what you pay for. You don't want to cheap out with fugu. You don't want to go dollar sushi on the fugu. So that's step one. You administer the zombie powder and then the person is pronounced dead. Yes. You bury them, then you go get them. Well, that's the revelation moment. That's what makes the bokor look like they've done their thing. Nice reference to our brainwashing podcast. Thank you. Yeah. And I love the back door there for the Bocore. If it doesn't work, there's a little loophole where he says that if the procedure doesn't work, that divine intervention can always prevent this from happening. Right. So anytime it doesn't work, that's his go to. Or if the powder is prepared to kill too strongly. Right. So you've got somebody. Right, exactly. It's like, well, hey, it didn't work this time. And plus, anyway, once you've administered the zombie powder, I guess under Haitian law, you're in for a penny, in for a pound anyway. Right, sure. So that's step one. Right. Chuck? You've zombified the person. Step two is to get to their grave within about 8 hours. Right. And you assume them, and when you do, you feed them something called a zombie cucumber. Was that the salt? No, you don't want to feed them salt. That restores their senses. Right. The zombie cucumber is a combination of sweet potato and the tura. That sounds nice. Jimson weed, which is one of the more hallucinogenic plants available. Man, that sounds really nice. Yeah. So when you've got somebody who's already, like, half paralyzed and has been buried, that's a pretty traumatic experience. Right, Chuck? I would imagine, yeah. So the next step is to feed them a highly hallucinogenic concoction sure. And watch them go. Right. So that's step two of creating a zombie. What Davis came up with was that none of this would work, Chuck, unless you were in Haiti, because all of it had the social support for belief that zombies can exist. So once you've gone through this process, you're not an American thinking about, oh, I'm a zombie. Right. As Tracy Wilson put it in her How Zombies Work article that we're basing this on, she said, in another culture, if you have tetradoxin tetradotoxin poisoning, you're just a toxin poisoning victim. Right. But in Haiti, because of this belief among some people that there is such a thing as zombies, that supports the experience. And all of a sudden, this person is spending X number of years as basically a zombie slave. Right. Like snake handlers. Sure. Most people would think you're just a redneck that got big by snake, and they think that it was all divine. Right. Yeah. That's actually very much the same. Nice one shot. I just pulled that one out of my texture. That was great. Smells delicious. Thanks. So a lot of people do you want to get to where people think davis wasn't exactly on the level? Sure. On all levels, yeah, because it all sounded good until the article turned a little bit and said, no, not quite. Well, yeah, it definitely depends on where you're coming from. But there's a tremendous amount of criticism for somebody like Davis who's saying zombies exist. Right. Because one thing he did, which you mentioned, was dig up bodies or supervise the digging up. Well, he was there. At least he was there. And a lot of scientists didn't like that. No, I thought that kind of goes against the code of ethics somewhere across the boundary, and I think I might agree with that. Yeah. They also questioned the initial experiments with the powder and if they were scientific enough, because he practices on, like, monkeys and rats when he got back to the States. Right. Yeah. He made zombie rats. Yeah. It's pretty cool. Yeah. So they questioned the initial experiments. They didn't know, like, if he had added anything else to the powder, I guess he says he didn't, but they weren't there to witness that. So they questioned that. Right. What else? Oh, yeah. This one I found odd. They found samples contained no tetradotoxin. Yeah. And he said that you guys are putting it in some sort of solvent to carry out these tests. So you may have destroyed it. Iffy, though, maybe. I think one of the big points about this in Davis's defense, is that his reputation academically is still very much intact years after this. He published two books on it, the Serpent and the Rainbow came out and he survived that. Right. I can't imagine that made him look really good among his academic peers. And this guy is still doing more and more research. He's a National Geographic Explorer in residence, which, as you know, I think is one of the coolest things ever. Yes. So his reputation is still intact and he's still a respected ethnobotanist and anthropologist. Another point that people made, though, Chuck, was that a lot of these people who were supposedly zombies were chalked up to mistaken identity cases of mental illness. Exactly. Kind of like Jerusalem syndrome. If you live in Jerusalem right. You're going to have a much higher tendency of believing that you're a reincarnated saint or prophet than if you live in Detroit. Exactly. What are you going to say in Denver? Okay. Yeah. I'm glad you said Detroit, though. Are we moving on to Denver now? Maybe. All right. Yeah. West, young man. So, Chuck, that's the Haitian zombie, the real, quote unquote real zombie, we should say. As far as I could turn up, there's no one who satisfactorily debunked Clairvius Narcissus story. Right. And also, I should also say that at no point did Davis say that these people were dead in any way, shape or form, or they were strictly poisoned by the specific toxin that brought them, that lowered their vital signs. They were pronounced dead and then they were revived by Deterra. Right. And then believed that they were zombies. They were not dead and brought back to life. So those are real zombies. Let's do fake zombies. That started not started, but very much kickstarted with George Romero's classic that we played earlier, night of the Living Dead. Oh, did you hear that was our colleague Chris Paulette. Did you hear that, Brain? I was going to do that, but apparently Jerry said Chris nails it. Yeah, he does. There he is. Can you tell, Brains? Right. That's pretty good too, Chuck. Yeah. So Romero starts the whole thing off. Basically, he comes up with all the rules of the game, like we heard at the beginning of this podcast. Right. Actually, Tracy did say that movies as early as 1919 had zombies, so save your fingers on the keyboard from typing. And he wasn't the first. Nice. He definitely brought it into the mainstream. And zombie movies forever after were based on, like you said, his world and his rules. Like, for example, he was the one that said if you can destroy a zombie's brain or detach his brain from the rest of its body, that's it for the zombie. Everybody knows if you want to kill the zombie, you got to cut their head off. Basically, that's Romero. Or blow their head off with a gun. I should tell you that our colleague and sometimes standing producer Matt Frederick got really excited when he found out we were doing a podcast on zombie. Oh, really? He thinks that a Remington pump action shotgun is the best weapon to have against a zombie. I would say that in one hand and a samurai sword and another would be pretty cool. You'd be doing well for yourself. I'm more a battle axe man myself. Although we're going to talk about the Canadian mathematician study eventually. Okay. We don't stand a chance if there's a real zombie attack, dude. Well, it depends on what we do. Let's talk about that. Is the one with Robert Smith oh, yeah. With a question mark name. Yeah, the guy has a question mark at the end of his name. Robert Smith and one of his colleagues, both mathematicians at the University of Ottawa, they used contagious disease models yeah, pandemic models to study out the math of whether or not we could actually survive a zombie attack. A slow moving zombie. Yes. They specifically picked the classic slow moving zombie, and they still found that unless humans strike fast, strike often, and strike increasingly escalatingly, we're in big trouble. Right. So that you can't do the oh, geez. We got to learn a humanitarian way to put these zombies down. Like District Nine. You got to go in, don't even bother trying to figure out how to cure it. You just have to kill everybody you find. Exactly. And that was another thing that Romero established with Night of the Living Dead, was that zombies beget zombies. Right. In his version, what happened was a zombie was somebody who was killed by a zombie was brought back because of this radiation from a satellite that had returned to Earth that was causing the dead to rise in the first place. So if you were killed while that radiation was still around, you were inevitably going to come back. And also, did you know that George Romero got his start shooting segments for Mr. Rogers Neighborhood? I think I did know that. Really? Yeah. He also established some other rules about their strength. They're very strong, but typically slow moving. Although there have been movie offshoots with the fast moving zombie. Of course it depends. Well, so they're fast or slow. Well, like 28 Days Later is technically not a zombie movie because no one who is a zombie is actually dead. Now they're infected by whatever that was a disease. The infection. Yeah. I don't remember what it's called. But there are some other fast moving zombies I've seen in other movies. Resident Evil. Again, they had some hurky jerky. Fast moving zombies. Right? Yeah. Again, Matt Frederick thinks is the perfect zombie motion. What herky jerky? Herky jerky. Whatever is in Resident Evil, he's hip with because he said that's where the pump shotgun is. I like the slow movers. Yeah, they're a lot more comforting. But it was always funny to me to watch those movies and think, you're all faster than the zombies. How could you ever get but you get surrounded. That's what happens. Surrounded is the big problem. Are we going to get into that? How to avoid getting eaten by zombie? Yeah. Okay. Well, we should wrap up the rules first. They're in purpose to pain. You can hit them in the face of the baseball bat and they'll just keep lumbering forward. So you really have to cut their head off. You can cut their arm off. And they'll walk with one arm. They'll cut a leg off and they'll hop at you. Oh, yeah. Their arm will come at you. Return to the living dead. Yeah. Or Evil Dead. Yes, two. And they are driven to eat. Relentlessly driven to eat. They're afraid of fire and light, so they'll come out at night. They want to eat your brain. That actually came later. That largely returned to the Living Dead from 1985, where they actually have a zombie pinned down. And it's just this woman's torso and arms and head. And this medical examiner doctor says, why do you eat humans? She goes, not humans, brains. That's the clip he sent me today. Let's hear Paulette do it again. Nice. Thank you, Paulette. So good. Yeah. That was that clip I sent you. That was awesome. What else, Chuck, are there anymore? How are zombies created? In Romero's version, it was radiation from a returning satellite. Yeah. In Night of the Comet, it was a comet. And 28 Days Later, if you want to consider that zombie movie and Resident Evil, it was a virus that was passed around. I love Night of the Comet, by the way. I just want to go on record. Yeah. I love that movie. That was a good movie. Well, it's very dated. And kind of very awful 80s movie, but it was time to dated the second it came out. It was, but it was really for a 13 year old watching HBO on a Saturday afternoon, it was pretty perfect. Did you have a crush on the younger sister too? I had a crush on both. A couple of hot cheerleader chicks. Yeah, it was nice. I learned a lot about watching that film. But you did came of age to know the comment. I did. All right, so how do you find them? Yeah, I mean, Chuck, let's say that Robert Smith, his prediction comes true. And by the way, we should say their paper is called when zombies attack. And there's an exclamation point. Robert Smith, he's big on punctuation. You now include an exclamation point at the end of your name and your email signature. Don't think so. Right. Let's say we were getting attacked. Let's say Robert Smith is right on the money. What do we do? Well, first of all, you want to go to a place if you're going to retreat, you want to retreat to a place that has plenty of supplies. True. Preferably one of those walmarts. I don't know if they're still around or not. That also sells guns and ammunition and groceries. Yes. The superstore super death center. Yeah, you want one of those because you want a hole up in there. You can last as long as you need to. There's probably communications equipment in there. And again, you've got guns, hose, machetes, anything blending your favorite weapon. I told you. Battle axe. Oh, that was yours? Yes. You know I've changed mine. What? Crossbow with those rainbow exploding arrows. That would be sweet. That would be awesome. Wow. I would like to kill them before they even get close to me. Yeah, I think it'd be unsettling to be face to face. So where are we? We're in the Walmart or Costco or Target or wherever. Sure. And the zombies are attacking. You want to stay away from where there's people. So that would be a good place. Yeah, that was a really good point that Tracy made, that if you're in the midst of a zombie epidemic, just like any other epidemic, it's going to spread more quickly and have more casualties in a populated area. If you live in Manhattan, you probably want to get the heck to Long Island. I would say sure, too sweet. But as anyone who've seen 28 Days Later knows, you still want to be on your guard, even out in the sticks. Yeah. The old cottage in the marsh, that's not a good place to go either because they're going to be waiting for you in the movie version. Yeah. You want to barricade everything so Michael Jackson and his cohorts can't get in. Nice. You like that? Yeah. Actually that's more applicable than ever. Chuck, I know you want to not back yourself into a corner because that's what we talked about. You always end up getting surrounded. And just like in Thriller, I believe she backed herself into a corner, literally yes, she did. In that house and send it upon, like, walls. Her hands came out of the wall. She was in trouble. I don't know if I'd want to be inside at all. Come to think of it, I'd want to get my supplies and go to the mountains. That's what I do. Yeah. Like getting a tent. I don't know if a tent offers that much protection. You want to be able to barricade. Well, I would just want to be in the open so I could run. I would never want a wall around me anywhere. Yeah. That's just how I do it. That's how I party. Give us some words to tell you. Party with Zombie death. Well, Tracy said wait for rescue and make long term preparations for your survival. I guess so. But what if you want to fight the zombies? I think you can do both at the same time. Hers is kind of a run and hide mentality. Yeah, I think Tracy would be good to have on your team. It'd be good to have somebody like us armed with battle axes, crossbows, pump action shotguns, but then have Tracy maybe behind the semicircle thinking about what we need to be doing a year from now. Maybe mix it all together. Because you don't want just boneheaded thick MC rock skulls. What are her about him? Zombieland. Yeah. During the making of Zombieland, when he blamed remember he attacked those photographers? He got all in trouble because he attacked some photographers. And his excuse was that he was playing a zombie hunter in this movie. I think it was actually shot in Atlanta called Zombieland. And he told the judge that he was so caught up in that character and so in character as a zombie hunter that he reacted too aggressively to the photographers wow. Who followed them around like zombies. I guess Batman is a pro. Yeah, he's a pro. Smoked a huge joint. Yes, he did. Got off scot free, probably. At least he didn't play bongos naked or anything like that. Yeah. Who was that? McConaughey. Yeah. Nice. Didn't you hang out with him? Yeah, McConaughey. Actually, speaking of Zombieland, I just saw today where the director of that film was going to have Patrick Swaysy play a swazi zombie, like as himself come back from the dead. Swazi zombie. Originally it was written into the script, and this was before he got sick or anything. Okay. So obviously no, I mean, the movie is just coming out, so this is a while ago. And then he got sick. He contacted him and everything, and he had fallen ill and couldn't do it. And I think he got some other big star to do it, and they're trying to keep that a secret or something. Who is it? I don't know. Fish. I tried to find. Out? I couldn't. When did it come out? I don't know. Soon. I saw the preview the other day. So soon? Okay. Chuck basically there's some pretty common sense things you want to avoid in a zombie attack. Like don't lock yourself in a car that you don't have keys to. We'll call these movie things because this is what always happens. Movie things? Yeah. In the movie, they get in, they don't have the key, and then you're thinking, why did you get in the car if you didn't have a key? Right. You don't want to leave any implements that a zombie could use as a weapon out for them to find and pick up. Yeah. Because they can use basic weapons only. Do not give a weapon to a hysterical person. You have no idea what they're going to do. And at the very least, they're not going to use it properly. Yeah. And you'll end up really regretting that. There's other stuff, like getting into an elevator and a building infested with zombies. You don't want to go on a retreat to a seller or something without taking supplies with you. Sure. God knows how long you're going to be down there. I got one. How about you fight the sudden urge to make out with a zombie? Yeah, that'd probably be a good thing to do. Sure. That happened in Night of Living Dead, wasn't it? Oh, really? Yeah. The girl was like Johnny. Yeah. And he was like, yeah. So that happens sometimes. Awesome. Chuck, let me talk about one of my favorite zombies. Okay. Reanimator. Did you see it? You know, that was the Lovecraft story based on classic film. Yeah. Bmovie, you remember the guy decapitates either his mentor or the dean of the school. I can't remember. Herbert west. He decapitates them with the shovel and he's like, awesome, I've got another specimen to work on. And he uses the serum to reanimate both the head and the body, which is highly unusual because in most zombie films, once the head is detached from the body, that's it. Bye bye. But he was reanimating it after it was detached, so hence that's how you break the rules. Okay. There were sequels to that, too. I think there were. But do you know what's particularly unsettling about reanimator, but that there's actual research into that very stuff going on right now into human reanimation. Cool. Max Planck Institute. I was reading an article that was linked from a crack blog post. You love that website. I do, it's great. And it was, I think, from 1999 or 2000, and they're like, we're getting close. Actually, we found out that it's not cardiac arrest. Your brain doesn't die as a result of cardiac arrest like we thought. Instead, we destroy it when we try to reanimate it. So now we're trying to be a little more general. And actually we've gotten a brain to kind of function after it's been dead for an hour. We didn't get the whole organism reanimated, but we're working on it. Right. And I just went, what kind of makes sense. Was it futurama that had the different heads in the jars and they could actually still talk and everything? Sure, yeah. I mean, from the neck down, it's really not a lot going on besides organ function and moving. If you could find a way to wire the brain up and keep it from decaying, you can keep partying, man. Yeah. Keep on trucking. Let's see if you want to keep on trucking with zombies, you can go read the article written by our esteemed colleague Tracy Wilson, who knows a lot about zombies, probably more than she should know. It's a good one. You can type in zombies in the handy search bar@houseupworks.com, which means it's time for listener mail. Yes, the return of listener mail. Josh, I'm going to call this listener mail from the dude in the band that you know about, Jerry. I like this guy. Hey, there Chuck and Josh and Jerry. I'm riding on behalf of my band. We're an indie rock and roll band from Eagle Rock, Glendale, California. This is where I used to live. We've been lucky enough on our tour for a good chunk of the year to be on tour for a good chunk of the year opening for bigger acts. While on tour, we constantly fight over who gets controlled. The CD player in the van gets nasty sometimes. We frequently run in opposite directions to our trusty ipods. It's pathetic. Five guys in a smelly van, each in our own little world, not talking. Tired and cranky, I quickly learned to resent touring, and the 45 minutes on stage wasn't worth the hours of driving and sleeping in dumpy motels and on couches. So they were not having a good run of it. Sadly, I liked this exposition. Right. Well, as we were headed back on the road, our old base has sent us off with a spindle of stuff you Should Know podcast burn to a CD. They were reluctant at first to throw it into the CD player, but find ourselves intrigued by how cannibalism works better. For sure, better. Body Farms would say it'd be a good fit for indie rockers. Yeah, it was one of the first episodes we listened to. We were hooked. After that, the ipods went away. The band started talking more in the van. The podcast ignited debates. We joked about our favorite lucid dreams, cringed at the image of a dog eating its owner's face, drooled at the thought of a banana cream Twinkie. I also panicked because my girlfriend recently dyed her hair red. So he just wanted to say thanks for bringing the Spark back in their touring. They listened to 20 hours of the show driving through Kansas and Montana, and we've been all around the country with them, and they burned another CD for the next upcoming tour. Did you just have a stroke a second ago. I did. So they're playing here in Atlanta, actually, soon. The Henry Clay people, right? The Henry Clay people's. Name of the band. And they are actually awesome. Yeah. You have their music, right? Yeah, they're great. I like it a lot. And we get people that send in their band stuff sometimes, and it's not very good. Are we going to go? I'm going to go. I wrote him back and he still has not responded, so maybe he's on tour and can't get through. Put me down for a plus one, will you, Jerry? You going? All right. Yeah, we're going to be there. The Variety Playhouse in Atlanta october 7. Rocking out to the Henry Clay people. Nice. Opening up for airborne toxic event. Yeah, which is a big tour for Henry Clay people. That's good for them. It's good rock and roll, Raucous. Rock and roll. You know, it's funny. That's exactly what Chuck said in an email to me and Jerry when he's like, I like these guys. Rock and roll. It's good. It's like good drinking music. Like early stones or something. Right on. Let's go. October 7. All right, well, if you want to see if you can entice Chuck, Jerry and I to come out to see whatever, or if we left out your favorite zombie movie, which we inevitably have, you can send an email inviting us and or chastising us to stuffpodcast@housetuffs.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Want more housestuffworks? Check out our blog on the Housetofworks.com homepage, brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means schools out, the sun's shining, the daylight is longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from exactly right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen 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." | ||
Homeschooling: Not Just For Hippies and Religious People Anymore | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/homeschooling-not-just-for-hippies-and-religious-p | Back in the 1970s, homeschooling was illegal in the U.S., but after activists of all stripes lobbied lawmakers, schooling kids at home has become a viable option for parents. And as more and more have chosen it, it's become more mainstream. | Back in the 1970s, homeschooling was illegal in the U.S., but after activists of all stripes lobbied lawmakers, schooling kids at home has become a viable option for parents. And as more and more have chosen it, it's become more mainstream. | Thu, 11 Dec 2014 14:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=11, tm_hour=14, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=345, tm_isdst=0) | 47496997 | 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 Knowles with us again. Which means it's stuff you should know. I did. That would have been good for the cliff diving episode. Remember that one? Oh, man, that was interesting. You have parents, Chuck? I do. Who were both educators. Yeah, right, sure. Dad, principal, mom, teacher. And I was wondering while I was researching this, because we're talking about home school today, I wasn't home schooled. You weren't home schooled. Now, in a way, you were home schooled because I was in my dad school. Right, exactly. But I wondered, like, if you were raised with any kind of opinions one way or another on homeschooling because of both your parents profession. No, not at all. Because when I was in school and when you were in school, it wasn't super popular. Well, it may have been illegal in a lot of places. Yeah, I guess that's a good point. To bring up schooling education History 101, it started compulsory school attend. It started in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts yeah. In 1852, and by Mississippi, of course, was the last state to I'm so sorry, mississippi. It was the last state to demand compulsory attendance by law. And then for many years it was that way, like you had to go to school. That was when I think the movement really started, but I think possibly into the 90s. Like there were states where you had to go to school. Yes. And we should point out up front and that every state is different when it comes to laws about home schooling. So this is a super high view. We would have to do 50 podcasts to really get into the nitty gritty of the finer points of home schooling in each state, for sure. So, yeah, we're going to do an overview. But you are right. Home schooling, it wasn't around until they started to really there was a group of grassroots people who got together and started organizing and got home schooling laws passed. Apparently they were trying really hard to get the Supreme Court to rule on a case, a home schooling case once and for all. That would give it some sort of constitutional or federal protection that may lead to like a federal law or mandate, but they haven't gotten to that point. Instead, it's just been state by state, which is fine. Very few kids go to school. Interstate, right? Yeah. Or interstate, I should say. But there's no federal legislation. It's like you say, all the states have different laws. They all have homeschooling or allow for home schooling, which is pretty amazing in and of itself, considering in 1970 it was illegal. And hold on, let me say one more thing to Chuck. There's an article out there called A 500 Year Moment. It's on a new magazine called Moria mooria, and the article was written by a guy named Dougald Hein, who is an awesome thinker who I believe is Scottish. I've only seen them online, but this is an amazing, best article I've read in years as far as content goes. But one of the things he touches on is compulsory education in the history of it and how it was used to basically turn children into responsible, unquestioning little drones. And this is what originally gave birth to the home school movement. Yeah. I want to be more in control of how my child how and what my child gets educated with. Exactly. Because that's what free public education does. It indoctrinate your children. And for some people, it's like, great, this is free daycare because I work, my husband works, or it's just me and I work and I've got to have a place for my kids and if they're learning along the way, awesome. So there is something that free public education gives to people, but a lot of people said, I want a better hand in that because you don't really have much say in what your kids are taught in public school. Yeah. There are polls conducted and generally states like to keep track of why you are homeschooling so they can theoretically, I guess, get better at their public schooling. So in most states when you apply to home school, you have to give a reason. And this study was actually from a while ago, but I saw a recent one that the numbers are pretty close, so I think the reasons are fairly consistent. About 30% or so say it's out of concern about the environment of the school. Right. About 30% are for religious or moral reasons. So a lot of Christians are up in arms about the secularization of schooling over the years, and they want to be able to teach their kids stuff from the Bible and stuff. Regular curriculum. Yeah. And then about 16% because they're dissatisfied, basically dissatisfied with the instruction in either the curriculum or the teaching. Right. I don't think they're getting a good enough education. If I put my kids through this meat grinder, I don't think they're going to come out as smart as I want them to be. So I'm going to teach them myself. Yeah. And this is not an indictment of teachers or public schools because, boy, we know how hard you people work and what you're up against. Yes, but I went to public school and I just used the word myself. Yeah, but you're a big shot podcaster. Yeah, that's true. A couple of sort of not so fun things upfront about taxes because I started wondering if you're home schooling your kid, a, do you get tax breaks because you're buying this stuff, the curriculum? And B, do you have to pay taxes, education taxes for your kid that's not going to public school? Since there's no federal law requirement or mandate or anything regarding home schooling, I would guess you have zero tax break on the federal level, but probably on state level. In some states you would, right? Boom. Federal government doesn't offer anything right now. Some states, I think. Illinois, Louisiana, Minnesota offer tax credits. You can write off a lot of stuff, I think in Louisiana specifically applies to 50% of eligible expenses during a year, up to $5,000 per kid. Oh, that's a nice break. Yeah, it's not too bad. Well, plus also you remember there was this huge movement to get tuition vouchers given to kids to go to private school, like lower income kids, to get more of a mixture of people in private schools. Apparently in some states you can take that voucher and just use it to fund your home school. So that's actually opening up the home schooling door for a lot of people who didn't have that opportunity before because they just couldn't afford it one way or another. Yeah. And things are changing every year. This will be out of date a year from now. I know Ohio had it on the docket to consider they were voting, I think, to decrease property taxes if you were a home school home, but I couldn't find sometimes it's hard to find where these Senate bills sometimes they just seem to disappear. Yeah. That means they haven't been voted on, I guess. No, I think that the people like really, the senators really rally behind them around election time and they get reelected and they're like, I have kickbacks to go get bothered with this stuff. That's disappointing. And then California is one of twelve states where home schooling is considered a private school exemption. So you're sort of your own private school in the state of California. You don't pay property taxes or anything like that. I'm not sure about that for taxes, but they basically consider you part of the private school pool. Well, that twelve states. That taxing though, too, is a real reason there's a tug of war between home school people and public school administrators. Because for every people you have in your school, you get X number of federal dollars and you start to lose kids to home school, then you're losing federal funding and your whole school suffers because it's not like that money covers that kid down to the penny. It frequently goes over and you can use that for the school and for all this other stuff. I don't want to call it a vicious cycle because it's not like that's a pretty good term for it, actually. The public schools are perceived as failing in their mission, so they lose students, and by losing students to homeschooling, they lose funding and so they are doomed to fail even further in their mission. Yeah, that's a pretty vicious cycle now I think about it. Yeah. But the real truth is there aren't that many kids that are home schooled. Still. Three something. Is that what you got? Yeah. I saw a more recent one I got anywhere from 1.7 to two point something, but oh, I thought you were going to say percentage. Yeah, I saw 177 million. Yeah. 3% of the overall school age population. Yeah, but I've heard those numbers could be higher as much as double just because I guess it's not counted. It's tough thing to count and aggregate it or maybe no one cares enough to do so. Or school districts have a lot of reason to fudge numbers on the lower end. Yeah, it's true. But that's up about 20% from just like seven or eight years ago. Well, that's actually double from 15 years ago. Yeah. So there's a very steady increase. And I think the reason that it's increasing, I mean, doubling over 15 years is pretty significant, even if it's going to be like in 50 years. Right. And I think the reason that it's just picking up steam and it's spreading more and more is because the more people that have done it, because the people who originally started homeschooling had to figure all of this out on their own. And there were very few homeschool textbooks available, very few resources, very few websites, very few groups. So the more people that tried it and were successful in built momentum. Now, homeschooling is not some scary, weird thing that parents who only let their kids watch PBS do. It's like a viable option for a parent who is considering where they want to send their kids to school. Yeah. My brother and his wife homeschooled their kids for a couple of years. Yeah. How did it go? It went great because it's my brother, he built a full on classroom. Not quite sure. It was awesome. Well, we'll get into it, but it's something that you should treat like that. And they eventually went back to public school because the kids wanted to, but it was great for a couple of years, I think, for everyone involved. So let's dig into this. Chuck, what are the considerations? I mean, this isn't something like you just hit upon it. This isn't something you take lightly. No, not at all. So, Chuck, let's dig into it and figure out what the considerations are because you just hit upon it. This isn't something you take lightly. We'll do that right after this. You're right, Josh. As you said before the break, it is not something to take lightly. You want to do a lot of research beforehand and ask a lot of tough questions of yourself, of your child, and maybe get some good books. There are a few recommendations here in this article. Real Life Homeschooling by Rhonda barfield tells a lot of stories about homeschooling families which can help. Homeschooling for Success by Rebecca Kalkinduffa and Elizabeth Kana is another going to check out in the Homeschooling almanac by Mary and Michael Lepert Right. And there are scores and scores of more books, but read some of those, start thinking about it. Can you afford it is the first question. Well, the first question I think is why? Well, yeah, good point. Why do you want to do this? And Catherine Near, who wrote this article, How Homeschooling Works, says, be as explicit as you can be, so use a lot of curse words in your answer to your story, but you have to wonder why? And that's probably a pretty easy question for most parents who are considering home schooling to answer. Yeah, you probably got that reason already in your head, right? But if your answer is like, because I don't want to let my child out of my site ever for the rest of his life, that's not exactly good. Maybe you should talk to some other people about that idea and see if they can talk you out of home schooling. Yeah, that's a good point. The next question that I alluded to is, can you afford it? Because there's a couple of expenses. One, or all the things that you need to buy to support the education. All those field trips, too. Those aren't cheap. Sure, all that stuff costs money. And the other one is, depending on your situation in your house, you may be dropping a salary if you're not going to take a job as a spouse to home school your kids. Yeah, that's an economics called an opportunity cost, and that is a big one for a lot of people. That's what's prohibited a lot of people from being able to go to homeschool. Their kid like they just can't afford it. Sure. So that's why those tuition vouchers have come into play and helped a lot more people be home school teachers, because you can use that. Yeah. That's not to say, I mean, with today's modern work trends like telecommuting, working from home, creative scheduling, you can tag team up with the parents, or you might even work it out where you both still have an income and you can homeschool. But when you traditionally think of home schooling, you think of like, one of the parents isn't going to work and they're going to be the teacher. Right. Another option for you, too, is to have grandparents do it. Yumi's Boss. I've never thought about that. Yumi's Boss's daughter is just sharp as a tack. She's home schooled by her grandparents. That's cool. So, yeah, they're responsible for her education and they're apparently doing like a bang up job with it. I bet that's a very patient teacher, too, the grandparent. Yeah, that would probably be a good scene. Yeah. But the point is, with the grandparents, they're already retired, they already have income, and if you have money from your job, you can kick them a little bit, too. Yeah. So everybody wins. Yeah. Plus, you're not doing that parent thing where you're just trying to make a little mini version of yourself that narcissistic. Like, here, wear this Ramon shirt and I'm going to give you a mohawk and an earring at seven, man, grandparents don't care about that. They just want the best for you. They're mellow. All right, the next question is, are you qualified to teach? Just because you have a college degree or a high school degree doesn't mean you're going to be a good teacher. Right. And the whole concept of home schooling, too, I think, kind of comes out of the sense that you are qualified because kids, not every kid, but a lot of kids are home schooled in some way, shape, or form. Sure. Where they learn to read or recognize words or how to run or walk or crawl, all the stuff they learn before they have to go to school, that's a head start these days. Right. But even without a head start, even just basically being there, absorbing the information that you get from a family and from being around family members, that is a form of home schooling. And a lot of people think, like, hey, we're on a roll with this stuff, let's keep it going. And I'll be this kid's teacher. Yes. That's something to think about, for sure. You want to think about your kid and talk to your child like, do you want to be home schooled? What do you think about it? They may be ready, they may be not ready. I wouldn't say treat them like adults, but treat them as if they have their own opinion, because they do. Right. It's probably not something you want to force on your kid. If they really want to go to a public school, of course everyone's going to make their own decision about their children. I can tell you how to parent, but I think it's a good idea to have a good, open, honest line of dialogue with your kid about home schooling first. Yeah. And I mean, if your kid is just dug in like, I do not want to spend all day every day with you, it's not going to work, you should consider that answer. Yeah. And it doesn't have to be the final word, either. Like, my brother, they did it for a couple of years, and you can try it and see if it works. And it's not like the public school is going to say, no, sorry. You had your chance, smarty. You left us, you abandoned us. That'd be weird. The principal just got his arms crossed at the watch front door. Yeah. That's how local government works. So let's say everybody's on board, Chuck. Everyone's on board. You got to get in touch with your state and find out exactly what the rules are to do this legally, incorrectly. Right. And Catherine says, don't just look at synopses of laws. Go to your state's education website and find out the laws. And she uses North Carolina as an example. So, for example, in North Carolina, you would have to file a notice of intent, which basically says, you don't need to worry about my kid. I got my kid covered and why. Right. Yeah. Why am I doing this for religious reasons? Am I doing it because the bullies are really bad at the local school? Whatever. And that would also be your claim for whether you are a religious school or just an independent nonpublic school. Right. You in North Carolina have to have at least a diploma or GED from high school level to be a qualified home school teacher. Yeah, that's probably a pretty good idea. Whatever. North Carolina is obviously a nanny state, and then you need to keep track of attendance. You also need to do Immunizations, which I was kind of surprised by. Yeah. I don't know if that's still accurate in North Carolina. It is, I looked it up. Is it? Yeah. The only one that's not on here is annual standardized testing. Well, this is North Carolina, because that's where Catherine lives. Right. And that's the only state's website that they're allowed access to. But like we said, every state is going to be different according to whether or not you have to pass standardized tests. Whether or not how many quote unquote, vacation holidays are allowed during the calendar year, what months of the year you were required to be in school. Well, some states. There's eleven states out there that are like, you don't have to tell us anything, just do what you want. You don't even need to tell us you're homeschooling your kid. That's pretty cool. Yeah. There's eleven there's two or three that one of the homeschool associations say is highly regulated, like New York. We'll have people come visit your house to make sure you're doing things right. Sure. And then most other states fall in between. Got you. Where it's kind of like, yeah, you have to tell us what you're doing, but other than that, it's your show. Yeah. And this might inform your decision on whether or not you want to follow through on it, too, depending on how lax your state is. I mean, lax, but how permissive, I guess, or whether or not they have a lot of rigid standards that you're trying to get away from in the first place. Sure. Like standardized testing, which is a whole different kind of worms. Yeah. So you've got this figured out, I think if you're thinking you can homeschool your kid, you can probably navigate your state's regulations. Yeah. Let's say the other way. If you can't do that, you probably shouldn't home school your kids. I think that's a good point, Chuck. Yeah. So you've reached this point where you're like, okay, my kids excited. We've chosen our school mascot, we've gone over the state's website together. We've agreed. Yes. Now you have to get it Immunized, whether you like it or not, because we're doing a home school in North Carolina. What teaching method should we use? This is a pretty big decision, but it's also one that is not a final decision. Like even the decision to home school, it can change and evolve, and apparently with most people, it does. Yeah. It's weird to say that, but I totally agree. I think it is the most important decision you can make. But don't freak out because it's not written in stone. You can evolve your teaching method according to what works. Right. The traditional approach, Katherine points out, is when I just want to school my kid at home, I'll use the state's curriculum, I'll get all their books, and I'll kind of try and mimic what goes on at the public school in my home. Right. Or I'll get all of my sources from Oral Roberts University's curriculum or whatever, but it's like I imagine your brother's house was you walk into this special room, and it looks like a classroom, or at least all the stuff that's going on is what you'd find in a classroom, too. Yeah. You don't have to build out a special classroom if you don't have room, you can do it. However, it works for your family. But I think they found just having that separate room was beneficial. For sure. Well, yeah. There are fewer distractions, I would guess. And it's just the psychology behind it is like when you're in this room, you're learning. Yeah, exactly. This is what this place is for. Yes. Classical education. If you want to talk about the three principles known as the trivia or the three phases, you have the grammar school age students, which they focus on memorization, gathering facts, the logic, which is middle age students. And that is when you start to focus more on critical thinking. Middle school aged. What did I say? Middle aged. Those are called nontraditional students. I watched Back to School the other day, by the way. That's good. It was so great, man. I wouldn't believe you if you said it didn't hold up. It totally holds up. Of course it does. Very funny. And the triple windy. Oh, yeah. It was still so funny to me. All right. Middle school aged. Yeah. And that is when you're concentrating more on critical thinking and you're putting all this stuff into context. And then the final stage is rhetoric, which sounds like a bad word these days, because you think of rhetoric as just a bunch of gobbaddy, someone spouting off some gas bag. Yeah, but that's not a rhetoric is don't know what he's talking about. Even. These are high school age, and that's when they can actually articulate a language focused discussion about topics in education. Yeah. The whole thing behind classical education is that it's language focused and language oriented. Yeah. And all this probably sounds pretty familiar to you. If so, it's because it has its roots in the Middle Ages. Not middle aged students, but the Middle Ages. So it's been around for a little while, and a lot of people opt for that one. There's a lot, of course, material out there based on classical education. What else, Chuck? Well, you have Montessori, which is a type of schooling based on this really awesome Italian physician named Maria Montessori. And she basically was like, someone needs to make a movie about her. She was so awesome. She was basically like, I'm looking around and I think this stinks. And this is the early nineteen hundred s. It wasn't like in the 1970s when some hippie lady, and she was saying, the way we're teaching our kids is wrong. And so she started doing things like, you know what? Get this heavy furniture out of here. Let's put some kids furniture in here that they can move around. Right. Let's like child size. Let's lower the bookshelves to where the kids can access this stuff. Let's teach kids how to cook for pets and gymnastics and how to cook, and let's put these big open air sections where they can move about freely if they want to. And really just sort of opened up, really revolutionized education in early 1019 hundreds. Italy. Nice. There was another, I guess, turn of the century educator. She was British, though. Her name was Charlotte Mason. She came up with her own method that I think is kind of clever in a way. Charles Manson. Yeah, he came up with his education idea. Oh, Charlotte Mason. Charlotte Mason. She said, just teach your kid a bunch of stuff. And I'm not exactly clear on how it's taught, maybe in a normal structured environment, but also teach them fine arts and a bunch of other stuff that most schools just kind of are getting rid of these days. The thing that makes her so revolutionary is like, you don't use testing. I love this. Instead, you use what's called narration, where you say, okay, kid, I've taught you everything that I know about whales. Stand up and tell me about whales. Yeah. And the kid narrates everything he or she knows about whales. And I did my book report on whales. Whales live in the ocean and the saltwater, and they are large and blue. Right. Because I guess you probably wouldn't be able to have notes because you're not really narrating. Yeah, they have to understand it in order to talk about it. Exactly. That's the whole key, is that to narrate something, you have to understand something. Of course, you could be like a complete BS artist, which is kind of awesome in and of itself. I mean, your kid has got some skills and another those are creative skills. Yeah, but Charlotte Mason's point was, if your kid can stand up and tell you about whales in a smart, intelligent way, then your kid has learned about whales. Yeah, that seems like a pretty cool notion if you ask me. And the next one is my all time favorite, the Waldorf Method. Oh, no, sorry, the second the next one. Oh, okay. You were thinking the Waldorf salad. Yeah. Which man, those are weird. Isn't that the one. The grapes and stuff. Grapes and, like, apples, but also mayonnaise. Grapes and mayonnaise. Not a winning combination. Yeah, someone wrote in with that. Cotton candy grapes. Did you see that? No. She said that they had them at Whole Foods, and they are grapes that taste like cotton candy. Weird. Crazy. What is it called? Mutants. The Waldorf Method is based on Austrian scientist Rudolf Steiner, and he has the concept of educating the whole child. Basically concentrates on creative topics fine arts, painting, music, drama, foreign language, gardening, sewing. Things that are, like you said, are kind of going by the wayside in a lot of public schools these days, sadly. But then you build upon these things based on the kids age. That determines what the kids studying at any given point. Yeah. So if you've ever heard the Head, Heart and Hands method, that is the Waldorf Method. Here's my favorite one. The unit studies method. Oh, yeah. I like this one. That's kind of cool. It's a little vanilla, but it makes sense to me. Basically, you choose a topic or a theme, and you stretch it out over, say, like, a week or a month or a semester or whatever. And the theme is, say, pirates. Okay. And then you use pirates to investigate or you investigate every aspect of pirates using math, science, history, documentaries, projects, like visits to a pirate ship, if you're in the San Diego area, all that kind of stuff. So sort of finding the individual lessons within a topic. Yes. Like, you can teach economics through talking about pirates. Exactly. Or history, like all those things you remember. Yes. And so in the end, you fully get pirates, but you also get a really good understanding of how everything has all these different aspects and components to it that come together and form it. Form a hole. It's our trade. That's what you and I do. We take that hole and break it apart. I think that's why it appeals to me so much. Yeah, I was right there with you on that one. Then you have Unschooling, which they call child directed learning or natural learning. And this is I was originally used by author John Holt, and this just sounds like kind of crazy way. Not crazy way, but basically let your child learn how to manage their time and run the show. Yeah, which is really super interesting. He was one of the early homeschool activists that was like Agitating in the early 70s. Agitating. So your kid is still learning, and you are still teaching and guiding. But they interviewed Catherine. I don't know where she got this quote, but one of the Unschooled students has a really great quote. I'm planning what I do, so I have an overwhelming sense of commitment to what I'm doing instead of being told what to do and when to do it and simply being shuttled back and forth from activity to activity, I get to. Choose. So your kid is learning planning and logistics and scheduling, and this seems like a really good real world way of teaching. Oh, yeah, for sure. I think I would guess everybody would choose this. The problem is a fear that accompanies this of, like, what if your kids committed to eating cat and crunch and doing jack all day? What do you do with that? Well, then they're not a good candidate for unschooling. Oh, yeah, that's a great point. Great point. Like, I think you only do this if your child is a good candidate, and that way your kids like, you know what? I want to do science experiments all day, but I just want to go to the library and read today. Yeah, then go for it. But part of the key to unschooling is the kid isn't like, so take me and I noticed that you have a slot in your schedule where you could take me to the library, and then you could pick me up 2 hours later. Let's work this out. And then you go, hey, don't get smart with me. Don't point to your imaginary watch. You're not wearing a watch. Can't even read time yet. Kids, how do you know when I have yoga? Because it's on the fridge, I would imagine. You'd have to have a family schedule of stuff on the fridge for unschooling. Yeah, I think that's pretty smart. Anyway, and then after that, Chuck, you have to figure out what kind of learner your kid is. Yeah. Well, there's also the eclectic method, which we didn't mention, and that is just sort of a cornucopia of all these different methods kind of cobbled together. I guess that's the best way to say it, right? Yeah. And apparently most parents who are new to home schooling start off their kid with a much more rigid structure method, and then apparently by year three, it's much loosey goosey or laid back, I guess, is a better term for it. Sure. But it's not necessarily just unschooling or just this. It's probably along the lines of the eclectic method. Yeah, that makes sense. And like we said, you're not locked into any of these. You got to find out what works for your kid. And a good way to start is, before you start, figure out what kind of learner your child is and what kind of learner and teacher you are, maybe. Yes. You want to figure out apparently, if your kid is one of the four there's four modalities, I guess is what it's called of learning. Yeah. There's visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic. And visual learner is basically like you see things and you get it, whether it's a pie chart or a drawing or a photo or something like that. You learn through seeing. Yeah. So that's visual learning style. And that's pretty common. Yeah. Auditory, obviously, is going to be listening and speaking. It's akin to the Charlotte Mason method. Tactile has to do with touch. It does. And I was wondering which one would have to deal with, like writing stuff down, because that's how I remember stuff. How I get it in my head is through writing or typing it out. And apparently that falls under tactile doodling, too. People who doodle or tactile learners. I think I'm a much more visual learner. Yeah, I get it when I see it too, but I don't get it until I write it myself. Actually, I'm a combination between visual and kinesthetic because Kinesthetic is really being involved. Like she's an example of a sailboat. If you want to teach a kid about sailboats, take them sailing. I know. To research for this episode, you went and sat in on a home school class for a couple of weeks. I did not. That's the method, isn't it? An acting yeah, it would be method podcasting. I think so. Once you figure out what kind of learning your child is, though, you're going to have a good and those aren't the only teaching methods that we mention, but those are some of the leading teaching methods for home schooling. Yeah, but you're going to have a good head start on figuring out a good place to start and then just observe, go from there and do the eyeball test, as they say. And if things seem to be working, then great. So there's one huge thing that's still outstanding, Chuck, and that is that a lot of people worry that if you take your kid out of school, even a crummy school, but that standard course that a school provides, then they're going to have a harder time getting into college. And most home school resource places say no. If anything, your home school kid is going to have an easier time getting into college because it'll be more well rounded, probably smarter. Home school kids tend to excel, more academics and other stuff, but I couldn't find any quantitative evidence on that. Like that home school kids get into college more easily than non home school kids. I couldn't find anything like that. It was all anecdotal. Yeah, I don't know about actually getting into college, but as a parent and a homeschooler, you need to keep really good track of their scores and records, if they did any and this is a benefit of home schooling. If they do any apprenticeships, all of that stuff is going to help because that's what's going to take the place of like being in the Beta Club or whatever. Beta Club? Yeah, like those school activities that supposedly looked at on college transcripts. I don't even know if that's true, by the way. Well, there's a lot of home school groups that form so that they can do things like have a Beta Club or have debate club or have a sports team go on field trips. Yeah. So if you do home schooling, it doesn't mean that you can't do any of that. You're just not doing it with your school. The other elephant in the room is concern over socialization. Yes. Your kid can be weird if you home school. Yeah. And all the evidence and the research that I saw points to, no, your kid is not going to be weird, and they're probably going to be better for the real world because they aren't, like you said, trapped in a school of peers, constantly worried about what their peers think and being judged or trying to fit in. They're kind of doing their own thing. This great article, and of course, this is from a home school advocate, so it's pretty one sided, but it's called socialization colon. Homeschoolers are in the real world, and it was by Chris clica, and his notion basically is that your kid is already in the real world. They're not going to be shuttled off to college. And you're like, what in the world is going on? I'm going to go HOGWILD and crazy. Or are these people exactly. They say that they overcome this potential for isolation by being on these, like, in the YMCA or the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, singing groups, little League, basically. There are all kinds of ways to socialize your kid outside of a school that parents in schools do, too, that you probably don't think about. Yeah. It doesn't have to be in a classroom. No. And it's entirely possible that we take the damage that's done by elementary and grammar school and high schooling for granted like, that you have to be damaged as a result, and you don't necessarily and you can isolate your kid from that kind of stuff. And maybe they'll turn out better than they would have if you had put them through regular school. Yeah. It seems like research indicates that self esteem, what they call self concept and self esteem of a homeschooled child is higher. Yeah. They generally score higher on tests. This one guy, what's his name? Smedley. Thomas Smedley. He did a thesis, a master's thesis, and he had a pretty cool quote. He said, in public school systems, children are socialized horizontally and temporarily into conformity with their immediate peers. Home educators seek to socialize their children vertically toward responsibility and service and adulthood with an eye on eternity. That's awesome. Pretty cool. Yeah. And all of this is just intuitive, the idea that if you have that much more attention and your education is tailored to you, the individual, how can you not benefit in excel? Yeah. Well, we have a list of people here that have excelled that were home schooled. People like Irving Berlin, ansel Adams, DA Vinci, Agatha Christie, Einstein the DA Vinci Count. Okay. Peter Jennings. C. S. Lewis. Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln is backwood, so I don't know if that counts. That's home schooling. I mean, that was the origin of home school. Yeah. Benjamin Franklin said, agatha Christie, Thomas Edison, and our colleague from Stuff Mom Never Told You kristen Connor was homeschooled, and you're in for a treat, because right after this message break, we're going to get kongs in here, and we're going to talk to her. Okay, we're back, and we have a third person in the studio. Stuff mom never told you. Kristen, conger. Hey, guys. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me. So we were doing the show on homeschooling, and obviously you came to mind because you were homeschooled. Yeah, I was home schooled from second through 8th grade. Oh, wow. Yeah. Well, just give us a little background. We kind of want to know why you guys made the decision, who taught you, and just sort of how it went down, what methodology you guys used. Yeah. Okay. So in terms of the why, we were a little bit of the hyper religious family who wanted a little bit of sheltering from secular education. Okay. So there's that. We got to fit that home school stereotype, which still persists today. Sure. But there was also a desire on my parents part to provide a higher quality education than they thought we would get in public schools, because my mom at the time was teaching in public schools, and she did not like what she saw, and she was like, I can do better. She said, stink. Yeah. I am doing a terrible job, so I will try this on my children. Yes. I want to focus that on you. So your mom is a public school teacher. What grade did she teach? She's at high school. Okay. Yeah. She quit her job to teach home school for you. So my mom stayed at home with my siblings and me full time for the first two or three years. And then she actually went back to work teaching once we were a little bit older and had the hang of things. Which might sound wildly irresponsible. But we stayed on task easily. And she had assignments for us every day. And since she taught. She got home from work by the early afternoon anyway. So it was minimal lack of supervision. But my siblings and I were so well behaved, and she was so good at organizing and leaving us tasks to do that we would just kind of do our schoolwork while she was gone. No way. Wow. Yeah. That is awesome. I don't know if that was legal, but who cares? Did she chain you to anything while she was gone? She didn't need to, josh that's the thing. I was just that good of a child, and I loved reading. Are you the oldest, youngest, or the youngest? Yeah. Brothers. You have a brother, right? I've got brothers and sisters. Okay. Yeah. So one thing I've been trying to figure out, we've been talking about home schooling. This is the end of the episode. There don't seem to be any drawbacks to it. Was there anything negative about homeschooling that you encountered in your experience, or was it all just good for the most part. It was really great. I think it worked well for our family. It worked really well because my mom knew what she was doing. We had formal textbooks she formally taught us, and even though I probably made it sound like she just let us run wild all day, we would sit down every day and do school work one on one with her to check over tests and work and stuff. So she kind of used the method where you basically take the school's curriculum and just try and replicate it out of the school. What's it called? Structured the structured home schooling or school at home. Yeah. I mean, she hand selected all of our curriculum and put together lesson plans for all of us. So it's even more intensive got you than something like that. But she had the background to be able to do that. And as far as drawbacks go, probably the biggest one was just the socialization factor. That is the thing. Yeah, we talked about that, and I saw a lot of research that says that's sort of a non issue these days. There are so many ways to socialize your kids outside of a classroom, and you may be doing your kid a favor by not having them in the classroom. But these were written by home school advocates. Well, they were absolutely social outlets that we had during home school. For instance, I played on a soccer team. I took ballet, we went to church. So we had youth group activities and things like that. And especially in elementary school and middle school, I don't think that I really missed out that much socially when I started high school in what we called regular school, much to my mother chagrin, there was a little bit of a transition simply of having to deal with kids peers day in and day out in a more intense way than I ever had before. And there are still some socialization factors I think I'm trying to figure out at almost 30? Oh, really? No, I mean, I joke, but sort of on the one hand, I'm really grateful that I did not have to go through middle school because everyone I know who went to middle school, that sounded like a horrific and confusing time to be in school. But there were some humps here and there because my concept of school and social life and getting along and even high school dating and all of that was largely just based on TV and movies. The Brady Bunch method. I had a few missteps. Yeah. Interesting. Well, why did you eventually go back to school? How did that all work? Well, there was a decision on my parents part, largely because I was the youngest in my family. So by that time I was the last one at home, it would have just been me by myself. And they could kind of tell that I was sort of jostling for a little bit more. Plus, your mom was done. She's just done. She was so tired of me, Josh. She was like, I've had it with you. Not really. So you're the last kid, so it was basically just kind of felt like the right time. Yeah. So did your older siblings graduate from high school through your mom's home schooling? Two of my siblings graduated home school, so that was a little bit of a sticking point when I got to go to real high school. Oh, they were jealous. Yeah, maybe a little bit. I got to go to spring break. I got my older sister and brother. But is that the dream of all homeschool kids to go to regular school, or is it like when you're in home school, you're kind of like, I have it way better than my peers in high school. Well, first of all, I don't want to speak on behalf of all homeschoolers, but I get the sense, especially from what you guys are talking about in terms of home school today. I don't think there's as much of that longing for, quote unquote, regular school as maybe there used to be. What decade were you in home school? In the 50s. Still young. It would have been in the 90s. Again, it has a lot to do with age, probably for elementary schoolers, middle schoolers even. Who cares? Elementary school. Home school is awesome. I could hang out on my PJs. I could go play in my fort when I wanted to. It's like work from home now. Exactly. I could do my math in the woods if I really wanted to. But I think once you get older, you just naturally want to start finding your place outside of the home a little bit more. What about your siblings that graduated home school? Did they go to college and what was that process like? They went to college. It was a little more challenging for them with I think they had to take the act and the Sat and perhaps some Sat twos, because I did, too. There are Sat two S, and they are a bear. But people were a bit more skeptical of the quality of home schooling back then. I don't know that it's as stringent today, but they both went to and graduated from college and are well adjusted adults with families, and one of them is actually a teacher now, which is kind of interesting. Speaking of families, if you had kids or if you do ever have kids, would you ever consider homeschooling them? The question. No. No. But that's largely because you're lazy. I am horrendously lazy. I've forgotten how to read. Not true. And I just would make a terrible teacher. I don't have the patience for it. Would you ever hire your mom as a home school teacher for your kids? No. Because she wants to be a full time grandma. Got you. Well, we did see that was one of the big questions that you should ask yourself. Just because you're super smart and doesn't mean you're a good teacher. Yes, I've definitely seen some questionable home schooling attempts on parents who are clearly not qualified. And there are kids, too, I think, who benefit more from structured classroom environments, who might, especially if they have perhaps a learning disability or something like that, who need more specialized attention. Got you. I got nothing else. I don't either. That was super enlightening. Yeah, thanks a lot. Okay, thank you. And you can catch Kristen and her colleague Carolyn every week. What day does stuff mom ever told you come out? Mondays and Wednesdays on itunes on your site. What's the website? Stepmomnevertoldyou.com, appropriately enough. Thank you for joining us, Kristen. Thanks again, Josh and Chuck. And if you want to know more about homeschooling, you can type those words into the search bar athousoforks.com and since I said search bar, it's time for the listener mail. All right, Josh. I'm going to call this Crop Circle email. Just listen to the crop circle podcast. I was particularly amused to hear you take a romantic view on overhearing people conspiring to make crop circles in a rural English pub. Because I am from Salisbury, Wiltshire, a near 10 miles from Stonehenge. That's the epicenter. It is. One of my favorite pubs in Salisbury is called Windham Arms. What's special is they have a very local crowd. Secondly, the pubs brew their own ale, one of which is called Crop Circle. If you let me know your shipping address, I will happily send you some bottles of it. Oh, boy. Yeah, I was quite excited to hear you mentioned my home country. Home county. Excuse me, a wheelchair. And I thought I'd share a local legend, the collective nickname. People from here are moonrakers. Now, once upon a time, long ago, there were a group of bootleggers making illicit booze somewhere in north Wiltshire. These guys were walking along the road and with their wares. All of a sudden, here comes the custom officials. Thinking quickly, they place the booze in a nearby pond. The custom officials hear the racket investigate, and they see these guys in the pond, ask what they're doing. The Wilshiremen noticed the reflection of the full moon in the pond and said to the officials that they were just trying to get this giant cheese out of the pond. The officers supposedly looked at each other and said, hey, look at these stupid yokeles. That's no cheese. They're trying to rake the moon. So that's where Moonrakers came from. Is that where the James Bond title comes from? I don't think so. And that is from Chris near Stonehenge. Thank you, Chris. Nice. Thank you very much. Chris. Yeah, we'll send you the address because I would love to drink that beer. Oh, heck, yes. I'll send you the address, too. You'll get it at least two, three times. Yes, if you want to send us some beer. We would love that. You can tweet to us for some weird reason about it to Syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffyshow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@housestepforce.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com." | ||
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-09-28-sysk-nude-beaches-final.mp3 | How Nude Beaches Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-nude-beaches-work | Probably all beaches were nude early on, but as society developed and body shame became all the rage, people started wearing bathing suits. Some, though, liked the way it was before. | Probably all beaches were nude early on, but as society developed and body shame became all the rage, people started wearing bathing suits. Some, though, liked the way it was before. | Thu, 28 Sep 2017 14:07:08 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=28, tm_hour=14, tm_min=7, tm_sec=8, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=271, tm_isdst=0) | 43325303 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetuffworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry. This is stuff you should know. Totally new today, of course. You're looking good. Well, I think you're sort of kidding. Only time will tell. You want to break the news? Go ahead. Yes. Lost another tooth. I didn't want to mention it. So here's the story, because I know people are interested. Everybody likes this tooth sock of yours in my dental blows. It's riveting. But also, people feel for you, you know? Yeah, I think so. And I think the dentists and oral surgeons of our audience get a kick out of it. That's the thrilling part for them. So I was on vacation, as you know. Isle of Palms, South Carolina. Bought tons well, not tons, pounds and pounds of seafood to cook and was having a great week grilling fish and scallops and shrimp. Nice. So you went to the local seafood market. That's like, just one big long counter of seafood, and it's super cold inside. Yeah, I love those places. There's always, like, a few bottles of Tony Cacheries Creole Seasoning and all the local stuff. Like, here's the crab boil in a Ziplock that we make. Yes. I love those places. Nothing makes a beach vacation more than a visit to the local seafood place. Agreed. And I will even shout out salmon, seafood and Mount pleasant seafood. They're going to send you a box of shrimp while I bought unrefrigerated. I bought a box of 100 oysters while we were there. Wow. And we had oyster happy hour every night. Nice. And I learned to shuck oysters like a pro. Nice. And I made my own version of frogmore stew. Dude, one night, can I come on vacation with you guys? Next time we do it right, man. I bought probably seven or \u00a38 of shrimp, five or \u00a36 of scallops, stone crab claws, king crab claws, jeez flounder, snapper salmon, you name it. Dude, do those guys have, like, a lien on your house now? No, I did spend a ton of money on this stuff. The other thing that we enjoyed was the dips, like crab dip and trim dip and salmon dip. Anyway, everything speeding along. It's the final second to the last night. And I make my own version of frogmore stew, which is the low country boil, basically, of Charleston. And I bite. We have these crustinis that we bake, and the one tooth that I've been saying is going to go, they got hurt in college, and it's been loose for, whatever, 20 plus years, and I've been afraid that my daughter is going to kick it in one day. I was, like, counting down that clock, and I bit into a Cristini, heard the belt, the crack, and immediately was like, there it goes. And Emily and my friends were like, no, really? Oh, yeah, I know that crack. That sucks. It does suck. Did it hurt at all? No, it never hurts. That's good. That is the one good thing. I finished my meal very gingerly. Eating on the I've learned how to eat in the back of my mouth. Yeah, like a neanderthal. You use your eyes like a frog. They just go inside your skull and push the food down. So I made an appointment the next day. I called around. It was like, do I go home? Do I tough out the rest of the vacation here and be stressed and go home and do it? Which means I probably can't get until Friday. Or do I ruin part of a day? My final beach day, doing this locally, and so I decided to go in and get it done there. And 2 hours out of my day was all I wasted. Oh, wow. That's pretty good. Not bad. So big, shout out to Apex Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery and Janitorial Services of Mount Pleasant and Doctor Charlottes Marvel. She was great. Was she marvelous? She was. And when I get it done here, I go under twilight sleep, which I don't feel a thing, and it messes me up. The whole rest of the day, I'm just grogging in bed, and I didn't want to do that. And I was like, I'd like to enjoy the beach and go out to dinner tonight. We had reservations, this great place, on our final night, the last night dinner out deal. And she said, well, I can just inject you, and if you're okay with needles. And I've long talked about the needle and the gums is the worst thing. And she said, well, this will also be needle in the roof of your mouth. And I was like, all right, I got to do it. And she stuck me in the roof of my mouth, and my eyes just started running water, and I literally said, I'm not crying. That's just a reaction. Yes, it was fine. I mean, it numbed it up so much, I didn't feel a thing. And it was kind of interesting being awake for once during this procedure of distraction and bone. What do you call it? Bone fraction. No. Yeah, because now I've learned when they take out a tooth, now, the best practices are you immediately graph bone to it. Yeah. Because you lose it so quickly. Pocket protection is what it's called. Yeah. That's awesome. That is so nerdy awesome. I love it. But, man, it is a rough procedure. They are so rough. And now I know why they knock you out. Because they don't want you to know how rough they are with you. Yeah. I felt like I was getting assaulted. Yeah. They don't play tennis. Don't play and that's not to knock Dr. Marvel. She did great. You got to get in there and do it. So, anyway, I was literally on the beach 2 hours later with a gin and tonic. That's great. Now that is really great. Good story. Had it all. Yeah. Had food, surgery. The beach. Dennis was a great name. The beach, yes, the whole thing. And also, this also means for people coming to see us on tour for the remainder of the year, I'm not even bothering with the insert tooth, thank goodness, because I had to sit there with it right next to me, staring at me during the show. No, I'm used to it by now. I'm just going to Bubba it up for the next nine months or whatever. They're going to love it. We should start charging double for tickets, then. We should, yeah. So thank you for indulging that story. Well, it leads to a burning question that I've been trying to ask this whole time. Were you nude on the beach at any point? No. No. New beach at Isle of Palm, huh? No. I thought about during a nighttime ocean swim, doing it. Is that how they say that? Yes. But then I thought, you know what? I'm being sort of brave swimming in the ocean at night anyway. I'm not going to have things exposed. There's something really creepy about swimming at night in the ocean, particularly. Agreed. But I did it, and it's great. Yeah, it's really, like I think that's part of the exhilaration is I don't know what's out here. Yeah. I guess as long as you say, and I don't care, I'm just going to enjoy myself, and it would be enjoyable. Yeah. But I did keep saying, but at least I've got my pants on. Well, I did have pants on. I had tuxedo pants on, but there's a lot of what a tuxedo pants on? As is for traditional Isle of Palms, okay. To cover your junk from the sea turtles. Yeah. That's what you do at night, you swim on the beach and tuxed pants. Right. So that's almost the exact opposite, then, of a traditional new beach, which is what we're talking about. You ever been to one? I have. Nude? No, I went and visited. I just went and looked for a second. You're one of those guys? Yeah. No, I wasn't, like, poking people with a stick or anything like that. Right. I just want to see, like, okay, what is this? And I'll tell you what really drew me over to look. You and I were down in Florida, and there's a nude beach. It's a clothing optional and I believe unofficial nude beach at the Canaveral National Seashore. I've been there. Okay. Yeah, that's right. We'll share our stories. Okay. And we drove down at one point just to kind of see, and sure enough, there was a woman walking around just wearing shorts, and that was it. But what really got me to go check was we saw this girl who must have been 17 or something, and she was totally closed, like, fully dressed, not even wearing, like, a swimsuit. She's just dressed, and she was coming back from the beach with her hand over her mouth and her eyes like the size of bread plates. And her mom was sitting there laughing at her, waiting at the car, watching her come back like this. And I was like, I got to go to Seat. So I went and looked, and I was like, yes, there's a couple of naked people. They're all dudes. And I've seen the nude beach now, but at the same time, I was like, I would love to just go nude at a nude beach. But the more I did this research, the more I was like, I could take or leave it. I have no problem. And probably would still like to go nude at a very secluded nude beach. But I get the impression that public nude beaches and I don't even think I would enjoy, like, a nudist resort nude beach. It would have to just be like a remote, deserted island. Not because of any shame or anything like that, but because I just think that that would be the way that I most enjoyed the experience of just being nude out there on the beach. You know what I mean? Nude on the beach with just like, you and your wife, right? And that's it. Yeah. Just hanging out. You want to own your own beach, I guess. I think that's what I'm getting at. I'm hoping a wealthy listener will send us one. So here's my experience with that very beach. Was that playa? Linda or Klondyke? All right, so my deal was many years ago, I did a long three month out west trip with my best friend Brett, and we started in Atlanta and said, all right, where should we go first? And this is pre Internet. And when you're doing book research. And I said, there's this place in Florida near Canaveral that's called Klondike Beach. And I said, and I don't know if this is true, but what I read is that there is a law enforcement vacuum there because no one there's some overlap with counties and national land where there's a space where there's no law. Yeah, there's supposedly a place, and I think Yosemite National Park that's like that too. Well, yeah, I've heard that stupid story where you can kill somebody and get it right. Is that not true? Well, I don't know. I remember reading that article and they would get you somehow. Sure. But I think it wasn't no law, but technically there was no legal overseer of this one area, and that was Klondike Beach. And there were hippies smoking weed and nudists. And I was like, that's where we should start, right? I have no idea what drew me, because it wasn't like I was going for either one of those things. That sounds a bit like a place called Wreck Beach in Vancouver where it's not like there's no jurisdiction or questionable jurisdiction. It's just really hard to get to. There's like 400 steps down to the beach. So apparently the cops a long time ago said, whatever, you guys can do whatever you want there, we don't care. So not only is it a new beach, it's like a drug add old drunken beach, but apparently it's a lot of fun. But supposedly they started cracking down on it recently and it's not as fun as it once was. Well, I do remember actually what drew me was you can camp on the beach there, which is sort of rare to it wasn't a campground. There's, like, backcountry camping on the sand and there's not a ton of places in the States where you can do that. Yeah, that sounds kind of fun, actually. It was waking up to the sound of waves like that. It's wonderful. And we did go down there and we did camp, and it was a great way to start the trip. And this dude walked up to us and of course, I think this is usually the story, this probably 50 something year old man, but naked, walks up to us and just starts a conversation. Oh, really? So I got a lot of differing advice from doing research on this. Yeah. So the guy started a conversation with you. What did you do? Did you go, hey, Bob, good to meet you. Nice penis like that Saturday Night Live sketch. No, I think we just tried to treat it like a normal conversation, which it was. I guess what I've been hearing differing things on is that at nude beaches, you will possibly be surprised by the standoffishness of the nude bathers. You might be expecting free spirits like Bob, the guy you met, right? Yeah. I think the deal is and we will be corrected through listener mail, but I think if you are closed, they may be a little more standoffish. But from what I understand, if you're not closed, that's all kind of part of the community and we should do a larger one on nudist at some point. I could not agree more. I had an idea, but I had no idea how lengthy and longstanding the Nudism movement is, or the nature is a movement, I should say. Yeah, natural. It's like, from what I understand, they're very much a community and that's the whole point is to normalize it to where it's just like talking on the beach with anybody, right? Like, it's not like any different than being clothed. And that's their whole bag as, hey, this is how we come into the world, and we have all shamed each other with our bodies over the years to where we have clothed ourselves. And of course, me, growing up Southern Baptist, I have a very weird relationship with Nudity, right to the point where I'm like, yeah, man, what's the big deal? Europeans have got it, right? It's just your body. Who cares? And then the other half of me says, oh, my God, put some clothes on. Do you want to go to hell today? Right. And it's not even that. It's just I guess I'm kind of shy. Yeah, but I mean, I'm sure it's it's ingrained shyness. Oh, yeah, for sure. From an upbringing like that. So you definitely hit on something. Right. So when you're talking about the natureist movement, if you go to a natureist resort, like a specific nude beach that's part of a naturalist resort, where you have to say, be a member to get in, or something like that yes. You're going to find people who are very happy that you're there and they're very happy to be naked. And everybody's very happy that everyone's naked. Right? Yes. But you're also probably going to encounter something like compulsory nudity to where if you're there, you have to be naked. They don't want anybody coming along and be like, what's this all about? What are you guys doing over here? Shake your money maker for me. Yeah, they're not into that. No, they have to have their own set aside resorts. It's like their own place. It's like a private area, but it's like a different kind of beach, like a clothing optional beach where it's a public beach that allows nudity, but it isn't compulsory. Yes. That's when it seems it seems to be kind of like paradise lost for the nature, historically speaking. Well, there's a culture clash going on. There definitely is. Yeah. And it seems like just about every country that has beaches has nude beaches. And if they are public nude beaches where clothing is optional, it seems like the nature of who are actually there to just enjoy being naked. It has nothing to do with sex. Their kids are running around naked. The whole family is there. It's very family oriented. Naked beach tend to lose control of it because outside elements usually come in, start, like, partying, having public sex, and then all of a sudden, this nude beach gets a terrible reputation, and the government steps in. Local people complain, and usually when they do it's successful, the government steps in, and nobody can be naked anymore. And it's ruined for all the nature. Yeah. And that is not the same thing at all as topless beaches that you find in Europe and in some places here in the United States. I went to one of those too, and you call it Topless Beach. It was just a beach. I think a lot of the beaches in Europe are topless. It's not like a big thing. Right. And we saw ladies with their no bikini top on. And of course, being a kid, I was young. I was like, hi, you're like that wolf in the cartoon. But I was respectful because I knew even then, like, you don't want to Augle somebody because that's probably not too cool. Sure. But then even as a young guy, it normalized. And I was like, oh, well, that's just a body part. It isn't a big deal. Yeah. After you turn, I don't know, 19 or 20, it's really easy to become desensitized to that kind of stuff. Yeah. So let's take a break. Man, there's a lot of good set up there. Yeah, that was a lot of set up. Eating penises and all kinds of things. The whole shebang. We'll be right back. Everybody prepared. 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A summer is here, my friend, which means school is out, the sun is shining bright, the days are longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. Yeah. Whether you're road tripping or you're relaxing by the pool, you can tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good, it's criminal. Morbid. That's right. It's part true crime and part comedy. Morbid takes you on a journey through murderous mysteries and major laughs, all in the same week. Yeah, from the paranormal to the pretty spooky and everything in between, host Selena Erkhart and Ash Kelly cover it all. And with two episodes released each week, you'll be hooked on this chart topping series before you know it. You can listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. So, Chuck, you've mentioned it a couple of times, and it seems like anybody who even basically knows about new beaches tends to think of Europe. Sure, and for good reason, too. There was a survey in 2016 that surveyed, I think, like 90 different countries or something like that. It was a pretty extensive survey to find out what the attitudes were toward nude sunbathing on public beaches. And they found that Austrians the Austrians I really would not have guessed the Austrians, and I'm not mistaken in Australians. I mean, the people from Austria, do they have a shoreline? Josh? I don't know. Okay. I wish I did, but I don't know. At any rate, they're fine with nudism. At the very least. I'm sure they have sandy lakes. They're fine with nude sunbathing at the beach. Something like 76% of Austrians say it's, quote, absolutely acceptable to sunbathe and the nude in public. It used to be Germany was the champion of being cool with nude sunbathing. And they're famous, very famous shoreline. Yes. And the North Sea. But they fell the second place. 72% of Germans say it's absolutely acceptable. And you're sure it didn't say Australians, right? Because they're way down with it. Okay, yeah, I know. Well, Australia has a roller coaster relationship with nude beaches. I think it depends on who's in charge of the culture at any given point in time. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, maybe while we're there, we'll be in charge of the culture for a short time. Yeah. News, see everywhere gets grossed out. Our shows are about to get raucous. You never know. A nude show. How about that? No, absolutely not. No, I mean the audience, not us, so I'm still not comfortable with that either. Well, that's how they say to the reason I say that is because it's a two live crew show. They say to picture your audience and the nude. Right. If you're nervous, I think they say underwear. Oh, okay. Got you. I remember that. Brady Bunch. That's all I know. So I don't know. Australians. Okay. But I do know 18% of Americans say it's absolutely acceptable. Somebody than the news. That seems about right. Pretty low percentage. That's what I figure. Well, you know who had an even lower percentage? Italians. 71% of Italians say they are not okay with having somebody some days nude by them on a public beach. That surprises me. It surprises me as well. But such is the way. But they're kind of an outlier as far as Europe goes. And Europe actually, again, has some of the earliest nude beaches around. This article says that the first one was in Bordeaux in France that started around after World War II. But I actually saw footage of a nude beach in Georgia, the country, not the state, dating from the 1920s. So as far as nudity goes, georgia is even more progressive than France, apparently. I don't know about progressive. I think sometimes it's just freaks are going to let their flag fly. No, you got it. And if you got a group of them together, I don't care if it's 1920 in Georgia and they find each other, they're going to do it. I don't think that necessarily means that Georgia was super progressive. You know what I mean? Okay, I see what you mean. Or maybe it does, I don't know. But I'm just saying and that's the case with a lot of these new beaches is bear's pointing out. Some of these are sanctioned, and some of them have happened over the years to the extent where, like you said, the local cops are just kind of like they're not hurting anybody. This is sort of where they gather and everyone knows that. So they can either choose to go there or stay away from there. And these places are usually somewhat removed, too. Not all the times, but usually, like I remember with Klondike Beach, it wasn't like the main beach. You had to kind of work a bit to get there. Yeah. It's almost always, if not remote, as far as just beaches in general go, it is like, say, the northernmost part or the southernmost part. So it's secluded in some way, shape or form. Yes. I read this fascinating article about a nude beach off of Palm Beach called Air Force Beach. Okay. And it was a private island owned by John D. MacArthur of the famous John D. And Kathryn T. MacArthur found it. Yeah. And he made his billions selling insurance, I believe, and apparently was a bit of a nature of himself. But he allowed people to use his beach and he also allowed one of the sides of the beach to become a nude beach. And there was a big struggle because he died as he was signing over or his son was signing over the deed to this beach, to the county with the stipulation that this part remain nude. And he died before the nude part document was signed. So the county took the beach and was like, no, we're not going to sign that other thing. And there's been a struggle ever since. I think that was in the 90s when he died. But it was a lost nude beach. But for a while there, there was apparently something like 5000 people a day coming there to sunbathe nude on the weekends. It was one of America's most populated nude beaches. And it was all because it was this old rich guys. He was okay with it. Did it have a sign that said, these penises are brought to you in part by the John D. And Kathryn T. McArthur foundation? Yes. And you push a button and it's read by IRA Glass? Yeah, actually, IRA didn't read those. Does he? Can you do it, though? I think everyone wants to hear that. No, I don't think so. I've retired my Iride glass impression. The other thing with some of these beaches is like, sometimes they're so remote and removed, it's just sand and you're on your own. Right. They may not even have trash cans and stuff. Other ones are a little more advanced and they might have activities. They might have a beach or a toilet. What do you call it? Like a bathhouse, right. And a shower. Or maybe they even serve booze. But it bears pointing out that I think a lot of Americans, and especially like, more conservative, like, in the kind of way I grew up, more conservative, religious Americans might think it's just like a hedonistic sexual free for all with these weirdos. And that is generally not the case at all. It is a bunch of old people naked and talking to each other about whatever the economy how the fish are biting. Yeah, I don't think how the fish are biting. Well, as long as it's not sea turtles, I guess. Yeah, we can't really overstate that. A genuine natureist Nudist nude beach has nothing to do with sex. It might be a sensual experience to have. Like this one guy quoted in the article says, just being out there and feeling the breeze and feeling the water and all that, it's sensual. Sure. But this guy is talking about the senses, like the tactile senses, just making them feel good. Not saying, like, I got a giant erection. Right? Because of it. Yes. It's not about sex. And again, a lot of these places are more family friendly than even adjacent beaches. Yeah. And there is no shame in our bodies. And we respect each other's bodies. I mean, they're probably the least or most open minded body type community on planet Earth, right? Yeah, you would think so. Like, there's no body shaming in nudist communities. That's the whole point. They all come together to accept where we all hang and wrinkle and all the things that happen to bodies over the years. Sprout, weird goat hairs. Well, you should take care of those. Yes. Even the nudists are like, you need to do something about that. Yeah. You just come back to your little cabana and there's like a pair of tweezers and scissors on your pillow. I was reading, dude, Milwaukee used to have a nude beach. Yeah, I was pretty surprised to hear that one. But it was called Paradise Beach, and it was like a legit. I think it was closing optional because it was county. Usually if it's a government beach, they can't legally exclude anybody, so it has to be clothing optional. But I think it was clothing optional. It's Paradise Beach, but it was like family oriented nudist beach, and it was adjacent or just down the beach from a beach called Bradford Beach, and you had to wear clothing beach. It's not nudist, but it was a party beach. And Bradford Beach, where you had to wear clothes, was a bigger party beach than Paradise Beach, which was the clothing optional beach. And that's usually how it is. Although eventually, and this is normally the case, sometime in the early 90s, some of the people from Bradford Beach started hanging out naked on Paradise Beach, started, like, getting wasted and having sex, and it wasn't family friendly anymore, and there were complaints. And then the Paradise Beach is no longer yeah, the whole sex thing is weird to me. It's not like a bathing suit. If that's the barrier that keeps you from just going hog wild sexually, it's not much of a barrier. No, it's true. I get the impression that this halliver park in Miami, it is known as the largest nude beach in the United States and one of the most popular in the world. So says our article. I get the feeling it's way more of a party scene. Yes, it is, because have you ever been there. No, I was reading about it. Yeah, I read about it and I looked up pictures and of course, I'm sitting at my desk looking at new people on the beach. It's part of the job. But there's pictures of it looks like a spring break with like, 40 people posing and they're all naked. And these were younger people, too. This wasn't like the older set. It's Miami. I mean, it was all kind of people older and younger. Right. And again, just because I am who I am, I was like, that's kind of completely normal, actually. And the other part of you went, oh, my God, what is going on there? I just don't know what to think. It's funny. It is funny and sad. But I mean, the very fact that you are aware of it means that there's hope for addressing it, like, once and for all. Yeah, the nudity problem. Yeah, you just go one way or the other. Either be like, I'm totally fine with nudity. I'm going to make this my mission and just be fine with nudity. Totally. Or just go, never nude. Just always wear, like, that pair of Daisy Dukes under your clothes. No, but like you said, I am fine with it in my adult, rational, evolved brain. But that shame is so ingrained. I know. From childhood it's really hard to get you. All right, let's take another break. How about that? And we'll come back and talk a little bit about Cape Cod and some of the behaviors you should obviously avoid. 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. 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So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, you can tune into the podcast series on Amazon music My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right Media. That's right. Part true crime and part comedy, my Favorite Murder takes you on a journey through small town mysteries and major laughs, all in the same week. That's right. Hosts Karen Kilgarif and Georgia Hard Stark 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. All right, so I promised a little Cape Cod talk. We mentioned hall over park. There's Blacks Beach in San Diego. Very popular. Longstanding nude beach. Yeah. One of the first in the US. I think. Yeah, for sure. And that, of course, San Diego. I figured they would have one there. Yeah, dude, San Diego Beach is in the 70s were like, whatever you wanted to do. Yeah, it's like Three Company all day long. Yeah, but like, the place, not just the innuendo they were making innuendo about was actually going on there. Right. Whenever I think of San Diego in the companies, I think of what those bars called? Fern Bars. Yeah, fern Bars that we covered in the bars episode. Yeah. The Regal Beagle was literally a firm bar. I think they had burns there. So anyway, Cape Cod in the 19 seven s in Massachusetts had a bit of a fight going on their hands. The NPS. The National Park Service outlawed public nudity. And it was a big deal because in parts of Cape Cod, there were people that would go nude. It ended up in lawsuits and the nude ban was upheld. And they, I believe, still are the only national park with a specific ban on nudity. I didn't know that. It's not a federal law. No, in any federal park, apparently, except Cape Cod now. Yes. It's the only one. So congratulations, Cape Cod. You really showed your butt. Yeah, and I love it here. It says, now if there are conflicts, the park employees attempt to resolve it informally. Right. I think everyone is just like, come on, can we just work this out? Why don't you go over here? You go over there and don't look at them. And can I go back to my office? You need a lobster roll rough. You in. Log cabin of my own making, probably. So, yeah. Kick cot is kind of an outlier. Usually there are, like a nude beach getting legislated. It will go one of two ways. It will start with a beach that people just say, this is our new nude beach. We're going to start being nude here, take my pants off. It's very remote. Normally it's hard to get to, and a lot of nudists prefer it that way. Like, it's a little harder for them to get to it. But that also means that it's a little harder for perverts. And look, you lose to get to. Well, plus, remote beaches are the best kind of beaches, right. They end up getting a score with like a very remote kind of tranquil scene. Yes. So you've got that it'll be an unofficial public beach. Public nude beach. And then something will happen, and the local government will either legislate that officially it's clothing optional, or else no, it's not. Everybody needs to get dressed normally. Everybody needs to get dressed because usually it's the result of a complaint, like there's some residents or an HOA group or somebody nearby who considers that their beach and doesn't want a bunch of naked people frolicking around. And if the nudists are trying to make their case, like, no, we just want to be naked. We're not perverts or anything like that. If they're making their case, it's usually, again, underscored by people like getting wasted in having public sex on the new beach. Right. Which brings us, Chuck, I think, to where we should share some tips to people who are thinking of maybe going to a new beach. And the cardinal rule of a genuine nude beach is no sex. Don't have sex on the beach. No one wants to see that. Yeah. I think the first two cardinal rules of a nude beach don't have sex and don't be a creep are the same rules at a regular beach? Definitely. You don't want to be a creep with your clothes on or off. Yeah. This one says, you know, it goes to a lot of trouble to say, like, don't take pictures of people. Don't take pictures. They mentioned selfies. Like, if you're in the background, you may not realize someone's in the background. Or God forbid, if there's a child in the background or the newest family, just put your camera away for a bit. Yeah. I mean, like, if you're taking pictures and there's a naked kid running around, you are really putting your life in jeopardy depending on that kid's father and what his opinions are on creeps. Very true. But again, my point is that applies to regular beaches, too. Yeah. Fully clothed beaches. Don't take pictures of people at the beach. That's creepy and wrong. Agreed. What else? What's another tip? This says, and these were we should point out these were from the Holiver beach website. And that's the party beach in Miami. It says, don't just sit right down next to another person if there's plenty of space on the beach. And again, that's sort of like a regular beach. It would be a little weird when I was just at Isle of Palms, not many people there on a weekday this time of year. Like hundreds of yards in between blankets and chairs. If someone would have sat down right next to me, I would have been like, that's a little weird. Yeah. Why won't you go over there or over there or anywhere else? And especially true in new beach. And then you turn and the person is actually made of sand and they blow away. What is that? I just made it up. Okay, not everything's a reference, all right? I didn't know if that was sort of weird fantasy film or something. No. Maybe Dune. This thing says, be sure to bring a towel. Yeah. This is good advice. Yeah. I mean, that's pretty obvious. And they say that most people need us. Bring two towels. One to sit on and put all your junk on. That can get potentially gross. Right. And then another one to actually dry your face with. Right. I would have brought a towel just to dry off with, but it wouldn't have occurred to me, like, no, you also need to bring a towel to sit on. Like, if you're going to sit on a stool or a chair or something. Nobody wants your butt funk on their chair. No, that's grody. And you don't want somebody else's either. So let's think here. Yeah. I would say a beach chair rental company at a nude beach is probably not thriving, don't you think? Yeah. I mean, that should be a tip as well. Like, maybe bring your own chair. Another tip that it said is if you get an erection, there's ways of taking care of that. Get in the water, turn over onto your stomach. Think about nuns playing baseball. I mean, if you're getting an erection on a nude beach, I don't know. I'm not sure what to say about that. Well, you could be, like, 13. Yeah, maybe. I didn't really think about that. No, but I mean, even if you're a dude and it's your first time or something gets you just right. Yeah. There's got to be some sort of etiquette for that. I think the point of this is, like, don't just walk around like, hey, everybody, it's happening. Check it out. Right. You want to just kind of keep that to yourself is the point. Yeah, I would think that would be a big stay away from me sign to other people. Right. You could take an eye out. Oh, man. I really feel like we may have crossed lines here in this episode, and I'm not sure. Yeah. Do you think so? No, I'm surprised that I'm able to make it through this episode, to be honest. I'll bet there's a lot of people who are like, I can't listen to Josh and Chuck talk about this one. Bring sunscreen, of course, and then kind of kidding around. But definitely not kidding around because they make the very fine point. If you're in your it's your first time ever doing this, then by all accounts, it's probably the first time your body parts down there, your private parts have seen the sun. Yeah. And that's a bad recipe. Can you imagine? No bad sunburn. There no could not imagine sunburn or will ruin your vacation period. I can imagine sunburned penis would really put a dent in things. Yeah. This article suggests even bringing a hat to use, which I thought was smart. I got a cut helmet that would definitely work. I got a couple more things. What else? So back in the 19th, century, the Victorians were pretty well known for being pretty prudish, right? Yeah. On the surface, that is. Yes, exactly, on the surface. But at a public beach, all of that is out on display. So the surface is all that matters. Right. So I ran across this invention that they came up with. At least in Australia. If not in England as well. But they had cabanas on the back of wagons that were pulled by horses. And you would get into the cabana and the horse would draw the wagon with you and the cabana in it out to the ocean. And then you would get out into the water so that nobody else would see you in any kind of remote state of undressed. And we're still talking, like, wrists and ankles covered. That was too much. So they would get in these private cabanas and be drawn by horse out to the water. Wow. Yes. That was crazy. And then fast forward to the 1950s, and there was a nudist trend that sparked all over Australia. And I think now Australia has something like five designated nude beaches, which I'm surprised it was that little, because in Britain, there's eleven of them. Really? Yeah. I was surprised by that, too. And there's a great quote from this one counselor Brighton, who is like, I guess a local elected official from back in 1979 when Brighton became the first official nude beach. He said, I personally have got no objection to people showing their breasts and bosoms and general genitalia to one another. Jolly good luck to them. But for heaven's sake, they should go somewhere more private. Isn't that a great quote? Yeah, maybe that's where I lie. Is it really? So you have a problem with nude beaches? No, they're fine, just not for me. Got you. What about the private nude beach that I envision? The island that you own, I would visit it without you there, and I would pull my shorts down for a minute, for 60 seconds. Right. But not past the ankle. You just stay in there with me. Oh, no, I would still have my hands on them. And I'd be like, jokes on you. Whole islands under surveillance. Jokes on you. It's a surprise party. Well, that's new beaches, man. Unless you got anything else. I got nothing else. If you want to know more about nude beaches and you made it this far through the episode, or what we could probably call a psycho drama between me and Chuck, you can type that word in the search bar@housetofworks.com and we'll bring up the Spine article. And since I said search bars, time for listener mail. I'm going to call this. We helped a dude Get into medical school. And here it goes. Hey, guys. I started listening at the beginning of middle school, although the moment I was completely hooked was when I listened to the Delta Force episode. Since then, I don't think I missed an episode for nine years straight. Jumping Back to Present Day a few weeks ago, I had a medical school interview. One of the interviewers asked me something to the effect of how have you cultured a spirit of continuous learning in your life outside the classroom? One of the things I brought up was stuff you should know. And the interviewer who asked the question was a fan. That shared connection at the beginning of the interview really helped to break the ice a bit. And the rest of the interview went really smoothly. I just heard back that I had been accepted. I guess I can't say that our mutual love of SYSK was the reason I got in. But I do think that having that connection helped me to relax and nail the interview from that point on. So thanks for helping break the ice for me. Hearing back from you guys would make my week. We'll do one better. Isaac Lam. We read it on the air. Good luck in med school. He lives in Indianapolis. Said he wants us to visit there for a tour. I think we're going to try and hit up Indianapolis at some point. It's possible. And yeah. Way to go, buddy. Yeah. Congratulations on getting into med school, Isaac. Great name too, by the way. Agreed. If you want to get in touch with us like Isaac did, you can tweet to us. I'm at Josh Clark and at Syskpodcast Chuck's on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant and stuff you should know. 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Who was America's first murderer? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/who-was-americas-first-murderer | John Billington didn't just sign the Mayflower Compact -- he was also the colony's first criminal, and had the dubious honor of being the first European to be convicted of murder in this new place. But how did it happen? Tune in to find out. | John Billington didn't just sign the Mayflower Compact -- he was also the colony's first criminal, and had the dubious honor of being the first European to be convicted of murder in this new place. But how did it happen? Tune in to find out. | Thu, 30 Jun 2011 15:32:54 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=30, tm_hour=15, tm_min=32, tm_sec=54, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=181, tm_isdst=0) | 26984783 | 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. Chuckle. Right. And this is stuff you should know. Episode 398 no, it's not what I'm saying it is. Okay, so now it's episode 398, episode three something three nine or eighter. That's good, Josh. That's your intro. Rocking and rolling, splicing and splashing over the horizon. What could it be looked like it's going to be a new country. You remember that one? No. What are you talking about? I genuinely have no idea what that was. The schoolhouse Rock for the Mayflower voyage. Wow. Really? Rocking and rolling and splashing. You remember that? Over the horizon. What could it be looked like it's going to be a free country. Nice. Or new country? Either way, it was both new and free. Probably new. Yeah, because it was not free for everybody. That's true. Yeah. So you're talking about this because we're going to talk about the first murderer, right? Yeah. And before we start, I want to ask why has no one ever made a modern film about the Mayflower Voyage? It seems like a no brainer. Yes. I don't know. Especially after going on around to it yet. Like the awesomeness of Master and commander. Did you ever see that? The one with Russell Crowe. Yeah. It was very good. Surprisingly good. Yeah, it surprised me, too, actually, but I didn't get the colon. It made it sound like it was a franchise, but it was like the first of the franchise. I guess parts of the Caribbean did have a call in the first one, didn't it? I don't know. That was Peter. We are Master and Commander, so it makes sense that it was awesome because he's such a great director and related to Bob Weir, I think. Really? I don't know. I don't think so. I've always suspected. Did he do the Truman Show? That was written by Bob we did Gattaka. I don't know who directed that. That might have been Peter Weir, but he did Gallipoli and scores of great movies. Well, cool. Well, thank you for joining us at this discussion of Peter Weir's film. He should direct the Mayflower movie is what I'm saying, for goodness sakes. Oh, okay. They need to do it like a realistic because when you learn about it in school at least I did, I thought you learn about it from Schoolhouse Rock and you get the picture. They sang songs and kind of rock and roll over the ocean and then ran into Plymouth Rock and shared Thanksgiving with the Indians. And they need to make a real movie about how it really was. Well, yeah, because that whole Schoolhouse Rock impression is pretty widely held, even among adults, educated adults. And the reason why is because there's a very small amount of firsthand information that left Plymouth Colony right. And was allowed to stand. There was a small group of people who are controlling all of the info about that place, and they were trying to paint it in as good a light as possible because they were trying to attract investors. And these first hand accounts that basically painted the Puritans as these hard scrapple people who were guided by a divine hand in the wilderness has stood all these centuries. 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No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. So let's talk about the programs, the voyage. Right. They landed in 1620, just as a quick primer. So says you. And they were pilgrims. They were Puritans separatists, as they were often called. They were people who were so pious that no one in all of Europe was pious enough to contend with them. And they were like, I'm sick of all your sinners. We're going to go find a new republic in the name and for the glory of God, and we're going to be really good, and we're going to do it in the new world. And that's what they did. They sailed over to Massachusetts and landed in Plymouth. Yes. As it turns out. Nice place to land, I imagine. And are we going to get to the murder guy right away, or should we just ease into that? Well, let's talk about who is there. It wasn't just Puritans. It wasn't just Separatists. There's a whole other group of people who don't get talked about a lot, and they were called the Strangers. Yeah, that sounded really creepy when I read it. For some reason. I think it sounds cool. I think it sounds creepy. They look like they should have been dressed in the Pilgrim black. Right. Like with wide brim hat so you can't see their eyes. Yeah. What was the deal with them? Were they Catholic? They were anything but the Separatists. The Puritans. So they were Catholics. They were sailors. They were Africans. They were whoever kidnapped Indians. I don't know if all those people were on the Mayflower, but there was a bunch of people right. The Puritans got them over there who went with them, and the Puritans were pretty rigid. Obviously, they didn't like Catholics at all. They were indeed extremely rigid, but to this degree, as we'll see, they found that nobody's this rigid, and there were a lot of strangers who broke a lot of laws, but there were a lot of Puritans who did, too, and they just kind of glossed it over. They kept records, but these things just didn't get promoted. Right. Yeah. Mortgage Relation. Yes. Is that what you're talking about? Yes. Mortgage Relation, written in 1622 by William Bradford, who was clearly the governor, longtime governor of Plymouth. Right. His cousin George Morton wrote he was a Separatist, and he wrote this book or an account, and that sort of looked at as the account of Plymouth. But as it turns out, as you point out, because you wrote this, mortgage Relation was written to attract funding for Plymouth. It was basically like a lengthy in depth brochure to attract investors. And what are you going to say? You're not going to say, we're starving to death over here. Right. We're having a really hard time. We're probably not going to make it. People are committing bestiality. Yes. Buggery is what they call that. Really? We'll get to that in a minute. Okay. And they're not going to say this. They're going to say, things are great. We're really living by God's will. We're really just making it over here and we need some more money. Yeah, that's what they did. So that means take it with a grain of salt. But they didn't just pretend like the strangers weren't there, but they painted some of the strangers in possibly a less than flattering light. Right. Yeah. I mean, are we at the Billington's, then? Might as well be. The Billington's. The family, John Billington, his wife, Eleanor, his son's, little John, john Jr. And Francis, who was a boy, his other son. They were sort of painted as reading your article. They sort of seemed like, on one hand, like the first white trash. That's one way to put it. And then they also sort of seem like, no, they might have been kind of cool and just rabble rousers. Yeah. Yes. I think that's very accurate. But they definitely weren't any friends at Bradford. He did not like these people. No, he didn't. He wrote in a letter to a Mr. Cushing, I believe yes. Who had some sort of authority, I guess, over the colony in back in England. But he basically says that Billington still rails against you and that he's a knave, which means a scoundrel, and he'll always be a knave. He'll live and die as so he'll live and die. Yeah. That was Cushman, by the way. Thank you. Same thing. And he also said he said they were one of the profanest families to come to the colony. And it wasn't just John. He didn't like any of them. His kids were a bit of a handful, too. Well, one of them it doesn't say who in the records, but on the way over, decided that he was going to shoot off his father's musket yeah. Right. Gun in a cabin filled with people, which is bad enough, but he did it right next to an open, half filled keg of gunpowder. Right. So he almost just blew the whole Mayflower up, and history would have changed forever. Probably. So that was the first thing that happened with the Billingtons and the rest of the people on the Mayflower? Yes. No, actually, it wasn't. There was a mutiny that John Billington, the father, was involved in, and he was let off the hook because it was his first offense. But that started. Tensions were already high, and then one of his sons, either Francis or John Jr. Shot off the gun in the cab. So you start to get an impression of this family, especially when you look at when you think of them bristling not just the average person's eye, but a Puritan. Right. Because you can screw up innumerable ways in the eyes of a Puritan. Sure. Especially if you're not a Puritan. That's right. And then once they got to the New World, they continued their shenanigans. John Jr. Kind of wandered off one day, 20 miles worth, and wandered into a Native American village. Right. And then he was taken to another village by those Native Americans, and eventually they send out a group to go find them. It took them a little while. They set sale actually ended up on Cape Cod, what is now Cape Cod, and said, you're going to have to come back. Yes. And they found him because of Mesa SWAT, who is the great station of the wapanoag. Wapanoag. Yeah, wapana. Wag. I'm getting an email for that one who was involved in the first Thanksgiving with the same people. So he might have had something to do with that then, huh? Well, he did. He basically was trying to use the Englishman against his rivals, I think the Abnorm, to basically run them out rather than consolidate with the other Indians against the English. Got you. And basically that turned over the whole continent to Europe, like that. One act is largely considered as the turning point. How about that? So he was already pals with them. We helped him find the boy. And if you're from Plymouth, if you live in the Plymouth area, then you might know Billington Sea, which is a pond, and that's named for John Jr. Yeah. He wandered off. Right. Yeah. I think that he might have found that he discovered the pond, but he may have discovered it on his wander. Right. His sojourn, if you will. But they found him, and he was behind with weeds. So apparently they kind of adopted them a little bit. Like he was the mascot of Ned Village. Yeah. And then they gave him back. And then I think the colonists gave the Indians a couple of knives and said, thanks and went back to Plymouth. Thanks for the beads and the guy, but you have to imagine that mounting a ten man sailing expedition into Indian country because your kid wandered off. You're going to rub the back of your neck and be like, thanks a lot. If you're a Billington, you're like, thanks for getting my kid back. Do I owe you anything? Not so, though, because Billington had a bad reputation and that he scoffed at Captain Miles Standish, and you don't scoff at Standish. Miles Standish proud. Miles Standish is trying to get people to serve in the military, and Billington was like, no, dude, I'm not doing that. Yeah. He was a part of anti government groups, government subversion. Well, there was in 1624, there was what's called the Older Man lyford Conspiracy. That was the name of the two main conspirators. He was named as a co conspirator. And reading his history and then the actual history of this conspiracy, which is a lot of secret meetings about how they should overthrow this Puritan regime and start governing this colony the right way. Right. He was probably a part of it, but he denied it and was let off the hook again. Well, and he also apologized for standing up against Standish, and they said they threatened him with Hog Tyne, which can actually kill you. I didn't realize that I could see that because all your weights on your chest, right? Well, they tie your legs together, they tie your arms behind your back, and then they tie your ankles to your neck, around your neck. What? So unless you stay completely arched like that, you're going to start cutting off circulation like it's a form of torture. It's not just how we're going to tie you up. Well, that whole second step has been kind of lost to history, as I understand it. Well, now, is it just tying your wrists and your ankles together behind your back, and yes, you're arched, but I don't know anything about tying the ankles around. That that's horrible. Apparently, the old hogtime is a little more brutal, which makes total sense, which also makes sense why he's described as basically, like, pleading for mercy, not to have that happen to him, which is why they let him go. Yes. Miles sand is like, all right, get out of my site. Billington, really? We can't forget. We can't leave out the fact that these people were original Plymouth colonists. Like, they were the first he's on the charter, right. The first English, European, Americans in the first who would become one of the first states of America. These are important people, no matter what their reputations are. He was the signer of the Mayflower Compact, which is the first European based governing law, I guess you would call it laws. Right. And he helped hug the colony out of the wilderness. He was one of the colonists, right? Yeah. And there's a PDF online I found that traces his family tree. And apparently James Garfield, the president, was a descendant of Billington. I wish I would have written down some of the last names. I know Witten was one of them, but I mean, there are people that say, like, still alive today. Oh, yeah. Apparently. I remember researching this. I couldn't find it when I re researched for this podcast, but there's like a whole group of people who are into that kind of thing. We're proudly ancestors of billington. This rabblerous is the first real troublemaker in America. Well, people are proud, period. Just to be descendants of the Plymouth colonists, for sure. Hopefully everybody has kind of an idea of how Billington and his family were regarded. Right? Well, we didn't get to his wife and daughter. I know that was after what he did. Go ahead. Eleanor was locked in the stocks and whipped at one point. She also had to pay fines of \u00a35 sterling because she was found guilty of slandering her neighbors and his granddaughter. Dorcas, I love that name. There's only one way to pronounce that, right? Yeah. D-O-R-C-A-S dorcas. I'm going to bring that one back. Yeah. If I ever have a daughter, she's going to be Dorcas. Bryant. Dorcas apparently was sentenced to whipping because she had sexual intercourse when she was 22 years old. And you didn't do that. The whole family was definitely not they didn't fall in line with the rest of the crowd, although that's not true because a lot of the rest of the crowd was doing even worse things, as it turns out. You just didn't read it in the brochure. Right. So can we talk about some of the stuff that people were doing, please? Okay, so remember, by 1690, there's still only 755 people in Plymouth Colony. 775. Okay. So this stuff is happening like 2050 years before that. There are way fewer people. And yet there were incidents where people like Thomas Granger, who is a servant, was indicted for buggery, which we established before it was bestiality, with a mare, a cow, two goats, diverse sheep, two calves, and a turkey who he fell in love with. He was sentenced to hangs, to die by hanging John Walker the next year. Turkey. Yes. He laid with a bitch, as it's put. And of course we mean the Pilgrims meant the dog, the female dog. Sure. Another guy, he was held on suspicion of buggery with a beast. Another guy had buggy with a mare. And it just keeps going on and going on. Basically, somebody would get caught sleeping with a dog and would be whipped, put into the stocks pillaried and it was just recorded but never talked about. Yeah. There was also rape and sodomy against humans going on. Yeah, the way they put sodomy was that John Alexander and Thomas Roberts back in 1637 were caught, and they got the hot irons, which wow, that's rough. So you hear about this stuff, and you think dorcas doing sleeping with a man, I presume, is a very normal thing for a 22 year old middle aged woman to do right at the time? Yes. She's not playing down with turkeys. No. Hey, everyone, when you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office? And you could be using stamps.com. Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses, because stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and ups shipping services you need right. From your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. To stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. So Eleanor got put in the stocks for slander, right? Yeah. There's no recording of what she said. Basically, we've reached this point here where we should probably talk about what John billington did. Okay. Because now that we debunked the fact that not everyone was super pure and you can't necessarily read mortgage relation and the brochure and say everything is just hunky dory over there. Actually, maybe this is why the movie hasn't been made, because he wants to see a guy sleeping with a turkey. I don't know. I think you get yourself there's a market for that kind of movies. You paid a lot for it. There's a market for that, but it's not box office grossing record breaking numbers. Peter Weir wouldn't touch that one. Not what the info poll. So we should probably talk about how billington became America's first murderer. It took place, what, ten years after he got there? So you have to think like, this guy is an original settler, and he's been farming, and hewing an existence out for himself and other people. And as an original mayflower compact signer, he got a bunch of land parcel to him, like this party's land now. But while he made an enemy, clearly r1 enemy, he made quite a few, bradford being one of them. But he made one enemy named john Newcommon, who was a newcomer, as it turns out, to Plymouth. He hadn't been there for ten years. And it seems like history is a little sketchy because, like you said, it's not all recorded at that point. But one thing I read was that it was possibly over hunting rights, and I don't know how true that is. It is very true. Yeah. When I was going back and reading the source material for this, I'm like, why was I so vague when I wrote this article? Because did it confirm that? Yeah. Well, in the Branford's version, basically, is like billington waylaid. newcoming we should explain what waylaid is. Waylaid is like basically lying in wait and then murdering. Yeah, like hiding in the bush. Premeditated. It's premeditated. It's huge. If you read a stranger's account, there's an account by a stranger. I don't know who. It's not in the source I cited, but it talks about how New coming was already known to Billington, because he used to steal from Billington's traps. He poached on his land. Okay. And Billington had chased the kid off a bunch of times. Newcomers, 17 at the time. Got you. He's a little jerk, basically. And he was what the strangers called a saint, which meant you were in good with Bradford because you were a Puritan. And compared to a stranger, you had exponentially more rights, and you got away with exponentially more stuff. Got you. Okay, so here's Billington, who already has a bad reputation, and there's some little 17 year old punk kid stealing from his traps, who he's chased off time and time and time again, and he catches them there. So he goes after him with his gun, and the kid goes and hides behind a tree, and Billington shoots at the tree. I don't know if he meant to shoot at the kid. Apparently, he's a pretty good marksman. But he hit the kid in the shoulder. Right. Not exactly a lethal shot today. Sure. Well, the kid died in, like, three days of an infection. That's how America's first murder took place, and it was apparently with a blunderbuss. Have you ever heard of these guns? Is it the one with the big yeah, it's sort of like you see, Elmer Fudd is a pilgrim hunting with yeah, a little bit. I mean, it's not like an elephant gun, but it does flare out of the end, and it's sort of like what would be considered today is sort of like a sawed off shotgun. So it was a musket, but it was short and flared, and so I imagine it had a wider spray, even though it wasn't well, it wouldn't be a spray because they didn't use pellets, but they compared it to a sawdust shotgun hand on the pump. Exactly. So that's how the first murder took place. I get the impression Billington, who is also described as beloved by many in another account by a stranger, kind of a satirical take on Plymouth Colony. Yeah. Thomas Morton in the New English Canaan, said that he was a beloved dude. He was beloved by many. Basically, if you were a stranger, you probably liked Billington. He sounded like a kind of a fun guy, to be honest. Right. I know he's the first murderer, but he's a rival rouser I tend to associate with those types. Well, Billington thinks that because of the fact that they need people there still. Yeah. Each individual is very important, and that this kid had been really it was the kid's fault that he was on his property. Billington warned him off that he would be spared his life. Well, no. Governor Bradford himself was the one who ordered him to death, and he didn't like him to begin with. Right. Now he had his chance. Right. So this is what you could call unfair to a certain extent, perhaps. And not only did Bradford sentence his longtime enemy or somebody he disdained for many years, to death, he was also the one who literally wrote the history in addition to what is it? Mortgage what? Mortgage retort. Not mort retort. I was kidding. Mortgage relation. Okay. So in addition to mortgage relation, the other probably largest cited first hand account of Plymouth Plantation is called of Plymouth Plantation. It's Bradford's own journal. So he literally wrote the history for Plymouth, and of course, he's going to paint it in his he's going to paint himself and his fellows in the best light. And that's what we go on. And Billington in a poor light because he sent it some to hang. Yeah. So I think, if anything, this was the episode intended to tell you to always take historical accounts of the grain itself, especially the old ones. There's always two sides to every story, and the three stooges actually get better as you age. Stuff you should know. You got anything else? No. Do you want to learn more about America's First Murderer type? America's First Murderer America. I'm having trouble sending that these days. You can type it in handy. You can type wherever you want, but you're going to get the best result if you type it in the handy search bar at How Stuff works.com. Sure. And that, of course, brings up listener mail. Yes, Josh? I'm going to call this nicotine poisoning from Erin. A couple of years ago, guys came home from university to find my kiwi roommate working away in the kitchen. He decided to bake brownies for the first time, and I hurried upstairs to try some because he wanted to support his friend. Okay. Quickly, I was overwhelmed by a sour taste, which was only mildly canceled out by the cherries, which were mixed in with the batter. I was very close to spitting it out when my roommate walked in and said, what do you think? I didn't want to insult them, so I popped the rest of it in my mouth and said I could use a little more sugar. I left the room, and that's when everything got hazy. What I do remember is my roommates bursting into my room. This is crazy. They found me curled up into a ball with my head between my knees, rocking slowly. I was covered in sweat and muttering to myself, letting out loud moans, which is apparently what alerted my roommates. When they opened the door, they flooded the room with light, caused intense pain in my head, and for some reason in my stomach. Not really thinking, I bolted to the bathroom and induced vomiting, trying to get all the evil out of me. I was exhausted, laying on the floor, trying to figure out what was wrong. Apparently, there were two boxes on the table. Did you read this one? No. One containing brownies and one with shisha tobacco destined for the hookah that they kept in their house for good. In my case, I accidentally consumed about 3oz of cherry tobacco mix that was destined for the hookah. Not sure exactly how much nicotine my body absorbed in the hour or so it was in me, but when I stood up, I promptly passed out and, according to my roommate, started convulsing on the floor. They wanted to take me to the hospital, of course, but I refuse. Being the bullheaded Midwesternner I sometimes can be for the college student who doesn't want to pay for that kind of thing, right? When I did go to the hospital the next morning, explain the situation to the Er tech, they immediately took my vitals and said I was lucky to have survived without any serious complications, that it very well could have been a fatal dose. Yeah, I'll bet. And all I can say is, if you're ever in the same situation, err on the side of caution called Poison control right away. And he's lucky that his roommates, one of them, had EMT training. It could have gone the other way. And Aaron might not be a fan of our podcast today. Me? He egged who could youbacco popped it in his mouth and said it needs a little more sugar. Wow. Okay. And if you are a member of the billington clan by blood somehow, or marriage, whatever, we want to hear from you. Send us an email to stuffpodcast@howtofworks.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. 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How Curiosity Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-curiosity-works | Alternately hailed a crucial part of the human condition or accused of killing cats, curiosity remains a subject of debate among researchers. Where does it come from? How does it work? Join Chuck and Josh as they explore the mysterious roots of curiosity. | Alternately hailed a crucial part of the human condition or accused of killing cats, curiosity remains a subject of debate among researchers. Where does it come from? How does it work? Join Chuck and Josh as they explore the mysterious roots of curiosity. | Thu, 16 Jun 2011 15:18:52 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=16, tm_hour=15, tm_min=18, tm_sec=52, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=167, tm_isdst=0) | 32455437 | 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. Wow. 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 Advantageplatinum Select card. Learn more at citi comAdventure and travel on with Cityadvantage. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from houseworkscom. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. What did you just say? I think that came through. Did it, Jerry? Well, we'll find out eventually, but wait a minute, we got a little plugged to do here at the beginning of the onset, as you know. Okay. We are making our radio debut on tomorrow. I know. And it is the awesome WFMU out of Jersey City and it covers the New York metro area and it is the oldest freeform radio station in the country and very highly respected. And one of my favorite stations because I stream it online, which anyone can do. Yes. So you're going to be able to stream our show online or just listen to it if you live in New York. Right. So WFMU is taking a couple of old podcasts and putting them together into an hour long show that they're going to air. Yeah, pretty cool stuff. Very cool. We're bona fide. We are bona fide. And you can hear that on if you live in New York, you know, FMU. But in case you don't, it's 91.1 FM and in Hudson Valley, 90.1 ft. So you can listen to us all over the place up there. Those are total public radio megahertz. Yes. And we are on Friday. I guess we need to say when. Every Friday from seven to 08:00 PM. On WFMU. You can hear us or you can stream that online and your support is appreciated. Yeah, as always. Nice. Let FM you know you like us if you do, and if you don't, just keep it to yourself. Nice, Chuck. Thanks. How's it going, Chuck? It's going. Hairied and good. You're about to go to La. Max Fine Khan, technically. Lake Arrowhead, la first for a couple of days ago, then Max Funk. That's right, yeah. I'm excited for you. Yeah. You're going to hang out with Jesse Thorn. Jesse Thorn, the esteemed head of the podcasting division of the world, head of MaximumFun.org in the voice of the Sound of Young America and Jordan Jesse Go, among others. The dude is a young mogul. I think my title that I just gave him, the title I just gave him, he'd prefer. Which is what? Head of the podcasting division of the world. I didn't mean to hear that. Sorry. His buddy and ours, Hodgman, is going to be there. Actually, the part of Josh Clark at this weekend will be played by John Hodgman. That's going to be pretty cool. Totally. You guys are doing trip together? Yeah, I'm a little nervous. Oh, Chuck, I know you're going to knock it out of the come on. Hey, guess who's there now I do know. You want me to yeah. Andy Richter. Yes. One of my all time heroes. Yeah, that's going to be pretty cool. And tell him I said I can ask for some sidekick advice. Dude, I'm just kidding. All right, well, we'll probably edit out that with that anyway. So having lunch tomorrow with our buddy Luke Ryan. Tell him I said hi on the Paramount Pictures lot. Do you know who's losing her mind right now? Who? Katie M. KDM. Beautiful. You already forgot. Good enough. Let's get started. Howie. Chuck. Great. Okay, Chuck, I have a little bit of a story for you. Okay. I don't remember when I was looking for it, but at some point in time, it occurred to me I had no idea where the origin of the phrase curiosity killed the cat came from. Right. It's written on my page. What do you have? Oh, I don't have the origin. I just thought, well, I killed the cat, so it couldn't be good. You wrote that down. I didn't write that down. You had a note to remember that, though. I'm telling you, I went the wrong way to get here to work today, so I'll handle this. Yes. I went onto the Internet with a capital I, and I found that it was attributed to a playwright named Ben Johnson. Right. And he wrote a play in you mean old Ben Johnson that lives out yeah, the immortal Ben Johnson. The one he just won't die. Okay. Yeah, that guy. Every man and his humor with a U. So, you know, he's, like, British. He is the quote, helter skelter, hang, sorrow, carol kill, cat up, tails all and the loose for the hangman, whatever that means. Right. But he's got carol kill AAT, meaning like, warrior kill a cat. Which is weird because this is associated with later on. Worry and curiosity are associated for a little while. Really? Yeah. Finally, we get to 1898, okay? Exactly 400, 300 years later, and the first old Ben Johnson still around. Old Ben Johnson, he's more secluded than ever. We finally get to the Galveston Daily News, right? 400 years later. Isn't that weird? 300 years later. I don't know why I can't subtract 1598 from 1898 and come up with the right number. Yes. Anyway, in the Galveston Daily News, the first time it appears in print, the proverb it is once said that curiosity killed the Thomas cat. They couldn't just say it, like, the right way, but a Thomas cat is a Tom cat. Like Tom and Jerry. Right. But we've had it ever since then. 1898. Did you know that? No, I didn't know. Back then. They called it it's almost capped. Well, that was a new thing you just learned. But the fact that I went and looked for that with really no gratification whatsoever, there was nothing offered. No one was paying me to go look it up. It's an example of curiosity. True. It's also part of your job where you get paid to do but I know what you mean. I don't think it worked into any of the stuff I wrote. Okay, so I did you've just let the cat out of the bag with cats? I was asked to write how Curiosity works, in part because we have a TV show coming up here in the Discovery family eventually called Curiosity. It's going to be huge when it happens. I think it's coming out this summer. Yeah. Answering a lot of the just really cool questions of life and beyond. Right. And then there's a website that's already running Curiosity.com. Yeah, we write for that some, too. It's very cool. It's worth checking out. But I was asked when all this was going on to write how Curiosity works, and I was like, it's not going to be that great. And I wrote it, I researched it and wrote it, and I thought, this is really great. Yeah. Worth podcasting on. Absolutely. Agreed, sir. So, Chuck, have you ever landed an assignment like that, that you thought it wasn't going to be great and then you ended up being proud of it? Yes. Not even proud of it. This is not going to be that interesting of an assignment. And it turned out to be good. Like two lungs, one heart, right? Right. Wow, you really are not showing up today, are you? I'm here. I'm right here. All right. Well, Chuck, let's talk about curiosity. Well, what you pointed out, which I thought was kind of neat, was that it killed the cat, theoretically, so the cat wouldn't have done well, evolutionarily speaking. Nice. So that's something that sort of flies in the face, curiosity as a whole sort of flies in the face of evolution. Because bring back Tuck. Tuck, he's making an appearance back in the day. Tuktuk gets a little curious about what's in the cave. Tucktock ends up with a slash chest from a cave cave bear or the clan of the cave bear. Tuckduck is not around, and he doesn't reproduce, so his offspring won't live on to be more curious. So still, humans are curious. Beyond that agreed. Take that, Darwin. Yes. I guess that probably forms the basis of why we don't really understand curiosity. Because we can't explain that. And we can't explain that because we don't understand it. And we don't understand it because we can't explain it. Which to me seems incredibly appropriate. Right? Yeah. Like, think about it. So we need, as humans, right? Very limited stuff. We need a certain amount of water, we need a certain amount of food, and we need shelter. And then as a species, we have to reproduce, right? Yeah. That's it. That's all we need. We don't need your Modest Mouse T shirts. Your Last Chance garage hat. Frankly, your facial hair is a tattoo perfluous. Really? It's not necessary. It's not really doing anything for your survival. No, not for my survival. But if you look around, Chuck, I mean, we've got some pretty great stuff going on that enhances our existence that we don't need. Right. So a number of the things that we have that have enhanced our existence are the result of curiosity. Right. Like Penicillin Alexander Fleming, he said, what exactly is growing in this petri dish here? And investigated it and found out that you could save millions and billions of lives with it. Right? Yeah. I would say many, if not most of the big advancements we've made have been because of an initial spark of curiosity, at least. But I would even go back to counter, sir, that even, like, survival does, in fact, depend on curiosity to a certain degree, because maybe if Tuck Tuck doesn't go see what's on the other side of that mountain, he doesn't find the rich fields of wildebeest to hunt when his family is starving. That is a very good point, Chuck, and I think you revealed something that forms the basis of curiosity. If for some reason, say, he was afraid of finding out what was over the mountain, he would never go. Yeah. Curiosity exists in antithesis of fear. They're actually counterproductive to one another. Yeah, I thought that was a good point. Yeah, well, not mine. You got it from somewhere? No, there's a whole field of research called curiosity research. There's a guy named George Lowenstein, who I quote pretty early on in the article, basically saying, like, whether you understand curiosity or not, just try to turn off the television set toward the end of a close football game where you are in the world. So what Lowenstein was pointing out was that there's probably a biologic basis to curiosity, and that suggests that it's a drive. Right? Yeah. And what I like about this, and you'll see consistently throughout this podcast, is that curiosity isn't one thing because it's sort of esoteric, but it's also a little like everything you mentioned in here. It's a little bit of both, I think. Okay. Starting with within us or without us. Something exists inside us. Right. Or something outside acting upon us. That's a big question. Yeah, and I think it also depends on the situation too, as we'll see. But there are two rival explanations as it stands now for curiosity and one is that it's within us and one is that it's without us. So like within us is drive theory, right? Yeah, like being hungry. It's exactly right. We have a hunger for basically superfluous information stuff that we don't need to survive right now. And so we go seek it out in the form of learning a new language or crossword puzzles. But you link the inner drive to the similarity to regular hunger and eating and satisfying that hunger as well. Right. It's this innate thing within us that we just have to satisfy. Okay, that's driving theory. Then there's another theory that says no, it's pretty much a response like, say an emotion. Right, right. Or pain to an external stimulus. Object specific incongruity, is that what it's called? Well it's saying that curiosity is object specific and it's called incongruity theory. Right. So incongruity theory says that there is a certain order that we can expect to the universe and when we notice something that is outside of that order, then we are forced to investigate it. We can't resist investigating it, but it's in reaction to something outside of us. Yeah, but I thought everyone was like this. But it's just not true. No, it's definitely not. And one example you use was why is that truck parked across the street at 02:00 a.m. That big delivery truck. Right, I would always be curious about that, but I guess some people would just see that and not think anything about it. Well, I think it's absolutely true, but there may be something that captures your curiosity or your attention that wouldn't somebody else or somebody might be curious about that picture of Nikola Tesla next to you that I just don't look at. But that could be because your curiosity is satiated about it. Right. So those are the two big rival theories, drive theory and incongruity theory. Right. And also to go a little further on incongruity theory, so say all of a sudden you notice that a pencil was just kind of moving slowly across the desk in front of you. I would wonder about that for sure. At the very least you would jump up and then look. But there's no way you're not looking. I'm looking around right immediately. Okay, so that's external, that's a response to the universe. But the problem is that both of these theories, they have a big hole in one fills the other big hole. So you put them together and you got maybe a whole unified theory of curiosity. Do you? Well yeah, I'm close. It's probably close. Okay. The big hole for incongruity theory is crossword puzzles aren't an example of disorder in our universe. Why would somebody go out and seek it? Drive theory? I can't think of it's a big hole, but there's a hole there, and I can't remember it. But for my money, drivetheory is the more correct of the two carries. Last minute 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. All mothers love their kids equally, right? Well, so does at and T. They treat all their customers like family. All of them. Everyone gets the same deals on every smartphone with a choice of plans. Only at at and T. It's pretty easy not to play favorites. And that's just what at and T does best. They give you their best deal. Doesn't matter if you're a new customer or if you signed up when a flip phone was still the future. Who doesn't want a deal? At and T won't make you feel like a middle child. They love all their customers, the same joint. At and T for their best deals on every smartphone and the choice of plans. And after you're signed up, give your mother a call. She misses you. Eligible plan required. Offers vary by device. Restrictions may apply. See at and t comdealsfordtails. So there's a further way to subdivide curiosity beyond these theories, and this is slightly less theoretical and more observational. Yeah. This is why I think we studied this in school. I remember studying this a little bit. Oh, yeah. Okay, we'll take it away, Chuck. Not in depth, but because it was high school. But state and trade, those are the classifications of the two types of curiosity, and they describe how we engage in curious behavior. So state curiosity would be the pencil moving on its own and being curious about that. It's basically by state they mean don't they mean like circumstantial almost situational. There's something going on right then, right? It's fleeting. It could be anything from that truck or that pencil to standing at a funeral and thinking about death. Yeah, but if you're just thinking about death in the afterlife, that's trait curiosity, right. Unless you're at the funeral. Yes. Right. Yeah. It depends with trade curiosity. Remember when we talked about happiness in that one audiobook? Yeah. So remember state versus trade? So there's state happiness, like winning the lottery, but you always went back to your baseline. Yes. This applies very much so to the same curiosity as well. That's pretty cool. Yeah. So with state curiosity, it's situational with trade curiosity, it's like your whole life, say Ernest Becker, he would have been trait curious about death. Yeah. Because he thought about it outside of funerals. He thought about it a lot. And because it was his life's work, you could make the case that he had a depth of curiosity for death. It's a further subcategorization of curiosity. Right, right. And the trade, obviously is just you're probably born curious. You have a lifelong interest just for the sake of learning things. But you also tag on here that is also linked to all kinds of things like arson and fearlessness and experimentation with drugs. Yeah. So there's a downside to that. Whereas the first state curiosity is a little more related to reward even though they both can lead to reward like excitement or a sense of association. Yeah. I'm curious what the correct pronunciation is. Yeah, I'm not with what you were saying, though. With trade curiosity that chuck, the fact that it does have a dark side to it got you. Overall, it's generally viewed as a very positive thing, highly encouraged. Except for this one period in the west when curiosity was reviled during the Middle Ages. St. Augustine. St. Augustine and his confessions. And I think like 392 Funkiller basically said like God has a special place in hell for the curious. Right. Because I think that was pretty much the quote. Yes. Don't ask too many questions, don't question things. And it detracts from the time that you have to think about God and your relationship with God and how great God is. Right. This is a very brief period of time where curiosity was downplayed or denounced or whatever. Yeah. Otherwise it's encouraged for the most part. Very much so. You want your kids to be curious, you want your parents and grandparents to still be curious. You know, that whole cycle of life thing. Right. Because I know you linked you found one study of Alzheimer's patients who they display a very low level of curiosity. And that's sad. The older you can keep that brain vital. We talk about it a lot. But curiosity has a lot to do with that, I think. Yes. And fear also tends to increase in Alzheimer's. Oh, really? Yeah, they're negatively correlated. One goes up, the other goes down, generally. All right. Because you said that fear basically curiosity gets you out of your comfort zone and fear keeps you in it. Right? That's exactly right. 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. Smartphones are getting smarter, faster, and that might freak some of you out. It's hard to keep up. Trust me, I'm lying when I say I know what LTE means. So let's simplify wireless together. Just fast, reliable, secure at and T. That's more surprising than making the League at 5ft. To reach new heights, you need the type of network that can keep up with you, with no hoops to jump through. Just fast 5G speeds for downloading and reduce lag. Plus 24/7 network protection with automatic fraud call blocking with at and T Active Armor. So join at and T and discover the power of 5G through our 5G compatible devices. At download of apps required. Five G may not be available in your area. For coverage details, the att. Comfivegforyou visit www dot att. Comcallprotect for details. So we were talking about trade, curiosity, and that it can be subdivided even further. Those two categories are depth and breadth. Right. So if you're interested in a lot of different things, but you're constantly seeing something new, maybe, right. That's breadth of curiosity. There's just a lot of different things that appeal to you. But if you're interested in the French language right. And you start studying, it back to pre Roman era, right? Yeah. Johnny Fuller here with the piano. Does he know the piano pretty well? Yeah. He didn't just, like, say, learn how to play the piano. He's learning, like, theory, and he's learning about how pianos are constructed, and he's learning about the history of plucking a string and what that means to his life. Curiosity very much adept. So either way, that's just great. Though I think it depends on the mood of society. I remember which is better. Like, when we were in school, colleges wanted kids that were really well rounded. They wanted people with a breadth of curiosity. Yeah. And nowadays, they want their campus to have a breadth of curiosity by having people with deep curiosity, a bunch of different people, no students. I know state universities have to make you take your base courses and all, but I think all colleges should really just let you take what you want to take. Do you think they should be free? No, I don't know about that. I think they should be free. I mean, that'd be great if they were free. I mean, Georgia, when we went there, might as well have been free. It was like $500 a quarter. It was really cheap. Yeah. But I would have easily traded in the classes that I could still don't care about now for a lot more of the ones that I really enjoyed and were interested in, I did. It worked like a chunk. That's a good point, my friend. So, Chuck, we've covered pretty much all of the angles, I guess, all of the science of it. So far, curiosity has existed mostly in the realm of psychologists, cognitive behavioralist, I believe, who really took up the mantle and started investigating. And I think the they came up with some pretty cool ideas. But I think really what's been settled on and I think it's probably correct, we just haven't been able to fully flush it out, is that there is some sort of internal drive that makes us curious and then it has to be satiated. Right? Yes. You point out it starts with babies. Obviously. That's how you learn simple things like the stove is hot and the floor is hard and closing that door on my finger will make me cry. Right. Just to get daddy upset or I will lose feeling in my hand forever. Like that one listener who wrote in today. Right. Yeah, but the implication of that is okay, well, there's an example of what we get for being curious. We learn about the world around us, we gain experience to a certain age and beyond. Well, then why doesn't curiosity just dissipate entirely? Well, Josh, because we want to be distracted in our brains. And you found a cool study they did in the where they took people in, I guess was it solitary confinement? They were doing brainwashing studies. Do you remember when we did brainwashing and those guys came back from Korea? I suspect that it was the same research. Okay, so brainwashed people would sit around and when nothing else is going on, they would prefer to have an old stock report read to them over and over. Yeah, the same stuff. Same one. Just to have some sort of source of stimulation, mental stimulation in the face of complete sensory deprivation. Yeah. Right. So that's why that's one and it's not just humans either. Rats exhibit this kind of thing where they'll start exploring mazes even though there's no expectation of food. Right. Monkeys kept in cages with windows that have sliding covers, I guess, will open to look out just to look out for the heck of it. They finally found what amounts to curious gene. Right. Yeah. You can get cognitive psychologists to say till they're blue in the face that curiosity is going to eventually lead to your personality and identity. And that's great. Well, that's a big one, though. Let's talk about that. That makes just complete nonsense to me. Right? Yeah, me too. If you think about it, curiosity is going out and gaining experience. Right. And a lot of our identity is the experience that we've gained, the knowledge we have, the intellect we have. It's what makes us interesting to other people. Right. And because curiosity is different in every single person to varying degrees to the different type, each person kind of helps mold their own identity through their own curiosity. And that is why curious people are attracted to other curious people. Yeah, that was a pretty interesting study. I think it was from University of Texas in 2004. And they found, just what we said, high levels of trait curiosity predict how they felt about one another. Right. So they found that people who shared the same levels of trait curiosity were attracted to people with the similar levels. But you could put people who had that same level of curiosity but had different outlooks on life, positive or negative and overrode that, right, yeah. It was a bigger indicator of attractiveness. That makes sense, though, because that's your outlook on life almost as your curiosity. Not positive or negative, but like, what do you want to do? Do you want to sit on the couch or do you want to go see what's on top of that mountain? Right. And it doesn't matter what mood you're in while we do it? No, I want to go over there and see what's on top of that mountain. The husband says that, I'd rather watch the packers game, and the wife just shoots him in the chest because she's just so tired of that answer. Do you know how many times a year that happens? At least four. Four times a year. So, Chuck, we were on the gene, though, right? Yeah. Back. I think what you were saying was cognitive psychologists are talking about the symptom of the action of a gene. Right? Yeah. Which you can study, like correlatively I'm curious, but if you want to talk to the brain in science, they've pinpointed a gene, the DRD Four gene, as being responsible for creating dopamine in the curious. Is that right? In the Curious great Tit song birds, which are known to be fairly curious birds right. With a silly, silly name. Yeah. And they found that by enhancing and repressing the expression of this gene, the birds became more or less curious, like exploring different parts of their cages, building nests in strange places. I haven't been eight inches that way. It's very sad science, but it's science nonetheless. Right, right. But the same thing happens in humans. Dopamine is our reward center. And so we get flooded with dopamine just like we would when we eat, get a reward for a big fat steak or a big Vegan Crunch Ball. They're so delicious. I'm off the Vegan Crunch Balls these days. But you get rewarded with Dopamine that way. So curiosity is reinforced through those reward centers. Well, that's like scientifically boom. Goes to dynamite right there. Right. Because anytime dopamine is present, it means that you're hardwired to do that thing. That's how we learn to repeat behavior, the release of Dopamine. And we say, oh, this feels good, I'm going to do it again. Oh, I like this, I'm going to do it again. Or low fat milk or I'm going to go set this billing on fire. Because it felt really. Good. And I'm curious, right? Or volunteer to take part in Hands Across America. Same thing. Yes. Virtually the on cellular level, it's the same exact thing. Right. Setting fires are taking part in Hands Across America is the same thing. Yes. We're just a big bag of jeans and cells. Right. But in humans, I don't believe it's the same in the great songbird, but in humans, a little part of our hippocampus called the Dente Gyrus appears to be implicated as the big curiosity region. Right? Yes. It accepts dopamine, right. As a form of payment. Yes. And this region of the hippocampus and the hippocampus itself, one of its functions, as we talked about, I think, in the Memory podcast, is to differentiate between already experienced and novel situations, because if we couldn't differentiate them, hey, it's good to meet you every single time. Would that be nice? We would just do the same podcast over and over again, and everybody would keep listening to the same podcast over and over again, and it would just be just as thrilling every time. Good. Let's do this. Let's get stuck in the Muppets Loop and just do that. That would be a good one. I could do that one. I could do Twinkies every single time. All right, well, I guess we should probably agree on one right now. Which one? Swap it. All right, let's put it together. You good? Yes. Is this Curiosity Satiated? Yeah. I mean, I guess we should anecdotally just say, or I will say that I've always been a very curious person, so I was born with it. I have a breadth and a depth, depending on what my main interest is, and so I've always been pretty curious. I have to I would say, though, that there's always been a healthy mix of fear and curiosity. Sure. I would say it's fairly close to balanced. And yes. I don't have enough fear in my life. I don't think I ever have. Really? Yeah. Well, not a lot of bad things have happened to you. That's what you think. Chuck Bryant. Mysterious. Mysterious man. So you're good? I'm good. All right, well, if you want to learn more about Curiosity, brother Sista, we got a whole site for you. It's called Curiosity.com. We're totally chilling for it at this moment, but not because we have to. It is very cool site. Yeah. We didn't even get asked to do this. Watch. They're going to ask us to do this in a few weeks. We're going to say done and done. And they'll be like, oh, can you rerecord that introduction? So that's Curiosity.com, which is a sister site of our beloved and esteemedhoustepworks.com. Right. Which is where you can find how curiosity works. And since I said howworks.com, and in there is implied the word handy search bar, that means it's time for listener mail. That's right, Josh. And quickly, before listener mail, I personally want to issue an apology to those of you that took offense when I said walleye and disco eye. Oh, yeah. For people who have the condition with Travis. Yeah, with a lazy eye. I have a friend with a lazy eye. He always called it a disco eye. I always thought it was hysterical when he did so. He thought it was funny. We all laughed. Not everyone thinks those things are funny. And I was pretty insensitive when I just threw those words out there because it is a condition a lot of people feel really bad about. So good for you, Chuck. I want to just apologize for saying that. That was very grown up. Not what we're about here. And if you want to know how I feel about stravismiss, type in stravosmith and blogs and howousefours.com into the search engine, your favorite search engine, and it'll bring up a blog post on it. All right. With a little cross site Asian girl more than upward. I'm going to call this for a Good cause from Kristin. We got a lot of those back a few months ago when we talked about your good cause thing. Well, when we called for hey, if you got a good call got you. And this is one that I've been meaning to read for a while. Okay. Hi, guys. And Jerry just finished the one on Colts who is the leader. And at the end, Josh called for people to write in with projects that will better humanity. I think I have a good one. I have the great fortune of working for an incredible international humanitarian organization called World Bicycle Relief. Check us out at www dot. World bicyclerelief.org. I live and work in you're going to beep that out until our check clears, right? Yeah. I live and work in Zambia, in Southern Africa, and we build bicycles that we give to folks in need. Pretty simple. That's great. We are currently doing a distribution of 50,000 bicycles over the next three years. That's 10,000 bicycle wheels. That's right. What? It's 100,000. Oh, man. Let's just take that part out. They were giving out unit cycles. 25. Go ahead. Sorry. Through the Ministry of Education to help students and teachers access school. One of the things I think is super cool is it is. 70% of our bikes go to children, girl children. Females being disadvantaged and often left out of education. In developing countries like Guatemala, they give them to girls because they give the bike to the boy in the family so he can get educated. That's as old as the hill. That's right. Our project is the bike. Our project is actively increasing attendance of all children at Zambian schools. I love my job. It's better in humanity. Promoting education, providing access to health care, and assisting with financial stability. Plus, this exercise is good for you. That's right. She encourages to visit Zambia. She said it's pretty awesome. And she's been there for four years ago listening to us since then. And ours is one of her favorites. We'll take it. Definitely. That is Kristentworldbcyclereleaf.org. Great. Thank you, Kristin. I appreciate that. Well, if you have something you've always been curious about and that's something stupid, but something like cool that we could possibly answer, we want to know. Don't be stupid. I'm curious how thermost works. How does it know hot or cold? Also, that's not stupid. I just can't answer that. It's insulation. It doesn't matter. Caterpillar. A thermos. I thought you meant a thermometer. Got you. So, if you have something you're curious about, tell us. We want to know, and we'll try to figure it out. And if you have a podcast that if we had to podcast the same podcast over and over and over again, what would it be? We want to know whether we recorded it or not. Maybe it'll bring up a good idea. Send those to stuffpodcast@howstepfours.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast stuff from the future. Join housetopworks staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, my Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarra and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You know you're a pet mom. 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." | ||
http://netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2008/1215463281477sysk-manufacture-water.mp3 | How Manufacturing Water Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-manufacturing-water-works | The United Nations has found that 22% of the world's population does not have access to clean drinking water. Could we fix the water shortage by manufacturing water? Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about manufacturing water. | The United Nations has found that 22% of the world's population does not have access to clean drinking water. Could we fix the water shortage by manufacturing water? Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about manufacturing water. | Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:22:06 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2008, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=18, tm_hour=18, tm_min=22, tm_sec=6, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=170, tm_isdst=0) | 5680716 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetofworkscom. Brought to you by consumerGuide Automotive. We make carbine easier. And welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, a staff writer. Here@housetepworks.com with me is arguably the greatest writer of the entire site, mr. Charles Bryan. How are you, Josh? I'm great, and I am a great writer guest. Thank you. Pass off to your self confidence there, Chuck. Thanks. So, Chuck, we have a huge problem. By we, I mean you and I and the rest of the human population on the planet right now. We do. We are having trouble with water, with safe, clean drinking water. The United Nations published a report a year or two back, and they found that 20% of the global population doesn't have access to safe drinking water. And they may have, like, a river nearby, but it could be polluted. Right. I know China has got a big problem with e waste right now and high levels of lead and mercury. Lake Chad in Africa has shrunk to a 10th of its size in the last 40 years. So water is running out, and it's actually becoming a problem in the developed nations as well. With this problem of water and water being such a simple compound of just oxygen and hydrogen, why don't we just make it right? That's a great idea. And you would think that with all the technology we have today, we could just kind of throw it in a big kitchen aid and mix it up and have a spigot at the other end. But it's not as easy as that. You can't just mix them up. In order to combine these two compounds molecules close. Yeah. You have to have a big burst of energy. And that potentially could be really dangerous. Well, yeah. It causes an explosion. Right. You have to entangle the orbits of their electrons and yeah, it can be, like you said, very dangerous. So I don't think it's so dangerous that it could never happen. I mean, we humans are pretty ingenious, but we can't do it right now. But there are other solutions. There are. I know when you're researching, you found these other inventions that people have been able to pull water from the atmosphere. Yes. Pretty much. Water right. Out of thin air. Right. Kind of like a big dehumidifier. Yeah. Which you said that you do. You use a dehumidifier in your basement to water your plants. I do. I have it hooked up to a hose. And here in Atlanta, we're under a drought, so we use our water to water our house plants. We need to get you some birkenstocks. Yeah, it's a great idea. So you want to talk about Aquamagic there, Chuck, which, I got to say, I can't tell which one of these two inventions I like more. Yeah, I like the other one better. But I'll tell you about Aquamagic Aquamagic is these two guys invented this. You throw it behind a car, like a trailer, and it basically just pulls all the water from the atmosphere. And how much does it make per hour? It makes 120 gallons of purified drinking water in 24 hours. 24 hours. Which is pretty good, but significant. Yes. The problem is it runs on fuel. Yeah. Twelve gallons of diesel fuel for that and emissions. And so it's not exactly the best solution. But the thing is, it's portable. They debuted this thing at a relief site after Hurricane Katrina. Right. And really, once your house is under 1012ft of water, you really don't care about the CO2 emissions. Exactly. You just want the clean drinking water. So it definitely has its benefits. The other invention that I came up with when I was researching this is the Wissen Windmill. Yeah. This one's really cool. Yeah. It's named what is it? Well, he named it MaxWater, which all inventors have their cute little names. And that is a cute one, too. It is. So this thing is kind of similar, except it has the advantage of being totally green. It doesn't use any fossil fuels. They painted it green? No, it's like the real kind of the new hip green. Yeah. The eco friendly Macy's One Day Sale get a free tote bag green. That kind of green. So the whole thing runs exclusively on wind power, and basically it uses a refrigerant to cool the blades of the windmill, which causes the water and the air to condense. It collects it, and there you have it. And it actually produces a lot more, I think something like 2600 gallons. Per day. Per day. The problem is we have no idea what the impact would be on the water cycle. You know, the rain cycle. Right. If we started using these widespread across the globe to address drinking water right. I don't know how they could really project what could happen either. No, we can't. Which is kind of seen in that British project from 1952 that you know about. Right? Yeah. The cloud seeding. Yeah. Operation Cumulus. Yeah. That's crazy. And I think post World War II, they found out if they flew above the clouds and threw a bunch of silver iodide and dry some salt, it would actually make it rain. Yeah. They were trying to rain out enemy front. Right. And it worked really well. It worked a little too well, didn't it? Yeah. So basically, this poor place called North Devon, which was near the site of the cloud seeding, experienced 250 times the normal amount of rain. That's not in two weeks, 35 people died, dams broke bowlers. And that was the end of the experiment. Sadly, yes. It's a testimony to how humans really shouldn't tamper with nature. Exactly. If you want to find out more about nature and manufacturing water and the like reid, why can't we manufacture water onhouseaux.com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Visit houseofworks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcasts@howstuffworks.com brought to you by The Reinvented 2012 camry, it's ready. Are you?" | |
The Lowdown on Anonymous | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-lowdown-on-anonymous | Anonymous is an amorphous group of hacktivists with no single leader or power structure. Some call them heroes, others call them criminals. Can they be both? | Anonymous is an amorphous group of hacktivists with no single leader or power structure. Some call them heroes, others call them criminals. Can they be both? | Tue, 24 Nov 2015 14:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=24, tm_hour=14, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=328, tm_isdst=0) | 43604997 | audio/mpeg | "Hey everybody. If you want a great website, you want to do it yourself. With no must, no fuss, turn to Squarespace. They have everything to sell anything. They have the tools that you need to get your business off the ground, including ecommerce templates, inventory management, simple checkout process, process and secure payments. And if you're into analytics, hold on to your hats because Squarespace has everything that you need. Just head to squarespace. comSK and you can get a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code SYSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. The Neogen device developed by Rst Synexis, 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 Neogenreleavespane.com. Your patience will thank you. Welcome to stuff you should know from houseupworkscom. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant and Noel is over there. So this is stuff you should know. I want to point out there's a work party going on. This is how dedicated we are. Right outside our door. People are out there drinking and eating and having a good time, drinking alcohol. We're just sitting here working. Free alcohol. Yes. Even Noel is over there eating right in front of us. Yeah, thanks Noel, for that because it's making a lot easier. So Chuck yes? Have you heard of Anonymous? I have indeed. I have heard of Anonymous as well because I read the newspaper and things like that. You're a hip happening guy. Super. But I didn't understand really in any way how Anonymous actually worked until researching this episode. Yeah, very interesting. I think we should say we're not experts here. No. Probably going to get some stuff wrong. Sure. Let's just hope it's a little mostly right, rather than maybe like the sun episode. We're sorry in advance. Anonymously. Yeah, right. Take your eye out on us. I think we're in good shape, actually. I read one of their key characteristics is that they don't talk about the group, they don't disclose their own identity, and they don't attack the media. Typically they don't. There is actually an attack carried out by an anonymous offshoot named LOLSEC that I guess you could call it an attack of the Frontline, PBS's Frontline website. Oh, really? Yeah. They posted a fake news story that said Tupac was alive and well in New Zealand. I don't know if that really constitutes an attack. I guess technically it does. But that did get some people in the media a little nervous. Sure. Like, oh, is the media now fair game? But I think for the most part we're media, if we're anything. Right. I think a we have some listeners who are anons, which is what Anonymous members are called. You think so? Absolutely. You're probably right. Not a doubt in my mind. And I think they're going to love this because they like press, they like headlines and they like for people to know what they're doing even though they are in the shadows. As far as their identities, they fully claim what they do and stand behind what they do. Sure, yeah. I think it's pretty smart to keep their identities anonymous because there are a lot of federalists after anybody who does any kind of computer crime these days. And the laws are really draconian and really strict and really disproportionately tough. Yes. And the government uses some of the same tactics that Anonymous uses to go after people, an Anonymous, which, as we'll see, really ticks Anonymous off. Yeah. They think they're big fat hypocrites, basically. And they have a pretty decent case in a lot of cases. Yeah. So, Chuckers, I guess let's start at the beginning. Yes. I don't want to do that deal where people like you never even said what Anonymous was. Right. So Anonymous is a group of hacktivists yes. Hacker activists. That term was coined, I think, in either 1994 by a cult of the Dead Cow member, which was an early hackers group. They really kind of set the stage in the what computer hackers and actually telephone hackers initially are meant to do. And the idea is that freedom of speech and the freedom of information is sacrosanct, should not be messed with. And people who do mess with it deserve to be messed with themselves. But even that contains rules. Yeah. And they've been described as everything from a collective to a shape shifting subculture. So Miko Hipponin called them, or Bare Brown, a Texas journalist, said what they really are is a series of relationships. Yeah. So it's all very secretive and we'll get into this more, but it's not an organization where they go and meet every week with a president and a treasurer and they wear their Guy Fawkes masks and they get together and decide what to do next. Right. Which makes them really difficult to take on if you're a centralized body like the US federal government. Absolutely. Because really what Anonymous is, is an idea and a concept and there's an ever shifting group of people that come in and out of it. And the whole idea is pretty simple. If somebody sees a wrong going on somewhere in the world and the person carrying out that wrong can be gotten to via the Internet, then they go and they try to rally the troops. And if enough people say, you know what? You're right, that is messed up and we should do something about it, that idea will have enough support that what happens is Anonymous ends up carrying out an op in operation against that target and there you go. Those people may never join together again for another operation. That operation may end up becoming an even larger operation. It's totally unpredictable and it's completely fluid. And that means that if you bust some people, which the US government has done plenty of times, there's going to be tons of other people to come take their place. Yeah. You can't kill anonymous. No. And what might happen is everything from something a little more light hearted, like taking over your website and replacing the banners with your own messages to completely disabling your website altogether so no one can even access it. A writer named Brian Kelly said there are three key characteristics of the group. One, an unrelenting moral stance on issues and rights, regardless of direct provocation. So in other words, it's not like someone's messing with Anonymous, so they're going to fight back. In fact, it rarely is. It's usually like Westboro Baptist church or Scientology. Right. I don't know. That covers all of Anonymous, almost from the beginning. There's long been fractures in the group between people who just want lows, which is like entertaining yourself at other people's expense, basically trolling people just to mess with them for laughs, whatever, and others who say, no, we've got a really powerful weapon here. The internet is serious business and we need to use it for moral crusades, basically. Yeah. Number two, a physical presence that accompanies the online hacking. So don't just stop it like disabling someone's website, but get out in the streets with those Guy Fox masks. If you've seen the movie V for Vendetta or you know anything about the 5 November, you know the mask that I'm referring to? Yes. And actually that mask being used by Anonymous goes back even beyond V for Vendetta. Actually there was a meme called, I think, epic fail guy. Yeah. And he was a meme that was like a stick figure wearing the Guy Fox mask. And everywhere he went, he just screwed everything up. It's a cool mask. Yeah, so they were like, we'll use that mask. And number three, a distinctive brand, which is that Guy Fox mask. I mean, they're great at branding for sure. That and the suit and tie with a question mark in place of a head is one of their logos. It's a great logo. And what is their log line? We are anonymous, we are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us. Yeah, that's a little creepy. It is a little creepy. They're scaring people who and I'm not scared, but if you're doing something wrong, then you should be scared, you know what I'm saying? Yes. And a lot of people will say, well, no, actually, anonymous will come after you even if you didn't do anything really wrong. That's not necessarily true. There are like offshoots that have come and gone that do believe much more in mayhem and stuff like that. But when you think of Anonymous these days, typically you do think of there is some sort of moral aspect dimension to the thing that's being carried out, and it depends on what your definition of right and wrong is, too. Sure. Clearly a lot of people think that they're anarchist that should be jailed and throw away the key. There's other people who think, no, you know what? They're taking on the immoral corporate giants, not just corporate giants that are doing really bad things behind closed doors. Yeah. Pretty interesting. Oh, it's super interesting. Should we take a break? Sure. All right, let's take a break and we'll dig in a little bit more right after this. Hey, everybody out there in podcast land, we want to alert you to what we're going to call a podcasting event. An event like the moon landing, but for podcasting, basically. That's right. It's a new podcast from GE podcast theater in Panoply called The Message. It's an eight episode series that's pretty much going to blow your scientific mind. Yes. The Message follows the story of Nikki Tomlin, a PhD in linguistics from the University of Chicago, who follows a team of cryptologists at a research think tank called Cipher. These researchers are trying to decode a message that was received from outer space 70 years ago. It's going to be pretty awesome, man. That's amazing. And if you want to subscribe and you should just go to itunes, look it up or wherever you get your podcast. Yes, we'll be doing that, won't we? That's right. Available now wherever you get podcasts, including itunes, GE Podcast theaters The Message. So, Chuck, let's go back to the beginning, shall we? The whole idea of, like, we are legion. We do not forget, we do not forgive, expect us. That's pretty far cry from how Anonymous ended up starting, right? Yeah. So there's this site called Fortune. Fortune has all sorts of what are called image boards, right? Yeah. It was created in 2003 by a 15 year old Christopher Pool. And Christopher Pool's whole thing was like, I want to have a place on the Internet that's totally censor free and anonymous. Yes. No self censorship. There's nobody in charge. There's no rules, there's no nothing like that. It is just whatever you want to post, whatever you want to say. You want to troll somebody, troll them. And let's just not take things too seriously, shall we? Yes, but let's also see how far we can push other people to take things seriously. Fortune attracted a certain kind of netizen, I guess, pretty quickly off the bat. And this one image board in particular, b, it's like four chan.org. It's the random board. Yes. It's whatever people started kind of congregating there and finding that they all shared this kind of, like, desire to mess with people. Yeah. And then Anonymous sort of evolved out of that because there were some people saying, you know what, let's set this up a notch and let's not just goof off and have fun. Let's actually try and accomplish something for good. Yeah. And again, that caused somebody down. That caused the rifts, like, right from the beginning, because some of the people were like, no, originally we were doing this for fun. There was this thing called the Hebo Hotel, which is basically like a kind of a weird second life hangout that they went and infiltrated and just populated with characters that would, like, block the pool or basically just, like, shut down the site, take it over just to mess with people. And it was fun. They were having fun doing it, just screwing with people. And other people said, no, let's use this for good. And that actually kind of came accidentally out of messing with a guy named Hal Turner. Have you heard of him? Hal Turner? Coney Island Turner? Right. Yeah. So Hal Turner was this extraordinarily racist radio host, and he got pranked by some of the original Fortune message board members. Right. He was getting, like, prank calls or whatever, and he recorded the calls and somehow got the data and published it on a site or released it to his fans and said, hey, why don't you guys go figure out who these people are? And they figured out some of them, including some underage message board members whose parents addresses were posted now on this virulently, racist radio hosts website. Yeah. And so the people from Fortune said, Take that down, and he said, no. They said, okay, well, that was your one warning. Wow. And they went to town on this guy, and by the time they were done with Hal Turner, he was off the air. He was off the air and imprisoned for, I think, a couple of years. For what? Threatening federal judges. They basically went and found all these emails and stuff and just published everything, including, like, his home address, all this stuff. They took, like, his tactic and just turned it on him a million times over. And that was the one where people said, hey, we just did something really good. We just got a racist radio host off the air. That was thrilling. We should use our stuff for good. And again, some people said, no, we're just in it for the lulls. Other people said, no, we should do this morally. And then even other people said, well, wait a minute, wait a minute. What are you guys doing? Like, that guy had a right to free speech, and you just drove him off the air. How can you possibly be proud of that? Yeah, the prong that said no, there was some good moral dimension to what we just did, using our computing skills for good, what we determined is good. That's the direction we should go. And it kind of took off from there and was supported by the Operation Against Scientology. Yeah, that came along in 2008. That was one of their first big ops. It's called Channelogy. And basically what they came across was a video that we've all seen, everybody seen. I'm obsessed with Scientology, but the famous Tom Cruise video, where he's sort of just rambling and he seems a little crazy and kooky, and he's talking about Scientology, and it got out there and Scientology said, not very smartly, like, we want to remove this from the Internet. Which is impossible. Right. Can't do that because it's 2008 at the time. But they were doing a pretty good job of it, apparently. I saw it, and this is before the channel, right? So they were trying to get it down, and Anonymous basically said, you know what? No, what we're going to do is we're going to attack your website. We're going to get everything about Scientology off the Internet. What's it called a DDoS attack, right? A distributed denial of service attack, which is kind of key to an Anonymous app. They attacked Google with a Google Bomb for Scientology. So if you type in dangerous cult, it directed you to the Scientology website. Right. They had hundreds and hundreds of pizzas ordered and sent to Scientology offices worldwide. Have you heard of black faxes? Yeah, they sent them jet black faxes. So they would just run out of the ink, right. Over and over again. Yeah, those are all pretty silly little harmless pranks. The Scientologist didn't take it that way. No, they weren't happy. In fact, I think they went to the FBI. They said, you need to look into these people. Right? We have to pause here for a second and point something out. One, with both the Hal Turner app and Project Chlogy, a lot of people say, like, oh, man, they went after this racist radio host and got them off the air. They went after Scientology, which is a roundly hated cult, and tried to drive them out of business. And the idea is it just stops there. But if you go a little further, both of those operations were based on infractions by the offending parties against the Internet. Hal Turner posted underage four Chan users parents addresses on his website and wouldn't take it down. That's a rule broken. That's why they went after him. Scientology, they tried to censor the Internet, and Anonymous thinks of the Internet as like, their Internet. They're the cops of the Internet as far as they're concerned, right. And the Internet is not to be messed with, and they protect it like that. And so when Scientology tried to take that video down and was trying to sue people who kept it up, that was censorship of the Internet. That's why Anonymous went after the Internet. But again, just like the Hal TrendER operation, the Project Channellogy thing took on this moral dimension, and Anonymous was called upon by a guy named Mark Bunker, who was already an ardent critic of Scientologists. And he said, why don't you guys use what you're doing for legal, productive ways, right? And so anonymous called for actual physical protests of Scientology churches around the world. Yeah. And I think now that's become one of their hallmarks. That's why they want to pair the activity with a physical presence. Right. And a YouTube video which says, have you ever seen those? Sure. Yeah, they're creepy and awesome. They are. They're really well done. The whole thing is like very Mr. Robot esque. Right. And with every video that they release, with every operation, they release a video ahead of time saying, what's going to happen? What's going down? Right, yeah, exactly. And it's very smart to do that because, number one, they're showing that they're accountable for their actions. They're taking accountability for it, but also it keeps them from being scapegoated and it keeps other people from claiming their work. Sure, yeah. In 2010, with Operation Payback, they realize they found out that Mastercard, Visa and PayPal said, we're going to stop. You won't be able to donate to WikiLeaks using our services anymore. Right. We're going to shut that down. Which in and of itself, they figured was bad. But as evidence, they went and found, like, skinhead websites that you could still donate to using those three mechanisms, but you couldn't donate to WikiLeaks. They were like, okay, that's messed up. Yeah. So they said, you know what we're going to do? We're going to shut you guys down. And they did. It was a cyber attack, and they disabled the home pages of Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal and Gloated. They had their own special little smarmy messages back. There are some things WikiLeaks can't do for everything else. There's Operation Payback. Yeah. And so, like I said before, with an Anonymous app, like, people may disband and never work together on another one, or your operation may grow to include even more stuff. And Operation Payback is a really good example of the latter of those two. It started out because at some point, the United States government hired an Indian firm, an Indian software firm, to launch DDoS attacks on these two sites, megaupload and Pirates Bay. Sure. And shut them down, basically. And both of those are file sharing sites, typically. Illegal file sharing sites. Yeah. And so the US. Government was using the same tactics, DDoS attacks that they were also prosecuting the hackers Anonymous for using. Right. But they were using it with impunity that really ticked Anonymous off. And we should also say what a DDoS is. Right. So, Chuck, basically, when you contact a website, when you go to a website, you're contacting a server to request all the information on the page. If a bunch of people do that at once, the server becomes overloaded and the people who legitimately want to use the site can't get in, or the server becomes so overloaded, the site crashes, shut it down. Right. So one of Anonymous's key tactics is to do a distributed denial of service, where a bunch of people are doing that all at once hitting the site to overload it. And then there's even software called the Low Orbit Ion Cannon, which anybody can go download and use when you type in a URL. And this thing really hits a site, it's like a bunch of people all at once hitting it with just this one computer. We should say that you can be prosecuted, and many people have been prosecuted and sent to jail just for using that. Yeah, not unless you're the US. Government again. But that's what set off Operation Payback, was that the government was using the same tactic that they were prosecuting other people for. Yes, and because they didn't want any confusion and for people to say, oh yeah, well, they clearly just want to download movies for free and stuff like that. They have their YouTube video where they're like, no, that's not why we're doing this. Right. We're doing that because you guys are using the same tactics that you're prosecuting us for other people for. Exactly. And so Operation Payback then at about that time, they found out about the WikiLeaks stop payment from PayPal and Mastercard and Visa, and they extended it even further. Yeah, PayPal said it cost them five and a half million dollars, which is a small dent in PayPal, but still no, it is substantial. The idea though, there's this really great documentary that's available for free on Anonymous's official YouTube channel. We are Legion. I haven't seen that one. This one's called The Story of Anonymous. Okay. And it's pretty good. It's very straightforward and it's got a lot of the people who are involved in the early days, and I think it goes up to like 2011 or twelve, but it's definitely worth watching. But it interviews this kid who downloaded the low orbit ion cannon and engaged in Project channellogy against Scientology. Right. And the FBI came to his door and arrested him. And he got like, I think he got like time served, so he didn't actually have to serve prison time, but he wasn't allowed near a computer for twelve months or else he would be arrested. And it was really bizarre punishment considering that he was just requesting the Church of Scientology's website for its information to the Nigeria. Right. But that was it. He didn't make any threats, he didn't order any pizzas, he didn't do anything. And when you think of the other term for DDoS attacks, they're called virtual sittings. It really kind of drives home the idea that this is a form of protest that's being harshly punished by the federal government in the US. Which is really strange. There's a Wired article written by a guy named Tor Eklund, who's a very famous lawyer for these kinds of cases, and it's called America Must End its Paranoid War on Hackers. And it really kind of lays it out there like, here's what's going on. Like most people don't realize this, but there's an untoward amount of punishment being leveled at people who are protesting stuff legitimately by using things like DDoS attacks, and they're going to prison for like ten years for this stuff, and that's messed up. It says tore Echlin. And I agree. I agree, too. Some of the other things they've done, we mentioned Westborough Baptist church, which a lot of people just say is a hate group in disguise as a church. I think it's labeled by the government as such. It's a hate group. I think so. Well, they would like to take over their website and put messages of peace and tolerance, which probably really rankled them. They would pose is young girls online to lure in sexual predators and then send that information to the police to expose pedophiles. What else have they done? Well, they were instrumental in the Arab spring. Yeah. They basically had a pretty large hand, anonymous did, in overthrowing the Egyptian government. Yeah. They like to topple dictators. Yes. And the reason why specifically in Egypt, that really ticked them off was mubarak shut off the internet. And again, just like with Hal Turner, just like with scientology, just like with the government, you don't mess with the internet if you don't want to excite anonymous's eye. Right. And so they helped Egyptian dissidents by basically instructing them on how to get the internet back online there, how to set up, like, virtual networks that couldn't be shut down by the government. Some of them went to the point of just communicating with these people and then turning those communications into tweets for them. And then they also disseminated video of the government carrying out violence against protesters and spread it out to the world. Yeah, they had a huge hand in the Arab spring, not just in Egypt, but in Tunisia as well. Yeah. They've also had their hand in the situation in Ferguson, Missouri. Occupy wall street. Untold amounts of police brutality cases or police cover up. Steubenville rape case. That was a big one. Yeah. In 2012, a 16 year old girl was sexually assaulted, and they found out, you know what? There's a cover up going on here. So there was an offshoot called knight KN I-G-H-T SEC, and they launched a crusade that said, you know what? Here's what's going on here, there's a cover up going on. And they finally uncovered and publicized the names of two star players in the high school football team that allegedly committed this assault that were being covered up. So it was a big deal. That's a perfect example of an anonymous op. Right. There's an injustice in this little tiny corner of the world where Ohio meets west Virginia that no one else had ever heard about, that somebody got onto the four chan board and told everybody about this, and people started saying, enough. People started saying, we should do something about this. And they left the message board, hit the IRC internet relay chat channels right and started communicating with one another and figuring out how to launch this attack and what to do and who to attack. And then they attacked. In the real world, there were repercussions, right? That's Anonymous hold jam. If they go do something, get a bunch of headlines, and then not only did Anonymous do this, why did Anonymous do this? Who did they do it to? Oh, we should go look at that. And now all of a sudden, this little tiny corner of where Ohio meets West Virginia, everybody's heard of and everybody's heard about it in the absolute worst terms. Yeah, that's an anonymous operation. And then all the people who were part of it disbanded. But on the other hand, the data dump that Anonymous had about Steubenville, the rape case, contain a lot of unvetted facts and things like that, and a lot of people were unfairly treated, targeted from the doxing that resulted. So I guess the point is steubenville is a good example of how Anonymous, even when carrying out some sort of moral justice, also there's an amoral dimension to it, and that there's a lot of innocent people who can become casualties as a result, too. There's actually a really good gawker article about Steubenville a year later. I think it was the town that was torn apart by what two people did or something like that. All right, so let's take a quick break here and we'll come back and we'll talk about who Anonymous is and how you can become a member right after this. Okay, friends. So imagine you're in an accident and your injuries are extensive enough that not only do you have to spend time in the hospital, but you're going to need rehab too. Well, you have insurance, so no problem, right? Well, not entirely. You get back from the hospital and notice there's a gap and that your insurance is only covering part of your bill. And it's a big bill. Yeah. 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Stride Career Prep is backed by over 20 plus years of experience in online learning and education. Take charge at K. Twelvecom podcast. That's K Twelve. Compodcast, and start taking charge of your future today. All right, so Anonymous, it's tough to define, it's tough to pinpoint because they are hiding in plain sight. You can't go to anonymous.com and sign up for their newsletter and buy your mask in the store and say, I want to become a member. Just fill out this application. It doesn't work that way. You should probably not accept applications to be a part of Anonymous because it's probably a set up. Yes, exactly. But there is something called Anon News, which does post information about ops. You're not going to learn too much inside real information as a casual Internet browser. No. And it's more like if you follow a non news on Twitter, say, for Operation Payback, I think they listed like the Visa site or something, and they said, Fire at will. And it was a link to the Low Orbit Ion Cannon and the Visa website that you post that URL in. And it was a way to just get anybody involved in the DDoS thing. The problem is that can be very dangerous if you're just a casual person downloading Low Orbit Ion Cannon. And you're just doing this because you're having fun helping Anonymous and you're not covering your tracks in any way, shape or form. And the FBI comes and knocks on your door, you may be facing several years in jail because they're looking to make an example out of you. Absolutely. No. You got to do a lot of work, in fact, to even get in there. And once you find yourself in one of these forums where there's real information being discussed, you sort of need to prove your worth with either ideas or specific skill or knowledge you might have. And then you may be invited to participate in one way or another as an anon. And again, even if you are at the top of your game, what anybody in the media would think of is like a member of Anonymous, like one of the long term members who's done a lot of ops. You can still get busted. A guy named Jeremy Hammond was busted and got ten years for some stuff. A guy named Barrett Brown was busted and got five years for some stuff. And again, all of this is just computer crime we're talking about. So again, if this is really like, cranking your case, there's a lot of repercussions to this. Yeah, there's a misconception too, that it's a bunch of brilliant code writers and hackers. Apparently only about a fifth of anons are true hackers. Who said that? There's an anthropologist, Gabriella Coleman, actually, she is an expert at Anonymous and has written several books and is in that documentary I was talking about. Yeah. So only a fifth are hackers and the rest are, quote, geeks and protesters. But apparently you don't have to be some brilliant hacker. They will call on you if you have some other skill, if you have good ideas, if you're a graphic designer, if you're a good writer, you can help put together a press release. If you're a filmmaker and you want to do these YouTube videos, there are all sorts of ways that you can contribute if you want to contribute. And being an on, aside from being a coder and the idea that they're completely what's put out there is that they have no hierarchy whatsoever, that everyone's equal, everyone has equal footing. There is no leader whatsoever. It is just this big amorphous group of anony that isn't entirely accurate. They may not have a president and vice president, per se, or treasurer or treasurer, but supposedly they do have four or five people who are really good at doing what they do. So they sort of take turns emerging as the leader of a specific app, maybe. Right. They'll fall to the background and another perhaps, and you become a leader whether you want to be or not, based on your skills as an organizer. Yeah. If you are just naturally somebody who can rally the troops, then your ops are going to be the most successful because you're going to attract the most people, and you're going to attract the guy who wants to put out like, a good video for it. You're going to get the most results, you're going to get the most information, the biggest data dumps, just naturally. That's how it happens. Yeah. And people follow. Like, Commander X did a really great job on that app, so let's listen and hear what he does next. Right. But then other people are like, well, CommanderX, you need to shut your mouth because you talk to the media and even though you've been in the hacker culture since the 80s or whatever, you have a loud mouth, and that's not cool for this. So on a message board, he could be getting deferential respect. Commander X is a real person, by the way, and he could be being called opposite at the same time. Right. And both of those comments have equal weight on the message board, no matter how long Commander X has been doing this. Yeah. There's a lot of duality with Anonymous. Some people look at them as a beacon of light for those who don't have a voice. Attorney General Eric Holder in 2013 said they are a steadily increasing threat to America's economy and national security interests. People anons will say, you know what? Don't say that, because we're not stealing money. We're not robbing banks digitally. Right. We're not after financial gain at all. We're out to expose people that are doing bad things for the most part. Right. But like you said earlier, though, when they're off shoots, there's always going to be bad apples, I guess. Yeah, there are. I mean, like, for example, Westborough Baptist Church they doxed, where you get the person's personal information, home address, phone number, all that stuff and post it out to the masses. That's tricky and dangerous. It is. But it's Fred Phelps, so nobody really shed it's here. The problem was they also did that the Libby Phelps, who is Fred Phelps's granddaughter, who had very publicly distanced herself from the church and denounced it and said, I don't agree with what my grandfather does or says. She still got Docs, and now my name is out there and my personal information exactly like low SEC is another example. They were this group, I think of like six or seven people who carried out what's commonly called 50 days of mayhem, where they just went crazy. They just hit whoever they wanted. Yeah, this business called Magnets.com got hit because they called their customer service reps and asked them how Magnets work, and the customer service reps couldn't tell them, so they launched an operation against them. They should have told them to listen to our podcast on Magnets. Totally should have. I assume that our podcast probably spurred that phone call to begin with. Right. But yeah, there are groups that do this. But then overall, if you think about Anonymous, the ones that get the most pressed, the opposite gets the most pressed, usually have the most moral dimension that makes Anonymous seem the most Robin Hoodie. Like the Ku Klux Klan dump. Yeah, that just happened within the past couple of weeks. Right. And they went after the clan and got doxes on several hundred members. And I don't think there were any huge revelations necessarily in there. There were a few. Okay, so there were some, but the point is, they went after the clan and they basically shined a light on the idea that the clan is still very much around. Yeah, but there were also people I think there was a senator or congressperson or something that was exposed that were like, I have never been involved in the clan. So there was wrong. There was a separate dump that occurred before the actual one that Anonymous came, because they can communicate with the media. They're able to do this. They said, that wasn't us, that's not our research. We can't vouch for that. Interesting. Yeah. Like I said, this tricky business when you're exposing people, those are real lives. You better make sure you've done your homework and you've gotten it right. You know what I mean? Yeah. And I think Anonymous thinks they're getting it right. Yeah, I think they tend to think that. Sure. Like, I don't think they're just generally going about their business willy nilly because they want to be effective, to not get a bad rep. They don't want to have anything that people can use against them to say, like, well, look what they did here. They were completely wrong. Yeah. At the same time, though, there is definitely a thread of appreciating mayhem for mayhem's sake, and with some people who work under the Anonymous banner as well, which is what you're going to get when you're not a well defined group with boundaries. When you're this amorphous, everyone is Anonymous type of thing. You're going to have that happen. But I think it is kind of pretty astounding that despite no central authority whatsoever, it isn't just more like crazy and frenetic and just way more mayhem centric that it actually does carry out these ops that do have repercussions that the average person can look at and say, I kind of agree with that. Sure. I agree with the outcome of this. I think somebody got their due who had it coming. You got anything else? I do. There's one last thing. So the name anonymous came from fortune. They did. If you log into Fortune, you can post Anonymously, like you said. I think early on, the whole reason why is because that just helps keep people from self censoring because you're posting Anonymously. But then this joke kind of developed on Fortune that Anonymous, all these people with the Anonymous handle were really just one omnipresent person. And that's where using that term for these ops, this group, this collective group came from. Did you ever go to Fort Chan? Did you check it out? Yeah. I've never felt so old, but even Reddit does that to me. Yes, reddit's, definitely. I just look at sites like that and I just like, I don't even know where to look. I feel like an old man, for sure. Yeah. And I'm like, I don't understand what this means. I'm sure this is hilarious, but I don't understand it. Some of it's funny on its face, for sure. Yeah. But others just like I spent a little time on Four chan earlier today, just sort of looking around and it's not my bag, but people are into it. They definitely are. Yes. You got anything else? Sued? No, I enjoyed this one. I thought it was good. Oh, we left out the HP Gary thing. What's that a few years back, this security company named HP gary, the CEO named Aaron Barr came out to the financial Times and said, I've infiltrated Anonymous. I know who all the top guys are and I'm going to the FBI with it. So some people in Anonymous said, let's go see what this guy is talking about. Cracked into their website, found out he was totally full of it, but found a presentation that had all these dirty tricks for undermining Anonymous and WikiLeaks and getting people to turn on one another and all that. So they're like, we're going to go after this guy because he was publicly boasting too, that he was going to take down Anonymous. And that is not a smart thing to do. No. And there's actually in that Anonymous documentary, there's some hilarious clips from Stephen Colbert explaining what this guy did and equated it to he put his penis into a hornet's nest and this is going to turn out about the same way and it did. You had a physical reaction to that. Yeah, that image. So the guy, the CEO ends up stepping down as CEO and drops out of public. They totally just really got the guy. Yeah, that was a dumb thing to do on his part. But not only was it dumb for him personally, it also gave Anonymous a really great opportunity to show just how you don't mess with Anonymous. Yeah, that's Anonymous. That's right. If you want to know more, seriously, go check out that. Well, every documentary you can see that's over an hour and a half long is probably pretty good. And then also there's a presby by a person named Choi June Huek called copy of Anonymous, which is a really great basic explainer on Anonymous and how it works and functions. It sounds like somebody who is at least hung out with members isn't one himself or herself. I bet you've hung out with a member of Anonymous. Crazy. We may have one or two in this office, you never know. My buddy's on Ben Bolton sure of stuff, but he's such an obvious choice. It's got to be somebody with stuff they don't want you to know. Yeah, like is it you, Chuck? Yeah, it's Holly from stuff you missed in history. She loves Star Wars and hectivists yeah, if you want to know more about Anonymous, also you can go type that word into the search bar athowstepworks.com and since they said search bar, it's time for the listener mail. Yeah, and speaking of mail, if you are an Anonymous member, write us. Yeah, because I want to know something. I don't know if I'm going to buy it, though, if somebody's like, I'm an Anonymous. Dear Josh and Chuck. Yeah. Love, Gary from Garyjones. Right? No, but if I get some weird encrypted thing, I don't know. I think we'll know. What if we like post a video to YouTube? That'd be awesome. Unless it's saying like we're coming after you guys. No. Did we do a good job? All right. Listener mail. What is this? I'm just going to call it from an English listener. Hey, guys. I'm just an 18 year old from the UK, but you have my most sincere congratulations for running the best podcasts out there. Awesome. And I've listened to cereal, right? Your flowing conversation works so well, and it's always a pleasure listening to you. And you guys have to compete with British radio voices, so that's saying something. It really is, because they are collapsing. Having burnt through 802 episodes in seven months. Wow. I finally ended in a wonderful spooky spectacular. You have been there with me through breakup. Six flights, eight long distance trains, three A levels, which is some sort of education thing in England. I think that's like exams, final. Four new jobs, one bike crash, one results day. All of this in six months. Seven months. An interrail trip around Europe and a very lonely night in Brighton train station. Four jobs in seven months. Is this guy a hitman? Yeah. Four new jobs. Interesting. It's been a crazy time of my life. Sounds like it. And you've been the constant that's kept me sane. So big thanks to all of you. That's awesome. I show no favoritism. You've made a barrel, I think you say, in, like, between us. Yeah. You're on an awesome podcast. Keep it up. Look forward to the next 800. Do you have one question? You guys get along when the mic is off? Fantastic chemistry. And I've always wondered if it ever comes from your friendship or if you two are just the most professional people ever gone on too long. All the best. Hector Leach. Clay. Thanks. Oh, that's a British name. You guys better come to the UK for a live show. We are, yes. And of course, we get along off the air. You've seen our TV show? We're not actors. We would not be able to make our way through this. Chuck has been gazing into my eyes this whole episode. Yeah, if it's not some Sunshine Boys situation. What is that? Is it George Byrne? Yeah. Just go google it, people. Sunshine Boys. Okay. It'll all become clear. Nice. Good reference. Thanks. Hector Leach. Clay Esquire the Third. Yeah. Where's Hector Leech from? Clay? I don't know. Clay a place. Is it, Leech? Hyphen Clay. Because that would be his last name. That was a hyphen. But never know. They do that a lot over there. You're big on that. Yeah. Well, thanks a lot, Hector. We appreciate that. And thank you for not playing favorites. Isn't that the ideal human? Somebody who appreciates us both equally? Sure. So if you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstuffyshenknow BookBook. You can send us an email to stuffpodcastohouseworks.com, type. And, as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshehno.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.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 their top rated app, you can deposit checks and transfer money anytime, anywhere, making Capital One an even easier decision that's banking reimagined what's in your wallet terms. Apply Capital One in a member FDIC summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. 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c37ac2b0-5460-11e8-b38c-171a4ac70ad1 | SYSK Selects: What Is a Shotgun House? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-what-is-a-shotgun-house | Shotgun houses are iconic pieces of American architecture: they're long, narrow, and filled with artistic flourishes. But where did they come from? Join Chuck and Josh and explore the mysterious origins of shotgun houses. | Shotgun houses are iconic pieces of American architecture: they're long, narrow, and filled with artistic flourishes. But where did they come from? Join Chuck and Josh and explore the mysterious origins of shotgun houses. | Sat, 10 Aug 2019 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=10, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=222, tm_isdst=0) | 23392847 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody, chuck here. Right now, there are millions of people around the world hosting on Airbnb. I mean, there's no doubt it's a great way to earn extra income, but I've always wondered about their stuff. Like what happens if somebody drops a wine glass? Well, now I know. Thanks to Air Cover for Hosts, people can welcome guests into their home with confidence. Air Cover for Hosts gives you damage protection for free every time you host. Learn more and host with peace of mind@airbnb.com. Aircoverforhosts. You do it all without breaking a sweat. And you do it all in style. That's why Infinity fully reimagined the QX 60 to help you take on everything with ease. A luxury SUV as functional as it is stylish, as versatile as it is serene. Available features like a panoramic moonroof, ample cargo space and massaging front seats. Introducing the all new 2022 Infinity QX 60, designed to help you take on life in style. Visit infinityusacom to learn more. Now, with extremely limited availability, contact your local retailer for inventory information. Hi, everybody. It's May 10, 2012. What? No, that just means it's me, Chuck, picking out a select episode for May 10, 2012. What is a shotgun house? It's cool because I like houses. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's. Charles W. Chuck Bryant with me, as always, which makes the stuff you should know. Yeah, that's our theme song. Nice job. Thank you. How are you doing? I'm doing great. I feel like we just said this. I'm looking forward to this show. Are you? Yeah. Because it touches on parts of Atlanta in its history, which I always love. Sure. And that's just Atlanta, man. All over the state. All over the state. Chuck. Yes. As the immortal David Byrne put it, you may find yourself living in a shotgun check. You may find yourself in another part of the world. I think even David Byrne didn't realize what he was saying when he put those two lines together. Yeah. I think he meant them to contrast with one another. Yeah. But really, if you found yourself in a shotgun check and, say, the beginning of the 19th century, you probably were experiencing both. Yeah, but he doesn't tip. No. He doesn't care what he said. That's crazy. So, Chuck, do you remember hurricane Katrina? Sure. It killed, I believe, 1800 people. Well, that is a lot of people. And one of the things, in addition to the loss of life and property was real worry about loss of very specific type of architecture, the shotgun house. And the reason even though you can find it everywhere from Key West to Chicago to San Francisco, all over the place, you can find shotgun houses. Atlanta. The reason why people were worried about losing it in New Orleans is because as far as the United States goes, that is where it was born. That's right. And the whole reason anybody would even worry about a shotgun house, if you've ever seen one, you might think, why would anyone care about losing old shotgun houses? Is because they are routinely cited as the possibly greatest contribution by African Americans to American specific architecture and design. And not only that, responsible for the bringing together in many ways of the African American communities due to their things that we're going to talk about. I was going to ruin it. Thank you for saving it. That was good, man. Okay. You've surely seen a shotgun house. Yeah. Let's talk about just some of the features we should. Yeah, because there's probably plenty of people out there and people who have seen them and don't know what we're talking about. You're about to go, oh, if you haven't seen them, then go onto how stuff works.com and type in what's a shotgun house? And you will find some images of shotgun houses in this article that I wrote. That's true. You wrote this years and years ago. I don't think I knew that. Yeah. Nice job. Shotgun house is long and narrow. Yeah. A lot of times they won't have windows on the side of the house. Although in researching this, I saw plenty that do. I did, too. It's almost like a throwaway thing. Sometimes they do don't. Yes. And the reason why is because they're often really close together. Sure. Like, I mean, like a foot, couple of feet. You can maybe walk without turning between two houses. Yeah, but that's it exactly. Well, you just said they were close to one another. They have high ceilings. Very few of them had indoor plumbing at first. That was usually brought on later and tacked onto the rear of the house, sometimes crudely. Typically what you have is living room, bedroom, bedroom, kitchen, all in a row, all in a straight line, all the doors lining up, interior doors lining up. Right. So when the front and back door is open, you can see clear through the house, which is one of the reasons why a lot of people think it got its name. You could shoot a gun or shotgun through the front door and it would exit out the back door without hitting a single wall, and it would hit the house behind it. Right. Or some poor staff who is coming in. And as you point out, Josh, it's a cute story and it's all over the place. I bet you there are many, many tours of New Orleans that say that story is true. May or may not be. It probably isn't. Yeah. What else is specific about shotgun houses, Chuck? Aside from being modest homes? They have certain architectural flourishes that make them distinctive. I think the idea was kind of like, we may be poor and not have the biggest house, but we can certainly adorn the venting grates. And what the arbor that held up the not the arbor brackets that held up the roof. They would be intricately carved, usually in a gingerbread design, which a lot of people kind of criticize or poopooed that addition as poor blacks or even before that, slaves just trying to emulate whites, which is not the case because if you trace the shotgun house finds its origins in the US. And New Orleans. That's right. But if you go even further back, you'll find older ones on Haiti, and then even further back, you will find something that looks startlingly similar in West Africa and in the Yaruba tongue, these houses are called to, which means house in Yaruba or Shogun, which means God's house. So probably that's where the name comes from, by the way, it's Togun or Shogun from the Yoruba dialect. Right. Which I love. But in these houses, they also had, like, intricate details, but they were more of an African motif over time. Here in the United States. They adopted gingerbread or Victorian. Yeah. Different kinds of carvings. But it is very cool. It's kind of like this is a very modest, straightforward house, but there's also pretty neat little details. Right. We can still have great pride in it. Exactly. They were usually in New Orleans, they were typically a few feet off the ground because of the obvious flooding problems there. And it seems believable to me, but I didn't have time to triple check it at the time. Property taxes were based on frontage. Still are, man. Are they? In New Orleans, if you have a house, you're paying by the frontage, which is the width of your house. Yes. And if you are looking at a shotgun house, it's very narrow, but it's long. Right. And the number of rooms. Okay. Yeah. And in New Orleans, they changed it to the number of rooms they added that on. Yeah, it's both. Okay. And in New Orleans, rooms include hallways and closets, and you're not going to find a hallway or a closet in a shotgun house. So it's also another way to, I guess, keep your property taxes low as well. And I found that originally it was just frontage, and then so they started building the Camelbacks, which is a shotgun house with a second story on the rear of the house only. And then that's when the city said, oh, well, we should tack rooms onto this as well, because these smart people have found a way around paying as much property tax. Right. Pretty smart. Yeah, it does. It makes sense. And also found that the first mention in print calling them shotgun houses was in our very own Atlanta Journal Constitution. Is that right? In classified ad. May have been the first time that it was actually named that in print. And it was like, shotgun house, $12 a month rent. $12. That's not too bad. But you could get a shotgun house about that time. A kit for $100. Yeah. They also allow for good airflow, too, I want to mention. Yeah, because you can open up the front and back doors and you got a straight shot. Well, that's one of the reasons why they were adopted in Haiti. Not everybody in Haiti was from West Africa, but that became the predominant style, this West African design house, because it fit in really well with the tropics sure. In New Orleans. Right. So, well, it made its way from Haiti to New Orleans indirectly because of the French Revolution. Right. So French Revolution takes place and you've got liberty egality fraternity to all people. That put French planners in Haiti in kind of a pickle because they couldn't grant liberty to their slaves because they wouldn't have any profits any longer. Right. So as they're figuring this out, they're trying to figure out what to do. A guy named Tucson Louvercher makes the decision for him and leads a slave uprising that lasts for many years and basically drives all of the white plantation owners from the island of Haiti, one of the places that they went. And then Haiti became the first recognized sovereign maroon nation of freed slaves, revolting slaves, which is pretty cool. But that also led to, if you go back and listen to our voodoo podcast, a deep and abiding suspicion by whites of Haiti, all things Haiti from that point on. Right. So the slave uprising that led to the freeing of Haiti also led to the white populating of New Orleans. Right. So about that time, if you went to New Orleans or about 12,000 people and a third of them were slaves, a third of them were white, and then a third of them were free blacks. Right. So this real melting pot. And one of the things that came about from that was people fleeing Haiti, bringing the shotgun houses with them. Right. And then it was always African American, and it was always associated with African Americans. And it just kind of spread from there to where if you came across a working class African American neighborhood, like in Chicago or something like that, you're going to see shotgun houses. Right. Or Atlanta, like I've mentioned many times, if you are local, then you can see these kinds of houses in like the Sweet Auburn district, cabbage town and I think cabbagetown. They were houses for factory workers, for the nearby cotton mill off and factories. Yeah, it changed. Tans also, you're going to find them directly across the street from Martin Luther King's birthplace. That's right. In the King Memorial area. The whole park is there are still people that live in them. Oh, yeah. And they've been pretty well preserved over the years. Yeah, it's very cool. But those were like late 19th century built. But it did kind of transition from African American only to working class of all colors. The shotgun house became kind of an emblem of the working class as much as African American now is a row house the same thing or is a row house just no, those are side by side, like, touching, sometimes all forming one large building. But then maybe different gables, differentiating them. A shotgun house could be a row house, but a row house can't be a shotgun house because doesn't row house indicate, like, the proximity to one another more than the style of the house? Or does it? No, I think it's both. Yes. And then the shotgun house is not supposed to be confused with the railroad house either, which is you enter and there's a long hallway from front to back, and then off of the hallway are rooms. Yeah. My friend rail car apartments. My friend Meredith in New York and Brooklyn lives in a railroad apartment. Okay. Which was always a little weird because when I would stay there, I would stay in the living room. And when someone had to go to the bathroom, they would have to walk through the living room to get to the bathroom. It's always awkward. Yeah. Or she could go outside through the hallway right. And then come back in because she had two doors to her apartment. Got you. It still does. Yeah. Hi, Meredith. 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Learn more@halopets.com. So, Chuck, we were talking about where else they spread. There's also a lot of them in Oklahoma, especially southern Oklahoma. Oh, really? Yeah, and one of the reasons why is because Southern Oklahoma, the Oklahoma Territory, before it became a state, was a free black area. And a lot of blacks traveled to Oklahoma to move to Oklahoma to be free. And a lot of runaway slaves, maroons is what they're called formed and integrated with Native American tribes like the Seminoles. And when these five civilized tribes are making air quotes, like, furiously were moved to the Oklahoma Territory, a lot of blacks went with them, and shocking, houses showed up alongside the whole thing. Awesome. And there's like all black towns or formerly all black towns in Southern Oklahoma, where it's like, shocking houses everywhere. Wow. Yeah. So, Chuck, if you ask me, I feel like now we've reached the point where this is the fact of the show, and I know you're excited about this one. Well, it's cool. It's one of the reasons I talked about why the cultural legacy of the shotgun home had a lot to do with bringing together the African American community is because of a little something called the front porch. Yeah. They didn't exist in the United States before the shotgun house brought it along. So shotgun houses are typically I mean, a lot of them actually were so far forward that they were on the sidewalk, but the ones that weren't had a few feet of grass and then a front porch to hang out on. And in a small house, you're going to congregate on the front porch. And in the evenings, if your neighbors on the front porch 5ft from you and they're 5ft from another one, then what you have is a big old, friendly cultural block party going on right. Every evening. And the porch is made it's a spandrel, I guess, of the overhanging roof. And then if you add the fact that in New Orleans, like you said, they were built off of the ground some, you have to build steps to go up to it. And then you have just you have a de facto porch, and then yeah, you add a bunch of them together, and there you go. So we don't have porch. So, like, these huge wrap around porches on old, like, plantation mansion stoops. In New York, all of this stuff can be traced back to the shotgun house. Really? Yeah. That's crazy. And thank you for that shotgun house builders, because one of my favorite things is the front porch or the back porch. Good porch. It's very important. Shotgun houses started to wane in the wasn't until fairly recently that we knew the history of shotgun houses that architects went back and art historians went back and figured out where this all came from and traced it step by step. I mean, it was within the last couple of decades. Well, and they were like, okay, we found some shocking houses, and these are really old, and they date them, and they'd be like, okay, New Orleans is the birthplace. And then somebody would be like, have you been to porter prince? They got some of their really old there, and then they traced them back, and then somebody figured out that they were from west Africa. But the new construction in the United States waned in the like I said, about the turn of the last century, you could get a kit for about $100, which also made them really good, cheap housing for labor. If you had, like, a work camp, you probably got a shotgun house cabbage down. Yeah, exactly. And they were also really good for disaster relief, specifically. They made a big appearance in the San Francisco earthquake of six. Well, yeah, they needed to put up displaced people. And when you can build a house for $100, then you do so. Exactly. And when it can be prefabricated and then taken apart in, like, six large parts, put on a train and sent somewhere, and then put back together within a couple of hours. It's like a waffle house. Yeah, it's exactly like a Waffle House, as a matter of fact, I think you can go on a limb and say, we wouldn't have the Waffle House without the shotgun house. You're right. Little pop culture. Yeah. You already mentioned David Byrne. Yeah. Cougs. John Mellencamp. My boy cougs Pink Houses was about a shotgun house. Apparently. His legend has it he was driving on a busy main road and he saw this old black guy sitting on the front porch of his little pink shotgun house. Gave him a wave and he said he just looked like he was as happy as could be sitting out on the porch and wrote a song about it. That's nice. The album that I was on, too. Yes, I think so. Great song. Elvis Presley was born in a shotgun house. Oh, yeah. In Tupelo. Yeah, mississippi. Which is where I have family, actually. And Aaron Neville grew up in a shotgun house. The incomparable and muscley man. That guy is singing and moly. But boy, man, that guy can sing. Yeah, like a bird. Pretty good. Aaron Neville. What if you were a gigantic snack food maker and you had to wrestle a massively complex supply chain to satisfy cravings from Tokyo to Toledo? So you partner with IBM Consulting to bring together data and workflows so that every driver and merchandiser can serve up jalapeno, sesame and chocolate covered goodness with real time, data driven precision. Let's create supply chains that have an appetite for performance. IBM, let's create. Learn more at IBM. Comconsulting you know you're a pet mom when you growl back during Playtime and you insist on feeding them the highest quality food you can find. Enter Halo Holistic, made with only whole meat, no meat meals, and probiotics for digestive health. Our first ingredient is always responsibly sourced protein raised with no antibiotics. And bonus, our fruits and veggies contain no GMOs. It's a lifestyle and a pet bomb thing. Find halo. Holistic at Chewy. Amazonandhalopets.com shocking houses are making a resurgence, too, by the way. Are they building them again? Yes, there's this thing called the tiny house movement. Oh, yeah, that and the whole idea of living modestly in a house you can afford that grants a very small carbon footprint. Shocking houses fit that bill. I like the tiny house thing. I think, actually, Emily might have written an article about that. Is that right? If I'm not mistaken? Or maybe it was me. Somebody did. Somebody in our family did, because I remember it happening. Was it Buckley a few years ago? Yeah. Buckley wrote it. You got anything else? No. Go seek out local historic landmarks that might be easily overlooked when you're angry in traffic. Yeah. And when next time you pass a shotgun house, like, stop and look at it and you'll see some pretty cool little details to it. Ask them to open the door so you can shoot a gun through it. Don't do that, man. That was a reversal. I was like, no, don't do what Chuck just said. Normally, it's the other way around. And if you are ever in Atlanta, chuck and I always recommend going to the King Memorial Center, the place where he's buried, where the eternal flame is. And all of the surrounding area is, like, a living museum. Preserved house is just awesome. One of my favorite parts of Atlanta for sure. So if you want to learn more about shotgun houses and see pictures of shotgun houses, you can type the words shotgun house two words into the search bar@housestopworks.com, and that'll bring up this article that I wrote. And I said search bar, which means it's time for listener mail. Josh, I'm going to call this Beastie email. Yes. Hey, guys. Did you read this one? No, I just listened to the music sampling podcast. We got a lot of good feedback on that, by the way, man. Everybody loved that. It was a good call. Tough. And a lot of people offered up like, people that know way more than us offered up a lot of cool insight. Yeah, we kept getting called out for not mentioning Girl Talk. I've never heard girl talk, so I don't feel bad. Yeah, but everyone we know about Girl Talk now. Okay, guys, I just listened to the music sampling podcast. Wanted to say how great it was that you featured the Beastie Boys so prominently in the show. Thought I'd share a little story of when I met them during their 1987 Licensed Ill tour in Las Vegas when I was 15. So this girl must be my age, because I saw that tour, and I was about 15. Well, they performed in a concert hall on the UNLV campus, so it was easy to get to the area where their tour bus was. Because I lived in the bleachers. They were inviting every female they saw back to their hotel for a party, including 15 year old Jeez. Well, they were only, like, 18. 1920, still. Well, I know, but you get to be 40, and you're like, what's the big difference of five years, man? That's back then, 15 and 19. I'm just saying, it's not like they were, like, 1520 years old. Right? I'm with you. All right. I'm defending their pedophilia. By the time we got there, the party had taken over the 9th floor and had already been shut down. We got to say hi to MCA before being escorted away by security for curfew violation, but I was determined. I skipped school the next day. I went back to the hotel, basically casing the joint. I ended up finding MCA, who remembered me from the night before. I said, Howdy? He said hi. Very nice. You are waiting on that one. Yeah. I ended up spending the whole day with the guys, chatting, playing arcade games, walking over to a 711 with a very hungover Ad rock and even helping load their bags onto the tour bus. They were only 1920 and 21 at the time, very unassuming, so they weren't getting much attention. I felt like a little sister tagging along with their super cool older brothers. That is very cool. At one point, MCA offered me a tour of the bus we got on and he closed the door and said, now we cannot do all sorts of things that you're going to tell all your friends. We did anyway. He was really hysterical, so he was like he was still a gentleman, unfortunately. And he's like a Buddhist now. Big time. Unfortunately. I had not thought to bring a camera with me, so I have no picks. I did get her autograph documentation that any of this happened? No. She does. Oh, yeah. I did get their autographs, but the only paper I had in my jacket was old school Snoopy Valentine's I had bought to give out friends. I still treasure my three Snoopy Valentine's, each one with their autographs, and she sent pictures of them. That's cool. I stayed until they left around six at night. I naively asked MCA if he would write to me. He answered with an honest no and gave me a very sweet kiss on the cheek. I loved it that they have continued to rise in popularity and are given the respect to being true innovators in the field. First sir, this is Allie Smith and she got kissed on the cheek by a very sweet sounding MCU. And all your 15 year olds out there, you better be at home sleeping. Yeah. Don't be hanging out with 21 year old dudes. Especially not those girl talk people. Are those guys or girls? I think girl talks a guy dear. Clear that girl talk dude. Yeah. Let's see. What do you want to call out for? Do you live in a shotgun house? No. I guess yeah, if you have a house with an interesting history we did that one. Yes, but let's do it again. Oh, boy. If you live in a house with an interesting history or you hung out with the BC boys, we want to hear those. You can write to us at let's see. You can tweet to us at Syscape podcast. That's our handle, Facebook. Comstuffychannow is also on Facebook and you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstepworks.com. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio's Houseworks. For more podcasts, my Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows, you know you're the best pet mom when you growl back during playtime, give epic belly rubs and feed them halo holistic made with responsibly sourced ingredients plus probiotics for digestive health. Find us at chewy amazonandhalopets.com." | |
How Desertification Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-desertification-works | Josh and Chuck discuss the problem of desertification, from what causes serious degradation of dryland ecosystems to possible ways to repair the damage, in this episode. | Josh and Chuck discuss the problem of desertification, from what causes serious degradation of dryland ecosystems to possible ways to repair the damage, in this episode. | Tue, 06 Apr 2010 15:50:30 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=6, tm_hour=15, tm_min=50, tm_sec=30, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=96, tm_isdst=0) | 21864775 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, as Charlie. Charles W, Chuck Bryant. You. How's it going? Oh, you know, Josh, it's Monday. I don't see reporting on Mondays neither. We're in the stupid room that you hate. My head hurts. Jerry's all bummed out. What a wife. What are we doing? I don't know. This isn't a big upper of a topic either. Desertification. Yeah. Maybe it's a good thing we're not in, like, some chipper mood. Yes, I think you're right, because as you know, Chuck, desertification is one of the overlooked, I think, problems, crises facing humanity right now. Yeah, man, big time. Especially here in the Cushy us. Especially in the very lush southeastern US. It's kind of easy to overlook. And we even had, like, a pretty huge drought a couple of years ago, and we're like, oh, no, we have slightly less drinking water than we did before. Right. Well, there were some other slight issues. We had some uprooting of trees and such. Sure. There was. That there wasn't nearly as much boating or jet skiing as usual, which I'm sure affected a lot of the gas stations around some of the lakes. Right. Yeah. There were probably some impacts here and there that we didn't think about. And you're probably right. But it's also even easier to overlook some of the impacts that take place during desertification in some of the more marginalized societies in the world. Right? Yeah, for sure. So what are we looking at? I think it's like 90% of the people who live in areas that are at risk of desertification are the poor, undeveloped countries. Right. Right. Josh, it's about 2 billion people. Right. And for these people, there's a kind of a slightly more problems than not being able to jet ski as much as one would like. I think the infant mortality rate is about ten times that of an industrialized nation. Indeed. And something like 24,000 people die every day from starvation. A lot of these people are found in desertified areas. Right, right. Let's get to the nitty gritty of this. Chuck, what is desertification? I'm just going to say it in my words. Okay. Desertification is when natural things take place, and then man made things take place to cause essentially what is the degradation of the soil itself to where it will erode. Things won't grow there. And basically you're left with a barren desert landscape. Right. That's Chuck's definition. That's a good definition, Chuck. It's dead on. The two chief processes that hasten desertification are poor soil management. Right. Yeah. And overuse of the land. Right. This land is not meant to have lots and lots of people in cattle grazing. Not people grazing, obviously. People farming. Cattle grazing. Right. And the land we're talking about specifically are semi arid regions. Right. Dry land right. And we have one of those here in the United States. You wouldn't think of it because it's artificially managed, but the Great Plains are semi arid. And because of those man made interventions like overuse and intensive farming techniques, that and not observing soil conservation, we actually did experience desertification. Yes, sir. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what happened. We got all these newfangled farming equipment and said, hey, we're kind of poor because the Depression is coming up and we need to use all this stuff to really farm a lot. Right. And that's what happened. And then the Dust Bowl happened, but we got it back. There was this perfect storm that happened actually in the Midwest in the late 20s. Since it was the Roaring 20s, everybody was making tons of cash and farmers started borrowing heavily. And then the depression hit. Much like today, the values of land dropped, the prices of commodities, including agricultural products, dropped, and people started having trouble making payments. Banks, foreclosed. At the same time, the farmers were hit really hard financially. They were also hit really, really hard naturally, because as they tried to step up farming to increase yields, all they did was strip the land of its nutrients. And it became this vicious cycle where the harder they tried to coal stuff from the land, the worse off it got. And then all of a sudden, nothing would grow. Well, bring in a drought, which is the second component. Right. Mother Nature lending a hand. Well, not a hand, a back hand. And that's when the Dust Bowl occurred. And we were in bad shape in the Great Plains for a long time. Yeah. Apparently these things were like the dust storms that came up. Trains would miss their stops in the middle of these things because they couldn't see. Static electricity is easily generated by these particles, so cars would stall. So people started dragging chains behind them to ground the cars. To keep them from stalling, people would put wet sheets up over their windows and, like, you would have drifts of dust in your house with all the doors and windows closed. It would still get in. It was everywhere. Yeah, it was bad news, bad times. Right. But we got it back. We did. Like I said, Great Plains farming once again. Rich soil once again. And that's a little teaser because we can combat this, but we'll get to that at the end. Right. So it's happened here, it's happening in other places. It's actually happening at a pretty rapid pace, isn't it? Chuck. Yes, Josh? Stats? Are you calling for stats? I am. New deserts are growing at a rate of 20,000 sq mi a year. And when you consider that half of the total land mass of the earth is dry land, and ten to 20% of that land is already degraded, then it's not looking good. No, it's not. And there's not a lot of processes in place. Right. Now that are going to stop this. Although we have a pretty clear picture of what's causing this. Right. Like we said, poor soil conservation. Yeah, it's pretty easy, actually, when you look at it, it's not like the most complicated problem. Well, let's talk about the problem first. What's going on? What causes desertification? Well, if you talk in ecosystems like the human body and like any living thing, you're looking for balance. What is the word we used in the homeostasis? Homeostasis. Yeah. So an ecosystem wants balance as well. And anything to throw it out of balance is not good, which is what happens with desertification. When you get infrequent rainfall, you lose what's called humus, which is the really good organic topsoil. Right. Maybe what you want dead plant and animal material. Right? Yeah. So Bobcat's walking along, get struck by lightning, falls over under the ground, that's great for it's going to degrade and be eaten by microbes and then turned into humus, which supports soil. Yeah. We're talking carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus, all these things that make your topsoil really fertile. Right. And there's nothing wrong with the semi arid region. Like it's not a desert. You don't want to confuse the two. The problem is when humans come in and say, we really need this land, this semiarid land, and we're going to overuse it, then it does become a desert. And it becomes overused by not rotating crops, by overusing chemical fertilizers, not composting like you should. Right, exactly. And kind of irresponsible irrigation techniques. Right. Allowing for runoff, that kind of stuff. The problem is, like you said, humus is so essential that if you strip the soil of its humus, no matter how much rainfall comes along, it's not going to restore that balance. Even worse, the rainfall is going to carry the soil away, just erodes it further, which is the problem. So what are some of the things that we're doing to the semi arid regions? Let's say a bunch of people suddenly come to a semi arid region and say, we're going to start farming here. What are some of the uses of this land that can be problematic? Well, grazing. Grazing of cattle, like irresponsible grazing. What happens is a lot of poor people might migrate to an area because their area has been degraded. So you have a mass migration of people that will bring in all their cows. So they're overusing the land. All of a sudden the cows are grazing. And you can't fault them for saying it's irresponsible grazing because they're trying to survive. Sure. And they eat all the grass. Let's say grass and trees are essential for holding that top soil together. So once that's gone or firewood was another one. Right? Yeah. Because if they're looking for firewood right. If you're using that fuel, then they do like crazy. You're going to cut down trees because there's your fuel right there. And when you cut down a bunch of trees, you actually make the land much more reflective, which dries out the atmosphere. It causes more evaporation. And also, once you lose that anchor for the soil, the soil gets kicked up as dust. So the combination of that drier climate plus the dust in the air means it's harder for precipitation to form, making the area even more arid. Yeah, like compounds on itself. Sure. I got a stat. I was telling you that the mass migration of people in the 1990s, dry land regions grew 18.5% in population. These are places that shouldn't have that many people there anyway. They're probably already overtaxed. Then mass migration happens, and it's just a recipe for disaster. Right. And the problem is humans migrate a lot faster than land, can be restored. Much faster. So you move from one place to another, use that place up, you move to the next one, you're eventually going to run out of places to move. Yeah, right. That's what's happening. It is. And it's easy to overlook here in the US. Although I don't think we should, because we have really good irrigation techniques in the Great Plains these days. Sure. But if you look at it, there's not a bunch of people living on the Great Plains. It's pretty sparsely populated. But humans in the US. Are virtually represented on the Great Plains because you've got 1% of Americans farming for the rest of America. Right, right. So there's like a virtual demand on that land through farming because it produces the food we eat. So we may not be living there, but we're using that land just as if we were indigenous people all living on the Great Plains. Right. And the water that's used there actually is virtually exported elsewhere. Right? Yeah. So we're putting in water inputs there. It's growing. And we're taking that water, basically, and exporting it to the places where we eat that food because we don't have to use the water here. So it's like a virtual export of water. Interesting. Well, the other thing, too, being American, is we import a lot of our food, right. Because we can afford to do so. So we get food from all over the world. One of the things that exacerbates the desertification is these migrating poor people. They're relying on the natural ecosystem around them pretty much only. Right. They can't afford to. Sometimes in regions where they just can't import anyway. Plus they can't afford to because prices are skyrocketing for, like, wheat and soy. So they need to use the grass that's behind them and the cow that's eating it and the little tiny river full of dirty water. Yeah. Because if you're cutting down trees for fuel, you're probably not exporting a lot of stuff. I got another stat for you. Let's hear it. You ready to be creeped out? I am. 50 million people will be displaced by desertification in the next ten years. I saw that. So it says peopleandplanet net that's a lot of people. That's a lot of people. And they're going to places like we said, that aren't necessarily fertile oasis anyway. Right. So it's just making everything worse. And again, if you don't have the money to import food, you don't have the money to virtually import water. Hence the 24,000 people that die every day of starvation. Yeah, every day. Wow. It's very sad. Sad. Like you said, though, Chuck, just provide a quick recap, right? You've got a semi arid region that looks kind of lush. It doesn't look like a desert. Right. You come in, you start planting, you use too much chemical fertilizer, you over graze, you cut down trees for fuel. Sure. And you're making a living. A few people can do this and it can be sustainable. But when too many people start doing it, then the humus is lost in the soil and the land starts reflecting back into the sky. Precipitation goes down, the soil is loose, storms blow in, and you got nothing. You have desert erosion and desert. How do you combat this? Well, Josh, it's not easy. It's actually fundamentally easy, but it's hard because not enough people are taking part. Right. And it needs to be done on such a massive scale. Right, exactly. What you have to do is start at a grassroots level, is what they say. Yeah. And you need to go in there. People like the UN I know has a group will plug them in a second. And you go in and you teach these people long term benefits, teaching them to think long term as far as rotating crops, terracing the land, proper irrigation techniques so they're not so short sighted and just trying to get the crop this year. You got to teach them that's hard to do. That's what we did. In the late thirty s and early forty s, the federal government was like, wow, our nation's bread basket is a desert. Now we have to do something. But they determined that they couldn't constitutionally force farmers to use improved soil techniques. So they turned to the states to basically force them to. They created Soil Conservation Districts and made it virtually free to farm and undertake these soil conservation techniques. So they're like, we're going to provide you with everything you need. Just do this. Right. Use contour plowing to trap water better when you irrigate. The federal government also planted between 19, 1342, 185,000 miles of trees. Yeah, that's a huge one. Because trees, not only do they help keep the soil together with the root system, but they block the wind, and the wind causes a lot of erosion. Yeah. This is all easier done in America. Obviously, we got our work cut out against us for developing nations. Well, yeah. But China, they're starting to get a little more cash in their pocket than they had before, and they have a huge problem with the certification. As the Gobi is creeping closer and closer toward Beijing. Yeah. Apparently a dust storm from the Gobi that covers Beijing. Some of them are so enormous that they can be detected in the States. Yeah. Crazy. Yeah. Big dust storm it is. China is taking action though. They're in the process of planning a 3000 miles long belt of trees along the edge of the Goby, which was going to help. Yeah. And I think what other country is doing that along the Sahara Desert? They're trying to build a similar like they're calling it a Green Wall. Right. And there's a German company actually it's not a company. They're out of Bremen University. I love this one. They figured out that if you take coffee sacks, like juice sacks, fill them with this kind of gel that can hold like 1000 times its weight in water or something like that. Seeds compost and sort of like a seed bomb. It is. It's like a huge seed bomb. You can drop them out around the desert, at least a semi arid region, and they will take root after just a few rainfalls. You can also put them in between trees and just leave the trees and those trees will grow. I think they had an 80% success rate with a type of holly tree that they were trying to grow. They plant two of them and then put one of these bags in between them. Yeah. That's awesome. The other thing I thought was cool in the article was that the writer talked a little bit about sometimes the old traditional techniques, the ancient techniques, they were really on target with what they were doing and sometimes the modern way doesn't work as well. So in Spain, a British company has been renovating in 1000 year old Moorish irrigation system. Yeah. How cool is that? It's just cool that there's a 1000 year old irrigation system. Unless you feel like going to China or sub Saharan Africa and plant trees, there's not a lot you could do. Like a stuff you should know, listener. Right. Except where is there? One of the key ways of preventing desertification or slowing it, I guess, is encouraging indigenous societies to look for alternative means of sustaining themselves, I guess. Yeah. Besides farming and agriculture. Right. And there's things like growing herbs and things you can make oil extracts from and using them as soaps and stuff like that. So I guess if you wanted to do something here in the States or in Norway sure you would maybe kind of look for something like that and start buying them on mass online. Does Emily sell those on love your mama. Well, she sells her own soaps, but she doesn't does she use oils from the Gobi or anything? No, she tries to buy local, actually. Right on. That's not local. No, it's not that local. I'm going to shame her for not shipping in her essential oils from the Gobi. You got anything else on desertification? Yeah, if you want to read a little bit more on how you can participate or at least support and write letters, that kind of thing. The UN has a cool site. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. And that is UNCCD int. And you can click on Action Programs, and that's programs spelled with two M and an E. Yes. British. They're silly that way. Sure. So it's pretty cool. You can click on Action Programs, and there isn't one action program because it's got to be very specific to the land. So you click on that, and you can go to Africa, and you can go to a sub region of Botswana and find out. Like, you can download a PDF to see exactly what they're trying to do. Cool. It's cool just to educate yourself. Or you can start collecting juke coffee bags and mail them to Bremen University. Seat bombs. So here you go. If you want to know more about desertification, arguably the greatest crisis humanity faces right now, you can type that word in. Remember, just one S in the handysearchbar@housetepforce.com, which means it's time for listener mail. Indeed, Josh. I'm going to call this those crazy wacky Aussies. Okay. We have a lot of Aussie listeners. We hear from them quite a bit, and they're wacky people, and we need to make it down there at some point. Okay. Although I don't think you could ever stomach that flight, could you? I'm going to Japan. That's 14 hours. Good luck. This comes from Chris. From Australia. I listen to your podcast all the time. I'm sure it's a clinical addiction. And I thought you needed to know about cowpat lotto. You know what a cowpat is? It's poop. Yeah, cowpie. Cow poop. Cow pat lotto is recognized, but certainly not common event in rural Australia, where a paddock is plotted into sections. I don't know what you would call it. I don't know, an area of land. Maybe you call it a paddock. That's what he says. That's what I've always called. So they split it into sections. This is all done on paper, like a cartesian coordinate. Gamblers will bet their money on a particular portion of said paddock when it's decided that it's time to get on with the game. A farm animal traditionally bovine you know what's coming, is thrown in the paddock. Gamblers and other locals and sit around eating and drinking and generally making Mary and wait for said bovine to take a crap. Wow. So when the aforementioned cow has taken its poopoo, its coordinates are taken, and the winner is whoever's plot the poopoo has landed in, obviously, prizes. I don't know, maybe the money. Maybe they wait for a second and third prize. Although this would indicate an unhealthy cow. It keeps going, right? And maybe they get a turkey or a meat tray or a slab of beer or something. That's where I get confused with a slab of beer? Yeah. What is it? A case. Maybe. It's Australian for case. Right. Anyway, it's generally used as a fundraiser, like a local raffle. So it's like a fundraising thing, she said there's, like, ladies having baked sales and the guys are all sitting around getting hammered, basically. Oh, yeah. Generally, it's a great excuse for a suck more. And that is an Australian synonym for a shindig, a hoot nanny, a party or a boozer. They call it a suck more. Okay. That's from Chris. Australia. Red hair. Nice. Thanks, Chris. So now we know about desertification and suck. Morris. Yes. If you have an interesting term, you want to introduce Chuck and I to Chuck and Me too. One of those two. Send it an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffs.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howestofworks.com. Want more? HowStuffWorks? Check out our blog on the houseepworks.com homepage brought to you by The Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's Criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. 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44036c84-53a3-11e8-bdec-97cc195ec792 | How the Escape from Alcatraz Worked | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-escape-from-alcatraz-worked | In 1962, three ordinary criminals transcended into folk heroes when they crawled out of their cells in Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary took to the water in a homemade raft and were never heard from again. Could they have possibly survived? | In 1962, three ordinary criminals transcended into folk heroes when they crawled out of their cells in Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary took to the water in a homemade raft and were never heard from again. Could they have possibly survived? | Tue, 01 Sep 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=1, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=245, tm_isdst=0) | 52738594 | 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 trendy apparel company facing an avalancho demand to ensure more customers can buy more sherpa lined jackets? You call IBM to automate your it infrastructure with AI. Now, your systems monitor themselves. What used to take hours takes minutes, and you have an ecommerce platform designed to handle sudden spikes in overall demand, as in actual overalls. Let's create It systems that rule up their own sleeves. IBM, let's create. Learn more at IBM. Comitoimation. Hey, everybody, it's us. And we're here to talk to you about get this, our book. We have a Stuff You Should Know book coming out this November and you're going to love it and you can pre order it now. That's right. It's called Stuff You Should Know, an incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. And it's been a lot of fun to work on and we're really, genuinely excited about how this thing has come together. Yes, it's 26 chunky, hairy chapters that are just going to knock your socks clean off. And yes, Chuck, we are indeed proud of this book. It is truly indubitably. The first Stuff You Should Know book, and it's coming out this November and you can order it now, preorder everywhere you get books, so do that and we thank you in advance. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck Jerry's out there in the ether somewhere. Like that one kid being transmitted from the camera to the TV in Willy Wonka. Wow, I got that one eight kinds of wrong. Yeah. But anyway, this is stuff you should know, which is appropriate. I would get something eight kinds of wrong right at the beginning. Did you ever hear the story from Gene Wilder about the move at the beginning of that movie where he walks out with a cane, where he did the spill? The somersault? Yeah, he sticks the cane in the ground and does a somersault. No, he said that that was his idea. And this just shows the brilliance of Gene Wilder. And he said he did that because he knew from that moment on no one would believe anything that that character said. Yes, I have heard that before. Great. That is brilliant. That man was a brilliant man and a wonderful human being. I loved him. He's got one of his last interviews on conan O'Brien was so great because Conan was just gushing, and Gene Wilder was very, I think, kind of taken back by how much he means to people. Have you ever seen oh, no, that wasn't the question I had. Did you know that? Did you fart? Did you know that Conan O'Brien and Dennis Leary are cousins? I don't think I knew that. According to Conan O'Brien asking a question on Jeopardy. That is his cousin. Did you not know that? Speaking of Jeopardy. We have a colleague named Ken Jennings who is on Jeopardy. And we have another colleague, two colleagues called Daniel and Jorge, and they have a podcast called Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe. It's pretty cool. But they also chuck, I just saw have a PBS Kids animated program coming out September 7 called Eleanor Wonders why? And it looks adorable. Wow, that sounds like right at my daughter's alley. Yeah. So check it out, everybody. PBS Kids september 7. Eleanor wonders why. And congrats Daniel and Jorge. Do you have any famous cousins? Famous or infamous? I think we are the famous cousins. That's how sad our families are. Yeah. Feels pretty great, though. I keep being like, hey, let's have another family reunion this month. Speaking of infamous cousins, Chuck, how about those Anglin brothers, huh? Yeah, man, I kind of thought we did this. Do we do one on the Alcatraz and maybe just briefly touched on it? Absolutely. Because this movie, Escape from Alcatraz Movie with Clinic Wood was one of my favorite movies as a kid. It's a good movie. I watched it just the other night as part of this. Yeah, it was an HBO special, so I must have been I didn't see it when I was eight. I probably was like ten or eleven. And it was one of those movies I probably watched over a dozen times when I was 1212 years old, followed by Crowle and Outland. Oh, man, those are great. Yeah, they always went together, though, didn't they? Yeah. In War Games. I mean, those are all HBO specials, but this was a really good movie, and I'm a big, big fan of Prison Escape movies. Sure. And I was thinking today when I was looking over this stuff again, that it's so weird that these guys were hardened criminals, and yet when you're researching this, all you can think about is, oh, man, I hope they got out of there, and I hope they lived a fat life in Brazil. Well, that really speaks to, like, who they are, what they became because of this escape, which is most simply they're folk heroes, I guess so. Yeah, that's definitely a part of being a folk heroes, that you can transcend the kind of, like, crime judgment that society typically levies against people like criminals. If you are so good at your craft or so good at something to do with criminality that you transcend being judged for your crimes, you've become a folk hero, for sure. It's like DB. Cooper. Yeah. And I think it helps that these guys were armed robbers and thieves, and I think Frank Morris and we'll get into all who these dudes are, but he was a drug trafficker, but they weren't rapists and murderers. I don't think anyone transcend that. No, they were definitely nonviolent criminals from everything that I've seen. Yeah, they used a toy gun in one of these robberies. Yeah, it's adorable. Well, let's talk about these guys. Like you were saying, we're talking about a group of people who escaped from Alcatraz, and as far as anyone knows, they are the only ones who really may have escaped from Alcatraz. They vanished in 1962, last seen leaving their cells and were never heard from again. And like you said, they were all hardened criminals, like, lifelong career criminals. Frank Morris was 35 when he left Alcatraz, and he'd been a criminal since he was 13. He was in and out of institutions. And like you said, he wasn't a violent criminal. He wasn't a rapist or murder or anything like that. He liked to sell the drugs. He had, like, a forehead or a star tattooed on his forehead for a while, which he very sensibly had removed later on. Is that what that means? What, he was a drug trafficker? No, I think that means that he did a few too many drugs one night. Oh, he really did have a star. Yeah. I thought that was some prison thing for the tear drop tattoo. Doesn't that mean you killed somebody or something? That's what I've always heard, but I don't know. It could just be urban legend, but yes, what I've always heard, he really did have a star. Okay. Yeah, I think he got super wasted on his forehead. There was a tattoo or just far too handy that night. Yeah, which I think the old saying, don't ever make friends with tattoo artists, or at least drinking buddies. Sure, that's true. But he was also super smart, too. Yeah. And they point this out in the movie, and a lot of the movie I mean, it's pretty close to the real story. They did a really good job, but they do make a big deal in the movie about how smart he was. I know IQ is sort of taken or leave it as far as that being a real measurement of one's intelligence, but he supposedly had an IQ of 130. And the BOP, which stands for the was it Bureau of Prisons? I didn't know they had rankings, but they had rankings of intellectuality. Is that a word? Yeah, I think so. It gets the point across. Ergo it is. Yeah. And I'm curious what other rankings they have, but best looking, best ABS. But he was in the top 2%, supposedly in the American prison system as far as his intellectual capabilities. Yeah. So you hit on a point there that I think we need to at least at least bring up the movie did follow the actual truth of the matter fairly closely in some cases. In other cases, it veered wildly away. Like, there was a character based on one guy who was very much involved, but they didn't even use his name, and they made him seem less involved than he actually was. There's a lot that the movie gets wrong, but the problem with covering this is that there are so many gaps and holes that are so easily and casually filled in that you can't help but wonder, like, wait, was this detail provided by somebody who saw the movie and took the movie as fact? Like, where are we exactly? And just how pure the knowledge and understanding is of this escape? So you have to just kind of bear that in mind that it's kind of a blur in the annals of crime as far as factuality goes. Yeah, but it's a good story. Great story. And most of this is pretty true, I think. So frank Morris was four years into a 14 year stint. This was for a bank robbery, and he was transferred to The Rock in 60. The Rock. We were using Lingo. It's Alcatraz. It's a prison island or an island prison. Yeah. And some might say the island itself is a prison, which we'll get to. And then his buddies you mentioned, the Anglin brothers, JW. John, William and his younger brother Clarence were 30 and 29 years old, and they were from a very big family of migrant farm workers in South Georgia. They traveled all over the country wherever their work was, basically as a big family. And they got into stealing things from people. Yeah. And they were the ones who used the toy gun. Later on, they were, I think, visiting family in a small town called Columbia, Alabama, which is in the southeast of the state. And they found out that this bank had been around for 100 years in this town and had never been robbed. So they assumed, we're going to change that. It will be easy to knock over. And apparently it was pretty easy to knock over. And they had a toy gun that they used, and they still managed to get away with at least, I think, like ten grand or 20 grand something. A pretty substantial amount of money. And they were on the run for a little while, but got caught in the Alabama, were not very happy with it, and they threw the book at these brothers. They got 25 year sentences for robbing a bank with a toy gun, and that actually was way better than the sentence they initially faced, which was potentially the death penalty. That's crazy. Yeah. So they were caught and busted and they had a third brother named Alfred, too, who was also involved, but he was never sent to The Rock, as you put it. Not I bet it was factually a lot easier to rob banks back then. Yeah. It was way easier to be a criminal even just a few decades ago. Yes. Just in general. I think now it's like, don't even try. Yes. I mean, if it's not the cops and their cameras, you got some dumb neighbor with their cameras like me. Right. Oh, man. I hate to get off topic so quickly, and we should post this on the Facebook page or something. Or maybe I'll put it on instagram. What? I got attacked by a squirrel, and it was captured by my front of the house camera. Oh, yeah. Everyone wants to see that. This is great. I was taking out some recycling, and I heard some rustling, and I went around the corner, and the squirrel was freaking out, and then he literally leapt. If you freeze frame it, he left 3ft in the air wow. And hit my leg and ran up my leg a little bit. Wow. And I react thusly. That's awesome. You know what would be wonderful is the inner cut close ups of your face when you got that Charlie horse on internet roundup. Oh, my God. In with the squirrel attack. It's a good thing I don't care about myself and looking dumb. Why did that squirrel attack you? What did you do to it? I didn't do anything. I was freaking out, and then I turned and looked after I dropped the recycling off, and he and another squirrel were going at in our oak tree. So I think he was all riled up. He might have been out on you. Yeah. Did he have a star tattooed on his forehead? He did. Right on his little tiny, furry forehead. Wow. Yes. Please do post that. Okay. All right. These guys are all in alcatraz. And alcatraz at the time was, like I said, it was sort of the rock itself was the prison. And that was the idea, was that even if you're even if you manage to get out of the prison that they eventually built, which we'll talk about, then you still can't get out of there, because you got to swim over a mile to the nearest body of land, about 1.3 miles. That water is really cold. The currents are brutal. The winds are really strong. San Francisco bay is not for people that haven't been there. It's not just some lovely little chill body of water that you hang out in. No. It's not a very hospitable body of water. It's not. The idea was that when you got sent to alcatraz, you weren't getting off of that island, and you either paroled or died. And that was actually the reason that the England and Frank Morris were sent there was because they had all met at the federal pen in Atlanta, I guess the one down in grant park. Right? Yeah. Which that building is amazing. It's one of the most forbidding buildings in the world. I would say it looks like an old timey federal penitentiary. Al Capone was there, too, for a little while. Yeah, I actually drove by there not too long ago with my daughter for the first time, and I was like, Check out that building. Look at that. It's like, that's a prison. What's a prison? And I went, oh, well, I guess I got to explain that. I'll tell you when you're 18, if you make it and don't go to prison first. Right. So they all met at the Federal Pen in Atlanta. I can't remember if they actually made it out or if they were caught escaping, but they were known as escape. Artists like Frank Morris had escaped from places in Florida. They didn't stay put when you put them in prison. And so that's why they were all sent to Alcatraz and just crazily as they arrived. Between 1960 and 1961, they were all put pretty close together. And in fact, the England brothers had adjoining cells, which is a very stupid thing to do, but that's what they did in part, I believe, because there is a certain thread of arrogance that ran through the administration of Alcatraz that it was just basically inescapable. Yeah. And I think you also sort of want happy prisoners, and I've heard of requests like that being made possible before, like, hey, if you put me near my brother, we're going to be a lot better behaved. Yeah, we're definitely not going to break out. I don't think we mentioned either, like, Alcatraz was so formidable as just an island that the very first time they used it was when the army put soldiers there who cheered on President Lincoln's death. And so they didn't even bother building a prison, though. They just built some barracks through them on the island. It was like, well, you're in prison now, because good luck getting out of here. Yeah, that's what I saw, too. And when the Bureau of Prisons took over, they really fortified it even more. Like you said, there was a larger building that housed everything from the mess hall to the cell blocks. So when you were in a cell block, you're in a little tiny prison inside a larger prison on side this island prison. And the cell blocks themselves had, like, three inch thick concrete walls, reinforced iron bars. The building itself is made of very thick concrete. It was just meant to basically tell you there's no getting out here. But what's crazy is Frank Morris and the England brothers, they weren't the first people to ever try to bust out. I believe they were part of a total of 36 people who tried to escape in the history of the prison. Everybody else, almost everybody else was either killed, captured, or their bodies were found. Except, and I did not realize this, morris and the England brothers were not the first people to vanish without a trace from Alcatraz. Had you heard about Ted Cole? And Ralph Row. I hadn't heard about them until this, but in the 30s, late 30s, they did escape and they did vanish and sort of like, Where this story's going? I don't think anyone wants to admit that from the prison system that they could have really made it right. So they're like, no, they died, they drowned. But the thing is, the thing that really differentiates the England brothers and Frank Morris from guys like Ted Cole and Ralph Row, they all shared in common that they escape from Alcatraz and vanished without a trace. The thing that differentiates Morris and the Englands is that their folk heroes, because almost exclusively because of this plan, they devised and executed, and that the plan was so good and so complex and well done that it actually lends credence to the idea that they may have survived and escaped from Alcatraz. Genuinely. Yes. And what they had in common is that they were all top ten in best ABS in the prison system. Yes. And what everybody listening right now has in common is that you're about to hear an ad. Hi, everybody. If you want a great quality website, you want to do it yourself with no must and no fuss. Then there's nowhere else to look than Squarespace. That's right. Squarespace has every single thing that you need to put together an awesome website. Everything from growing and engaging your audience with email campaigns, collecting donations for your cause through Apple, Pay, Stripe, Venmo PayPal. Plus, you can also make your website optimized for mobile, which is great for your user on the go. That's right. And if you're into selling stuff, square space is everything. To sell anything. They have all the tools you need to get your business off the ground. They have ecommerce templates, inventory management, really simple checkout process and secure payment. So whatever you want to sell, you can sell it on Squarespace. Yeah, don't just take our word for it. Head to squarespace. Comssk and start your free trial today. And then when you're ready to launch, use our offer code S YSK, and you'll get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain that's Squarespace.com. SYSK squarespace. These days, you use your personal info to do just about everything, especially when you're online. And guess what? With all that info just floating around out there, it can make the Internet a practical gold mine for identity thieves. And stealing your identity, it turns out, can be dangerously easy. Which is not good. But now it's easy to protect yourself with LifeLock by Norton. Yes, LifeLock monitors your info and alerts you to potential identity threats. And if you are a victim of identity theft, a dedicated USbased restoration specialist will work to fix it. Identity thefts have had it easy for far too long. Now, finally, it's your turn. Just remember, no one can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transactions at all businesses. But everyone can save up to 25% off their first year by going to LifeLock.com stuff. That's LifeLock.com stuff for 25% off your first year LifeLock. Identity theft protection starts here. Okay, we're back, everybody. And I think it's high time we talk about the plan, the escape plan, don't you? Yeah. If you're going to escape from Alcatraz, it's not the kind of thing where you distract a guard and just run and jump over a fence. You got to start this thing, this plan many months in advance. And by all accounts and by all accounts, meaning from the one account that we really have this, they started planning easily six months before the escape, they start developing this plan. They start collecting kind of anything they can get their hands on that they think they can use, everything from just loose nuts and bolts and screws to things. I mean, they actually ended up using a lot of this stuff, but I got the impression that they were just kind of like anytime they saw something that they could squirrel away and hide, they would do it because you never know what you could use it for. Yeah. And so, like, over the six month period, they amassed something like 80 tools that they either had stolen for them, rebuild or repurposed out of other stuff, or just made completely out of their own labor. Like, they had a pretty extensive toolkit that they created. One of the ways that they got a lot of the tools was from Alan West, who we haven't mentioned yet, but a lot of people don't realize there was a fourth conspirator in the Alcatraz escape who was a major integral part of it, but who actually didn't go along with the escape, as we'll see. Oh, man, that part of the movie is so tough. It is. Especially with that poor guy. He just looks yeah, that character. I'm out of the womb, like, down on my luck. Can you spare a dime, brother? He's so good. He's been in so many things, but I think he was the guy who played Kramer on Seinfeld in the pilot. In the NBC pilot. Yeah. So, like, in the show, the guy playing Kramer in the show, I think that was him. Yeah. He stole the eminem, I think. Yeah. So he was an escape from alcatraz, too. Yeah, he's perfect for that part. But this guy named Alan West, he was on the painting crew, and he put that to use big time. One of the first ways he did it was he was in the prison barber shop and managed to steal a pair of electric clippers while he was in their painting. And they were like, hey, this motor will come in handy. Let's repurpose it into a power drill. And they did. Yeah, that's pretty cool. I mean, just having a little motor is so handy. So he came across a vacuum cleaner that wasn't working, and he said, hey, you mind if I repair this, I got to shake the tree first, but after that you mind if I repair this? Is that what they call it, the vacuuming? No. And you got a P on the chain gang. You call it shaking the tree. Oh, I guess I think that's what it's called. Sure. But I mean, what does it have to do with fixing a vacuum? Nothing. It's just prison humor. I got you a lot of prison jokes. All the inmates listening right now is busted out laughing. Like he said, Shake the tree. Well, it's a drinking game. Well, explain. If you're listening from prison, if someone says, Shake the tree, you take a drink of Pruno. Well, that's another drink. Yeah, but that's what you would drink when somebody says, Shake the tree. Shake the tree one more time. Right? Shake the tree. Guys, I think everybody's got a pretty good buzz in prison right now. So he says, Let me fix this vacuum cleaner. They say, that's fine. He saw that the vacuum cleaner had a couple of different motors, and one of which he used to repair and actually make, you know, pass it off as a working vacuum cleaner. And then he just took that other one. And that meant that they could make a drill that was even more powerful than the other one. Yeah. So they had not one, but two electric drills at their disposal, which kind of gives you a pretty good idea of just how dedicated and smart and crafty these guys were, right? Yes. They also very famously ended up with 55 different raincoats that were made from rubber prison issue raincoats that they got from other inmates. And this really reveals something that I think a lot of people don't necessarily realize. It seems like basically all the inmates in prison with the Anglins and Morris were well aware of their plans. Not necessarily every detail or even any of the details, just that they were planning on breaking out. And so they managed to get their hands on, like, 50 different raincoats from other prisoners that they use to build a life raft and life vests with. Pretty great. I think the idea was that these guys didn't like being on Alcatraz, so they kind of figured, hey, if these guys actually get out, they're going to close this place down. We're going to get out of here. Right. I don't know if I would have gone along with that rationale. I would have thought, it's going to be even worse for us here, but we'll hang on to what happened till the end of the show. How about that? I think everybody would have kept their Pruning from you had you raised that point, you know, so they've got all this stuff. They got paint, they got paper, they collect hair. And from the barber shop, they like, sweep up his hair and keep that. You might be thinking, why in the world would they need that, you'll see. And then they had about three and a half hours each evening after dinner slop and before lights out, where they had to work and create a way out of their prison cell. And then once they get out of their prison cell, like you said, they're still in this larger building then a way out of there. But the first trick is getting out of their individual cells. Yeah. So from what I understand, that took up like the lion's share of the time between when they first hatched this plan and the time when they finally escaped. They were like these little six by eight or nine or something, very small ventilation shaft cemented into the wall. The grates were cemented into the wall, but really it was just a little metal grate over a hole. So they figured they could start chipping away at that hole and enlarge the hole into something they could crawl through. And that's exactly what they did. Eventually, over time, Frank Morris and then both of the Anglin brothers managed to create these holes. And they did so by serving as look out for one another while the other one chipped one night. And then they would trade off that kind of thing. And then here's the question that I have. I could not confirm one way or the other if it was a movie thing or if it was a real life thing, but in the movie, they create these kind of cardboard false walls that they're able to fill the hole with that it looks like the grate is still there and the wall is still intact. So when they were out of their cells, they could put this false wall in behind them and nobody would be any the wiser when they just walked past and casually glanced in there. I don't know if they did that or not. I mean, it's a pretty great detail of the movie, so I'm inclined to believe it. Let's go with it. I haven't seen it in a long time. Did they have those drills in the movie? Because I just remember a lot of digging with the they kind of just used a sharpened spoon as a little mini pick. A sharpened spoon with the wardens fingernail clippers that he steals in like one of the first scenes. But there was no drill in the movie, was there? Not that I remember. No. But there definitely were two drills. One of the drills, that one with the vacuum motor, they actually figured out it's just too loud. It's too powerful and too loud. So they abandoned that one. But I don't know what became of the hair clipper drill. I didn't hear anything about that one other than that they created it and used it. Well, they managed to dig through, though, where they could get their bodies out of the cell. And that just must have felt like we're halfway there at this point, guys. Oh, yeah, I'll bet. So from there it led to a utility corridor. It was about a meter wide. And there were no guards in here because this is sort of like the guts of the prison. Yeah. Like, why would you need to guard where there are no people? Wink, wink. And in that quarter or they could kind of move around freely. They would climb up to the ceiling. This is like a three story cell block. Still within a larger building, though, of course, like we mentioned. And then they had a full on workshop up there for a few weeks. They could store their tools, they could hide their stuff, they could build we haven't really talked about the rafts, but where they match. They would build their rafts there and it just sort of serves as their staging area where they would eventually leave from to go by this big, heavy iron grate to a ventilation shaft which actually finally led to the rooftop. Right. But that big iron grate was a big iron problem because the bars were reinforced. They were, I think, welded, or maybe screwed, I'm not sure, into this iron ring that covered this ventilation shaft. So it was a big problem. And then they figured out that the bolts holding this whole thing together were actually not nearly as strong as the bars that made up the grate and the ring that held the bars. So they started working away at cutting these bolts one way or another. I think they created a wrench. They built themselves a wrench and they managed to use that to some pretty good effect. But it went from digging out of their cells to figuring out a way to get through this great that was kind of like stage two. And then let's talk about the raft, because the raft is extremely important part of this whole thing. And I think really one of the things, if not the thing, that lends credence to the idea that they might have actually made it. Yeah. So they got these raincoats, and back then, raincoats were just basically sheets of rubber. Yeah. They didn't breathe very well. They're very hot. Think like sweaty gorton's fisherman type of stuff. A sweaty gorton's fisherman? Oh, yeah. The guy was always sweaty. So they ended up creating a six foot by 14 foot life raft from these raincoats. From an article in Popular Mechanics, which shows up a couple of times. Very useful magazine, if you were trying to escape prison. And it was an article about a hunter who had gotten lost and survived hunting geese that he attracted using rubber decoys that he'd made. So they get this idea they build these inflatable pontoons made from these raincoat sleeves. So they were stuffed inside and made airtight by gluing rubber cement, contact cement over the seams and then pressing them against steel pipes which vulcanized it. It just basically melted everything shut. And then you have these floatable pontoons that you could use and craft this larger raft. Yeah. So they had something that was inflatable because those seams were vulcanized. It would hold the air. The air couldn't escape. And they used a concertina. I can't remember Handsome Pete, there's like a little guy who plays the accordion down on the docks that looks just like Cresty the Clown in one of The Simpsons episodes, and he's playing a concertina. It's like a squeeze box. It's like an accordion without the keys and the buttons. Yeah, but it acts as a bellows because it moves air. Essentially. That's what they used it for. They modified it so that they could use it to inflate their raft very quickly with this concertina that I guess they stole from the prison music room, which is pretty great. So they're working on all this stuff. And the raft in particular. This is like the lynch pin of this whole plane, is this raft in these life preservers that work fell to Allen West. So while these dudes were chipping away at the ventilation holes, allen west was standing look out for most of them. And he was creating this raft in these life vests. And so he wasn't able to chip away at his own ventilation hole nearly as fast. So while they were out working on the vent cover great. He still had no way out of his cell at that point. He hadn't made it all the way through. Yeah. And we should point out something that earlier we mentioned. If they happen to walk by and they don't notice a hole in the wall because they may or may not have made these false grates and walls, if you're a listener and you don't know the story, you might have said, like, yeah, but wouldn't they have noticed there was no one in the cell? Good question. What they did was they made paper machete recreations of themselves. They made these busts. They use that prison hair, which is so gross. It's so gross. And use that rubber cement again to glue this hair on. And if you see the real things, it's not Madam Tousseau or anything. It's not like, boy, look at that likeness. Photo realistic. But it's in the dark. And you're sort of, I think, as a human, trained to see what you're looking for. So if your guard that's just walking by, you see a head turn the other way with prison hair on it and some pillows under a blanket, and you don't think it looks fake, it just looks like it wasn't, like Ferris Bueller style with, like, a fake snore on the high five system or anything, but you just kind of walk past it. It worked well enough. Like, they did this for weeks and weeks and weeks with these paper machs, and it worked. They never got noticed? No, they didn't, because, remember, they were working between the end of dinner and lights out, so they just seem to have made it look like they went to bed early and put the paper mache busts in there. Those guys sure are sleepy for you. Frank, I got a lot of questions about this, but I'm not going to investigate any further. Exactly. So do you want to talk about the escape and then go to Ad Break? Yeah, I think that's the way to do it. Okay. So finally they get to this point where the bars are removed from this grate enough that they can slip through, and they realize that they have successfully penetrated to the exterior of the building. That's right. Okay. They're on the roof. Well, they know they can get on the roof now. They know they go. Nice. I bet you they got up there at least once to be like, all right. I don't know. I haven't heard anything like that. And there's a lot of questions about why this particular night. Was this the very first night that they were able to get out? And they're like, let's go, which seems likely to me. Or are they waiting for a particular night? Or, like you said, have they tested it before they do any dry runs? We don't really know that. But what we do know is that on Monday, June 11, 1962, JW. England. Clarence Anglin and Frank Morris all left their cells. And the first thing Frank Morris did was go to help Allen West finish puncturing the hole through his cell wall. Poor Alan still had not done this yet. He's like, Come on, we got to go. But apparently, part of the plan was to help him punch the hole out the rest of the way, and then he would escape with them. Frank Morris apparently tried in vain and went off to get Clarence England to come try, and they trade it off. And then Clarence tried. He couldn't do it, either, so I guess he had the very uncomfortable government. I'll be right back. I got to go shake the tree or something like that. I'll be right back. You stay here. And that was the last anybody ever saw of Frank Morris, clarence Anglin, or JW. Anglin from that moment until today. Yeah. So they get to that corridor, they climb up to the roof of the cell block, and then through that ventilation shaft. That grate is no longer a problem, and they push away Alan West, they can just barely hear him saying, like, you guys are coming back, right? Any minute now, you said. So there's this rain cover on top. They push that thing off, and this all makes some noise. And in the movie, they kind of accurately display that, too, as some clinking and clanging around. And I don't think in the movie they did this, but in real life, supposedly, there was so much noise that they did, like, a little 45 minutes kind of a search of the area. Right. Didn't see anything going on? No, they didn't go up on the roof, that's for sure. And they basically didn't find anything. So the guys are out. They shimmy about 50ft to the ground via drain pipe, which is how you always do it, go to that perimeter fence. And I'm sure the perimeter fence was fine, but I think the idea was that they're never getting out anyway. So I don't think it had like 15ft of razor wire or anything like that. I think it did have double barbed wire at least. Yeah, for sure. Nothing. It's not like concertina wire or anything. No, nothing like that. Around one in the morning. Allen west. Poor Alan West. He finally gets that cell great broken open. I'm sure he just thinks, alright, I'm going to catch up to these guys and it's going to be all good and I'm getting out of here. Followed that same route. It's been a couple of hours at this point, though, these were genuinely good dudes, it seemed like, because they did leave him a paddle. I don't think we mentioned they made paddles out of chair legs and the screws and nuts and bolts and a pontoon that was all inflated for him. And he got a little snack. Low rice Krispy Treat. Rice Krispy Treat. Little shot of Bruno for his courage. And then he looks over. Terrible timing. And there's a guard in a new position that basically could see anything that he tries to do from that point forward. He's visually pinned down on the roof. He can't do anything. So this is around 01:00 A.m. Or something, and he figures, okay, the guard will eventually move. Well, Alan West says the guard never moved until dawn. Doesn't this guy pee right? Doesn't he ever shake the tree? And he didn't. He did not shake the trees stayed put. And so eventually Alan West was forced to climb back down the ventilation shaft, back down from the roof of the cell block that is three stories back to his cell that he had just a few hours earlier. Finally, after months, punched a hole through and he went and lay down and just waited for the heat to come down on him. And indeed it did, because at the 07:00 a.m. Bad check, three dummy heads were discovered. Were three inmates. Real heads should have been. And the prison just went berserk. You know that feeling you get when you take a wrong turn and go like three or 4 miles in the wrong direction and have to go all the way back the other way? Yeah. Imagine being Alan West and having to do that. That times infinity. That times infinity, yeah. You want to take another break? I think so. Man all right, well, we won't get to the bottom of this, but we'll speculate all over the place 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 at in Squarespace. That's right. Squarespace has every single thing that you need to put together an awesome website, everything from growing and engaging your audience with email campaigns, collecting donations for your cause through Apple, Pay, Stripe, Venmo, PayPal. Plus, you can also make your website optimized for mobile, which is great for your user on the go. That's right. And if you're into selling stuff, square space is everything to sell anything. They have all the tools you need to get your business off the ground. They have ecommerce templates, inventory management, really simple checkout process, and secure payment. So whatever you want to sell, you can sell it on Squarespace. Yeah, don't just take our word for it. Head to squarespace. Comsysk and start your free trial today. And then when you're ready to launch, use our offer code s YSK, and you'll get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace. Comsysk. 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. Yeah. LifeLock monitors your info and alerts you to potential identity threats. And if you are a victim of identity theft, a dedicated US. Based restoration specialist will work to fix it. Identity thefts have had it easy for far too long. Now, finally, it's your turn. Just remember, no one can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transactions at all businesses, but everyone can save up to 25% of their first year by going to LifeLock. comStuff. That's LifeLock.com stuff for 25% off your first year. LifeLock identity theft protection starts here. Okay. So there are some things that we know about this from watching a movie. But the movie writers based the movie on a book. And the book author. I believe. Based this stuff on an interview or interviews with Alan West that Alan West had with the Bureau of Prisons and the FBI. Because basically everything we know about the escape from Alcatraz came from the mouth of Allen West. Yeah, so he made a deal. He said, listen, I'll tell you all about it, but you can't throw me in here for longer because I tried to escape prison. You got to give me immunity for that attempted escape. And let's be honest, guys, it really wasn't much of an attempt. Can you give me a break here? I had to make the sad walk of shame back to the show. I have a feeling that they definitely factored into their decision to give them immunity. Like, man, probably so you really got a hard luck case. So he makes a deal and says, I'll tell you everything, but again, this is just his account of it. One thing that kind of jumped out is maybe it's not the most accurate account, was that he was like, yeah, I was the mastermind. I thought of the whole thing from the start. And I don't know if that's quite true because it seems like Clinistswood did. Yeah, certainly in the movie the movie basically should be called Colon the Frank Morris Story. He's the main character. Everybody else is a side character clinician. It really kind of downplayed. A lot of the contributions by the England brothers, certainly by Alan West, doesn't even use Alan West name. So I don't know how much of an influence is from that movie or if that movie was just based on the general idea that Frank Morris was the mastermind and the leader. That he was a very intelligent person and kind of a boring leader, from what I know. So it's just not clear whether Alan West actually came up with this plan or not. Was he the one who sold the raft all this time and he got left behind? Or maybe he had really weak arms and this is just what he told the Bureau of Prisons investigators. It was the reason why he never was able to chip out of his cell. Who knows? So just bear in mind, from this point forward, we're just going to go on with this as gospel. But all of this is coming from Allen Westmouth. He was the one that was left behind. I feel like in the movie he got to the point where he could not jump up by himself and reach the grade. Is that right? Yes. So in the movie, they help each other up and then he would have had to have done it himself. And he couldn't jump. He just kept jumping and jumping and couldn't make it. Yes, but from what I know, he made it up to the roof and was pinned down on the roof by that guard and the watch tile. I think it was a guard inside. No, you're right. In the movie it was like that. So the plan was, and this, again from west account said was to sail this raft, or I guess paddle this raft across the bay to Angel Island about a mile away, a little over. And he said from there they were going to rest for a little bit, get their bearings, stash everything and then swim to the mainland across what's called the Raccoon streets to Marin County. And then once they got there, they would start doing crime again immediately. They could rob a store for closing money and steal a car and get the heck out of there as quickly as possible before the word gets out. Which is a pretty great plan, actually. The crime part, I don't know. I guess the idea is to just get as far away as possible. But I don't know if I would have yes, but you need a car. It's not like somebody's going to just give you one. I can take the Bart. Sure, you could take the Bart. I guess the Bart was around back then. I think it was a pretty good maybe they were just like one last heist to get away from here. Maybe that's what it was. Maybe because they just want I mean, I get to want the urge to get as far away from there as possible. But also, what if all of a sudden cops are on you from stealing a car immediately? It is a big risk. And a lot of people say that they were actually helped. On the other side. There was a guy named man. I can't remember his last name, but he's his nickname was Bumpy. He was Miguel Cuddy, harlem crime lord, drug lord, who is just a total BA. And they think that he may have had something to do with helping them escape, with somebody who would have shown up and picked them up and driven them off. Other people say that one of the England's girlfriends was there, but the FBI supposedly investigated and said frank Morris didn't have anybody. He was an orphan. He didn't have anybody on the outside he could have helped. The England had family that definitely would have helped if they could, but they didn't have the means to actually help them out in San Francisco. Yeah, but they were a tight family, and they were the kind of family where I think if one of them had called and been like, I'm breaking out. I need you to pick me up, they would have done it. They're like, that kind of tight family bond. Not like my family would be like, oh, I'll call you right back, and then, hello, FBI. How much of a reward do you have for giving up a prison escapee? Yes, a federal prison. All that much, huh? Great. Do you have a pen? Can you do any better? Yeah, that's exactly what my family would follow up with. They did find some evidence, though. They did a search for about a week and a half, along with the FBI, like you were saying in the Bureau prisons. And the Alcatraz people, they were all super mad, of course, especially in the movie version. And they searched Angel Island. They searched all the other islands in the bay. And they did find one of those life preservers that had teeth marks on the inflation valve. They found a wallet wrapped in plastic that they figured was JW. England. They found one of those ores and they found it looked like most of the raft, but no bodies, no stolen cars, no burglaries. No one had reported anything in the area unusual, according to their plan, which was to steal closing money in a car. Yeah. And so the Bureau of Prisons, like, right out of the gate was like, they drowned. They were washed out to sea. That's it. We'll never hear from them again. But they're dead. They didn't actually escape. And this was the 1962 it wasn't until 1979 that the FBI closed the book and said, yeah, that's probably what happened. We presume that they were dead and their bodies lost at sea. But when they were building this case, they cited the story of a guy named Seymour Webb who had jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge at virtually the same time the Englands and Morris would have been in San Francisco Bay. And his body was never found, despite there being witnesses who watched him jump. Very flimsy. Yes, but at the same time, it does kind of demonstrate, like, look, man, this guy was never yeah, he was never found. He jumped at the same time the England and Morris were in the water, so maybe their bodies were never found. There was a sighting of a body about five weeks later in July of 1962 by a group of Norwegian sailors who saw something kind of floating off, and they were like, Is that a body? Yeah, they went up binoculars, and they said, that's a body. It was a body. It was floating upside down. So all they could see was the butt basically kind of bobbing in the water, and the butt looked through their binoculars, at least to have on jeans, have on denim. And that was part of the prison outfit, was they were wearing denim. And this is the part that kind of gets a little flimsy to me, is the FBI said that there were no missing persons in the area in that time frame that were wearing jeans. Are you ready for this? Are you sitting down? Who knows? And it was reported many weeks later, so it was kind of hearsay, I guess, at that point. It was. And then by the time they actually reported the sighting, it was October. So they're like, well, that's kind of useless. But they do point to that and say, okay, this combined with Seymour Web, we think that their bodies were swept out to see. Not everybody agrees with that, including the Anglin family, who very much maintained that their brothers survived this escape from Alcatraz and actually had a photograph that I don't know where they got it, but they have a photograph that was supposedly taken of their brothers in Brazil in 1075 that they shared. Looks like it could have been them. It does. It certainly does. And there's actually a company I can't remember the name of the company, but they do like artificial intelligence, facial recognition, so they're just really leading the way to a Dystopia, but they were like, hey, everybody, we want to introduce you to our software. So we're going to analyze this picture. And their AI said, yes, definitely the Angling. How cool is that? Yeah, I mean, I certainly looked at it, and it could be it didn't look so unlike them that it was like, no way, right? And again, I found myself being like, hey, man, these guys made it to Brazil and they're robbing banks there to this day. Exactly right. I have them raising cattle in Brazil. That's my idea. In 2013, there was a letter sent to the San Francisco police department, supposedly from JW, england, saying, hey, we made it, guys, but just barely. Morris died in 2008. We kept in touch. Great guy. Clarence died in 2011 and I'm still alive, but I got cancer. I need help, and I'm going to come forward if you promise in pinky swear and tell the public that you're not going to send me to jail for more than one year and you're going to heal my cancer. Yes. And apparently they analyze the letter like, this is inconclusive, but the FBI was like, we closed this case in 1979. We're not about to open it up. But here's the thing. The idea that they survived is at least possible enough that for this whole time, the US. Marshal's office, who took over the case from the FBI in have kept it open. Like, these guys are wanted outlaws still to this day, even though they would be 89, 90 and 95, I think by now they are considered wanted fugitives and the case is open. Even though I believe the marshal service typically believes that they're dead, they haven't closed the case. Yeah. Here's my deal. If you do something like this and you don't leave some rock solid deathbed evidence, then you're just selfish. You really are. You owe it to the world to have this be a lead story. It'd be like Frank Morris died and here's the evidence. Here's a little flower from the movie. Yeah, exactly. Teach your smartest head of cattle to stamp out a message in morse code. That's what I want you spending your dying days doing, teaching that cow. The marshalls say that they don't think they survived and went on to lead lives of solitude because they're like, these guys are career criminals. They would have done something again. They would have gotten caught again. It's a good point. Arguments for is that and they don't know if they plan this that way or not, but when they went on the day they went and during the hours they went, they actually had a few good hours of pretty calm bay currents. It could be so bad that they're going to pull you out to sea or so bad that they take you in the wrong direction, completely away from land. And they said that whether it was just providence or whether they planned it this way, they had a cloudy night, so there wasn't much light from the moon, and they had a really calm bay. So in theory, they might could have done this. They could have. But the winds were really terrible that night, too. I think they were gusts up to like 21 miles an hour, sustained winds of, like, 10 miles an hour. In which direction, though, that's tough to row. Who knows? If it was lucky, then yes. If it was blowing them toward Angel Island, that was in their favor. It was blowing in any other direction that would make it very blown to Brazil, and then maybe. So they're like, well, I was fortunate. I didn't even have to steal a car. The other problem is the water. The water temperature is like 50 degrees Fahrenheit, which is very, very cold, and you get very numb and eventually sent into shock and then exhaustion pretty quickly after being in this water for 30 minutes or less. But people swim in that thing. They do, and it's happened before. They have triathlons in that water, and people do it. So it's not to say that these guys could not have done it. It wasn't so frigid that science would say, oh, no, you would die inside five minutes in this water. Exactly. I mean, especially if they were operating on the adrenaline that they surely would have had from the escape. Shimmering 50ft down a drain pipe alone will pump you full of some pretty decent adrenaline. So who knows what they were capable of at the time? I have a theory is that the Anglins killed Frank Morris out there on that raft, and that was the body they saw floating, and that's why they made it to Brazil. And we never heard from Frank Morris again. I don't like your theory at all turning on them at the last minute. No, my theory is that that body was actually Seymour Webb, that he was wearing denim jeans under pants that got taken off of his other pants, and that he wasn't actually dead, but he met a mermaid or Merman, who he fell in love with and spent the rest of his life under the sea with. That's lovely. I like that theory. But the cherry on top here is that those prisoners who wanted to help them escape because they thought the prison would close were right. The prison was shut down the following March, and the Bureau prison said, you know what? We were going to shut this thing down anyway because Alcatraz is just too much to keep up. This big concrete block on a rocky island is too expensive to keep up with very few guards, so who knows? But in the movie, they definitely sort of portray it as that's the reason why. Yeah. And the warden never had a happy day again. That's right. Pretty satisfying film. Pretty satisfying film. And Chuck, I guess we said all this to say this, we have a book coming out that we would love for you to preorder. Yeah, that's right. Stuff you should know is that Jarring an incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. And guys, one of our lifelong dreams is to be on the New York Times bestseller list. If they give. You a T shirt. We really want to get on that list. And if that list came out today, we wouldn't be on it. So we would love for you to step up and help our dreams come true. Sure. How's that for a plea? I think that's a great plea. A plea and a plug. Altogether, it's a plea. What is this thing called, $20? I think so. And it's worth every penny, I can tell you because we wrote it. That's right. So that's it. If you want to go over our book, you can preorder anywhere. You get books. Thank you in advance. And I think that's it for escape from Alcatraz, too. Right? That's it. If you want to know more about escaping from Alcatraz, there are some really great articles and books and all sorts of stuff out there in the Internet for you to dig into. So get digging. As I said, get digging. It's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this Delaware response. We kind of poked fun at Delaware a little bit. We now, I guess it was me, but Delawarean. Delawareance. Delaware. Delaware. They are lovely people, as it seems, because we've gotten quite a few emails and they all have good humor about their lovely little state. Hey, guys. The Delaware family had to laugh at your pirate radio podcasts. Delawareeans. Oh, yeah, it's right there. Would be proud to be known as the Luxembourg of the United States. Most people drive through our state on I 95 in less than 30 minutes. But if you do stop by, our state is rich in history and agriculture and we have a few nice beaches. What you should know is the arc on the top of our state I guess it's an arch is made by a twelve mile radius from Newcastle in historic town. What many people do not know is the bottom of the ark formed a wedge betwixt Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware. The ownership of that land was in dispute between Delaware and Pennsylvania for decades, only to be resolved in 1921. Rumor has it that the disputed land was a haven for unsavory types who capitalized on the uncertain jurisdiction. Thanks for the show. Informs and entertains my family and we wish you well. From Delaware, the first state to ratify the Constitution. That is from Doug Wazgat and family. Nice, Doug. Thank you. I would have led with the first state to ratify the Constitution thing. I bet they tout that a lot. That's a good thing. To tout. Yeah. Well, if you want to be like Doug and defend your state, whether it's Delaware or not, we want to hear from you and you can send it in an email to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio's how stuff works. For more podcasts my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. 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 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." | |
a634f6ec-5462-11e8-b449-fb6737fd263a | Gerrymandering: How to Stifle Democracy | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/gerrymandering-how-to-stifle-democracy | No matter which side of the political spectrum you fall on, you should be outraged about the practice of gerrymandering. Redrawing voter district maps to ensure political dominance is about as undemocratic as it gets. | No matter which side of the political spectrum you fall on, you should be outraged about the practice of gerrymandering. Redrawing voter district maps to ensure political dominance is about as undemocratic as it gets. | Thu, 12 Jul 2018 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=12, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=193, tm_isdst=0) | 35169266 | audio/mpeg | "Ah, summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's Criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. What if you were a global bank who wanted to 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. That was a dad joke right out of the gate, man. Apparently that's all I've got these days, are dad jokes. There's nothing wrong with that. I guess not. Which is really just a way of saying middle aged dude jokes. Sure. Because I think our senses of humor decline, we get less funny look at Jim Gaffigan. But we think we're funnier, right, Hot Pockets? Actually, I tease Jim. I love your work. Oh, are you pals? No. Okay. No. But I do love his work. I'm just a fan. Yeah, absolutely. Zero. There is zero not to like about Jim Gaffigan. You know, my buddy Jim, he sort of pals with him. He says he's a good guy. There's no way he's not. You can't make up that level of coolness and niceness and approachability affability even. Maybe Gaffability, he just went, that's genius. I'm going to trade myself. Totally. As if he listens to this show. So here we're diving into politics, which we keep saying, like, let's not do that because it's political. But this is very newsy, and not everyone understands Gerrymandering, and I think file this under PSA because it's a big deal and it stinks and it's been going on for a long time. Yeah, I'm definitely one of those people who didn't understand it had to do with drawing maps and you could draw them so that they're unfair. And I never thought, well, how do you do that? And I found out, thanks to researching this episode, and apparently it's gotten way worse in recent years. Sure. To understand Gerrymandering, though, you have to understand a little bit about the House of Representatives, one of the two Houses of Congress, one's the Senate, one's the House of Representatives, and Webster's defines right. Yeah. So the deal with the House is that the Founding Fathers invented the House, or established, let's say, the House to be a much more sort of of the moment, reactive, fair, ultra democratic group of governing body. And that it's only every two years. And the idea was to have a lot of turnover and have them really because there's 435 of them have them really tied to their constituents. Right. So it's just a super fair way for things that really matter to you on a smaller level are heard as opposed to the Senate, which is far fewer. Right. And there are a couple of ways that they did this. One, like you said, elections are held every two years. All Congress people are up for re election every two years and they're elected directly by the people they represent. Right. And when they started, I think there were 65 seats in the House of Representatives and by thinking it was up to 435. And they added seats because they established the House of Representatives to represent a set proportion of population. Population. So each Congressperson represents one chunk of America from their state. Right. So the larger and larger America grew, the more and more Congress people you needed. And then finally in 1912, they said, we can't do this anymore. If you have too many Congress people, you're not going to be able to do anything. It's just going to be too right. So they capped it at 435. And that does something. It means that if you have a state that keeps growing, because it's not like America stopped growing in population in 1912. So as your population keeps growing, that means that as one state keeps growing, proportionately speaking, that means another state is smaller. Whether people move from that state to the other larger state or the other larger state, just by contrast, attracted more people. That means that the smaller state or the one that didn't grow as much is going to actually lose congressional seats and that the bigger state, the one that's growing, will actually gain congressional seats. Because again, a Congressperson represents a set amount of the American public from their home state. And right now it's about, I think the average is 711,000 people, is how many people a Congressperson represents in the US today. Yeah, and they did this through what was called the Reapportionment Act of 1929, which basically set up, alright, here's an automatic system. Now every ten years we do a census and they will just redistribute and allocate seats according to that census every ten years. And like you said, if you're growing, we're going to nip some away from the places that aren't growing or shrinking. And it seemed like a pretty fair way to redistribute and allocate these seats. It is extremely fair. So as a result, you've got like Montana, the whole state has one congressional district that represents about a million people, whereas New York State, which is a third of the size of Montana, has 27 congressional districts and hence seats in Congress. Right. It's a very fair system. Here's the problem when the Census Bureau figures out all these figures and they say, well, this state actually should get two new congress people, and this state should lose one and another state loses one, they have to redraw the maps of the state to show what these new districts are, because population has shifted over the ten years since the last census. So you have to update the maps to make sure that each congressperson is representing roughly the same number of people, and so everybody is accounted for again. Makes sense, right? Yeah, but the problem came in when they were very vague as far as the rules for drawing these boundaries. It says something like geographically contiguous, compact, and shape, roughly equal in population. All these things are subjective. So when partisan politics become involved. The people that redraw these maps. It seems. Can't help themselves but be like. Hey. If we move over ten blocks this way and a couple of miles that way and shape it like this. Which looks really weird. But. Hey. That's okay. Because these rules are vague. Then even though there may be a majority of one party. We could still win if we draw this thing the right way. Right. The big problem with this whole process for apportioning the House of Representative seats is that they left in each state the dominant political party who happened to be in power at the time when the maps need to be redrawn. It was left up to them. There's no federal oversight. There's no oversight whatsoever. And the whole premise of it was, well, okay, the voters will see what they're doing, and we'll vote those guys out. The problem is, if you control the congressional maps, you can draw them in such a way that even the voters can't vote you out. And this is gerrymandering, and this is the current state of politics right now and has been for a very long time. Actually, we've been gerrymandering for a while, but again, like I said, supposedly it's gotten way worse in the last decade. Yeah. All right, I'm a little worked up already. Yes, you've got a interestingly you're crying blood. I'm trying not to, but it's not helping. So we're going to take a little break and maybe let's jump back and talk history, if that's all right with you. I would love that, Chuck. And then we will go back forward in time to study the current mess that we're in right after this. What if you were a major transit system with billions of passengers taking millions of trips every year? You aren't about to let any cyberattacks slow you down. So you partner with IBM to build a security architecture to keep your data network and applications protected. Now you can tackle threats so they don't bring you to a grinding halt and everyone's going places, including you. Let's create cybersecurity that keeps your business on track. IBM, let's create learn more@ibm.com. Hey, everybody, if you want a great quality website, you want to do it yourself with no must and no fuss. Then there's nowhere else to look than Squarespace. That's right. Squarespace has every single thing that you need to put together an awesome website, everything from growing and engaging your audience with email campaigns, collecting donations for your cause through Apple, Pay, Stripe, Venmo, PayPal. Plus, you can also make your website optimized for mobile, which is great for your user on the go. That's right. And if you're into selling stuff, square space is everything to sell anything. They have all the tools you need to get your business off the ground. They have ecommerce templates, inventory management, really simple checkout process, and secure payment. So whatever you want to sell, you can sell it on Squarespace. Yeah, don't just take our word for it. Head to squarespace. Comssk and start your free trial today. And then when you're ready to launch, use our offer code s YSK, and you'll get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's Squarespace. Comsysk. Squarespace. All right, we're in the wayback machine. Yeah. It's Virginia ratifies the Constitution of the US. And former Governor Patrick Henry convinces his state legislators to redraw the Fifth Congressional District to force his foe James Madison to run against James Monroe because he figured he could easily win it backfired on him. Madison came out on top, but this kind of kick started at the onset of our founding of our country in the Constitution, the process of gerrymandering, even though at that point it wasn't quite known as gerrymandering yet. No, it wasn't. It was known as gerrymandering after, I think, the 1820s, I believe, and the governor of Massachusetts, Elbridge Jerry, he was the governor of Massachusetts, right? Correct. He came up with a map that he drew to help keep his party, the Democrat Republicans. I think that was Democratic Republicans. Beyond confusing. Right. But he drew a map that was just abhorrent. It was just so clearly partisan and drawn just to keep his party in power in Massachusetts. But I think the Boston Gazette published a picture of this map and proclaimed that it looked like a salamander. And so they said, this isn't a salamander, this is a gerrymander, which is a million times worse because it's politically toxic. And a lizard. I love that little tidbit. But that's where the name came from. Yeah, I never had any idea, but that's where gerrymandering came from. Not a pretty word, but it definitely rolls off the tongue like a oil. So it grew to be a very common practice and very blatant. And Congress at one point. Early on. In 1842. Tried to get it under control with that apportionment act that I talked about and that said those vague things like. Let's draw these things as contiguous and compact as possible. But apparently no one I guess the rules were so vague and outlined in such a nebulous manner that there was no way to enforce it. Such that at one point they carved out two separate states. North and South Dakota. The Republican controlled Congress so they could get more seats in the Senate. Yeah. At the time, if you were a state, you had three Electoral College votes, no matter your size or anything like that, and the Dakota territories were Republican leaning, so the Republicans said, hey, you guys, welcome to the union, and by the way, we're going to carve you into two states. So now we have six electoral votes rather than just the three. If you were one big state. Yeah, pretty clever, pretty sneaky. Says one thing that this article I think this is a Patrick Kyle article, I think it's smart to point out is that this is not just a Republican technique. This has been done throughout history by both the parties, both the two main parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, apparently also the Democratic Republicans, and to the same effect, which is we're drawing these maps to make sure that you guys don't have a fighting chance in the next congressional elections. Right. I did some digging, though, because I was curious about these days. It's interesting because you can say who is worse with gerrymandering, or more correctly, maybe who is better at gerrymandering. Sure. As far as getting it pushed through more. And every political science and mathematician will tell you that across the board, sort of Republicans are either better at it or doing it way more, or that the recent elections over the last, I think, like three or so, have favored the GOP in ways that they ended up with something like 20 extra seats that they wouldn't have otherwise had had the maps not been gerrymandered. Yeah. In some of these I think Maryland was one case where even though was it Maryland where the Democrats held like a 52% majority, yet the maps were drawn in such a way that they would have to get like an eight to ten point oh, I'm sorry, that's Wisconsin. Yeah, Wisconsin. An eight to ten point victory in order to overcome those gerrymandered maps. Yeah, which is not going to happen because Wisconsin is pretty close to being down the middle. And that's actually a really good example of the modern gerrymandering that's going on. Like Patrick Kyger points out, when you think of gerrymandering this kind of thing, you think of guys, like in a back room smoking cigars and poking each other in the chest saying, this is my district and you can have this one, that kind of thing. But this is actually like there are very specialized political consultants who go around the country after each census and help states draw their maps, and they do so with really sophisticated software that has block level census data. So just like by the block, the people who live on a block, they can carve it out like that. So that they can more accurately create these maps. And then when they create these maps, they can create dozens, as many as you want. And when they use them as a model, they can feed them into their computers and run a simulation of future elections based on this map. It's crazy. And then this is why it's gotten so bad. And then they can adjust, take this block out. What happens if we take this block out? Put this one in instead, and now all of a sudden, oh, well, we'll win for the next ten years, and they have this map. And the reason that I started talking about this, apparently Wisconsin has a map that's in effect right now that is so well done that even if the Democrats get 52% of the vote statewide, the Republicans would still control 60 seats in the state assembly, that they would not lose any seats whatsoever, even if the Democrats got 52% of the vote. Yes. And the one thing where it kind of stings them. Even though there haven't been any real repercussions yet. Is that one political scientist said it's getting so sophisticated. Though. And they're drawing these maps in such a weird way that you can then go back and look and say. This is clearly an outlier. Because this thing looks like a sidewinder rattlesnake across the state. And that is neither contiguous or compact. And it's just so obvious what's going on because you're using these computer programs to just distort these maps to your favor. And this is where I just get so burned up on both sides, because it just completely subverts the process in place, which is you are supposed to be able to vote for the person that represents you in that vote count. I'm glad you said that, man, because it's absolutely true. This is not like lip service. Like, both sides do it. So we're mad about it. This is genuinely like, neither side of this should be doing this. This is an inherent flaw in the political system that back in the day, when things were different, we could get along with it. It was a stumbling block. It was kind of hamstrung the Democratic process some. Now with a couple of things, it has gone into hyperdrive. Like, so many things have, like, normal political weirdness put through certain filters, like incredibly powerful computer programs that just hyper tailor things like this. That's a big problem. The other problem is the polarization of politics to a degree that hasn't been for well over a century or so. That has made gerrymandering all the worst, because before, you could gerrymander all you want, but there were such things as moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans, and if it was a reasonable piece of legislation, they would cross the aisle to vote for it. They would break ranks that does not exist anymore. If you're a moderate, within the last ten years, wealthy interests basically carved you out. They created upstart political parties to run against you in the primaries, so you would lose your seat or your national convention would collude with their favorite candidate against you. There's no middle any longer. So the fact that the current political power, whoever is in charge of that state can gerrymander makes it all the worse because it just makes those divisions even deeper, because the parties get what they want one way or the other. There's no middle ground anymore. So gerrymandering has become a real problem in the 21st century. Well, yeah. And the other thing that burns me up is it's just a smack in the face of the average citizen. Yeah. It's done behind closed doors with zero thought to jeez what is this country supposed to be about? And it just really burns me up. There was a report last year by the brennan center for justice, and this just really kind of shows exactly what's going on. It's not like we needed this proof, but almost all gerrymandered districts in this country are in seven states michigan, north Carolina, pennsylvania, florida, ohio, texas, and Virginia. And Texas aside. What do those other states have in common with one another? I don't know. They're the swing states. Oh, yeah. So the swing states have been lost as a result of gerrymandering, huh? Yeah. Those seven states are where these gerrymandered districts are happening, and they're all swing states. It's just like, literally they're going in and targeting, how can we rig this thing as much as possible? Right. It's just disgusting. Plus, also, the next time you hear a politician talk about the founding fathers and what they wanted and their view of everything, this runs so far afoul of what the framers of the constitution were looking for when they established the house of representatives. It's mind boggling. Like, they're probably generating usable energy through the spinning in their graves that's going on right now because they created the house of representatives so that there would be, like you said, Chuck, turnover every couple of years, that they were the pulse of the people. They were elected directly by the people. They were meant to be the voice of the people at any given time. And the fact that gerrymandering has been allowed to go on like this means that there are safe seats now, seats where you can reasonably expect the party and maybe even a single politician to hold onto for a decade or more. Yes. Which is not how it was supposed to be in the house. No. And I saw that these days in the US. And in congressional races, maybe 100 of the 435 seats are actually competitive races. The rest have been so firmly made safe through gerrymandering over the years that they're not even competitive anymore. Either that one candidate or their one party is going to control that district. All right, I see another trick of blood coming out of your eye. Just one. So let's take another break and we're going to come back and start up with the two main gerrymandering techniques right after this. What if you were a global energy company with operations in Scotland, technologists in India, and customers all on different systems? You need to pull it together. So you call in IBM and Red Hat to create an open hybrid cloud platform. Now, data is available anywhere, securely, and your digital transformation is helping find new ways to unlock energy around the world. Let's create a hybrid cloud that can change in industry. IBM, let's create learn more@ibm.com. Hey, everybody. 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And then when you're ready to launch, use our offer code s YSK, and you'll get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace. Comssk. Squarespace. All right? So I promise. Talk of techniques, you hear gerrymandering and redrawing maps. There are a couple of ways that you can do this. They're called cracking and packing. Cracking is when you scatter the political supporters across a lot of different districts so that they just never get a majority in any of them. Like, let me just snake it up this way for a mile, then back down here, and we pretty much know that they're not going to get a majority and we're going to win. The other one's called packing. And that's when they jam everyone into just a few districts and essentially just say, fine, we're going to lose those districts, but we're going to win overwhelmingly everywhere else, the majority of the other districts, so we're going to be fine. Right? And cracking and packing, to sound like a political consultant, came up with those to explain it to legislators. They probably thought it was like the most clever it rhymes, even. Right? So here's the thing with that, right? You can use those techniques in a couple of different ways, but with the advent of those same computer programs that can crack people or pack people more efficiently into all different maps or whatever, you can use the same ones to kind of expose that kind of thing, right? Sure. And so you can actually, with those same computers, I think you were saying you can use to expose this kind of stuff. And that political scientist you mentioned, not George, nicholas Stephanopoulos. Yeah, his cousin. I looked. I don't think they're related. No, I don't think so either. Well, leave it or not, but Nicholas Stephanopoulos came up with that efficiency percentage. And so what you do, Chuck, is let's say that we have and here's the part where I confuse everybody. You ready? Yeah, I was waiting on this. Okay, good. So let's say that you have five districts and you have ten people in the district, and there's just two parties I'm already lost. No, I'm going to start over. I just scratched out the old stuff, starting a new when you pack a district, meaning you take basically a huge chunk of the other party supporters and put them into one or two districts. What you're doing is, like you said, you're giving up those districts, you know you're going to lose them. But as long as there's only a couple in the larger scheme of things, as far as Congress is concerned, you're actually coming out on top because you're going to win more because you've packed all of the opposition into just a couple of districts. Right? Right. So in any one of those districts, you have some wasted votes. You have your people's wasted votes, because you're going to have some people who live in that district, and their votes cannot possibly change the outcome of those district elections. So their votes are literally what they call wasted votes. You also have some of the opposition people's votes because all they need is the majority of the vote or the most votes and they're going to win. But whatever goes over that 51%, that's wasted votes, too. So there's a bunch of wasted votes in there. And then, similarly with cracking, when you dilute the other party's voters and you pack them in with your people, but you have way more people, their votes are wasted, and you've got some people whose votes are wasted either. So if you take all the wasted votes in a state and you put them together, subtract them from one another, and then divide that by 100, you've got what's called this efficiency percentage, and it's actually a usable number that, when you look at it, shows you very clearly which party is favorite. Is it a negative or a positive percentage? And it will show you who's favorite. And they're trying to come up with a rule of thumb now that says that anything over a 7% efficiency percentage is basically undemocratic and should be outlawed. Yeah. That wasn't too confusing, was it? No. Okay. Not at all. Here's something that isn't confusing at all prison gerrymandering. This is mind blowing that this is allowed. Certain states have counted prison populations as part of these efforts to redraw these districts, even though prisoners cannot vote. They're not eligible to vote. So there's a ward in Iowa that has 1400 residents, 1300 of whom are prisoners, and that counts. And only a few states so far have ruled this unconstitutional. The rest are just playing ball. Right. And by doing that, you give those 100 that can vote way more power, because their vote is the opposite diluted. It's concentrated by the addition of the non voting block. Yeah. And again, all this is happening because from the beginning, political parties are in charge of doing this. And the only thing that's going to stop this is because I would think any sensible, reasonably intelligent American would say this is bad for democracy, no matter which party is doing it. And the only way to possibly break this up is to have nonpartisan commissions in charge of redrawing these maps. Yeah. And supposedly they tried that in Canada. I guess they had rampant gerrymandering, and in the 60s, they said, we're done. Your political parties can't be trusted with this anymore. Because Chuck, it's as simple as that. There's no reason to put it any other way. Neither of the political parties can be trusted with this very important task. They've just proved it, both of them, over and over again. And in Canada in the 60s, they finally just came out and said it and put their foot down, and they created a nonpartisan unelected commission who's in charge of drawing all the maps for all the districts in the whole country. Yeah, and they've tried it. So far, in six states, california, Arizona, Washington, Idaho, Jersey and Hawaii have passed over control two commissions, and these maps don't even need final approval from governors or state legislators. But apparently, even there, like, these people are appointed by somebody. So it's even hard to clean it up then. And they've shown that so far, like, in California, it hasn't swung any elections. It has made some of them closer. So maybe it's working a little bit, it sounds like I think that point is worth making. Yeah. Elections that historically were not closer. Closer. Yeah. Sure. Darryl Isa used to get, like, 63% of the vote. That's what he got in 2010. And once they instituted these nonpartisan commission maps in 2016, he got a margin of less than 1%. Yeah. So he had a 12% drop in votes once they changed these maps. That's significant to me. Yeah. So maybe it hasn't swung an election in California yet, but that could be a sign that if we continue to do this, it could work. Right, but you would think Chuck. Okay, so if this is just such obvious, like, anti constitutional, anti democracy skullduggery, of course the Supreme Court is going to have something to say about this. Right? Yeah. That's where it's gotten really weird this year, is that there's a case, Gil versus Whitford that I believe was didn't the Supreme Court to say, they're not even going to hear. It. Yeah. They actually kicked it back down to the lower courts on a technicality saying that the people involved hadn't shown that they have standing because they hadn't been directly harmed by it. And they said, you go prove that your vote was actually wasted because of a gerrymandered map, which actually wouldn't be that hard to do these days, and let it another lower quote, rule on it and maybe we'll hear it next time. But they've been punting on it. Yeah. And that's the way our political system works. I'm not saying subvert that, but it seems like at some point we as a nation should be able to come together and say, hey, kind of like money and dark money and stuff, can we just clean this up? But here's the thing, Chuck. If you got gerrymander maps, even if everybody turns against the dominant political party, you have to have like 60% of the vote, a massive voter turnout with like 60% of the vote voting against you to actually overwhelm the gerrymandering that these maps produce, or the political tenacity that these gerrymandered maps produce. And you just don't have that. You could do it with that, but as the current political reality is, it's just not going to happen. And so as long as they're allowed to keep these maps, whoever's in power, whenever they redraw the maps actually gets to hang on to it. Yeah. And this is just another example of like, feeling powerless because this stuff is being decided among very few people in these closed door sessions. And I'm sure they all think they're very clever in how they're taking advantage of the system, like right in front of our stupid faces. And the Supreme Court, too, not swinging in. On the one hand, it's like, come on. But on the other hand, a lot of times we don't really want necessarily activist justices. It depends on the topic, probably, or the issue and how you feel about it. Right, but they have a long history of saying that's political, that's not constitutional, you guys go handle it yourself. But one thing I saw as an explanation for why the Supreme Court has yet to get involved is because there's no standard for what constitutes a congressional or a state district map. There's no standard that the Supreme Court can look at and say, this is the standard. This doesn't live up to that standard, therefore we're going to rule this way. So that's why they haven't done that. But they tend more often than not to uphold maps very, very infrequently do they overrule them. And there was like a whole spade of maps from Texas, North Carolina, Maryland and Wisconsin that they basically said, yes, they're fine, whatever. And in Texas, they demonstrated that these gerrymandered maps had been used to dilute the voting power of Hispanics who live in Texas and are the majority of Texas. Now, the maps have been drawn specifically with the purpose of diluting their voting power, which goes against the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That's one thing they say, like, you can't mess with minorities voting rights. Right. And for a long time they said, well, that includes gerrymandering. While Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas are both starting in this most recent one from, I think, Texas, they added on their own opinions saying, we don't think the Voting Rights Act actually prohibits that. And I think racial gerrymandering is totally fine under the law, which is a big problem. Yeah. So then go back and amend that act. Yeah, you could do that, but then again, you have to overcome the gerrymander. Right? Exactly. Man what's the snake that eats its tail? What's that called? The auroboros. This is aurora borealis. The 28th District of Maryland? Probably is. What you call it what it looks like. Oh, it's depressing, huh? Yeah. There's one more thing, too. This has been used actually to the opposite effect, too, I think. During the first Bush administration, they were really big on drawing maps that were called affirmative gerrymandering, which made sure that majority minority, meaning that areas where most of the people who live there were minorities, that they had very strong voting power, that they went out of their way to reflect it. They actually overreached in that way, too, and sometimes the courts would throw those out, but it's gone both ways for sure throughout history. It just needs to stop entirely because people aren't able to actually vote or be represented in Congress like they should be. Yeah. You got anything else? No. I see that the blood has crusted up nicely. I know. I can't open my eyes. You settled down. I was pretty worked up in this one, too. You were? And I was glad. Everybody should be worked up about this one. Everybody? Yes. If you want to know more about gerrymandering, well, look up this article on how stuff works. It's pretty good. Since I said it's pretty good. It's time for listener, man. I called this is a very sad one, but I'm trying to get the word out to a listener here for a listener, guys. After a six year battle, my father passed away last week from AML acute myeloid leukemia at only 65 years old. In the middle of his struggle, however, he was able to achieve about two years of remission with the help of a bone marrow stem cell treatment. While the treatment ultimately failed, his remission gave him two more years, relatively healthy life where he was able to meet the absolute apple of his eye and my new baby daughter. Sorcere oh, congratulations. Love that name. She will be one year old July 1, which is kind of right around when this is coming out, probably, and spend time with my other two kids, Gavin and Grayson, doing one of the things he loved most in the world, which is being a grandfather. Hoping maybe you guys could give a shout out to the B, the Match Bone Marrow registry. It only takes a few minutes to register and they send you a little cheek swab kit that you send back in and boom. You're now eligible to get the call to possibly give someone more time with their friends and family or possibly even save their life, you can go to www.bthematch.org and check it out. And that is from Chris and wrote back to Chris. Very sorry to hear about his father and definitely a worthy organization to check out. Yeah, thanks for telling everybody, Chris. That's a good one. I'm going to check that out myself. Yes, me too. If you want to let us know about something that we and everybody who listens to this podcast can do to make the world a better place, we really want to know about it. You can tweet to us. You can join us on Instagram, on Facebook, all that jam. You can find all those links at our website, stuffysheanow.com. You can also send us an email. Send it to stuffpodcast@houseepworks.com. 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http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2018-03-20-sysk-vampire-panic-final.mp3 | How the New England Vampire Panics Worked | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-new-england-vampire-panics-worked | In the 19th century, in isolated villages and godforsaken towns in rural New England, people began to suspect their deceased family members had become undead. Thus began everything we know today about killing vampires. | In the 19th century, in isolated villages and godforsaken towns in rural New England, people began to suspect their deceased family members had become undead. Thus began everything we know today about killing vampires. | Tue, 20 Mar 2018 16:52:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=20, tm_hour=16, tm_min=52, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=79, tm_isdst=0) | 45411358 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody. We've already made our big tour announcement for the year, but this is a little different because we have added a show because Denver sold out. So we've added a second show in Denver. Nice. Yeah, we're going to be there on Wednesday the 27th. We added to show the day before. Same place. Gothic Theater, Englewood, Colorado. And you can go to Sysklive.com to get info and tickets for that show and all the rest of our shows, too. Chuck. That's right. Boston, April 4. DC, April 5. St. Louis, May 22 and Cleveland, Ohio, May 23. Come out and see us. Welcome to stuff you should know from hasteworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Charles W chuck Bryant with Jerry. Stuff You Should Know. I love this one. Yeah. Vampires, December 4, 2012 was our main podcast on vampires. It was a good one. And I don't remember touching on this at all, did we? No, I had no idea about it. That's nutty. It wasn't until I read a great article, Smithsonian, about vampire panics in New England, that I had first heard of it. Abigail Tucker from 2012. Yes. She did an amazing job on that one. Agreed. Let's start with that article starts because I think it's a great place to dive into this weirdness. That's not what most people would think you would say. In Connecticut, I'm a freshman in college, there were some kids playing at, I think, a gravel quarry, and they discovered some graves. It's basically the dream of every kid who's ever played outside to discover some long lost graves. Like any kid poking around the woods, we're all really just looking for dead bodies. Pretty much. At the very least, you're prepared for it at all times, right? Yeah. Remember? Stand by me, kid me. That's what inspired it all. That was one of the great, unnerving, disturbing dead kids of all time. And you know what? Ray Broward, my best friend Brett came upon a dead body one time playing in the woods. No. Yeah. And it was a neighbor who had a heart attack while, like, raking leaves or cleaning up in the woods or something. So it wasn't nefarious, but he still ran across a dead body as a kid. Why was the guy cleaning up the woods? Well, I mean, I think it was the woods on the edge of his yard or something like that. How long have they been there for? Don't think it had been that long. He wasn't decomposed or anything. Okay. I think it was just like, oh, wow, lifeless body there's. Whatever, Mr. Whipple. Right. Don't squeeze the charm. I'm cleaning the wood. So these kids found graves that were very old. They weren't a dead neighbor or anything like that. Actually, it turned out to be a lost family cemetery. Again in Connecticut. Right. And in very short order, the Connecticut State Archeologist, which is a pretty cool position, a guy named nick Belentoni. He was called out and he starts excavating the place. Right. Yes. I'll keep going. He finds a bunch of graves, lots of kids, because it's New England, 19th century, late 18th century, early 19th century is when they finally said, this is about when this graveyard was in use. And there were kids, some adults, buried normally exactly like you'd expect. I love how she said they were buried Yankee style. Yes. I didn't know what that meant. It meant, like, in a very thrifty manner, very bare bones, if you'll forgive the pun. Not like our ostentatious Southern coffins. Right. What about that lady who got buried in her Ferrari? Did you hear about her? I think I did. She was great just for doing that. I'll see you all in hell. I'm taking my Ferrari with me. No one's going to get that. She was, like, buried sitting up behind the wheel in a neglige in her Ferrari. That's how she was buried. That's like the Elon Musk's, Tesla and Space, the Star man with a little astronaut riding around in it. Well, yeah. Everyone knows that that's actually the body of one of his enemies. Of course he was alive when that rocket went off. I'm sure. Yeah. So there's this one grave out of all of them. That is a little hinky, you could say. Belentoni starts pulling away some of the rocks. It's entombed, not like the others. There's rocks around it. And he finds that the coffin has been broken. And on the coffin on the coffin lid in brass taxes, J-B-I believe Hyphen 55. Yes. This coffin is red, which is also different, I think, than the others. Right. Most of the coffin is fine, or most of the skeleton is fine, but when he gets a little further up, he finds on top of the ribs, the thigh bones are crossed across the ribs and the skull is no longer attached to the end of the spinal column. It's on the ribcage as well. And the ribcage has been broken. And upon further inspection, he finds the coffin has been smashed. And Nick Belentoni says we'll all be yeah. I mean, this is not what normally happens as a body decomposes. They don't go into the shape of the Jolly Rogers pirate flag. Right. And it's funny that you picked this, because and this is sort of an announcement, but the great Aaron Mankey of Lore fame, was telling me these stories this week in the office because he has partnered with us. He's going to do some shows with us now. Yeah, not Lore. He's like, no, you don't get that one. Right. But he's going to do some new shows with us, and we're all super excited that he was telling me all these stories. You were falling asleep. He gently and the next day you sent this article, or this collection of articles you put together and said, let's do one of Vampire Panics and I was like, that's weird, man. Aaron, Mickey was just talking about this. That is weird. And he has like three Lore episodes, one on Mercy Brown that I listened to as part of this research, but then two others, and it was just it all kind of really weirdly came together. The spirits of the vampires are with us. So anyway, welcome, Mr. Mankey. Yeah, welcome. We're glad to have you. Are we calling him Mr. Manki? Not Aaron? No, but it was very sweet. He's a long time all time stuff. He should know. Listener. He's a legit. I'm sure that he is going to hear this and say, oh, guys, I did this so much better. I did so much better. I don't like you any longer. So anyway, JB 55 you're right. Is spelled out in brass tacks. It's a male skeleton. It's from the 1830s at the latest. And the body is probably in his fifty s or so. Yeah. And it's just very creepy and perplexing. Yeah, very perplexing. The first blush Belentoni said in that Smithsonian article, he'd never seen anything like it before. Right. So obviously, being an archaeologist, he's not like, well, that's pretty interesting. I'm going back to my sandwich now. He wanted to get to the bottom of it. That's right. So he started asking around, and finally one colleague said, well, maybe it was a vampire. This is Michael Bell. Not yet. Okay. It was apparently a colleague, I guess a fellow archaeologist, who's like, there was actually such things as vampire panics. And then Bell and Tony met Michael Bell. Right. And notably in 1854, this is about 20 years after the gentleman, JB 55, which is probably his age, right? I guess, maybe, yeah. Jim Brown, 55 years old, let's just call him that. In Jewett City, Connecticut, there was a vampire panic that had broken out and corpses were exhumed that people might thought were vampires. And then I think is when he finally gets in touch with this Rhode Island folklore named Michael Bell. Yeah. Bell is like, my friend, I'm going to tell you something. Are you sitting down? And bell. And Tony says yes. And Bell goes, have you had your sandwich? Bell goes, you are sitting on the only intact physical evidence of what was a series of vampire panics that gripped New England in the late 18th to actually late 19th century, almost up to the 20th century. Yeah. That's the remarkable thing here, because if you hear this, you're like, yeah, I know about Salem. Sure. This is a couple of hundred years later. Yeah. This is about less than 150 years ago. Yeah. We had evolved way past that by this point to believe that vampires existed and we need to dig up bodies of our relatives. Yeah. That's what's so shocking about this. Like, the enlightenment had come and gone. Science was a thing. It's very weird to think about how late this happened. It is but sure enough, as Bella Tony looked into it and talked to Michael Bell and found out, no, there was vampire Panics. A lot of people don't know about them, because most people don't dig into that kind of thing. But because they happened as late as they did, they're actually fairly well documented. The thing is, most of the graves are lost. You have an actual grave of one of the vampires that was basically a victim of this vampire panic. Yeah. And apparently it happened. He documented Bell about 80 of these exclamations as far west as Minnesota. But obviously, most of these took place in the Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire area. Rhode island to Rhode Island big time. Because I don't know what it is with New England. Well, we'll get to it. We'll get to it. They're weird because it definitely is a very weird thing, especially considering that at the time, people who are alive were like, what are you guys doing? How backwards can you be? So their contemporaries were even put off by this kind of thing. And at first it was like you had to know somebody to know that this was going on. But eventually a couple of them became high enough profile that it became international news that there was some weirdness going on in New England, that the locals were in the grips of a vampire panic. Yeah. Wrote about it in his journal. That's Henry David. Yeah. He was at an excavation, and he wrote it was like, wow, man. And as you said, Rhode Island. This wasn't just like, out in the sticks, a rural New England. This happened close to Newport, Rhode Island, which at the time and is still very tony area, where oh, yeah, dude, beautiful. That cliffwalk or whatever. Unbelievable. And those houses were around back then. These were well heeled, rich people. And that's where they submerged. Right. Murdering one another and getting away with it. Drinking champagne all the while. That's what they did. God bless them. That is a beautiful town. Newport, Rhode Island, is a gorgeous town. Yeah. I was very taken with it and thought I could totally live here if I had about 50 times as much money as I have right now. And it was $1,900. Yeah. As I said, it is very well documented in some respects. But you have to be a guy like Michael Bell who knows where to look because grades like this don't pop up every day. Right. Correct. There was this dude who documented it probably better than anybody, and he didn't hear about it until, I think, the late 1890s. But he was an anthropologist named George Stetson. He published, like, a monotype on it on the New England vampire panics and exactly what the beliefs were. So he established the baseline for these beliefs and really documented it in the late 19th century. Yeah. And kind of shook up the world with his findings. Yeah. So, again, everybody at the time who wasn't involved is looking in like, what are you guys doing? Apparently, the Boston Daily Globe said that was basically inbreeding was responsible for this weird behavior. Like people from the south were going, what in our nation are you guys doing up there? Right. There was the idea that George Stutson, the anthropologist, had basically been fooled, been fleeced by the slick New England rural folk and that they were just pulling his leg, as it was put. Interesting, that's not the case. This actually did happen. And it turns out that it is basically an extension of a tradition that finds its roots back in Europe. It goes back many centuries to Europe. And here is where it gets extremely interesting to me. The vampire legend that we understand today actually grew out of real superstitions. Like, everything you know about vampires is what some people hundreds of years ago and not that very long ago believed was actual reality. And this vampire panic was an actual manifestation of those beliefs in real life. That's right. You don't take a break. Oh, man. The spirit of the vampires are with us. All right, we'll be back right after this. I probably pronounced it like that in that episode so many years ago. I have a one note sense of humor. It's reliable. That's a nice way to say it came out of Europe, not the United States. And that word first appeared in the 10th century. And Bell, as far as he's concerned, says or thinks at least that well, we all know that it came out of, like, Germany and the Slavic immigrants coming here. But he thinks, for his money, is that it probably wasn't just one big wave. It probably came over from different people at different times. But eventually it made its way over to the United States through probably Pennsylvania and then made its way north. Right. And from his research, the earliest he's found is a reference to it comes from 1784 in the Connecticut Coron and Weekly Intelligence Center. And I think The Hartford newspaper is still called The Hartford Coron. So that's an old paper, right? Yeah, and it's a letter to the editor from a guy named Moses Holmes, who is a councilman in the town of Wellington, Connecticut. And he's basically warning people not to listen to what he calls a certain quack doctor, a foreigner. And basically this doctor was saying, there's vampires afoot, and you need to exhume your family and kill them because they're vampires now. And Moses homes is saying, don't do that. This is wrong and weird. Well, yeah. And that's the legend that came over from Europe. The Slavic people had the uper, and the Romanians had the struggle in and the upier and the struggle would die, be buried, and would come back to drink the blood of their relatives. And that was the legend and what it really was. Well, maybe we should hold on to that little tip. Yeah, I'm sorry. I meant to cross that out on yours. Okay. I was like, this came in too early. Yeah. All right. So we'll tease that out for later. So you ask yourself, I think of Yankees as, like, pretty solid people. Salt of the earth, especially 19th century Yankees. Salt of the earth people, really stable. Like, it would take quite a bit to drive one of them just totally crazy. Right. They had to put up with these winters. Nor Easters, southeasterns. Sure. All that stuff. Right. Now, how would this happen outside of, say, Puritanical New England in the 19th century? And it turns out I didn't realize this, but Abigail Tucker points out that the Yankees that we think of are not the Yankees and I'm not talking baseball here, are not the Yankees who were in actuality. So I sat up very late last night trying to figure out the most convoluted way to say that sentence. And I think it's paid off. Yeah. I thought this was super interesting because when I think of New England, I think of very religious Puritanical. Christian. Christian? They don't do this kind of thing. No, actually, it's funny is because mankind was here. I had him on Movie Crush. Guess what his movie was. Hold on. So I said Christian. Which makes me think of the song Sister Christian by Night Ranger, which factored in big Time into Boogie Night. No, his favorite movie is The Village, which makes total sense. I watched it again within the last couple of months. And I'm like, this movie is even better now. Yeah, I liked it more when I saw it again. For sure. Which is weird because you know the twist at the end. I know. Because it's the M. Night Shyamalan movie. Yeah. And I think it bugged me at the time. And I told him this in the show, but I think at the time I was sort of like, over M. Night and the twists. I was like, Come on, dude, another twist. And now I'm looking out for it. Right. I better be really good. Yeah. But I think years later I watched it again. I was like, you know what? I think I kind of dig this movie. I did, too. So, anyway, very fitting. But I think of those people, like these Puritans living off, removed from society, very strict religious peoples. But apparently that was not the deal. In the 1008 hundreds in rural New England, only 10% belong to a church. Shocking to me. And especially, it says here in this article, Rhode Island. And I love this. I had no idea it was founded as a haven for religious dissenters. Sure. I think they just wanted to go and party by the seaside. They were like, let's party and engage in hex magic. Another way to put it is that the New Englanders in the 19th century were superstitious bunch. Right? Exactly. Because if you were hardcore Christian, superstition didn't play a part. What are some of the things they did? They would bury shoes by the fireplace to catch the devil from coming down the chimney, but like a horseshoe over your door. Yeah, that kind of stuff. Basically anything you think of is like locker weird kind of Pennsylvania witchcraft, that kind of stuff. That's what it was. It was like country witchcraft. That's what they believed in. Because even if you weren't Christian, you still believed in things like good and evil and spirits and demons and stuff like that. You just had to have a different way of dealing with them since you weren't Christian in the way of dealing with them. Wasn't like praying to God or whatever, right. She had to hang up a horseshoe or bury a shoe to keep the devil from coming down your chimney because you were as backwards as it did. When are we going to reveal the reveal? When are we going to do our M. Night twist? We're working towards it. Still? Not yet. Not yet. All right, well then you got to go because I got nothing else. Okay. Are you ready for it now? Well, no. If you've got more if you can. I don't lost track of where we were. All right, well, here's the reveal. Because being superstitious doesn't explain the vampire panic. No. Alone. Right. What else does? I'll let you drop the hammer. So they are not entirely certain, but the general consensus among people who study this kind of thing is that this was a reaction to infectious disease outbreaks, specifically tuberculosis. Boom. Boom. That's why superstitious New Englanders were running around in the 19th century digging up family members and driving stakes through their hearts or beheading them in their graves. I love stuff like this. I do too. When you can look back years later, I wonder what they're going to in a hundred years about the satanic panic. Oh, yeah. It wasn't some disease, obviously. Nobody was better reveal. It was a panic, though. Yeah. It's interesting that two of our favorite episodes probably are going to end up being satanic panic and vampire panic. Sure. This one's going pretty well so far. All right, so let's talk about TB for a minute. This is obviously pre antibiotics. There is still tuberculosis, but super curable. Now if you're lucky enough to live where you can get antibiotics, but it is caused by bacterium, two of which can infect humans, m. Tuberculosis and Mbovis. Right. And you've heard the word consumption in movies like The Village, from that time period they're dying of consumption. Consumption was almost always tuberculosis. Right. That's just what they called it back then. Right. That was the name for it. The reason they called it consumption. And actually that term to describe tuberculosis actually predates the more common usage of consumption today. Like ingesting or eating something. Yeah, they expect like the think so the original meaning was that your body was consuming itself. It was like the word for tuberculosis. Yeah. And the reason they called that is because it looked like your life force was being sapped away from you. The way that the disease progressed, it included coughing fits where they said you couldn't even stop to talk. You'd be coughing so hard, coughing up blood. That's not good. No, you would lose a lot of weight. So it looked like you were wasting away too, but at the same time you were voraciously hungry, you wanted to eat. It wasn't that kind of illness where you just can't even eat. You were hungry all the time, but you're still wasting away. So there's this duality between hunger, rampant hunger and the loss of a life force. And it's possible that all vampire tales and legends and the origin of it is found in tuberculosis because that's what you think of with vampires. The whole idea at this time was if you had tuberculosis and you were the. Say. 2nd. 3rd. 4th member of your family to come down with this with consumption. It meant that one of the previous family members who had died of this disease was still alive in some way. Their soul was in a supernatural way and was coming at night and sucking the life from you to sustain themselves. If this is the case, then there was only one thing to do if you were in New England at the time, you had to dig up that family member and take care of business. Yeah, it's funny. Emily and I always laugh at the movie trope of the cough, like it has almost 100% return rate. If a character coughs in a movie, then they're going to die. Because you just don't leave coughs in movies. That's a sure sign. Or especially if they cough into a hanky. Sure, there's always blood in it. Like, remember Hodgeman's doc Holiday? Yeah, I'll be your huckleberry. Coughing up blood and lung tissue. Well, we just started watching The Crown last night. You know that show on Netflix? Do you watch it? No, I'm familiar. Then, yeah, we saw the very just the first episode last night of season one. And of course, there's Jared Harris, queen Elizabeth's father, the King I can't remember what his name was. King. Soandso the King of England and he's got TV, of course. He starts coughing in the very first scene into the hanky. And you're like, well, he's probably just going to be in the pilot. He's gone. That's how she became queen. If we're shouting out things we've seen recently, I want to give a shout out to Wonder. What's that the movie about the kid with facial difference. I've heard that his parents are Owen Wilson and Julia Roberts. So good, though. Is it good? Yeah. All right, you know what? Let's take a break. Okay. Who thought Wonder was going to make an appearance in the vampire panic? Not me. All right, we're going to take a break and we're going to come back and talk a little bit more about how a family might do this right after this. All right? So dad has gone from TB or consumption. Brother has, sister has. Yeah. Maybe one's on their deathbed, the other one is about to die. Maybe we should talk a little bit about consumption a little more. At the time, there were people out there in the world in the late 19th century who understood that consumption with tuberculosis was an infectious disease caused by these germs. The people engaged in these vampire panics did not generally think that they didn't realize that this was a contagious disease. They thought that a relative was sapping your life force. Right. The thing is, tuberculosis is a very contagious disease spread by coughing, sneezing, which you do a lot of when you have tuberculosis. And if you're living in like a one, two room house in rural New England and you're a family of six, you can say that a high percentage of your family members are going to eventually contract this disease. What was the number? It was killing like, 25% of people over a certain period. That's a really big point here. The vampire panic started in the late 18th century. Tuberculosis really started to gain a foothold in New England in about the 1730s. And by the time the vampire panics hit their height in the late 18th, early 19th century, it was the number one killer of New Englanders at the time. But again, they weren't like, gosh darn, that tuberculosis. I caught this infectious disease. It was one of our family members is sapping the life out of one of our other family members because our family members of empire. Yeah. Still, the effect was the same, that they felt totally powerless against this condition. They just had what it was wrong. And because they had it wrong, they would dig up dead bodies and do weird stuff, too. All right, so brother dies, sister dies, maybe another sibling, maybe one of the parents. And then if you're in rural New England, you say, all right, clearly what's going on here is that whoever the first one that died, or maybe one of them is coming back and killing the rest by sucking out their blood. I have a vampire in my family. What do I do? I'm going to dig with some help, probably. Sometimes it's quiet, sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes, like in the case of Vermont, it would be like a daytime public festival type of thing. There's like a party, like a community party. Yeah. In fact, I think that's the one Henry David Thoreau attended in Woodstock, Vermont, in his Journal. And he was like, WTF what's, these people? This is a weird party. Yeah. So you would dig these people up depending on where you are. Well, first of all, let's talk about what they might find when they open this coffin. Yeah. Because there are two important steps. The first step was you had to diagnose vampires. Right. Because let's say they finally decided by the fourth family member being sick, that this family was being sapped by a vampire. They didn't automatically know which dead family member was doing it. They got to look at them all. Yeah. So you might dig up multiple coffins. What they were looking for was the belief was that you could tell just by looking at them whether they were a vampire. Maybe poking around a little bit too. Sure. But the problem was that the idea of what we think of as vampires is basically the Bram Stoker Vampire, which comes later. These vampires were like the ghouls from the grave type. Like nasferatu looking. Yes. So, like real long fingernails and pale and bloody mouth and kind of slipping away from their body. The problem is this idea of vampires, what we understand, what they understood at vampires was a tradition handed down from people who had broken up or broken into graves before and could tell you what a vampire looked like. Right. Which is basically a body in a certain stage of decomposition. Right. And specifically, a lot of times, a body in a certain stage of decomposition who had died from tuberculosis. Sure. So you might dig up a grave and see a bloat because they have a buildup of gas in their stomach. That is not what they thought it was from. They thought what? They thought they were vampires full from blood. They'd be like, look at this fat vampire. Yeah. They might see long fingernails and say, that looks to me like a vampire. Right. But that is what your skin receding. Your skin pulls back from the nail bed, which makes it look like your nails have kept growing after death, which is not the case. Same with your hair, too. They may see red lips, bloody lips, even, possibly. Sure. Because apparently the breakdown of your lung tissue from tuberculosis continues even after death. So they would see blood on the lips and be like, yes, they've been sucking the blood out of their loved one. But the key to all this is the heart. That was what they were trying to get to, to see if there was any fresh blood near the heart. And if they did find that, well, we'll get to what they would do. And again, a lot of times you would see fresh appearing blood because of the way the body decomposed from tuberculosis or period. Yeah. But tuberculosis a lot, too. Especially like the blood on the lips kind of thing. Right. Yeah. So this thing was kind of self sustaining, self fulfilling. When somebody died of tuberculosis, if you dug them up at a certain period of time, especially if they say, like, died in winter, they might seem inexplicably in a pristine state. Yeah. Because they're underground in New. England. Right. It's freezing in the winter. So they would fit the bill for a vampire just by definition of being a decomposing body. But to the people who didn't understand what decomposition was, it was just plain as day that they were looking at a vampire in the grave. Right. So they find a family member that fits the bill of a vampire. That's step one. Vampireism is being diagnosed. Next is dispatching the vampire, dealing with the vampire. And the problem is this the vampire is already dead. So there are only certain things you can do to a vampire to kill it. And really what you're not trying to do is kill it. You're trying to make it so it can't get out of the grave and keep sapping the life force out of these family members, hence hopefully saving the dying family member. Right. And it was technically called apotropaic remedy. That's the clinical name for it. Basically something that you're doing to counteract this evil. Right. So it depends on where you were, what you might do. Everyone had their own methods in Maine and Plymouth, Massachusetts. I love this one. All they did was flip it over so it was faced down, and they're like, everyone knows a vampire just very creepily, rises from the waist out of their coffin. What if we just flipped them over? They couldn't do that. They went and done. Let's go get some ice cream. Or the stake through the heart, that didn't arise because they thought the stake had some magical powers, but they thought they would literally just stake them into the ground so they couldn't get up. That's another thing, too. So the stake through the heart with the vampire, you think that that's trying to kill the vampire? That is not what they were trying to do now. But the larger thought here is that our understanding of staking a vampire through the heart comes from people who actually did this because they were trying to battle tuberculosis. Right. That's so amazing. To me, it's a confluence of all these weird things, really, that led to this, and all of it has been refined into this neat, tidy vampire legend. This is the compartment and fits in vampire legend to those of us alive today. But it's got this amazing history and backstory, some of which happened in real life. This reminds me of the real life zombies, too. Yeah, exactly. Good point. Like, this weird religious hysteria combined with what they didn't understand at the time was kind of medicine and science. This weird prescience era is so fascinating to me. Not pre science, but I guess it was pre real science, rudimentary science. So in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, in that region, the go to was to burn the heart, take the ash from the heart, and ingest it to give it to someone who may be sick in the family or may even be healthy, trying to work off sickness and they would actually eat that. So that was one way of dealing with it. Yeah. There's a quote here from Woodstock, Vermont. One Daniel Ransom. In his journal, it was said that at the heart of one of the family who died of consumption was taken out and burned. Others would be free from it. And Father, having some faith in the remedy, had the heart of Frederick taken out after he had been buried and it was burned in Captain Pearson's blacksmith forge. Here's the thing, though. It did not ever save anyone from tuberculosis. No, that's the thing. And I was wondering, how did the superstition explain a failure to cure? I don't know where they just like, we waited too long. I bet you they did that. That had to be they would just have some explanation that we didn't do it. Right. Maybe they would try another method, not burning the heart like the JB 55. They think that the reason they did that weird Jolly Roger thing was because it was so decomposed. There were just bones. So I guess they just improvised. Right? Like, why don't we just do this? Well, that apparently finds its root in Europe. In some places in Europe, that was the way to deal with a vampire, was to cut its head off. Other places, they would stick a brick in the vampire's mouth. Some places they would bind them with thorns. In Europe. And that's another thing that kind of fascinates me about this whole thing, Chuck, is that at some point, somewhere, maybe in Europe, maybe in Asia, maybe in Africa, somebody came up with this idea of vampires of relatives coming back from the grave and sucking the life out of their friends, family members, villagers. And that person had this idea that spread and it made it, centuries later to New England where it led to the desecration of graves of family members. Right. Including one that was discovered another couple of centuries later by some kids playing in a gravel pit. That's led to us talking about this today. If that doesn't make history interesting, I don't know what does. Yeah. Some kids running around listening to the Pixies Finds a Mountain of Skulls. This new band, the Pixies, are top notch. It's great. Should we finish with the story of Mercy Brown? We should. All right. So murphy Brown lived in Exeter, Rhode Island. This was a farming land. And by all accounts, by the time she was around, the town had definitely seen its better days. Right. Thanks to the Civil War kind of decimating the town. Yeah. By exactly 10%. That's a good fact to it. The town is actually kind of a metaphor for vampirism itself. It had lost its own life force in a lot of ways. It dropped by like two thirds in the 70 years before Mercy Brown died. The population did. Yeah. It was not a good scene for the people who were left behind. Plus, they had tuberculosis running around town. Right. And certainly through her house. Her mother died. Her sister Mary Eliza died. No, that was her mom. Sorry. Mary Olive was her sister. It's a great name. Mary Olive. Sure. Agreed. She was 20. And Mary Olive, that is a good name. And I think some of those names are coming back, the classic name. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Little House on the Prairie. Trend. Well, I know one person who named their daughter Olive recently, and I thought that was a pretty sweet name. Yes. You should have been like, Mary Olive would have been better. I was listening to my favorite murder the other day, and they were laughing at funny names that it's just you can't imagine a baby being called like Barbara. They list out a few other ones. Like, it comes out with, like, clunky jewelry and a cigarette in their mouth. Exactly. Sweet little baby Barbara. So anyway, Mary Olive goes. Mary Elizabeth the brother. And this is where it gets a little weird, because I saw eight different accounts of this, and they all had different timelines of death and sickness, whether or not Mercy died and then Edwin got sick or not. But at any rate, brother Edwin is sick, mercy eventually dies of TB, and the town says, we got to do something here. Yeah. They went to the dead George Brown and said, man, you got a problem on your hands. And if you think about it so all this took place over, like, a decade, which you're like, that's a long time. I would think the end of the 19th century. That's a pretty average mortality rate for a family. Apparently not, but they were kids. They were in their early 20s. Well, so he lost his wife as well. So over the course of a decade, this family of five went down to basically a family of one and a quarter, depending on whatever you want to count Edwin as he's dying. Right. Yeah. So George Brown was like, you're probably right. We should do something. Later on, it was revealed that he didn't believe in this at all, that he basically agreed to this because the neighbors wouldn't leave him alone about it. And the neighbors aren't doing this just out of complete selflessness. There was this idea that once this vampire finished with the family, they would move on to another family. So if you lived in a small village, you had a real problem with this vampire being allowed to go on, and you would bother your neighbor to dig up their family member until they relented. And that's what happened with George Brown. Yeah. I mean, the writing was on the wall, certainly with Edwin, as far as the neighbors are concerned. Like he said, he's like, fine, do what you got to do. He did say, I want a doctor there, which is amazing that doctors would actually preside over an excavation. I think the doctor was trying to be the voice of reason throughout this process, even cutting open Mercy's chest and removing her heart and then her abdomen and removing her liver. He's pointing out, as this Abigail Tucker article says, look, this is evidence of tuberculosis. Like, shut up, college boy. Yeah. Give me that heart. Yeah, that's what happened. I got a hot fire burning, and that's exactly what happened. Like you said, they burned this heart, they mixed the ashes into a tonic. Edwin drank it, thinking that they would save him, and he lived a couple of months, maybe not even because he had tuberculosis. Yeah. Cutting open the chest of a dead relative and burning their heart and liver does nothing to cure tuberculosis. The sister. Yeah, the sister, which is really sad, but at the same time, it kind of gives you a picture of George Brown. He doesn't believe in all this vampire superstition. He apparently also is cool with the desecration of a grave. He's not a very sentimental guy. This is the impression that I have of him. He's like, yeah, go cut her open. That's fine. Just stop bothering me. Just make sure that my doctor friend Ted is there to point out how stupid all of this is. Yes, because they sent Edwin away, I think, to try and get well. And I don't know if George was there, but he definitely wasn't at the excavation. No, there was a guy there from Providence newspaper. Here's our other M. Night Shyamalan twist. That's right. He wrote an article that basically told the world about this, and it got picked up. And it got picked up by a number of papers, including The New York World. And in 1896, the New York World reported on the vampire exhumation of Mercy Brown, and a clipping of that article was found in the papers of a certain person. Chuck, who was it? Brahm Stoker. That's right. The author of Dracula. Yeah. So scholars have said this all came too soon. Before Dracula was published, he was probably working on it already. Or he was working already. It didn't influence it at all, some people say. No, he definitely did. He was influenced by this vampire panic, for sure. Yeah. In Mankey's Lore episode on Mercy Brown, because he's just a great storyteller, he ended it just by saying, I think the last words of the show are Bran Stoker. He didn't say. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. Okay, are you ready? Yeah. Hold on. Let's try this again. We're going to do this lower style. So, Chuck, of newspaper clipping of Mercy Brown's exhumation was found in the papers of Bram Stoker. Do we have classical music going? I hope so, Jerry. All right. Okay. And he also didn't have me giggling in the background. If you want to know more about Lore. Well, go check out that podcast and look for more good stuff. Coming soon from Aaron Mankey, who's now our coworker, which means we have to buy him a Christmas present. I know. And in the meantime, while we're figuring out what to get Erin manki, it's time for a listener now, I'm going to go with this one, venezuelan living in Chile. Okay. Hey, guys. New fan of the podcast. Started with the seven wonders. So that's super new. And I was hooked since then. And now listen to the new ones and go back in time to 2009 ones. I want to go through all that. Sounds like they're staying with you. Maybe. I'm from Venezuela living in Chile, and I want to suggest one about identity. We as Venezuelans are going through a difficult time as the government is not issuing passports. As an immigrant, it is super hard. Basically, if I want to travel, I can only go to the more costa member countries because I could do so with the Rut R-U-T which is the Chilean ID card. And I'm a lucky case since I have friends that, while asking for Chilean visa, the Venezuelan passport expired, and now they don't have either Chilean or Venezuelan documents. Ma'am. I feel like an orphan if my home country does not want to give me ID documents. And as a resident, Chile can't either. Only if I apply to nationalization, and I will have to wait a few years until I can do that. She sounds like Tom Hanks in the terminal, basically. But in Chile, and I have no one to claim, I just want to put the word out about our situation. The Venezuelan government pretends that everything is okay when it's not. My family is broken across the world, and I'm incapable to go see them and they can't come to me. It is a painful situation. Keep up with good work, guys. Thanks to you, I have new topics to discuss with my friends. They were particularly interested in how frogs work. Sorry for the broken English. I'm still working on my grammar. I think you did great. Agreed. PS. I would love to hear a shout out. Hearts. Hearts. That is Emmanuela. Guia. Shout out. Emmanuela. Hang in there. Yes. That's really sad to hear. And you're doing great with your English. We are very sad to hear about that situation. Yeah. If you want to get in touch with us and let us know about something going on in your country that we weren't aware of, we want to hear about it. You can tweet to us at Josh Clark or s yskpodcast. I also have a website called Ruceclark.com. Chuck is on Facebook@facebook.com. Charleswchuckbryant he's also at facebook. Comstuffyteknow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@housetaffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetepworks.com. Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. 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Coffee: The World's Drug of Choice | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/coffee-the-worlds-drug-of-choice | There's a 98 percent chance you're drinking coffee right now. Maybe not, sure, but coffee is ubiquitous - about 80 percent of Americans consume coffee and Brazil alone has 3 billion coffee plants. Learn all about the great black brew in this episode. | There's a 98 percent chance you're drinking coffee right now. Maybe not, sure, but coffee is ubiquitous - about 80 percent of Americans consume coffee and Brazil alone has 3 billion coffee plants. Learn all about the great black brew in this episode. | Thu, 29 Dec 2011 18:19:01 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=29, tm_hour=18, tm_min=19, tm_sec=1, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=363, tm_isdst=0) | 49095661 | 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. Even drink coffee. I am, actually. Josh, I told you. What did I tell you ten minutes ago? That you are drinking coffee. And you showed me even that you are, and it's my first cup. Since when? Like last February or so. Yeah, which is weird, man, because you were on coffee for a while. You talk really fast. You're like, I feel weird, and it was fun to watch. And then I guess I hadn't noticed, but yeah, it just stopped. Why? I'm not a regular coffee drinker. I drink it when I'm in the mood. Or when it's cold. Yes, but a year in between cups is beyond not a regular coffee. Well, it hasn't been cold. It's like avoidance, maybe. I've had some since then. Really? Yeah. Actually, I had one of those gingerbread lattes yesterday. Those are good. They're real good. Eggnog is good, too. It's almost like not coffee, though, to me, because you and I drink it black. Dessert treat, generally. Yeah. Which I'm not saying that's the way you should drink it, right. But I just really enjoyed the taste of black coffee about eight times a year. I'm with you. I've cut my intake down tremendously since then. Since last February. Down to a dozen cups a day. Down to, like, a third of that. No, a quarter of that. Three or four cups. About three. That's not bad. And it's all decaf, too. It's almost all decaf, yes. But I still get wired and buzzed. It's weird. Yeah. What do they call that? The old psychosomatic reactions junkie. So, Chuck yes. You asked me a question. I was like, this is the absolute truth to your listener. Chuck asked me a question because I said I didn't have any intro to this. And he said, do you know the origin of cup of Joe? And I said yes, I do. So here's the intro. Spontaneity. Back during World War II, right, the US worked closely with the British, and the British already had something called a cup. A-C-U-P-P-A hay to our British friends over there. You guys can go to sleep for a minute because you know this, but a cup is just a cup of tea. But tea is so ubiquitous that it's just saying cuppa means a cup of tea. A cup of if you're going to have a cup of, that means you're having some tea. Exactly. Okay. But coffee is so thoroughly ingrained in the American culture, I believe, Chuck, there's a stat you furnished me with that 80% of Americans consume coffee, and it's been this way for a long time. Right. And that's consumed not necessarily regularly, but consume take in, like I'm part of the 80%. Right? Okay. This is already well established by world War Two. So when American GIS were hanging out with British soldiers, they drank coffee all the time. It was part of the rations, dried coffee. There's even matches included, not just to let your cigarettes, but to light a fire for a kettle if you needed to. Sure. Coffee is just as ubiquitous among American servicemen as T was with GIS. Okay. Well, American servicemen Slang is GI Joe. You put cuppa before joe, and you have a cup of joe, and that is why coffee is called joe. Really? Yeah. All right. That mystery salt. That was a good intro, Chuck. Well done. It was teamwork. So I'm pretty excited about this one, actually. It was a good article. It was a really good article. Written by the esteemed and unknown Deborah Beller. Have you heard of Deborah Beller? Never. No. It must be a freelancer. All right, so let's get to the history first, because that's what we like to do here on the podcast program. There is ancient. Not ancient, but it's a legend and perhaps a myth. No one knows for sure about Caldi, the Ethiopian goat herder. Well, he has a name, so, you know, it's very goat. And supposedly what happened is he saw his goats mowing down on these weird green fruits. Red. I'm sorry, red at first. Geez, I already messed that up. And he noticed they called them dancing goats. They started to get a little frisky and not sleep at night like they're supposed to, and he said, oh, what is this stuff? I got to get a hold of this. There's two versions from here. He took it to a local monastery, and either the abbot there made a drink from it that kept him and the rest of his monks awake, so they said, this is awesome, or he said, no, this is bad, and he threw it in the fire, which produced that nice aroma, and then he said, hey, maybe it's not so bad. So either way, it's probably legend, but it's a nice story. Yeah. And there's a coffee company here in Atlanta. I don't know where they're based originally, but it could be Atlanta, called Dancing Goats. And that is why. Yeah, I never thought about that. There's a lot of Cody coffees around the country. Oh, yeah. I never thought of that. Well, okay. Dancing Goats. Never knew. Yeah, dancing Goats. They're crazy for the coffee. Have you ever seen a goat dance? Oh, yeah. I have not. I used to dance with my goat. I've seen a fainting goat, but not a dancing goat. So that's the legend. History. Right. We know that ancient African tribes by ancient, I mean, like, prehistoric meaning pre writing. How about that? Okay. Especially along the eastern coast of Africa. Basically, they made little power bars. That's awesome. They would take animal fat, and then they would take the coffee berries and either smoosh them and then put them in animal fat, or else they just put the whole coffee berries in animal fat and then eat them. And then they would have a lot more energy after that. Pretty cool, right? This originated probably in Ethiopia. Ethiopia is the zip code. Yes, naturally there. Yes, a certain type does, sure. Years later. So we leave Africa now. Africa, they're eating their power bars. We go to the Arabian Peninsula, and the same kind of coffee grows there in the Arabian Peninsula as thrives well, in the Ethiopian highlands. Should we go ahead and call it what it is? Arabica. Okay. And that is like the primo coffee, as far as coffee drinkers are concerned. The wine of Araby. Right. On the Arabian Peninsula somewhere around 1000 Ad. Somebody figured out that you could roast the stuff and make it into a concoction, a brew, if you will, and start drinking it. Yeah. Hot drink by, I think, the 13th century. A couple of hundred years later, the Muslims, which had conquered the Arabian Peninsula by then, knew that they had something really special with the coffee. So they would export coffee beans, but you would be beheaded if you tried to get a plant or a seed out. Right. They want to keep it. Yeah. Because they knew, like, we can basically control the world with this. Yeah. And I found that there's something called the Cabe Kane, which was the public coffee houses in the Arabian Peninsula, and they were hugely popular. Still are. Still are, I'm sure. And it's at that time, and this is, what do you say, 1000 Ad. Well, they had a lockdown on coffee by the 13th century. Okay. Long time ago, though. But early on, coffee already started to have a link between drinking this stuff and sitting around with people and talking about smart things. Yeah. It wasn't like going to a bar where you get sloshed and talk about the good old days and end up weeping. Exactly. So they called these cave kane's schools of the wise. And then later in England, there were more than 300 of these in London by the they were called penny universities because a cup of coffee was a penny. And you would sit around and learn stuff. In the US. No, in London. Okay, nice. So there was always a link. I just found it interesting from the very beginning between drinking coffee and talking smarts like we're doing. Right. Go ahead, Chuck. Okay. No, that's all I had. Okay. We were saying that the Muslims had a lockdown on coffee, but there was supposedly there's a couple of legends of people getting it out of the Arab peninsula and into the rest of the world. Yes. And one of them is an Indian smuggler named Baba Buddha. Baba Bui Buddhan. Okay. And he left Mecca, supposedly with some seed strapped to his chest, and made it out and started growing coffee in India. Well, the fact that it was Mecca, it may not have spread the same, because Mecca was obviously a destination, still is, for pilgrimages. So it may not have picked up if it hadn't been for the fact that it was in Mecca. Right. Supposedly, I don't know how it got out to Europe, but the first coffee plantation, first European controlled coffee plantation was established in Java by the Dutch in 1616, and then it made its way across to the Atlantic, and you can kind of see, like, little by little, there's, like, histories and legends about how coffee spread, which is pretty cool. So it made its way into India thanks to Baba Budan. It made its way to Brazil thanks to a spy named Lieutenant Colonel Palette, who was sent by the emperor of Brazil at the time, in 1727, to get copy from French Guiana. Go find the ambassador's wife or the emperor of French Guiana, the ambassador, go find his wife and seduce her and get some coffee seedlings. And he did. Yeah, apparently he was a looker, and she was a sucker for a handsome mug. And so when he left, she gave him a bouquet of flowers, and he hid them inside the flowers. So there you have it. Coffee spreads in Brazil. Now, Brazil is like the world's leading grower, I believe, of coffee. I think in Brazil alone, there are 5 million people who are employed to cultivate and harvest 3 billion coffee plants. That's just in Brazil alone. Wow. So. You mentioned Europe, though. Coffee in Europe. It would have not taken hold in Europe nearly as aggressively if it hadn't been for Pope Clement the 8th. Did you hear about this guy? No. It was originally coffee was very controversial, obviously, early on, because it's a drug and a stimulant, and a lot of Europeans cautioned against the bitter invention of Satan. They took it to Pope Clement and said, hey, dude, you got to rule on this evil stuff. And he went, well, let me give it a try. First he noticed everyone has a Brooklyn accent, and he gave it a try and said, wow, this stuff is pretty awesome, actually. I'm going to give it the stamp of approval. So Pope Clement gave it the papal stamp, and that's why it became so popular in Europe. Well, yeah, it was Vindicated Papily, and if it hadn't been, who knows? Okay, we'll talk about Europe for a second. You were talking about how the penny academies, penny university, penny universities. So there's also been a lot of companies that are still around today. Just a lot of huge events have taken place or begun or find the roots in coffee houses. Lloyds of London. Very true. Lloyds of London, the huge insurance company, I think the world's largest insurer, began in a coffee house that was owned by a guy named Edward Lloyd. And I guess to make a little extra money on the side or to keep his patrons happy, he kept a list of all the ships that were insured by some of his patrons, who, I guess at the time, you could get somebody to cover your ship as an investment. And Edward Lloyd started keeping track of it. Hence, Lloyds of London. And now you have your tonsils insured because of that very day. Man, that costs me an arm and a leg, but it's going to be worth it, just in case. Also, do you remember how I said that coffee is just so ingrained in American culture? Do you know why? The answer is totally obvious. It's so obvious. Yes, it's so obvious. You just walk right past it. Yeah. And you don't hear a lot of not press, but you just don't read about that a lot unless you go looking. And it wasn't just the Boston Tea Party that did it. That was part of it. But it was all of the taxes on tea that really made it prohibitive for people to drink tea. So they started switching to coffee, and then it became something of a point of national pride. And the Boston Tea Party itself was planned in a coffee house called the Green Dragon. That is very true. So coffee is very much, just from the get go, the reason why everybody is so jacked up for the American Revolution. Well, it's interesting, all these stories come together to make coffee. Like the fact that it was in Mecca, the fact that the Pope gave it the stamp of approval, the Boston Tea Party, the ties with smart talk and coffee houses. All those things came together to form the perfect storm of what is now the second leading import or export, or just commodity, aside from oil. Second leading commodity, as far as I understand it, ranks second to petroleum in terms of dollars traded worldwide. Crazy. And it's the most popular drink on the planet, aside from water. And I imagine that's on the normal market, I don't know if anything tops coffee on the black market. Chuck, I think there's plenty of reasons to love coffee, but probably the most common reason to love coffee is the trimethyl accent theme. Caffeine? Yes. C eight. N four. Two. For those in the know that's caffeine, which has the same but a milder effect on the brain as cocaine or opium, meth. I'm starting to feel this already. I felt the first one this morning. Yeah. And caffeine occurs naturally in a number of plants. It's not just coffee, but it's in, like, whammo amounts in coffee. An average cup of coffee has about 100 milligrams of caffeine. Or if you have, like, a can of coke twelve ounce can of coke is 50 milligrams of caffeine. Yes. So, I mean, it's twice as much. And you can tell I drank decaffeinated coffee just now, and I'm a little more just decaf. And decaf will explain how it comes about later on. But there is one plant out there that naturally is decaffeinated. One naturally decaffinated bean, right? Yeah. The Madagascar coffee. Crazy species. Mascaraofia, vignette. I wonder if that happen naturally, if it was bred to be so I don't know or not. Bread, you know what I mean? So we're talking about the United States. And as big a junkies for coffee as we are, there's only one state in the Union where coffee can grow, and that is Hawaii. And that's because Hawaii exists in the bean belt. That's right. And they grow their very famous and delicious kona coffee in the volcanic mountains. And the bean belt, it's on the Big Island. On the Big Island. Your Hawaii. I know. You know that the bean belt, as you mentioned, is bounded by the tropics of Capricorn and cancer. Yes. Henry Miller running right through the middle. That's right. And the soil, climate and altitude are awesome for coffee. It means that you're going to get a continually producing tree, which is really cool. One coffee tree can have beans ready to pick, beans in bloom, flowers blooming all at the same time. Do you remember we saw them in Guatemala? Oh, yeah. I think it's the second or third largest export is coffee. Says they're number eight in the world. I believe it. Yeah. So the coffee is grown on a tree. It's a woody evergreen tree that can grow up to 30ft high. But if you're into coffee cultivation, you keep your coffee shrub level so you can harvest it easier. Yeah, you don't want to be bringing ladders in there. No. And most harvesting is done by hand. Like you said, it's constantly productive. So you've got a little bit over here that's mature. You've got a little bit that's ready. And there's flowers. Did you know the coffee tree has flowers? I did. That smell like jasmine, some say. And on the spot where those flowers bloomed, about a year later, you're going to have fully mature red coffee. Cherries is what they're called ripe for the chicken. And they look just like cherries. They do. Except grouped in bunches. They taste different. Yes. And then one tree in a single season, I thought, this is kind of staggering. One tree produces one to \u00a31.5, which is less than it's about a half a kilogram. Yeah. That takes a lot of trees to produce all the coffee that the world is consuming. Think about that. Luckily, we have Babu Boudan, who got coffee out of Saudi Arabia. That's right. Varieties of coffee. Josh. We already mentioned Arabica. There are two Arabica and robusta, if you're talking Arabica, those are the original Ethiopian coffee trees or descendants of they grow well, I'm sorry. They are mild and aromatic. Eventually, that's what you're going to get when you drink a cup of it. About 70% of the world's coffee is Arabica, growing higher altitudes between two and 6000ft above sea level. The Ethiopian highland is a great place for it. Mild temperatures are required between 60 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit. 16 to 24 deg Celsius, and they need about 60 inches of rain per year. And frost is no good. No, not at all. No. Because if you look at the bean belt, florida's not even in it. Like the keys aren't even in the bean belt. So it's probably rare to get a frost, if not impossible. Sure. In the bean belt, right. The robusta is you're going to have a bean smaller and rounder. Overall, the tree is much harder because it can grow into temperatures up to 85 degrees Fahrenheit and lower altitudes, and it packs a lot more punch, about 50% more caffeine, and it's more bitter. And I read somewhere that robusta has long been considered an inferior type of coffee. Like, it's the hardy, like, redheaded cousin of Arabica. It's only 30%. We here in America consume we consume a lot of it. And the reason why is because the Pan American Coffee Council, I believe, which created something called the coffee break. Have you heard of that, Chuck? Yes. That's a made up thing from the 1950s. Coffee was coming down from up on high, where only the wealthy could afford it, to being a lot more predominant. And one of the ways that it was introduced to wider culture is by mixing the inferior robust of beans with the Arabica beans. And so now it was like, sure, it doesn't taste as good, but it gets you going through your horrible life. So have a coffee break and get back in there. We drink more of the Robusta here. At least in the 20th century, we started consuming a lot more of it. All right. Yeah. There are more than 800 flavor characteristics in a coffee bean, which is double that of wine. So when you hear people talk about wine and all the smoky oaky and woody, like, double that wine people got you. I'm a wine person, but I'm not I know you're making fun of yourself. I'm making fun of my people. But wine, I'm sorry, double that. And you've got what you got going on with coffee, even though you think you're, like, there's, like, the morning blend, little Colombian, little Brazilian. Yeah. Not so remember our friend Brandon was having a fight with our friend Mark Over because he keeps buying flavored coffee? Blueberry coffee should not exist. No. Mark really is going to go ahead and tell you that right now. Yeah. And not only should it not exist, but if you make some in your coffee maker, you might as well throw it away. Yeah. Because you can taste it for the next 50 pots of coffee. Let's talk about the actual coffee bean itself. Chuckers, the coffee cherry. Josh hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office? And you could be using stamps.com. Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses. Because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need right. From your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. All right, what you got is a bright red, like we said, skin. When it's ready to pick and ripe, it's green if it's not. And apparently coffee pickers, they don't want to have more than two green per every 100 picked. Otherwise they're going to get their hand slapped by coffee plantation owner. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like when they're hand picking them, they're picking them fast. Right. So you're going to have some green ones, but that's their goal, is what I hear. Okay. The skin of the cherry is called the exocarp, very thick and bitter. You got a fruit beneath that called the mesocarp. It's kind of like the inside of a grape. Like if you peel the skin off a grape. Yeah, that's what I take. The mesocarpas. Yeah. It's gushy and sweet. Right. Then you have the perenncaema, which is slimy, and it's a honey like layer, protects the bean. There's going to be two beans generally, and if all goes well and every cherry and they are covered by a parchment like envelope called the endocarp, they're kind of bluish green at the time. And then there's the silver skin on top of the bean, and it's all protecting that little nugget that looks sort of like a shelled peanut. Right. And the silver skin is also called the spermaderm. Prefer silver skin. I think everybody prefers silver skin. So if you can get rid of all these layers that protect the bean, basically what you're going down to is like the pit of a cherry. The seed. Yes. A nut. That's where the gold is. Right. And when you harvest them, you said that people, they just want the bright red ones. But people are harvesting between 100 and \u00a3200 a day by hand. Most coffee harvesting takes place by hand, and it depends on where you are, where it's going to be harvested or when it's going to be harvested. If you are north of the equator, you're going to harvest between September and March. If you're south of the equator, you're going to harvest between April and May, which is not spring. Right. So the summertime is basically the only time they're not harvesting, right? Correct. Yeah. And when you've got them harvested, you've got them picked, you have your 100 to \u00a3200 for the day, depending on the type of coffee plantation. You're going to dry them by one of two methods. There's basically just two methods of drying, which is pretty cool considering that there are huge concerns that produce coffee. Yeah. There's still two kind of primitive means of drying them. Before we get into the cool method, I want to point out that all of this is speed is key, because the freshness of coffee is the secret to good coffee. So if you pick beans that morning, they're being processed that afternoon. They don't sit around in barrels for a few days at all. Right. Unless they're being dried. Then they sit around for seven to ten days. That's part of the processing. So basically, if you're using the dry method of drying, you're laying the coffee beans out in the sun or the coffee cherries. I'm sorry? Yeah, big concrete slab. You're laying them out in the sun and you're letting them dry, and after about seven to ten days, and you're raking them periodically, just kind of turn them over and get some air underneath them, the cherries will have dried enough so that there's only about 11% moisture in the whole coffee cherry. And you can tell that it's ready because the beans rattle inside, so it makes it a good children's toy as well. I couldn't find who dries dry. Like, I'm sure you can find out whatever coffee if you really want to research what kind of coffee you want to drink. Yeah, I'm sure you can tell, like, who does the dry method, because I get the feeling that dry method is probably superior because anything that usually takes a little longer, it's probably worth it. Sure. And also it doesn't use enzymes like the wet method. I get the impression that if you get from a small plantation, probably using the dry method yeah, the wet method uses enzymes and fermentation, and basically you take the cherries and throw them into a VAT of water after I'm sorry, you get the pulp and skin peeled away. Then you throw it into a VAT to ferment for a couple of days, and the natural enzymes apparently eat away the little envelope in the silver skin. And then you have the beans left over. That's right. And you still need to dry for about four days in the sun, just like the dry method. And you let it rest at night. Sometimes, if you don't want to do if you want to speed it up even more, you don't do the sun dry method. You put it in these big rotating drums that pump in hot air, and that will dry it out and it's fermenting. But if it smells too much like vinegar, that means it's fermenting too much. Is that right? Yeah, that's what I hear. Okay. So let's say you have a bunch of dried coffee. What you have is a commodity, like we said, second only to oil in total dollars traded. Yeah. And it's called green coffee because coffee producers don't roast coffee. Roasters roast the coffee, and they buy their green coffee from coffee producers. Yeah. So if you bought a bunch of green coffee, what you would have is traditionally a big Jute or Cecil bag filled with coffee still as a stay. Yeah. And it's going to be transported to the tune of about 7 million tons of green coffee shipped worldwide every year. Now, it's already hot, too, at this point, right? Right. It's just the beans, right? Yeah. So the wholeling process, it's a machine that does that, and then they sort them according to class, like grade A beans, grade B beans. I forgot about that part yet. But eventually you're going to get a nice bean. Right. And they grade them first by size and then by density. And you want the bigger, heavier ones are superior to the smaller ones. And either they're graded by hand along, like a conveyor belt, or there's a conveyor belt and pus of air that will puff off the lighter, smaller ones. Yeah. Or they have little machines like the sorters that sort it according to size. There's all different kinds of machines now. Yes. They also have ones that look exactly like giant spiders that are terrifying, but they get the job done. All right. Now to the roasting, which is the good stuff. Yeah. That's where coffee really gets its aroma and its flavor. Eventual flavor. And here's an interesting fact. Roasting reduces caffeine. Is that right? That's right. So even though an espresso roast takes 14 minutes, compared to a seven minute light American roast, an espresso bean has a lot less caffeine than just a regular thing. A regular bean, you may say. Why do you get so jacked up? It's because the grind and the concentrated brew. I never knew that. I thought the espresso beans is, like, loaded with extra caffeine. I guess I would have mentioned the same thing, because you equate like taste with caffeine content, too. Yeah, true. So, like, the blacker it is, the thicker and richer the taste is. You just like, this must be loaded with caffeine. Not so very interesting. Chuckers so we're roasting now. Yeah. So you've got a roasting drum that's capable of achieving temperatures of 550 deg Fahrenheit, which is 288 degrees Celsius. And the key is not just the heat, but the rotation of the drums. You can roast coffee at that heat as long as it's moving. So it won't burn. Yes. Don't want to burn it's hot, but it's not going to burn. Espresso beans are burned a little bit. Right. So there's a couple of if you are a coffee roaster, you're looking for a couple of things. The first thing is that the beans should. Start to turn yellow, smell a little bit like popcorn. Like you said, they shouldn't smell like vinaigrette. You want to throw that out, and then you're going to hear something called the pop. And the coffee bean has just popped, and it's hit about 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Yeah. And it doubles in size at that point. Yeah. And that's really the beginning of the real roasting process. After that happens, you really want to be Johnny on the spot. Pay attention to this because things move pretty fast after that. Through a process called pyrolysis, the heat extracts the oil, and they turn the coffee from green or yellow to a nice rich brown. And now it's really being roasted and eventually almost a black. Yeah, it depends. Like you said, if you are going to make espresso roast, you're going to heat it for 14 minutes, and basically you're toasting these things. You're burning them, and the sugars inside are caramelizing. Right. And by the way, God help you if you say espresso. Yes. Really? Or even worse, if you sell espresso and you have a sign that says espresso. Come on. And then Chuck, there's the second pop. And the second pop is like, I'm done. Take me out. Yeah, you talked about the roasters. These roastmasters, and they are called roastmasters because it is a very specialized job. What they do a lot of times is because you don't want to roast 10,000 beans and have a bad batch. So what they'll do is they have a side room where they roast a little tiny batch, and this is where the roastmaster does their taste testing. They'll brew up four cups of coffee from different parts of the batch just to make sure they've covered it all. They push aside the foam, and when they don't put it in a coffee maker, they put the grounds in a cup with hot water and let it steep like old school. Yeah, that's how I make coffee, or what I like to call camping style. Do you do that at home? Yeah, you just boil it with the French press. Oh, French press, sure. I have several ways. I also have this coffee maker that Yummy got me to bodham, and it uses a vacuum. It uses a vacuum to suck water up into this top bulb, and it just sits there and percolates, and then it it drips back down. Really? But just the coffee. Does the ground stay up above? And then you take the top part off and you've got, like, a little pot of coffee. It's awesome. It's fun to watch. I find that a press pot is a little chalky for my taste. Yeah, it totally is. But I guess it's just if you like that, you like it, but you have to grind it just right, which we'll talk about in a second. It's all about the grind, Josh. But what they do is, like I said, they got the small batch they broke the four cups, they steep it, and then they push aside the foam on the surface to release the aroma, and that's called breaking the cup. They sniff it. Then they skim the grounds from the surface and do a little sip and spit for each cup. And then they say, hey, it's ready. Go ahead and brew the big batch. And then when no one's looking, they snort the ground. That's right. And another interesting thing is that once they roast it, it actually gets packaged still hot into the bag. Hot. And they pump in nitrogen to replace the oxygen, because you don't want oxygen. And then the vacuum sealed. Yeah, oxygen degrades the freshness of coffee faster than anything else. So, yeah, that's why everything's vacuum sealed. Well, let's go. We're there. Okay, well, there are four keys to making really good coffee, right? You've got your roasted coffee. It's been roasted Masterfully, and now it's your turn. You have a bag of beans that's vacuum sealed, very fresh. You can still tell it's warm, even Chuck. And so you have four things you want to take into consideration freshness, the type of the grind, the ratio of water to coffee, and then water, purity, and the purity of your coffee maker. And by the way, don't either, A, buy ground coffee, or B, buy coffee and grind it in the store. You're not doing yourselves any favors. You can and tell everybody, just leave you alone while you enjoy your coffee. Do whatever you want, people. But if you're a coffee connoisseur yeah, you're not doing that. You have a home grinder. You're buying beans. You have a home grinder, and you're grinding just enough to make a couple of cups of coffee. Well, and not only do you have a home grinder, but you should have a nice grinder. I went to research. Emily drinks a latte every morning of her life, and she had a crappy little grinder and a crappy espresso machine. So I invested in the good stuff. And the difference between the $15 grinder and the $100 grinder is massive. I would imagine so, yeah. Really? Is it a bird grinder? I've heard bird grinders are, like, the best one. It's a bird grinder, and I don't know enough about coffee to know the difference, but I started reading up on it, and it said the grind is the key. Yeah. So as you say, the grind is the key. You've got your freshness. You don't want coffee that's older than, like, two weeks. You don't want to grind it ahead of time. No. And if you do end up somehow with some ground coffee, you want to keep it in the fridge, and it will stay up to two weeks. Don't try to get Chuck Bryant to drink any of it, though. No, I'm not like that I'll drink any of it. I'm just teased. But the grind, like you say, is what releases all of the flavors and aromas and every little great little nugget of goodness. And coffee, it's the way you grind it. And anybody who's ever ground coffee, especially at like Trader Joe's or something, you can adjust the dial and it will say French press espresso, automatic drip. Right. And espresso is a really fine grind. Very. And Turkish is actually even finer than that. But the grind is related to the amount of time it takes to make the coffee. Right. So espresso is very fine, almost powdery, and that takes about 25 seconds to make espresso with steam, it takes about ten minutes to make a pot of regular drip coffee. So for that, you have a coarser grind is what it's called. Yeah. And then also, Chuck, I want to mention there's cowboy coffee. You're talking about how the roastmaster just matches up some? Yeah. Camping coffee. Is that called cowboy coffee? Cowboy coffee, yes. And apparently it used to be very difficult for Cookie to get anybody to grind coffee because that gets sold very often. So I believe in the 19th century there was a coffee company called Arbuckles Coffee, and they put a peppermint stick in every bag of coffee so that Cookie could be like, hey, whoever grinds us gets the peppermint stick. And yeah, apparently nice cookie had no trouble after that. That's a great story job. I agree, Chuck. I love it. 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Just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. So you talked about proportion of water to coffee. Everyone has their slight variation. Some people like a little stronger, some people like a little weaker. Yeah. I found this ratio to be wanting. Oh, really? Yeah, because what we have here in this article is two tablespoons of ground coffee for 6oz of water. They say that makes a strong cup, but you say more. I like a little more coffee than that. A little more, yes. Which is like a heaping. Kitchen spoon? No, kitchen spoon is about one tablespoon. Okay. Two of those. Yeah, that's what I mean. Yes. Heaping, for sure. Okay. You don't level it off if it doesn't fall off on the way into the basket or the French press. Right. It's fine. Okay. And they also say that fresh, cold water is what you really want to start with, and eventually you want to end up with 200 degrees Fahrenheit, 93 Celsius. If you want to really get all the flavor out of the beans and keep your maker clean, you got to clean that thing out already. Well, there's the irony. If your coffee smells like vinegar, you've got bad coffee, but you want to use a vinegar solution to clean out your coffee coffee every once in a while, rent it out. I don't know what the proportion is. Make it up. I mean, there's got to be a certain amount of weeks or amount of coffee pots you've brewed, but if you start to taste bitter coffee, then it's time. Or if you taste blueberry coffee and you want to do the vinegar thing, too, or throw it out. And then we talked about the Madagascar coffee species that naturally produces decaf, but most people don't drink this. Instead, they're drinking stuff that has been removed somehow. The caffeine has been removed from the beans, either by using a chemical solvent gross, which extracts the caffeine, and then the solvents washed away. Wow. And then the other method is to steam the beans nice. And that gets some of the outer part of the bean, which apparently packs the most caffeine worn away, and you've got decaf, and then I think they scrape the rest of it away after that, even. Yes. So if you're into healthy, then get organic decaf. If you want decaf. Non chemical solvent. Yeah. You don't want to be drinking in that. So then coffee around the world. Chuck America, thank you to our friends at Starbucks, who founded their company, has kind of come out of its haze of not that great coffee and is starting to understand, like, oh, there's really good coffee out there. Is it good coffee? Because I've heard coffee people say, you know, starbucks really need good coffee because of X, Y and Z. I was trying to be polite here and I was thinking Starbucks of 1971, not Starbucks of 2011. Sure. Starbucks opened America up to the concept of good coffee. Doesn't necessarily serve at good coffee, or at least expensive coffee, right? Yeah. But for the most part, Americans still prefer the American roast, which is about a seven minute roast, like you said, which is just shameful, if you ask me. So what do you think, though? I mean, I'm not an official. Are we talking about this? Well, I don't know. I mean, I just hear coffee snob, so, you know, Starbucks isn't even good. But then I think those are people that are just fighting the big mass corporation that's on every corner. Well, I don't know, man. I tend to go with the coffee snobs in that one. I think it used to be a lot about there's way too many Starbucks out there. And now I think it's like the coffee just doesn't taste that good. It's really cloying. But the thing is, I wonder also if I'm missing something, because how does Starbucks not know that it's coffee tastes like this? Why wouldn't they change it? What's the deal? I'm sure someone out there, we are going to get some good emails on this from people who really know how they treat their beans. From Ted Starbucks himself. He's going to be like, I'm suing you too, Teddy. Starbuck France. French roast. Very dark. Robust cafe ole. It's going to be half milk, half coffee. I don't know why you'd want to ruin your coffee with half milk. It's good. Is it? Yeah. Viennese Roast. I think Vienna was the first coffee shop in Europe was in Vienna. I might be wrong. I can't remember. I think so. I think so. Possibly. We'll find out. At any rate, the Viennese roast is very popular. Dark roast, two thirds dark roast beans, one third regular roast. And the European roast is to flip the reverse of those. It's one third dark and two thirds light. Yes. And then, of course, you have espresso, which, like you said, there's less caffeine, but you get the big jolt out of it by grinding it. So just pulverizing every hiding place where caffeine can hang. Have you ever seen Maholland Drive? David lynch? I have, yeah. The espresso scene. I don't remember. It's one of those mysterious meetings in David Lynch movies where you're like, who are these people and why are they having this mysterious meeting? And they serve this one guy, he's like, we searched the world over for this espresso, and we know you're going to approve of this one. And they surf it to the guy and he drinks it and then spits it up and so good. I love that guy. Oh, God. He's the best. Turkish roast. What's the proverb that coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, sweet as love. So what does that mean? They just put a lot of sugar in it. They like it sweet. I think it's more than that. So they have cardamom, chicory and coriander in their coffee. Have you ever had, like, Mexican coffee or Mexican chocolate coffee with cinnamon and cayenne pepper in it and all that? Very good. Nice. And then, yes, they also put some sugar in there, I believe. And it's very finely ground, like I said, even more finely ground than espresso. Boy, that's powdery. Yeah, and thick. They make it real thick. In Cuba, you're going to get the Cafe Cubano, which you do, it like a shot, which is pretty cool. And it's like espresso, but you don't sip it with your sambuca or your lemon twist or whatever. Have you ever had a lemon twist with espresso? Yeah, sure. I never have. No. Member balcony in Beverly Hills cop he said, Can I interest you in Thailand? I didn't realize this coffee is really strong there. And it is chicory tinged, iced and sweetened with condensed milk. So I don't know if they don't drink hot coffee at all. I know it's in Japan. It's like coffee is huge. I think it's always hot in Thailand. And they're like, it's too hot for hot coffee. Is that what it is? So apparently if you want to make it at home, you just take some coffee, a little sweetened condensed milk and some ice, and there's your Thai coffee. Boom. So, Chuck, I am heartened by some recent research that has come to light that basically says drink as much coffee as you like. Yeah, I mean, they used to say, like, coffee is bad for you. You don't want to have too much bolic acid for you, too much caffeine will make you go shoot people. I mean, it's been crazy. There's good and bad. Let's just say that. So let's talk about some there's some sort of weird link between coffee consumption and diabetes. There's a negative correlation, whereas the more coffee you drink, the lower your risk of diabetes. Right. Diabetes specifically. Yeah. They did nine studies about five years ago, and four to six cups of coffee per day versus two or less reduced your risk by 30%, which is pretty significant. Yes, extremely significant. 35% if you drink more than six cups a day. All right. And whether you drink decaf or caffeinated, the results were the same. Yes. So it's not the caffeine. No, which I thought was interesting, probably the bulk acid. We're going to do a caffeine podcast, by the way. Okay. That's coming. Free radicals, which may or may not exist, supposedly there's phytochemicals, about 1000 of them in coffee beans. And if free radicals do exist, these phytochemicals act as antioxidants, preventing the aging process and all sorts of cellular damage. If free radicals exist, they say that coffee improves memory and cognition. They did plenty of studies on this. And coffee drinkers, people that drink coffee in the morning especially, perform better than non drinkers when it comes to learning new information. Yes, I was surprised by this. I'm not surprised, but I wonder if they did a follow up like 4 hours later. How are you doing now? Exactly? Yeah, the coffee crash. I get that. Which is, I think, why people like my brother in law drink coffee all day long. There is no coffee crash when you drink two pots a day. No, I know what you mean. But you also don't sleep and like, your calf muscles rupture through your skin. They didn't study on that, I can tell you. All right, what about the bad? Because not everything is all good. Well, when you drink a lot of coffee, you pee calcium, and that means that you are losing bone density. Eg. Coffee can increase osteoporosis, but they say add a little milk to your coffee, balance it out. Oh, yeah, that's what it says here. At least it definitely makes sense. Or yogurt. But who wants to eat yogurt? So if you put two I love yogurt. I'm just kidding. I like it. All right. Two tablespoons of only the good stuff. Like only Greek yogurt. Yeah, two tablespoons of milk. Or yogurt per cup of coffee. I don't see putting yogurt in coffee, though. Like, you'd have to be literally insane to do that. It seems like it would just coagulate. Yeah, like they would take you away and lock you up if somebody saw you putting yogurt in your coffee. Josh, I know you like your skin. I know you like to remain youthful and handsome and sexy, but it's just like an exercise in futility, I feel like. I disagree. Coffee has antioxidants. If you drink too much of it, it will cause your skin to wrinkle probably quicker than your average dude. Who doesn't? Because of dehydration. That's what they say. I've heard that. I don't know about this weight gain thing. Basically, there's a change in blood sugar that the caffeine high can produce, which is strange, because that would seem to contradict the diabetes study if there was less of a risk of diabetes. But apparently, because we love eating donuts with our coffee and that kind of thing, too, you can actually gain weight if you eat a lot of coffee because you're like I would have another crawler. Why not? Because it goes so well. Do you dunk? I have dunked in the past. Not that big on it. I also will dunk an Oreo from time to time, but it's not like every time I eat Oreos, I have to have milk. Oh, I thought you meant Oreo and coffee. No. Okay. And then coffee is one of the most heavily sprayed crops on the planet with pesticides and herbicides and chemicals. So if you're not into that, you should get organic coffee. Thank you, Norman Borlaugh. And just a couple of more little facts here. I'm going to skip most of these, but I will say that fair trade coffee, if you have a heart, you will seek out fair trade coffee, because for every I'm sorry, the pickers themselves earn as little as four cents per pound, and the farmer earns as little as twelve cents per pound. Sold. So the fair trade movement tries to redistribute profits so that all these people earn decent wages. I believe the third trade movement originated around coffee production. I think that was the first industry. I think that's where it's cradle lies. Yeah. And finally, Josh, if you are one of those dudes or ladies who start your day off by going to your local coffee shop to get a cup of coffee on your way to work. You're going to wait in line about 45 hours a year for that coffee. Wow. Not too bad. A couple of days. That's a lot, though. You're also going to drop about $165 on coffee every year. Yeah, I don't know what day that to me, looks like a stat if you buy and make your own coffee. Got you. I bought one of those gingerbread ones yesterday at Starbucks. It was like 525. Yeah, let's even say $4. And you drink coffee every day and you buy one a day. There's plenty of people out there who buy 365 cups of coffee. That's more than $1,000 on coffee a year. Yeah, that's way low. Then. That's just a stupid statistic you came up with. I'm done with my coffee. We're done with the podcast. Well, no, we're not quite done yet. They got some stuff. Chuck, let's forego listener mail instead. Sure. We're not going to just let you go. Before we let everybody go, we want to wish everyone a very happy New Year. Yeah. No matter where you are, no matter what time it is, we are wishing you a very happy, safe, bountiful, beautiful, wonderful 2012. Yes. And that's what I love about New Year, is it's everyone? We're not going to get a mail saying, well, you know, in my country, we don't do this or down here. It's not that everyone gets a new year. So you must really love New Year's. I love it. Yeah. So Mary New Year. And I want to also say very special happy birthday to a very special girl who has her birthday the two days before New Year. No way. My yummy. I was assuming that. Well, happy birthday. Yummy. We love you. Happy birthday. Yumi. And Happy New Year to everybody. And I forgot almost. Chuck sure. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at siskpodcast. Facebook. Comstepusionnow. And you can send us a good old fashioned Happy New Year email to stuffpodcast@howstuffs.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. 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's. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | ||
a6c61190-5462-11e8-b449-03bf31b43051 | Finders Keepers: Real Law | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/finders-keepers-real-law | You know that heartbreak of the schoolyard – finders keepers, losers weepers? That’s actual law in a great many grown up places. Enter the murky legal world of finding something that belongs to someone else, from buried treasure to a misplaced ring. | You know that heartbreak of the schoolyard – finders keepers, losers weepers? That’s actual law in a great many grown up places. Enter the murky legal world of finding something that belongs to someone else, from buried treasure to a misplaced ring. | Tue, 20 Nov 2018 15:13:35 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=20, tm_hour=15, tm_min=13, tm_sec=35, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=324, tm_isdst=0) | 37004929 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And there's Jerry over there. And this is stuff you should know. Keepers edition, losers weepers. This is an actual thing. It's not just like a child's fantasy. This is law in some places. And while it doesn't actually state losers weepers, I think it's implied. Yeah. It's implicit in the law where the finder is the keeper, but you lost it, so you're legally obligated to weep in public. Yeah. And it's funny reading through some of these examples. It sounds like playground stuff. I'll say that I'll get to some of these some of these examples, though, I'm like, man, that's not yours. Come on, give it up. Did you say that out loud to yourself? I did a couple of these. I was like, man, seriously, man, that's not yours. I have a big justice thing. Oh, yeah, me, too. When I see people acting like a big baby and saying, like, there's money I found on my wall, there's mine. No, it's not. Well, you would be a great arbitrator. Yeah, get out of here. It's not yours. You'd be like, my ruling is this, man, that's not yours. Give it up. But no. Let's start with John and Mary. Not their real names. No. I guess it's worth pointing out these are anonymous husband and wife team from NorCal. Yeah. From Northern California. And they are anonymous because they didn't want a lot of attention, and they are still anonymous. We'll call him John and Mary. And they are famous. Well, I guess they're not famous, but their case is a little famous because they found $10 million and what could be $10 million in rare gold coins buried on their property that they own on a walk, and it's known as the Saddle Ridge Horde. In February 2013, they found these 1400 gold coins that no one knows who they belong to, how they got buried there, but they found them and took a long time sort of coming out with this. They did it about as smart as you possibly can. Yeah. They didn't rush to the press or anything and say, look what we found. They took their time because I think they rightfully knew that they were onto something pretty special. Yeah. So they were out walking on their property, put that away for later with their dog. And they noticed, I guess, the side of a can coming out of the ground, and they went and dug it out, and sure enough, there was a bunch of gold coins in there. Whenever you see a can coming out of the ground, that's your hope and wish, that it's going to be filled with gold coins or jewels or something. Right. But it never happens. And it actually happened to these people. They went back again and again and again, and they ended up pulling eight cans filled with gold coins, pure gold coins, out of the ground on their property. And it became very apparent, based on the state of preservation of the cans and the dates of the coins in the cans, that somebody had buried this no more recently than the very beginning of the 20th century and probably sometime in the late 19th century. Yeah. And here's a hint. If you ever happen to unearth a whatever, a can or a glass jar or something full of money buried on your property, just keep digging. That may be it, but maybe not. Yes. I wondered what kind of excavation they undertook once they were like, oh, there's more there. I'm quite sure they cleared that ground. It's verified there's no more cans. So if you're talking actual money face value, it's about 27 grand. But because these are rare finds in great condition, most of these coins, they're thinking that it could be worth as many, as much as $10 million. So they're going to sell it. Well, they have been and donate some of this money. And it's nice that they're donating some of it, but it really sort of opens up this question of, hey, what does the law say about finding something, period, much less like, on my property? Right. The finder's keeper's law, basically, is what you're talking about. That's really what it's called in case laws. The finder's keeper's laws are rules. That's right. So there is a lot going on here. These guys, John and Mary, owned the land that these coins were found on, and that was a huge mark in their favor. Oh, yeah. But in the United States, it really depends on what state you're in, what court you go to, what judge you happen to pull the case law on. It is so all over the place and so piecemeal that it's really almost the luck of the draw. And there are more things that you can do to compound your case to make it more likely that the thing is yours. But really it comes down to who has the best claim on whatever is found. Yeah. Like somebody could come forward still, probably, or could have come forward with John and Mary and said, wait a minute, that was my great great grandpappy Clark's land. And I'm sure he did not intend to Clark you those gold coins. Right. So we actually should have a claim as his family to take this stuff from you. And that could very legitimately go to court to be decided by a judge. And again, like you said, it's who has the more legitimate claim. What really helps them is like you said, it was on their land and that it's super old. Right, exactly. So the fact that it's very old means that the person who buried them is probably dead, may not even have any living heirs any longer. That's one thing that it's old. The second thing is that it's old, but it's also not necessarily archaeological. It's money. Gold coins are the definition of treasure, and what we've entered now is called treasure law. There are different types of things we'll see, but there's one category of found property is called treasure, and what they found was treasure. It was a gold coin, it was very old, but it wasn't necessarily archaeological. Again, it was on their property. And so had somebody come along and said, my Grandpappy Clark buried those back when my family owned this property that's ours, they would have a claim. And pretty much anytime something valuable, especially $10 million valuable, is found in the United States, it is automatically going to get hammered out in court because the laws are so vague in piecemeal and arbitrary that it's going to be hammered out in court who has the bigger claim. But because John and Mary found something that was old, that was buried by someone, no one knows who buried it and that it was found on their property, they have a pretty good claim. Now, if you were going to come and say, my grandpappy buried that, your claim would be, that belonged to my family at one point in time, we think it still does. It just happened to be buried and forgotten or left on land that these people bought. Now, there's a pretty good chance that the court would say, yeah, but they bought the land. And depending on what state you're in, that's that if they own the land, they owned everything on it. Yeah. Or bought the car with money in the trunk or the house with a super valuable painting buried in the attic. It's sort of all the same. And this is modern times. This has been going on since the dawn of time, when people would lose or bury something. And they've always had I think back then, it was a little more cut and dried, like in ancient Rome, if you found something like that, half of it went to the emperor. Just sort of know if, ands or buts. Right. In modern England, if you find something old and rare, they say, that belongs to the Queen, but here's a good fee for you. Now hand it over. And that's very new. And that represents the new thinking in treasure law, or found property law, which is, look, we can't just let you keep this stuff that may have not just like monetary value, but actually cultural value as well. Sure. So we need to have something to do with this. So England, I should say the UK just said, everything you find that is valuable or antique and archaeological, that belongs to the crown. But the crown is going to pay you market value, no questions asked, right off the bat. So it's not finders keepers, but it's finders, here's a bunch of money you didn't have before for finding this and bringing it into us. And the point of this, from the position of the Crown or the UK government is that it encourages cooperation with archeologists and historians to preserve cultural stuff, rather than just having it sold out onto the commercial market to private collectors because of finder keeper's laws. And that's how it was before. Yeah. I mean, if it's in the UK today and you find something that is not an ancient gold coin, but if you just find, let's say, \u00a310,000 bundled together, buried in your attic or on the street for that matter, I think you have to file paperwork at a police station. The owners have 28 days to claim it and then it's yours. In the United States, it varies from state to state and sometimes even county to county, but generally it's sort of the same thing. Like, report it to the police. They need to advertise the lost property for a week and then wait about 90 days, depending on where you are, to see if anyone claims it. And then after that, they might say, you can keep it. Yeah, but maybe it just depends on where you are. That's like contemporary property that you found, right? Yeah. This is not like ancient gold coins. I found a bundle of cold, hard cash. So let's take a break and then we'll take a detour into contemporary property, because there are, like, a whole other set of laws that are kind of important, too. All right? Yes. Are you looking for an escape or a relaxing getaway or a reprieve from the hustle and bustle of it all? Well, we know just the place. 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So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office when you could be using Stamps.com? Yeah. For more than 20 years, Stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses, because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and ups shipping services you need, right, from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. Okay, Chuck, so like we said, there's some categories for property found property. One of them is treasure, where it's just straight up, I found eight cans of gold coins and it's treasure in the UK. There's not really a distinction between that and, say, like, archaeological artifacts. They're virtually one and the same in the US. Because the age of the country is young enough. There's a distinction between an archeological artifact and, say, like, treasure that's found. Right. But then there's contemporary property where the person who owned it is probably still alive. If not, the first generation after them is still probably around. And that contemporary stuff is basically broken out into three subcategories. There's lost, abandoned and mislaid property. And depending on the status of the property, the finder may or may not get to keep it. And even that, then it depends on where you are. Yes. So as far as those categories go, abandoned property is something that they say is forsaken by a previous owner who doesn't have any intention of coming back for it. So they have abandoned it. Can you imagine how you would tell whether something is abandoned or not? I don't know. I mean, unless they literally leave a note saying, finders keepers, I don't want this anymore. Get this away from me. What would it be? Like a big bag of cocaine that somebody left there? Like I can't do anymore. This is really bad for me. I don't want this. I don't know. That is the one that is the most confusing, for sure. The other two are much more straightforward. Loss, obviously, is like the example they gave is you've lost your engagement ring in the street and clearly it's something that you want back and maybe have tried to come back and find, but you have dropped it or lost it somehow. Right? And this mislabeled is even more interesting because that is something that you intentionally put somewhere but then kind of forgot it. And another good example, like you went to the bank and we're filling out your form and then, oh my goodness, you got a cell phone call and had to bolt real quick and you left that money on the counter that you wanted to deposit in the bank. That is mislade because you clearly had an intention for it and were just way late or whatever. Right. So it's not technically lost because you put it somewhere on purpose, whereas lost, like you dropped something in a parking lot. You may not even know you're missing it at the time. Right. Or you can't find it. Right. Misleading is just like you're no longer where you put that thing down, but you intended to do something with it. There was intent behind it, but you forgot or something, or you got called away. Yeah. And that property, misleading property is supposed to be guarded by whoever owns the property. So in that case, it would be the bank. Somebody from the bank should go over there, collect that money and just set it aside and be like, that guy will be back for this. Right. Which is funny because the whole lost and found box, you think that's just like a Good Samaritan thing. Well, really it's everybody just covering their behinds, legally speaking, I guess probably. So. I see it differently now, and I'm a little more bitter because of it. So this Arizona case is one of the ones where I got a little P owed. Okay, a little bit. So this is a man died. He hid half a million dollars in cans, ammo cans, ammunition cans in the walls. And years later, the person who owned that house were doing some renovations. Outcome, these cans and they were like, oh my God, it's a half a million dollars. This is ours. So this man's daughters, they knew my dad loved to do stuff like this. He loved to hide things. He loved to hide things away. They searched before they sold the house. They even searched, but obviously did not find these cans stashed in the walls. And when this came out, these daughters came forward and we're like, you know, that's our money. It should have gone to us in a will, but my kooky dad stash it in the wall again. Jerk. And these people fought them for that and said, no, find your keepers. It's in our wall. We bought this house. Well, I mean, I can understand your eye or your anger. That's what I'm like. As soon as someone stepped forward, I would have been like, oh, well, here's your money then. Like, this is your father's. Sure, it doesn't belong to me, but what if you were like, actually, we've got a legitimate legal claim to this because depending on where they were and this is Arizona, but I mean, depending on the state, when you buy property from somebody, you buy the property and everything on that property, whether anyone knows it's there or not, it belongs to you as the property owner. For example, Texas is huge on that. Huge on private property ownership. So much so that if you own property in Texas and there's an archeological site on your property that's yours, Bob, you can set it on fire, you can turn it into a recroom, you can do whatever you want with that stuff. That's your property. That's how Texas views private property rights, right? So these people may have been like, well, we're from Texas. That's just how we do it. In Texas. They had a legitimate claim to challenge. I get what you're saying, but they also may have felt like, hey, we bought this property, and this came with the property, so this is ours. Sorry. That whole losers weepers thing, I think, is what they were invoking. Yeah, I mean, that's clearly what they did. But what I'm saying is that's not cool. That money did not belong to them. They didn't work for it. They didn't buy it because the house because they thought there might be money in the walls. Yeah, I understand. And if no one came forward, then great. But as soon as these daughters come forward, that's their money to do the right thing. That's what I say. I'm with you. There's no way I would have challenged these daughters in court. Right? You would've been finders nice guys, losers. Here you go. Well, I'd make sure I'd go through all the legal process of making sure that they are who they say they were, and it all checked out. I wouldn't like, if they came knocking on my door, I wouldn't just go, all right here, but I would go through that process and then say, well, okay, then it's definitely your money. Would you, like, interview their cousins and be like, what kind of daughters were they? Were they good daughters, or do they deserve this? At the very least, you're inviting a heap of bad luck and karma upon your head. Well, if you believe that kind of stuff, sure. It comes around. What goes around comes around. That's my motto. Well, that's another one. Finders keepers, losers, reapers. What goes around comes around. And then the third one, everything I needed to know, I learned in kindergarten. Or what about this guy in Georgia, the public defender? Talk about a jerk. Yes. This guy had no legal standing whatsoever, whether he was from Texas or anywhere. I didn't look them up to see what his name was. But in 2013, a public defender found a diamond ring, I guess an engagement ring that was worth something like $10,000, and just put it in their pocket and walked away whistling. Man, what a I mean, especially an engagement ring. That's mine. Yeah. What a jerk. No, I agree. And he got in trouble for it, from what I understand, when the person went back and said, I lost my engagement ring at the target. Help me, the target said, well, of course we're going to help you. Calm down. Calm down. Peace, brother. And they pulled up their surveillance videos and saw the public defender finding the ring and pocketing it, and they put a warrant out for the public defender's arrest for, I think, larceny, actually, at the very least, for not going to links to find the person whose ring it was. Yeah, not even links. Links pick up a phone or go into the target and be like, hey, I need to speak to a manager. Well, it's funny. It says one of the things that you can and should do is to do that and go give that diamond ring to the manager at Target. And I would never do that. If it was something super valuable, I wouldn't trust them. I would keep it under my own control and go to the cops, just walk around with a gun drawing on everybody, get back. I found somebody's diamond ring. Get back. And you're like, maybe I should just go ahead and rob someplace now that I got my gun out and I'm protecting this Simon ring. And you enter into a life of crime totally inadvertent. It's a justice thing again. People should have stuff that is rightfully theirs. It's not like, well, I just happened to get lucky today. Right? That whole get rich quick like, that's what's wrong with this country. Yeah. And I mean, I know you're right about the 500 grand behind the toaster oven. The diamond ring is even more cut and dry to me, for sure, but that's just in a parking lot and it was just lost. There are certain things that you want to do if you find lost property that is contemporary, that's obviously lost, that's obviously new. And one of the first things you want to do is take it to the cops and say. Here's my name and number in case somebody doesn't claim this. But I'm officially giving it to you. The cops. For safekeeping. And then probably take out an ad in the paper or on Craigslist or both. And then kick back and wait for the kudos and the praise for being a hero. Yeah. Or for that thing to be returned to you if no one claims it. Yes. Depending on where you are. I think, like you said in the UK, it's something like a month. In California, I saw 120 days. I've also seen 90. Yeah. If you do all the right things and follow all the right steps, it can be yours free and clear. Not only free and clear, like, you're not going to be arrested free and clear where the person can come back and say, oh, that was my ring. If you are a jerk, you can say, no, it's my ring now. And the cops will be like, It's their ring now. They followed all the right moves. Yeah. They also recommend, if it's something really valuable, maybe get an attorney on the thing, like maybe one who would find the diamond ring and not return it. Right, exactly. He's a public defender, too. That's what I don't get. Yeah. Well, I mean, if it was like an entertainment attorney, it would make much more sense. It would, I guess. But a public defender is like, well, I don't get paid. This is a really thankless job and I'm going to do something for myself for once. And then they ended up in jail for doing something for themselves and then needed a public defender. Yes, ironically. Should we take a break? Yeah, we're going to take a break, Chuck. And then we are going to go under the sea. Yeah, where things get really confusing. Are you looking for an escape or a relaxing getaway or a reprieve from the hustle and bustle of it all? Well, we know just the place. Maybe you want to solve a murder in your building. Or you're just all about that paper boy. Perhaps you want to watch Hollywood's biggest monitor. Or you crave the thrill of a classic American story about horror. Or is your stomach grumbling for a milkshake flaming flamer's chip? Would you love to quench your thirst with a delicious Tranquilium house smoothie? Did you see blood analysis? As an investment opportunity? Would you wear one of Dave's wooden shirts? Do you smash glasses whilst yelling who's? Ah. 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No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No longterm commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com. Click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. All right, so this is where things get super convoluted when you're talking about shipwrecks and literal treasure from an ancient galleon. Or maybe not ancient, but let's just say gallion. It could be, yes, gallions. In ancient times, they had, you know, the oldest intact shipwreck was recently found in the black sea. Did you see it? It's in ancient Greek. Ship. Okay, so ancient Gorik. Yeah, that's how ancient. It's not even Greek. It's Gaek. It's so ancient. It's the kind that odysseus was lashed to when they were going past the sirens. It's like that kind of ship. It's that old, right? Yeah. And it's fully intact, just laying on its side at the bottom of the Black Sea. It's just beautiful little shipwreck. That would be an ancient galleon, I guess you could call it. All right, so this is where I don't even know how to talk about this, almost, because it's so convoluted, because it can matter whose ship it originally was. It can matter what was on that ship. It can matter where the ship is now resting, in whose waters, or if it's international waters, or partially on one side or the other, which is when it gets super confusing, who the ship was leased from, who was leased from, who is in charge of because most of these aren't accidents. I know that it is pointed out that sometimes, like, a scuba diver might find something like this, but usually it's an expedition looking for this stuff specifically. So who runs that or whose insurance companies have a claim and what international agreements are made. And it's almost like it's so case by case, there really is no rule. Yeah. If you thought land property was convoluted under sea, archeology property, treasure property is just totally off the charts. So that was one of the nerdiest sentences I've ever uttered. Yeah. I wrote an article years ago about undersea archeology, and I did a lot of that research then, and it is just really like, basically what happens is once something is found, then everyone just lawyers up and starts fighting. Yeah, exactly. And I think the reason why it's particularly convoluted and contentious for the undersea treasure is that the treasures that they're finding are just so eye poppingly valuable that it's worth going to court for 1520 years over yes. Billions of dollars in some cases, yes. There was a wreck called the San Jose that was discovered. It was announced in 2015. I'm not quite sure when Columbia discovered it, but it's off the coast of Cartagena. And in 2015, the Colombian government came forward and said, we found the San Jose. That was a galleon. It was a galleon. It was sunk by the British 300 years ago. It wasn't Gorik. No, it was Spanish. But it was transporting gold, silver, gems from Peru back to Spain to finance a war. It was loaded with valuables. And they think that this wreck today, the valuables aboard are worth between one and $12 billion. Yeah. This is not something that any one of these parties or countries is going to give up on. No, it's the kind of shipwreck, it's the kind of treasure that can actually affect world markets, like the value of goods on world markets above on land, because this stuff has been under the sea and out of the market for so long, when it comes onto the market, it could actually depress the value of gold because there's so much of it suddenly coming on the market. That's how rich this treasure is. Yeah. And it's funny here this article you sent. There is a UNESCO convention in 2001 on underwater. Cultural heritage findings that have best practices. They're not actually like laws and they're like, we'd be happy to help out with this, but nobody's called us. That's so UN. Yeah, they don't want them involved. Basically, they're just like, no, we're going to work it out with the lawyers. They're like, hey, thanks a lot, just go sit over there until we call you. Okay. Pretty much. So the San Jose has a lot of people arguing over it. For example, Spain is saying, well, it's a Spanish gallon, give us our money back. Columbia is like, yeah, it's in our coastal waters. That's our territorial waters that belongs to us. Peru says, yeah, you guys came and extracted that from our indigenous population back when we were Spanish calling. And that's one that doesn't come up very often, but you think it should, especially in the new world stuff, right? Yeah, like, that was our original stuff to begin with. Even so, it should have never been on that boat. Ironically, they probably have the least claim to it. Sadly enough, there's no way they're going to get it. I wonder though, if they'll get a portion of it, though. I think if they said, no, this is a thing, this is legitimate, they could conceivably get caught in, but they're not going to get the whole thing. I don't think anybody is going to get the whole thing free and clear. So there's all these different groups arguing over it. And as big of a mess as it is, it's actually not the biggest mess of a treasure found above aboard a shipwreck. There's a ship called the Notre Dame Deliverance, I think that's right, yeah. That sank 40 miles off of Florida. 1755. I mean, one of just hundreds and hundreds of ships to crash off the coast of Florida. And a US. Salvage company found it in 2002. And this is the one that I was talking about. It's partially in international waters, partially as part of the Florida Keys national marine Sanctuary. The Spaniards leased the ship from the French West Indies Company. Right. And so they all have a claim. And then complicating this is the fact that in the United States, we passed the abandoned shipwreck deck, which means all shipwrecks within US. Waters, which is like 3 miles off of any of our coastlines yes. Are US. Properties, is that right? Yes. So it's super convoluted. And that's actually the territorial waters thing has kind of been the toughest one. Or the best claim that any country can lay on a ship is no, it's in our territorial waters customarily, that means that's yours, that's yours to deal with. But when the ship is in international waters or partially in international waters, that's just a whole different ballgame. And even when something's in territorial waters like Spain is not going to go away now when two to $3 billion is on the table, they're going to say, no, we're going to use our diplomats to press at least getting a portion of this. France will do the same thing. And the sellers are like, well, hey, wait a minute, this is ours. And actually at first a Florida judge said, yes, it's yours, free and clear. Two to $3 billion booty is yours. Take it, put on this eyepatch and this cool hat and go get it. Well, but you have to get Spain's permission to go get it. Right, exactly. So Spain is going to say, no, we want to have something to do with this. But that Shipwrecked Act, the whole reason why the United States has even involved is from that Shipwrecked act of it's very similar to the UK act where it basically says, no, it belongs to us. We're in the United States, it's in our territorial waters, it belongs to us. But here's a significant portion of it, usually like 25% of it. And the point of that is to keep salvers and treasure hunters interested enough that they're actually going out and salvaging these archeological sites. But they're doing it under the jurisdiction of the state or federal government. Which says you've got to keep daily logs. You have to break the wreck site into strings of square meters. You have to catalog everything. You have to have a certified marine archeologist on board throughout the entire voyage overseeing this whole thing. You got to do it right, and we'll give you 25% of what we can get for it, which is substantial in some cases. But it's not like treasure hunting is like a cheap activity. It's a very expensive undertaking. Yeah, it's seriously expensive. And these treasure hunting companies don't just go in there and say, hey, I think there's something there, let's go grab it. They do all their research because it is so expensive to ensure as much as possible that they will have a claim to it in the end. Right. They don't just go in there willy nilly in hopes that the courts will decide with them. No, for sure, but I mean, I think that's probably a significant portion of the operating cost of a treasure hunting outfit is the court costs and fees to get the rights to the treasure, I would guess. Yeah, and in this case too, I'm sure. France was like Florida judge, I don't care what you say, but Florida judges have a big say in this. They're about as professional as you could get as far as passing judgment on treasure claims for sunken ships. Florida has the most sunken ships of any state in the union, something like 6000 to 10,000. It's crazy. Estimated shipwrecks from piracy, hurricanes, all this stuff, florida's got it all. So if you're looking for a judge who has experience on ruling on a case like this, florida is probably your best bet. Yeah. Don't go to Oklahoma. No, that would be my suggestion. That's just good advice all around. And it can also, if you're a treasure hunter. Not only can the court cost be killer, you might be put in jail. There's a guy named Tommy Thompson who's a very famous treasure hunter who found the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. No. Although, man, there are few wrecks that fascinate me more than the Edmund Fitzgerald. I can just sit there and look at those eerie pictures of it all day long. I just sing that song over and over. You shouldn't do that. It'll drive you insane. No. He found the wreck of the SS. Central America, which was a steamer that went down in a hurricane off the coast of South Carolina in 1857 with 425 souls aboard and three tons of gold, and he found it. And he went and sold a bunch of stuff and didn't pay his investors. And a judge put him in jail in Ohio, where he's been sitting since, I think, 2015, because he refuses to say where 500 gold coins from the wreck went. He just won't say. He said that he gave them to somebody in Belize, but he can't remember who they are. That's what his lawyer had to tell the Washington Post. That's pretty funny. Yeah. I'd just be like somebody and you can't remember who. Yeah. I wish we could have been a little bit more like black and white about the shipwreck thing, but it still depends on the case. There is no solid rule. There's a couple of solid rules. There's one above ground where if you are caught digging on federal land, that's a felony. And any stone tool found in the United States belongs to the federal government automatically. Thanks, I would guess. Unless it's in Texas, in which case the Texas authorities and the federal authorities would fight with one another over your right to own that stone tool. That's a good point. So I think that's about it for finders keepers. Good one. Yes, I thought so too. If you want to know more about finders keepers, go find something and say, Finders keepers and see what happens. And then let us know. And in the meantime, we're going to sit here and do listener mail. I'm going to call this Stanford Prison Experiment follow up. Angry. Follow up. Yes. You read this one. Hey, guys, I just want to say thank you for your episode on Zimbardo. I'm a cognitive psychologist and have been teaching for years and it makes me angry in a way I have never been angry before. You do your best to fact check and show that you're giving the student and she's not talking about our show, by the way. Right. Zimbardo. You do your best to fact check and show you are giving the students reliable information, but then someone pulls crap like this against Zimbardo and causes serious problems for us as teachers. How did I handle this chapter this year? Well, number one, I taught it as normal as the text. Takes forever to be updated. And number two, I showed them the video ghost of Abu grave is it abu grape abigraib? And had them write about how Zimbardo study predicted this would happen. And then three had them all listen to your podcast. Now, they are all as angry as I am, partially at me for doing that, but I wanted them to feel the effort they put into it go to waste. But I had a very interesting observation in one class. The publicity and popularity of this study, could it have actually created the dystopian prison environment, in part at ebigrab through expectation? Oh, I see. Like a self fulfilling prophecy. I guess. So. Basically, was Zimbardo, the actual Lucifer in his book, having an effect not only in society as a whole and what we believe about humanity, but how we act? We now live in his hell. Then she says, thanks again. And that is from Alison Deming from Tri County Tech, temporarily insane with rage. That's right. I don't blame her. Yes. That was a good episode, man. One of the best. Yeah. Thanks, Alison. Yeah. Thanks a lot, Alison. Thanks for writing in with the support. We agree with you wholeheartedly. It's passion, it's not anger. That's right, man. Or maybe it's anger. I don't want to tell you how you feel, man. Chuck, you are killing it these days. So if you want to get in touch with us, you can go to Stephanie.com and check out our social links. I'm at the Joshlarkway.com and we're all via email at stuff podcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseworks.com. Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's Criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen. Today you want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? 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SYSK Selects: Lying Liars: How Lying Works, Liar | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-lying-liars-how-lying-works-liar | In this week's SYSK Select episode, studies find that absolutely everyone lies - some have found as much as a quarter of our daily interactions involve lies. What gives with everyone fudging? Chuck and Josh explore the philosophy, psychology and reality o | In this week's SYSK Select episode, studies find that absolutely everyone lies - some have found as much as a quarter of our daily interactions involve lies. What gives with everyone fudging? Chuck and Josh explore the philosophy, psychology and reality o | Sat, 15 Apr 2017 18:26:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=15, tm_hour=18, tm_min=26, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=105, tm_isdst=0) | 49184700 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody. This is Chuck, and welcome to I guess this is week three of SYSK Selects, where we give you one of our favorite or maybe a timely episode from our vault that maybe you didn't hear. And we're curating these individually. And this is my pick. Lying liars. How lying works. Liar. I think that was sounds like a Josh title. It's a great one. And this is from June of 2012, and I don't know, I just remember this being a pretty good episode, and lying is just a pretty interesting concept to me. And so I wanted to make this my selection this week, and I hope you enjoy it. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetofworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's. Charles w chuck Bryant. Right. Yeah. Take it, Chuck. Josh, that shirt looks great on you today. I just want to say that I really like a checked pattern. Well, I see what you're doing. You're blinking and you're scratching your face. It looks like you have scabies, like my friend Dirty Mitch. Yeah, but that doesn't indicate necessarily that you're lying. I'm glad you said necessarily, because they didn't say that in this article, and that was a very important omission. No, they did. They didn't say necessarily. They meaning Tom. Tom didn't say necessarily. I had to write it in because what we're talking about are potential tells whether or not you can recognize a lie. And people often associate blinking, scratching the face, covering the mouth, sure. As surefire indicators. And that's not necessarily the case. No, it's not. And let's just get that out right now, because there aren't any surefire behaviors where you're like, oh, you're lying, like the one I always heard was touching your face. It's based on the idea that somebody might do that if they don't normally do that. Right. Or if before this whole conversation started and they're placed in a position where they're lying, where they're choosing to lie, and they start doing that, they are now deviating from their baseline behavior. And that's what the important thing is. Exactly. That's where you add the qualifier necessarily. Like Tom said, maybe the dude has an eyelash in his eye. Yes. And he's rubbing his eyes. Right. Or blinking a lot. So yeah, it's interesting. Rosacea yeah, that's why he's scratching his face. Or scabies. Or maybe someone self conscious because of a missing front tooth. So they cover their mouth when they talk. I cover my mouth when I talk, especially when I'm eating. Oh, yeah, sure. But you're just not supposed to talk while you eat. Yes, Emily does that because she can't stop talking ever. So she'll just talk while she eats and cover her mouth. So I'm not even going to bother to ask you if you've ever lied. I've lied today. Have you? Sure. So, have you? I'm sure. Apparently, according to studies I have. You found a few studies that I thought were a little let's get into them. Okay. They're surprising. Like, one of them found that a quarter of all of our daily interactions involve lies. That seems high. That's really high. Yeah. I don't think I'm naive. I went back and just kind of evaluated my behavior. I'm like, still seems high. Yeah, agreed. So is everyone else lying more than us? Are these just really rotten people? I don't know. That happened to be part of this random sample in the study. Well, you pull up any study online and you're going to find a different result. Like, people lie every 90 minutes. People lie every 90 seconds, lie twice a day. Right. That kind of thing. Yeah. Feel psychologist failing miserably at studying lying is what you're saying. Yeah. As far as coming up with hard, because I don't think there are any hard and fast rules. I might not lie at all today, or I might lie ten times tomorrow. If you don't lie at all today, they'll make a movie about you. Don't they make movies like that? Oh, sure. You either can't lie. Jim Carrey's case. Yeah, yeah. That's usually the plot, I guess. Before we get into the studies, do you want to talk about what is a lie? Yes. You dug this up. I like these definitions. So there's this philosopher named Cecella Bach, who is a Swedish philosopher who published a book in 1978 that apparently still to this day is like the authority lying. And philosophically speaking, they did work in the 70s in psychology. I think they were smoking a lot of weed. Is that what it was? Yeah. And she's a philosopher. So this is the philosophical ethical approach to lying. And so Sicila Bach came up with basically a definition of a lie, and she said that it has three features, that it communicates some information. Now, philosophers tend to choose their words carefully. They're like almost the poets of the humanities agreed. Especially if you don't include poetry as a humanity. The liar intends to deceive or mislead, of course. And the lawyer believes that what they're saying is not true. So they haven't tricked themselves into believing that OJ believes that he did not kill his wife. Yeah, I don't know. I think that's a different conversation altogether, because that begs the question, is it really possible to fully trick yourself into believing something you know is not true? Is it true? You always hear that that can happen. Like, you become so entrenched in that lie for so long that you don't even realize it's a lie anymore. I'd like to see the study on that, though. Yeah, I'm sure somebody's got one out there. Yeah. But so you put those three things together and you have a lie. You're communicating information, right? Yeah. You intend to deceive and you don't believe what you're saying is true. And all apologies to OJ, by the way. That was really uncalled for. Yes, really sorry. That was very uncalled for chuck, shame on you for no, go ahead. There's a big debate, though, about whether or not the lie has to have false information to it. Yeah. That's what I don't quite understand. Can you explain that? Yeah. So, example I like your shirt. And I know that you hate shirts that have armpit stains on them. Right. But I know at the present time you also have a pinched nerve in your neck, so you can't see very clearly. Okay. So I want your shirt. I know you'll give it to me if I tell you there's an armpit stain. I don't think there's an Armpit stain. I don't believe what I'm saying is true. But I say, Chuck, that modest mouse shirt is an armpit stain. You should probably give it to me, and you take it off and give it to me. And the shirt actually has an Armpit stain. And someone pops her head in and goes, Whoa, whoa, whoa. That was not false information. I get you. Even though I intended to deceive you, I didn't believe what I was saying. Sure. I was just communicating information. That's the point. Okay. But that brings up another philosophical question. Like, is a lie of omission then a lie because you're not communicating anything? Well, in Tom's article, they talk about the reason the US. Court system say the whole truth and nothing but the truth is because a lot of omission sometimes is not as looked down upon. Because you're not actually constructing some falsehood. You're just not telling the whole truth. Right. Interesting. Yeah, sure. I think ultimately you can follow the conclusion is that most philosophers believe that lying is bad, but that there are exceptions to the rule. Like if a murderer comes up and says, hey, I'm looking for my next victim. Have you seen this man? And you have seen this man, and you know where he is. Yeah. Then I'm making this really basic. But that's an example of when a lie is beneficial. You're thwarting a murder and saving somebody's life. Yes. You should lie. Sure. Or obviously, a white lie, which kids learn early on, is something you do oftentimes to spare the feelings of someone else. Right. That top does not make you look bad. I think it's cut just fine. Sure. But maybe you should wear that other one because you look great in black. Well, I imagine if you're dealing with an intelligent person, you're showing your hand at that point. Not necessarily. Yeah, but you did mention kids. You mentioned white lies. Yeah. So you found a study, supposedly, according to Tom, around age two or three, we realize that we're not being constantly supervised, that reality exists outside of other people's view. Our reality sometimes does. When we go into another room. Sure. Mom is in the other room. I'm still here playing. Yes. And it becomes clear to us that we are responsible for conveying that information. But we have a choice BG free will that allows us to decide whether that's going convey that information truthfully or dishonestly. Right? Yeah. And then after that, it just takes off like a rocket. Yeah. This one study found that nine in ten of the kids that they spied on and this is just cruel they put kids in a room with, like, a stuffed animal, or they called it a soft toy, which is a little creepy behind them and said, don't look at that behind you. And they would leave the room and videotape them. Of course, nine out of ten kids turn around and looked at it. And then did it actually say how many of them lied? I don't see that. I guess they were just told not to look at it. I don't know if it's a lie. Yeah, that's a little hinky. It's not following orders. It's a bank. All right, well, how about this? The second part of that study was older kids. They would give them a test with the answers on the back and tell them not to look at the answer, give them a fake answer. And when they were asked to explain the fake answer, they would make up a lie, like, oh, I learned that in history class. Right. And actually the question was, who discovered Tunisia? That's one of them. And on the back, the answer was a fake answer. Presidious aikman. And the dumb kid from Star Wars who cheated said, it does, doesn't it? The dumb kid who cheated put that down. But then when given the opportunity to fess up, most of them lied. What I just disagree with about this study was that it said that the smartest kids told the best lies. How do you qualify the best lies? If it's believable and conveyed in a way but that's all subjective with confidence? Sure. Totally subjective. Yeah, you're right. It's methodologically unsound. But the whole point of these studies was they believe that children who are able to lie have faster developing brains, especially the areas involved in executive functioning. So they believe they concur that a child who lies early on might be more successful later in life. Yeah. Well, I mean, you could make a case that lying is basically using your imagination. Yeah. Especially when you're a child. And they have other studies that support the fact that rich people are more prone to lie and manipulate. Rich people are more prone to do a lot of shady stuff. You think? Oh, yeah. That's how a lot of them get rich. Chuck? Yes? Do you want to talk about why people tell lies? Like some of the great categories of lies, the big six. So what you call it? Sure. Okay. Number one, Josh, is to conceal a misdeed and stay out of trouble. And even at the advanced stage of 41, this is the reason I will most often lie. Okay. Because I hate being in trouble and I will try and cover for myself sometimes, even though in the end and in the long run, it's better to tell the truth. Agreed. The short term, you might get away with something, but you're not doing yourself any favors. No. I call these lies of cowardice. Thank you. Basically, it sucks. I mean, it sucks that you're having to go through this terrible, uncomfortable moment or whatever it is, but I'm really glad Tom pointed out, at least in the short term, you might not gain an advantage, but overall, there is a positive outcome. You're building trust by fessing up or whatever. Number two, to preserve a reputation. And the example Tom use is a drug addict, recovering drug addict who might lie about having gone to rehab or something like that. Right. Or to, like, a prospective romantic partner. Yeah. And I think that these are kind of understandable to an extent. It's like we have walls up. Yeah. If you're just a normal person, don't walk down the street like, hey, Josh, good to meet you. I spent some time in rehab. Exactly. Like, there's just a certain amount. And then once you get to that point, well, then maybe you are kind of short shrifting somebody who you consider close to if you're not telling them that. But as you gain trust, then you open up more. Right. You should. Sure. Number three, this one, of course, we all get the white lie to avoid hurting someone's feelings. Yes. We already kind of covered that. Number four, to increase stature or reputation. Yes. These are just the boastful people. They're like, yeah, I scored 42 in a high school basketball game one time and one county in track. And you're like, you do some investigation, and you realize they weren't even on the track team. Right. And I've realized that when you have a lot of these people in your life, it's time to get introspective because there's something wrong with the way that you're living if you have people like this orbiting you a lot. Those people wear me out. They really do. I've done a pretty good job of shaking everybody like that off. I can't think of anybody in my life, like, even acquaintance wise, that just makes up lies about themselves. Agreed. And I have known people like that. Sure. They don't stick around. No. Especially once you get out of your mid 20s is, like, the edge of where you should be interacting with those people still. Well, and I think that's sort of an immaturity thing, too. Like, if you're still doing that as you grow older, then you've got some serious problems. But everyone, when they're younger, probably stretches the truth about things they've done. Sure, but even still, don't you remember? It's just kind of being uncomfortable when somebody is doing this, and everyone in this group that they're talking to is like, we know you're lying. Please stop. You might as well be putting bamboo shoots under our fingernails. Number five to manipulate and this is probably something, like I said, the rich people are more prone to lie. This isn't evasive or defensive. It's to gain something for yourself. Yeah. It's the most vicious type of lying. Probably so. Because it also can involve telling lies about other people right. To get ahead. Right. That's awesome. To destroy someone else's reputation. Yeah. Man, those people there's a special place in Dante's Circle for you. Agreed. Now, those people you start to run into more of, especially as you enter the corporate world, and you know what? They may be the same people who were telling the other lies when they were younger. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. They just evolved into manipulators. Yeah. And the last one, Josh, is to control information. And this is what we mentioned about indirect lying, or, like, withholding parts of the truth. Right. A lie of omission. Yeah. Which I'm more able to forgive. Something like that. Okay. Big Six, huh? The Big Six. Chuck, kind of one of the running themes that we've had here is that everybody lies. I don't think that we've yeah, you said it explicitly said everyone lies. I bet the Dalai Lama doesn't lie. I don't know. I could see him wanting to preserve harmony or balance or something like that at a diplomatic dinner or something right. With one of his followers feelings about, like yes, it is a really nice sand mandala. Sure. Yeah. He's putting a lot of high pressure social situations. So at the very least, everyone has little white lies, I imagine. Right. Sure. But there are some types of personalities that are much more prone to lying. The Big Five. Yes. Like pathological liars. Yes. They are the worst of the worst because they are sociopathic and they don't understand right and wrong. And they're probably really good liars because they don't understand right or wrong, because they're not going to have the stresses associated with guilt and lying. Yeah. Bad people. Yeah. Their consciences don't put them through their paces when they're lying because they lack in whole or in part consciences compared to non sociopathic people. Right. Number two, I've known one of these people a compulsive liar, and I really felt bad for them because they almost seem like they can't help it. Yeah. And you would think a pathological liar and a compulsive liar. One and the same. Not true. No. Pathological liar lies as a strategy. It's a means of gaining advantage. A compulsive liar can't help it. Their brain has been trained to lie as a first resort. Even if there's no gain whatsoever in line, they will still just generally lie. It's the first thing. It's their gut reaction. This guy I knew, it was really clear that he lied as a first option, as his go to when he didn't need to, and it was so frustrating. Sure. And I had a sort of a big brotherly relationship to this guy, so he wasn't a peer. So I tried to help him through that, but I haven't talked to him a long time. I don't know if it works. So you abandoned him? I banded them and this of course makes sense in his case too, without getting specific, but it said that living in an abusive environment, relying is necessary. Self preservation might be where that stems from, and I think that was the case for him. Yeah. It's like the brain has been trained to lie. Like this is what you do. But the good thing is if you run across somebody in your life who cares enough about you, they can be trained out of you, I imagine. Although I'm sure it's a painful process for both people. Yeah, it's probably you're really waiting for me to say people cult deprogramming narcissists, of course, will lie. These are the people who lie to increase stature and reputation, but they do themselves no favors. Borderline personalities, I thought this one's kind of interesting. They will go through wild mood swings and engage in really risky behavior, but then they come back down to normalcy and they're like, oh, I just gambled away our savings account. And then they'll lie to cover those up. Right. And then histrionic personalities, these are people if you have like a true histrionic personality disorder, you are attention seeking, excessively needy for approval and emotional. Apparently women are more prone to be histrionic by ratio of four to one. Oh, is that right? That's what they say. Or at least I have the disorder. And these are people desperate for attention. Like if you leave, if you walk out the door, I'm going to kill myself. That was a great example. Time use. Yeah, that's a lie. You and I were on this air tram flight once and we were waiting to take off and this caterer was backing off of the little sky ramp. He was backing away from the other door, the catering door, and apparently he was still hooked to part of it or whatever, and the store was like, no, don't. And he kept going and she turned around and said, well, we're not going anywhere for a while. And the way she said it, you could tell we were discussing this. Like neither one of us believed her. We just knew she was wrong because she threw it out there. We're not going anywhere for a while. And of course everything was fine within like 15 minutes. Right. But the way she sounded, it was going to be like stuck in a tarmac for 3 hours. And it was weird. We afforded this glimpse into this woman's true personality. Yeah. And I wouldn't have hung out with her. It's histrionic. She was a bit hysteroic and that was probably low level. You could tell, right? Yeah. All right, so stay away from her. How can you tell if someone's lying? We've talked about microexpressions. Yeah. We have micro expressions. It was like three years ago. Yeah, it has been. Well, basically, for those people who don't know that, we have a good 100 and 350 episodes. Still not on itunes. Not on itunes. The episode we did on micro expressions. Basically, a micro expression is an uncontrollable, fleeting, like, millisecond long facial expression that is linked to your true feelings. That was longer than a millisecond. I just made a quick frowny face. That was a grimace. Yeah. Was it? You look like Megan Mramm. I don't think it is. She's on Twitter going like this. It's hilarious. Anyway, you can't control it. It's linked to your true feelings. And people have been shown to be able to pick up on these without even consciously knowing it. You just get what we would call a gut feeling about somebody, right. Because their smile and that sudden, fleeting micro expression of contempt back into a smile that you didn't really see but you caught, don't add up. Got you. And your body is like, why am I having a weird reaction to this person? So that's a micro expression, and they're apparently linked to lies and lying. So basically, if you have a gut feeling that somebody is lying, you might be on to something. Yes. And it might be because of a micro expression that you saw. Interesting. You know this I know, but I still find it interesting. Okay. I'm not lying. That's a new thing. Interesting. Did you know that? That I said that I've been on that for a while. Yeah. If I ramped it up lately. Interesting. These are nonverbal cues, by the way, micro expressions. Another one is a forced smile, and I think we've talked about this, too, that's when you smile with your mouth only yeah. That's so creepy. It is. Seeing it, you're just like, what are you doing? You look weird right now. But seeing it described the way Tom wrote it, which is a perfect description, was creepy to me. Yes, it was. Another thing you can look for is like, someone's nodding yes during a denial. That could be a dead giveaway. That's terrible. Sometimes it's like, way more outward. Like you get literally in a defensive position, right? Like crossing your arms or moving away, turning away from somebody who's questioning you. And fidgeting. Finally, we get to fidgeting. Like, fidgeting is significant if the person is normally calm or doesn't normally fidget. If it's a fidgety nervous person to begin with, then it doesn't mean that they're lying. Sure, if they're fidgety and then they get calm all of a sudden, while you think that they're lying, then you're onto something there. But they're probably the weirdest person in the world. And you should force them into life just to watch them go from fidgety to normal, because that would be really odd to see. Sometimes you can pick up on nonverbal cues. Sometimes they are quite verbal. Ask me a question ask me why didn't I come over last night and help you with your lawn mowing? That's a terrible question. All right, ask me something else then. Why did you tell me that the Sweetwater thing doesn't have a date when it clearly does? Well, I'll fake it, and then I'll tell you the real answer, because that actually does have a real answer. So, what, you're saying that you looked and saw that my band gig for Sweetwater didn't have a date on it? Is that what you're asking me? Yes. Well, I mean, I could tell you right now exactly. There's a very good reason for that, Josh. Then why don't you? Liar. So, those are some of the actual verbal cues taking too long. Not using contractions, repeating the question, basically buying yourself some time. Not using contractions is hilarious to me. Like, I cannot believe that. You want to know why I didn't tell you? Why I did not tell you this. And the reason why the real reason why? No, the reason why you're not using contractions. Well, to draw it out so the other part of your brain can come up with the answer. It's so hilarious. The real reason why I said that about Sweetwater is because I just found out two days ago that they have gone with another band, and it is no way officially canceled. No. Yeah, I was a little bummed. Do you want me to talk to somebody? No. I was told that one of the reasons why they went with another band is because we didn't have, like, video and things to send to show. I thought you clogged up your 250 GB computer with HD videos. Yes, but a lot of the stuff we don't want to send out a lot of pants with of it. Yeah, I think that stinks. If you're at Sweetwater Brewery right now, shame on you. This isn't them. This is NGO. This is a fundraiser. So the fan who wrote in to ask you yes? Bumped you. Bumped me? Really? For another band? And I looked at the other band, too, like, they have a website and videos. Okay, lady, stop listening right now. No, don't do that. At least for the rest of the episode. It's okay. It was humbling. Well, I'm sorry that I brought it up, Chuck. That's okay. Might as well get it out there. I'm glad you did, because you probably thought I was lying to you. All right, where are we? We are now going to teach people how to lie, which I thought was an interesting feature of this article. Okay, I thought it was interesting. I also refused to do it. I find it wholly amoral to teach people how to lie. Do you want to skip this in? No, but it's still information. I feel like we can say people who are successful at lying tend to do certain things, but teaching somebody how to lie, I think, is just utterly wrong? Well, I imagine there's been more than one attorney give these instructions to their clients definitely on the stand. But, I mean, who likes attorneys? Nobody. But we're making all kinds of friends today, attorneys in Detroit, especially. P U. All right, so here's how to lie. So says Tom chief. No, this is what successful liars do, okay? Stay calm. That's what they'll probably tell you before you get on the witness stand. They'll push you up, especially with the polygraph. Yeah, sure. Because it measures all those fluctuations and what, temperature and heart rate? Yeah, those two things. Yeah. Just listen to keep it simple. Stupid. And this one, boy, you see this one when someone's cooking up a lie and you know they're lying, when they start adding all these details because they think, well, the more detailed, who could make this up? I was thinking about this, and I was like, while I was reading this, I was going over my own behaviors, using myself as possible not to, I guess. Right. This I did not get. I tried to think back to any lie or story I've ever told him, just adding details and information that has nothing to do with anything. I don't get that. Yes, well, you know, it probably means you're not a very good buyer. That's a good thing. I hope that's what it means. But that's like the Eddie Murphy, remember his joke about the lady caught the guy? Like the car was at the other lady's house and it was just wasn't me. That's what he kept saying. Yeah, but I called you, and I called you red handed, and it wasn't me. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I guess that kind of goes back to it. Keep it as simple as possible. Richard Pryor apparently also had a little bit where he said that he came in and found his wife or his girlfriend in bed with another guy, and she's like, who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes? That's pretty good. Yeah. Remain steady. And this goes back to the you're being studied by let's go ahead and use the courtroom example. We're coaching you to go on the stand. This jury is going to be watching you. Just remain steady. If you're all fidgety, stay fidgety. People who are good liars tend to remain steady. Right. And what we mean by that is not just like you have to keep a steady hand that was already covered in staying calm. People who are good liars continue the behavior that if they were relaxed before a line of questioning started, they're relaxed during it, and they're relaxed after. Right. If they're fidgety, then they're fidgety before, during, and after. Yeah. Because they say one of the telltale signs or one way to trip up a liar, which we'll talk about, is to change the subject and see if you see them relax, because they think, oh, man, that's over. Thank God. Yeah. Tom. Says, once the question is over, don't suddenly relax and appear related. Alright. So I can get down now. Exactly. And then good liars generally are affable, which makes sense. They make people want to believe them. Yeah. I think if you don't like somebody, it's easier to be suspicious of them. Yeah. How many people have gotten away with horrible stuff because they just seem likeable, what about Ted Bundy? How many more people was he able to kill? Yeah, and he got caught. Remember we talked about him before he got caught because he went on just a completely reckless killing rampage in a sorority house. Yeah, he killed for years before that. Yeah, but he was wide and he had a good haircut. He couldn't have been any threat to anybody. Right. I love that serial killer stuff. I could do, like, every other show on some aspect of that. We'll do another serial killer one. Okay. So, Chuck, I don't find it immoral to teach people to tell when someone is lying. Right. So that we can do five steps. The big five. Big part two. Part two. And we kind of already talked about establishing the baseline. If you think someone might be lying and you're quizzing them, look at their behavior very closely and determine how they just normally act, and just go ahead and log that in your brain. That's step one. Right. I guess this is if you're a professional interrogator, like the lady in that terrible show or online order, the great shows. Or if you're on a jury, this is good advice. If you sit on a jury to watch these people, that's a good one, too, for sure. Or if you are really help bent on finding out if somebody that you interact with is lying to you and you do a lot of pre planning, you could do this, too. But yes, before you let on that there's a line of questioning that's going to be coming up, you want to interact with the person and make notes about their behavior. Yeah. Are they a fidgety, Joe? Not literally in front of them making notes. Or if you do do that, just don't let them see what you're writing. Exactly. All right. So number two is once you've established this to look for deviations from, that pretty much a no brainer. Do they start fidgeting, all that stuff? Yeah. Or if they're fidgety Joe, do they turn into a smooth Samuel all of a sudden? It's weird. Just be so weird. It would be. It's weirder if they're smooth Samuel and they turn into a fidgety Joe. There you go. That's a deviation from the baseline. That's right. Step three. You really got to listen. Somebody might be pretty steely with their nonverbal cues, so just listen to what they're saying and is it adding up if they're spouting off all kinds of details, maybe lead them down a different path and then jump back to those details and see if they're still on those and then pick out a detail. It seems a little hinky to you, as you would say, and start asking them questions about that because then they may have to lie about the lie. Right. And if none of it's fitting, are they having to make up more information to explain why certain things aren't fitting into this? And eventually, if you draw the line of questioning out enough, you're going to drive the person totally insane because their brains are going overtime. Yeah. The telltale heart, I think. And that would happen in that they finally got to them. They didn't even know what was going on, those guys. Oh, yeah, that's right. They were sort of innocently questioning and it was all in his head. Either that or it was really a phantom heart. Right. I guess you just shouldn't murder. Yeah. Boy, that John Kusak movie about Poe looks like one of the worst pieces of garbage for me. It really does. Whose idea was that? Let's make a movie about Edgar Allan Poe as a murderous hunter. And I'm thinking John Cusack. Yeah, really? Although I have to say, abling vampire hunter looks awesome. Oh, yeah, I totally want to see that. Man, I can't wait to see that. Joshua's not in that though, isn't he? No, I'm sorry. I saw the preview for the PO one and for the Abraham Lincoln one right next to each other. Got you. I linked the two and they look similar in mood or tone. Oh, hold on. With everything adding up and drawing it out. Yeah. One of the other things we talked about the body language, where a body language might be what they're really thinking or what they really believe, where if you're denying something but you're nodding your head. Right. And she talked about ARod or somebody like that, who is involved in Steroids, and he was on like 2020 or 60 Minutes and someone broke down their micro expressions yeah. And found clearly that he was nodding his head when he said yes or something like that at one point. Hence are so dumb. Yes. While you're doing that, normally our body language matches up to our thoughts because they're accurate and true and instinctual. Right. And when we're lying, not only do we have to think about the words we're saying and fabricate this alternate reality that doesn't really exist except in our heads, we also have to come up with the body language that's supposed to match us being calm, us being truthful, whatever. And so all of this think, you think it can be confusing to a liar, and if you stretch it out over the course of enough time, line of questioning, they're probably going to be like, why are you interrogating me? Or whatever. And you've broken them. And at that point, you just drive the hammer home and literally beat them to death with the hammer. That's the inevitable conclusion of any line of questioning, right? No. What you could do though is pause. Because a pause in a conversation might make just a regular conversation feel uncomfortable. You talk about the awkward pause, but man, if someone's cooking up a lie and you're asking them questions and you pause and this is a big time tactic by an attorney with someone on the stand that will seem like an eternity to those people. Yeah. They may get fidgety or whatever. They'll turn into like Miranda July on that video tape and you, me and everyone we know where she's like, I can do anything right now. Did you see that? I did. I enjoyed that. You know what I'm talking about. I know exactly what you're talking about. So if somebody does that in the middle of a pause during a line of questioning, they're lying. And finally or they're adorable and artsy. Right. Or into mumble core. And then we talked about the last one. Step five is change the subject and see if you see them visibly relax. And then go yes. Where they're like, yeah. And they're like, oh wait, no, I wasn't relaxing. Right. I'm on meth. Yeah, that's a good way to catch somebody off guard. Or you can do the Colombo method. Let them off the hook, let them calm down and then turn around and be like one more question, is that what he would do? Oh yeah. Every time. It's how we would catch somebody. And that would be like they didn't have an answer for that. And it totally caught him off guard. And then he beat him to death with a hammer at the end of every episode. Robert Blake. Right. Peterfalk, I always get those guys confused. Robert Blake really did go to jail for murder. Yeah, that's because he really killed his wife. He was baretta. That's right. I always get this confused. But not with the Rockford files. Oh no, that's Jim. Jimmy Garner. Yeah. Great. Alright, so I didn't look at any of the famous lies in history. They were pretty much whatever standard. So we talked about the kids study. I found an interesting link from the University of Southern California where they found what they believe is proof that the brain structure of a pathological liar is different. They're actually wired differently than the rest of us. Oh yeah, I could totally see that. Because the brain is subject to plasticity. Yeah. Structurally it's different. Right? Well, that's what they say. They took subjects, 108 volunteers and then interviewed them with psychological tests and placed them in different categories of like are you a repeated liar? Are you antisocial and a pathological liar? Or are you normal? Right, I guess a normal liar. And then they hooked him up to the old MRI, the Wonder Machine, and they found that liars had significantly more white matter and less gray matter, which they believe equates to liars are quicker thinkers. Basically. Yeah. White matter is the stuff that transmits the electrical impulses. They're more equipped to lie physically. Their brains are more equipped. Yeah. I'm like one big continuous lump of gray matter. I don't think I have any white matter whatsoever. There's a donkey on, like, a ferry that goes across the mighty Mississippi. That's my neural transmission with Huck Finn. Yeah, but Huck Finn is, like, really fat and kind of dumb. There they go. Right. Now. I can. Chuck Fan And then this other thing we've touched on, the thinking cap. Transcranial magnetic stimulation. Yeah. And what was that again? TMS. Oh, it was the thinking cap. We did an episode on this, too, where there's a I guess it uses magnets magnetic pulses that can target very specific parts of the brain without targeting others, laying a magnet that can pulse right over a specific part of your brain and going and then high frequency stuff makes you, like, you twitch and stuff like that. Low frequency can give you a stutter depending on the region of the brain. It's basically just messing with your brain. Right. And the neural firing, and it can make you more creative, too. Wouldn't that one of them. Yeah, that's what they found, more creative. And people could pick out, like, prime numbers out of a huge block of numbers where they couldn't do that, where they could draw a horse really well all of a sudden. So apparently, if these volunteers were hooked up to the TMS thinking cap machine, let's call it, and volunteered to have their Dorsilateral prefominal cortex stimulated, which is complex thought and deception, decision making. And it has two sides like every other part of the brain. Okay. And they found that people who had the left side stimulated lied more often, and people on the right side were more likely to tell the truth. And they asked him, like, obvious questions like, what color is this piece of paper? Lie to me or don't lie to me. And basically it's early in the going here. I think this is from 2011, but they think this could lead to possibly one day instead of people taking a lie detector test, taking a live prevention test, like hooking them up, and basically, you cannot lie to me while you're getting pulse like this. That is crazy. So did you kill your wife? That is very crazy. No, I wasn't asking you. Although I haven't seen you in a while. She okay? Just fine. I'm sorry. This morning. Good. I'll have her send you an email. Sure. Well, actually, it's funny you brought that up because this last little study found that email people are only likely to lie an email 14% of the time, compared to 37% on the phone, 27% in person and 20% via text. And I found that interesting. I find it interesting, too. The phone makes sense because it's verbal communication. So you're more frightened. Sure. There's more intimidation, which I think probably is one of the things that leads to lying among people more frequently than anything else. Being intimidated face to face, which probably helps. Exactly. So the phone is the most liden form of communication, right? Yeah. But email is the least liden and I think it's because you don't have to vocally express it. Plus the Internet makes us all very brassy. Well, plus email, too. Also there's like documented evidence or an electric paper trail. Yeah, that's a good point, too. Like, I wouldn't lie in an email because then somebody could take that email later on and bust me on it. It's true. I would only do that 14% of the time. Evidently. Right. Well, I record all of yours and my conversation, so I've got it all documented. Good. All of it. Oh, bad. I guess that's it. That's all I got. That was a lot. It was a lot. Online we covered the philosophical aspects you mentioned the brain we poopooed psychology. We talked about the Big Five, the Big Six, the other big five. We covered everything in here. Yeah. And let us finish by saying to kids out there, although it may seem like a good idea at the time, it is not a good idea in the long run. And your lie may just make things worse. In fact, it'll very much likely make things much worse on you. Yeah. Agreed. To tell the truth. Agreed. It's a good habit to get into as you grow. Oh, yeah. Those are the people who really kind of become the best. Agreed. Later on. Not necessarily the richest. No. Although Richard Branson never told a lie in his life. Probably. But there are riches beyond the dollar. Exactly. That's what I'm driving in. Being honest as well. And the true trust of another person. It doesn't get much wealthier than that. Agreed. If you want to learn more about lying, you can look it up by typing L-Y-I-N-G in the search bar athousedupworks.com I said search bar in. There no lie. This means it's time for listing or mail. Whoa, Nelly, whoa. We got a couple of quick announcements to make. Listener mail. The first is, if you've listened to our Halloween episodes past two years, we do readings that are loyalty free because they're old. Right. And they're good. From Poe and lovecraft and the like. Yeah. This year we want to read one of your horror stories. Absolutely true. And we're going to do that through this long, complicated process by which, starting this a little while ago, June 18, and running until July 20, you can submit your own horror fiction that has not been published anywhere else. And that is between 3004 thousand words. That's right. You can send it in an email to how stuff workscontest@discovery.com. Right? Yeah. And do yourself a favor, go read the rules, because you don't want to take the time to do this and then be disqualified. No, there's a blog post on the blog how Stuff works. And it's titled something like stuff You Should Know Is Horror Fiction Contest. Get your official rules here. Something like that. And it's got all the rules that has, like, a Pivot introduction to the rules that we came up with. The key here, though, is no matter what, you have to in the email, write the words, by entering into the contest, I agree to abide by the contest rules. Right. Any email that has a submission that doesn't have those words in it is automatically disqualified. Yeah. And we don't want that because if you've worked on this, we want you to be able to win. Yeah. It's only open to residents of the US. 18 or older. 18 as of June 18. That's right. But anyway, you send them to us, we're going to read all of them. We're going to judge them, and then we're going to pick the top 16, enter them into a bracket, and it's going to be like the Thunderdome until everybody votes on their favorite. And that favorite one is the one we'll read for our Halloween episode. Pretty cool. Great idea. Josh's idea. I think he's already regretting having thought of it because of how complicated contests are. They really are. Yeah, but I don't regret it. No, I'm very anxious. So ComicCon, too. What? Yeah, we're going to be at Comic Con in San Diego. You're going to Comic Con? You are too, pal. Oh, that's right. I know. I booked my ticket. Oh, you booked your own? I had people book mine for me. Well, let's see. We're going to be in Comic Con on Thursday, July 12, and we're going to do a live podcast at a panel, right? Yeah, right there at the convention center. We do not know what time exactly, but we'll announce that on Facebook and the like and Twitter. And there's supposed to be possibly a special guest may be there's going to be trapezes monkeys, circus peanuts, the whole thing. Yeah. We can't announce the guests yet because we haven't locked it down, but hopefully they are in the fringe of society. All right, so Comic Con, horror fiction contest. It's time now for listeners mail. Josh is going to call this s y SK teaching America's youth. Okay. Hi, guys. And Jerry. I've written before you even mentioned my podcast, our list on your show once. Remember? We were the doppelgangers because we sent you T shirts that you originally thought were you. Sure? And it was us. I remember those guys. Anyway, I wanted to write and thank you. Besides being a podcaster, I'm a teacher. My fourth graders were going to be dissecting Earthworms and help prepare them for their first ever dissection. I gave them a homework assignment of listening to the Earthworm podcast. Great idea. Yes. Many had never listened to a podcast before, and I was wondering how they would react. And the overall response was great, except for the three that ended up with seizures. For some weird reasons, they found it funny that you discussed species pronunciation, which turns out I was wrong. Remember I said, can't say species? Yeah. Apparently you can't say either. No, I said species. You said it's species or species. Species or species. And I said, no, it's a species. So you're wrong in that sense. I just wanted to make sure. I don't really remember. But that's how it went there. They found the facts that you shared amazing. I gave them a questionnaire to fill out. And Mr. Zack, please spell the word questionnaire. Zach, as they listened. And almost everyone completed their homework, which is no small feat. So thank you for giving me another way to reinforce my lessons. You may have some new fans in exchange. And that is Mr. Zach at East Cooper Montessori Charter in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. Go, Cooper Adams. Go, Barrel Makers. Yes. And that would Coopers do. Is that a Cooper? Sure. I think so. And I hope it is good. I hope it is. Thanks, Zach. It's good to hear from you guys again. And where can I find their podcast, Chuck? Our list on itunes, probably. Yeah, sure. Easy on Google. We have helped shape children's lives. Man, we are crazy for that. Yeah, we always love hearing about that kind of stuff. So we want to hear it. Send it to us. You can tweet to Usk podcast. You can join us on Facebook at stuffyshonow. Facebook.com stuffychnow. And you can send us an email at stuffpodcast@discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. 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." | ||
3ff795fc-5461-11e8-b6d0-bf7f4f00482a | Selects: Planned Obsolescence: Engine of the Consumer Economy | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-planned-obsolescence-engine-of-the-consume | If you’ve ever heard an old timer gripe that things aren’t built like they used to be, that old timer was right! In this classic episode, learn about the nefarious, possibly mythical, mechanism that’s responsible for the cruddy products and waste our consumer society is based on. | If you’ve ever heard an old timer gripe that things aren’t built like they used to be, that old timer was right! In this classic episode, learn about the nefarious, possibly mythical, mechanism that’s responsible for the cruddy products and waste our consumer society is based on. | Sat, 25 Sep 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=25, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=268, tm_isdst=0) | 53582898 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everyone, it's Josh. And for this week's Select, I picked our episode on planned obsolescence. It's the one where Chuck and I turn into old fogeys and start griping about how things today aren't as good as they used to be. But it turns out that we're right. It's one of the more eyeopening and maddening episodes and hopefully it'll shine a bit of light on one of the more wasteful aspects of our global mechanism. I just made that term up, so sit back and check it out. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there, and there's Jerry over there. So this is stuff you should know. Built a break edition. Okay, I didn't I was not paying attention when you said which one we were doing and I thought, you know what, I'm just going to pick up on the clues. Wow. Right out of the gate. When did you have it? When I said there's Charles that we took Bryant planned to break okay, got you. That was pretty sharp, Chuck. Hey, man. After eleven ish years, right? It's as easy as that. You can read my mind. So let's talk about the Civil Air patrol. You just threw me off. Luckily it wasn't enough for me to stop and correct you, though. I'm excited about this one because planned obsolescence is one of those things that I think just annoying to people like us. Were you raised with the idea of planned obsolescence? Were you aware of it when you were younger? No, because when I was a kid, thing seemed to last longer. I had the same refrigerator my entire life as a child. Same metallic p refrigerator. We even got it like refaced like that's how long you could have an appliance like that. It's like the styles have changed, so just get a new front for it. That's astounding. Man, I didn't even know that you could do that. Yeah, I mean, I doubt if you still can. No, but I definitely can't. Yeah. Back then they were like, yeah, this is a 50 year fridge, so every 25 years get a new thing on the front. Yeah. Well, if you're sitting there going, agua. When Chuck said 50 year fridge, that's okay. That's the world we live in now. The point is, it didn't used to be that way. Things used to last forever and ever. Right. So what changed? That's a big question that's on people's mind. And what a lot of people point to is something called planned obsolescence, which is pretty straightforward if you think about it. It's basically companies deliberately making their products so that they last a shorter amount of time in order to make you, the consumer, have to go back and buy another one much sooner than you normally would have if the things were built to last longer. Yeah. And there are a lot of ways that this can go down. It's not always just like, hey, build it cheaper, build it out of cruddy materials. But that is certainly one way to do it, right. Obviously. With smartphones and the technology sector of the world. That's where you really hear a lot about this. Because I know a lot of people have been frustrated with smartphones and the fact that. Like. Hey. Maybe I want to go five years with a smartphone and not have a new update. Make it slow. Or not have my battery not work after three years and stuff like that. Right. And I mean, it shouldn't have to be like an identity statement to keep the phone for five years, like you're swimming against the current or sticking it to the man. Right. You should just be able to keep your phone for as long as you like and it's still not only continue to work, but also to be, like, compatible with the rest of the world going on around it. That's not the case. That's just not how things are made, especially in the technology sector, like you were saying. Right. And here's the thing. This is something that a company is not going to admit to. It's not against the law. Some people say it's a myth and it's just like tinfoil hat territory. Other people say, no, it clearly totally happens. And then other people even say, yeah, it happens. But this is great for the economy to keep people making stuff all the time. Right. So there's this idea of is planned obsolescence a real thing? And if it is real, because I think you kind of touched on it with that third group. Some people are like, yes, it is real, but it's not like, deliberate and out of, like, a sense of avarice or exploitation. It's just kind of part of the world we live in these days. I think a lot of people, though, are like, no, it is real and it is deliberate and it is out of average and it stinks. It does stink. We'll find that there's a lot wrong with it. Right? Yeah. So this early light bulb story is pretty interesting. Way back when Thomas Edison invented a light bulb in the late 1080, hundreds that people could use in their homes, he used carbon filaments, which were eight times thicker than the tungsten filaments that came three decades later. So these things lasted a long time and they were built to last. And I can't believe I'm 48 years old and I never had heard of the centennial light, which is a light bulb from 19, one that is still working in California. Yeah, in a fire station in California. And it's on almost all the time. It's not like they turn it off for 35 years at a stretch now. You probably wouldn't want to turn it off at this point. I would probably not. That's probably the only reason it's working. Is because it doesn't know. It doesn't have to. Right? They've got, like, the Scotch tape over the light switch with, like, do not turn off. It's dim now, though. I saw that it's down to about a night light, four watts or so. Well, it's been burning for 118 years. Give it a break. Hey, man, I'm not knocking the centennial light. He's my favorite little old light buddy. Not my presence, at least. But yeah, I mean, that the point, is, they were built to last. And initially this is because electric companies installed and maintained all these systems, including, like, hey, you needed a new bulb, we'll come and take care of it for you. Yeah. And then that got shifted to the consumer, and they were like, hey. And they literally were like, hey. Because there was a concerted effort that wasn't just like some abstract thought. There was something called the Phoebus cartel in the 1920s when all these electric companies from around the world and bulb manufacturers got together and literally colluded and said, hey, let's make light bulbs not last as long because we can sell more. Yeah. Collusion. Can you believe that? I can actually believe it very much. It's not like they got together like they sent some letters or smoke some cigars or happen to have, like, a conversation at a club or something like that. They met in Geneva, Switzerland, to hold a secret meeting to form a light bulb cartel to make light bulbs last a shorter amount of time so they could sell more. It's just it happened. Yeah. I mean, that's very much proof if you're, like, planned obsolescence isn't really a thing. Like, there's proof that at one point it was definitely a thing. It was a thing in one of the earliest industries around in the post industrial age. Yeah. So the light bulb cartel it's not like that just kicked off everything where everybody was like, oh, yeah, that's what we're going to do from now on. It's almost like the impression I got is that this is an independent idea that was just kind of cracked up throughout the course of the 20th century. But the next people that hit upon it, I think it's entirely possible that these guys were all sharing info. The light bulb guys were like, hey, you car makers are being idiots. Here's what you need to do the same places in the cat skills every summer. That's what I would guess, seeing that young, upcoming comedian Henny Youngman do a bit. Yeah. So the automakers were the first to hit on it next, and specifically a guy named Alfred Peace Loan, who was a groundbreaking early president of General Motors, who said, I've got an idea. We could sell way more cars if we just make little updates here or there every year to the same car, but just change it out enough so that you want the newer car. It's newer, it's flashy, it's better than the car you own. So maybe after a couple of years, somebody will take their car that still works just fine and trade it in for a new one. And he's the guy who came up with that. Yeah. That's called dynamic obsolescence. Now, we take it for granted because that's all you hear about is the new model year. But previous to that, I'd love to do a show on the early auto industry. I guess they just made cars and they were called the whatever. And when did they make new ones? Every five or six, seven years, when they had a real innovation. Well, he had this idea in, like, the so they wouldn't have been cars for that many long before then. But I think it was just like the Model T or the Model A or the box with wheels, which all of those were. Right, yeah. The actual term, though, planned obsolescence, was in a pamphlet for the first time in 1932, written by a real estate broker named Bernard London. And this pamphlet was called it's 1932. It's like the big pamphlet writing days, right. You don't get enough of those anymore. You really don't see too many pamphlets outside of, like, a government office or something. Right. Or if you're in Vegas and it's just got yeah, those kind of pamphlets. Right. But this was called ending the depression through planned obsolescence. So right there, it's in the title. First time it ever been used. And this was a plan for products to include an artificial expiration date. So the idea was, if you're a consumer and you continue to use that product beyond that date, sort of like, you know, taking an old pill or drinking old milk, except you would be charged a tax, like, hey, you're still using that fridge? It's two years past this date, so you got to pay a tax on that now. Right. And it did not take hold, surprisingly or unsurprisingly. Right. Supposedly, from what I saw, there's 15 copies of that pamphlet known to exist still, and they're all in libraries. And there were 20 originally. Right, exactly. But that Bernard London, he had kind of an idea, but it was misplaced, it was in the wrong place. Nobody wants to tax the consumer for using an item they paid for fair and square. That's not going to be a very popular idea. So he was kind of on the right path, but he found a tree and he started barking up it and it was the wrong one. You know what I mean? Yeah. But in fact, that same year, there were two other guys, Roy Sheldon, and this is a great name, EGGMONT errands, and they wrote a book that wasn't too far off that pamphlet called Consumer Engineering or Lease of a Colon in a title, a New Technique For Prosperity. And they called it Creative Waste, and just basically flat out said we should make things that are less durable because people are going to buy more stuff. Right. That was in 1932. Yeah. Which, I mean, lays the foundation for the consumer economy that we live in today. Like, that's it right there. These guys came up with the basis of it. Yeah. It got me thinking about, like there are places that make really awesome things that are like their selling point is this is really built to last, whether it's a wallet or a piece of clothing or something. No, there are these high end wallet makers now that are saying, like, this is the wallet that you can have for 60 years. Like your father. I didn't know about that. But they often say things like use military grade fabrics or this or that. And I think that's just like back then, they used to use the highest grade. Right. And calling a military grade sounds all fancy, but what that really means is we use stuff like they used to because it just lasts. And now only the military does that kind of thing. Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right. That's what Bernard London and Roy Sheldon and Eggma Erin, the foundation of their ideas, even though they were separate ideas, was that things were made too well back then. And Bernard London's idea was, well, you can just keep making them really well, but you have to say that you can't use it beyond this date, which wouldn't work. But Roy, Sheldon and Egmont. Aaron said, well, we could go the opposite way and just make stuff less durable and sell more of it. That's the whole point, to stimulate the economy. Because remember, both of these were written during the depression and their idea was to stimulate the economy by artificially creating repeat customers that otherwise wouldn't exist because the stuff that you would go by is too durable. Like if you go buy a hose and that hose is going to last you for the rest of your life. And you're not in a business where you need multiple hoses. You're just a homeowner. You're not in the hose business. You're a hose maker. Well, I'm actually referring specifically to a hose that my dad bought from Sears in the 60s. He still got it. He still had it until the sprung a leak and Sears used to guarantee everything that they sold for a lifetime. My dad took it back to Sears and they gave him another hose in the 90s. Right, but the idea of a hose lasting 30 something years, let alone being replaced for free when it breaks, that was the problem. Stuff was just made too well. And you can actually go on to etsy and Ebay and sites like that today. Chuck and there's like a whole subculture, I guess, of people who buy vintage appliances that still work. They work like they did the day you bought them. Like, I saw a sunbeam mixer from 1930 and it says, works perfectly well has a few scuffs on it. That's it from 1930. That's coming up on 100 years ago. Yeah. It also weighs \u00a3275, and it catches your house on fire, so you'll have to pay a lot of money to have it shipped. But, yeah, it's crazy because this early planned obsolescence was in the when we think of that's, when they were making great stuff, and, like, now it's progressed to the point where it's just like, let's just make pure garbage. Right, but it won't last a year. The point originally was that it would stimulate the economy if you could sell the same person stuff multiple times over their life rather than making something that lasts a generation so that they only have to buy the one hose for their lifetime. Right. Well, your dad has two nicknames now. The Herbal Elvis and One Hose Clark. All right, boy. Shall we take a break? I think so. All right, let's take a break. And we're going to come back and talk about a man named Brooks Stevens right after this. All right, so this idea is out there. Planned obsolescence. It's been written down. It's a term really kind of became more common in the 1950s, even though it was first written about in the early 1930s. And this is where a man named Brooke Stevens enters. He was a Milwaukee industrial designer, and he did a lot of stuff. He worked in the automobile industry, he worked in the appliance industry. And basically his whole jam was, no, we need to make things obsolete and not last very long because this is good for industry. Right? Let's go get that bread. Yeah, go get that bread. And keep people working. Keep people making stuff. At a advertising conference, he gave a speech where he said, quote, instilling in the buyer the desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary, end quote. Yeah, it's right there. Just make it a little crappier, a little cruddier, and you'll sell more of them over a long period of time. Like, take the long view of it. And if you are looking at it strictly from an economic sense, like an academic sense, this just makes total sense. It's perfectly normal and rational and kind of a good idea. But when you put it into practice, we've found there's a lot of problems that start to emerge pretty quickly. Yeah, and emerge so quickly that Brooks Stevens gave that very famous speech, more famous among industrial designers. But he made that speech in 1954. By 1966, years later, there was a popular book by a guy named Vance Packard called The Waste Bankers. And it was basically about all the problems that come from that kind of mentality, that planned obsolescence creates all the waste associated with it, all the unnecessary consumerism, all the keeping up with the Joneses that emerges, like, just six years after that speech. So really quickly, people started to see the problems with planned obsolescence, like, right out of the gate. Yeah. This Vance Packard, I think maybe we could try and do a short stuff on. Yeah, easily. Just kind of reading up on him. He was sort of a pre Ralph Nader social critic. And I guess Nader was a little more towards public safety. But Vince Packard, he wrote a bunch of cool books and essays. One called The Hidden Persuaders that tackled the advertising industry and subliminal advertising and stuff like that. He was like the arch enemy of Edward Bernays, I imagine. Yeah. Those one called an essay called The Naked Society, which had to do in the 1960s, I think, about consumer privacy. Yeah. Technology ahead of his time. Yeah. And then the last thing he wrote in was called The Ultra Rich Colon. How much is too much? How much is too much? Yeah. So he died a few years later, like up until the very end, was kind of fighting the good fight for saying what a wasteful, invasive growth society that we're building here in the United States. Yeah. It was an interesting dude. Definitely the kind of author that guys like Gladwell and Friedman and all of them sort of followed in the footsteps of. But he kind of laid the groundwork for that kind of reporting on kind of the ugliness of the society that sold to us. I think we should definitely do a short stuff on him. Yeah. Okay. So pinky square. Pinky swear. Okay. Your pinky's cold. Soothing to me or frightening? It should be a little frightening. I'm frightened by it because I feel sweaty. Guys, I think Josh is dead. My nose just falls off onto the table. Oh, God. Oh, let me put that back. No problem. The funny thing is, as long as you could keep podcasting, I'd probably be like, that's fine. Yeah. I like Corpse Josh. You buy me, like, a steel rod to go in my spine for Christmas. Yes. But I'd have to buy one every couple of years because they don't last like they do. It's true. They don't last like they used to. That's another thing. I really want to say this, Chuck, because I'm sure too, especially some of our younger listeners, we sound like a couple of bogeys who they don't make it like they used to. Now it's proven they don't make things like they used to. It's not just people like, pining for the good old days or anything like that. There is a definite progression of increasing cruddiness among the stuff you buy and the shortening in the lifespan and durability of the things we buy. It's just happening. Yeah. It's funny when I see stuff on social media about people complaining about their fridge that doesn't work or this or that. And like, what about the lemon law? I'm always just like, oh, that's cute. I'm sure you're going to get real far with the lemon law. Yes. Although we should look into that for a short step, too, because there is such a thing. I just don't know how. I'm sure we talked about it before. God, we even did a show years ago on extended warranties. Oh, man, I hearken back to that show pretty frequently. Whenever I'm offered an extended warranty, I'm like, wow, that sounds like a really good deal. What did we say in the extended warranty episode? Oh, yes. Don't do it. Extended warranty. It's never worth it, if I remember correctly. All right, so shall we chat a little bit about some of the worst offenders these days? Yeah. First up on the Tball t is Apple. Yeah. Apple is in the news a lot and is very much at the center of the talk among the skeptics and on the skeptics websites about their evil plan to keep you on their machines every couple of years through updates that slow down your phone, which was proven true. Yeah. Well, there's a class action lawsuit against them for it. Yeah. So here's what happened. If you live under a rock, apple got they sent out an update. That was a few years ago, and the update was shown, and they admitted that it did slow the phones down, but their whole response was, hey, this is because the battery stinks. We're trying to make your battery last longer, so we're slowing some things down in order to give you a better battery life. And then here's what we'll do. Everyone, we're so sorry. You can buy a new battery for $50 cheaper for $29 instead of $79. So they replaced 11 million batteries in 2018. Did they really? I didn't know that. Yeah, up from about replaced for $29 a piece. Sure. Up from one to 2 million in an average year. Because I don't know if you've ever seen an iPhone, buddy, but it doesn't have a little switch on the back that you just pop a little thing and put a new battery in. No, that's another big part of planned options that we'll talk about is there's a strict control over the product even after it's purchased? Oh, yeah. They want to control it through repair, through everything. So I was looking up on this lawsuit because I didn't know where it landed, and I think it's still going on. And the latest article I read was from February that said, basically, Apple is squirreling away money because they're going to lose this thing. Oh, yeah. I'm just literally setting aside money to pay for this lawsuit. That's so cute for a rainy day. Yeah. They opened up a new account. They went down to the bank just call it lawsuit account. Right. But here's the thing with Apple. It's not just the update thing. Like, anyone who has bought a laptop from them like me lately, or one of the newer phones, and you're like, oh, wait a minute, I've done since I had my Walkman. I can't plug my headphones into this thing anymore, right. Without buying a little dongle. Or I can't plug in a USB port, because there is none unless I get some little adapter that they also sell. Right. So that's a classic hallmark of planned obsolescence, is creating a newer model that is incompatible with older models. So if you want to keep using the older model, you're going to have to shell out some money one way or another. Or even if you buy the newer model, which is kind of an even bigger slap in the face, you have to shell out even more money for additional peripherals, like chargers or headphones or something like that, to make them compatible. Just making stuff incompatible with older versions. It's a big part of planned obsolescence. Yeah. Gina, I wonder how much money they made on the little headphone adapter. Oh, man. It's $10. It's like 999. I've got one. And I'm like, I could really use another one of those, because I know the worst thing that can possibly happen to a human being is to have two sets of headphones. One for the flight on Delta and then one for your phone, because they have two different ends on them. To have to keep up with two sets of headphones is basically as horrible as it gets. So I'm probably just going to cave and get another adapter. Yeah. Or just quit ingesting culture. Yeah. Flip phone. Stop watching movies and TV altogether. Yes. Sticking it to the man. One other big offender that really gets my goat. And I know we are old guys complaining here, that's fine. But the old and young alike, I think, can all agree that printer cartridges are one of the biggest, most frustrating, wasteful and environmentally damaging scams on the planet. Yeah. Which I didn't know about this. I'm just going to go ahead and buzz them because I'm pretty proud of what we got at an Epson printer at home. And it has reservoirs that you fill with ink oh, man. And hold a ton of ink. That's great. From, like a refill bottle. And there's no cartridges involved or anything like that. The bottles that you refill it from are fully recyclable. This is good. Before we had cartridges, but they didn't have this particular component, which is a smart chip. Right. So what I'm trying to say is, I had no idea this existed until I researched this, but some printers, inkjet, laser printers, home printers, the cartridges have a little chip on them, which is, I guess, what you pull the tape off of when you load it into the printer, like a new cartridge. And it actually talks to the printer and says, here's how much ink I have left. What are you going to do this Friday? Oh, wait, I got another job coming in. Excuse me. And then eventually, the ink level gets down to a certain amount where the smart chip tells the printer no more printing. They've reached the preset amount, not the amount where they've actually run out of ink, but the amount that the company has determined is enough. You can go buy another cartridge now. And these cartridges also the smart chips prevent you from using other companies cheaper knock off cartridges because the chips won't communicate with the printer. So it's like the printer doesn't know the cartridge is there, and you can't refill them. They're designed not to be refilled, so they have to be thrown away, and you have to go buy another cartridge. Yeah, and I've had that happen before in the past, where I get down to if I'm printing something out, just like simple black text, and it starts to come out a little brown, and then it just stops, I'm like, okay, if it's a little brown. Right. I decide what's illegible printer I know. At the very least, I can tell you epsom makes a printer out there that has reservoirs that you can refill with bottles and no smart chips. Give me some money. Upset the auto industry is still kind of doing the same thing that they started so many years ago, which is discontinuing parts that could keep cars running for a longer time, making those minor cosmetic changes for that new model year, retiring models of cars that are really popular just because they want to bring out something new and make it harder to fix your old car. So repairs. Chuck, like, we kind of teased earlier that's a huge part of planned obsolescence. Like, if you're the company that controls the market on your parts and who can repair your products with those parts, you're basically saying, like, I can see this product through after I sell it to the customer to ensure that it experiences just that artificially short lifetime. Yeah, and the thing that's so maddening about this is you can just hear it in the meeting rooms. And here's the best thing, guys. We control the parts. We control the repair. The only thing we don't control is the shipping. And maybe we can make some deal with FedEx on that to get a little kickback. Exactly. I don't know if that really happens. I'm just making it up. It probably does now. I've got my tinfoil hat on, but you can just hear it in the meeting rooms. And that's what's so frustrating, is it's just this steady ooze of greed with no regard for the consumer at all. Right? And just to lay it out basically in explicit terms, if you're a company and you make a product, you can control that product after you sell it by saying, if this product breaks and you take it anywhere but where, we say, you can say, like, to the apple store or an authorized repair shop, you voided the warranty. So there's no warranty after that. You just voided it. And by doing that, they can say they control what parts are. Used, which means that they can be the only people who manufacture the parts that are used. Yeah. Then you say, Can I get the fixed under warranty through you? Then they're like, oh, we don't cover that under warranty. They're like, Warranty? Moron. With the repair parts controlled, they can raise the price or lower the price. They can adjust it however they want to make it so that it's actually as expensive to repair as it is to just buy another one or close to it, to just basically nudge you toward, well, just throw this one away and get the newer model. Or they can also this is a really big one, especially also in the auto industry, they can stop making those parts, which are the only parts that you can use to repair. So it ultimately, eventually becomes impossible to repair that thing because all the parts, the finite amount of parts that were ever produced to repair them are all used up. There's no more parts available. Go by the newer model. Did you see that used? Yugo. The new used Hugo. No. Someone put a Hugo on ebay that had 480 miles on it and had been garaged since 1988 or whatever. How much do they want for it? Nine grand is what it's sold for. Wow. Which it's nine grand plus. You got to get that thing going again. It's been sitting there for that many years. It's clearly not road ready, but it was cherry. And I think it's kind of funny that some no doubt tech bro with a little too much money wanted the most ironic car in San Francisco. That is as ironic as it gets, for sure. Every time I hear about you guys Chuck, I'm reminded of remember that Saturday Night Live commercial for the Adobe? No. It was like the first car under $1,000 made out of clay. So when you got the fender bender, you just pour water on it and mold it back into shape. It's only yeah, that was from the Phil Hartman era. It's the opposite of planned obsolescence. It is. Clothing is sort of the same deal. And again, there are some clothing companies and I think more than ever now, in recent years, or not more than ever, but more than in the last 20 years, there are companies that are making really well made clothes, but they're not cheap. There are many more companies, huge stores and big brands that are just pumping out cheap clothes because they're like, first of all, the styles change. So why do you want something? You don't want anything that's going to last more than a year or two anyway. Right, but my beef and we're calling that a lot of brands might as well just keep it going. But when I was younger, you could buy a pair of Levi's and have those for a long time. Yes. And a Russian would trade you a Hugo for them. Yeah, exactly. And now. I had a pair of Levi's for probably five months before I got a big rib. Really? In them. That's sad. It's sad. Levi's Strauss rolled over in his grave on that day. I know, man, because that was the thing. It's just like these things are tough as leather. Sure. It lasted so long. Like, there's nothing better than inheriting Dad's old Levi's. Really? And it's just like four or five months. Yeah. That's pretty sad to hear. Is there a middle ground? Can I get five years? Yes. Five years would be pretty good for some jeans. I'd take it. I always put although I do less than I did before. But my jeans would always wear out. Or my two thighs, my big fat thighs rubbed together. That's what we go first. But then you can hide that for a little while until one day you can't. Right. You just hope that that day comes and you're not in public. I can attach these because they're still comfortable. But you shouldn't have to, Chuck. You shouldn't have to. It's committal. I'm going to patch these. You want to know another racket? Yes. Or should we take a break and talk about it? We can take a break if you want. Or we can wait. Do you want to wait? Yeah, we'll finish the racket. This is fun, by the way. I'm having fun complaining about how stuff doesn't last like you used to. How about the college textbook racket? Okay. Hey, this is a new addition from the previous year. Oh, what's different? The page numbers. Right. So buy the new one, not the used one. Yeah. Which is like, if you're trying to follow along in class, it's kind of maddening because the information is usually not that much, but it's enough to just throw everything off. Right, right. Whereas if they just put these things as, like, a supplement or an appendix or something in back, then you could just or even to sell the additional stuff separately. It'd be a lot better. Yeah. Sell the little pamphlet for 899 and probably make money. Yes. 15 copies. How about the toy industry? So the toy industry is frequently guilty, and this isn't the case across the board, but it kind of is of a specific subcategory of planned obsolete called contrived durability. And they're not garbage product. Basically, the toy industry isn't the only one that does it, but they're the ones that come to mind when you talk about this. And this is purposefully using inferior parts that just aren't going to last for very long at all, especially the functioning parts, the stuff that moves or where the most stress is. Anybody who's ever gotten a switchblade comb and spend a half an hour just opening it, opening it and closing it, and then it breaks on the 50th time. That comb was most likely made through a process of contrived or ability. Right. And it's a big problem. Part of the problem is that's another really good example of a type of item that is just are you going to take a switchblade comb into the switchblade comb repair shop? And if you did, how much would they charge you? Would it be any more than you paid for the three ping pong balls that you managed to get into, like a goldfish bowl where you want the switchblade come from? I don't think so. Right. And actually, we'll talk a little bit about some of the problems after this break here in a SEC. But just an early shout to the death of the repair person. Yeah. And you died. Yes, there are still some of those things, but try and find a TV repair shop near you. Well, yeah, try to find one that's open, too, is the other thing. You can still find them in any given large city, but it's not like it used to be, where it was just like, oh, in any downtown, there's a locksmith, there's a tailor, there's a TV repaired person, or any kind of repair shop. Yes, they are very few and far between, but that may be changing as we'll see. All right, let's take that break. Okay. Thank goodness. I had a lot of anxiety building up because I knew that break was looming. All right, Chuck, so I feel like we've kind of hit upon the idea that planned ops license can be problematic, but let's talk specifically about the problems it does produce. Right? Yeah. Well, first of all, let's go out some stats just so people know we're not just being angry. Okay. There was a study about four years ago in 2015 by a company in Germany, the Uko Institute. No e on the end of Institute, which is so German looking, really, it's Institute. Otherwise, they found obsolescence was on the rise. Percentage of electrical and electronic products sold that were replaced because they broke within five years rose from 3.5% in 2004 to 8.3% in 2012. And then household appliances, which is one of the big gripes for people, because those are high dollar items that you want to last 15 years. Large household appliances that had to be replaced within five years grew from 7% to 13% and doubled between 2004 and 2013. This is a really rare study. Most of the evidence about this stuff is anecdotal. Right? Like, if you ever get your hands on an appliance repair guy who comes out, they will talk ad nauseam about how they literally don't make things like they used to, and that the lifespan is like two to three years, five years if you're lucky, but prices are still really high like it used to be. Like, okay, I'm going to shell out some money for a really good fridge. And you could tell basically, by the price of the fridge how long it was going to last. That ended a decade or two ago where you can still pay a significant amount of money for a fridge that has a one year warranty and it's going to last three to five years. Even though you spend a significant amount of money, It's Crazy. Yeah. Sometimes those appliance repair people get specific, too. I don't know if you've ever had this happen where they don't just say, like, oh, these things are junk now. They'll say, like, oh, you know what they started doing is four years ago, they started making this part out of plastic. And I'd see the same repair over and over. Now Right. And it costs X amount for them to even come out and diagnose the problem. X amount to put in the new part and then you also have to pay for the part. And depending on the appliance, I mean, like, if it's 1500 or $2000 refrigerator, $500 might be worth it rather than replacing it. But your one $500 refrigerator just became a $2000 refrigerator like, 18 months later. Right. So that's part of the problem is the cost of repair when it is available can be a problem. But if your refrigerator does manage the last five years and they stop making replacement parts for it after four years, you're out of luck after five years because you can't repair it anymore like we talked about. Yeah. We had a dishwasher that broke a lot from the first year that we had it. And it got to the point where I kept paying to repair it and getting angrier. And Emily was eventually like, neither one of us were like, oh, just get the new one. She was like, Dude, we're spending more. Like we could have bought the new one for what we're spending on repairs. Because you're being stubborn about saying this thing should last longer. But you get in that sort of conundrum where you're like. You don't know what the right thing to do is. Yeah. And eventually, just about anybody's going to be like, fine, I've spent more money than it would have cost to replace it. Yeah. Everybody's going to cry uncle eventually. I think it's just some people do it faster than others. Yeah. One of the other things with planned obsolescence is a company can It's very rare that a company is just that company. Usually they're owned by some huge Uber company that owns many of that company that brand's rivals. Yeah. If something gets a bad rep, you can just retire that brand and slap a new name on it. And it's kind of the same thing. So you don't know anymore if it's a good or a bad brand. Right. And if you just have a couple of mega brands and they're all doing the same thing with their multiple brands that they all own, which is they're just all kind of making crud that lasts maybe three to five years, then that means that there's actually technically no bad brand. They're all bad brands because there's also no good brand either. And they just trade on these brand names that you were raised to hear from your parents or from repairman or whatever. That's a good brand, but this brand is not any good. And then you have a bad experience with that brand, so you switch to another brand. But there's a pretty good chance that those two brands are still owned by the same company to whom it's all the same. You're still giving them the money. Ultimately, yeah. I'm sorry this is filled with so many anecdotal stories, but I was TV shopping recently, and there was a TV that seemed like a really good deal, and it got good ratings on all the places. But then you start reading the customer experience, and a lot of people were saying, this has a banding issue where you can see, like, lines on the screen when the screen is darker and stuff like that. Yeah, it was, like, ubiquitous. It was all over the place in these reviews, and every single one of them, the manufacturer would reply and say, boy, we're so sorry you had this experience. We've never heard of this, and it's certainly an outlier to get in touch with us. And it's just so madding. It's like, no, man, 30% of these reviews say this and I say that. Sometimes when I have to call about something like that, I'm like, Man, I know it's not like I'm not the only person this is happening to. It's all over the Internet. And they're like, well, we're not allowed to share stuff like that, sir. I have to say, in my experience, Chuck, one thing that has gotten better over the last couple of decades is customer service. Do you think? Yeah, I think for the average person, the companies want to please customers enough that they make the experience of dealing with them better than it was before. I think, Boy, I'm going to have to think about that. Okay, think about it. Maybe some companies I've had the experience with, some that are so big that you get the feeling that they think it costs more to give a hoot, right? Yeah, I think that's definitely true out there. But there's so many like, I think smaller companies and tech startups come from this place of, like, we treat the customer really well. That's just what we do. It just seems to be more than there was before. Whereas before it seems like it was all big companies that you had to deal with and they all had terrible customer service. I think the 90s were, like, the zenith of bad customer service, if I'm not mistaken. Maybe. So there's a really important point that we're kind of dancing around here, right? Like, 13% of large appliances breaking within five years and having to be replaced. Like 8.3% of smaller electronics. Are all electronics those things being thrown out? It doesn't sound like that much, but when you actually translate it into numbers, you're talking about millions of things, of items, of products that are being thrown away because they broke. And the vast majority of those things are just like I said, thrown away. They're not recycled. I think in the United States, 6% of small appliances are recycled, which is a paltry amount. That means the rest just go into landfill. Yeah. And it's especially egregious, because not only is all this stuff getting tossed, but ewaste are some of the biggest offenders as far as environmental damage. So you've got 350,000,000 ink cartridges in the United States tossed in landfills every year, 348,000,000 of which aren't even empty. Right. Because of the smart chips, you got refrigerators being thrown out. We did get a new refrigerator a couple of years ago, even though our old one that we bought used was still working. It was kind of a workhorse, but we sold it and I was like, we sold it really cheap. Was like, I bought this thing used, it lasted us ten years without problems. So someone's getting a good old workhorse here for a couple of $100. Nice. So we try and recycle our stuff or sell it or donate it these days, or at least set it on fire, so it's not somebody else's problem. The good news is, though, I don't want this to all be poopoo, is there are places in the world that are working on this and trying to change things. Not here in the United States, of course, but in Europe. They are working on creating some standards. There's a program called Ecodesign Directive, which would basically open up regulation of industry based on what they're trying to do is set new standards for durability and repairability and make it the law. Right. Yeah. The resource efficiency is what they're calling. Like, you have energy efficiency, like, how much water does the disposal use? How long does this thing last? Like, put it on the label. Right, exactly. Kind of like that Bernard London's idea. But rather than it being an expiration date to where you start to get charged for using it beyond that date oh, well, this one is going to last five years. This one says it lasts seven. I'm going to go with the seven year one. Right. And because of the resources these things use, the seven year one is more efficient by definition than the five year one. At least you can make an informed choice as a consumer right. Here in the States, like I said, the federal government isn't doing anything. But when it comes to the States, there are some groups. There's one movement called Right to Repair, started in the UK and is now catching hold. In 2018, there were 18 states that introduced Right to Repair bills, some of which have taken hold, some of which haven't. But it basically requires companies to make it possible to repair their devices on their own or take it to a repair mom and pop repair shop and not have the warranty voided. Yeah, these laws all kind of different, but they have in common the idea that, okay, if you guys are going to build junk, at least make it easier for them to be repaired, like design them so a customer can repair them themselves or take them to an unauthorized repair shop. And those repair shops should be able to get their hands on parts that are as universal as possible. And you guys, the manufacturers should be supplying repair shops with repair manuals for them to reference. Like, stop doing the opposite of everything we just said in order to make it hard to repair your stuff. Put out junk if you want, but let us repair it. That's kind of what the gist of those bills are. Yeah. And like we mentioned before, there is a segment of people that firmly believe that this is all great for industry, it's all great for the economy. It keeps an army of employees working at these cellphone companies and smartphone companies and designers and engineers because of that cycle. So that's one way to look at it. If you turn over goods really quickly, then that's a lot more stuff that needs to be manufactured and a lot more trucks driving things. And it might be an environmental nightmare, but those trucks are moving. Yes. On the one hand, though, I do agree with the idea of saying, okay, we want people to buy a new phone every three years. We have to give them a reason to buy a new phone every three years. And one of the outcomes of that is that technological innovation that is happening as a result of that. There are multiple phone companies all scrambling for market share. So they're trying to out innovate one another and justify customers going and replacing their phones, but barely. Well, yeah, because there's other routes they can take. They can take the fast fashion clothing route and just do cosmetic updates to it. Or like the Easy Bake oven. It does the same thing, virtually the same thing. From the beginning of its invention till today, it was just mainly cosmetic changes that were made to it over time to keep up with the times. Just like fashion. If you do that with a phone or technology, then, yeah, you're a schlub. You're not doing your job. But ideally, if you release a new version of a phone every few years and it is just way better than the phone before, that's. Okay, yes, there's still the manufacturing problem and the waste associated with it that can be dealt with, but at least technology is being pushed forward. At least it's not just a total scam. You know what I mean? Yeah. There's also the idea of value engineering, like kind of walking that line as a manufacturer to not make junk, but also to make something affordable for a consumer. And if we built a card to the last 75 years, no one would be able to afford it because it would all be military grade. Right. Materials. Or the same thing with the phone. Like if this technological progress is happening so that a phone does actually become obsolete, whether planned or otherwise, in a couple of years, it makes more sense to build phones with cheaper parts that aren't going to last forever, because then you have to replace a $500 phone every few years rather than a $5,000 phone every few years, too. Right. The final point kind of, is that the consumer does have a little bit of responsibility. It's a little bit all of our faults, because you might want the new phone in that color when your other one works great. There was a study by the same UK Institute that said a third of all replacement purchases for things like fridges and washing machines were motivated by just having a newer, better unit, even though their old one is still fine. Right. So that's kind of on the consumer. Hit them with that. Last 2012, more than 60% of TVs that were replaced were still functioning. Mike Drop TVs. That's certainly a big one. Yeah, but I mean, the question is, did this, like, ravenous consumer society develop as a result of planned obsolescence, or did planned obsolescence develop to keep up with this ravenous consumer society? That's the question we'll leave you with. That is a big question. Yeah. Love to answer that. We don't have the answer. Well, we try to figure it out. How about instead, let's listen to some listener mail from Chuck? Yeah. This is a very sweet email from a gentleman named Tom about his daughter. Hey, guys, thanks for being a positive influence on my daughter Grace. She recently graduated from high school, will be attending the University of Minnesota Twin Cities College of Biological Sciences, majoring in cellular and organismal. I don't even know that word. Tom just made up a new word. Physiology. Is that a word? I guess I've never organized because of your shows. Oh, here, he says she's even making up new words. There you go. Because of your show's unique insight to learning, you fan the plans of desire for knowledge. You routinely reinforce how awesome and cool knowledge and education can be. I started listening later than she did to try and listen to an episode each way, and then tried to listen to an episode each way from work every day. I've heard you read listener mail from other parents that compliment how you always give us something to talk about with our kids. That is also true in our home. Recently, on our vacation to go skiing in Colorado, we stopped at a Pony Express station in Nebraska. That's awesome. Your influence is beyond academics, too. She's involved in her community and articulates educated opinions for her passions. She will turn 18 this fall and is looking forward to voting. Many of the examples you give in your podcast have empowered her to take positions on social issues. I hope you know the importance and influence of your show, guys. We look forward to your show in Chicago. Nice. Yeah. So Tom and the family are coming from Rockford, Illinois, to Chicago. Thanks, Tom. And what was Tom's daughter's name again? Grace. Grace. Grace, thank you very much for making us look so good. Yeah. And good luck in school. Congrats. Good luck with that major. Yeah. We'll see you guys in Chicago. I guess that's it. If you want to get in touch with us, like Grace and Tom did, you can chuck onto Stuffysheno.com and check out our social links. Sure. And then you could also just send us an email. And if you want to do that, send it to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
How Fire Breathing Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-fire-breathing-works | As part of their strange, ongoing suite on circus arts, Chuck and Josh discuss one of the more dangerous crowd favorites, aspirating extremely flammable chemicals from one's mouth onto a flame, creating a ball of fire. It's straightforward, yes, and stunn | As part of their strange, ongoing suite on circus arts, Chuck and Josh discuss one of the more dangerous crowd favorites, aspirating extremely flammable chemicals from one's mouth onto a flame, creating a ball of fire. It's straightforward, yes, and stunn | Thu, 26 Dec 2013 14:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=26, tm_hour=14, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=360, tm_isdst=0) | 30497303 | audio/mpeg | "What if you were a major transit system with billions of passengers taking millions of trips every year? You weren't about to let any cyberattacks slow you down. So you partner with IBM to build a security architecture to keep your data network and applications protected. Now you can tackle threats so they don't bring you to a grinding halt and everyone's going places, including you. Let's create cybersecurity that keeps your business on track. IBM let's create learn More@ibm.com 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 Barrettunde Thurston connects with impactful organizations like the Trevor Project, Doctors Without Borders, and the University of Kentucky. Plus, inspiring individuals like Amy Allison and Juan Acosta to discuss ways to maximize our impact. Listen to Force Multiplier on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast. Brought to you by the allnew 2014 Toyota Corolla. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetofworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And this is stuff you should know, too. Hot addition. This is an addition to our long standing circus art suite. What else have we done? Done human cannonball. Sure. We've done lion taming. Yeah. Lion tame. Good one. Or animal taming in general, maybe. I think it was called lion taming. Okay. But there seems to be, like, a couple more. Yeah, maybe. Did we do that spear that the motorcycle guys ride in? Big super. What do they call that thing? Probably the Cage of Death, because it's the most dangerous thing ever. It's pretty dangerous. Gosling did it, though, in that movie? Did he actually do it? No. Okay. Of course not. What movie was it? The Pines One. Yes. Place beyond the Pines. Among the Pines. Beside the Pines, around the Pines had something to do with the pines. It had a pine smell to it. Yeah, that was a great opening shot, though, I have to say. Oh, is that I haven't seen a movie. It's a long, continuous shot that eventually takes him from his trailer into that sphere of death. Well, now the whole movie is pulled. You might as well tell everybody the what final part of the plot is. Is it called the de NU mall resolution? Yeah, the last act, it's called Denu mall frenchie. All right. Circus arts continued with fire breathing. I just did it. Did you see that, Chuck? Or what are some of the other names? Because breathing is technically kind of a weird thing to call it. That's the most common fire blowing is one fire aspirating. And apparently I read something on Houseapoi.com, which is basically a fire arts website. They were saying, like, there's a medical term for aspirating, which is to introduce air into the lungs and they wanted to go out of their way to point out that that's not what they were talking about when they call it aspirating. Okay. They were using the other definition, which is exhaling a mist. Vaporous. Mist. Got you. So aspirating is probably the best term, technically, for it, but everybody calls a fire breathing. Yeah, because what do they call the people that yellow barker isn't going to say, step right up and see the fire aspirator. Yeah. They may have some of those old timers where they were in the big words fire aspiration. You'd have to say it like that. Exactly. Like Walter Winter. Exactly. For some reason. Chuck? Yes. Have you ever seen somebody breathe fire? Sure. You have. In real life? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, like the smaller circuses Lapalooza. Well, I did see the gym rocha back. Do they have a fire breather then? I don't remember. I just remember the guy that hung from needles through his teeth, and I remember eating glass and stuff. But there had to be a fire breather in there. Well, apparently that was around the time of the fire breathing revival. They think that it's possible people were fire breathing back in ancient Persia. Apparently, that's where naphtha was discovered, which will talk about yeah. Fire breathing as we know it probably came about around the 18th, 19th century, around the time when circuses started. As we understand them, medieval traveling players gave way to traveling circuses, which gave way to big circuses. Right. And then it just kind of died off for a little while until a little known guy named Jean Simmons started doing it at shows for the band called Kiss. Yes. What does it stand for? Knights and Satan Service. Is it really? No, that's not a rumor. Is it a rumor? Yeah. That's not true at all. Okay. They just want to party. Bunch of Jewish guys from New York that wore makeup. So yeah, Gene Simmons used to do it on stage at Kiss shows. Still does. I didn't know that. Did you? That he did that? Oh, yeah. That was his big trick. So you've been in a Kiss tribute band before. Did anyone breathe fire? I see pictures. We dressed up as Kiss for a Halloween concert that we did. Same thing. We did not play a single Kiss song, though. Oh, got you. Because they're kind of crappy. Well, did they go and breathe fire? No. I should have had the blood capsules, too. So Gene Simmons taught a guy who was in a tribute band called Black Diamond how to breathe fire so he could do a better tribute act. And that guy eventually started this whole well, he kind of introduced fire breathing to the whole urban, tribalism, raver, goth culture. And then there you have it. Now we have fire breathing. So Gene Simmons is responsible for the resurgence in the 1970s of our reading. Pretty much. All right. Yeah. So if Jean Simmons can do it you say anybody can do it. And you're pretty much right. But the thing is, it takes a certain kind of person to brief fire. And with that, I feel like we should see away here. Yeah, big time. Like, this is fire breathing. So there's actually stuff called fire arts. It's a subsection of the circus arts. And it's basically anything dangerous to do with fire. Yeah. Juggling breathing, eating. Eating fire. Sure. Anything you can do with fire is pretty dangerous. Fire breathing is far and away the most dangerous of the fire arts. It is extraordinarily dangerous, you could say extremely dumb to do. Yeah. And I used to think that when I saw it, I was like, I could do that. You just put it in your mouth and you just blow the fine mistake. Just spit it out. But you will end up burned and disfigured if you just try that on a whim, which we'll get into. I was reading an article by Penn Julette about fire eating, and the whole time he was talking about how dumb it was and don't do it. But then he's giving us step by step, which is what we're going to do, kind of. Yeah. But he was saying that fire eating and fire breathing, any of the fire arts are one of those rare things where even if you do it right, you're still going to get hurt. Yes. You're not going to come away unscathed. And in addition to the immediate problems you're going to have, you can have long term problems, which we'll get into as well. But we should say that just from the outset, people who are fire breathers typically won't teach you how to do it. Yeah. If you ask them to. And they will also tell you, don't listen to podcasts, don't read magazines, don't read books, don't go to websites. Like all of those things have problems. And if you really do want to learn how to breathe fire, then go find somebody who does this and has done it for years and knows what they're doing, a professional, and ask them if they will teach you how to do it. This is the only way you can possibly even remotely safely learn how to breathe fire. That's right. And for this article, who wrote this? This is a Tracy Wilson jam. Well, you know, it's thorough. Yeah. But she interviewed a couple of professional fire breathers, mike Garner and a lady with the stage name of Paylay. We're going to be quoting from them. And a lot of this is their expertise on the page. So we just want to shout out to them. Yeah. I don't know if they're still doing this, but I bet they are. Like, who hangs up their boots, their spurs? If you're a fire breather, I think when your mouth falls out. Well, they've both been hurt. Yeah. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but we're pretty excited about summer. I mean, what's not to like? School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's right. And that's where True crime podcasts on Amazon Music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. Yeah, and with so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. Prepare to go deep and become your own detective in the world of serial crimes and unsolved mysteries. Get lost hearing spooky stories with a combination of detailed research and lighthearted analysis. Whether you're a lifetime fan of true crime or you just feel like being entertained while doing the dishes at night, there's a podcast out there for you. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. What if you were a 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. All right, so let's get into it. All right, so with fire breathing, you've got basically two things that you need. Yeah. You need a fuel source and a flame source and a mouth. Yeah, that's pretty much it. Yes. You don't even technically need a hand. You could use some sort of robotic arm to hold your flame source. So really, you just need a mouth, a fuel source, and a flame. And like you said, you thought you could just do that. You put a little fuel in your mouth and you spit it out the flame and you're fine. Yeah, I was just going to do a tiny bit, too. Well, apparently it's all you want. You want about a shot's worth yeah, so I already would have done too much, probably thinking it was little. Right. And I have a huge beard, which is not a good one. Yeah, that's another big one, too. Some people say that you should do this unclothed from the waist up just to prevent your shirt from catching on fire, whatever. Sure. But the key to fire breathing, apparently, is the mist you produce. You don't want the fuel to be you want to kind of atomize the fuel in your mouth with the spit. You want to create this mist because if it's not misty enough, the fuel will be too heavy to catch fire and land on the ground and just burn the ground. That's right. And if this is something that eventually you want to try and do professionally, and you get hooked up with a professional and they're going to give you lessons. They're not going to hand you a cup of Coleman fuel and say, let's give this a try. They're going to hand you a cup of water and they're going to say, we're going to be getting this missed correct and the angle correct for the next two years. Yeah. Until you ever touch fuel to mouth. And speaking of angle, that angle needs to be between 60 and 80 degrees, because if it's too low, it might get on your body. If it's too high, it might fall back onto your face. And that's really important angle. That's the angle of the mist coming out of your mouth in relation to the ground. Yeah. Okay. Is that confusing? Yeah. Okay. They're like, what are you supposed to lay on a board at a certain angle? So the first thing you want to do, or the first thing the professionals do, is examine their surroundings. You got to check the wind, of course, even if they're indoors. And Garner actually paylay, says to actually watch the flame on the torch is the best way to tell what the wind is doing. Yeah. But it can all change in a moment. Oh, yeah. It definitely can. Wind direction. And you're in trouble. Yeah. Big trouble. You also want to this is not something you want to show up to. Just put the fuel in your mouth and blow into a flame. You want to do a little reconwork first. Sure. You want to make sure there's no power lines around where you're going to be blowing fire. Yeah. You want to make sure that you know where the people are going to be and where they're not going to be. You want to know which direction you're standing, the wind direction, wind speed, all that kind of stuff. Trees. Yeah. No low hanging fruit nearby. That's right. And then once you've kind of got your missed down your angle of your head and the knowledge that you don't want to blow fire toward power lines, it's time to investigate what kind of fuel to use. That's right. There are all kinds of fuels. One thing that you want to always avoid is gasoline or just straight up alcohol. It's not safe. Yeah. Methyl alcohols are extremely toxic. And Pele points out ethyl alcohols can induce drunkenness. You do not want anything approaching drunkenness while you want to be a sober as a sober judge while you're fire breathing. Yeah. And both those alcohols have very low flash points, too, which makes them more dangerous. Yeah. And here's why. So there's something called blowback. Yeah. If something has a low flash point, that means it ignites at a low temperature. Right. So if you're spinning fuel at a fire source, a flame source, that fuel that's close to your mouth, if it has a low flash point, could conceivably catch fire. So the trail of fire can follow the path back to your mouth and then catch your mouth on fire while you have a mouthful of fuel. Yeah. The trick that you also should never do, which is what? The aerosol can, and making that into a flaming torch, I've seen it crawl back up toward the nozzle when someone else is doing it, and that's really dangerous. That's the same thing. Same exact thing. Right. But imagine you don't have a cap that closes a valve with your mouth. Right. And you have fuel all around your mouth from the little spittle miss that you've been making with it. It's a bad scene when blowback happens. And so to avoid that, I should say fire breathers use fuels with high flash points. Yeah. So you want to look at your flashpoint, you want to look at the toxicity, even though most of these are going to be fairly toxic because you're putting this in your mouth. Well, there actually is one that's non toxic that apparently works. Cornstarch. Yeah. Yeah. Apparently cornstarch processing plants used to blow up in the 19th century a lot. Do you remember that sugar plant blew up in Savannah? No. Well, a sugar plant blew up in Savannah, and it blew up because of sugar dust. Anything that's that small can explode, can ignite. So cornstarch can as well. So it's nontoxic. But the problem is if you get it into your lungs, then it can cause problems. But did they actually use that professional fireworks? I saw it on House of Pois, right? Yeah. Okay. And hey, House of boy, they know what they're talking about. Love. You said that like it was the National Archives or something. It pretty much is. It's the National Archives of Fire Breathing. Right. So the taste and the smell, because, like we said, you're going to put this in your mouth, and there's also going to be people around, and you don't want to offend people with some maladrous toxic fumes. You don't want all kinds of awful smoke, and you want it to make a nice flame that has a nice color, and it's very visible. Right. So all this goes into choosing your fuel. That's right. The most prevalent fuel that I came across in researching is kerosene, which is also known as paraffin. And it's toxic. But as far as the fire breathing fuels go, it's one of the least toxic ones. Paraffins actually used medicinally as a laxative, which means that you can suffer anal seepage as a fire breather, if you use paraffin as a source. Yeah. That's one of the side effects of paraffin. Laxative use all right, never mind. They both have kerosene and lamp oils. Another one, they both have high flashpoints, so they're a little bit safer and they burn at low temperature. But they're bright. Yeah, but they are smoky, and they do have a pretty nasty smell, and neither one of them is really safe to ingest. Right. And they do have toxins in the additive. So nothing's like perfect. No, like choosing the lesser of the evils. I think there was a lamp oil that was colorless and odorless, but it turned out to be extremely carcinogenic because whoever was making this stuff used additives to make it colorless and odorless, and those things were very deadly. Isn't that weird? Yeah, that's weird. I mentioned Coleman Fuel earlier. That's what I use, like camping. A lot of camp stove and stuff use Coleman fuel. That's what pendulate uses for fire reading, aka white gas or lighter fluid or naphtha. And that has a low flash point. So it's more volatile and it's toxic, of course. And a lot of people say it is more dangerous inside with the kerosene over the Coleman fuel. That's a common brand name fuel, by the way. Right, but it's almost like Tylenol fuel or Kleenex fuel. Yeah. So we talked about avoiding alcohols in general. You got your fuel, you got your mouth at the right angle, and you get the mist going on. Now you need a flame source. This looks like a match, right? No, no. You'll catch your whole hand on fire, you want something that you can keep away from your hand. Yeah. So a torch, usually there's actually torches that I think are made for this kind of stuff. Sure, you can make your own, but you want to be, I should say fire breathers can make their own, but they want to be careful with the materials they use. Like, for example, let's say you had a wad of cotton and that you were going to dip in naphtha. Right? Okay, makes sense. But the wad of cotton is not going to stay there. You need to wrap it around with something. Well, you have to be careful what you wrap it around with. If you wrap it around with rope, it can break and fall into your mouth. If you're doing a fire eating trick. Same thing with nylon rope. That stuff will melt and drip into your mouth and just burn until it feels like going out. Yeah. So you want to be careful what you use. And from what I understand, you want to kind of pony up for the torch, the premade torch. That's what I would get designed by a professional not to burn your face off. Yeah. If you're going to be a professional fire eater, you're not going to cheap out on the torch. Right. And I mean, really, that's going to be your most significant investment, unless you have to pay somebody to teach you, because how much is lamp oil? How much is your mouth? Your mouth is free. Probably not much. Yeah, this is pretty low buying. I guess it is, but a high cost if you do it wrong. Well, let's talk about the high cost. Well, dangers in safety. There's one thing called fire eater pneumonia, and that is a condition that they're prone to called hydrocarbon pneumonitis. Basically, that's from inhaling fuel. And they've nicknamed it fire eater pneumonia because it must just be a common thing in that trade. Yeah, it can lead to coma. One of the signs of it is stupor, collapsed lung. You can also get a fluid build up in the lining of the lungs. It's not good. No good. That's not the only problem. We also talked about blowback, because if you think about it, you can influence the direction of the flame, but you're incapable of controlling it, especially outdoors. So, first of all, even without blowback, the wind can direct the flame in a different direction that you want it to. And all of a sudden, you or somebody you care about is on fire. Or maybe someone you don't even like that much, but you don't want to be in the hook for setting. Exactly. You could still be liable. Trees on fire. There's things that catch fire when you're fire breathing, even under the most perfect of circumstances. Yeah. Some of the lesser effects over time skin irritation, ulcers in the stomach, gum disease and dry mouth poisoning. And general respiratory distress. Like if you're a pro fire breather, it's not a normal thing to put this toxic fuel in your mouth and blow it back out. So over time, it's going to catch up to you. Yeah. And don't forget anal sweepage. You can that's another one for using paraffin. But they do take a lot of safety precautions. Paylay points out that they work with partners who are very adept at putting out fires. They train them in how to put out the tools, how to put out the person, how to put out the area around it if anything bad happens. And it's basically just an assistant there in case anything goes wrong with all of the accoutrement. Like a fire signature. A wet blanket. Yeah, like literally a wet blanket. I guess that's where the term came from. Fire breathing. Don't be a wet blanket. Yes. In this case, we want someone to be a wet blanket right at the right time. And the person is not only good at extinguishing a tree or a loved one, they're good at extinguishing the fire breather himself or herself and calling 911. Yeah, it's probably a good idea to have the old cell phone handy, but you want to have someone you trust and who's not going to panic. Yeah. You also want to have a first aid kit and make sure you have everything you need. You just don't drive up Willynilly if you're a pro, you've got all the stuff squared away. You've talked to the local authorities, maybe the fire marshal. You've said, here's what we're going to do. Is it okay, here's my fire plan. Yeah, there's another one. Pale was saying that she contacts the local fire department or the local fire marshal and says, hey, I'm going to do this. Are we cool? And then here's what happens if things go out of control? The fire marshal says, yeah, that looks good to me. Hey, Jimmy, pass out lasagna over here. Fire marshals are known for loving lasagna. Yeah, well, I think that's all those guys do is eat, right? Eat lasagna or just good food. Yeah, that's why people go into that business, right? I don't know. Hang out with the dudes and eat good food. Is that really Dalmatian? Is that it? No, they're saving lives, buddy. We talked about where Dalmatians became associated with firefighting, right? At some point, we didn't. Okay. It wasn't standalone. I wonder what it was. I can't remember. Okay, so, another thing you can do to minimize the effects of fuel on the body is in between axe, you want to make sure all that fuel is cleaned off of your facing hands. Yeah. Don't forget any of that. I mean, literally, what they do is they blow. They put the torch down, they wipe their mouth with a wet rag. Sure. And then they spit whatever fuel remains in their mouth back into the fuel cup and wipe their mouth and hands again. And then that's one blow of the thing. That's one blow, ideally, one breath. Yeah. They also recommend or some of the tricks of the trade, at least, is to eat like bread, drink milk, and an acid. Yeah. Just kind of funny when you think about it. pendulate was saying, like, the burps that you will have after this really are indescribable interesting. Like, a little puff of smoke comes out. I think it's worse than that. Okay, that'd be the card. The smell and the taste of it are just horrible. Wow. There are associations, real professional associations. The North American fire artists association and the national fire protection association have guidelines for all this stuff with performance safety. So does home of poi. Let's go ahead and get to the poi. So, the poi we didn't even mention it in the Maori episode, did we? No. So, poi are two heavy balls on a string that you've seen, like Koolaid answers, like swing. And thanks to the centripetal force, they maintain this distance. Although it takes a lot of agility and strength in your arms to spin these things. Well, somewhere along the way, some Maori said, hey, let's fight this on fire, because it'll look really cool. And it does. It does look very cool. So, pois are one of the implements you can use for fire arts. Yeah, it's not juggling, but it's almost sort of light juggling, fire spinning. You can juggle with fire, as this one person points out, pretty much any juggling prop you can catch, you can light fire. That's right. Yeah. And we talked about fire eating, too, which is basically taking your torch or whatever. You get your mouth really wet with spittle, apparently so wet that you can form a spit bubble very easily across your mouth when you open it. And then you put the torch in there and extinguish it, close your mouth around it without touching it. Yeah. So that apparently, is where all the practice comes in for fire eating, is you don't want the torch to touch anything inside your mouth, and when you close your lips to extinguish it, you don't want them to have to touch the torch itself. It's probably hot. It's very hot. And then also, if you have just recently dunked your torch, some of the fumes will stay in your mouth and catch fire. And you can hold fire in your mouth and have somebody light a cigarette or cigar or what have you off of it pretty cool. That's a trick. There are different ways of breathing fire depending on what kind of plume you want. You can alter your mouth and how you blow the stuff out into different types of tricks, like the basic pop or the volcano or the fire breathing from palm flame. Oh, I'll bet that looks neat. The old ground lifter or the old Challenger classic fire breathing moves. Yeah. And if you go to which website was this? Probably home of Poy. They have little video demonstrations of each one of these the around the world, the one beat weave, the connectity shuffle, the carousel, and they're all a little bit different. And I guess if you're a fire breather, then you want to master each one of those. Yeah. And there's a record, Chuck, for the straight up pillar of fire. 28ft. Somebody exhaled a 28 foot pillar of flame once. And it's all about breathing, too. I don't know if we mentioned that it's not just forming a mist. Like, you have to do breathing exercises so you can take a huge deep breath first, because you can't breathe with that fuel in your mouth. You'll aspirate the vapors. You have to be exhaling the entire time. Yeah, just exhale. So you have to be able to take a deep breath and then exhale it at a steady rate or control it however you want. And also atomize the fuel with your mouth. There's a lot to it. It isn't something that anybody can just do. No. It takes a lot of practice. Yeah. Should we go over some more of these world records to give these folks there do most flames blown in 1 minute. 85 by Preacher MUA Dib in Italy. 85 in a minute. That's like yeah. Is that the rhythm? I don't know. I'll get you 85 at least. Most people at once. 293 participants in an event in 2009 in the Netherlands that seems very dangerous. Yes. How about this one? Continuous firefly. Okay. 9.98 seconds. Wow. By Frederick Carlson in Sweden in November 2011. That's a long breath. Heck yeah. That's a real long breath. And Antonio restivo in January of 2012 in Vegas. Breathe a plume. 26ft five inches. So I saw 28ft feet in out Antonio. Yeah, maybe. Or else Antonio is the one. That my source is wrong or Antonio has arrival and they continually best each other by, like, six inches each year. It's his older sister. Also, one of them dies of mouth cancer, probably. And that's a nice bummer way to end this. Well, I think I want to remind everybody. Yeah. It's dangerous. It is very dangerous. Yeah. Be careful out there. Burning. We've talked about burning. It's not a fun thing to go through. No, it's not something you should be playing around with. I think that's what we hit upon is the worst way to die, remember? Yeah. If you want to hit on a constant pain that won't go away, that morphine can't even take away, then burn yourself really badly. All right. I'm the one with the bummer ending. Hey, if you're into that so you got anything else? All right, if you want to learn more about fire breathing, type fire breathing into the search bar houseofworks.com. It'll bring up this awesome episode. And since I said awesome episode, that means it's time for a message break. Hey, Chuck, it's summer, which means school is out, sun's shining, the daylight lasts longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story, isn't there? There sure is. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, you can tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, my Favorite Murder from Exactly Right Media. That's right. Part true crime and part comedy, my Favorite Murder takes you on a journey through small town mysteries and major laughs, all in the same week. That's Right hosts Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark Banter with each other, sharing their favorite true crime tales and explore unique hometown stories from friends and fans alike. And they're both great, and it's a fun show, and you should listen. So listen to new episodes of my favorite murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. What if you were a gigantic snack food maker and you had to wrestle a massively complex supply chain to satisfy cravings from Tokyo to Toledo? So you partner with IBM Consulting to bring together data and workflows so that every driver and merchandiser can serve up jalapeno, sesame and chocolate covered goodness with realtime datadriven precision. Let's create supply chains that have an appetite for performance. IBM let's create. Learn more at IBM. Comconsulting. And another thing from us to you now is listener mail. Hey, before I do the listener mail, I think we got a little something special to announce. We do. So you know our friends at Coed, the Cooperative for Education, if you don't go back and listen to our part one and two Guatemala adventure. But they help build literacy among school kids in Guatemala. And remember, we had call outs for people to go and sponsor their scholarship students while they reached their goal for the 2014 school year. Awesome. And we said that we would read out all the stuff you should know. Listeners who donated, we have the last one of the year, Chayla Garcia. Glenn. Awesome. Yes. So thank you, Chayla. I hope I'm saying your name correctly and all of you stuff you should know. Listeners who went and helped out students through coed. And if you're interested in learning more about it and figuring out how you can help out, no matter what time of year or what goal they've reached, they're always very happy to receive a donation or help of any kind. Sure, you can go to coeduc.org and that will lead you to all of the places you need to go. Very cool. All right, so listener mail. Yes. I am going to call this American Werewolf in London, dudes. Guys have just listened to the Werewolf podcasts and I'm also a huge fan of that movie and I thought I'd share my experience of the first time I saw it when I was eight years old. It was a big family affair as we were the only ones who had a VHS player at the time. Oh, yeah, remember that stuff? Sure. So my uncle and aunt came to watch it, too. My uncle was my hero at the time as he was serving in the Navy and also the Navy boxing champ. He told me that if any werewolves came knocking on the door in the middle of the night that he would be safe as long as he stayed behind him. So anyway, we watched the movie. I loved every minute of it. I was only a little bit scared, not too much. But around midnight that night, I went to bed safe in the knowledge that Uncle Allen was in the next room. Just then I started to drift off and I heard a blood curdling scream from outside my window, followed by shouts of help and he's going to kill me. I was out of bed in a flash, getting ready to bravely run away, hide behind Uncle Allen, when I see a figure running up to the front door through that weird 80s bubbleglass. That was all the rage back then. Then this figure starts frantically banging the door, shouting, he's going to kill me. He's going to get me. He's going to kill me. Naturally, I had brown underpants at this moment, as most eight year olds would after watching that movie and then hearing and seeing this person screaming through distorted shapes. By this time, my uncle, along with the rest of us, were up and he opened the door to see what all the fuss was about. I was expecting to see a bloodied and torn to Shred's victim of a werewolf attack, but it turns out it was. One of our neighbors. I found out later had mental health issues, was having a delusion that he was being chased by monsters. It's pretty weird timing. Yeah, that took a really sad twist. The night this kid sees us so it's like bad timing. Plus, his neighbor is like that bad off mentally. It is sad. But guys, we calmed him down and made him a nice cup of tea because in England, that solves everything. And mom took him home when he was okay enough to think rationally, so they took care of the guy. And that is from Al, who is now in Australia. Wow. That's a heck of a story. Yeah. Beats my werewolf in London story. Went to bed. Yeah, it was pretty uneventful. Yeah. If you have a great story about something that we've talked about, I know it's vague and nebulous, but that's good. It's a wide net, basically, is what we've just cast. That's right. You can tweet to us at s yskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffyturno, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. And as always, check us out at our home on the Web stuffyoushaneo.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetepworks.com. Brought to you by the all new 2014 Toyota Corolla. 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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442c9d02-53a3-11e8-bdec-37874791949c | Fallout Shelters: Probably Useless (Let’s Never Find Out) | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/fallout-shelters-probably-useless-let-s-never-find | The advent of nuclear weapons and the Cold War kicked off a craze in the US for building rec rooms with foot-thick reinforced walls and outfitted with survival rations and board games. Would they work? Probably not. | The advent of nuclear weapons and the Cold War kicked off a craze in the US for building rec rooms with foot-thick reinforced walls and outfitted with survival rations and board games. Would they work? Probably not. | Thu, 01 Oct 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=1, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=275, tm_isdst=0) | 45213681 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Kablooey Clark. There's charles w, bam, bam. Bryan it and Jerry radioactive. Rolling. And this is stuff you should know. You still got it. After all these years, you still got it. Hey, I think before we get going we should talk very briefly about our audiobook. Oh yeah. Because this week in real time we are each recording our respective parts for the audiobook. And first of all we just want to tell everyone there's going to be an audiobook version. Yeah. Spoiler of stuff you should know. Colon and Mostly Incomplete guide to Very Interesting things. And still an incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. Yeah. So we're trying to push that out as get both is what I say. But if you're into audiobooks we're doing one. But also I just want to make sure people know what they're getting. And I put this on the stuff you should know. Army page. They're not getting 27 new podcast episodes. No. And they should know that because our podcast is unscripted conversation. An audiobook is us reading an audiobook and rather than just weirdly trading lines reading from a script which would I think that would dash a lot of people's image of what we do. Yeah, we are each reading chapters and I think they're going to mix in some stuff here and there. But yeah, I mean it's going to be great and fun but it's not podcast episodes. We don't get to just fart around and make jokes. Like we got to read our book. Oh man, we will be kept in line. If we tried to fart around and make jokes it would not be good. There's this whole time as money ethos and yelling, sometimes crying. It's a real stressful situation. Everybody, how did that go for you yesterday? Did you enjoy yourself? I just told you there's a lot of yelling and crying. It was very stressful. Yeah, it was fun. It reminded me a lot of recording The End of the World because I wrote those and then I read them. Right. So it was very similar to that except a lot less heavy. Yeah, I was slightly nervous at first for some reason after talking for twelve years. Probably just because you weren't there, but then it was fine. Did Fleet the director calm you, make you feel better? Yeah, I got in my groove. I felt pretty comfy by the end of it. Yeah. So I mean it is fun. It's definitely a lot of extra work this week but it's kind of cool. At the end. We're going to have a bona fide audiobook that's right. And a bona fide book that you can preorder now. And we're also working on getting that pre order gift available to the UK and Australia and other parts of the world because we have different publishers there. It's not like we were trying to exclude everyone. No, but we are moving Heaven Earth to get it done. If you're in the US and Canada and you pre order, if you haven't gotten your poster yet, worry not, you're going to get your pre order gift eventually. That's right. Wow. So for the 1517 people who stuck around prepared to learn about fallout shelters, because that's ultimately what we're here to talk about today. That's right. Actually, before that, I have to say one more thing. I posted that squirrel attack video on my Instagram that we talked about on the episode, because people kept asking, so I put it up. I'm at Chuck. The podcaster. If you want to see a squirrel go berserk and literally fly through the air and hit me in the leg, then you can see that it's been viewed, like 15,000 times now. One of these days, I hope you'll fess up to what you did to provoke that score. The whole thing is there. You see me exit my house? Yeah, but we didn't know what happened, like, half hour before. They had been ongoing for the last week. Yeah, that's true. That's true. No backstory. So now I think we're going to talk about fallout shelters, because, Chuck, your house has a basement, but it's exposed on one side to the outdoors. It's not an inground basement, as far as I know, and hopefully I'm not divulging too much information about your house, so weird fans will be able to find it and show up. Well, actually, one side of it is exposed to the world, but the other side is 10ft of Earth and red clay. Like, it could have been a great fallout shelter had it not been for that one side. Sure. But there are things you could do or could have done. I think we should use past tense here, because the need for a fallout shelter as far as a nuclear war goes, is vanishingly remote these days. Yeah, I like to think I don't think we should get any fear mongering. No, I agree. But there are a few things you could have done or could do to build a follow up shelter with that good side, I guess, and we're going to talk about that today. But mainly what we're talking about with fallout shelters is almost kind of like this examination of the world psyche during the Cold War to where. As the nuclear arsenals of the Soviet Union and the United States started to build up in step with one another. And we were suddenly in a nuclear arms race where just ten years before. There were no such thing as nuclear weapons. People started to realize. Like. Oh. Man. If one of these goes off near me. I'm in big trouble. And they started looking around to the government to say, hey, what should I do? And at first, the government was like, Figure it out yourself. And then eventually, the government kind of got a little more involved, and before you know it, we had a national fallout shelter program. As feeble and terrible as it was, at least we had one. Yeah. What's really funny is when you read up on this stuff and you learn that President Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, that is, ask Congress for $100 million to build public fallout shelters. Right. That is such an adorable number. Now, that would build like ten fallout shelters these days. Yeah, maybe that's like the amount of money that would take to get like, a motorcade to the capital from the White House. Basically. Yeah. But it was a real threat back then, and I can't remember what episode it may have been. Nuclear radiation. We did one on the disaster in Japan. We've done a couple on this, but I know that I told the story of my father, like, having us sort of do 20% of a fallout shelter when I was ten or twelve years old, after the movie The Day After on television. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. It was my brother and I taking out digging out buckets of dirt and carrying them out in the woods and dumping them for probably three or four weekends, and then we stopped. So you guys were 20% covered if something happened, yeah, it was pretty gross. So was it akin to this shelter that we were going to go over at the end? Was it like that? Well, I mean, it eventually could have been, which is to say, kind of a concrete room underground, surrounded by earth. Oh, yeah. No, I'm saying like the kind where it's like you dig a trench and put some wood pole. This is part of my basement. Like my dad had a workshop, and on the interior wall of the workshop, he knocked down the cinder block wall and we just started digging. Oh, wow. Which I'm sure was super safe to the foundation of the house. Right. He's like, it's probably not load bearing. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, there was definitely a point in time, especially during the height of the Cold War, where it was like, we're really in danger here. The world was just kind of walking around, just twitching and shaking at the idea of this. And part of the problem was not just the idea that a bomb was going to go off and just blow cities apart, because apparently there was one of the nuclear deterrent theories, the game theories that people kind of operated under, said, now, you know what, if we ever engage in nuclear war, we're just going to be attacking military installation side to side. And so we don't really have to worry about that for people in New York or DC or Atlanta or wherever, any of the major metropolitan cities, we have to worry about those cities getting leveled. But there's going to be a huge problem for the people living there because there's such a thing as radioactive fallout. It's not just the bomb that gets you, it's the fallout afterward. Yeah. I mean, if you're talking about a nuclear bomb, a nuclear warhead, it depends on what kind. Back then, it was different than it is now, but let's say a one megaton H bomb back in the day would completely wipe out everything within about 2 miles from where it hit. Yeah. And I know I said we weren't going to fear monger, Chuck, but I found out that there is a bomb in the US. Arsenal called the B 83, which is 1.2 megatons, and it can be carried around very easily by the B two bomber. So 2 miles, everything is gone. And this is from the blast. And if you're like 5 miles away from that bomb site, you're going to get hit with third degree burns just from that blast. Yeah. You're going to be hating life. So the blast is going to be bad enough and again, just for people miles away, could be burned to death, incinerated, vaporized, just all sorts of terrible stuff. But if you're living outside of that blast zone, you've got problems in the radioactivity that's going to be generated by it, because when those bombs explode, they release a lot of radioactive particles of different varieties, and those things go up in the air and they get kind of carried around and stirred up in the atmosphere. But a lot of them are heavy enough that they come back down basically around the area, in a larger area around the bombs at the center. Yes. And we should probably just go over some of these different types of radiation. Some of it you might recognize from various incredible Hulk comic books. But you've got your alpha particles, your beta particles, you've got gamma rays, you've got neutrons. The gamma rays is what got hulk, right? I think so. Right? Yeah. I'm pretty sure because gamma rays are green and hulk was green. That's right. I think that's it any of those sweet, sweet purple pants that somehow still fit for sure. So the alpha and beta particles, they are not great, but they are easily stopped. It's probably the best way to say it. Yeah. So here's the thing. Like, everything I tried to read about this is like, they would go to great lengths to be like, well, this one isn't that much of a problem. This one's way worse. Then finally, they throw up their hands and be like, actually, all of this is going to be one big giant cluster, because depending on the different type of radioactive particle, there's different situations where they are way worse than the other one. Like a gamma ray is really bad because it can go clear through several inches of lead right into you on the other side of the lead, through your body, and then everything that comes in contact with, say, all your cells and tissues and bones and all that stuff, it really screws them up genetically. And you can develop cancer and radiation sickness and all that. That's pretty bad. But then you've got alpha particles where they can be stopped by a piece of paper. They can't even make it through your skin, but they could get all over like crops in the water, and we drink them and eat them and then they cause all sorts of sorts of problems inside of you, too. So there's really no good radioactive particle as far as the fallout from a nuclear bomb is concerned. Yeah, not at all. So if you read up on this stuff and I said, oh, a piece of paper or a little bit of plastic can stop beta particles and alpha particles. Just think about the air you're breathing, the water you're drinking, the maze you're growing. Sure. Do you want to get traditional? It's all very dangerous. Yeah. Don't just be like, oh, let's make a paper suit out of newspapers and maybe a little paper tricorn and hat out of newspapers, I'll be fine. But like you said, when this bomb hits, that mushroom cloud goes up. Everything's all mixed together. And as the wind blows, these little I think John Fuller old pal wrote this one a long time ago, right? Yeah. For how stuff works. But John Fuller, he said there are lots of little they act like little tiny missiles, basically, that are just going off all over the place. Yeah. That was the neutrons, right? Yeah. I think the neutrons specific he called the missiles, but they kind of all are. Yeah, they are. They're super high energy and gamma rays, like I said, they can pass right through you. Neutrons are a problem in the relative immediate blast area because they're very heavy, so they don't go nearly as far as gamma rays or X rays or alpha particles or beta particles, but they all do damage in their own unique, special snowflake way. Yeah. And this stuff is being carried around by the wind, but the actual particles that you're seeing is actually Earth that is now enriched with the stuff that is poofed up from that crater where Earth used to be, I guess. Right. And so knowing all this. This is why people started to be like. Oh. Okay. Maybe we should start building fallout shelters to live in or inhabit for the immediate period after this nuclear attack to give us a chance to survive and hopefully make it a few weeks and then things will die down. Everybody's forgotten about the whole nuclear holocaust and we can come back out and restart civilization. That was the really, honestly, if you get down to it, the thinking behind fallout shelters in the United States in the late fifty s. All right, should we take a break there and talk about these things? I think so. Some more? Yeah. All right, we'll be right back, everyone. So, Chuck, I think since we've got one act under our belt. We need to start the second act by telling everybody they can preorder our book. Hey, I took some vitamins. I've been taking vitamins as much as I can, and I've got this multivitamin, you know, like the worst of vitamin can taste. I've got that horrible vitamin taste just stuck in the back of my throat because it got stuck there for a half of a millisecond before it washed down and it just left this terrible taste of vitamin coating back there and it's driving me badly. How is your health with the vitamins? Can you tell the difference? No, none. How's your pee? How's your urine? It's bright yellow, which makes me just feel like such a chump, especially after our vitamin supplement episode. Right. Didn't we say like, we pee most of it out? Yeah, there's good ones for sure. And I like to think I'm taking going, but I just know that there's no telling right now. I'm using injectables now pretty much snortable vitamins. So fallout shelters, it's funny here, and I'm glad John put it this way, because it really makes a lot of sense if you think about an SPF for sunscreen. It's the same exact way with the fallout shelter. You have a PF, a protection factor, and that is just very simply a representative of being in a fallout shelter or just being out in the open. And FEMA put out a pamphlet called Standards for Fallout Shelters, and they said you need a PF of 40 at least. Yeah, if you want to. And that puts you down to about 2.5% of the radiation, which I heard that number and I thought that was too much. Yeah. No, I think what you're really shooting for is something like 300, that kind of thing. And they're saying like a minimum of 40 year old. You might as well just go lay out in the radioactivity for all the protection you're going to get. Another way to look at that PF number is that it's the denominator and the fraction of the radioactive exposure that you get compared to being outside of the shelter. So PF of 40 would mean that you get 140 th I'm more of a fraction guy than a decimal dude. Yeah. How about you? Do you like decimals or fractions more? I don't like either one, but I think for our next live show in 2022, you should wear a shirt that says fraction guy and I'll have one that says decimal dude. That'll just be our new tour outfit. Fair enough. And you can have yours printed on a button down shirt, of course. Okay. Because nothing looks better than good silk screening on a button down Oxford. Maybe by the time we go on tour again, this horrible vitamin taste will be out of my mouth. Maybe. So with fallout shelters, there's a couple of kinds if you're going back to the 1960s that people were talking about, and that is the public one and then the private one that you just build at your house, like we kind of didn't do. I went down a bit of a rabbit hole and this would be right up your alley. You probably did. This rabbit hole is pretty safe, I bet. Yeah. It depends on how deep, I guess. Yeah. But if you start googling 60s fallout shelters oh, and I did. Oh, boy. It's just a treasure trove of articles and pictures. I saw one that these people in Woodland Hills, a suburb of laughter, part of greater Los Angeles, bought a house not too long ago, a few years ago, and they found a did you see this one? No. I saw some in Milwaukee. Oh, well, I saw that Milwaukee article, too. That was great. But they found a 15 foot down under the Earth fallout shelter. Wow. That was fully stocked. Like, it was like a time capsule from brendan Frazier and Christopher Walken were living in it. I can't remember who the mom was. Do you remember? Oh, I didn't see that. Oh, you didn't? No. It was a cute movie. Yeah. Is that Encino Man? No. This is blast from the past. Oh, okay. You know, man was great, too, because the weasels in it. Oh, is he? Yeah. Polly Shore. Yeah, I know what that is. I just didn't. Polly Shore. Sean Austin and Brendon. Sean Austin. Whatever. That guy is rich enough. He doesn't care what I say. So I was looking at all these 1961 period products and just, like, getting tingly feelings in my body because they were perfectly preserved for the most part, like faded and stuff. But there was a can, like a coffee can, but it said, Multi Purpose Food meals for Millions. And so I was like, I got to find out what this is. And it turns out that Meals for Millions was a non profit from way back then that is now Pepper International. No, now it's transformed into another name. These days, I think Freedom from Hunger is the new name. Okay. But these two guys, clifford Clinton and Dr. Henry Borsouk took on this task of borsuk was a biochemist at Caltech, and they took on this project of trying to find the best food to feed. Like the cheapest, absolute, most bare bones thing you could put in a package to feed the hungry. Right. And that's what they came up with, was this stuff in a can. And it is 68% defended soy grits, plus dehydrated potatoes, cabbage, tomatoes, onions, leeks, parsley and spices fortified with vitamins and minerals. And it comes in a can and you boil it up and eat it. And it was something like two cent per serving. Wow. And it was a really ingenious idea. But this became, I think, kind of a popular thing for fallout shelters because you could just stock cans and cans of the most barebones, caloric sort of healthy thing you could get meals for millions. That's pretty great. I did not expect it to actually be as healthy as what you just listed off. Yeah, I would love to taste some of it. Travel to Woodland Hills. I know, just call it food. What do you mean multipurpose food? Is it like a pomade as well? Maybe a food that I ran across that was pretty popular, especially among government funded fallout shelters was this kind of like wheat cracker that was made from bulgar wheat and apparently they were inspired by some crackers that were found in Egyptian tombs that were still edible after a couple of thousand years. So they're like, oh, that'd be perfect for fallout shelters. So they kind of recreated those tasteless edible. Yeah, multipurpose, apparently. You could shave with them too. You might go that Milwaukee article is pretty cool though. I think it said that at the time there were like 3000 plus personal shelters in the city of Milwaukee alone. Yeah, the thing is, that's probably a pretty good number. The thing is there's no official numbers for the fallout shelters that were built around the Cold War because there were a lot of private ones, but there's also public ones too. So let's keep talking about the private ones first because if we're going to follow the historical timeline, which I'm in favor of around, I think the late 1950s, I think it was in the Eisenhower administration, there was a report that's now called the Gaither Report and it basically said, here's everything we figured out about a nuclear war. The cities are toast, people are going to die on mass. We have no place to put them for them to shelter in, and everybody is in a lot of trouble if there is a nuclear war. So really the best thing we need to focus on is to prevent a nuclear war from happening. Well, that leaked out and people said, well, what are we going to do? And this is when the government was like, I don't know, why don't you build some shelters and leave us alone? And so people started doing that and it became like a huge craze. And so shelters in places like that home in Woodland Hills or that one in Milwaukee that are still around today, in some cases that became like a big deal, like adding like a really nice swimming pool or adding like a rec room or something like that, people turn to fallout shelters and they started building them like crazy. Yeah. And from that Milwaukee, I think it was in Milwaukee was the name of the website, but from what they said was they were being marketed as sort of multi purpose rec rooms that in case the s goes down, it's conveniently lined with concrete. Right. And you could just sort of easily convert it. And I guess you would have some stuff stashed there in either a closet or in bins or something. And when there's no nuclear disaster. You're just using it as sort of a playroom or something. Yeah. There was some decorator show in Chicago in the late fifty s, I think, and they build this thing as the family room of tomorrow, where it was exactly what you described it was like a normal functioning family room, but it just happened to be in a basement in like foot thick concrete encased under the dirt. Yeah. I remember seeing when I was a kid, my brother and I did lots of sort of I guess it wasn't urban exploring, but trespassing suburban exploring. Sure. Okay. And I remember a couple of distinct times that we saw vent pipes just coming out of the earth in the forest and we never saw any entryway or anything like that, but that had to be some sort of fallout shelter, I think. Yeah, probably they were near homes, but not like in the yard. We'd come across a couple of them in our various expeditions. Okay. Like just a clearly event pipe just coming out of the woodland forest floor. Got you. Yeah, I'm sure that's exactly what it was. I hope. Yeah. Well, we didn't dig around. If not have you ever seen that Hugh Jackman movie where like, his wife is kidnapped prisoners? Yeah. Man, that was really good. I mean, really good. Yeah, great movie. What's his face doing the new Dune movie. Denny villain. Well, there you go. That's why it was so good. Yeah, he's a master. I'm sorry, Chuck, I can't not correct you. His name is Dennis. Dennis villanov. I'm sorry. Okay. I mispronounced it, so I was kidding. Anyway, there was the private fallout shelter trend that just blew up and became a thing. And then in 1961, President Kennedy sent a letter out. I'm surely it went out to more than just this, but if you were a Life magazine subscriber, which was pretty substantial back in 1961, in the September 15 edition, you got a letter from President Kennedy basically saying, like, hey, this whole possibility of nuclear war thing, well, we've decided we're going to do something about it. We the government, and we're going to start what's called the National Fallout Shelter Survey. And with the survey, basically what we're going to do is send out government officials and they're going to look at buildings all around the country and identify sites that have the potential of serving as a fallout shelter. And everyone says, well, that's great. So like a fallout shelter. So if like a nuclear bomb goes off over our city, we're going to be saving it's? Like, no, don't be ridiculous. That would cost a lot of money. Now this is going to protect you from radioactive fallout. You'll have to survive the blast, but this will hopefully protect you from the fallout afterward. Yeah, and we kind of laugh about that, but there's no way they could have built enough adequate shelters to protect all Americans from the blast. No, I mean, there was a lot of Americans, apparently they did look at it at first, and 200 billion in 19. $61 is another cute number, actually. They were like, oh, no, we can't do that. We don't have that kind of money. So it was like you said, I think 190,000,000 is what they ended up spending on it, which to me seems like a lot of money to send out some people to look at buildings and decide what was a fallout shelter and what wasn't. Yeah. It's really funny is when you look at what people did around the world, what countries did around the world, and how it jibes with how those countries are still today. So the US did what we did. The Soviets said that they built a big, extensive system, and they had an advanced cooling system and all these filters protecting against everything and provisions, food and water forever. And this is the press release they put out. Basically, who knows what really happened? Yeah, because I found that on Russiasogreat.com or whatever. It was like an urban exploration of, like, an abandoned shelter. But was this just like, the biggest one? How many were like that? Right. Supposedly the Soviets boasted of a system that could protect most of their citizens from the blast. All right, so that makes sense. Sweden built 65,000, which covered about the population. TS for the other 30%. Switzerland built enough shelters for everybody. Okay. God bless them. The UK said. You know what? We're going to build enough for our military, our government, and the royal family. Yeah, chin up, everyone else. And then Australia said, we'll take a pass. We're not going to build any because no one's going to mess with us down here. Yeah. They're like, Everybody's right on the beach. Everyone knows we're fine. If the rest of the world's going up in flames, I think they're probably right, especially back then. Enough off the map or off the path of the threat that they didn't even need to sweat it. Yeah. They're like, hey, what's all the ruckus up there? Yeah, so the US said, okay, we've got to do something. Let's at least build these fallout shelters that are going to protect people from radioactivity. And so they started building these well, I shouldn't say building they started going on to private property or public buildings and saying, hey, you got a really nice basement here. Can you take down the human skins, clean it up a little bit? We're going to put some bulgar wheat biscuits in here. We're going to put in some multipurpose food. Don't ask. And we're going to turn this place into a fallout shelter. And on their way out, they would slap a sign, very iconic sign, which is a black circle with three inverted triangles, all pointing toward the center that designated a fallout shelter. And they did this in yellow in the event of a blackout during a nuclear. War or something so that you could easily see it. Yeah. Pretty cool. The company three M made these for about a penny each, and they made about 400,000 of these signs. And they would stock these things with, like, medical first aid kits, some water drums. Yeah. Those crackers that you talked about that if you add water, could probably double up as, like, cement patch. Yeah, I guess. But I think people would wrestle you to the ground if you tried to use the water for anything but drinking in the event of this. Sure. I mean, that's one thing we did mention. If you go to build your own fallout shelter, you should have some food. But water, obviously, is far more important. We've talked about that a lot, about how long the human body can go without food and water. Got to have a lot of water. I think I would stock it up with some of that, Mike's. Mighty good ramen. Sure. Of course. Which, by the way, we'd be remiss if we didn't point out that they actually sent us a coupon code for Stuff You Should Know. Listeners. Oh, yeah. This is not an ad, but we talk about that ramen so much, they said, you know what? Tell everyone stuff you should know. 20. We'll get them 20% off Ramen if they want to order some. Very nice. Do you write the number 20 or write out TW enty the number 20 after Stuff You Should Know? So 20. Yeah. And you could stock up your own fallout shelter. You can eat that stuff for lunch. Does it take up a lot of room? Good calories? It's multipurpose food. You got to use some water for it, though. Right. But I mean, hey, or you could collectively spit in it, I guess, and heat that up. That's grody. You're going to get that water anyway, though, because you're going to drink the juice. That's true. So back to the public shelters. They have these pretty well stocked. They said there was an actual booklet in there that said, if you want a toilet, cut a seat out of a chair and put a bucket under it. And there's your toilet. And so when that pamphlet came out, in particular, the American Citizen reset for real, this is what our tax dollars are doing. This is what we're getting from our government. Cut a hole in the seat of a chair and put a bucket under there. That's your advice for the nuclear war that you're half responsible for having us live under the threat of? Right, yeah. They said we're not socialists. You take care of yourself. Yeah. So the thing is, people would read newspapers or people would watch the news or whatever, and they would be getting one channel of information that was saying, like, yeah, here's what one megaton bomb could possibly do to you. Or if this blew up over New York City, this is what would happen. And people would say, well, what's the point of having these fallout shelters? Because if a bomb goes off over New York City, all of those fallout shelters are going to be totally obliterated. There's no point for them. And the government, in doing something like trying to at least lift some finger and make people feel less anxious, actually had the opposite effect because it drew a lot of attention and focus to the need for fallout shelters, while at the same time reinforcing the idea that these fallout shelters weren't going to be worth anything for anybody. Unless maybe you lived in Topeka or somewhere where there wasn't what's known as a key target that you might actually survive in a fallout shelter that was well stocked and had few enough people. It could work, but for most Americans, especially ones in major cities, you're going to be in bad shape. And the fallout shelter program really kind of pointed that out. All right, should we take a break? I think so. All right, we'll take our last break and we'll be back right after this. So before we broke, you said something about unless you live in Topeka, doesn't Kansas have silos or no, military, as I was saying? And I was like, yeah, I'm glad you said something. At least they'll save us the emails. Okay. Because we did mention but we talked about game theory earlier, about how the reasoning was, no, you don't need to worry if you're in a big city because there aren't military bases there. Right. But that sort of goes the way that war goes once anything goes wrong. So if one bomb from the opposition, from the enemy goes to somewhere that isn't supposed to go, then all bets are off, basically. Yeah. And then it's just bomb away. Also, I want to give a shout out to Robert Clara from History.com, who wrote, nuclear fallout shelters were never going to work, who wrote a pretty great article about how this whole program was kind of doomed from the start of it all ill conceived. But not only was it ill conceived, they were also, like, poorly stocked. Some of these things that were designated volatile shelters never got their supplies. Water drums were leaking, and then others worked really well. So well, in fact, that there's one they found at the Oyster Adams Bilingual School in DC, which is a school still functioning today, part of DC public schools. But there is a fallout shelter that's like a time capsule, basically, that has all the original provisions in it just frozen in time still. Wow. Yeah. Really neat house in California. Yeah, basically. Except this was one of the designated public fallout shelters, but below a school. Yeah. I think didn't they try to build them to house at least 50 people? And I think they recommended for the personal ones that they'd be at least six and a half feet tall. Yeah. And that was one of the things that sort of would have been the toughest, I think, about fallout shelters. Just so many of them had very low ceilings. Obviously, there's no windows. I mean, it's bunker. Life is tough going. And they recommended two weeks, which is nuts to me. There's no way I'm poking my head out after two weeks just to see how things are going up there. Right. And I mean, like, there was some logic and reasoning to that two weeks and that you would have exceeded the halflife of a lot of the radio nuclides that are created. But yeah, there's plenty that would still be around. Yes. It was never going to work like Robert Clara put it. No. And I think that was sort of the idea of what you're talking about with the public being so disheartened and feeling helpless about our civil defense was like, this is the general public and they didn't think it seemed like a good plan. But it makes me wonder, though, is that a good thing? Like. It sucks to have that kind of mental anxiety that we all collectively had during the Cold War. Especially at the height of this stuff. Like in the but I think it might have actually been good because then the public was aware of just how dangerous things were and would prevent a kind of cavalier attitude toward nuclear war because they knew what was at stake. And what was at stake were their very lives. Maybe. And maybe that's a bottom up, sort of like a groundswell of public thought eats its way up into government. I guess. We'll never know how close we ever got. I don't think we've ever done one on the nuclear Cuban Missile Crisis. Have we not? I don't think, specifically, but, you know, we've been on the brink in a way that history has recognized. But I'm curious how close it's been in times that we never even knew about. There's one guy who celebrated every year. I can't remember what the day is. But it's basically like save the World day where this one Soviet. I guess. A missile commander. Basically had a few minutes was being told by his computers and all of his underlings that the US had launched a massive strike and that it was up to him to call and order this counterstrike or call the people who would order the counterstrike. And he sweated it out. He said that he just didn't believe that the Americans would have launched an unprovovoked all out nuclear strike like he was being shown. And he stayed his hand and literally saved the world from a nuclear war single handedly. And the scary thing is, Chuck, is that has happened more than once. Yeah, I'm sure. It's funny that we're basically the last generation that grew up with any knowledge of the threat of nuclear war like this. We sort of experienced the tail end of the Cold War perfect generation. Yeah. But it's hard to the Friendly Fire podcast, which is one of my favorites, the War Movie podcast that our buddies Ben Harrison and Adam Pranica and John Roderick do. They're younger. Roderick is a few years older than me. Way older. So way older than you. But John kind of drives this point home a lot about like it's really hard to put into words what that does to a set of generations when we're all sort of living under this very real threat that we could all die the worst possible death and not like, oh, you kids have got it made, or anything like that. But it's a different sort of mindset. Yeah, it definitely affects you from every stage of your life. It went away by the time we were in college, but I remember my early years, obviously, we were digging a fallout shelter was a big threat, and movies and TV reinforced that every day. So if you wanted to build a fallout shelter, we have to say there was a time in addition to designating fallout shelters, by the way, if you find one of those old fallout shelter signs, hang on to it. You can pretty much take it. And unless there's a close watching Groundskeeper Willie type who takes care of that building, nobody's probably going to notice it's gone. And the US government has no idea how many are out there because they never kept track of the fallout shelters. There was no registry or anything. Yes. I mean, they started shutting these down in the early 70s, officially started giving away the food, sent some of it to organizations in Africa and Bangladesh. And then those signs started, I think, in the mid 70s, started pulling those signs out. And I think finally, just three years ago in 2017, they said that they got the last of the signs out of New York City. And I don't think we mentioned it's hysterical that they built these fallout shelters in Manhattan and Brooklyn, as if that would lead to good things. Right. If you did want to make a fallout shelter, there was a pamphlet put out by Oak Ridge National Laboratory where they basically hired boys. Yeah, they had a sideline in studying nuclear disaster survival. Like, you couldn't tell with their beards, right? But this pamphlet basically was the result of Oak Ridge hiring a bunch of families, regular old American families, and saying, a nuclear war is happening right now. Go build a fallout shelter. Here's your instructions. And then seeing how easy it could be done, and then adjusting the instructions and so on and so forth, until they finally got to this pamphlet. And the pamphlet basically came up with this really good fallout shelter where you just basically dug a trench in the ground that was several feet deep, covered it with wood poles, covered the wood poles with something like cloth the old bed sheet, something like that. Put dirt on it, put shower curtains something waterproof and then put more dirt on that. And they actually figured out that this particular fallout shelter had a protection factor of, like, 300. Really? Yeah. And it would also survive a blast that most houses would not survive. Yeah. Because you're just basically hunkered down in the earth and it would work for you if you wanted to. And they said that it can be done. They use the example that two non athletic college age girls did it in 36 hours. That was how they were selling it. We got a couple of girl couch potatoes. Right. Look at them. Wow. Yeah. When I was reading about that, I figured you'd get maybe a 20 out of that. What do you mean? For PF? No. 1300. Wow. Yeah. So, there you go. Thank you, Oakridge Boys. Giddy up. And since Chuck said that everybody, it's time for Listener Mate. All right, I'm going to call this a series of apologies to Australia. Oh, boy. Yeah. I know what this is about. So before we get into the email, I do think we should address this, that we've had some ads running in Australia only that have been no good. And these aren't ads that we knew about. These aren't ads that we read. We have a separate company in Australia that's doing that for us. And everything is under review right now because we don't want these ads out there. Yeah. It's a new relationship and we're kind of figuring each other out. That's right. But we do want to say that none of these ads were our decision. If you're out there and your interest is piqued and you're like, oh, my gosh, what are they talking about? I'll never know. They were ads for mining companies and stuff like that, among other things. Not super s YSK type stuff. That's right. We wanted to address it head on, but also we wanted to address our own foibles in the billabongs terminology that we were talking about in the Wetlands episode. Just shameful, man. It is. And this is something we should know, even though we are not Australians, but we use the term Aborigines very sort of willynilly. And this is an email from Tenita. She said in the episode, and Wetlands used a number of terms talking about billabongs that were not correct terminology. The term Aborigines is considered outdated and offensive as it groups all indigenous groups into one term. And as connotations of colonial Australia, some of the current terms and correct terms for traditional owners of Australia include Aboriginal people, indigenous First Nations people. And this is something that we just should have known. Yeah. Plus, I mean, it applies to more than just the native people of Australia, too, of course. Yeah. And we got a bunch of emails from people that said, if you really want to do right by these people, you need to research the exact people that you're talking about. Like the Palawa people from tasmania, where she's from, or the Anaiwan people from the area around Armidale where she lives now. And we didn't do that. And she said there were 250 different languages in Australia before invasion. Only 120 are now spoken. Billabong, in fact, comes from the we're, a Jury language from central New South Wales and is now a common Australian English term. And that is from Tinida and many others. Thank you so much for taking it easy on us, Tinita. That was very nice. Super Australian of you as well. Just laid back and nice and not at all like chest pokey. So we appreciate that. That's right. And if you're in the United States and you're not quite sure what even this means, it would basically be like just saying Africa as a lump all term for any tribe in Africa, and the culture and the language that is very specific to that region. Right. And we're not hip to that. So thanks again. Who was that? Tinida? Yeah, okay. Thanks again, Tanita. Thanks again, Australia, for taking such good care of us over there. We appreciate you guys. And thanks to everybody who listens to stuff you should know. And if you want to get in touch with us for any reason, no matter where you live in the world, no matter what language you speak, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio's how stuff works. For more podcasts, My Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
Are contrails actually chemtrails? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/are-contrails-actually-chemtrails | You know those trails that jets leave in the sky? While science has explained why they happen, plenty of conspiracy theorists believe there's more to it. Join Josh and Chuck as they channel the guys from Stuff They Don't Want You to Know in this episode. | You know those trails that jets leave in the sky? While science has explained why they happen, plenty of conspiracy theorists believe there's more to it. Join Josh and Chuck as they channel the guys from Stuff They Don't Want You to Know in this episode. | Tue, 17 Jan 2012 18:30:19 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=17, tm_hour=18, tm_min=30, tm_sec=19, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=17, tm_isdst=0) | 30810365 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from houseworkscom. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles. Chuck Brown. And we're together and there's a couple of microphones in front of us. This is stuff we should know. All that separates us is some cheap foam and metal and a table and some kleenex and pens and pencils and the Ikea lamp. So there's actually a lot between us, come to think of it. This box of chalk. Yes. What's that here for? I don't know. There's some really uninterenting things on this table. The playroom in here. Well, we screwed this one up already. Great. Nowhere to go but up. That's a great way to look at this, Chuck. Yeah, that's great. I'm not going to use it as a segue, but it's a really good, positive way of looking at things. Okay. Thank you, Chuck. What does the cities of Boston, Massachusetts boston, calgary, Canada abute? Where is it? In Canada. Edmonton. Okay. Edmonton. And a little town called Palmer, Alaska had to do with one another. I love it when you do this. I have no idea, actually. They're all cities or towns in the Northern Hemisphere. North America terrible. I know. Are you ready for the answer which destroys your guess? Okay. All three cities recently voted to remove or stop adding fluoride to the water supply. Okay. Do you know that? I did not. But we've covered that before. We have we got a little overboard, possibly, in our disdain for fluoride, did we? Maybe. Who knows? I thought it was a good one. I still stand by most of it. Those are in our younger days. Yeah, our head of your days. So there's three towns that are starting to wake up because it's not really a conspiracy theory as much, it's more. Apparently people are buying their fluoride. Cities are buying their fluoride from China and the Chinese fluoride is sub par and it's starting to gum up the city water works. So they're like, we either need to find a good supplier or else we need to stop adding fluoride. And everybody said, you know what, let's stop adding fluoride. There's not even real evidence that it works to prevent tooth decay. Okay. Okay, I'm with you. That's one major government conspiracy. Down dead onto the next one. We're going to talk about chemtrails. Yeah. We handle these occasionally. We have a video podcast, it's not our own, but our fellow colleagues here stuff they don't want you to know. They tackle these conspiracy things and it's a lot of fun. Matt and Ben, they know what they're doing. We try to avoid it because a lot of times I just don't want to be the guy that poopoos everything or the guy that is the conspiracy dude. But we're going to tackle it today. We are. Because people have asked for chemtrails over and over. Yeah. So we're going to talk about it, and we're going to handle it very well. Let's talk about this. So just to get everybody on the same page, a chemtrail, depending on who you are, who you're talking to, is either a chemtrail or a contrail. Let's talk about contrails first. This is what the FAA would call it. Yeah. You know those streaks in the sky that follow a plane? Yes. Lovely ones outside my window today. That's great. They're essentially manmade cirrus clouds, right? Yeah. What happens is when you are in a jet plane, your jet engine produces very, very hot air exhaust. Sure. Also included in that very hot air is water vapor. And if you are flying in an airplane very high up, say 30,000ft, the ambient temperature, atmospheric temperature is going to be about negative 40 deg, which is the same as Celsius and Fahrenheit. Oh, well, remember, Celsi height. Yes. So when you have there's also lower atmospheric pressure. And if you also have thrown in, there saturated air, humid air, very humid. The vapor pressure, which is the pressure that gas exerts on its surrounding environment. When you have that all combined, you have what amounts to a man made cloud. A contrail. Yes. Condensation. Condensation. That's an even better way to put it. It's water droplets or a lot of times, but not always, as our author says, it turns into ice. It doesn't always turn into ice. Sometimes it's just water. Right. But a lot of times it will crystallize into ice if it's cold enough. And that's what you're seeing. Contrails condensation trails. Right. Shortened to contrails. So problem solved. They dissipate. Yeah, eventually. It depends. If you're in drier areas, it's going to dissipate more quickly. As Jay McGrath, who wrote this article, points out, if you've ever been out on, like, a very cold day and it was very humid and cold, you can see your breath. Yeah, sure. It takes far longer to dissipate than it does on a cold, dry day. That's right. That's because the air is less saturated and hence the vapor pressure is higher on a dry day. That's right. And in this exhaust, or contrail, if you will, you're going to find carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, soot sulfate, and most scientists agree, if not all. I haven't talked to all of them yet. Still got like three people to go. Right. They agreed that this extra cloud cover essentially can be bad for the environment. Yeah. That's not debated very much right now. No. There's a study that was released that basically estimates that just in one year, the energy trapped by contrails was about a third of all of the energy trapped in the history of aviation wow. From greenhouse gas emissions of planes. So these contrails are apparently a really big problem as far as climate change goes in creating the greenhouse effect. Well, there's a lot more flights going on now than ever before. Yeah. A lot more than there were 20 and 30 and 40 years ago, obviously. Yes. So, yeah, it's an issue. So that's what a contrail is, and they are essentially problematic. That mystery should be lying. They're dead. I mean, there's not really a mystery. It's like you can explain it through science. Yeah. Apparently, the FAA, NASA, other aviation agencies, northrop Grumman probably has said, here is exactly what's going on. Right. And whenever you lay something out and you do it in a very forthright way, a lot of times conspiracy theorists think you're lying, you're making something up. Sure. So a lot of conspiracy theories have cropped up, and basically, most conspiracy theorists say, yes, I understand there's such a thing as contrails. Stop trying to humiliate me. Right. But have you noticed that contrails stick around way longer than they used to? We'll do a little before and after with this. They say that chemtrails is let's go ahead and just let the cat out of the bag. They're calling these chemtrails. Right. And they're saying they're doping the fuel, essentially lacing it with chemicals for myriad reasons that will go over here in a second, and these chemicals make it stick around longer. That's what they say. It's telltale evidence that there are chemicals, as you say, the planes exhausts are being doped with this stuff. Gosh, I wish I had this guy's name. An atmospheric scientist that I looked up earlier said, this is one of the biggest claims that Kim trailers, as he calls it, gets wrong. Okay. He says contrails can persist for hours as well. They've done so since we've had jet planes. If you look at old photographs from the you're going to see contrails in the sky, just like we see today. There are a lot more of them now because there's a lot more flights. Right. And he said, quote, often when persistent contrails exist from 25,000 to 40,000ft, several long contrails increase in number and gradually will merge into an almost interlaced solid sheet. And he said, this happens. It's a contrail, and that can happen with a contrail. Yeah. And go ahead. A Kim trailer would say that's a purposeful sheet of chemicals being laced over the world right. Exactly. In the atmosphere. And we all know why 40,000ft is the limit that scientists cited. Yeah, we went over that. Did we? Yeah. So here's, I guess, the crux of the problem. There is this thing that everybody agrees is there. We're all looking at it. This is there, but why is it there? And it's very tough to explain to a conspiracy theorist that what they believe is incorrect, especially when you can't take them and show them the plane that nobody's doping it. Yeah. Another guy I read said when we try to explain this to them, they say, you're just part of the conspiracy. Right. I mean, it kind of shuts down any intelligent conversation about it right there, but it opens up some fantastic speculation. Yes. So if the government usually it is the government that's tasked with or that's accused of doping plane exhaust. Sure. If the government were doing this, why would they possibly be doing this? Here's where we get to the myriad reasons. This is great. Yeah, there's a lot of reasons, but they range from population control, essentially killing the sick and the elderly quicker with these mysterious flus. Right. And this coincides with belief in the New World Order, where basically there is an alleged movement toward controlling the population more basically, it's eugenics on a global scale. But apparently China is being left out. I went on this one, Chemtrail conspiracy theorist, I guess, the Chemtrailer website, and the author was saying, like, you never see a chemtrail in China. Oh, really? Because the NWO is grooming China to be, like, the premier country. So in just like, this one sentence or two, this guy really laid a lot of stuff on the table. Sure. You have. Like the NWO, the rise of China and Chemtrails all in, like, one sentence. Was the Illuminati in there anywhere? I didn't search for it, but it's possible. Okay. Yeah. Well, that's one reason. Okay, so population control, they're killing people off. Another reason is that we are experimenting with weather control for defense purposes. We have done before. Yeah. England has done this. We talked about cloud seeding, and it was just a while ago, operation Cumulus. I can't remember which one we talked about. It was early. Yeah. Anyway, I'll just go over it again. Operation Cumulus, it was a cloud seeding operation by the Royal Air Force in the 50s where they're experimenting with making it rain so that they could flood enemy forces, whatever. If you can control the weather, there's all sorts of great things you can do with it. Sure. And it actually worked. And it worked way too well. And as we talked about, a lot of people died from flash floods and whole villages were just washed away. And the Royal Air Force went back home and then the Ministry of Defense denied it until 2001. Right. So it's possible China does it. China did it before the Olympics. Yeah, that's right. With silverado died. Did it work there? Yeah, you just shoot silver? I diet or dry salt or something. And it creates the conditions needed to make it rain for a cloud to become pregnant with rain. And then that it goes away. Although that term pregnant with rain or pregnant with anything that's not a baby. You know what I'm saying? I do. Okay. Others will say that it is aluminum being shot into the air to reflect the harmful rays of the sun to combat global warming, which would be a good use, quote, unquote, I guess. And there is such a thing as chaff. You know what chaff is? No. Chaff. Chaff is released from the underbelly of a plane, and that is, in fact, little aluminum needles released into the air, but it's been used since World War II by us and the Germans and anyone with any kind of advanced defense program, military program to confuse enemy radar. Like, hey, look, this is an actual object up here that you're going to fire missile at. So don't fire at me. Crazy. So there's such a thing as chaff, but it's not released through the exhaust. It's dumped out like you're spraying crops. Well, plus also if we're using that for defense purposes, anti missile defense, why would a commercial aircraft be launching it? I guess dropping chaff, as they say in the biz. Yes. So that's what chaff is and that's a real thing. Contrary is a real thing. Right. So this all kind of gets mixed together though. Got you in a conspiracy like manner. Right. And you were saying like, that there's an idea that the government is, well, intentionally trying to combat global warming. I have a feeling that this would be well publicized. Yeah, they would tout that, don't you think? I would think so. I think the conspiracy theorists say then they would have to admit all the dangers of global warming cliche. Yeah, there's a rebuttal for every site. There totally is. It's a great game of ping pong. There is another one that I came across too, that is my personal favorite. Another reason let's hear it. That the government probably the larger new world order somebody is manipulating. Orgon. Okay. Orgon. Are you familiar with Kate Bush's song Cloud Busting? No. Oh, you're not? No. I like Kate Bush, though. It's great. It's like her most famous song. I feel like a heel then. No, don't. Okay. Her video for it starred Donald Pleasant as the dad. It was directed by Terry Gilliam and you can tell me. Wow, cool. Yeah, just look up the video for Cloud Busting on YouTube. Good song even, but it's a ballad. It's about this guy named Wilhelm Reich who was an Austrian psychoanalyst who moved to the US. In the he claimed to have discovered the stuff called Oregon, which is a life energy that everything has basically like chi, right? Mediclorians. Yeah. And there's a packet of Oregon that surrounds the earth and protects it and gives it life. Okay. So he apparently fell in really badly with the FDA. They considered him like a huckster and a fraud because he was selling organ generators that would basically organ accumulators, that would heal cancer, grow like plants or whatever. And he did a two year bit in jail. And I looked this up and I'm pretty sure it's accurate. The FDA banned and destroyed his books. Oh, really? I didn't know the FDA could do that. So I looked even further and it turns out in 1000 1998, the FDA destroyed, banned and destroyed another book on cooking with stevia. I'm not kidding. I looked and found it in several places. If this really happened to this guy in Texas who wrote a natural food cookbook. So apparently the FDA can burn your books if they want to. But anyway, Wilhelm Reich was jailed and he died in prison in 1957. But I came across this chemtrail theorist idea that chemtrails change the polarity of the organ that surrounds the Earth and affects us, that effects our energy. Our life energy. Yes. Okay. You can make your own cloud busting machine at home for about $500 from parts you can get at Home Depot. Wow. Yeah. Pretty cool. Yeah. If you go to educate yourself.org, you can find a chembuster schematics. Seriously. I'll do it. I got $500 to burn. And look up that Kate Bush song. The video loan is really cool. Yeah, it sounds like it. And they put some real money into music videos. Yes. Back in the day, yeah. What else, Josh? Any other reasons? No. Well, then let's talk a little bit about well, the United States actually did address this because a lot of times they'll just not even give any credence to these conspiracy theories. But there were so many inquiries to this. The NASA, EPA and NOAA issued a joint fact sheet in 2000 that explained everything and said, here's the deal. Here's your fact sheet. This is official, and this is our official stance. I think the Air Force did something similar. Right. Didn't do anything to dissuade anyone. No. And I'm sure in a Catch 22, the fact that they did uncharacteristically break the silence and come forward just added fuel to the fire or strengthen the conviction of conspiracy theorists, wouldn't you say? I think so. One of the things that the conspiracy theorists will point to with Kim Trail, or let's just keep calling them Kim trailers, so much easier. Yeah, I like that. They will point to the grid like patterns as mysterious as setting it up, so it will eventually form a complete coverage from day to day. And air traffic dudes will say, you know what? That's because of our airspace systems. North south and east west flight lanes. That's how we send planes. So they're going to crisscross like that, and it's going to look like a grid. Okay. It seems to explain things away pretty well. There was also Josh, the local news, they'll get on the case of something like this and get really excited, and especially when weathermen are involved, because they'll get, like all of a sudden, they get to do one of those investigative reports that they never get to do. So in Shreveport, Louisiana, at KSLA News Twelve, they did a test because this guy said, you know what? I've noticed these unusual clouds that just continue to fall until they reach the ground. And I'm collecting this water and we should examine and test this water. They were just like, sure, of course we should. And they tested it and found high levels of barium at 6.8 parts per million, which is more than three times the toxic level wow. And they said, we're onto something here, because that is a hallmark of Chemtrail testing. And then they found out, they actually misread the report, and it was 68 parts per billion. Oh, not per million, not 6.8 per million, but 68 per billion. And it was well within the range. They retracted their story. Other local stations around the country picked up on that and then kind of had to wash the egg off their face afterward as well. Or they just never mentioned it again without a follow up. Exactly. Wow. Colors. A lot of times these things will have vibrant colors. And I saw a show on our own Discovery Channel called Best Evidence and one of their atmospheric researchers said, that's just coloration. You're going to get it and you're on the ground, you can't tell, like getting back to the grid, you can't tell from the ground what atmosphere these things are at. Right. So it looks like a criss cross right over each other. Might be 20,000ft apart. Right. And you're looking at this from the ground, you're looking at the colors like is a rainbow. Some vast conspiracy as well. Somebody's got a conspiracy theory on that one. The rainbow conspiracy. I think Chemtrails proved that there's a conspiracy theory on absolutely everything. That's true. Yeah. But the show was actually pretty good. It was called Best Evidence. You can watch it on the YouTube. Or maybe Discovery.com has it, I don't know. And they actually tested stuff. They tested jet emissions in a lab for aluminum and tested them with atomic absorption spectrometers, and they also tested it in the air with a land spectrometer, and they found no aluminum and the fuel or exhaust. However, the conspiracy theorists will say, well, you didn't get the Doped fuel, you just tested regular jet fuel. And not the secret jet fuel. That the US government. And it's not just us. Canada and Britain and other countries have made these claims as well. So it's semi worldwide, but not in China, evidently. No, because there's this thing as a contrary or a chemtrail in China. They're the NWO's favorite. And then the Dennis casino thing. Yeah. Tell me about this. I haven't heard and this is something that the Kim trailers will point to. And there was a bill introduced by Dennis Kasinich, a dude I happen to like. Yeah. And the Space Preservation Act, HR 2977. And it actually specifically banned Kim trails. And they said, see, they use the word Kimtrails. This is a government act. It turns out it was not a bill that he had written, it was written by UFO enthusiasts. And some of the other things included in there that they wanted banned were plasma weapons, psychotronic weapons, extraterrestrial weapons, and climate weapons. Psychotronic weapons are real, are they? I believe so. I remember the guy who went to Waco and was saying he could play this jumbled sound and it would drive everybody out of the house and the FBI said, well, what happens if it doesn't work? And he said, they'll probably just slit each other's throats like weapon. No, but what he had, the technology he created was real. Okay. Russians. Apparently the story behind this is Casino didn't read the bill fully before he endorsed it, and then afterward he read it and said, oh, jeez, here we go. He rewrote it, and then the bill died and was dropped in 2002, even after it was rewritten to omit all of the plasma weapons. Yeah. The Gobbledy Cook. That's crazy. Well, that's a great piece of history. Yeah. I do remember we talked about how contrails, whether they're contrails chemtrails, whatever, they seem to have a very pronounced effect. You came across something September 11, 2001, climate study. Yeah, I remember they did study something because it's a really rare thing to not have any planes for a few days. Exactly. For three days, all air traffic in the United States is grounded. And there was for the first time since the history of the invention of the plane. Yeah, that's what I mean by rare. It's once. Right. Exactly. Three straight days where there were no planes in the sky. So a couple of people scrambled to study any effects that happened, and they found that there was a diurnal temperature change. Right. Well, it's the temperature difference between day and night in a single day. Got you. They observed a 1.8 degree change from the other day. The other three days celsius. Sorry. From the three days leading up to the 11th and the three days following the 14th. So that's pretty substantial in 30 years that they'd ever recorded. That's serious. Yeah. Basically, the contrails are real and they do have an effect. We just need to get rid of air travel. Right. I wasn't going to do this, and here I go. My deal, when it comes to any conspiracy that's this vast and widespread yes. Where the airline industry is in on it and the dudes on the ground and that work for Delta are in on this. Right. It has to be so vast that there could be some kind of proof. And there is no evidence. I never have not found any single person that's ever come out and say, you know what? I was a part of this program. I can't remember what that's called, where, like, the absence of evidence is evidence itself. But yeah, in this case, I would say that that's pretty strong. And one of the other things that Kim trailers will say is or people that don't believe it will say is, well, why are they doing this out in full view? Like where everyone can see it and they go, exactly. Of course they're going to do it in front of full view because then you won't suspect anything. Well, the irony is that there are chemicals that can be added to a jet's exhaust, but not to create chemtrails, but to keep contrails from forming. Oh, really? Yeah. The original stealth bomber had this extra option to make it stealth. Yes, that makes sense. They figured out now you can just fly at a different altitude, stay away from wet areas, and our pilots know what they're doing, so they don't even use it. Or they didn't use it. But there's your irony right there for the episode. Well, and then one of the guys on the Discovery show said, you can't add aluminum to jet fuel. Like the plane wouldn't run. My kids wouldn't be able to handle that. Right. Why are these fish not running my outboard motor? Right. And finally, for me at least, the rise in the chemtrail conspiracy, although it has been around for a little while, really gain steam, they say, in 1999. In 2000, sort of coinciding with the massive pickup of Internet. Well, not just that. The stuff change of the millennium. I think everybody was really paranoid in, like, the decade leading up to that. Think about one of the number one shows of that decade, x Files. I love that show. That's great. This lady on the best evidence show sent all these pictures of different chemtrails to one of the atmospheric researchers, and she said to see here how this has become a sudden burst of a cloud. And this one had come from this chemtrail. Now it's a burst of a cloud. And he went, no, that's a cloud. And that's a chemtrail that intersects it or doesn't. Maybe it's off by 20,000ft. But he's like, that's just a cloud. Got you. And this is this and this is that. And he explained every single picture. He's like, weird things happen depending on how high you are and how humid it is and how the engine of the plane is running. He said, they're going to look different. And it's just easily explained. Chuck, josh, you should be very proud of yourself because you helped take a two page, 600, 700 word article and turn it into a 30 minutes plus podcast. Good for you. Thanks, chaff. So there you go. Without much silver needles. Hey, you were half of that. I was less than that. You did good. So that's chemtrails. If you want to read this 6700 word article, you can type in chemtrails C-H-E-M-T-R-A-I-L-S. If you got three and a half minutes to burn in the search bar. HowStuffWorks.com? And I said, search bar. So it's time for listener mail. Josh, I'm going to call this. I've got my Poop card. I'm not afraid to use it. Oh, this is a good one. Do you remember that? It's from Tina. Hi, guys. Just listen to how the digestive system works. And loved it. I've been waiting to have a cool reason to write in. Once again, one of those. Right? But never felt like I had any kind of expertise until you mentioned crohn's disease. I was diagnosed in 2008, had surgery to remove a section of my small intestine. I had never heard of the disease until the doctor told me he had removed 14 intestine that had been severely affected by it. I was glad you mentioned what we're going through, and I can answer a question you raised. I'm a member of the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America, and they did send me a card that says I can't wait. And it's an all caps due, which I guess it is on the card. And it explains on the card that I have a medical condition that requires immediate need of the restroom. I keep it my wallet, and it's come in handy for all those emergencies. My boyfriend thinks it's hilarious. I do, too, actually, but it makes me feel better having it around just in case. I'd love to hear you read a part of this on the podcast. Done. It would make me and my poor Crohn's infested shortened intestines so happy. And, yes, I am playing the sympathy card. And that is Tina. She has I can't wait card and the sympathy card. And the sympathy card. So there's a card? Yeah. Chuck, you did a portion. Was that 14? Her email? That's a portion? That's what she said, yeah. Okay. Why? She asked if we'd read a portion of it. Got you. It wasn't that good. No, I like it. Okay, well, if you have had a significant part of your body removed, we'd like to hear about it. You can tweet it to us if the part is 140 characters or less. That's S-Y-S kpodcast. One word. That's our Twitter handle. You can join us on Facebook, facebook. Comstuffyshow. And you can send us an oldfashioned email to stuffpodcast@housetuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseupworks.com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The Housetopworks iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on itunes. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you?" | ||
How X-Rays Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-x-rays-work | Like many huge discoveries, X-rays were accidentally stumbled upon. That serendipity led to a medical breakthrough still in use today. Learn about how X-rays are created and why they make such delightful images of our bones. | Like many huge discoveries, X-rays were accidentally stumbled upon. That serendipity led to a medical breakthrough still in use today. Learn about how X-rays are created and why they make such delightful images of our bones. | Thu, 04 Dec 2014 14:40:43 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=4, tm_hour=14, tm_min=40, tm_sec=43, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=338, tm_isdst=0) | 36864066 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck. Prime as always. And there's Jerry over there fiddling around with stuff. So it's stuff you should know the podcast, not stuff you should know the movie. That's right. We're sworn secret to you about that. That'd be a good movie. That would be a bad movie. I don't know, man. It could go either way. I always see I imagine it like Strange Brew. Yes. They could base it on the stuff you should know. Tell all book I'm writing. Oh, yeah, that would be exciting. That would be very exciting. I'm looking forward to that book. Like a Lifetime movie of the week. Do you, like, switch people's names? Like, am I Joe? Joe Clack? Yeah, exactly. Now it's sort of like, did you see the Save by the Bell movie? Oh, yeah. It didn't Screech write a book? It was based on a book by Screech. Right? Yeah. Wasn't it, like all sex and drugs and stuff? It was a bunch of teenagers in Hollywood, so sure, there was some of that in there. I didn't read the book, but the movie was bad and not nearly as salacious as you wanted it to be. Right. I remember a lot of people being disappointed. And by remember, I mean I recall like, two weeks ago when people were talking about it when it came out. It stunk. I'll watch Emily and I'll watch some of those just terrible, terrible biopics occasionally on TV. And it can be fun. Like, we watched who was the one actor? Brittany Murphy. The Britney Murphy story. Oh, really? Does she have a heck of a story? Is she alive still, or did she die? No, she passed away under kind of weird circumstances because she and her husband both passed away within weeks of each other. Weird. And there were all these strange claims that her house was poisoned. That they were poisoned. And, yeah, it was fun. What's your take on it? Oh, I don't know. That the movie wasn't very good. Who played Brittany Murphy? Do you remember something? Bowen, wasn't it? No, he's in all of us. Someone who didn't look very much like Brittany Murphy. Julie Bowen. I was right. The Ashton Kutcher guy was pretty good, though, I got to say. Steve Jobs played him. They should have just gotten Ashton Kutcher to play himself. He's not doing much. He's only two and a half men. I don't know. That's got to require 15 minutes of work a week. He's selling cameras. Do you remember when the whole Two and a Half Men thing was going down? We were in La. And for the one and only time in my entire life, I see John Crier that day. Oh, during the Charlie Sheen meltdown. Meltdown? Like the day of the meltdown. It happened at night, and within 8 hours, I saw John Crier for the first time in person at a McDonald's digil Ducky? No. I left him alone. He looks stressed out. Oh yeah. He's probably like, my career is going down the tubes. But little did he know he's a survivor. Yeah. His career is just fine. Yeah. So X rays is what we're talking about, right? Yes. That's the lightest part of this podcast. I like this one. This one, it's one of those things where if you can just hang on by your fingernails, it can click and then you lose it again. But that means that it could click again later on. That's what I like about it. Good. I'll leave that to you. I got lots of other stuff about it. Oh, you do? I totally understand. Good. So have you ever broken anything and needed an x ray or has it all just been dental stuff? You know what, dude never broken a bone. Wood. Knock on wood. Yeah, I mean, my injuries were always stitches. I was always getting busted open rocks and sprinklers and I was always getting cut and sewed back up, but I never broke a bone. That's great. Yeah. You should probably knock on wood one more time just to be safe. Yeah. So, yeah, all of my x rays too have been like just going to the dentist or whatever. You never had a bone broken? I don't want to say because I don't even know if knocking on wood will do it on laminate. Ikea. That would just be so horribly interesting if both of us broke a bone after this. Yeah. And we're at the age where you should break bones when you're a kid, where you're like, whatever, I get a cast at this age. It's like drag. Yeah. I remember reading like a Tom Clancy novel and some kid got an arm torn off or whatever, and one of the surgeons was like, if the arm is in the same room as the kid, it can be healed. Right. That doesn't hold true in your Tom Clancy's age. Now, so you are familiar with x ray. So you've seen them before. You've watched Er Shirley? Yeah, I mean, I've had x rays for the dental ones, like you said, and then just other various chest x rays for sicknesses and things like that, which I think may be a little frivolous, to be honest. Yeah. And kind of dangerous. Really conceivably. Sure. Which we'll get into later. But were you familiar with x rays at all beyond that? Did you know that they were invented or discovered accidentally? Yeah, I did know that. I did not. It's one of the few things I know. I saw a little quick short on some like it might have been actually Science Channel. I looked all over. The most I could find was a dude on Siemens just describing it in the most flat aspect. I watched one of his videos. Yeah. I got to five and Five wouldn't load and I was like, Forget this. Yeah. Five never loaded for me. I watched the other 14, though, and the whole time I was going, man, these are a minute long. Please join them all together into one six minute video. No, it was so weird. Yeah, it was pretty silly. But he was good. He was just very dry. Yeah. And they spent zero pennies on any kind of soundtrack or anything. Like, if he grabs papers, you hear papers rustling in the classroom. It was pretty straightforward. Yes. But that's a very windy, roundabout way of getting to it's. Discovery in 1895 by a German physicist named Wilhelm Runtogen. Nice. And he was testing whether cathode rays could pass through glass, and he saw that the fluorescent screen was glowing when he turned on his electron beam, which wasn't a big deal, but he was like, Wait, he's got cardboard around it, right? There shouldn't be any visible light escaping, which is silly to think of now. Oh, yeah, it is. But you have to put yourself in his shoes. Like, X rays hadn't been discovered because he was literally on the verge of discovering them right then. That's right. So he was like, this is very curious that this is fluorescing. Yeah. And he noticed other things were glowing, and eventually he started putting other objects between the tube and the screen. They glowed. The screen did that is finally put his hand there. I read his wife's hand. Oh, really? Either way, come in here for a second. I want you to try something. And saw bones projected and then I guess probably poopooed his pants. I said, man, I think I'm onto something here. Yeah, it was really that quickly. Immediately, the application was clear. It wasn't one of those things where it took 20 years. Right. He's like, Hold on, you can see bones. This could be really helpful. Yes. Anyone? A Nobel Prize. Very rightfully so. The first one ever for physics. And he named him X Rays because he didn't know what the heck it was exactly. Kind of signing your name. I think he assumed that later on, future scientists would fill in the blanks, but they were like, no, we're cool with X rays. Well, he probably thought that someone would eventually call it, like, the runtin ray or something. He wasn't much of a self promoter. He was just like, I'll just call him X rays as a placeholder. And he didn't patent anything. He never made money off of it. And then just his wife had hand cancer as a result. Really? No, I was laughing, but, no, she didn't. It was just a joke. You can proceed with the laughter. Plus, I've never heard of hand cancer. It's got to be out there. And then a couple of years later, they were already using it in the Balkan War was the first time it was really put to practical use. First Balkan war. The one around World War One. Well, no, 1897. Oh, that Balkan war. I didn't know that existed until just now. Yeah. And they said we can see bullets and shrapnel and stuff now, which is helpful. It is extremely helpful. So, like, this guy Rootkin discovers X rays and their most practical application in one fell swoop, basically. A little further study revealed that X rays are actually just another part of the electromagnetic spectrum of which radio waves, microwaves, what we call visible light. Yeah. What else is on there? Well, I've got my Handy wallet, electromagnetic Spectrum card. Yeah. And X rays fall between gamma rays and ultraviolet rays on that spectrum. Right. Which are all below well, you say below. I don't know if it's not really an above or below situation. Visible light and then infrared, microwave, and radio waves. So it would be a higher or lower frequency, because that's how the whole thing is divided. Yeah. So, like, the visible spectrum of light consists of electromagnetic radiation that has a frequency, a wavelength that our eyes are sensitized to, so we can pick up visible light. But there's plenty of other stuff on the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation, and all of it is delineated by the frequency, the wavelength. So at the highest end, you have gamma rays. They're like yeah. That means the squiggly line is very close together. Exactly. And then on the farthest end, you have radio waves that are like and that means the squiggly line is far apart. Exactly. And that is called Chuck science. That's good stuff. Yeah. Back in my wallet, right next to the what else do you have in there? I just have my Papa Blue ribbon membership card, which I actually do. Did you really? Yeah, but I've had it for, like, 20 years. Wow. You got it when you're, like, seven, eight. So X rays fall I guess we're about higher end. They have a higher frequency as far as electromagnetic spectrum goes. But the point is that it is ultimately the same thing. It's a type of electromagnetic energy that is carried on a photon, which is a particle of what we would call light. Yeah, we talked about photons plenty in the show. And the same, like, photons produce the visible light that we can see. Photons blast out from the sun. How long does it take? It takes like, 100,000 years to get from the core to the surface and then, like, eight minutes to get from the surface to Earth. That's right. Yeah. I love that fact. So this is the only part I understand, so I'll lead with it. If you want to imagine an atom, the nucleus of an atom, and rings around that atom. It's a new word, an atom as orbitals. When an electron drops to a lower orbital, it releases energy in the form of a photon, and the electron will always drop to the lower orbital. That's right. So, like, if an electron has kicked off of a lower orbital, an electron in the higher orbital goes yeah. And drops down to that one. Yes. And depending on how far it drops, it's going to determine the energy level of that photon. It releases its energy when it drops. Right? Yeah. Because it doesn't have to drop more than one orbital. Right. You can skip down I don't even know how far, but a long way. Yeah, it can. And like you said, the greater the distance between the two orbitals or the greater the energy differential, the greater the energy that photon, when released, will have. Right? That's right. And as we said, photons are the energy carriers of the electromagnetic spectrum, and depending on the energy or the frequency, the wavelength of that photon, that determines what kind of photon it is. Right. Whether it's a radio photon or an X ray photon or a photon that we can see that's in the visible spectrum. That's right. Sometimes when these photons are flying around, they will collide with other atoms, and sometimes those atoms absorb that photon's energy and then kick it up to that higher level again. Right. But it has to be, from what I understand, and I saw, that there's, like, of course, it's science, so there's like, atomic science, so there's little exceptions to this and that. But from what I could see, Chuck, the energy of that photon has to exactly match the energy differential between one orbital and another on an atom so that it can kick it up. So that it hits that one electron in the lower orbital, kicks it up to the higher orbital, and thus transfers its energy. Which means that atom just absorbed that energy that that photon was carrying. Right? That's right. But if it's a little less, it's not going to have the energy to kick that electron up, which makes sense to me. Right? Yeah. But if it's a little more, this is what doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't kick the electron up, and then the photon carries on in a diminished energetic state. It just doesn't do anything. It doesn't interact with that. It has to be exact, say, like the energy differential between orbits is eight. Yeah. So photon has to have an energy of eight or else it's not going to do anything with the atom. That's right. Okay. Well, let's say you have a radio wave. They don't have very much energy, so they can't move electrons between these orbitals. They just pass through things. Xrays are super powerful. There's lots of energy, so they can pass through things, which is key if you want to check out your bones from outside of your body. It is. And we're going to explain exactly how right after this. Okay. So we're back checking you tantalized, everybody, by saying that this difference in absorption is what produces X rays. Right. Was that tantalizing? I was tanilized. Okay. And I even know what's coming. That's how excited I am about X rays. Good. So consider this. Different atoms have different atomic weights. Yeah. They have different densities. They're just different like different atoms are different. And atoms also have what are called differences in radiological density. Right. Okay. So a really high energy, high atomic weight, very dense atom is going to be able to absorb a lot of energy. Smaller atoms that maybe are looser and have a lower atomic weight are going to get kicked around by any old photon that wants to come along. Yeah. And that's key. Like I said, if you want to see bones, because your soft tissue if you've ever noticed when you have an X ray, you'll see the bones, but the rest is sort of a grayish, black mess. Exactly. Because your soft tissue has smaller atoms, your bones calcium atoms are much larger. So they're going to absorb those xray photons. That's exactly right. They do it really well. Exactly. So imagine you have, let's say, chuck, let's go back and hang out with Tuck Tuck. Right. Oh, man. Let's get back on the way back. It's been a while. Okay. Look at him over there. So here we are in France in this cave. Tuck Tuck has his hand up against the cave wall, as you'll see, and in his other hand, he's got that little straw filled with red pigment. He's blowing it on his hand, right? Sure. And now that he moves his hand away, there's the outline of his hand. It's called a stencil. Right, exactly. He's just made an early stencil. He's like a bank seat, basically. Like a caveman banksy. But if you look at the back of tuktuk's hand, don't get too close, but look at the back of his hand. Yeah. It's covered in red pigment. Right? Yeah. So if you want to equate this to an X ray, the hand absorbed all of that pigment, and the stuff that passed through left the picture on the cave wall. That's kind of what happens with an Xray. Except with an Xray photograph, the xray photons are absorbed by the denser, calcium rich bones. Yes. And they pass through the softer tissue. So the picture that we have is the outline, the silhouette of the bones, because the X rays made it through the tissue didn't make it through the bones. They made it through the tissue and onto the Xray plate, which absorbed the picture in negative. That's right. And I'm glad he said picture, because that's all it is. On the other side of the human being that they're shooting the X ray at, there's a camera, and you're just going to get a regular negative, and they can make it a positive, but they leave it as a negative because you really don't need the positive image. Right. And that's what they'll put on that little screen to show you your cracked femur. Exactly. And they can see the crack because some of those X rays will make it through the gap. That's right. Right. So all you're seeing is the result of X rays that made it through the tissue were absorbed by the bone, so those don't make it to the plate. The ones that make it to the plate cause the chemical reaction that gives you your negative, your Xray. And it's pretty simple, really. Like, if you think about it, at least in principle, it's also extraordinarily difficult to conceive of. But if you understand the principle behind it, it makes uttering, complete sense. Yeah. And it's a pretty focused shot that they're using there. It's not like they don't fill the entire room with X rays. They've got a thick lead shield around the whole device, and it contains everything. It's got a little small window that's just going to let that narrow beam pass through through a series of filters and basically hit you wherever they want to hit you. Yeah. And the reason that they use lead is because lead is an extremely dense element yes. Right. Sure. Oh, God, I hope so. With a very high atomic number, which means it can absorb tons of energy. Right. Yeah. That's why you're going to wear a lead apron. If you're getting your skull done, you're probably going to wear an apron on your chest, let's say. Sure. So this lead is being bombarded with X ray photons and electrons, and it's just taking it. It's fine. And it's not able to pass through because it doesn't have high enough energy. But yes, when they put that little window in the X ray generating machine, it passes right through there in a concentrated beam. And Chuck, let's talk about the machine. Right. This is basically what we use as X ray machines, is essentially what Rookin was made was experimenting with when he accidentally discovered them, because if you look for X rays, they propagate naturally. But I think like, 20% of the X rays on Earth come from humans. Oh, really? Yeah, we generate a lot of X rays. You don't find them normally on Earth. They're coming from outer space to us. Okay. Hence xray astronomy. But the ones here on Earth that are generated on Earth, it's not like rocks put out X rays or something like that. Right. We do humans and lead aprons put out X rays, and they use this machine like Rootkin made. Yeah. What you have in the machine, you have an electrode pair, a cathode and an anode, and that's inside a good old fashioned glass vacuum tube. Right. Which it's amazing how vacuum tubes are still, like, the best way to do many of these things. Well, it allows things to travel at the speed of light easily. That's right. And it allows guitar amps to sound great. I didn't know these vacuums in that. Oh, is that a cathode tube? Yeah, yeah. The best amps are still made with vacuum tubes. You can get solid state amps, but the sound isn't as rich. So it's kind of like this old technology that's still superior. Right. They're all pumped out by hand by a 90 year old man in Tennessee. Mr. Marshall yes. So the cathode is a heated filament, just like you might see in a light bulb, and the machine is going to pass a current through that and heat that thing up, and then it's going to spit electrons off that surface and it's going to hit a disk made of tungsten and it's going to draw those across the tube. Basically, the tube is sort of the key piece, right. Because you've got the positive and the negative charge, the cathode and the anode. Right. Yeah. And that difference, that electrical charge draws those electrons down to the anode. Yeah. With a lot of force. Yeah. And that force means that when those electrons hit the tungsten anode, it knocks a bunch of electrons off, creates a bunch of X rays in the process, and you have a whole box filled with X ray radiation. Box full of X ray. That's exactly what it is. They might as well be like a footprints to this thing, like an old sewing machine. For as technologically advanced as it is, there may be, for all I know, I don't know what goes on in that other room. Right? Yeah, true. There's some dude in there, his right leg is three times more muscular than his left leg because that's the only one he uses. So in addition, like I said, to X rays being created, the other X rays, other photons, can go on and knock more electrons off. So you have, what's, like a process of chain reaction starting, right. It's not like one gets hit and then that's it. And the photons created it just hangs around until it's beamed out. You're just generating this huge amount of xrays. And the xrays are also continuing to propagate themselves because they're knocking more electrons free. And the more free electrons you have, the more interactions you have. Right, right. So one of the ways that more electrons can be knocked off, you don't even need a direct transfer of energy where a photon is absorbed or knocks an electron from one orbit to another or knocks it loose entirely. A photon actually has this really cool capability of just orbiting close by the nucleus of an atom. And when the nucleus basically draws it into its orbit, the photon just takes a hard left turn. Yeah. It just bumps it off its course. But even like the Dodge Viper has to slow down to take a left turn. Slow a little bit, right? Just a little. Just a little. Yeah. But that little bit in photon world means a transfer of energy from the photon outward as an Xray. Yeah. And then the photon takes that left turn and the energy is transferred to the atom. Yeah. And one of the byproducts, if it sounds like it's going to create a lot of heat. It's because it will. And in order to combat this, they rotate this anode to keep it. It would just melt down if you kept it in place. And apparently there's a cool oil bath that helps absorb heat as well, which I never have heard of that either. It sounds oily. A cool oil bath. Yeah. It doesn't sound refreshing at all. It sounds like the opposite of refreshing. Yeah, cool and oil don't really go together. No. And I misspoke that's. An electron that can be drawn to the nucleus of an atom, appropriately enough, because they orbit nuclei anyway. Right. But it doesn't have to hook up with that atom. When it takes that hard left, it emits the photon, like you said. That's right. And like I said earlier, there's a camera on the other side of the patient, and it's going to record that pattern of light when it passes through the body. And it's not so different from a regular camera. And in the end, you're just going to get a picture, like I said, a negative image. Yeah. And if you hook it up with a computer that allows you to take X rays basically in slices, you can come up with computerized tomography aka CT. Right, with CT scan. Exactly. If you get a breast exam, you're using a type of X ray called mammography. And then there's a fluoroscopy, which the man in the extraordinarily dry presentation from Siemens said was basically like moving picture. It's like a movie. Exactly. And then he showed us what the movie is with a flipbook. Right. That whole flipbook trick. And if you listen to this podcast I'm sorry, I just want to apologize for both of us. Siemens guy. Oh, yeah. Hats off to you for doing that at all. Yeah, he's probably saying, well, at least I was correct and everything I said. Exactly. It's a good point, sir. But with fluoroscopy, it's basically like a movie of an Xray movie. And you would do this to make sure, like, a heart is beating correctly because you wanted to see it. But you have to have an additional instrument, because, as we said, x rays will pass through tissue, like heart tissue and muscle tissue and blood vessels and all the stuff you want to get pictures of using an X ray. So you have to use something called the contrast media for it. Yeah, a contrast agent is basically more dense than the soft tissue. So if you want to, let's say, swallow, it's usually like a barium compound. If you want to examine, like, your blood vessels or your circulatory system, sometimes they can inject that. Or you might drink it to see if you're doing like a gastrointestinal, like a GI tract, you're going to swallow that stuff, which I've never had to do. I think my dad had to do that. I don't think it's super pleasant. I get the impression not too but my dad did, as well. Yeah, it's an old guy thing, so I should be getting one soon. And then it allows you to see a moving image, basically, how that liquid is. If there's any blockage, there's all sorts of applications for it. Yeah, because that liquid has a high radiological density, which means that the X rays don't just pass right through the tissue that it's being suspended in, like your blood vessels. It absorbs it for it. So you get a picture of your blood vessels, your circulatory system, which is pretty cool. It's pretty clever. It's also extraordinarily elementary in principle, my dear Watson. And that single picture, I think we mentioned CT and Mammography and all that and floroscopy, but the single picture is just called standard radiography, and that's when you're taking a photo of your skull, right, or your lungs or your bones, or your teeth. Speaking of the lead apron thing, man, it's always made me kind of nervous. Like, the rest of my body has to wear lead apron. But you're shooting an X ray into my head. Am I going to be okay? Well, we'll answer that right after this message. All right. X rays, are they bad for you? The answer is yes. Pretty unequivocally, but like all things, it's in moderation, is the key. Sure. In the 1930s and into the 50s, they had X ray machines at shoe stores. Oh, yeah. They can Xray your feet to get a better fit. And they didn't realize at the time that they were X raying people way too much. Yeah. Talkative kids in class, they just shoot them with an X ray. Would they? No, they probably did. I've got you, like, twice. Well, no, I believe that, like, hey, let's look at his brain. There may be a mouse running around inside of it. Yes. People in the 30s were dumb. Well, it's basically radiation sickness. It's a form of ionizing radiation. Right. So what can happen? Like, if just normal light hits an atom, it's no big deal. But when an X ray hits an atom, it knocks electrons off of it, creates an ion, which is an electrically charged atom. And basically anything from cellular death to mutation can happen at that point. Yeah. And mutation can spread, and it can cause cancer. Right. Because stable atoms are neutral. Right. Because they have an equal number of protons and electrons. You lose an electron, all of a sudden you have a positively charged ion, and that negatively charged electron running around, and it just causes trouble. And you said light, visible light, can be absorbed, and it's no big deal because visible light exists on a wavelength that's about in tune with the soft tissues of our body. Right. So we know how to absorb it, and it makes us tan, and that's cool. Right. But with these ionized atoms, these positively charged atoms, like, going around in your body, it can cause a lot. Of problems like mutations, like cancer. Right. Yeah. I mean, if you break that DNA chain, that's not good. No, it is itself. And one of the results is the DNA can basically lose its ability to regulate itself, and the cell replicates more frequently than it should. And all of a sudden, you have a tumor on your hands, and that can spread. It can also be a problem if that DNA break occurs in utero, because then that can lead to birth defects, which is why pregnant women shouldn't get X rays. And it can also just lead to plain old cellular death. If you have cellular death and the tissues that are made up by those cells break down, and you have a problem on your hands with that as well. So here's the deal. We get exposed to radiation every day just walking around on the planet. Yeah, it depends on where you live. But every year, the average person is going to be exposed to anywhere from one to four. It's measured in millisebergs per year, like I said, depending on where you are. I think in higher elevations, it's less than at sea level. So if you live in Denver, Colorado, you're going to be exposed to less well, yeah, because you're higher up in the atmosphere and that makes a difference. Exactly. You have less protection. Right. Yeah. So what they want to do, medically speaking, they want to use or they're supposed to use the minimum amount to achieve the pictures you need. It's not like the old days where they're just like, let's 20 X rays, let's do the minimum amount we need to get the information that we need. A CT scan can you lay down in the tube? And it rotates around you, and your whole body can be photographed in less than 5 seconds these days. But there are concerns if you get too many X rays. Still, like a dental panorama, I think what I say one to four milliseybergs per year, and it's cumulative, too, you should say. It's not like you get one and then eight months later you get another one, and that first one went away. Like it accumulates over the course of a year. Yeah. So here's just a few examples of how much radiation you're being exposed to with X rays. A dental panorama is going to be .01 millisevert. So not very much like two. Chest X rays might be zero one. Mammogram is around zero four. Your pelvis is zero six. Your back, upper back, maybe 1.0. I wonder why. Because there's so much bone there. Maybe yeah. Maybe you have to do with exposure to yeah, that makes sense. I got a ton of bone in my upper back. A full CT scan, it depends on what you are, depends on what you're X raying. But a CT scan is obviously more like an abdominal or pelvic. CT scan can be as many as ten milliseberts. So that's like, up to two or three years worth of radiation in a single CT scan. Yeah. Which can be problematic, which is why they don't say, get in the CT machine, like, every other week. Right. But some of the reasons you might if you had a traumatic injury, they're going to Xray you a lot of times for disease confirmation, they'll use an Xray machine during surgery as a visual guide. Like, if you do endoscopic surgery, the surgeons actually needs to look at something. So sometimes there's X rays for that or to monitor your healing process. When you break a bone. It's not just that first X ray. You're going to keep getting them to see how you're healing up. This is right out of the Siemens video. No, it isn't. Okay. I don't think so. I mean, I looked at so much stuff, cumulative research. So I did a brain stuff on sea vert and how many we can take. Yeah. And it's a little alarming. Sure. How much radiation we're exposed to. People who fly a lot, too, are exposed to tons of radiation because you're, again, higher up in the atmosphere, so you're less protected by the atmosphere. Speaking of flying, of course, baggage, that is X ray. The food industry uses X rays a lot. Archaeologists use it if they don't want to destroy an object and they want to see what's inside. Or Earth Sciences, they'll use X rays for rocks to see what kind of mineral composition. So there's all sorts of applications. It's not just medical space. Yeah. X ray telescopes out on satellites, apparently, you can see a lot. You can see things you can't detect from an Earthbound telescope, because Xrays are absorbed by our atmosphere, so you can't shoot it into space like that. So this article makes a pretty good point, if you ask me. It says, yes, X rays are bad for you and you should use them with care and caution. And one good point is to always ask if there's an alternative to an Xray, just to basically say, hey, Doc, or, Dennis, slow your role. Is there another way we can get this information without an X ray? I know it's the easiest, but what are the alternatives? But then the article makes the point like it's still safer than the ultimate alternative. The thing that X rays replaced, which was exploratory surgery. Yeah. Back in the day, if they thought you had cancer, they would cut you open and see. And this is definitely better than that. Yeah. Or broken bone. Imagine getting that arm cut open just to see how it's doing. They're like, no, it's not broken, and we haven't invented anesthetic yet. Good luck with your dentist, by the way, because I always get the feeling that the dentists are like, no, your insurance allows us to bill for so many per year. That's how many you're going to get. These X rays are putting my kid through college. Yeah. You got anything else on X rays? No. That was a fine amount of stuff. I'm feeling good about it. You feel good about this one? Sure. I do too. Yeah. If you want to know more about X rays, you can check out this really informative article on howstep works.com. It's got some great diagrams that explain a lot of the stuff we are saying visually. And you can type x ray into the search bar, how stuff works, and it'll bring that up. Since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. This is from my buddy Poppy in Vancouver, stuff you should know. Listen to that I met while I was there. And Poppy, as this is, he's got a pretty cool job. He listened to the PTSD show and wanted to write in about another option that he works with. He's a registered acupuncturist in Vancouver with special training in trauma and addictions. He has a program called neurotrophic stimulation therapy. NTSC in a large part of the program uses ear acupuncture and electro acupuncture to promote neuroplasticity in the brain. He says you can't necessarily directly fix the brain, but you can stimulate the ear nerves and will help the brain reregulate certain functionality so it can heal itself. He's been treating trauma and PTSD patients for several years, and the evidence for his efficacy is high. It can be done with acupuncture needles alone or in combination with a mild electrical stimulation. Remember we talked about transcranial electromagnetic stimulation? Yeah, transderal Cranial stimulation. He says that's one of the things that he's also using to treat PTSD, which is pretty cool. Wow. And he said it makes cognitive behavioral therapies so much easier to introduce because it promotes neuroplasticity. And the results help a PTSD suffer to be more open to and able to receive positive social programming. So here's a program we want to promote. If you want to see all the components in action in this program, you can visit lastdoor recoverysociety at lastdoor. Orgnt or you can donate funds to help purchase a brain scanner so that they can scientifically measure the results of the program, which would really help show the validity of the therapies. And if you're interested in helping out Poppy's cause there, because he's really big on treating veterans in Canada, in the US. I shortened this little URL to bitly bitly 101 Y-N-L-O and that is from Poppy. And he says namaste. Thanks a lot, poppy, is it? Poppy with an O-P-O-P-P-I. Nice. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstuffysheno. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast athouselworks.com that's right. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and bow tons of other topics, visit housetepworks.com." | ||
a60ce7b0-5462-11e8-b449-333219245830 | Frida Kahlo: Painter, Icon, Genius | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/frida-kahlo-painter-icon-genius | Frida Kahlo was a painter who transcended her own work to became an icon. Learn all about her fascinating and inspiring life and work in today’s episode. | Frida Kahlo was a painter who transcended her own work to became an icon. Learn all about her fascinating and inspiring life and work in today’s episode. | Thu, 07 Jun 2018 13:31:41 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=7, tm_hour=13, tm_min=31, tm_sec=41, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=158, tm_isdst=0) | 45379586 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everyone. We're coming to Salt Lake City, Utah and Phoenix, Arizona this fall. Yeah. October 23, we're going to be at Salt Lake City's grand Theater. And then the next night, October 24 will be in Phoenix. And we added a second show to our Melbourne Burn Show, right? That's right, a second earlier show in Melbourne. So you can get all the information for all of these shows@sysklive.com. Welcome to stuff you should know from houseteporkworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And there's Jerry Rowland. This is going to be an interesting one because I don't know how to say the lady's last name. Jerry's over there with her spider monkey on her shoulder, a dead hummingbird hanging from her necklace just like any other day. Yup. We're here in La Casa Azul, right? And she's gotten a hold of some eyebrow pencil and filled in between the two across the bridge of her nose. So I'm excited about this. A, because you said Frida Kaylokayla, we started recording Frida Kayla and B, because my family's fascination with this woman in her work no, we've talked about it before. That's okay, though. We've done 1000 episodes. We have talked about it before. Yeah. Okay. Well, we'll get back into it. Yeah. We're way into Frieda. Emily is borderline obsessed. Is she a freedom maniac? She is. That's awesome. And my daughter loves her. You know, there's like, frida I hate to use the word, but kind of cults devotional groups where they basically dress up and are like frieda, like channel frieda Kloo. Yeah. Because as one of these articles that we source from Point out near the end, not only does she draw in people for her art, but she draws in feminists and she draws in women who have suffered miscarriages is and disabled people who have suffered great pain and chronic pain in their life. Yeah. So through her life, she's able to touch a lot of people because of her life. And I'm sure with any artist where the more you know about the artist, the more you can appreciate their art. Sure. With Free to Kayla, it's almost like you got to quit saying that. My whole life, I've been saying free to Kayla. I like it. It rolls off the tongue. Yeah, but let's give her the due respect. When did we start doing that? I don't know. Okay, so you just almost can't fully appreciate any piece of her work without knowing at least the basics of her story, I think. Well, yes, and certainly once you know the basics, you're like, oh, right, that's where all this comes from. It really makes sense. Yeah. But she is a great artist for sure. I was going back and looking at some of her art. I'm familiar with her. I know a little bit about her, but I definitely saw some pieces that I didn't realize before. And just from researching this I very much came to appreciate her even more. Like, she's a great artist. Just the techniques she used, the imagery she used, the symbolism. I really dig it all. And it's like you can appreciate it because it gives you a visceral reaction, but the average person can also get what she's feeling or what she's saying without being like, this means this and that means that. She just kind of get it. Visually, it's something that you can get and appreciate pretty easily. Yeah. We've seen her work in museums all over the world. Basically every new city we go to, we see. Is there any free of color work there? Have you been to la Casa Azul? No, but that's going to happen. Oh, I'm sure. I was going to say bucket list, but it's just on the list. Right. I don't want to do it when I'm 80. Right. With Jack Nicholson? No. Morgan Freeman? No, we're going to go down there for sure. All right, so let's start chronologically. Let's start at the beginning. That makes sense. So, Frida Kahlo, she was born back in 19 seven, although she used to being a revolutionary. She used to say that she was born in 1910, which was the year of the Mexican Revolution. But she was born in a town which is very frida. Yeah. Frida color thing to do. Right. She was born in a town called Kojoakan, which is outside of Mexico City, and she was born in that house, La Casa Azul. The Blue House. Yeah. Maybe not. There's a lot of parts of her early life, like the year she was born, where other people say she's actually born nearby, but she says she was born there. Like her birth records indicate a different place. But I got you. We'll say she was born there. At the very least, it was her family's house. Right? Yeah. And it was in her life for her whole life, so much so she actually died in that house? Yeah. And it's a museum now. Yes, it is. It's a national museum dedicated to Freeda Kahlo. Pretty cool we can visit, right? So she was born in 19 seven. They figured out, apparently you figured out. And her father, was he German or Hungarian? Because I saw both. Well, here's another little thing. Oh, boy. It's going to be a long one. He was German. He was born in Germany, but Fried always said that he was of Hungarian Jewish descent, but that just doesn't appear to be true. Like ancestry, genealogy, records. So is he like, German Protestant or something? German Lutheran. Lutheran? I think that's Protestant, I think. I think so. But I think it was Luther. I can't remember. Okay, but his name, depending on it, was Carl Wilhelm. But when he traveled to Mexico in the late 1800s, he changed his name. He took the translation, the Spanish translation of his original German name, which would have been Guillermo. Apparently it's a great name. So it's Wilhelm, though. Yeah. And then 1894, he became a Mexican citizen and married her mother, Matilda Calderon, who was American Indian and Spanish. Yeah. And we should say Frieda's. Full name is Magdalena Carmen Frieda kahlo e colderon. Great name. It is, really. There's a lot to it there. Basically gives you everything you want, right? That's right. So she was born someone else I came to admire from researching her as her father. He seemed to have been a pretty cool cat. He was a really good dad. Her mom was a little bit religiously, hysterical, I think, and very strict. But her dad was a bit of a foil in that he raised frida. He noticed something in Freda, it seems, that she was different from her sisters, which she screamed just like she dressed in men's suits and things like that. She's definitely different than her sisters, but he saw in her something very much different than her sisters, not just in her outward behavior. And so he kind of plucked her out of the path that his sisters were on, which was, go get married or go be educated in a convent. Go get married. Go be a wife. And said, you're going to go a different path. Let's get you in a different school here. Yeah. He was a photographer, so her first experiences with art were accompanying him on photo shoots and being in the studio with him. And like you said, he sent her to the German College in Mexico City, where she was introduced to European things. And very sadly, she was sexually abused there and then ended up going to and I think was one of only 35 young girls to go to the National Preparatory School in Mexico, because that was right around the time of the Mexican Revolution. She said, Maybe we should start letting young women in here. Yeah. She wanted to be a doctor. Yeah. She excelled in biology and some others and was on a path to become a doctor, actually. But one of the other things that she discovered at the Preparatory Academy of Mexico City was a real zeal for the Mexican revolutionary spirit. Yeah. Not only did she learn about Europe, but she got really into learning about her indigenous roots. That seems to be something that fascinated her throughout her life. Yeah, for sure. Was her European and her Mexican roots and how they combined in her, and she explored them outwardly as well. She even had a painting called Roots. Oh, yeah. Kind of on the nose, and roots were growing out of her body, even. Yeah. We kind of skipped over one very important thing in her life. When she was six, she contracted polio and long recovery permanently damaged one of her legs. One of her legs was I think her right leg was smaller, just very skinny. Yeah. A little withered. Yeah. And she had a permanent limp from that age, which was a big deal. It was just the beginning of a lifetime of pretty horrendous physical disabilities and pain. Yeah. She was alive on the planet for 47 years and starting at age six, you say. That's when Polio yeah, that's when it began at the latest. It started at six and continued all the way up to 47. When she died. Yeah. So in this kind of revolutionary group that she joined, the Cache Chas, which means the caps or the hats, which apparently today is narco slang for cops in kachukuchas. It's hard to say kachuchas. Yeah. Because of the two HS. It's like Jason's coming or something. She fell in love with kind of the leader of that group. But really she found herself as a revolutionary. Right? Yes. And not just a Mexican revolutionary. She also became a communist ideologist and was for life. That's one thing that a lot of people don't realize, is Frida Kahlo, this pop culture icon, this patron saying of women and feminists, was also very much a fervent communist. Actually, she referred to her husband later, Diego Rivera, who you're about to mention as nobody's husband. He was a lousy husband, but he was a great comrade. This is a great quote. Yeah. So in 1923, that's when she fell in love with Alejandro Gomez EDIUS, and they were together for about five years. And we'll get to kind of what happened toward the end of that relationship in a SEC. But in 1922, when she was just 15, she was at school at the preparatory school, and Diego Rivera, who was very famous artist and muralist at the time, already this giant man like Alfred Molina's size. That's who played him even bigger, I think. Yeah. He was huge and just tall and rotund and just a big personality and everything. Like Edward Herman. Sure. Yeah. He was painting a mural at her school called Creation when she was just 15, and she would go out there and just basically kind of stare at him while he was doing his work and sort of became infatuated with him and the art. I get the picture that it was all sort of intertwined, and years later, they would meet and marry and then remarry, which we'll get into the ins and outs of their relationship. But it was an interesting love story of sorts. Artists. Yeah. Should we take a break? Sure. All right, let's take a break, and we will talk about the tragic events that befell her at the age of 18. Okay, Chuck, so like you said, something really bad is about to happen to Frida. She's 18, she's on a bus with a boyfriend who is the leader of the Kachachas. Yeah. And the bus was struck by a trolley or vice versa. She was on a trolley, struck by a bus, one of the two. And either way, it was a bad, bad scene for her. Yeah. She was impaled by one of the handlebars. It went through her pelvis into her womb is how I saw it. Put broke her spine. She was in a bad way, and supposedly her boyfriend walked away unharmed, which just makes it even worse. The way I got it was that everyone was shaken up pretty bad, but it was this sort of freak thing that this rail impaled her hip, that she got the worst of it. Now, this would go on to be, in my opinion, the most significant event of her entire life 100%, because it changed everything. It changed the course of everything. Remember, up to this point, she's planning on becoming a doctor. And she was so laid up for so long and so immobilized that she basically said, well, there goes my chance of being a doctor. I'm not going to be able to catch up. I'm not going to be able to move. Who knows if I'll be able to walk again? And it just shifted direction. Plus, that whole womb thing is going to come into play later on, and that will definitely influence her art for sure, too. Yeah. So she's bedridden for months. I think she had something like 13 or 15 surgeries from that point on for the next 30 years. And it turns out that she was a great painter, which must have been something to be like, well, I'm in this hospital bed. They're equipping me with this special easel that I can use in my full body cast lying down. I'm going to put a mirror on the ceiling above me so I can be my own model. And she was very much known for her selfportraits, and she starts painting and is amazingly talented. Yeah. And at first she was saying, okay, well, I can't be a doctor, and apparently I have this knack for painting. Maybe I'll be a medical illustrator. And once you hear that, when you see some of her work, you're like, oh, yeah. She basically was a medical illustrator. Yeah. But exploring anatomy as a metaphor for emotion, from what I understand. Right. Yeah. This might be hyperbolic to say this, but I don't know of any artists that poured herself out on the canvas as much as she did. Certainly not up to that point. Yeah. Especially female artists. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Up to this point. When Frieda Callow came along, if you were emotional, you were hysterical. One. But if you were a woman artist, you certainly weren't expected to explore emotions and grief and personhood and the self, and you certainly weren't expected to do it in your paintings. And she said her work showed that that was not the case. It wasn't even like, you shouldn't do this. It was, women can't do this. She came along and said, Actually, we can, because I'm living proof. Yes. If you're a man, you're just a brooding artist. Right. You're mailing college. Yeah. If you're a woman, you're hysterical or you're depressed. And she laid it out there as raw as you could imagine. And especially for the time, it was just off the charts how radical it was. Right. And she's able to do this because her family set up a special easel in a mirror for her to be her own model. Yes. Right. Yes. So this is a big thing like this is starting to come along, and she passes the time while she's recuperating doing this. And she recovers enough that she goes back to school and starts hanging out with her old friends again. And from that reentry back into the revolutionarycommunist world in Mexico at the time, she ended up in the orbit of Diego Rivera again. Actually, they ran across each other at a party. Yeah. And this was it, man. From that point forward, they would be tied to one another through their work and through their multiple marriages to one another. She was 22. He was 20 years older than her. And he very much encouraged her early on and championed her and was her mentor as an artist. She went up to him at this party and said, I want you to look at my work and tell me, should I pursue this? Am I an artist, or is this just nothing? And he looked at her work and he said, you were an artist. This is astounding like, do you have what it takes? And you should keep pursuing being an artist. And as a matter of fact, let's get married. Yeah. I mean, he was attracted to her, but I haven't seen anything that led me to believe that any of his support of her work was not genuine. Right. And because he wanted to get her in the sack. No, he wasn't that kind of guy. He would get anybody in the sack. He certainly didn't have to marry you, and he certainly didn't have to tell you you were a great artist. That was below him. I saw a thing. They both had multiple affairs. We'll talk about that throughout their marriage. And maybe or maybe not so understanding of each other doing so. But I saw one point that he supposedly got his doctor to write a note that said that he was physically incapable of being faithful. Oh, really? I don't know if that's true or not. I just want to get this quote. And he had a great quote about her as an artist. He said that she was a realist as far as her art is concerned, she was the first woman in the history of art to treat with absolute and uncompromising honesty, one might even say cruelty. Those general and specific themes which exclusively affect women. Yeah, those are pretty strong words from a renowned artist. Diego Rivera was well renowned by this time already. So when he looked at her art and had things like that to say about it, it really meant something. If she ever wasn't outsider artist, she wasn't anymore. She was a genuine artist. She'd been decreed as such by the cream of the crop. Yeah, I think the article on our own website downplays a little bit. Her successes during her life, it's certainly nothing compared to what she got many, many years later, decades later, after her death. They weren't freedom maniacs back then, but she also was not just completely unknown as an artist. I mean, she got some notoriety during her life. She got to know Picasso. She got to know these were the circles she traveled in, partially because of Diego Rivera. But they started moving around starting in the 1930s. They didn't stay in Mexico. They lived in San Francisco for a little while, depending on where the work was. Because he was a muralist. Right. So he had to go to the place where he was doing that. Yeah, exactly. He can't say, I'm going to send you a mural. Just tape it up. Send me a wall. And he had her in tow, which I get the impression, like, sometimes she was a willing accomplice, and other times she was very much home sick from Mexico. Yes. She for sure miss Mexico. I know she did enjoy her time in, like, New York and said, I don't know if she loved Detroit. I don't know if anybody did. They moved to Detroit while he worked for the Detroit Institute of the Arts. But very famously, in the 1930s, they lived in New York City when Diego Riveros, commissioned by Nelson Rockefeller, who in the movie, the great movie by Julie Taymor and Sama Hayek, was played by Edward Norton. Oh, really? Yes. Have you not seen that movie? No. Oh, man, it's good. Yeah, I'll bet. And once you hear that, especially with the backstory now with the Weinstein stuff coming out, this was her Samaja's passion project for her life, and he put her through a living hell. It's horrifying. I think it might have been in New York or New York Times had a great article about it that she wrote, I think. But I think what got me on that was Edward Norton. He rewrote the script for free. Because basically one of Harvey's big thing was like, I'm not going to give you any money for this. You got to do it for almost nothing. Everyone's going to have to work for free. So she got everyone to work for free or scale right from Edward Norton to Julie Taymor, the great director. And he demanded a lesbian sex scene, literally was like, I'm not doing this unless you do that. And she was bisexual, so it wasn't like he created this out of thin air. But he's like, I want to see this on screen. She supposedly had affairs with George O'Keefe and Josephine Baker and all these famous female performers and artists, but she did not do that. I think she had a kissing scene with Ashley Judd at a party. Who is Ashley Judd supposed to be? I can't remember. I haven't seen it in a minute. OK. Emily's mad that she's not here right now. I told her about this last night. And she's like, why am I not on it's? Like, we don't have guests. She's like, I'm a guest on Movie Crush. I was like, well, that's a different podcast altogether. Sorry, Emily. Yeah, she will pick this apart, trust me. But anyway, she had a devil of a time getting that movie made. And it went on to great success and I think still is the highest grossing art based movie of all time. Yeah, that's what I saw. Yeah. So, anyway, they were in New York City because Nelson Rockefeller, played by Edward Norton, had commissioned Diego Rivera to paint mural at Rockefeller Center called man at the Crossroads. And in it, it was one of these big almost look like a Sergeant Peppers cover people all over the place. I've seen it. And he snuck in Vladimir Lennon in the painting. So I have a question about that. Did he sneak it in and was caught? Or was he like and also, by the way, have included this great man, Lenin. He snuck it in as a response, as a very pointed response to something. And I can't remember exactly what it was. But it wasn't originally in the plan. I don't know if it was in the original sketch. I might be getting this slightly wrong. But at any rate, he got Lennon in there. And Rockefeller was not happy. I mean, I think it was more of his family. Like he stayed his friend. It wasn't like he was like, I hate you, you're big poopy pants. Go back to Mexico. Right? But he stopped the work. That painting was mural was removed and destroyed. But eventually was it destroyed? Yeah, man. Pretty sad. But eventually Rivera recreated that a little smaller in Mexico City and changed the title to Man Controller of the Universe. And then in parentheses, up yours, Rockefeller. Maybe so. But that just sort of puts a button on them moving kind of all around the United States for a while. And this is when she was being introduced to high society and everyone from, like I said, Josephine Baker to Trotsky. And she was working at the time too, right? It wasn't like she was just hanging out. Yeah, she was still painting. And one of the paintings she did was The Suicide of Dorothy Hale. Yeah, that was interesting. So she was commissioned by Claire Loose Booth. Little Deuce Coop. She was from the publishing family at the time. I think she published Vanity Fair or something like that. She's a great publishing magnate. And this was back in the she was friends with Dorothy Hale, who was an actress, a well known actress who had hit on hard times financially and was having to live on the generosity of her friends. And she climbed up to the highest point of the high rise that she lived off of and jumped to her death, and it devastated Claire Booth Loose, and I hope I get that right somewhere. And who was her friend, and she commissioned Frida Kahlo to do a painting, which she thought this would be a portrait to commemorate my friend Dorothy. That's not all. What Frida Kahlo did yeah, I don't know if she realized who she was commissioning fully. Have you seen her work? Right. So what Frida Kahlo did was she took this assignment and commemorated not Dorothy Hale necessarily, but Dorothy Hale's death by suicide. Yes. It's almost like a step by step diagram. It shows her at the top of the building in midair and then in the foreground. Largest of all is her broken, bloody body on the ground. But it has this very somber text, caption, basically across the bottom in a scroll that explains what this is and how sad this is, and that it was the suicide of Dorothy Hale. And so, apparently, when Claire Booth Loose got this, she unwrapped it and was like, what is this gag? She's horrified, and she was going to destroy it, and friends talked her out of it. So it's still in existence today, from what I understand. I think the Booth or Loose family has the painting in their possession now. Yeah. And that's just emblematic of Frieda's outlook, which was like she was no BS. She's like, I'm going to show you what's real. So let me ask you this. You're the freedom expert here. No. Between the two of us. Okay, maybe was she doing that? I'm all in your face, Claire. This is the reality of your friend's suicide, or this was her expression of emotion that she thought Claire I'm not saying her last two names, would kind of vibe on and, like, this would be the greatest commemoration of her friend. Which one? Well, I don't think it was all in your face. I think she thought that was the honesty. I think she thought that was the most honest work. But I'm not sure whether or not she considered, like, wait a minute, is she going to hate this? Okay, so she wasn't like, it doesn't matter. She hates it. This is the most honest work. So even if this psychologically destroys her clarity needs to toughen up. I'm very curious. That's a good question. I understand a lot of the symbolism in her paintings now, but I don't necessarily haven't hit upon her motivation or personality quite yet. Emily's going to be so mad because she read her 800 page biography, and she's probably like, oh, well, read page 630, jerks, and that will explain it all. Sorry again, Emily. That's all right. You want to take a break? Yeah, let's do. Okay. All right. Chuck so one other thing. Very big thing happened to her in Detroit, actually, and she has a painting that commemorates it called Henry Ford Hospital. She had her second miscarriage. Yeah. And her miscarriage. I believe she just had the two. I think so. But that's all right, right? Those would affect and influence her work for the rest of her life. They deeply impacted her and not just emotionally impacted her, but they were themes she explored. Can you still be a mother to other things even if you don't bear your own children? How does it affect your femininity? It's a theme that really affected her and she explored, and it really is just right there in broad, bold colors in Henry Ford Hospital. Yeah. She very famously was a mother to many animals. She had spider monkeys. She had dogs, cats, birds. She had a pet deer all at her at her house. We have a great children's book called that I recommend called Frieda Kai. A lot in her animalitos. This is really fun for kids and adults, actually. But yeah, she really wanted to be a mother, and it was devastating to her that she couldn't be right. And like you said, with all her work so raw and laid bare and I assume most people have seen her work. Like, we'll talk about some of it a little bit. It wouldn't hurt to kind of brush up on these if you have a couple of tabs handy while we're talking. Yeah, but lots of blood. Lots of exposed organ blood vessels connecting her to things. Yeah. Like you said, you don't have to work hard to understand what she's getting at when there's a painting of her with her, like, body cavity split open and like, a baby bunny where her womb is. Actually, I think I just made that part out. That's a great idea. I like that imagery. It wouldn't surprise me if that was one of her paintings. Sure. There was a lot of pain, physical pain depicted in her paintings. And this is another huge theme or motif or whatever you want to call it, to where the physical pain depicted. And again, remember, she's painting herself almost exclusively here. Her emotional pain is depicted as physical pain. So, like, nails all over her body or she has a huge tear going vertically up the middle of her body, and her spine is a doric column that's crumbling. Just physical imagery that it did depict her physical pain, too. She was always in a lot of pain throughout her life, physically, but she also suffered a lot of emotional and psychic pain as well. And all of it was combined as physical pain and evisceration and being laid open in her paintings. Yeah. And eventually she would meet Andre Baton. Is it Beton or Breton? Breton, I think. So. The father of surrealism's. Yeah, and he is the one. She actually, in a funny way, kind of said she never considered herself a surrealist until Andre Breton came to Mexico and told me I was one. Yeah. Really? I do not know whether my paintings are surrealist or not, but I. Do know that they are the frankest expression of myself. Yeah, but she is, if you want to classify her art wise, surrealism or magic. Surrealism is definitely categories that a lot of her work fits under. We used a lot of sites for this. I can't remember which one it came from, but I saw a description of her work that she was an individualist, which means she was her own thing. She may have had influences, and she definitely had Mexican indigenous art influence. That is a huge thing that really drives the visual impact of her painting. But as far as schools of art go or movements, she tapped into primitivism, indigenousm, magic, realism, surrealism, and again, all of it combined to make her an individualist artist. Well, yeah, you mentioned her indigenous roots, and I think Diego Rivera is one who really encouraged her to embrace that. And she started I mean, she wore suits and stuff sometimes when she was a kid, but she wore more European style clothing when she was younger and then really started wearing more Mexican indigenous stuff. Yeah, really colorful stuff. And most famously captured in maybe her most famous painting, the Two Fridas in 1939. It's the double self portrait that on one side, it shows her in the more modern European clothing, and then on the other side, it's her in her more indigenous Mexican clothing. And both of them have their hearts exposed. I think on the European side, the arteries are severed and things on the Mexican side, it's intact. The heart is intact. Really pretty. It is very pretty. A lot of our work was pretty. Sometimes it looks very primitive, and then other times, in some details, like the eyes of a cat or something like that, you're like, wow, that's really almost photo realistic. So it's very weird to me how her I don't want to say her talent, but her visual talents kind of were applied in some places and not as much as others. And I'm wondering what the details were that made her make those decisions. Yeah, she included her pets and a lot of her paintings. I think 55 of her paintings featured her pets, some very famous ones with her spider monkeys and birds on her shoulder. My favorite one is called what the Water Gave Me. I guess it's a self portrait in a way, of her in a bathtub from her vantage point. So you just see her feet and toes sticking out at the end of the tub, and then the water is just full of all kinds of other stuff. I don't think I've seen that one. It's really nice. Like, there's a volcano with the Empire State Building coming out of the center of it with, like, gangrenis lava flowing over the sides. Wow. Because she would get gangrene later in life. Just another physical malady. And had one of her legs amputated below the knee. Yeah, there was a dead bird, a one legged bird being pierced by a tree. There's a nude woman floating next to her dress, looks like her parents on their wedding day. And it's all, like, in the bathtub water with her feet and toes sticking out. One toe, of course, is mangled and cracked and bloody. There was so many gruesome aspects of so much of our work right. Because it kind of punches you in the gut. Very much like, to see these things in person is like especially if you're a fan of her work, to actually stand in front of one of them and put your nose six inches from it is really pretty astounding. Do not sneeze. Do not sneeze on the art. They have signs everywhere. Host of Fox article points out the wounded deer yeah, that's a good one. And my Birth, both in the same paragraph here. These are two of my favorites, actually. My birth is so just twisted, but it's also really simple and straightforward. Her mother, but you assume it's her mother. The sheets actually placed over her mother's head, so you never see her face. And you also kind of get the impression that it could be frieda as well. But it's Frieda's head. Grown up frieda, like coming out of the birth canal. The womb, as it were. Yeah. I feel like such a 19th century white guy calling it a womb. Yeah, it is graphic. But I don't know. I don't want to armchair critique it or anything like that. I just like that one. And then the wounded deer, I think is awesome too. Yeah. We should probably apologize to every art historian and critic when it comes to art, and I know you do, too. I love going to museums, and you're probably where I am, which is I just like what I like if it looks nice to me. Right. And nice doesn't mean, oh, that's pretty. But if it touches me in some way, then I'm like, I like that. Sure. What's supposed to do? I enjoy reading the Placards and then understanding a bit more behind it, but I'm definitely not some art historian or critic. Although I do appreciate being having art explained to me by art historians, by people who know, like Sister Wendy, that whole series from the 80s or Ninety S. I don't know that. Oh, man, I've told you about it before. She's this nun who understands art better than anybody in the world. She had, like, a little PBS series for a while where she could just explain art. And you just wanted to watch the next episode so bad. Yeah. But I think the level that you and I are at, that you are characterizing, is it was best captured on The Simpsons, where there was a museum audio tour that was narrated by Melanie Griffith. And when they put it on press play, she's like, oh, let's see what's in this room. Oh, this one's nice. I like this one. Oh, look at that one. What's in the next room? That's the level we're at of understanding and appreciating art. Melanie Griffith level. We briefly mentioned Leon Trotsky earlier, the exile communists and rival to Stalin. They were friends and they hosted him, she and Diego Rivera, the Blue House, and supposedly had a brief affair, although other people have questioned whether or not she really did because of, I think last year, a lot of her love letters to Diego were published. Oh, yeah. And it's really interesting, their relationship. They divorced in 1939, remarried the next year in 1940, lived in separate houses. They both had their infidelities. But a really interesting complex relationship. Mentor, student lovers, friends, rivals as well in some cases, but it's hard to obviously, as an outsider, encapsulate it on a podcast. But a very complex relationship, full of respect and admiration on some levels, but also he was also that sort of of the time in Mexico and America, just that male macho thing going on. I mean, for goodness sake, he tried to have his doctor write a note that said he was physically incapable of being faithful. Right. So let's just say male, dominant, complex marriage and relationship. Well, I also saw she could kind of put up with his affairs, and she definitely had her own, but supposedly his affair with her younger sister really crushed her. Yeah. That was, I think, led directly to their divorce. Yeah, I could see that. Yeah. That was uncool diego yeah. Even with a doctor's note. Diego yeah. And he died just a few years after her, I believe. Right. I don't know when he died, actually. Yes, I think he died three years after her. By the 1950s, her health was really declining. She kept having these surgeries, kept painting. 1953, she had a solo exhibition. I love this man. She couldn't get around. And it's so great in the movie, she wasn't going to go at all. And then they brought her in by ambulance, brought in a four poster bed, and that's where she was in the gallery. She was laying in bed, like greeting people. Yeah, she received everyone while she was in bedridden. Pretty amazing. And she died a couple of weeks later, I think, actually. I think the last time she was seen in public, she showed up for a protest against the Usback coup that overthrew our Benz in Guatemala. Yeah. Edward Renee is coming back in into the picture every time. And she died again at age 47, man. After a life of pain, but a very productive life of pain, too. It changed things quite a bit. Yeah. And with her death, it's listed as pulmonary embolism, but they never did an autopsy, and it's generally believed that she committed suicide. Oh, by how pills? Her personal nurse said that she took twelve, I think, painkillers when she knew that her max was seven. And earlier that evening, she had given Diego an anniversary present a month early, which it all kind of adds up in the chronic pain. And just this was after polio, after gangrene, after amputation, after pneumonia, after the bus accident. After the bus accident. So, yeah, she may have just ended it. Understandably. Yeah. So when she died, like you said, she was fairly well known in certain circles in the art world, but when she died, her work kind of entered into obscurity. For a few decades, it was dormant. Yeah. It's well put. And then in the late 70s, it was rediscovered by, I guess, nationalist, you could call them art nationalists in Mexico. And she has been basically a pop icon ever since. Once her story was really established and built and her work came back out, she's just never really left the art scene since. Yeah, which is pretty cool. Very cool. If she is in a museum near you, go check it out. Do you want to talk about her famous eyebrow? Because I think this article did a really good job of addressing it. Yeah, she painted herself. She very famously had what you would call a unibrow. Right. Yes. And she would paint it a lot. But the article on house of works quotes a book by Desmond Morris called The Naked Woman a study of the female body. And he basically says, desmond Morris says that women will pluck their unibrow into nothingness religiously. And then it takes a woman who is above fashion to flaunt her unibrow. And that perfectly that term, above fashion, perfectly encapsulates free to Call, which I thought was a pretty cool thing because Desmond Morris wasn't talking about Free to Call. This article went out of its way to go find that and bring it in. I think it analyzes her appreciation of herself inside and out pretty well. Yeah. I mean, if there was one thing that she did on her canvas was say, this is me, right, in every single way, inside and out. And her legacy in the art world, especially among women, female artists, like the one Arc we read said, you just can't overstate the importance. Right. Nice. Anything else? No. I apologize for all the mistakes. Yeah. Sorry. Let's do Andy Warhol One next. I tried to do right by this one. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I was apologizing to Emily specifically. Right. Sorry. Emily. If you're not Emily and you want to know more about Free to Call Out, you can search her on our website. There's actually a pretty decent little article, and then there's tons of stuff. Go look at her art all over the web and in person. And since I said that, it's time for listener mate. I'm going to call this mistakes in defense of us. Okay. Hey, guys. I'm sure you get annoyed at the influx of emails you get every time you make a mistake on your podcast. At least that's what I gleaned from a few recent episodes where you anticipate people writing in and correcting you, in effect. Right. How ironic. I'm writing to counterbalance that. You guys do a fantastic job. I'm amazed that you were able to cover topics in such detail with such high turnover rate. With how quickly you produce episodes, I would expect so many more mistakes or sloppy work. But not with you. Me. Excuse me? No, not with you. I do, too. I'm starting my own podcast, and it's made me deeply appreciative of how talented and gifted you guys are as hosts. One day, I hope I'll be as smooth and easygoing as you are. As always, please keep going with your work. You're my favorite podcast. I also want to give a shout out, especially to your Trail of Tears episodes. I recently went into the archives and listened to those two. You told that story beautifully. I think you really did it justice, and I would recommend anyone who hasn't listened go back and listen. Anyway, seriously, thank you for adding something fun to my life. And that great name is from Shelina Bathala, or maybe Batala, depending on how you pronounce it. Okay. And she is the host, and I asked her, you're a bad plugger of your own work. I don't even know what your podcast is going to be about, but it's coming soon. It's called Worth It. Yes. Good title. Yes, everyone. That is how you get your podcast plugged on stuff. That's right. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Breaking news. Oh, yeah. Treaty Paulo came back to life. No. I just got an email reply from Shelina, and she said, my podcast is about helping people create a life that they're happy with. Nice. I think a lot of people feel lost, don't feel connected to themselves or feel scared to do what they actually want to do, like pursue creative career or do something that makes far less money. So I talked to people who have been there, who are still there about their journey and what they have done to create happiness in their life. It's going to be good. Yeah. Good job. That sounds great. Yeah. Hurry up, Shalina. Yeah. Okay. Best of luck with Worth It coming soon to a podcast distributor near you wherever you find your podcast. Right? And if you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at SYSK podcast. I'm at Josh mclark on Twitter and chuck that moviecrush on Twitter. You can also hang out with us on Facebook at facebook. Comsteno or facebook.com charleswokbriant. You can send us all an email to stuffpodcast@howsteporks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstepworks.com. Ah, summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon music that's so good it's criminal morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this charttopping series will have 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." | |
c7dfdd62-361e-11ea-bbe5-bffc92933c33 | Short Stuff: Lawn Darts | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-lawn-darts | There was a time when kids had to look out for flying darts that could pierce their skulls when they played in the backyard. | There was a time when kids had to look out for flying darts that could pierce their skulls when they played in the backyard. | Wed, 27 May 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=27, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=148, tm_isdst=0) | 11693700 | 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. This is Short Stuff. Giddy up. Let's go. Look out above. Is that what people shout? Look out above? It feels wrong. I think they say, look out below. But that didn't make any sense. No, neither one. It just say, how about just look out or heads up? That's a good idea. No, not heads up. You'll get a lawn dart in your eye. Just move out of the immediate area quickly. Duck and cover. There you go. Yeah. I don't know if that would help either, because get this, we're talking about lawn darts, and when they get a real wind up under them, they strike with a force of around \u00a323,000 per square inch. That's right. And we are talking about lawn darts. And if you're like, what is a lawn dart? That means you're probably younger than we are because we grew up in the with these toys. It's basically a giant oversized dart, like you would throw at a dart board right. With plastic fins. And they're about a foot long or so dish. Yeah. And the idea is that it was sort of like cornhole. You would get on opposite sides of each other, like horseshoes, and you had these big hula hoops, basically, you would put on the ground. Right. And you would throw the lawn dart up in the air and try and get it to come down and stick inside of that hoop. Yeah. And you get some points for that. You just let it arc gracefully back down into that hoop. And that was it. And it was a lot of fun. The problem is it was a lot of danger as well, because these things, again, a lot of them had, like, a blunt end, but not all of them did. Some are sharp, especially the first ones. They would come back down to Earth with a lot of force behind them. And if they happen to come back down to Earth via your body, they could really mess you up really well. Especially if you were a little kid whose skull hasn't fused fully yet because you're not 20 years old. And some kids suffered tremendously at the hands of the lawn art industry. That's right. And the government comes into play here before we were born in 1970. And this was I think they debuted in about 1950 ish the FDA banned these things because they were like, these are really dangerous. And the manufacturers said, no, they're not so dangerous. Let's send our lobby in the toy lobby and get them brought back to the market, because we got to get these lawn darts out there. Nothing is more important right, than getting the lawn darts back to market, getting the people their lawn darts. And Chuck, you lived through the lived through the 70s, although I wasn't fully aware, except towards the end there. But do you know how dangerous something had to be to get banned in the 70s? Yeah, I mean, SNL had a skit about dangerous toys with an ACROD. Exactly. So there was a push to get rid of londarts, but the londard industry, very surprisingly, if you ask me, pushed back, and they struck a deal and said, look, how about this? We won't market to kids anymore. So lawn darts are officially not a toy. We'll sell them in the sporting goods section of department stores, and we'll put a warning on the box about just how dangerous they are, because we didn't say, chuck, londarts are the direct descendant of a weapon of war called the plumbada. I read this mashable article about these, and a plumbata is a lawn art, except a lawn dart that you used in war, starting with the ancient greeks and about 500 BCE. All the way up to the middle ages, people were using plumbata. Yeah. To great effect. Right. And so the laundry industry, the recreation sporting goods industry, said, we've got to get these weapons of war back onto the market. And so they struck a deal with the FDA, and the FDA said, fine, you can start manufacturing them again. That's right. And we got in on the second wave of land arts in the when they said, we won't sell them in the toy section at target, we'll sell them in the adjacent sporting goods section at target. Right. Kids will never see them. You'll never know. It will be like they don't even exist to them. And so they came back. And when they came back in that second wave that you and I were a part of, they were bigger than ever. Even. Like, law and arts were a thing for a little while there, but they weren't any less dangerous than they were before. And we'll see right after this message break. Well, now we're on the road driving in your truck. Why not learn a thing or two from Josh and chuck? It's stuff you should know. All right. Okay. So. Chuck. In that second wave that really began in earnest in the 80s. You could go to that sporting goods section of your department store. And you might be there to buy. Like. A volleyball set. But TS for you. Because including that volleyball set is a set of lawn darts. And you have to buy them if you want that volleyball set. And that's how they were sold in a lot of cases. Yeah, that part I don't get. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Like why they would include another toy, completely different toy, in this volleyball set. I just don't get it. Well, I think that they were saying, like, you, customer, have shown that you have a desire for outdoor fun and recreation in your backyard. Here's another game that we're going to throw in that we apparently can't move on its own, so we're just going to was that the deal? That's what I want. We're going to sweeten the pot on this volleyball net. Why are they giving away toys? That's how I took it. Well, regardless of Mental Floss reported that David Snow, this aerospace engineer in California, did such a thing in April of 87 and thought, like any reasonable parent, like, oh boy, I should hide these for my children, which he did in his garage. But his children found them, started playing with them, and very tragically, one hit his seven year old daughter in the head, lodged in her brain, and three days later, she was declared clinically dead and removed from life support. And it was a big tragedy and a big, big deal. Yeah. So David Snow happens to be the kind of guy who like this would get to anybody, obviously, losing your child like this, but I think there's a significant portion of people who would just be so dead inside that they just had no drive or resolve or much of anything after that. He was the opposite kind of guy. He went the opposite direction, and he became a citizen activist, self taught lobbyist, self funded lobbyist, who made it his mission to get lawn darts banned again. But by this time, this was in the 70s anymore. This is the Reagan era. Eighty s. And getting any industry or business banned or regulated more than it was before was not the easiest thing in the world to do. No. So he approached the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which had taken over from the FDA, and he said, you got to get rid of lawn arts. First of all, look at what happened to my daughter. And they say, well, we're really sorry about what happened to your daughter, but if you look at the numbers, man, they're just not that dangerous. They're certainly not dangerous enough to enact an outright ban again, so sorry, no, we're not going to be doing that anytime soon. That's right. But what nobody noticed at first was that these numbers included, they were just dart injuries. So that included just throwing regular darts at a dart board. I think we've all had one of those bounce off and sticking to our thigh at one point. It's like nothing, no big deal. You're not going to go to the hospital for an injury most likely from a regular dartboard. No. And if you do, you are making a really big deal out of this. That's right. So they said, wait a minute, what if we pull all those darts out? And what if we actually just did a little research on lawn darts? Because that's what we're talking about. And it was a big deal. Over eight years lawndarts had sent more than 6000 people to the emergency room, 81% of which were kids 15 or younger, half of which were ten or younger. And they were to the eyes, to the ears, to the face and the head for the most part. Yeah. And again, kids were particularly vulnerable because their skull is infused. So when a kid got hit in the head with the lawn dart they could very easily penetrate the skull. And they found that this was happening, ate a lot more than anyone had ever realized before. So now they have a problem on their hands. Now they had real numbers that showed that actually this thing is bad enough to ban. And they looked a little further and they commissioned a study that found that the londard industry was not following those rules that it agreed to from when the 1970 ban was overturned. So they were marketing it as toys, they were selling it in the toy section, they weren't including warnings on the box and just completely going back on the agreement from before. So it started to look more and more like, okay, maybe we should ban these. And again, Chuck, it's really hard not to step back and be like these are lawn darts. Yes, just ban them, who cares? But they would not do it. They were very deliberate in undertaking this ban on lawn darts. But finally, thanks in no small part to news, the week that the vote on the ban was going to go through, of a little girl in Tennessee who had been put into a coma by law and art. They enacted the band two to one. They voted in favor of the ban. That's right. In Reagan's America they actually banned a toy. And it's so funny to think there would be such pushback over this one thing. Yeah, you know what? Let's just get rid of the lawn darts, manufacture some other toys. It will be fine. Yeah, but they had to have those lawn darts out there in the hands of children. Right? And you can still make your own lawndarts. You can DIY it if you go on the web. There are companies in the United Kingdom that will sell you the parts, which is a bit of a workaround. You can assemble them yourself and you can still go to tournaments. There is a US LDA Lawn Dart Association and you can go to tournaments and bring out your old darts and talk about the good old days of no government oversight. And you can pitch those things and imagine drinks and beer and probably have a pretty good time. Yeah, probably have a great time. Really just sticking in the eye of the nanny state. Yeah. Do it safely, though. Keep the kids away. Yeah. And I want to say one thing. The reason that you can get law and darts is because that government ban. Ban the import and sale, not the possession. And this one dart company in particular from the UK said, oh, well, that means if we just send these things unassembled, they're really just lawn dart pieces. And so IpsoFacto is great, legally speaking. IpsoFacto? Yeah. So that's it for lawn darts, right, Chuck? That's it. Well, Chuck said that's it, everybody. So that means that short stuff is a way stuff you should know is production of Iheartradios how stuff works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the Iheartrad radio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
b82f22f1-b091-45f7-9c30-ae66011c672b | How Light Pollution Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-light-pollution-works | Artificial light at night, aka light pollution, affects almost everyone on Earth. And not just people – trees, plants, animals, insects, and marine life are affected by our propensity to light up everything we can. Learn what you – YOU! – can do to help.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Artificial light at night, aka light pollution, affects almost everyone on Earth. And not just people – trees, plants, animals, insects, and marine life are affected by our propensity to light up everything we can. Learn what you – YOU! – can do to help.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Tue, 29 Mar 2022 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=29, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=88, tm_isdst=0) | 46385187 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and there's Jerry over there. And I just want to say this is stuff you should know. Chuck's birthday edition. Hey, happy birthday, Chuck. Thank you. Okay, so back to it. Yeah. I got approval from Josh to do a special front loaded listener mail. I'm a little tense about this, I'm not going to lie. Really? You were like, oh, it's his birthday, I got to do it. Yes, I had to give in. For those of you don't know the end of the podcast, some people just switch it off when you start your little gobbledygook at the end. But we read mail from listeners which can be informative and instructive and fun and heartwarming and sad and they're really good. So you've been missing out if you don't listen through to those. But I'm going to do one here at the front because this just came in as sheer coincidence that it happened to dovetail with today's topic. Yeah. So while Alex last year of New Zealand did not suggest this topic such that we took the suggestion, we're already doing it. Nice. Legalese there. Yeah, you sounded like a mobster trying to fight legal stuff. So here we go from Alex. Hey, guys, following up on the National Park app, I like to suggest you complete the trifecta and do dark sky reserves and marine reserves. I'm from New Zealand. My dad played a part in the formation of our own dark sky reserve in the McKinsey Basin is a joint effort between the local Maori Iwi I'm probably just mispronouncing everything. Ticapo tourism, which is the town, and the University of Canterbury, who ran the Mount John Observatory in the area. My dad was head of Physics and Astronomy at the university at the time. It is a truly life altering experience to look up and see a skylight brilliant by the Milky Way with no light pollution. And then Tecapo, you can do a tour to look through some of the telescopes for a better view. And this from Alex Lash. And he attached a picture of a photo that his friend took of the night sky with the observatory in the foreground. And he was like, there is no special cameras just mounted on a tripod to leave that exposure open for a long time. And brother, you should check out this email from Alex. It is unbelievably gorgeous and we forget what is up there in the sky when you live in most places in the world. Yeah, I mean, they say that in the US and Europe, 99% of us live in light polluted skies that are so light polluted that we can't see like the Milky Way. You just can't see it. It's there, we just can't see it because of all the light that we put out. And so, yes, that is an amazing photo. So to see something like that in person and to realize that it's out there, it makes you kind of sad. But at the same time, it makes me very determined to go somewhere and see it. Unfortunately, I've been looking around. There's not a lot of places that I want to go anyway, so it's going to have to be a special trip, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. And it is occasionally when I have gotten out to the desert or out in the middle of the ocean on the one cruise ship I went on, and you see those stars, it is a reminder those things are always up there. And so we get to see so little of that in the city. You're lucky if you get a smattering of stars if you live near a city on any given night. Yeah, no, it's definitely true. And like, sky glow in and of itself if you don't stop and think about what it is, it can be kind of beautiful in a weird way. It makes you feel like you're alive and connected to everybody who's alive in that city right then. Weirdly. Or it does for me, I should say, yeah, I'm with you there. But when you do stop and think about what it is, it can make you pretty sad. And then when you do see something, you get just a taste of what the night sky is supposed to look like. Chuck in a truly a night sky that isn't polluted with light. Like, Venus and Jupiter are so bright they can make you cast a shadow. That's how bright they get. The Milky Way does too. Like, you can cast a shadow from Venus and Jupiter. It's just mind boggling to think of. You can't even see Jupiter. Maybe you see Venus, like, if you're lucky around the city. But like you said, smattering of stars and some sky glow is basically what you get. So I think the thing that really kind of makes me feel like, man, we are so close, was up until even like 60, 7100 years ago, you didn't have to go very far from a place like Atlanta or New York or Boston or wherever, any city to go find something like this. Like maybe just drive out beyond the city limits here or there. But today we've been increasing our artificial lighting even faster than our population has been growing. And so it's gotten to this point now where we've lost a lot. And there's some people saying, hey, not only are we losing stuff, we're actually gaining all sorts of negativity, too, that we need to start addressing. And that is the upshot of light pollution. It really does stand as a type of pollution when you dig into it. Yeah. And this is one where we're going to arm you with some information, maybe gently remind you about some best practices without trying to be too preachy about what you do. It's your own home but, you know, it's not just skyscrapers and big city stuff. It's the individual humans home that has far too much light pointing up at the sky these days. And it all adds up. It does. And a significant portion of it is wasted if you start looking at light pollution, I guess, warning people, right? Yes. If you start hanging out with that crowd, you'll find that they also very frequently say, hey, you can save a lot of fossil fuel emissions and a lot of money on electricity if you just use sensible lighting that doesn't pollute. Yeah. So let's talk about the history of it a little bit, because, like I was saying, it's not a very old problem that we face, but it's really kind of grown by leaps and bounds in recent years. Yeah. And big thanks to Livia for help with this one. I think this is kind of right up her alley. She points out that astronomers, obviously, were some of the very first people to say, hey, we've got a problem going on. And this was in the late 19th century. There was an astronomer named Giovanni Shiapareli yeah. Who talked about coal smoke, a problem in and of itself, and, quote, the abuse of electric lights in, quote, that were basically wrecking Giovanni's view from the observatory in Italy there at, I guess, in Brera, but the Brera Astronomical Observatory, it's in Milan, actually. So part of the problem was that Chef Pierrelli was too cool to take his sunglasses off. He was not exactly like a reporter you could rely on. Right. Unreliable. Narrator and Gucci sunglasses. Yeah, I've noticed. I've gotten to this weird point in my life, Chuck, where rather than use the word I'm looking for, I used five different words that are clumsily strung together that kind of get across what I'm trying to say. You've gotten to this point. Okay. I feel like it's stepped up recently. Okay. All right. Yeah. I need a little more perspective on myself to be thinking about how I be. No, you don't need to think about that anymore than you already do. Okay. So astronomers were among the first. There are also authors, olivia points out there was a naturalist and author named Henry Beston who has a great quote. It's kind of sad. There's a 1928, mind you, with lights and evermore lights, we drive the holiness of night back to the forest in the sea. Today's civilization is full of people who have not the slightest notion of the character or the poetry of night, who have never even seen night. Yes. 1928. Yeah. When you take those people out into the night, they go, what was that? Who's there? Where's my flashlight? So things really kind of got going. Like, people working are aware there's all sorts of light pollution going on. All you have to do is try to get some sleep in a city where there's tons of lights on to understand light pollution and have it affect you. So it's not like people didn't realize there were issues with overuse of artificial lights along the way. But it wasn't until the 50s that anybody actually started to do something about it, which, if you stop and think about it, if really we started to run into this problem around the beginning of the 20th century. Less than half a century later, people were already moving to address it. The whole thing started in Arizona, thanks to a Richie Rich astronomer, Percival Lowell, who had built an observatory, great Lowell Observatory out there near was it Flagstaff, I believe, in near the Grand Canyon. Yes. And it was a great space at the time when he built it in 1894. But by the time I think the 1950s rolled around when they were looking to expand, they're like, already Flagstaff is just too bright for our telescope. What are we going to do? Well, and they said, and this is what all observatories basically had to do, is move out even further. So they moved out about 12 miles southeast of the city. But then even then they were like, at some point this is going to be a problem as well because of the way that humans just expand their footprint with suburbs and exurbs and so let's actually do something about it. And so the Flagstaff City Council is sort of one of the first measures in the United States on light pollution. Banned the search lights when you grew up in the remember this? You don't see them anymore. Which I guess this is why I've seen it as recently in the last ten or 15 years. Oh, really? I've seen one and I didn't even remember them until this article. But when a big business would open up, or just any business that could afford higher spotlights, they would have these search light spotlights, like these bat signals just kind of flowing back and forth in the night sky. And I guess the idea was you would just say, what's that light? I need to drive toward it. I got nothing else to do. I need to find out if there's a new errand rent. Exactly. Exactly. Because they used them. Those search lights weren't cheap to rent, I would imagine. So they must have been effective if people use them for that long. I remember those all the time when I was a kid and Flagstaff City council said, at the very least, no more of those dumb things. Yeah, it's exciting. True. But it's wrecking Percival Lowell's telescope. So they were the first city in the country and maybe even in the world to pass something that protected dark skies and that kind of set, like the tone for the Flagstaff and Tucson area, which I can't remember if they're even remotely close to one another. Not super close. Now, our good friend Blair Bunting actually, I think they live in Flagstaff now, so he's probably going to send us an email disabusing me of any notion that Flagstaff and Tucson are anywhere near each other. But I guess Tucson copied Flagstaff, maybe, and started to say, hey, we should protect our dark skies, too. Yeah, I think it was just sort of in the air in Arizona, and in the early nineteen s, seventy s, tucson passed some laws that said, hey, all these lights that are pointing upward, let's just point those down at least. And then over the next few decades, they moved to different kinds of lights that were a little softer on the visual spectrum, not as bright. One of the big problems we'll talk about later is all the blue light these days from LEDs and electronics and things like that. But do you have the blue light? Oh, my God. Are you trying to get better sleep and not looking at your phone before bed? I've got that night shift thing on from sunrise to sunset or sunset to sunrise. It's like a yellow it's like yellow stuff. Automatically it does that. Yes. And I try to read books more at night, too, I think it's but it's more just like the light bulbs, those light fixtures. I don't care what time of day it is, they just look like you've made the decision to do everything you can to drive yourself insane. So you're going with the blue light LEDs. Well, you should avoid those, right? I think so, yeah. I don't have them in my house. Good for you, Chuck. I mean, it's one of those things like LEDs are great because they last a long, long time, but they make different kinds of LEDs now, so you don't have to have those blue light ones. So there's this group called the International Dark Sky Association. They were founded in 1988 by somebody who was part of that push in, I think, Tucson, to start protecting the dark skies. They are big time into saying like, hey guys, we need to figure out something else. But aside from these blue wavelength LEDs that are really not good, we'll really just stop all over blue light LEDs whenever we get a chance later in the episode. The point is, the International Dark Sky Association has been introduced now, and they are responsible for Alex Lashes favorite thing, certifying dark sky places around the world. Actually, I think there's 170 of them. Yeah, like dark sky sanctuaries. Basically, if you do the right thing, if this is your goal and you do the right thing, some people might say it's the wrong thing. You can get certified places in Minnesota. I think there's a park in Maine, the Cottagen, woods and Waters National Monument in Maine, cosmetic campground in New Mexico, one that is, I don't think, on the list, but I had a dark sky experience at sapolo Island, Georgia, a few years ago. This is when I had the very misguided notion that I was going to try and direct a little independent movie. And a couple of friends of mine and I went down there to scout Sappalo Island, which is one of the barrier islands of Georgia that is virtually uninhabited. There are still some of the original guiche people that live there, but it's like there's no electricity. So the guy that showed us to our place was like, take your flashlights at night because there are no street lights, there are very few people, and it is dark. Neat. And we got this little golf cart to ride out to the lighthouse. Was it an original golf cart? It was pretty original. But we got out on the little road, the dirt road, and turned the lights off. And, man, it was unsettlingly dark. You literally could not see your hand in front of your face. Oh, really? I was going to ask you if your eyes acclimated to the dark so that you could see better than you thought you could eventually. But this is like when we first switched them off, and you just forget about just street lights and just people and all the light that comes in. So it was all the best guy there I'd seen in a long time. And it's just weird when you're in a place that's super dark. Yeah, I can imagine. Because you're not used to it. You're a city slicker. I'm a city slicker. So that's pretty much brings us up to where we are now in history. As far as light pollution goes, it's a big old problem. There are some people at the fringes of this starting to try to get everybody else on board, and we're going to kind of dive into what actually makes light pollution after a break. Let's do it. A birthday break. Okay. And we're back. And it's still Chuck's birthday. Happy birthday again, Chuck. 51. It's a weird number. Yeah. But if you add them together, it equals six, and six is perfectly fine. Right. It's my daughter's age. Right. We all come full circle. By the way, I took her to her first pro sporting event last night. Went to a Hawks game. Oh, wow. What do you think? It was interesting. I mean, I knew we would have to leave it like half time just because of bedtime, but she made it through the half, got a little squirmy. But NBA games, there's a lot of extra fun stuff going on. Oh, yeah. Fire cannon. Yes. They had dogs catching frisbees and T shirt cannons and all that themselves. Wow. On the court, it was great. So anyway, light pollution, I guess we should talk about the four main kinds. Right. And I have bigger problems with some of these than others. Yeah. So the IDA, the International Dark Sky Association has basically identified four types. The first one is glare, and that is basically like if you look up at a street light, that light is going to basically hurt your eyes. You're being hit with glare from the street light. That's right. That's the kind of light pollution it makes sense. The reason that that's light pollution is ideally, you should have to be standing directly under the light fixture, the street light, and look up for that glare to happen. That's just not the case. You can be half a mile away and look at a street light from the side, and you're still going to get hit with that same glare. That's why it's a problem. That's what makes it light pollution. Right. The second one is one I have a big problem with is light trespass. And this is when you have a neighbor or somebody that has a floodlight, like, pointed in your bedroom window, and sometimes they just keep it on. That's not the case with my current neighbor, just to be clear. I don't think he listens, but he's pretty good. Like, I do have the motion sensor floodlights that only pop on when something is moving. But be aware of the light that you cast from your home. That's as prechease as I'm going to get. I just realized two days ago that the old front security, I've replaced all the rest of them with those motion detector ones. But the one I've left so far, it's very old. Like, the on off switch is actually, like, rusted in place. It's been on all day and all night, and it has been shining at my neighbor's house. Luckily, I think their bedroom is on the other side, and they're very friendly. They would say something if there was an issue in a very friendly manner, very friendly people. But I just realized it. So now I ordered, like, a replacement light, and I had to turn all my lights off because that one is just sitting there, sitting on it's. Crazy. And also when I think about all the electricity it's wasting during the day, it's like, come on, yeah, don't be so stupid, you stupid light. There's called clutter, which is I mean, it's described by Libya as bright, confusing, or excessive groups of lights. Yeah, I looked into that. What does confusing mean? Confusing is that we have something called contrast illumination that we use for night vision. So a light that looks less bright than another light is going to be further away. Well, with artificial light, that's not necessarily the case. You could have, like, a porch light that's even brighter than a street light that's further away, and it's going to confuse our eyes and mess up our night vision. Okay. And then also I have the impression that just having a big smattering of individual lights across the landscape at night is clutter as well. But I think the problem is it really messes with your night vision. Yeah, we do have a porch light. To be clear. I'm not advocating for total darkness of your home, but you leave the porch light on at night like Tom bodette says to do, and that's it. You got a Motel Six now at your house. I live in the management office. It's quite nice and comfortable. Affordable. Yeah, it's your side hustle. Then you got sky glow, which is I think everyone kind of knows what this is. These are just the culmination of city lights. And if you've ever driven into Las Vegas from the desert, you see that sky glow from a long ways away. It's just sort of a big glowing dome in the distance. And that one seems to be a problem that's not just from light pollution, but also air pollution too, because you can see sky glow just fine on a cloudless night and it's reflecting actually off of all the particles in the atmosphere. And then if there are clouds, you can see the clouds usually quite clearly. You're not supposed to be able to see clouds, but that's part of sky glow as well. And as we'll see the villain of this episode, blue wavelength Led lights are particularly problematic with skyglow because those blue wavelength, that blue wavelength light actually travels very far and can create skyglow hundreds of miles away from the city. When you're way far away from the city, you'll still be able to see it just fine. Yeah. And Livia included this one we're kind of talking about. He kind of just forget in the city and you get used to stuff. She included a fun little story from 1994 when Los Angeles had a big power outage across the city and people were calling in, very concerned and reporting what ended up being the Milky Way galaxy in the sky. Right. Like they thought it was a gas cloud or something. I'm not sure. Just something concerning, I think. Like, hey, there's this weird looking glow in the sky. And they went, It's fine. It's the Milky Way. So I was saying earlier that our light emissions have been increasing faster than the human population. I think it increased about 6% a year between 1947 and 2000. That's a lot. That is a lot. And so that's tough to keep up with and it's also tough to get people to kind of give those up, as we'll see. But one of the things that has kind of become a newer problem, like artificial lights, like porch lights that get left on all night, that kind of thing doesn't have been a problem for a really long time. But one of the newer problems, Chuck, is satellites. Yeah, we talked about how many satellites there are up there flying around. And that's the problem. I think we talked a lot about that in Space Junk episode. It's a problem for that reason, but it's a problem because they're interfering with astronomy in our night sky, aren't they? Yeah. In particular. So there's satellite streaks. They used to show up in about zero 5% of satellite images or of astronomy images that were taken at twilight, which is when you can see satellites most clearly. It's also the time you can see things like comets and meteors more clearly. So in addition to being an annoyance, it also potentially poses a hazard because it makes it more difficult to track nearearth objects that we want to keep an eye on that may be coming toward us. Although if you seem don't look up. It wouldn't matter anyway if we identified something like that in time. Did you see that? Yeah. Was it good? Oh, yeah. You haven't seen it yet? No. The reviews were so bad that I avoided it. Really? Like abysmally bad. I don't get that at all. That I was just like, I'm not going to waste my time. And then I got nominated for best picture, and I was like, well, how if it's so bad? I genuinely don't understand what the bad reviews were. Not only was it like engrossing and well done and I thought Vice was terrible. I thought it was a terrible movie. So I'm not like some just Adam McKay fan. I also thought The Other guys is one of the worst movies ever made. I think you and I walked out of the theater on that one. Okay. So I've established my bona fide. I'm not so lackey for Adam McKay, but it was a really well done movie and it was really entertaining, too. Just looked up real quick. It's got to fit. For what it's worth, a 55% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 49% on Metacritic. I don't get it. It is definitely nowhere near that bad. All right. It was actually pretty good. I think you'd like it. I always go to the RogerEbert.com because I still trust the reviews there. And they give it 1.5 stars, man. So seriously, Chuck, I would like you to watch this pretty soon. Come back on another episode and tell everybody. Don't tell me first. I really want it to be raw and you want it to hurt if it's going to hurt, you know what I mean? And just tell me what you think. I'm watching his Lakers show, which is fun. Oh, is it good? Yeah, it's fun. I would recommend it. Okay, well, I'll take your recommendation, you take mine. Yeah, I definitely want to see what all the stink is about. But you got to finish your stat, though, because you only gave us the front half. Yeah. So I think they showed up in half of a percent of images before. Now they're up to something like 19% of images taken at twilight. Two years. Yeah. And it's just going to keep getting worse and worse because we're adding more and more satellites. And by we, I mean Elon Musk with Starlink, apparently. I think he's got or applied for permission for 42,000 satellites for Starlink internet service. 42,000 satellites. That's gotten weird. He challenged Putin to a fight. I know, yes. That is demonstrably weird. Not just to a fight, a fight for all the marbles over Ukraine. Like if he beat up Vladimir Putin, putin was going to have to leave Ukraine, I guess was the thing. It is very weird. I agree. Maybe he thinks we're living in a cartoon simulation of real world. I'm pretty sure he does. So there's going to be something like 100,000 satellites in the next few years, they think, because people like Elon Musk and others are just launching, launching, launching, and it's going to be more and more problematic. Yeah. Which is a problem, like you said, for tracking Near Earth Objects. So it's the kind of thing that people should pay attention to. Well, plus also they pose a problem for astronomy in that they use radio signals to transmit and we use radio telescopes to pick up radio transmissions. And apparently the satellite people and the telescope people are not necessarily coordinating, so they're not making the satellites invisible to the radio telescopes by using specific wavelengths that the radio telescopes could then tune out. So I think that's a problem in that sense as well. Yeah. Here's one stat. Without telescopes, just with your regular vision looking up in the sky, satellites will very soon make up one in ten visible lights in the sky. That's a lot. So those aren't stars you're seeing up there? No. About 10% of those will be satellites, which that's also a problem in that sense, too. We might as well talk about it now. One of the things that I find very satisfying. Because it keeps coming up whenever you look into light pollution and people advocating about doing something about it. Is that there are a lot of indigenous cultures around the world whose heritage is predicated. At least in part. On the night sky. On celestial stuff. And not just like really bright stars like you could see in a city. But like really subtle stuff. Too. And it's extensive and it's like a deep catalog of the cosmos that they use as part of their world view and some of their religious and spiritual views, and that is being infringed upon just by satellites and light pollution, too. Yeah. I think this one it wasn't a direct quote, but Libby says that there are some scholars out there that are saying this is basically like a cultural genocide that we're seeing happening to some of these cultures that rely so much on the night sky for not just navigation, but rituals. And this is happening in Australia, and I think indigenous Hawaiians are kind of big on trying to preserve that starlight for their culture as well. Yeah. And it's being prevented from being passed on from generation to generation because the same things that were there and could be talked about and passed on a hundred years ago, you just can't see anymore in a lot of places. I thought that was really interesting. It comes up a lot, and some people try to coopt it to basically. Say, like, see, we need to get rid of light pollution, but it does seem to be, like, genuinely included at the table now for people like the International Dark Skies Association, like, they're like, this is a legitimate issue, too, that we need to be taking into account. Should we talk about animals? Yeah. So it's an annoyance to humans, and we're going to also talk about real, like, health effects on humans in a bit, but it's obviously going to interfere with animals. And there are many, many examples. Everything from city birds thinking it's morning and five and 6 hours before they're supposed to be awake with their little friends in the countryside, they're up and chirping and singing their bird song to animals that navigate at night, like, literally depend on the night sky for their migrations. And it's confusing or completely throwing off base their migration patterns to where they lose their way to get lost. They could possibly even die. Yeah, I guess just cities having a lot of light tends to attract migrating birds in particular, so that you see bird strikes, which usually results in the death of a bird, really increase a couple of times a year when they're migrating one way and then when they're migrating back the other way at a different part of the year. I came up with a website, Chuck, that I thought was really interesting. It's called BirdCast Info. You came up with it, meaning you designed it yourself just this very morning. It's pretty good, considering. I don't know what I'm doing and I did it in a couple of hours. Hey, thanks to squarespace, right? I really shouldn't take credit for somebody else's work. No, it's not my website, but they have migration forecasts, like maps, and you can type in your town and it will show you, like, the next few days of what the expected bird migrations are going to be like, numbers wise, basically. And you can actually adjust your outdoor lighting at night to help those birds because they are attracted to light, they're normally diurnal, meaning that they are active in the daytime, those birds that are migrating. But they choose to migrate at night, which means they're not pros at navigating at night, necessarily. So they can be easily thrown off, of course, by being attracted to, like, a city with a bunch of bright lights. And then even worse than that, they frequently will dive bomb into windows with a lot of light, for reasons I am not entirely clear on. Yes. To the tune of. And everyone's like, sure, that happens every now and then. There are about a billion birds a year that die from running into glass in the US. Alone. Yeah. And we have lost 30, almost 30%. We've lost 29% of our birds since the 1970s. Like a net loss overall. Not just from running into buildings, but that's a big chunk of it is bird strikes into buildings. Yeah. So a lot of cities are. I think Chicago started back in the late 90s, started with these lights out programs where they basically say, hey, if you live in or have a high rise office building, you turn that stuff off at night, or you close the blinds or do both, or move to only task lighting, or at the very least, turn off decorative lighting at night. And a lot of companies and buildings have gotten on board with this kind of thing, thankfully. Yeah. The guys who walk around with the huge ring of keys, they're getting on board with that kind of thing. They like, it dark. Something I didn't realize, Chuck, but that I find kind of awesome is that there are a lot of insect species that pollinate and visit flowering plants at night when you're asleep, like they're doing their thing. Did not realize that same. But it turns out that those insects can be greatly impacted by artificial light, and so that apparently, in turn, has a deep impact on the near Earth object. Callback has a deep impact on the pollination of flowering plants. And they did a study in the Bernice pre Alps. Beautiful name. And it's typically dark there. So what they did was they surveyed how many insects arrived under normal conditions. Right. Yeah. I think they worked with about 300 species of insect that do their business at night, and I think 60 plants. And they found that when they turned on these Led street lights that near these meadows, that the pollinator visits dropped 62%. Wow. And that was a 13. And people like, oh, what's the big deal? You can just do it during the day. It led to an overall 13% drop in fruit production. So the trickle down effect that this has, we talk about this kind of thing all the time in ecosystems. It's no different for nighttime pollinators. Like, if you like to eat your fruit and have abundant fruits and vegetables, this is one thing that's disrupting that. And it can also impact the plants directly to, like, light, can trick them into thinking that days are not getting shorter, even though they are. They're getting artificial feedback and they're keeping their leaves longer. There's some types of cacti and palms, I think, that have been shown to not flower at all when they're exposed to artificial light at night, which I don't think we've said that. That's kind of like the in group term for light pollution, artificial light at night or allen. Allen. Poor Allen. Yeah. Sorry. All the Allen's listening. We're not picking on you from this point. And Karen's sure. That stinks. Someone's name has been co opted. Yeah, for now. I think that's fading. Yeah, it'll pass. It's already out, I think. Okay, but if you're still saying that now, you may be a Karen. What about those poor little sea turtles? Yes. So one of the things that sea turtles use to get to the safety of the ocean after they hatch on the beach is light. They go toward the brightest light that they see. And normally, under normal circumstances, that's the sun not the sun, but the moon reflecting off of the water kind of guides them. It can be very bright. And I found out recently it had been a while since I guess it's in the moonlight, like a full moon over the ocean. And when we went to Amelia Island after Disney World, I had a night like that on the beach where it was like daylight out there. Yeah. Remember that amazing. That great shot. It had to have been. Of course, it was just made up, but it was a great looking shot in Joe Versus the Volcano, when he's out there in the middle of the ocean on that steamer trunk, and that moon just rises over him. I forgot how big it was. What a great movie that was. Yeah. We haven't talked about that one in a while. Yeah. One of the best. So what do they have to do with sea turtles? Yeah, that's why they tell you to not use your flashlights on the beach during sea turtle season, because that light confuses them. Yes. And if you have a beach house, typically you're asked to keep your outside lights turned off and even inside lights turned off so that you don't accidentally attract the hatchlings. Because when they move away from the water, where they are relatively safer, they sometimes walk right into the jaws of Wiley Coyote. Right. And I imagine beach house people comply because I think they probably love their sea turtles and they try to be generally good stewards of their area. Yes. If there's anything people who own beach houses are known for, it's compliance. Should we take a break? Sure. All right, we'll be right back. Okay, so now we've reached the point where a lot of the humanists can start to get on board to this, because artificial light at night, aka. Light pollution, has terrible effects on human beings as well. Yeah. Obviously, some of this stuff is just getting worse sleep and what that does to your body as far as anxiety and stress and headaches and migraines and things like that. But I know you dug up some interesting stuff on cancer even, right? Yes. So that blue wavelength Led light has been linked to something called global DNA methylation and methylation. Do you remember way back in our episode on Ken, your grandfather's diet, diet influx. It was about epigenetics. Yeah. Well, DNA methylation is how epigenetics happens. It's where a methyl group is put onto a gene, turn it on or off. And what they found is that this is a huge trigger for things like diabetes, type two diabetes, I should say cancer, specifically breast cancer, as far as light is concerned, and that this DNA methylation can be triggered in turn by exposure to artificial blue wavelength light. At night. It messes with our circadian rhythm, and that's one of the ways our bodies respond to it. So it is not an exaggeration to say that being exposed to blue wavelength light at night can trigger cancer in your body or potentially type two diabetes or a whole host of chronic conditions. Yeah. I mean, it's such a problem that the AMA, I think, in 2016 officially issued guidance on limiting the impact of Led outdoor lighting systems. And when the AMA is officially weighing in on something, that means it's got sufficient evidence to do so. It's not saying this is sort of annoyance to your neighbors. It's saying this is legitimately impacting the health of people. Yeah. And it's definitely been linked to breast cancer, at least. But from what I was reading, the fact that it's been now shown to trigger DNA methylation suggests that there's a whole bunch of other terrible things that could happen as a result. So, seriously, if you have an iPhone, just go into your settings. I think it's what's it called, Chuck, like nighttime or something like that. Sweepy time. It's in your display settings where you'll find, like, brightness and all that. It's like night shift, I think, or something like that. And just turn that on. Just do sunset to sunrise. Oh, night shift. Night shift. Thank you. Yeah. And you'll be much the better for it. And I think there's apps also you can add onto your Android phone, too. You don't have to have an iPhone, and you can probably do the same thing to your computer as well. Yeah, night shift. I had mine on. I didn't even realize it. Good for you, Jack. And I love how Livia put this. The good news about fighting light pollution, she says, is there's a lot of low hanging fruit. Yes, it really is kind of that easy. There are so many things that individuals can do on their own properties. The IDA estimates that 30% of outdoor lighting in the US. Is wasted. So a lot of this lighting that people have isn't even doing the thing that it's supposed to be doing if 30% of it is wasted. And it's a financial loss, too. About $3.3 billion annually and 21 million tons of CO2 emissions. And this is just from wasted light, not from just having lights. Right, exactly. So, like I was saying before, it goes hand in hand talking about light pollution and mitigating. It goes hand in hand with keeping people from wasting electricity, too. And some of that low hanging fruit. Like this is stuff you can do on an individual basis. And then if you really get into this and you really want to make a difference, you can teach yourself and arm yourself through kind of outreach that the IDA has to go educate your city and get your city to put in different kinds of street lights that shield from light pollution so that you do have to go stand underneath it to get that glare. And so there isn't light trespass and there's less sky glow. There's a lot of things that you can do. There's a lot of things you could do on the local level. But one of the big ones is just like, stop and think, like, do I really need light in this area? Does there need to be some blaring, like, blue Led streetlight on my shed that I don't even have anything in? Is it really, like, needed? And that raises a big question, Chuck. A lot of people are saying, like, well, what about crime? That's why we light the night, is to prevent crime. And there's plenty of studies that say, yeah, if you add some artificial light, it'll reduce crime. But there's apparently an equal amount of studies that say, actually, not only does that not have an impact on lowering crime, in some cases, it actually increases some kinds of crime. Like, if you want to make sure that the site of your school building is really well lit for graffiti artists at night, you should make sure that you have all sorts of artificial lighting. Some studies make the case that it's easier to size up a person for whether they're a target by a criminal in a really well lit place and vice versa. In the dark, your eyes are more acclimated to seeing things in the dark, like a criminal who might be waiting up ahead for you. Yeah, think about it. If you're on a really well lit pathway, the nearby shadows are really dark, and that's where these people could be. Not to be too fear mongering, sure, but that's where they're laying in wait for you. Right, but that's true. Like, big light creates a big shadow and darkness nearby. And when they do studies, they do show that it's a reduction in crime. But when you look at the overall number, it reduces crime at night. But the overall number of crimes is a much less percentage, I think 30% reduction at night in a place like New York. Whereas if you take a whole day, it's about 4% overall, which means most of the crimes are committed during the day. You think of nighttime as being more scary, but more crime is committed during the day. Right. And also, when you're considering whether you need a light or not, the one that I saw, Chuck, was, do you need to leave your back porch light on? And normally when you leave a light on, it's to do two things, it's to deter somebody. But in that case, you might actually be making it easier for the criminal to see their way into breaking into your house. Right. And then, secondly, the other reason you would do it is to expose those people to provide witnesses. Well, who's watching the back of your house at night? Probably no one. And in fact, if you don't have that light, there you may force the criminal to use a flashlight, which is going to be even more suspicious than somebody standing at your back door. Or you might use a motion detection light, which is, from what I've seen, the optimal thing to do if you're worried about security, but also concerned about light pollution. Yeah, because then they walk back there in the dark and then boom, hit them with the spotlight. And if you have the security cameras at your house, those things work really well in the dark these days. Sure. So if security is your issue, there are ways to get around that that's not like lighting up your house like a prison yard. Right. That's a lot to say. That's it. I got nothing else. I don't think I do either, actually. So that's it for artificial light at night, Allen, aka light pollution. Hopefully this has opened your eyes a little bit to it, but not so much that you're blinded by the glare, you know? Right. And since we front loaded listener mail, we'll just use this and to say, spread the word about stuff you should know here in your 14. Yeah, basically, yes. Like, next month will be in year 14 and we don't talk a lot about trying to grow the show, which we should probably do more. So tell a friend, tell a neighbor, tell a colleague about stuff you should know and introduce them to the podcast, and it really helps us continue to do what we do. Yeah. And not just a podcast, Chuck. We have a book. A New York Times bestseller. We do, in fact. We have a Trivial Pursuit game that's right. That'll hopefully be on store shelves again soon. Yes. And what else? We sell tups of our hair. Sure. I got a lot of hair right now. I can send out tufts. We can make some money with that. You got to cut me in. Okay. Alright. Well, if you want to get in touch with us and try to purchase some of Chuck's hair, you can email me at stuff podcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My HeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
a6b26c4e-5462-11e8-b449-13b10543ba90 | How Easy Bake Ovens Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-easy-bake-ovens-work | Easy Bake Ovens are as iconic as a toy can get, as American as apple pie or baseball. Learn all about these light bulb cooking, working ovens that endanger children to this day. | Easy Bake Ovens are as iconic as a toy can get, as American as apple pie or baseball. Learn all about these light bulb cooking, working ovens that endanger children to this day. | Thu, 01 Nov 2018 13:30:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=1, tm_hour=13, tm_min=30, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=305, tm_isdst=0) | 34635517 | audio/mpeg | "What if you were a global bank who wanted to crunch billions of transactions against thousands of compliance controls? So you tap IBM to UNSILO your data, and now you can supercharge your audit system with AI. Let's create smarter ways of putting your data to work. IBM. Let's create learn more@ibm.com. You know you're the best pet mom when you growl back during playtime, give epic belly rubs and feed them halo holistic made with responsibly sourced ingredients, plus probiotics for digestive health. Find us at chewie. Amazonandalopeetscom welcome to Stuff You Should Know From Housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Ramsay. Over there, the huge. Which means it's time for stuff you should know. Nostalgia edition. Colon TS hodgeman. Yeah, we've done a few toys. Plato Slinkys. Right? What else does a boomerang count as a toy? It's always alive, mate. We've done tons. We did Silly Putty. Silly Putty, sure. We did a bunch of balls episode. How balls work? They round and they bounce. We said balls like, a million times in that episode. Yeah. This one's kind of cool, though. The Easy Bake Oven, which I never had one. Did you ever have one in your home? I don't think so. No. I don't think my sister had one either. Although I was a pretty tubby kid. So it's possible that my mom was like, make sure your brother doesn't know you have one of those. Do not feed your brother anything from there. But it's interesting that this is one where sort of a very simple idea, and you never can tell what's going to hit toy wise. Nothing super complex about this, other than you could literally bake food and sort of pretend to be an adult in the kitchen. That was the basis of it, being an adult. That was kind of Kenner's thing. And Kenner, the people who made Star Wars toys were the ones behind us, and they were very much into toys that let kids pretend they were grown ups. Yeah, that was their bag. Yeah. I have a new neighbor, actually. Shout out to Rick. Kathy. Hey, guys. Where they really got under your skin, huh? What? Rick and Kathy got a shout out on the podcast and the new neighbors. Gee. Yeah, because I was talking to him and I was like, he seems like a good guy. And what do you do, Rick? He's retired now. What did you do? He's like, I was a toy in action figure designer for Kenner. And I was like, wow. Whoa. What years. He came on after the first thing he worked on was the Tim Burton Batman movies. Nice. And he stayed on for a long time, like, his whole career, like, after they were sold and everything. Wow. Pretty neat. That is very cool. Yeah. Good for him. Yeah, he still does wonderful sculpture. Oh, I'll bet. Just go after Rick Watkins art online and check it out. I'm going to check it out. But, I mean, Kennedy is such a big deal to people our age and of many ages, but I didn't realize their origin as a company. Remember we did a whole action figures episode, remember? Oh, yeah. And we talked a lot about Kenneth. Was that a two part episode, or was it just like an hour and a half long? It was just long. It was very long. But Kenner almost didn't do the star wars ones, if I remember. But for us, at least, that put Kenner on the map. What I didn't realize is that Kenner was already on the map as far as toys go. Yeah. And one of the ways that they got there was from the easy bake oven, which debuted in November of 1963, right around the time that John Kennedy was shot. Yeah. But Kenner had been around since the 1940s. Albert Philip and Joseph Steiner formed the company after, as legend goes, one of them saw a maker bubble wand, or whatever you call them, and was like, hey, if I could do a gun that shoots bubbles, we might be onto something. And that was their very first product, is the bubblematic gun. Yeah. And then whatever. Less than 20 years later, the easy bake oven. Even though, as we learned today and yesterday, there had been toy ovens since, like, the Victorian days. Yes. Like, really dangerous ones. I know. Like, real little ovens. Yeah. Like wood burning pellet, solid fuel stoves made of cast iron that were sized down for little kids to use. Yeah. Basically, like, here's the oven that can kill your parents. We'll just make a smaller one that can kill you. Right? Yeah. The children's play oven functioning play oven history very kind of closely tracks the real oven history. Right? Yeah. Like, when there were cast iron, wood burning ovens, there were kids versions of them. As real ovens moved into electric ovens, there were kids versions of them. Apparently. Lionel, the model train makers. Sure. They made some in the 30s. Also, we want to give a shout out to Lisa Hicks and the people at collectors weekly for a great article. We also used for this episode, too. But in the 30s, there were electric ovens. By the 40s or fifty s I think there were fiberglass insulated ovens, electric ovens. It was just like a small oven for kids. But they were ovens. They were extremely dangerous. And Kenner had this really great idea. And the reason that this idea came about at Kenner to begin with is apparently Kenner was really big on having, like, ideas could come from anywhere. Yeah. Anybody in the company float an idea, and people would listen. They had, like, regular meetings where, you know, there were bull sessions. Maybe they ordered some, like, chow mein or something like that. Everyone rolled up their sleeves and relaxed and spat out ideas. And one of the salesmen from Kenner came back in from the field and said, you know what? I saw something. I saw some pretzel vendors keeping their pretzels warm on the street using a light bulb. What if we used a light bulb to heat up an oven for the little kitties? And somebody, I think. Charles House. Ralph House. Well, Norman Shapiro was that gentleman. And then Ronald House. Ronald House was the big time inventor for Kenner, who had a couple of really big products under his belt. And he was like, that's an ace idea. That's exactly how we talked. Yeah, probably so. Everyone hated him for it, but he was really good at inventing toys, so they had to put up with it. Yeah, but Kenner's deal, like you were saying, was find things that mimic adult things and that's, like kind of I bet, like, kids are going to dig that stuff. And they did from like kids still do little toy lawn mowers and toy bulldozers. Ruby's got a little cleaning set with, like, a duster and a dust pan and a mop. Is she OCD? No, but all the time she will say, Come on, Daddy, let's clean, and she'll hand me a mop. That's a little OCD. Well, no, that's good then. Yeah. I like where she's headed. Did you have one of those plastic safety razors so you could shave next to your dad? No, I did, but I think a lot of boys are pretty obsessed with shaving before they have whiskers. Yeah. And I think I heard that they would actually stimulate hair growth. I was about to say I remember being worried about that. Yeah, because looking at me now, you would never know. But I didn't have a lot of facial hair going on until well into college. Was it, like, lacking or does it come in patchy just a little bit? Sort of like my brother is now. He just stayed in that phase where your brother's got a perfect chiseled face. Oh, I know. It's because he doesn't have a beard. Okay, but Scott can grow a pretty decent goatee now, but I don't think he could grow the full beard. But his was we were both spotty, like a little bit above the lip, a little bit on the chin. The one part just kind of traced a line up to your eye from under your nose. Yeah, but I mean, it was sort of a family thing. We're not hairy, dudes. We don't have very hairy legs. It is odd that you have such a full beard. Like, I don't have hairy arms or anything like that. You're a beast. I don't know if beast is the right word, but yes, I'm a little hairy. You're a hairy guy. My chest hair definitely plucked out from under my shirt. You ever done any, like, laser or anything like that? No. Good for you. No, I'm hairy. No, I mean you're normal. It's not like you're, Robin Williams. No, he was airy. Yes, he was. God rest his soul. Yes, indeed. So, back to the ovens. So the idea has been put out there now by Norman Shapiro. Yes. Okay. It was taken up by Ronald house. And this was huge and groundbreaking because, again, there were unsafe as ovens for kids that have been around since the 19th century. What these guys had just happened upon was the way to make another unsafe oven seem safe to parents. Yeah. That was it. That was the genius of this idea. That is what made Easy Bake ovens take off. What they had figured out was that if they used a light bulb as the heating element and believe me, a light bulb can heat up an oven. Sure. Up to 350, which is a common baking dump. Yes. From a light bulb. And actually, at first, we'll see a pair of light bulbs, but the fact is, they're light bulbs, and parents are familiar with light bulbs. They don't seem weird or scary. Yeah, it's not a wood pellet. And the fact that it's not like, a heating element, like, in an actual oven, it's just a light bulb. That is what they use to convince parents that this is a safe product that they could buy for their kids. It was a genius idea. It really was. And like you teased a second ago, the very first model, 1963, and if you look at that very first one, it doesn't really even look like an oven. Well, certainly the new one doesn't either. No, I did go online. I was like, Maybe I should get one of those. But they're ugly now. I'm sorry. To the person who designed them. Yes. I'm glad you said it. They are ugly little oven. Yeah. They should kind of go back to looking more classic. I think that'd be my advice. But they use 2100 watt incandescent bulbs at first. One over the top and another under the bottom. Obviously, they were trying to get an even heat because you're baking things right. And they very wisely designed this thing so that the actual oven part was basically inaccessible to the kit right. On either side. So just imagine a box. Okay. My favorite thing when you try to describe something let me see if I close my eyes. It works. Imagine a box. Okay. And then coming out from either side of the box are a couple of little arms. Okay. But the arms are half arms, and they're rectangular and hollow. Okay. And they're actually opening. One opening, you slide in the uncooked thing that you want to bake into the heating area, the oven let it bake, and you push it through the other side, the cooling chamber, and then it comes out the other arm. Everyone, josh has had his eyes closed that entire time, and it worked. I really painted a great picture in your mind's eye. Yes. So that's what's going on. You had the two bulbs. And in fact, let's go ahead and take a break there, okay? Nice little cliffhanger. When we come back, I'll redescribe the Easy Bake oven again. 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What if you were a gigantic snack food maker and you had to wrestle a massively, complex supply chain to sacks by cravings from Tokyo to Toledo? So you partner with IBM Consulting to bring together data and workflow so that every driver and merchandiser can serve up jalapeno sesame and chocolate covered goodness with real time, data driven precision. Let's create supply chains that have an appetite for performance. IBM, let's create. Learn more at IBM. Comconsulting. All right, we were at One Bulb, right? I'm sorry. No, we were at two bulbs, right? So long ago, I couldn't remember. I know there's a full Abigail. But then what they did was they figured if they just engineered this thing to distribute heat and hold heat a little better, almost like a convection oven. Exactly like a convection oven, that they could go down to one bulb. Yeah. There was a dude named Charles hold on, I really want yes, charles Cummings. Charles One Bulb Cummings. Yeah, he was known as Charles Cummings was a designer at Kenner, and I think in the late 70s, he designed the interior of the oven so that the bulb, one bulb, created convection current, so it cooked just as well as two bulbs, but you just needed one. And he owns the patent to that. Oh, really? Which is the way it should be. Yeah, he was the designer. He came up with it. It's pretty rare, too, I think. Kenner, of course, I'm sure, had an exclusive license to it, but I'm sure he got, like, a decent amount of money from that license agreement. That is the way it should be. He also created the patent, or he held the patent for the add on popcorn maker that you could put onto the Easy Bake Oven, too. Good for him. Good for you. Charles Cummings. Charles One Bulb Cummings. He probably lives on top of a mountain somewhere. On a mountain of money. All right. You're down to one bulb, thanks to Charlie Cummings. They initially wanted to call this in 1963 when it was two bulbs, it wasn't debuted. Yeah. Right out of the gate. They wanted to call in November of 63, the Safety Bake Oven, because they really wanted to drive this home, was that it was super safe. Right. And the regulatory bodies were like, you haven't even sold one yet. We're not sure if this is going to kill kids. Right. You burned a dozen monkeys during the product testing trial. Oh, that's so awful. But you can't call it that yet because we don't know yet whether it's truly safe. Go ahead and sell them. Sure. But just call it safe. The Safety Bake Oven. So they're like, well, what about Easy? And they're like, Are we still talking about this? We're done with you. Go away. And so they were like, okay, fine, we'll call it the Easy Bake Oven. Then they sold it as the Easy Bake Oven and it sold out immediately. They sold it. So November 1963 is right before the Christmas season. Actually, it's in the Christmas season even back then. And they made a little more than half a million units and sold them all before Christmas. Yeah. For 1595, which is expensive. That would be about $130 today. No? Yeah, that's an expensive toy. Wow. And if you look at the thing, I saw a picture of one that's for sale on ebay for really cheap. I think it was like $30 or something. Really? It was unused in the box, still needed to be assembled. But if you look at it, you're like, that thing looks like a death trap. It looks like the Ford Pinto of children's toys from the know, like the sharp metal edges. That's what it looks like. The baby strollers. We were pushed around. Yeah. Remember that Dan Ackroyd SNL skit from years ago with the dangerous Christmas toys? There was one called the Bag of Glass. So great. And that's all it was, just a bag of shards of glass. So yeah, they sold a half a million, and then they're like, we got to make a lot more of these for next year. Yeah. Because this is back at a time when toys didn't do that very often. It seems like every Christmas now, people are like, well, what's the toy we should go fight other parents for their aisles? Tell us. Yeah, because I'm training in the ring. This is when it happened organically, when you put out a toy. And if it became like the fight worthy toy, that was a few and far between things. The Easy Bake Oven was the fight worthy toy right out of the gate. Yeah. So in year two, I think they made about 1.5 million, sold all those, and here's the little bit of genius from Kenner is anytime you can sell a supplementary product to the big thing, then you're really cooking with gas. That's like the ironically, the Gillette razor model. I think it was King Gillette who came up with that. Yeah. So what they did was they sold mixes, these little instant mixes that you would pour and it would make a little cruddy cake. And they had 25 of these at first, and we're selling those like crazy because, like hotcakes, if you're a kid, you want all those. You're like, well, I haven't tried the strawberry cake yet. Plus, also, maybe it will taste better. Mommy, it's not like you're putting this in like a book, like some baseball cards, and you're like, well, I've got this one. I don't need it anymore. You eat that thing and you need another thing and you replace it and you poop it out. Yeah. And you're not going to eat the poop again. No, you're going to go buy another one. And that was the genius of the other genius idea of this whole thing. There is a third genius idea to kenner did this, so right. The awe not just no, the advertising. Oh, sure. So remember, this is kids emulating grown ups. That was their thing. They advertised not just to kids through, like, Archie's comics, but they advertise directly to their parents, too. There were ads for the Easy Bake Oven on Isle of Lucy and on Hogan's Heroes, according to this Collector's weekly article. And in these ads, if you look at a lot of old ads and even some of the newer ads too, for Easy Bake Oven, it's a mom and a daughter, right? And the parent is like, oh, this is something we can do together. I love baking. It's basically my whole life. I live in 1963, and I'm a woman, right? So I would love to share that with my daughter. Maybe she's old enough to have an Easy Bake Oven herself. And that definitely helped propel sales, for sure, because it's not just kids going, I want an Easy Bake Oven, it's the parents going, that'd be a great thing to do with my kid. Yes. And of course, as people evolved and people became more woke over time, even though that word wasn't used enlightened, maybe it became a bit of a problem with gender roles. And like, this is for moms and daughters. They're pink. And that's what you're supposed to do is be in the kitchen baking for the men. Yeah. I mean, very famously, the Easy Bake Ovens always ended with the disclaimer, like, this toy is not for boys. Yeah, it didn't really, but essentially that was what was coming through. And the weird thing is, as far as legendary and iconic a toy as the Easy Bake Oven was, as gender roles evolved, I mean, this was talking like the early 70s when this really started to become like a thing. The easy bake oven did not evolve with it. Right. As we will see. It wasn't until the early 2000s that they started to respond to that kind of thing. And I saw an ad for 2014 not a boy in sight, all girls and just dancing around like the girliest easy bake oven you could possibly imagine. They actually got more girly as time went on, more girl focused as gender roles went on, which is really weird to me to be that is not just nonresponsive, but almost like, no, we're going the opposite way. Yeah. In an early 2000s, hasbro, who they bought out kenner, eventually makers of the classic snoopy snow cone machine. I never had one of those. Did you have one of those? No, neighbor did. Okay. But you got to eat some of that sweet, sweet sugar ice. There was nothing like the taste of, I think the cherry one I can't remember. But it was just the greatest snow cone you could possibly have. And that's until you had a shaved ice later, and you're like, oh, this is a lot better still. Number one, raining champ. Really? Number two is blue raspberry slush puppy. Yeah. See, what I would always do is slurp that sweet liquid, and then it'd be left with just some faintly colored kind of just ice. Oh, yeah. No, I know. That was the problem with it, for sure. But if you did it right and you just kind of let it settle, you got through the nasty stuff first when you got to the bottom, then you got to the true hyper dense snow cone experience. Yeah, I could never do that. I still have problems regulating my hot fudge to ice cream ratio when eating a sundae. Yeah. I just won't even do it anymore. You say you do all the hot fudge first, and then you're left with some Kredy ice cream. Yes. That's standard cruddy, delicious ice cream. Right. This ice cream that some people around the world would kill for is cruddy. It doesn't have any more fudge. Dude. I've been on a 15 year campaign to convince Emily that vanilla ice cream is like a legit flavor. Sure. I think she still thinks that vanilla ice cream is just like unflavored iced milk. Yes. It's the one without the flavor added, right? No, vanilla is really delicious. It is. It's subtle. Vanilla bean ice cream, like a true deflect. So good with you. So, in early 2000, they finally, like you said, tried in a very hamfisted way to get boys involved with the q u. Easy bake. Queasy bake. Is that what it is? It took me a second, too, because q u is a separate word. Okay. Now it's not even hyphenated. So the queasy bake oven and the mixerator for you boys, you can make mud and crud cakes and larvalicious cocoon cookies and not like, hey, just bake something good, because anyone can bake. Yeah, anyone can bake. And the girls don't use that one. Yeah, it was only boys that showed up in these ads. They're like, we really need to get boys involved. How can we do that? Well, we'll make one specifically for boys that's like they're making cruddy cakes. I mean, I know they're just trying to sell stuff, but in these meetings, in these marketing meetings that you just can't help but think there it's, like a bunch of, like, 85 year old men. It's our senate in there, right? They're, like, screaming and pounding and yelling at each other about the idea of selling this to boys. Oh, man. Well, after that, I feel like we should probably take a break. Yeah, we'll go to our senate chambers and regroup right after this. 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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. All right, so, in 1967, the easy bake oven is selling like hotcakes, literally. General mills buys kenner, and they did a couple of genius things. They partnered because they were general mills. They had no problem because they owned Betty Crocker as well, I assume launching Betty crocker branded mixes. And then later on, they got the licensing deals with McDonald's and pizza hut, because here's the thing you can bake anything in an easy week oven because it's just a little oven. You can make pizza, and you don't have to buy these mixes. You can just bake cookies that you made from scratch. Yeah, there's, like, a lot of recipes online. Easy baked oven recipes yeah. That actually don't taste like garbage. Right? Yeah, they did have a huge line of mixes, though, and they sold more than 100 million of them over the years. That's how they get you. But, I mean, there were recipes, mixes for candy bars, pecan brittle, popcorn, bubblegum. You can bake your own bubble gum. Interesting. It is interesting. I would have tried that, for sure. I want to see bubblegum come out in, like, a brownie pan. Yeah. I'd be like, I want some of that bubblegum. We had a cotton candy machine now that I remember. What it would just spin sugar, and you would I i know what they do. Yeah, I wanted one. That thing was probably dangerous. It was probably like a nuclear centrifuge. What was interesting about those are fascinating to me was the cotton candy. Oh, it's not called it's, like, not the web sugar or something like that. Yeah, I want to say web, but that's not either. It's not really visible in the machine, but when you stick in the little cone, it just builds up on it. It's just coming out of another dimension into this one, like coming out of a spider's butt. It's awesome to see a pink and blue spider's butt. Man. I had to go out yesterday. I still have my pickup truck because I just kept it because it was paid for, and I still move and haul stuff occasionally. Justify it to me. I had to move something yesterday, and I went out, and there was the most beautiful, huge spider web from a tree down attached to the rear tailgate of my truck. And you're like, chuck smash with this big spider right in the middle. And I was like, oh, man. I just felt so bad. I didn't know what to do. So you just put in reverse and pretended nothing. We didn't see anything. Now, I actually plucked it off little by little because I want to ensure his safety. The web just goes crumbling down into a long, skinny string, and he climbs right up to the tree, and I was just like, I'm really sorry. He's like, oh, I'm sure you are. I'm sorry. Spit venom into my eyeball. He's like, what do you need your truck for? And you're like, I got to go get peanut butter. He's like, oh, good. Thank you for ruining 30 hours of my work, a giant VAT of peanut butter that would only fit in my truck. All right, so let's fast forward here to the modern times. In 2007, the energy independence and security act, when the government said, by 2012, light bulbs have to increase their efficiency by 25%. So bye bye, 100 watt incandescent bulb. Yeah, so let me just say something. Let me set that up, too. Over the years, the easy bake oven had just remained a steady seller for Kenner and then Hasbro, and the design had been basically the same. It went from two bulbs to one bulb, but it was this closed box where the heating element was, where there was a slot. On the side. Remember, I went through the whole thing, pushed it in, and it came out the cooling chamber on the other side. But really, the design was the same. The outward look changed. Like, it went from the weird its own thing to the late seventies and early eighties started to resemble a microwave. Sure. And then in response to this change in light bulb requirements, easy Bake did a redesign in 2006. And for the first time ever, the Easy Bake Oven actually looked like an oven. Like a stove. It had little, like, fake burners on the top. It looked like a stove. And it was actually a front loader to where there was, like, a slot in the front of the Easy Bake Oven. And that's where you put the thing in, and that's what you actually pulled it out from, too. And it went right into the heating element. And they replaced the light bulb because, again, so long, 100 watt light bulb because of the energy act with an actual heating element, a ceramic heating element. Like an oven. Yeah, it was an oven. So they made an oven. But then when they made the oven, they redesigned this thing so that you could put your fingers right into the oven while it was baking at its hottest temperature. And of course, kids immediately started doing that. How did that one slip past? No idea. That just doesn't make any sense at all. So in the end, I think close to 250 kids ended up with, like, 2nd, 3rd degree burns. Yeah. One partial amputation of a finger. Yeah, because kids would get their fingers stuck in it. Right. And then some kids got their fingers stuck in it while it was hot. And, yes, they were getting huge burns. So Hasbro was like, well, we'll do a recall. And they recalled, like, $985,000. I think ultimately, a million of these things they recall. First they tried to say, here's a little fix. Yeah. Here's a retrofitted piece. It's really easy to snap it on. It will solve everything. And apparently, it did solve everything. They're like, why didn't you make it that way to begin with? Right? But most parents were not like, they didn't have their ears out that there was a recall of their Easy Bake oven. And so the kids kept getting burned, and finally, Hasbro was like, just bring them back. So there's a recall of a million Easy Bake Ovens from that 2006 redesign. That's a huge toy for them. If that would have ruined the Easy Bake Oven, that would have been a big deal. So what they did was they temporarily went back to an old design featuring a light bulb, too, while they redesigned it to the new version. So then they came out in 2011 with that really ugly designed, what's called the Easy Bake Ultimate Oven. I'm looking at it now. Yeah, it does. It looks terrible. It's horrible. It looks like it's on the go or something like that. I don't like it. It looks like a weird toaster of it. Yes, but it looks like it's trying to look futuristic and modern, which never ends up looking like that. No, it doesn't. But they also made it pink and purple. Super girly. The ads were flowers girl targeted, yet there's flowers on it. And again, they were like, no, this is for girls. Boys don't play with this. So in I think 2013, there was a girl named McKenna Pope. Yes. Who is just a hero of heroes. She's amazing. I saw an interview with her on CNN. Pretty great. She's just so self possessed and intelligent and well spoken, but also like a kid. Know where she's a kid. She's just amazing. One of those clearly reincarnated. And she went on, she started a petition to get Hasbro to make a gender neutral version of its Easy Bake Oven because her little brother liked to bake, but realized that the Easy Bake Oven was for girls. She wanted him to be able to bake. So she said, Hasbro, why don't you make one that's gender neutral? And got something like 50,000 signatures for her petition. And Hasbro came out with a new version of the Easy Bake Ultimate Oven, which was just a black version of it. Black and I think silver. I'm surprised it wasn't like our brush stainless model to emulate kitchens, right? Yeah. She's probably almost 20 years old now. Yes. When would she's doing McKenna Pope, are you out there? She's some sort of like consumer protection lawyer, I'll bet. Probably so. I hope so. Me too. 2006, they go into the National Toy Hall of Fame the same year that disastrous redesign. Yeah. They got in just under the wire. Can't take it back. I'm trying to look here from their very own website, some of the landmark years. And it is kind of funny that it emulated the styles at the time. Unless they were just doing pink. Like in 69, they premiered the Avocado green. Yes. The very next year was harvest gold. It's very good. Metallic Pea you say that a lot in our house. Oh, they had a potato chip maker. Do we mention that? No. 1973, the Easy baked potato chip maker. That's all. And then in 78, they finally started putting a fake digital clock on it that always read 1230, not 420. You see that a lot as a joke. Sure. Pothead joke. Yeah. But you'll see an alarm clock add in like Sky Mall or something and they'll say 420. Right. Because the publishers aren't paying attention. They get it doesn't know or they don't care. Sure. I remember years ago when we used to have a lot of illustrations on how stuff works and had two in house illustrators that I won't name. Remember? One of them drew like a park scene for me. And the tree clearly had a marijuana leaf embedded in it. And I was like, hey, man, you can't do that. And he's like, It was completely an accident, alright? I was like, Man, I wasn't born yesterday. Yes, I've seen a pot leaf before. I thought it was funny, but I couldn't do that. You got anything else? I don't think so. Easy Bake oven mac and cheese. You can bake. Oh. In 2003, they introduced the Real Meal Oven, and that's when you could do like, french fries and pizza and mac and cheese and stuff. I think that was the predecessor to the ceramic heating element that they eventually redid the Easy Bacon in 2006. Good stuff. Good stuff. If you want a nice blast from the past, just type in Easy Bake Oven commercials. There's one from 1980 that was just perfect. Yeah. Was it rad? No, it was pretty rad. Okay. It was like Carpenters era. Got you. Which is not rad, but still lovely. Yeah. Love the Carpenters. Me too. Well, if you want to know more about Ez Bake Ovens or the Carpenters or the Snoopy Snow Cone Machine, just go on to the Internet. The vast repository of stuff like that. And since I said that, it's time for listening to mail. Hey, guys. I'm a freelance writer who works remotely, so I've been riding and traveling the world for the past year and a half. It's been wild since I've been traveling alone. It can get lonely. But from Mexico City to Bali to Tokyo, you guys have been with me, keeping me company, making me laugh, teach me all kinds of cool facts. As a content writer, I also feel a connection to Y'all. We both have to research seemingly mundane topics sometimes and discover the cool, interesting things about them. Present them in a palatable way. People sometimes laugh when I'm telling them I'm writing something like the history of the Egg McMuffin are the best months to buy a mattress. But I'd just point to your podcast is a sterling example of how gyms and surprises lie within even the most unassuming topics. Thank you. Yeah, I agree. Have you guys ever considered doing a show on Digital Nomadding? Never. I know it's becoming increasingly popular as more companies embrace remote working. I'm in a cafe in Medellin, Colombia, right now, and there are five Digital Nomads tapping away on their laptops as we speak. They would beat me up if they knew I just referred to them as Digital Nomad. The future is location independent, I say. Thanks again for being so awesome. It's a short term dream of mine to Digital Nomad over to a country where you're doing a live show by you guys. A drink. Awesome. If you do read this on the airplane, give a shout out to Mark Alexander, who insisted that I keep listening to you guys even after I was initially slightly turned off by all of your sides. And off tracking. Happens to a lot of people. And that's funny. Because we had a lot of those today. You know, that reminds me of a totally unrelated story. She says now, I very much learned to appreciate those. He would burst into tears, and I would, too. So thank you, Mark Alexander, for turning on your friend. Maria. Cristina ladonde. Thanks a lot. Beautiful name. Yeah. I'm sorry. Lalonde Leone. Maria Cristina lalonde beautiful. And I hope that your buddy did just burst out into tears. That'd be amazing. Pretty neat. Thanks for that email. If you want to get in touch with this, you can find us on the web@stuffyshow.com, check out our social links there. And if you, like, sent an email to stuffpodcast@householdworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out. The sun is shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon music my Favorite Murder from exactly right media. My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgueref and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You know you're the best pet mom. When you growl back during playtime, give epic belly rubs and feed them halo holistic made with responsibly sourcing grief mediums plus probiotics for digestive health. Find us at chewy amazonandhalopets.com." | |
43cf0796-53a3-11e8-bdec-1fbe902f71a2 | How We Almost Got Rid of Polio | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-we-almost-got-rid-of-polio | For more than half of the 20th century parents in the industrialized world were freaked out by an unseen waster of youth, the poliovirus. It spread easily and could paralyze children for life or even kill them. Its effects were so horrible that humanity set about ridding if from the Earth. | For more than half of the 20th century parents in the industrialized world were freaked out by an unseen waster of youth, the poliovirus. It spread easily and could paralyze children for life or even kill them. Its effects were so horrible that humanity set about ridding if from the Earth. | Tue, 21 Jul 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=21, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=203, tm_isdst=0) | 43782978 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody. You may not know this yet, and if you don't prepare to be blown away. We are creating right now the first ever Stuff You Should Know book. It's called Stuff You Should Know colon an Incomplete Compendium of Mostly Interesting Things. And you can preorder it now. That's right. And if you pre order everyone, there is an incentive because you get a free gift. And don't worry if you've already preordered because you can just head on over to Stuff You Shouldread books.com. It's a very beautiful little web page and it's got all the information. And if you already pre ordered, can't you just upload your receipt and get that pre order gift? Yes, you can. And they will mail it off to you. And you will get it in the mail and say, oh, thank you. I don't mind if I do. And it's a poster that you will love and cherish and possibly pass on down to your children as an heirloom. That's right, everyone. We couldn't be more excited about this book. It's really coming together. Well, it's us through and through, and you can go check out some excerpts@stuffyadbooks.com. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles w chuck Bryan over there. And this is stuff you should know. Polio cast. That's right. Before we get going, though, we want to tell everyone that we have a book coming out called Stuff You Should Know colon an Incomplete Compendium of Mostly Interesting Things that You Can Buy and pre order online. And pre orders are very big deal to pre order the book. I never knew what a big deal it was, but pre orders are very important for the author. I didn't realize they're big deal. Now I'm kind of worried now they're a big deal. Okay, well, yeah, I guess if everybody will go, you won't regret preordering the book. How about that? And why? Because you get a special gift. Not only that, you get a special gift for sure. You just go upload your receipt@stuffyoushoreadbooks.com. But also, the book itself is really great too. I think you're going to like it. 26 full robust chapters. They're going to just knock your socks off. And it's 100% stuff you should know. That's, right. And we get great illustrations by Carly Minnardo. We had a great writer working with us named Nils Parker and a great publisher in Flatiron. And we're just super excited about it. And we appreciate your support. Yes. So you can go preorder that book everywhere. Okay. Wow, Chuck, we're getting really good at that. Now let's talk polio. We're not good at transitioning. No, we never have. So polio. When I was researching this, I kept running across whenever I typed in polio that auto suggests in the search bar, it would say things like, does polio still exist? And it absolutely does. But it's one of those diseases that we're really close to eradicating, thanks to an extraordinarily robust vaccination campaign, one of the first really big vaccination campaigns in the history of the world. And it was also one of the most successful, too. So much so that we're down to just three countries, I believe Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria are the only three countries where polio is still endemic, where you can just walk around and catch polio and there are outbreaks in other countries. We'll talk about exactly why, but it went from this global, worldwide problem at the beginning of the 20th century down to three countries, and we're like that close to getting rid of it forever from the planet, basically. Yeah. And it's interesting to read about polio and its vaccine during the middle of our own pandemic with coronavirus and Cobid 19, because there's a lot of similarities and overlap. It's interesting there's a pandemic on. Yeah. That's why I haven't seen you in three months. I know. Are you getting used to it yet? Sure. Just as anyone gets used to something that stinks. Thank you. I didn't mean not seeing you. I mean everything. But sure, if that's part of that got you, that's for sure. Part of that. But it is weird talking about it, for sure, because there are some real similarities. For sure. Yeah. So polio is the disease, but polio virus is the anterovirus, which is a virus of the intestinal tract, which is an RNA virus like COVID-19. But the disease itself, like covet, is the sickness, polio is the disease, as coronavirus is the polio virus. I mixed that all up, but I think it's right. So coronavirus is to Covet what? Polio viruses? To polio, yeah, that's the cleaner way to say it. Right. And then, apparently, polio, specifically, if you say, oh, this person, my grandfather had polio, you're not talking about just a polio infection. There's a specific kind of disease that you can get from the polio virus where it detects your central nervous system and can cause all sorts of problems. And that specifically is what somebody's saying when they say they had polio, which is in that case called poliomyelitis, which is what people are talking about when they say when they're talking about polio the disease. Yeah, because a lot of people got the polio virus, didn't know it had no symptoms. Your body kicks into gear, that immune system just fights it off. You got those antibodies for life and that's it. That happens a lot. But, yeah, like you said, if you get polio, that means that it hits your central nervous system. We'll get more into detail about all this, but polio virus is where it colonizes is in the throat, in the digestive system, and we're talking about your feces being contaminated or infectious and contaminated, and your saliva, depending on how you get it. So there's basically two ways to pass it along, either with your poop or with your saliva and the fecal transmission is much more prevalent, especially in the developing world because of poor sanitation. And if you look at just the natural history of the virus, of the polio virus, it's ideal to just replicate. Right. That's the whole purpose of a virus to just make as many copies of itself as possible. And so living in the water, the drinking water supply, and then infecting people infecting their gut replicating, being passed as feces back into the water supply to infect other people but without really developing symptoms in people, that's ideal for the virus itself. Every once in a while, though, I think in about one quarter of people who become infected, the polio virus will enter the bloodstream. It'll leave the gut and enter the bloodstream and will produce what's called viremia, where it infects the blood, it starts to infect other organs and those people will develop flu like symptoms for a couple of days. That's still not that bad. Probably nothing we would have mounted a global eradication campaign against. It's just that in a very small proportion of people who become infected, the polio virus not only infects the bloodstream, it actually travels to the central nervous system and attacks that. And then that is the real problem that comes from polio. What we were talking about earlier. Poliomyelitis? Yeah. And no one knows why that happens. Basically, they just think it is completely random. That seems to be the case of whether or not you get the paralytic version or not. It is not many people, but when you spread those numbers out, it can be a lot of people. So when you look at numbers, like 5% of everyone infected have paralysis. If you look at a human population, that's a lot of people, right? Yeah. Just a very small percentage of everybody or a ton of people around the world and for centuries have an infection, it does add up big time, for sure enough so and so not just the number also, Chuck, but just the devastating effects that polio can have. Polio myelitis can have on a person, it's a really bad jam because not only can it cause what's called acute flaccid paralysis where your motor neurons or your muscles are attacked so that you can't use your muscle and your limbs starts to wither or maybe you just become fully paralyzed, it can also travel to your brain and affect things like your swallowing reflex or breathing. And so it can very easily kill you when it starts to progress to the central nervous system phase of polio myelitis. Yeah. And there's no treatment for polio. And we'll talk about the vaccine here in a minute to a great extent. But it's just like any other virus. You let it run its course, your body will probably do the right thing and step up and fight it back and not let it get to your bloodstream. But like you said, even if it gets to your bloodstream, you might just get sick, but that zero 5% chance that you actually have. The paralytic version, there is no cure for that now, which is weird. I was like, so what? You're just a goner if you get polio myelitis? Or that's what the case was. And apparently your body can still fight it off. You can get polio myelitis, and if you receive the proper care. One of the better inventions to combat polio is called the iron lung, which would breathe for you using a bellows and negative and positive pressure to move your chest up and down. That can keep you alive long enough to give you a chance for your body to fight off the infection with your immune system. But that's not a cure. That's just keeping you alive long enough for your body to fight it off. It was really surprising to me that there's still, to this day, no treatment for polio. Yeah. I can't help but think of the Big Lebowski when I think of Iron Lungs, who is in an iron lung in that? Remember when they go to visit, they think the kid stole the car, or they found the kid's schoolwork in the back of the car, and they go to his house, and it was this former TV writer who's inside, and he's in an iron lung. I genuinely don't remember that part. I'm sure I'm being shouted at by some of our listeners, but sorry, it was played for laughs. The one I think of is Ralph Machio and the Outsiders after he gets burned from running in that house to save those in an ironman that's what I thought. And so I looked it up to verify. There's no mention of it. So I guess when I was a kid, I just made up that Ralph Machio is in an iron lung in The Outsiders. If I'm not mistaken, he just had a I guess what you would call a respirator today. Okay. Yeah. I think he was faced down in traction and suspended on a respirator, if I'm not mistaken. My tiny little impressionable brain translated that into an iron zone. No, that's okay. Stay gold. My brain hasn't gotten much better. Chuck sure it has. So you can survive. You can fend off a polio infection, even with poliomyelitis, but the problem is, it very frequently would not let you survive. It would kill you. And so, like we said, just mounting this campaign became kind of paramount. But polio is tough because they think it's such an old virus. They think it's been around for a very long time. And it's kind of evidenced by the fact that polio it's only humans that it lives in and tries to replicate. It's not like other viruses where there's, like, reservoir animals that it can hang out in and just basically stay alive until it can infect a human. It's just humans, basically. Although there was a case in 1066 of some chimps becoming infected from humans with polio in that sense. Oh, really? Yeah. Wow. And if you need to go over viruses again, folks, look no further than the recent Stuff You Should Know classic for March 20, virus Talk with Josh and Chuck. That was from March 20. The rerelease. What do we call those? Classics? Got you. Specials. Selects. Aren't you, like, one half of this podcast? I am, but I call them classics in my brain. I don't know what the official branding is. Select. Yeah. Like, we have hand selected this classic episode. Yeah. Classics. I think if you scramble the word select classics is in there somewhere, but it's spelled but yeah, that one just came out recently. So that will catch up on what a virus is. But should we take a break and talk a little bit about the ancient history, perhaps, of polio? Yes. All right, we'll be right back. Everybody want to learn about a Terraceordan, Colorado? Word up, Jerry. All right, so, ancient history, we don't know exactly where polio started because old diseases have shoddy record keeping. Sure. They just didn't keep up with stuff like they do now, but we do. If you looked at some of the mummies in ancient Egypt, you might see some limb deformities that could have been polio. There are paintings on walls and things that maybe could be polio, but this is us extrapolating this from a modern lens. Those limbs could have been smashed in a heavy object accident as well. You never know. A combine accident? Well, I was going to say that, but they didn't have combined. So a barge accident. How about that? Okay, so over the years, people were studying polio, and, I mean, we kind of started to get a pretty good handle on it. We didn't understand what viruses were, so we didn't know it was a virus until the 19th or 20th century. No, the 20th century, I think 19 eight. Our old friend Carl Lansteiner, who developed blood types, was also one of the two people who identified the polio virus in 19 eight. But other people had contributed up to that point, like it was recognized as being an epidemic disease if there were outbreaks, that kind of stuff. But everybody was kind of okay with polio existing. Like, it was not something that we were happy about, but nothing that there was this great urgency to cure until about the beginning of the 20th century. And they think that people living together in close quarters urbanization and better sanitation led to polio outbreaks that hadn't been seen before because the better sanitation produced a population that had not been exposed to polio virus. Yeah, that seems counterintuitive. It does. But it makes sense, because if you've got a virgin population, that thing can just hop from person to person to person. Whereas if you have an endemic population where any proportion of the population is already immune from having been exposed to the virus before, because, don't forget, remember, we said a lot of people, most people, I think 75% of people who are infected never even show any signs or symptoms. So if you don't have people like that anymore because of improved sanitation, but you also don't have a vaccine program. You've got a virgin population that a virus can just run rampant in. And that sounds familiar. It does. That's what started happening in the early 20th century, and it started scaring the bejesus out of parents because it was largely affecting kids. Yeah. And it happened in clusters because it was so easily transmitted. And like you said, with the virgin population, there would be these big outbreaks, and that causes panic with parents, especially. Yeah. In 1916 in the US. 60 people died from polio in about 27,000 paralytic cases to 21,000 paralytic cases. And also, Chuck, we said in our book, you remember in the mr. Potato head chapter, that polio outbreak is what made mr. Potato head one of the first big toys, because so many kids were stuck at home that summer because of a polio outbreak. That's right. And that's exactly what happened, because it's kind of mirroring what we're seeing now, is they would shut down parks and swimming pools in schools and public events, and America rallied behind it back then and said, yeah, that's what we should do for the good of the public. It's not happening now, unfortunately. But back then, everyone got on board between, I think, a quarter of a million and 650,000 americans were alive at any given time in the 20th century that had lifelong issues caused by polio. Right. That's a lot of people. I mean, that's a real problem. That's not over the 20th century. That's at any given point in the 20th century. Right. Yeah. At any given point. So you can kind of understand why around then. Especially when people were seeing entire classrooms of children struck down with polio. Some of whom went on to have lifelong mobility issues. Some of whom died. That scared parents a lot. And it scared everybody so much so that it kind of laid the groundwork for this big national and actually an international push toward coming up with. If not a treatment. Which they tried at first and found that was not happening then. A vaccine for polio. And that's exactly what we did. We being the humans. Yeah. And a big driver for this vaccine was a little organization called the march of dimes, which was originally founded by Franklin Roosevelt. It's called the national foundation for infantile paralysis. And I never knew this, but they had a march, and people would send dimes as donations to the organization. And that's why it's called the march of dimes. Right. It's amazing. And because of that, because of all those individuals sending in dimes to the march of dimes or to the infantile paralysis foundation that laid the groundwork for the financial support for all this research that was going on, specifically for the research of one of the guys who came up with a vaccine for polio. Because we actually have more than one, but the most famous of them all was Jonas Salk, who came into the picture in about 1947. And because of those dimes that were contributed by average everyday people, because that money directly funded his research, he very famously refused to patent the vaccine that he came up with for polio and just said, this belongs to the world. Yeah, just like a farmer bro. Exactly. Same morals. Right, right. So this is a good chance. I'm glad when we get to do shows like this, because Jonas Salt gets so much credit, and deservedly so, is a genuinely great human that walked the planet. But a lot of people had chipped in over the years to get this vaccine where it was and we get a chance to talk about those people now, which is always fun. In the late 1940s. John Franklin Enders, Thomas Huckle Weller and Frederick Chapman Robbins. All three serial killers. That's right. They figured out how to grow the polio virus culture in a lab, which, if you want a vaccine that's the first big step, is to grow that culture in a lab. And they won in 1954, for those efforts, they won the Nobel Prize in Medicine, which is great. Yeah, it was. That was a huge first step. Like you were saying, the people had tried to create a vaccine even before that first step, though, I guess the old fashioned way. Brody and Coleman. John Coleman. I don't know Brody's first name. But when they were working together. They created a vaccine that actually killed five of their 10,000 test subjects. Which was not good. And it actually kind of set the whole vaccine movement back a hint. But astoundingly it didn't kill it. Rather than saying. Like. No. We're not going to try this. People looked at polio cases and said. This is so bad. We need to keep pushing forward despite that. And so by the time Salt came along and started working on his vaccine, people were already a little jumpy about the idea and it was made all the more so that he was trying an unproven form of vaccine. Whereas most vaccines used attenuated virus, which is live, but it's a weekend version of the virus and it's in a much smaller dose. What Salt was suggesting, what he wanted to use, was an inactivated virus, which is dead in the sense that it can't replicate any longer. It's been treated with formaldehyde, but it's a huge dose of it. So if it's not dead, you're in big trouble. Yeah. And it was a big deal at the time because it was new science and a lot of scientists said that I don't think you could administer this much, even kill the virus safely. And so what you had was a couple of different things going on. A couple of potential pathways to take was give a little bit of that weekend virus that's still alive to kids, which we know is going to infect them with a virus. So it's going to generate those antibodies, but hopefully it's not going to be strong enough to get to that central nervous system point of infection or super dose them with this inactive virus and that's going to cause antibodies in the blood. So that will 100% prevent polio from happening, that will keep it from going to the central nervous system. They knew that. Right, and that's great news. But boy, you better be sure that that virus is perfect, because if it's not, then you're in big trouble. Right? And not only that, that's a big risk with it, but if you do it right, the risk goes very close to zero. The other problem with it is because it produces antibodies in the bloodstream, that leaves out the gut, which means that you could still be infected by polio and colonize your gut and replicate and be passed in your feces. But because you have those antibodies in your bloodstream, it's going to protect you from ever developing poliomyelitis. Yeah, they were trying to stop the disease, not stop the virus, right? Well, it depends on the paradigm. Like the one that actually infects you with the polio is going to prevent any polio virus from ever colonizing your gut ever again. So it depends on which approach you're coming from. And over the course of a couple of decades, both came into use enough around the world that we actually have come close to eradicating polio, thanks to this combination of both of them. Yeah. So Salk developed a two part test that he used on himself and volunteers and then in. He had to get a massive PR campaign behind this in a big way because they had to vaccinate a million children. They were called the polio pioneers. And even though it looked good, it's still a big deal to vaccinate a million kids with this new vaccine that you're not quite sure about yet. But they figured that was their only choice. They were like, we can't just let polio continue to thrive and paralyze and kill our children. We have to take a chance with these pioneers. Right. During this polio pioneer experiment, it was actually, from what I saw, the first double blind in a major public health study, so no one knew whether they were getting the placebo or not or getting the vaccine. But one segment of this group of polio pioneers, 2000 of them, were given a vaccine that wasn't inactivated. So it was a huge dose of still alive polio vaccine. And 40,000 of those 200,000 people came down with polio. 200 of them were kids who develop paralysis and ten died. And this was huge, huge. Like, can you imagine a setback like that where 200,000 kids were given a vaccine that hadn't been done properly that would just stop it in its tracks now. But again, because polio was so bad, america at the time was feeling very utilitarian and said, you know, 200 kids developing paralysis is horrible, but without this vaccine, 52, 27,000 had developed paralysis. So again, they still push forward. Even with the government temporarily suspending vaccination programs or this test, I believe American parents still move forward and vaccinated their kids anyway with this, what came to be known the IPV, or inactive polio virus that Salk developed. That's right, the inactivated polio virus vaccine, which is still around today. And again, it doesn't prevent the infection, but it does prevent the bloodstream from moving it onto the central nervous system. Right. That's poliomyelitis. That's, again, what people mean when they say polio. That's right. Should we take another break and talk about the other vaccine? Yeah. All right. We'll be right back to talk about the cheaper vaccine right after this. All right, so there's another guy who is somewhat famous, but not nearly as famous as Jonas Salk. Salk, he announced his findings on CBS Radio and became like a household name overnight. I think America was kind of smitten with him because he had tested the vaccine on himself, his wife, his three sons, sterilizing his syringes in his own kitchen, and he was very much derided by his main rival, a guy named Albert Sabin, or Sabin, I'm not sure which way you pronounce it. I don't think it matters at this point. Sabine. Oh, that's a good one. Let's go with Sabine. So, Albert Sabine, he came up with what we were talking about, the other kind of vaccine, an attenuated virus that had a lot of advantages over Salk's virus or Salk's vaccine. But because Salk had kind of beaten him to the punch in America, sabine was forced to kind of go outside of the United States to test his vaccine. And he ended up testing his in the USSR, I believe. Yes. And like you said, his was attenuated. So it was live, and it was actually a really infectious strain. But something about the strain, it just seemed to not go to that central nervous system, and infect the central nervous system nearly as much. Right. So he went to the Soviet Union, tested more than 10 million people there in the 1950s, and they said, whatever Russian is for thumbs up, way to go. Great job, great ski. And it was widely used and came into the US. In the so then all of a sudden, we have two vaccines. We got the IPV that you have to inject. At first, they thought it had to be boosted every few years, but it was, in fact, a forever injection, the best kind. It was very safe. There were no systemic reactions. The cost was high, which was kind of a problem at the time, as opposed to the lower cost of the OPV, which was oral, and you gave it on sugar cubes. Right. So there's a lot of advantages with this OPV over the IPV. And as a result, between the advantages, just lower cost alone would make public health officials be like, we should go with that. But the Cutter incident, where 200,000 kids were accidentally given active polio, that really kind of shook people in Salk vaccine enough that his vaccine got supplanted by Sabine's OPV oral polio virus vaccine. And that became the standard in the United States from about the early 60s up to, I guess, 2000s, basically, right? Yeah. And I think we failed to mention there were three types. Three serotypes, type one, type two and type three. And the OPV, you could get all three of those types onto that one sugar cube, which is great. And if you're infected by one of those serotypes, it doesn't give you antibodies against the other two. And a vaccine for one doesn't protect against the other two. So you have to get inoculated against all three. And Sabeen, remember, he found a strain of polio virus that was very infectious but didn't attack the central nervous system very much. And he actually identified strains for each one of those types that kind of fell into that category. But the thing is this. Remember we said that with an activated or an attenuated live virus, you are actually being given polio virus and you are being infected with polio virus. And so that means that you are shedding polio virus in your feces. So let's say you want to start a vaccination campaign in an area that has poor sanitation and a lot of resistance to a vaccine campaign. Well, if you can just get in there and vaccinate a few people, they're going to go and shed that polio virus in their feces. And because it's this weakened strain, that weakened strain will go on and infect other people in the community who drink this tainted drinking water, and they will kind of become what's known as passively vaccinated by this. So it was another advantage in developing areas as well. But there were some major problems with this vaccine and still remain today, mainly because this is a live virus that you're being infected with on purpose. Yeah. And because it's live, even though it's weak. Very and I don't know about the word rare, but in very few cases, and they think immunodeficiency had a lot to do with it, you could contract polio, you could get the paralysis and you could possibly die. That was known as VAP vaccine associated paralytic poliomyelitis. And that's no good, even if there are very few cases, that's not great for your PR campaign. But not only that, because it was a live virus, they could still replicate. They also found that when it entered your gut and colonized, there, sometimes it could undergo a type of mutation. So that what came out the other. End in your feces was actually a new version of the strain that you had been given. And sometimes it was way more infectious, sometimes it was way more deadly. And that would be what you pooped out into the local water supply. And at first, again, compared to the wild strains of the three types of polio virus that were out there in the world, at first it didn't matter. That happens infrequently enough that just keep going with this oral vaccine because it's really, really working. But as it became more and more effective and fewer and fewer people had polio, the idea that you are giving them a vaccine that could actually produce a virulent strain became a real problem. And as a result, people said, well, wait a minute, we need to figure out what to do about this vaccine because we really need to start figuring out how to phase this out. That's right. And is this where the Dutch entered the picture? I believe so, yeah. And you might think, what do they have to do with it? They were studying Salk's IPV this whole time they were using it, they were researching it. They were funded by their own government to do so. And they made it more robust, basically against all three types, which is great. And the big thing they did, though, is they found out how to reduce the cost. Because the cost was one of the big drawbacks of Socks version. And one of the big parts of the cost, very sadly, is they had to import 5000 Reese's monkeys every year in the Netherlands alone. 5000 monkeys in just the Netherlands. So in the 70s, these two people named Paul van Hemmert and Anton van Visel, they figured out how to grow Cultured Monkey Kidney Cells, which is a great record title, I think. Oh, I think so, too. I hadn't thought about that. I don't know the band. The band is the plastic beads. Okay? And their new album, cultured monkey Kidney Cell. So they figured out how to grow these on plastic beads and steal flasks and then grow that polio virus on the kidney cells. So all of a sudden, you didn't need 5000 Reese's monkeys. You just needed a few of them. And you didn't have to spend a, you didn't have to kill all these monkeys, which is awesome. And B, you didn't have to import all those monkeys in that expense. And that saved a ton of money. And they could all of a sudden pump out these IPV shots at a really reduced rate. All right? So now all of a sudden, actually new, improved version of Salk's original vaccine is competitive to the OPV. Price wise, I think it's still way more expensive, but much less way more expensive than it was before. But then also it prevents poliomyelitis from happening. So what public health officials started to realize by the way the US. Started to switch back to the salk vaccine, the IPV, in 2000. And what public health officials realize is that this combination of the two could actually wipe polio out of existence. For one, you could prevent poliomyelitis from ever happening in your population with the IPV. But then also if you could knock out polio in the wild with the OPV and keep the population that you're inoculating from developing these vaccine associated viruses, the mutated viruses that can come out the other end, you can actually wipe polio out of the wild. And as a matter of fact, one type of polio, I believe it was type Two, was eradicated. They figured out sometime around 1999, and then, I believe in 2015, they officially declared type two polio virus eradicated. It's just gone. It's just not in the wild anymore because it died out because it couldn't find a host to transmit and replicate. And we killed it. We got rid of it from poop, though. That's right. Literally in the last polio dump happened. Yeah. It is kind of crazy because you do, at least in the United States, you associate polio with the early 20th century. Yeah. So the last polio poop came out, didn't hook up with anyone that didn't have immunity. And the good news about type two going away was remember how we were talking about the VAP, the VAP situation with the OPV? Confusing. Yes. Type two was the part most likely to cause that vaccine infection, that vaccine derived infection. So with that out of the way, you were just left with the OPV for types one and three, which is way more safe and effective. Right. And I saw that type three had actually been declared eradicated as well. I think that it's made some sort of weird comeback in Nigeria, but that I believe it was declared eradicated in 2019. I'm not sure if they double back on that or not, but either way, there does seem to be this idea that we could and we're right there on the cusp of being able to eradicate polio. And there's a difference between eradicate and eliminate. Eradicate is where there are zero cases to where the only polio that exists is, like, in a lab or in vaccinated form. Eliminate is where it just doesn't exist on Earth anymore. And for all we know, type two polio virus has been eliminated. But type three, type one has been close to being eradicated. For example, for all types of polio, in not very long ago, in 1988, there were 350,000 cases worldwide still. So there's still a lot of polio. In 2017, it was down to 22. 22 worldwide. So we're making, like, great headway, but unfortunately, the CIA seems to have really gotten in the way and set polio eradication back by decades, from what I've read. Oh, yeah. Yes. Did you see that Scientific American article I sent? I didn't get to that. Okay, tell us about it. So when the US. Was hunting for osama bin Laden. One of the ways that they tried to find them was through a fake vaccination campaign. And it wasn't for polio, it was for hepatitis C. But they basically got a public health official to mount a fake vaccination campaign to gain entry to the bin Laden compound or suspected bin Laden compound and basically take DNA samples of the children there while they were vaccinating them. And I guess they didn't happen. It wasn't successful. I don't remember how they found out he was in there or not, but the fact that the word got out that this fake vaccination campaign had been used as a ruse by the CIA completely undermined all other vaccination campaigns around the world in places that were already wary of the CIA. Because, remember, polio is endemic in three places nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. And none of those three places really have a great impression of the CIA. So legitimate public health vaccination campaigns in those countries were totally delegitimized in the eyes of the local population and the local governments. And in fact, some vaccination workers were murdered and kicked out of countries directly because of that ruse that the CIA had undertaken. And from what I read, they say that it set this eradication campaign for polio back literally decades because it is built around public trust, that these scientists who are injecting them with stuff, these American scientists, are trustworthy. And that trust has been lost, sadly. Well, and then that nuts. That can have that kind of ripple effects like that. And now we're going to have to live with polio at least another 20 years, probably. Sad. It is sad. Polio sad. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Well, that's it for polio, everybody. Soon. That's it for polio. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail, I think, right? Yeah. I'm going to call this just correcting us on some stuff. How about that? Okay, sorry, guys, I'm a bit behind. So this is somewhat old news, but since it involves the Byzantine Empire, perhaps oldest relative, the stuff you should know about us, about how flamethrowers work. Josh says in reference to the Greek fire, something like the Byzantines, who we know as Turks, were most notorious for using the stuff. I didn't say that. He said you said it at 531. That sounds made up. That's a madeup time stamp. The Byzantines were not Turks in the sense that white afrikaners in South Africa are not Zulus. The Byzantines were Greekspeaking. Colonists from the Roman Empire. The capital of the Roman Empire was moved to Byzantium in 338 Ad by Constantine the Great, and the strategic port was duly christened and Christianized, for a while at least, as Constantinople. Yeah. Not Istanbul. The Byzantines were much as the African were with the Zulus, at odds with the indigenous Turks for most of their history until they were overthrown by the latter in the mid 15th century. The name constantinople was changed officially to Istanbul in 1930, but had been in use by the non Greek speaking natives there for centuries, even before the city fell to the Turks in 1453. Why the heirs of the Roman Empire spoke Greek rather than Latin. It's similar to why modern South Africans speak English mostly rather than Afrikaan. There's probably a couple of whole shows you can do about the convoluted colonial histories touched on above, and that is from Conrad Berbe. Thanks, Conrad. I appreciate it. I still dispute that I said anything as ridiculous as what you say I said, but regardless, I'm glad it resulted in that top notch email. If you want to be like Conrad and send us a top notch email, you can do that. Send it off to stuffpodcast@iheartradiocom. 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, you." | |
43f27d8e-53a3-11e8-bdec-ab0fd8e7a8fa | How Anti-Dieting Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-anti-dieting-works | There’s a movement afoot that says we should all stop thinking about our weight and just enjoy food. No, it doesn’t help you lose weight…No, it’s not a diet…No, - just listen to the episode, okay? | There’s a movement afoot that says we should all stop thinking about our weight and just enjoy food. No, it doesn’t help you lose weight…No, it’s not a diet…No, - just listen to the episode, okay? | Tue, 18 Aug 2020 12:12:23 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=18, tm_hour=12, tm_min=12, tm_sec=23, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=231, tm_isdst=0) | 45488243 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody. I don't know if you've heard, but we have a book coming out finally. Finally, after all these years. It's great. It's fun. You're going to love it. It's called stuff you should know. Colon. An incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. Yes. And it's 26 jampacked chapters that we wrote with another guy named Nell's Parker, who is amazing and is illustrated amazingly by our illustrator Carly Minnardo. And it's just an all round joy to pick up and read, even though we haven't physically held in our hands yet. It's like we have Chuck in our dreams so far. I can't wait to actually see and hold this thing and smell it. And so should you. So preorder now. It means a lot to us. The support is a very big deal. So preorder anywhere. Books are sold. 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 Chisey. Chuck Bryant. And this is stuff you should know. Yeah, that's all I got to say. I think this is super interesting, this anti diet movement episode. I do, too. I'd heard a little bit about it. Every once in a while, we'll say something and one of our listeners will write in and be like, hey, you guys shouldn't be saying that, or you guys shouldn't be talking about trying to lose weight or something because it shames other people indirectly. Like, you should check out the anti dieting movement. So all of you people who have ever written in with the suggestion for that, this one's for you, because I believe all of you are the ones who brought that to my awareness. Yeah. So the anti diet movement is a response to there's a lot of pieces to it. And we're going to go over all of them. But it's a response to diet culture in the world. Especially in the United States. And a response that basically says. We don't think diet culture is healthy. Literally healthy for your physical health and also not healthy for your mental health and for the well being of an individual. We don't think diets work. We think we have proof and studies that show diets don't work. And we think that there's a better way, which is to accept food as something that is to be enjoyed and accept your body. And there's a lot more to it than that. But that's sort of the broadest stroke in society goes, what I tell you, man, when you look at how we are, maybe brainwashed is too strong of a word, but how humans and Americans are brainwashed into thinking there is only one way to live and only one way to live that way, it's pretty interesting and hard to undo. Every single one of us in America, and I would guess in most of the west as well, are subject to kind of this two pronged attack about weight. One is the idea that you just don't look as good when you're overweight. And then two, the idea that you're not as healthy when you're overweight. And this anti dieting movement rejects both of those. Yeah. So their whole thing is and it's worth kind of restating here because it's tough to wrap your head around because of the way that we've all been brought up for so long, that the anti dieting movement isn't like, no, all you have to do is cut meat out and you're fine, you can do everything else. There's nothing like that. It's not only don't diet, it's throw away your dieting books, stop following dieting blogs, reject the standard of beauty at the small, kind of vaguely underweight standard that we have in the west. And stop listening to people, including your own inner voice, that makes you feel ashamed when you crave or eat certain foods, that all foods are on the table. There's no such thing as bad foods. And you can just stop thinking about weight and food. Those two things can be decoupled for the rest of your life. You're free, basically, is what they're saying. You're free. Go fly a little bird, go live your life. Stop thinking about being overweight. Yeah. And it all comes down. And some people may just think this is the craziest thing they've ever heard in their life, right? But what they're saying is you should embrace something called intuitive eating. And this came around sometime in the nineties. There was a book written by Evelyn Treebowl and Elise Resch called Intuitive Eating Colon a revolutionary program that works. And this was in 1998, and this was basically the idea that we've been looking at this cycle happen for years, of restricting your food, getting on a diet, losing weight, gaining it back, sometimes gaining back even more weight, doing this over, it's not working, it's not good for people, it's not effective. It doesn't make you healthier to go through this weight loss and weight gain cycle. And you need to stop listening to these external controls, whether it's the media or your parents or your spouse or partner or yourself. And you need to start listening to your body and eating what your body says to eat. And here's the important part stop eating when your body says it's full, right? And so they kind of put all these things. So intuitive eating is kind of the central focus of anti dieting, but it's not one and the same. Anti dieting is a larger umbrella. Movement is the best word for it. That includes anti or intuitive eating, but it also includes a kind of a militant opposition to fat shaming of any sort of any kind, and also believes, not even kind of overtly believes that any weight loss goal is negative, that it comes 100% from that being brainwashed culturally. So we'll talk more about the anti dieting movement in general, but we should really explain the ten principles of intuitive eating that Tribal and Rush put together. And we should say one other thing, too. This is not a diet. So when you're hearing these things, don't think, and then you do this and you lose weight. Now, that's out the window. That has nothing to do with this. This is about your relationship to food. And then, number two, these people are no slouches. Triple and Rush are both registered dietitians, which are certified regulated professionals who know what they're talking about with nutrition. And intuitive eating is widely, almost universally embraced by dietitians and nutritionists as well. So just kind of keep that mindset when you're hearing these ten principles of intuitive eating. Yeah. And before we actually list the ten, it's worth pointing out that part of intuitive eating is part of the foundation, is the fact that they say, hey, listen, look at your kids when you're born and you're a little baby and you don't know anything. You're just a dumb baby and you grow up to be a dumb little toddler. Your body tells you when you're hungry and you eat, and your body tells you when you're full and you stop eating. And I see that with my five year old. I'm not hungry anymore. All right, stop eating. It's that easy. And the argument for intuitive eating is that partially the anti diet movement is somewhere along the way, we lose that as adults or as teenagers even, because of this onslaught from the media and from everybody talking about your weight, your weight and your health, and you got to be skinny. And we literally lose these biological triggers that say, eat when you're hungry, stop when you're full. Those just go away. And the idea is to kind of retrain your mind and body to get back to that state you were when you were a dumb baby, right? Yeah. Because I don't even know if it goes away. We're just trained by diet culture to ignore them. Oh, they say it goes away. Yeah, I know. I don't know if I agree with that one. But the key is that it's being one way or another, we don't have that intuitively anymore, because diet cultures come in and replace that with no, pay attention to the calories or ignore the fact that you're hungry because you're limiting portion size. They're saying, ignore that advice. Right. So here are the principles, the ten principles. The first one is we already kind of covered it to reject the diet mentality. Basically, it's just saying these diets don't deliver lasting results. And you've got to remind yourself of that. Right. The next one is honor your hunger. It's so sweet. They have honor in here a couple of times, but they're basically saying that when you are hungry, you should eat and you should pay attention to not only what your body is like, the fact that your body is telling you hungry, so go ahead and eat, but what your body is asking for too. Now your body, that's important to say is what they're saying to honor, not your sad. So go eat the ice cream. Right. Which comes later. That comes later, yeah. What else chuck there's? Make peace with food. Yeah. That is basically unconditional permission to eat. We're tempted by the Twinkies and the ice cream and stuff like that. And they're saying give yourself that permission because that's sort of one of the keys is once you rewire your brain, you're not going to want the Twinkie for lunch because it doesn't have that allure and it's probably not going to make you feel great physically. And maybe you need to do that a couple of times to realize, oh boy, I don't feel so hot after eating ice cream for lunch and only ice cream for lunch. Exactly. Yeah. So they're saying just like if you are on the couch and you're like, those Oreos sound good, should I, shouldn't I'm saying get rid of this. Should I, shouldn't I? If you feel hungry and those Oreos sound good, you just get up and you eat the Oreos without a second thought. That's the point of making peace with food, giving yourself permission to live like that. That's right. The next one, number four, is challenge the food police, which can be everything from your friends and family or partners to your own and I think many times your own invoice probably more than anything that intervals. And one of the things with the food police, too is they can come about in ways that are much less direct than calling them the food police. Sound food police sounds like somebody who's going to tell you to put down that Twinkie because a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips, people who say stuff like that to other people, that's definitely food police kind of stuff. But that same kind of guilt or shame or reinforcement of feeling guilty or ashamed about food can come from people who are talking about their own dislike for their body or their weight. Because it makes you kind of sympathetically trigger an exam in your own. Especially if that person maybe has weighs less than you do. Because if they're worried about their weight, well jeez, that means you should really be worried about your weight. Or they're worried about eating the grilled chicken on their Caesar salad and you're tucking into a chili dog. Should you really be eating this? So the food police, in this sense can kind of come from a number of different directions. Defunds the food police. Yeah. The next one is respect your fullness. And this is a big part of it because they're saying eat when you're hungry. But they're not saying eat till you feel sick. Right. They're saying you need to listen to your body at all times when it's hungry, feed it and then maybe eat a little slower, maybe pause during that snack or during that meal and say, all right, buddy, am I hungry now or am I bored or stressed out? And is that why I'm continuing to eat? Like, check in with yourself in the middle of a meal to see Bobby, do you need fuel right now? Or it's something going on at work, and this Twinkie makes it a whole lot better. And so that kind of reveals one of the big principles of intuitive eating, which is mindfulness. Sure. Like, you're not supposed to just kind of zone out and watch TV while you're eating ice cream, because then you look down and you've eaten way more ice cream than you've even realized, which means that you didn't even enjoy that ice cream. You want to be more mindful when you're eating in part not just to monitor how much you're eating, but to enjoy it more. That's part of the whole thing as well. The next one on the list, in fact, is satisfaction. Okay, hold on. I got one more thing about respecting your fullness. So there's this confucian teaching that the Japanese call hara hachibu, which means belly, is 80% full. And the kind of rule of thumb among Japanese people is that you eat until you feel about 80% full, because then your food kind of expands in your stomach, and by the time you're done eating, it eventually becomes 100% full. So you don't overeat until you feel sick, and it's actually extremely satisfying. It just takes again that level of mindfulness. That's right. And that number six was satisfaction, which is enjoy your food. Assess that taste and the texture, and how does that feel in your stomach? Is it a gut bomb or does it feel good? Right. And I think also, Chuck, if you stop and think about a lot of the ultra processed foods that people have in America, you will find it doesn't make you feel very good. So I think the authors are aware that part of that mindfulness is going to lead you to some different kinds of foods than the ones that people traditionally think of, that they're just going to eat food when they don't feel guilty about eating food. Right. Like, they sit back and they're like, no, go ahead and chow down on the ice cream. And then they sit back and go, watch this, right? I don't know about be happy for a few minutes. And then they're going to be like, oh, I got a stomachache. I think ice cream is exempted from that. I know I keep talking about ice cream. Ice cream is fine in the world. Let's all leave ice cream alone. But I think there's been plenty of stuff that I've eaten where I realized later that it's not actually good, it doesn't actually taste good, it's not actually satisfying. It actually makes me feel kind of bad. And then the icing on the cake of do I love icing on cake disappointment. Yeah. Icing and ice cream are exempted. But the icing on this cake of just feeling kind of duped is that I probably saw an ad for that food within the last couple of days, and that ad worked its mojo on my head, and that's why I ate it. Not because I like it, but because the ad got me. And then the food itself is designed to hijack your limbic system. So I ate more and more and more, but when I stopped and really thought about how it made me feel, I didn't feel good about it and didn't like that food. And I've actually given up Popeyes chicken as a result. Very good. Yeah. Honoring your feelings is the next one without food. Check in with yourself emotionally. How are you? Are you anxious? Are you lonely? Are you stressed out? Are you mad? What are your food triggers, and why are they there? And try and resolve some of those issues without using the food. That's a big, big part of it. I think that is the part of it, dude. I think most people who are overweight are overweight because they eat emotionally. Maybe it's over confirmation bias. I'm a huge stress eater. Huge. And I guess it's possible I could just be presuming. Most people are like that. But I suspect that that is the key to all of it is if you can figure out that food is an addiction to you and that you're using it as an emotional crutch, that will make you identify what you're actually trying to deal with or cover up or run from or make yourself feel better against using food, and that is the key to decoupling it. And when you can do that, you can do all this other stuff, I would guess, is just kind of like a cascade of easiness from that point on. I think that's probably the hardest part. Number eight is respecting your body. And this is the idea that you want to love your body and accept your body and feel good about what they call your genetic blueprint and the body that you have and maybe you were meant to have and having a realistic expectation about what you can and should look like. That's a big part of it. The 9th one really kind of stands out to me, too, Chuck, is that exercise? They're saying, like, exercise, but the thing to know about exercise is you don't exercise for weight loss. That's not what exercise is for. It's actually not that great for weight loss. It's good for improving your mood and making you feel better. And it can help with number eight, with you just respecting your body, you can just feel good about your body without even really losing any weight, just from exercising from time to time. And they don't even say you necessarily need to exercise. They're just saying, move more. Yeah. Don't be sedentary. But that was a big, life changing thing. For me, too, is learning that exercise is not about weight loss, it's about boosting your mood and sense of well being. Yeah, it feels good. It does. It feels really good. But if you do it to try to lose weight, it's very frustrating and counterproductive, and you'll eventually give up exercise, probably. And then the last one, honor your health with gentle nutrition. And this is the idea that you're making food choices that you like the taste of, but also honor the health aspect. Sure, you might want to have some cookies and chips from time to time, but focusing on those non processed foods that also do taste good, that's sort of the route that they suggest you go. Right. That's intuitive eating. Although if you go back to number three, technically number ten could be canceled out. Like, if you're just like, no, I really hate asparagus. I hate vegetables. I love Oreos. I'm just going to eat Oreos. They're like, okay, that's fine, as long as you're not feeling guilt about it. As long as you love your body, as long as you're listening to yourself and the cues your body is telling you, whatever, that's just part of it. It's go to town. Just love food and love yourself is kind of the message, which is a pretty good message that I think a lot of people want to hear, I think. So you want to take a break and then talk about the idea that this is rooted in science? Yes. Okay, we're going to do that eventually. Everybody. I will be right back. That's the name of it. It's a great name. All right. Stuxnet with an X. All right. So intuitive eating, this has been sort of a new way of thinking that's come about over the last probably ten or 15 years, maybe a little bit more, but it seems like it's really gain steam in the last ten or 15. And the idea is that there are all these buzzwords that we are sort of ingrained in US. Dieting. Losing weight, getting healthy. They've changed that to or changing from diet to things like getting healthy, or it's a lifestyle change, and they're trying to avoid some of those earlier buzzwords. But if you're an anti diet proponent, you're saying, you know what, this is all the same stuff, just because you call it a lifestyle now, and you're talking about getting healthy rather than losing weight or going on a diet. It's the same size, it's just in different clothing. Yeah, here's the standard, and everyone needs to reach it no matter what. And that really flies in the face of this idea that seems to be one of the tenets of intuitive eating and definitely of the anti diet movement, which is that every person has their own different, basically, genetic weight set point, and that is what your body is going to stay at no matter what. And if you try to contravene that set point, you might be successful for a little bit, but probably the vast majority of people are going to suffer relapse, I guess, and they'll gain that weight back over time. Give them enough time, they'll gain that weight back, and then the problem is they might even gain even more. And so there are some diets out there that have been demonstrably shown to work, like Weight Watchers, now called WW, like Jenny Craig, now called Jenny Craig, still JC, although I didn't know it was Australian, so I guess it should be Jeannie Craig. How was that? It was great. I don't think it was great. I thought all of a sudden I was talking to Russell Crowe. Right. So those have been shown to work. The problem is this, that you are signing up for a lifetime of paying attention to what you eat. Like that's how it works. Like it'll work, but you have to keep it up for literally the rest of your life if you want to keep that weight off. And then other diets just don't work at all, or they'll work temporarily, but then you just go right back and then you gain some weight. And they seem to have figured out, at least according to intuitive eating dietitians and anti dieting movement proponents, that there seems to be some biological response by the body to dieting. And it's almost this comedy of errors that just makes everything even worse when you try to diet. Yeah, I mean, the idea is with any diet, pretty much you're restricting food in some way. Whether it's a kind of food or the amount of food, there is almost always going to be some amount of hunger involved. Even though they all say, like with this diet, you'll never be hungry again. They all say that. But that's sort of the idea with any diet is you're restricting yourself. And anti diet proponents say, you know what, when that happens, your body is wired to want to eat and survive. And when you're consuming less food energy, that's going to create that energy deficit. And that's when you're going to be burning those fat stores and that is how you lose weight. But your body is also going to trigger a biological starvation response that is going to mean you're going to fail eventually, because your body is saying, I got to eat. I think I'm lost in the middle of the woods all of a sudden and go eat. You're hungry. You're hungry. Yeah. You're more hungry than you would have been, right. So this can very easily lead to binge eating because you're not just hungry, you're hungry at this point. And so when you finally do give in and start to eat, you're going to eat more than you would have if you were just plain hungry, right. That's a huge problem with it. But it seems to be even more nuanced than that and that the body seems to enter basically a kind of starvation mode where once it does manage to get you out of that starvation response, where it does get you out of that diet and back into eating, what you've just done is scare your brain, it seems like. So where your brain says, well, I didn't realize that food scarcity was going to be an issue in our lifetime. So now that I realize it is, I'm going to take that set point of out of pocisity, which is the amount of fat you would generally store on yourself. I'm going to inch it up a little higher so that my person can store more fat, because we need to make sure that if this ever happens again, we have plenty of energy stores. So when you come out of dieting, you can actually gain more weight than you had before. Because of that because of that adaposity set point being increased, and then as a result, as a response, you end up dying again. Your brain says it happened again, so your out of pocity set point might be set even higher, and so you'll gain even more weight back. And it's a phenomenon that we're just starting to understand that. I can't tell if it's just theoretical or an interpretation of evidence, but a term I've seen for it is called diet induced obesity. And it's just fascinating to think that dieting can actually make you heavier than you would have been if you hadn't died at all. Yeah, I mean, here's the thing I don't think we mentioned yet. When your body goes into that biological response that says, oh, boy, you got to eat now, it's also saying you got to eat something that's really high in calories. It's like, don't reach for the trisket, friend. You need that pimento cheese on white bread. Yeah, palmetto cheese. You ever have that stuff? I've got some in my fridge right now, buddy. Man, that's the best. It's hard to go back to anything else. To be honest, I didn't even know there was anything else anymore. Although really good. There's a listener who makes Queen Charlotte pimeno cheese out of Charlotte, North Carolina. Is it good? It's Queen Charlotte. It's extremely good, yes. It's like high end pimeo cheese, but it's not like snooty pimeo cheese. It's like, really good pimeno cheese. Do you get the palmetto? Do you get the jalapeno or bacon or just the plain? Just the jalapeno. Okay. Yeah. I've not had the bacon. I'm trying not to eat pig, not for any health reasons, but just because they're supposed to be really smart. Yeah. I don't get the bacon because Emily doesn't eat it, and I just get the plane. I don't get the jalapeno either, because I don't love super hot things, although it's not that hot. It's becoming really apparent that Emily and I are basically one in the same person. I have drawn up divorce papers for that reason that's it from her. Me. We can't get divorced. Okay. Alright, good. So what are we talking about? Oh, yeah. So your body wants even high calorie foods to pack that weight back on, and it's going to pack on more than last time because you've scared it into thinking that it's going to possibly run into food scarcity again. So that's what you're doing is you're basically forcing your body into a starvation mode to lose weight, but your body responds by saying, like, I'm two steps ahead of you, you're not going to win this game. And then you're eventually going to keep gaining more and more weight back and dieting more and more. Here's the other big part of it too, Chuck, is that you're going to end up on this disappointing treadmill where you've wasted all this time and energy and emotion into something that's just going to frustrate you. And the anti dieting, people just say, stop. Well, which could trigger what leads you to eat to begin with, which is stress and anxiety about your weight. Right. And then there are people like Christy Harrison. She's a podcaster of food psych and author of Anti Diet reclaim Your Time, Money, Well Being and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating Colon. She's also a registered dietitian, so she knows what she's talking about, too. Yeah, so she says, you know what, your nutrition, your physical activity, smoking, alcohol, any kind of behavioral health determinant is just about your overall health anyway. And people hang everything on this. An ideal weight means I'm healthy. Of course we think people should quit smoking. I'm not saying, yeah, go out and smoke anyway, but there are people that say all of this stuff combined is only about 30% of your health, and I'm sure your genetics have a lot to do with it. Somebody's anxiety and stress level may be so high that they have a steel cable running through their body at all times, and they may be thin, but they may drop dead from that heart attack in their 40s because they're not addressing other factors in their life other than food. Right. And it's kind of rich too, for the diet culture to be like, well, what about health? What about health? Because there's some pretty unhealthy diets out there. I ran across a few that have come and gone over the years, and then sometimes they're revived. Have you heard of the Sleeping Beauty diet? What's that? You take a nap every time you're hungry. You take sleeping pills at night so you sleep longer, so you're not awake to eat. Don't forget Deal a Meal, which wasn't necessarily bad, but it was definitely calorie restrictive. Richard Simmons very colorful. Cute little cards or something. Yeah, the grapefruit diet, the cabbage soup diet, which diet was very 70s severely. And the cabbage soup diet, I didn't realize this dates back to the they worked at. The thing is, it's calorie restrictive, so you're entering that starvation response and it'll work at first, It's just you eat more when you finally get to eat again. And then this one is I just can't believe this. This is a real thing. Chuck, the feeding tube diet, I didn't even want to look that up. I did. And it's exactly what you think. Yeah, I figured a doctor, like, I guess a doctor Nick type, fits you with a nasogastric tube that delivers about 800 calories of nutrients directly to your stomach. And under the severe calorie restriction, you will shed the weight. But again, you're going to gain it all back and then some, probably when you start eating again. When did you do that? That's still going on. Really? Yes. So the idea that not dieting is unhealthy is awfully rich coming from people who undertake some of these extraordinarily dangerous diets. Like, you can get a kidney infection from that feeding tube diet. Like, a lot of stuff can go wrong, but there are some things that do exist in the world that you have to kind of consider, and one of them is the obesity epidemic, which is tough to get around, but astoundingly the anti diet movement has been like, we got this. Yeah, the anti diet movement says there is no public health crisis going on unless you're talking about the diet culture burn, there is no obesity epidemic. If you look at the average weight of Americans compared to the generation before, it's about six to \u00a311 more. And maybe what this is done, if you look at the BMI scale, which basically says there are three types of people, or I guess four, underweight, normal, overweight and obese, that might that six to \u00a311, which amounts to ten extra calories a day over time. That might nudge you into a different category from overweight to obese or from normal to overweight. But BMI and mortality are just and this is what they're saying. Is that that's causation we think we have evidence that shows that being obese and having a higher BMI doesn't mean you're going to die sooner. Which is that's astoundingly contrary to common sense. It seems like. Or at least the common perception of the link between being overweight and being dead. Basically. Apparently. Really the holy text of anti dieting seems to revolve around this 2006 study by a law professor named Campos. I don't know what campus's first name, but Campos did a survey of the medical literature and tried to find the correlations between BMI and mortality and seem to find that there actually is a correlation. But it's not where you'd think that people who are in the overweight range or the low range of obesity apparently don't seem to have much more of a risk factor than anybody who's in the normal weight range as far as mortality goes. You have to get into the far side of obesity and then the far side of underweight to get to where you're actually at risk of dying. So that's super contrary to what most people think. And again, this is a 2006 study by a law professor who did a survey of the literature on nutrition and weight. So you can take that as you will, but at the same time, if it is correct, it's still to me, I don't think it discounts everything, because if people have gained six to \u00a311 on average compared to just a generation before, that's not terribly much. I mean, it seems like a lot depending on how, I guess, inculcated into the diet culture you are. But it seems like that's taking a snapshot of something that we're still in the process of and then just saying, don't worry about it because it's just this much, not how much more is it going to be, and is there danger if we reach that point, if everybody ends up like the humans in Walle? And it's kind of akin to saying, like, well, it's just the living room that's on fire right now. There's the whole rest of the house is not on fire. Stop your moral panic about house fires. It's very similar to that. So I'm not saying that it's wrong, and I'm not saying that it doesn't help the anti diet movement ideas, but I think that just to say, like, bam, case closed is a little glib. You're being glib, Matt. What's that? We say that in our house a lot. That was when Tom Cruise and Matt Lauer interviewed Tom Cruise. Scientology you're being lib, Matt. That is about as Tom Cruise a thing to say as anyone's ever said. And look what happened to Matt Lauer. Yeah, he got Cruised. You want to take a break? Oh, my gosh, have we not taken a second break yet? No. Let's take a break and we'll come back and talk about the big elephant is in the room right after this. You know, it's Stocks. No, that's the name of it. It's a great name. All right. Stuxnet with an X. So the elephant in the room is nutrition. I think this is the glaring thing that if you've been listening so far and disagreed with a lot of the anti diet movement, you're probably saying you can't eat just Oreos just because it makes you feel good. You got to have nutrition. The body needs nutrition. And here's the thing, the body does need nutrition, but the anti diet movement says, just unwire your brain on this moral judgment on food. And if you get too intuitive eating, what we're saying is listen to your body. And if you eat these just Oreos for lunch, you're going to feel like garbage later on, right? And if you're listening to your body, your body is going to tell you that it wants nutrition and it wants good vegetables and it wants whole foods. And if you're really in tune and you're really listening and you're not just saying, oh, well, I'm just going to give myself permission because I'm an anti dieter to do whatever I want, and I may be doubled over in pain every afternoon from eating garbage food. That means you're not doing it right. That means you're not listening to your body because your body will crave nutritional health. Right. You're just being a smart alec at that point. That's right. So that's kind of like the big thing among registered dietitians and nutritionists that basically says, like, yeah, we're in favor of anti dieting, and we're definitely in favor of people being body positive. There's something called Healthy at Every Size that was founded by Dr. Bacon, of all people. Is it healthy at any weight or is it any size? Any size. Okay. Yeah. Size. Health at every size. That's right. Linda Bacon back in 2010. And so most dietitians and nutritionists are like, of course, we're all very much in favor of that, but nutrition is important, and I'm sure there are some people out there like, yeah, you would say that you're a nutritionist, but I just think that there's no getting around the idea that you need healthy, whole foods. I think the problem is the anti diet movement says that sounds awfully close to there's such things as good foods and there are such things as bad foods. And we reject that outright. And the nutritionists are saying. No. There really is such thing as foods that are better for you and your body and are going to make you feel better when you eat them than other foods. So technically, sure, there is such thing as good and bad foods in that sense, but not shame. It's just this is going to provide more benefits for you than this. Yeah. And there is a real danger, too. And the people that are, I guess you would say, against the anti diet movement, say, like, listen, we can't let this thing we're all for body positivity, but we can't let it go so far in the other direction that your diet shaming and you're saying you shouldn't eat like you were saying you shouldn't seek out nutritional foods. Like, don't let the pendulum swing so far in the other direction that you're brainwashing people into thinking that they can just eat garbage all the time and be healthy. I don't get the impression that that is super prevalent among anti diet movement. I don't think it is. I think there seems to be targeting any kind of weight loss, and that seems to be a division in the anti diet movement itself to where if you want to lose weight or even if you don't say you want to lose weight, but it's evident that you did. There's a model named Ashley Graham who was a full figured Sports Illustrated cover model a couple of years back, and she lost a few pounds, but it's still definitely plus size and full figured and proud of it. But she faced a huge backlash as a result of that, where people were like, I'm not a fan of yours anymore because you lost weight and you've betrayed us all. So there's this division between, well, no, I feel better when I shed a couple of pounds and I have no problem with wanting to shed a couple of pounds. And the other side is like, you can't even think that way. That's diet culture brainwashing you. We reject that and we reject you basically too. And so the Internet has been injected into it, which is the problem is what it seems like, right? Because people should be able to make their own decisions on their own bodies and how they feel it best suits them without being piled on on the Internet and on either side. And I get too also that people are like, well, no, when you talk about that stuff, it makes me feel shame, but triggers my shame. But the problem is you can't control other people. You can only control yourself and your response to other people and forcing other people to behave in a way that makes life easier for you is not how things work. Like, you have to just focus on yourself and your own response and your own positivity so that it is strong enough and robust enough that it can withstand hearing other people talk about how they wish they could lose some weight and being like, you know what? I don't anymore. I'm truly body positive. I truly love my body. That would be the true body positivity that people are trying to achieve there. And it would solve the problem of fighting infighting among people who agree on almost everything else. Yeah, and it's so hardwired, it's really hard to undo. It takes a lot of work. There was a study in 2017 of intuitive eating among retired female athletes and they said they felt very liberated. And when they made that shift to food freedom, for lack of a better term, but they said it, quote, necessitated an effortful process of recalibration during which athletes had to relearn and reinterpret their bodies physiological signals of hunger and satisfy. So, like I was saying earlier, how you lose these signals from when you were a baby? A lot of work has to go into relearning those signals. And these are from these female athletes. And this isn't necessarily the same thing, but there's a big movement now among former NFL players to get their health back into shape. And there's a long list of these men who have come out saying the NFL kills you. The weight that you have to keep on, the amount of food that you have to eat to be an offensive or defensive lineman, and the before and after pictures of some of these guys that are like six 4320 on the offensive line that are now like six, 4225, wow, is unbelievable. And they're just like, I've never felt better in my life and I can walk around now and I don't feel like I'm carrying a sled behind me. Right. Because the NFL is just like, no, man, you got to weigh \u00a3325 if you want to be on the line. Yeah. And then I think also the opposite way is for people who are in sports and have to be severely calorie restricted. You're basically taught to have an eating disorder that you have to unlearn when you stop playing sports, too. So it kind of goes both ways. I think the key here is for everybody, for athletes, for everyday people, for people who are overweight, underweight the cross that all of us are bearing. If you'll allow me to get a little religious in my metaphors here, is that we all have to stop being so obsessed with food and how we look in our weight. Almost all of us are on the same road together, and it's good to remember that we're on it together, traveling together. Let's stop squabbling with one another. I definitely honor my hunger. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Okay. Thank you for listening, everybody. We hope this helped. We hope it didn't set anybody off. If it did, email us, let us know. We apologize in advance. That was definitely not our intent. And since we said that, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this Axe Murder and Family or Ex murdered family. Hey, you guys are the best. I stumbled upon your matcha that isn't just Tpodcast a few weeks ago, and I've been down to stuffy shino rabbit hole ever since. Well, welcome to the show, Jenny. Yeah, welcome. Love hearing about new listeners. Right. Most recently, I've been really into your shows about axe murderers. They're fascinating. And get this, I've discovered that members of my own family were killed by an axe murderer or two in the 1800s. Wow. There's a whole book about it titled Murder Along the Muskanic Kong. I thought it was more they're called the Infamous Changewater Massacres of 1843. The Castner family, which is my family line, was sleeping one night when two men who were attempting to rob them came in and murdered the mother, uncle, and two year old sister with axes. They had lured the father outside, killed him, and threw him in a ditch right before that. What's amazing is that there were two survivors, little JP and his older brother Victor, who were asleep on a cot behind the doorway. The murderers had no clue the boys were there, and they were left unharmed and slept through the whole thing at six and ten years old. Wow. What's interesting is that I'm not sure if the two men convicted were killers. Were the killers. More than two other men were originally arrested. So it's kind of sketchy. You guys should check it out. Thanks for all you do. You're a comfort, especially during this strange season. That is from Jenny Farnan. Thanks, Jenny. That's awesome. We're probably just born in I like fardon the Destroyer, the Matcha drinker. Thanks, Jenny. We appreciate you listening. To mention those two boys, six and ten, being like, hey, who's up for Pancake? When they wake up? Is it too soon? It's an 1834 murder truck and the other one says, no, I'd rather have Waffle editor a little bit. Yeah, we might cut this, but if we don't, you guys can let us know how much we suck, right? To us via email at stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio's how Stuff Works. For more podcasts my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
Animal Migration: Where's that gnu gnoing? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/animal-migration-wheres-that-gnu-gnoing | When you think of animal migrations, you probably picture thousands of animals thundering across the savannah. But where are they going, and why? Josh and Chuck explain why and how animals migrate in this episode. | When you think of animal migrations, you probably picture thousands of animals thundering across the savannah. But where are they going, and why? Josh and Chuck explain why and how animals migrate in this episode. | Tue, 02 Nov 2010 18:41:01 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=2, tm_hour=18, tm_min=41, tm_sec=1, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=306, tm_isdst=0) | 11277962 | 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. Chuck Bryant. And this is stuff you should know. The podcast edition of the podcast. We should change the name of the show to Stuff You might Want to Know. If you care about being an enlightened individual. We need a colon in there. We've been using colons a lot lately. Yeah, let's not change the name. We should change the name to just try and find a pulse. That's good. Thank you. Chuck? Yes. Have you ever seen an animal migrate? I see my dogs migrating to the food bowl at 05:00 every day. Yeah, I guess that is kind of migration. Yeah. Actually I see them migrate to me at 430 and start to say hey staring at me like, you know you got to feed us. Right? Yeah, we talked about that. And can dogs perceive time? That's right, sure. I have seen animals migrate on the YouTubes. It's gorgeous. It is. I mean, it's unbelievable. It is. Especially depending like the monarch butterflies. Everyone's like that's the money migration. Not to me. Have you seen the bats, the fruit bats in Zambia? That's pretty amazing. It is amazing and horrific. If you don't like bats, I like the mammalian ones, like the elk to thousands and thousands of them steaming across the tundra. Yeah. Caribou is another one. Wildebeest, also called Ganoos the canoe. No. Good news is good canoes with Gary. Did you know that? I did know that. The wildebeest, aka the canoe is also known for its huge migration and that doesn't always go very well. Did you know that? What with the canoe? 2007. Now what happened in a river in Kenya in 2000 and 710 thousand wildebeest drowned at this one spot in this river because one of them went in and got swept away and the rest of them were like, oh, he went in. Well, I guess. Well, that's really sad. Yeah. 1% of the population of the African wildebeest population died in that river that day. Quite a mess too, I imagine. That would probably damn up the river, I would think. I would think so. 10,000 wildebeests, I mean they're about four and a half feet tall at the shoulder. They're big and yeah, 10,000 of them. That's a lot of biomass. It's like when a whale gets beached. Do you remember the one in Oregon in the they blew up with dynamite. This footage as well. Is it really? Yeah. Wow. So this migration, Chuck, you got anything else? Listener mail. It just blacked out. Josh Migration, we should define it for our foreign friends. Exactly. It is a large scale movement of an animal species and typically it's because of a few things like weather or mating or food, trying to find resources. Yeah. So when you said that you see your dogs migrate to their food bowl every day. That does technically count as migration because most of the reason things migrate is food and then the other ones are generally secondary. What are the three types of migration? There is irreversive migration. No. Eruptive migration. Yes. I just made up a word irreversive. And not eruptive is in a volcano, but I RR that's. Right. And that doesn't follow a pattern. Usually the species is making it up as it goes along. Right. The wildebeests are known for eruptive migration because they follow water, and wherever the water is, they're going to it and apparently drowning in it. And they said to in this article, which is crazy, that their migration patterns can be based on like thunder clouds. Well, yeah, if they hear thunder so awesome, they're going to learn that. Go to the thunder because that's where the rain is, meaning that's where the water is. It's just so cool how smart the stupid looking canoe is. Dummy. Gary canoe wear a turtleneck and a jacket. I think it was a dicky. Okay, Josh, another one is complete. And partial migration, obviously complete is when the entire species migrates. Partial usually happens when you have such a range in your species that some of you live where it's nice and warm, you don't have to go anywhere, and some of you live where it's cold. And the bar now is a good example of that one. Partial migration is basically just a species showing off how much range it has. Like some of us don't even need to migrate. Exactly. There's also altitudinal migration where you're a billy goat up in the Alps and it starts to snow and get a little cold for you, so you move a little further down the mountain, bing, bang, boom, migration done. And the final one, I think it said three, this is more like five, is the saddest one of all. And that's removal migration. And that is when wherever you're living, for one reason or another, whether it's deforestation or drain, swampland, swampland or climate, is just not the place to live anymore. And you just pack your bags as a species and leave, never to come back. It is the saddest migration, I think. So, Chuck, that's the types of migration. The three, five types. Three to five. Yeah. And what we're finding is from the outside, it looks like people who study migration before we studied migration, it was just like, I like the animals are moving again. But people have given it a lot more evaluation over the last decade, century, year or two. Right. And they're finding that there's pretty much, well, like we said, foods in mating and climate. Those are the reasons. Yes. And they all equal survival. Yes, that's the whole point. Yes. Right. You said that partial migration is based on range. What animals need is food. You got to have food to survive. And for the most part, that's why animals migrate. Is for food. Yeah. And what's interesting too is it's not always a migration to like, oh, let's go find because there's tons of food over here. Sometimes they're smart enough to know we'll deplete all the food here if we don't move around some. And we want to survive as a species. So we're not going to take all the food here, we're going to migrate over and kind of spread it around so we can all live. Right. It's pretty cool. Water also falls into that category of survival as well. Like the wildebeest, which we were talking about. Right, yes. And then there's breeding and mating as reasons for migration. Whales are very famous for migration for both actually for feeding and for breeding. Right, right. So they migrate to the poles in the summertime, thousands of miles. Yeah, they migrate to the poles in the summertime to go feast on krill. But their calves, when they're born, don't have enough blubber to survive in the polar climate. That's adorable. So they go toward the equator, the tropical climates, to mate and reproduce. Do you ever look at animals and think if they figured it all out and humans are just messing it all up? Yes, frequently. I say that all the time to myself. The chinook salmon, josh is one in relation to mating and breeding. And they are famous for heading out to sea as adults after they're born in the river. And then later in life, they swim back upriver and they lay their eggs at the same hospital where they were born. The same little river spot. Right. Because they're going to be eaten in the open sea. So they go back to where they were born because it worked for them. Well, that's exactly why they do it. That's amazing. Yeah, because they know that this spot is because I'm alive. I know this is a safe spot for me. Plus I haven't been by there for a while. I need to say hey to the old neighborhood. Exactly. See what's going on. Check you're talking about removal migration. There's a good example of what happens as a result of removal migration in the Whooping crane. Right. This is the best story. Do you like this one? It's really awesome. The Whooping crane in the United States went down to 20 birds in the wild for a little while. That's not the good part, by the way. Right, that's the sad part. That's the funny part. Here's the good part. The eastern population of the species was completely wiped out and the western population was pretty much keeping the species alive. So I guess to oppose removal migration is it Rutgers? I believe it was Rutgers. Ruckers or Anthologists really started to take a real shine to the Whooping crane and wanted to get the population back up and so they started breeding them in captivity. The problem is the annual migration of the Whooping crane is about 1200 miles. They go from the north down to Florida. Sure. They learn that that's intergenerational knowledge, right? Yeah. So the ones in the east, they have no idea how to get from where they live during the summertime down south in the winter. Yeah. They don't know the route because those people who used to or those cranes that used to have that knowledge died out. Right. I know. It's so sad. So tell them what they're doing, Chuck. Well, this is the cool thing. As sad as that is, and as down on humans as I am, there are humans that do amazing things like this. They basically dressed up in whooping crane costumes from the time these little chickens were born to acclimate them to the adults and the sound of an ultralight aircraft from the time they were little ones, they got them used to that sound. Right. Then when the time came to migrate Josh the birds, a guy got into an ultralight aircraft dressed as a whooping crane, dressed as a whooping crane and flew from Wisconsin to Florida and led these birds and basically said, this is the way to go. This is how you're going to survive. How awesome is that? It's pretty awesome. And it worked so far. So far. What they're hoping is obviously in generations to come that they have learned this and they'll be able to pass it down. Yeah, exactly. That's so awesome. That's pretty rare, actually, that we understand why or how a species migrate. For the most part, how and when or how they know to migrate. It's still relatively a mystery. There's different ways that we think an animal species can say, okay, it's time to go to Florida. And one of the big ones is called the photo period. Right. Based on the circadian rhythm or the circulian rhythm. Sunlight. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means schools out, the sun shining, the daylights longer. And best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarif and Georgia Hardstarks, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting anymore before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | ||
404c5900-121b-11eb-ba6a-bf0383690ac2 | Short Stuff: Christmas Cards | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-christmas-cards | You ever thought about where those cards you send out during the holidays came from? Prepare to do just that! | You ever thought about where those cards you send out during the holidays came from? Prepare to do just that! | Wed, 22 Dec 2021 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=22, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=356, tm_isdst=0) | 12059420 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. And this is Short Stuff. And this is the special Christmas week version of Short Stuff. So for this episode, Chuck, we're going going to do a special Christmassy themed one that also you can make an argument is card themed as well. That's right. And we got to give a big shout out to our Stuffy schneow army member and old friend Robert Paulson. Paulson now sends us Christmas ideas every year as a gift to us, I think. Yeah. He actually says, this is your holiday gift for me, so I don't expect anything else. They're good ideas. Yeah, he's like, I just want to make sure that the Christmas episodes never dry up or go away. So he's doing his part, which is pretty sweet. And he's not the only one. Every once in a while, some other people send some ideas, but Paulson actually sends links. That's amazing. And this is one of them. He suggested we do one on Christmas cards. And thank you, Robert. We're going to do that right now. Yes. And also thanks to ttown Britannica Victorian Albert Museum and Smithsonian. And we need to talk about Sir Henry Cole, one of the early pioneers of industrial design. Yeah, I don't know if he's known as the father of it or not, but he very well may be. He's not. Okay. But he's close. We'll call him the Grandpappy of Industrial Design. Well, the father came after it's one of those things where he probably is the grandpappy. So he said that he laid the germs of a style. So, yeah, I guess that's not being the father, that's the grandpappy. So that's not the only thing he did. Just doing that would probably be enough to be remembered. But he was like a civil servant. He was a patron of the arts. He was an important figure in the UK in the 1840s 50s. In 1852, he became the founding director of the Victorian Albert Museum, which is a world famous art and design museum. And leading up to that, he was just kind of like a man about town, and he made a lot of he was a very popular guy, apparently a good person, and he made a lot of friends and acquaintances. And that actually became problematic for him, Chuck, because one of the things that was a tradition in Victoria, in England was that around the holidays, you would write a letter to your friends and relatives and acquaintances, people you cared about, and that was fine. Like, Henry Cole could have conceivably gotten away without writing letters because he was a very busy guy, and still the Victorians would have considered a polite and genteel. It was a different side of that same tradition that eventually tripped him up. Yeah, you got to write people back, unfortunately, and I think we all can identify with an email inbox where you have to write these people back. You can't just ignore these things. And you couldn't back then, you can't now. I guess you could, but you'd be rude. So he would get letters, lots and lots and lots of letters, because he was a popular guy and he found himself in a bind around the holidays because he just didn't have time to get back to everyone. So he invented the Christmas card. Yeah. It's indisputable. He was the guy that did it, and he did it by being a big old patron of the arts. He got in touch with a friend of his, John Kalkat Horsely, and said, Horsely, you old dog, can you please draw me a great holiday themed image that I can use to transfer a thousand times on the card stock and Horse ly did just that. He made a very sweet little design. In the middle is Sir Henry and his family. I think a few generations of his family, and they're all toasting and engaging in merriment. Then on the side, they're helping out, like, the poor. And then at the top it says, two colon blank. And then I think it says Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Sir Henry Cole. And there's maybe a little bit of a space for him to write, like a huzzah or something as well. But that was it. That was the first Christmas card. And he sent them out in the Christmas of 1843. Brilliant idea. Time saver. Although people in Victorian age didn't think it was a little bit of controversy to it because they were like, the point of these Christmas letters is you tell everyone what's going on. You catch everyone up on your family, what little Timmy is doing, what little Jamie is doing, how bad our alcohol problem is as parents in Victorian England. Sure. What kind of various diseases are going through the family right now? Right. And we get none of this with his card. And he went, yeah, but you know what? You're missing the point. That is the point. I'm thinking about you guys. What more needs to be said? Yeah. Stop being so grabby, so needy. Just accept your card and be happy for once. Yeah. Like today. So this required, like, a little bit of a transition for the Victorians to get over this kind of social transition from these very long, drawn out letters and the expectation that they be replied to to the slightly impersonal, at least compared to letters, Christmas cards. But they actually did finally kind of stick. It wasn't like an instant hit, but by the 1860s, they were definitely there and they were helped along truck by a few other factors that all kind of converged together that basically said, Christmas cards are it and they're here to stay and no one cares. That little todd caller this year, we don't want to hear about that. We just want the beautiful image and the Happy New Year and Merry Christmas well wishes. That's right. And we'll get to those convergences right after this. All right. So the Christmas card is invented. Christmas started to become really popular as a holiday in Victorian England. So that all of a sudden was converging with the invention of the Christmas card, which also converged with the UK, or at least Great Britain. Introducing the penny post, where anybody gets into postcard for a penny, which was affordable for almost everybody. And all of these things kind of coming together at once meant all of a sudden, the Christmas card was a real deal thing. So one thing about that penny post was that Sir Henry Cole himself actually helped get that passed through Parliament, which is pretty neat that he had his hand in that as well. But also one of the other things that cemented Christmas in the aisles was Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol, like really laid the foundation for how we understand Christmas today. And that book came out the same year that Sir Henry mailed his first Christmas cards back in 1843. So all these things came together and like I said, by the Christmas cards were happening not just in the UK, but they made their way over to the US as well. That's right. And the first American printer of the card was Louis or Lewis Prang, who was in Roxbury, Mass. And he debuted his cards in 1873 and he also held the design contest. So I think some of these printers were entrepreneurs. They knew how to run a printer, weren't necessarily artists. Right. So people still do commission artist contests today. And that was kind of the first Christmas cards in the United States. Yeah. For a little while there, it looked like Christmas cards were going to go the way of disco would eventually go a century or so later with the introduction of gimcracks, which are also called gigahs or doodads or whatever. They're just basically little like a figurine or costume jewelry. I saw somebody explain there's just a little something you can mail very easily. It says here's your Christmas present. I'm thinking of you. And those actually replaced Christmas cards for a couple of decades in the United States. That's right. About 20 years. They went away, but they came back. I think once cameras became a bigger thing, you could include a photo of the family, which was a big deal. Offset printing came around. You could do multiple colors, you could do that green and you could do that red at the same time. And it made them a big deal, of course. And then finally comes around and starts making Christmas cards. And they, as well as Louis Prank and other folks, they commissioned works from great artists including Salvador Dali, Norman Rockwell, grandma Moses and Jackie Kennedy. Have you seen Dali's christmas cards? Yes. I love everything Dolly does. Yeah, they're pretty cool. One of them is Santa Claus growing out of the snow. It's like Dolly doing a Christmas card is perfect. Yeah, it's great. But Hallmark also owns the best selling Christmas card of all time, called Three Little Angels that debuted in which you have almost certainly seen because it's still in print today. You can still find it today, but it almost looks like a drawing of some kind of precious momenti. Angels, they all are praying, but one of them got our eyes open and looking at you from the card. But that one has sold something like 34 million copies. At least. It's a lot of copies. That was a gangbusters Christmas card. It's the best Hallmark could have ever hoped for. That's right. These days, there are digital alternatives a lot of people just send either on social media or through email or something, they'll send a digital version because Christmas cards are pretty wasteful. There are 2.5 billion holiday cards sold in the US every year, and that's enough to fill a football field ten stories high. Wow. And so if you're going to do Christmas cards, you might want to look into not using the envelope. Just use that postcard. If you got a mail something, maybe look into recycled paper. Post consumer recycling, it's great. Maybe use wood base paper, maybe use hemp or veggie fiber. This one is sad. This next one is well, you cannot recycle the glossy ones or the metallic finishes. So if you're going to use those, those are going to go in a landfill. Yes. And they're going to have to be fully replaced next year by brand new trees, which is sad. That's right. Also another one, and by the way, this is from Ttown, which is a nature preserve in the Hudson Valley. Their blog suggested these. The last one is hilarious because it's going to make some really great friends out of the people who you work with throughout the year. But do you want to contact your dentist, veterinarian or other people and say, can you please take me off of your Christmas card list? Yes. Which is awkward, but it will save the planet. So it's worth it because do you really care what your dentist thinks of you? No, I don't. I need to go. So they don't like me right now. Yeah. I've never sent Christmas cards in my life. We don't do it. But I do appreciate it when people send them. And I want to shout out Emily's, Aunt Peg, who they do the Christmas newsletter every year, which I really love. You get a big, like, one page sheet about the family and all those things we talked about, catching everyone up on what everyone's been doing throughout 2021 and on into 2022, and it's really, really nice. So big shout out to Aunt Peg and her cousin Alex for this great Christmas tradition in that family. Yeah, Todd got caller this year. Yeah, hopefully that doesn't happen. So big shout out to Aunt Paige always means everybody. That we wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy holidays. And that short stuff is out. Music 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 Near-Death Experiences Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-near-death-experiences-work | The concept of a near-death experience is well-known in popular culture, but we still don't know why these seemingly supernatural events occur. Josh and Chuck explore the myriad theories that attempt to explain near-death experiences in this episode. | The concept of a near-death experience is well-known in popular culture, but we still don't know why these seemingly supernatural events occur. Josh and Chuck explore the myriad theories that attempt to explain near-death experiences in this episode. | Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:22:52 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=3, tm_hour=16, tm_min=22, tm_sec=52, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=337, tm_isdst=0) | 25262523 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry, it's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always. It's Charles W. Bryant. Hi, Josh calling Chuck. Josh insert with the intro. I don't have one. Okay. Should we talk about near death experience? Yes. I've got one for you, actually. In 1991, there was a woman named Pam Reynolds who is a songstress, from what I can gather, a blues songstress, possibly country crossover here. There. She's an Atlanta resident. Really? Yeah. And she underwent a procedure to repair a brain aneurysm. Right. Okay. And this brain aneurysm apparently was in a really difficult place, and she got in touch with a specialist who was like, you know what? I know a procedure we can do on you, because we're going to have to drain all the blood from your brain to operate on this thing. That's not good. Now, basically, the doctor said, pam, we're going to have to kill you for about 45 minutes. I was just about to say, that would probably mean she's dead. So the procedure that she underwent was a hypothermic cardiac arrest, and she was intentionally cardiac arrested by lowering your body temperature to, I think, 60 degrees Fahrenheit for a good 45 minutes. Right. Looks like flatliners. It's very much like flat. We'll talk about that later. Yes. So Pam Reynolds is dead for 45 minutes and not, like, accidentally dead. She was purposefully killed by her physicians. They cut the top of her head off, repaired the brain aneurysm. So they're butchering her as well. Right. Yeah. She's dead. What does she care? And then they successfully bring her back. Oh, good. And Pam Reynolds sits up after she's recovering and says, hey, got a breath. Pretty crazy. I saw my grandmother and my uncle, and there was a tunnel with white light and all these things that have come to be recognized as aspects of a near death experience. That's weird for one reason. One reason is that there was no blood to her brain. Therefore, she should not have had any sensory input reaction whatsoever. But maybe it happened as it was draining. Now, who knows? Maybe. Okay, weird thing number two. Weird thing number two. When she came to, she could describe the bonesaw that she never saw while she was alive that cut her head open. She said that she was surprised by it because it looked more like an electric toothbrush than what she was expecting, and she never saw it at any point. Sure. And she could also describe things like, oh, I don't know, the surgeon's shirt that he was wearing beneath his scrubs. Wow. Things like that that she should not have ever been able to see. She was not, as far as I know, much of a believer in that kind of thing until afterward. Right. And her case is widely pointed to as one of the best pieces of evidence that there is such a thing as life after death. Wow. She had, like, a classic near death experience. We could end it right now, and I think people would be satisfied. Okay. That was such a good story. Well, I'm hungry, so why don't we okay. Let's get a Twinkie. Wow. That's awesome. Cool. Thanks. And that really happened? Oh, yeah, it definitely happened. She still got Pam Reynolds. She's very much alive and apparently likes her experience. She had a great experience. She has at least one album she released called The Side Effects of Death. Are you serious? Yeah. She seems like a pretty cool lady. Is she still in Atlanta, do you know? I don't know. That would be cool if we had lunch with her or something. Well, if she is and she's listening and send us an email, we'll go have lunch, because I would love to hear that first hand. That would be awesome. As a matter of fact, I will pay for lunch out of my own pocket for that one, which is really something. I know. That's not true. I know. I owe Jerry $35 1st. Yeah. He's like, Pay me then. Go eat your hot dog. So, Josh, the term near death experience, coined in 1975 by Doctor Raymond Moody. Yes. And it's booked life after life Very clever title. It is very clever. And actually, Moody, you'll notice the doctor, which makes him less of a crackpot. And we'll find throughout this podcast that there are some very smart, very educated, very skeptical people who are researching this. This is not just some fringe scientific idea, right. Or even just a fringe religious idea. It's pretty much where religion and science converge. Yeah. There's no doubt that there are near death experiences. What they are interpreted as and explained away as is what differs. Right. They definitely happen. The earliest description we have of a near death experience comes from Plato's Republic, written in 360 BCE, which is BC. For those of you who are not hip to the new abbreviation. Right. Do you know what BCE stands for? Before Christ existed. Before Chuck. Existed. Before Chuck? I don't know. No. Before the Common Era. The Common Era. Judaism and Christianity. What's the other one? Because you said that one the other day. The common era CEO instead of CCE and Ce. Right. Yeah. So with that out of the way yeah. It's still JudeoChristian, though. It is? Well, yeah. Before the common era of Judaism and Christianity. Oh, I just thought they meant before Chuck existed. Okay. So anyway, Plato describes a soldier named Er who was killed in battle and came back to life, but apparently left his body and was judged before a panel of souls and saw happen, which will sound kind of familiar to any fan of Albert Brooks. Yeah. Defending Your Life, defending Your Line, arguably the greatest movie about the afterlife ever. Yeah, I'm a big. Albert Brooks fan. I'm not a big fan, but that's probably my top five favorite movies. I like him. I'm down with the neurotic Woody Allen Albert Brooks types. I like him more than Woody Allen. I'm a Woody nut. Chuck, do you think we should talk about near death experiences? Maybe we should talk about what is typical of an NDE. Yeah. And the thing that strikes me is it's not that grabanowski who you know, is like the sign of quality for an article. You see his byline, you know, it's worth reading. Right. Which is not to say that there's an article on the site that's not worth reading, now that I think about it. Good point. Kiss up. Yeah. But I think just anybody living in the 21st century has been so exposed to the concept of near death experience. All of this will sound very familiar, but Chuck yes. Take it. We'll go through these fairly quickly because there's a little list feeling of calmness is one intense, pure, bright light. You always hear about the light go into the light and out of body experience. That's good. I think it actually makes that sound, too. Upon reentry entering another realm or dimension. Two spirit beings. These are beings of light or other representations of spiritual entities. I already said okay. The tunnel, which we always talk about, and the light is typically at the end of the tunnel communication with spirits, it's usually a strong male voice, which is interesting, and life Review, which is also called a Panoramic Life Review Check. And that is when you see your you've heard of your life flash before your eyes, right? That's that yes, those are the common hallmarks of an NDE. Right. And most of the time, when you hear somebody coming back to life after death, whether your physician did it to you on purpose or accidentally, or somebody hit you in the head with a ball peen hammer. Right. Most people say it was awesome. Like Jesus was there and so was my aunt and my dog and Elvis and everything. Yeah, Elvis is there, and he wasn't fat anymore. It was wonderful. Right. But there is actually a segment of the population that has experienced a near death experience that says, yeah, that didn't happen to me. Actually, I had the exact opposite experience. I went to hell. Up to 1% to 25% of people in a poll that we're going to talk about said what I like to call a bad trip. Bad trip, indeed. Probably the worst trip of all time. We're talking biblical descriptions of hell, lakes of fire, tormented souls, and oppressive heat. Actually, this is surprising to me. Some people come back from experiences like that, or even good ones, with the prophetic vision a lot of times that the world is going to end the future. And there was a group of people who were unknown to each other that came back, I guess, during the said the world is going to end in 1988, and they didn't know one another, and they all had the same experience, which is weird. The world obviously didn't end in 1988, but so that means it's bunk. Not necessarily. Okay. What if a portion of the world ended, a portion that we're not really familiar with, or that we just didn't realize? Like, maybe humanity lost a little bit of its humanness in 1988. We just didn't recognize it as the world ending, or the aliens living inside the Hollow Earth, maybe they all died. Or have you read what was it? Dirk Gently's. Holistic Detective Agency. Never heard of it. By Douglas Adams, the guy who wrote Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I heard of that. He writes about this other dimensional group that are coming to take over Earth, but somebody forgot to carry, like, a zero or something. And when they teleported themselves to our dimension, they showed up as very tiny and were inhaled by a dog immediately. Really? Yeah. That dude's got a great sense of humor. He's got a great one. I always take what he lays down. Well said. Let's get back to that poll that I referenced. Yeah. Because this is pretty interesting. This is one of the people I was talking about. He's very smart and very educated and very well known, too. George Gallup Jr. Right. Of the Pole gallops. The Gallup Poll of the Coney Island gallops. And author William Proctor released a book called Adventures in Immortality in 1982. And that's pretty much the most exhaustive polling research that's ever been done on indies. We have a rule of thumb here@housesetworks.com where if a study is a decade old or more, and a lot of us actually fudged toward the other side, like eight, nine years, it's probably out of date. This 1982 book is still cited. Right. It's so exhaustive. It's so authoritative. Yeah. It's the standard. Yeah. Very cool. I got some stats then from this poll, Josh. Chuck love stats. They know that somebody is drinking right now in Korea. Oh, yeah. Richard go, Chuckers. Hey, Jerry. 15% of all Americans who had been in near death situations reported having a near death experience. 15%. That's a lot. That is a lot. 9% included the classic out of body experience, and 11% included entering a realm or dimension, a different one. And 8% featured the presence of spiritual beings. Pretty cool. Yeah. And 1% reported bad trip. Exactly. That was the galaxy. But other smaller studies have reported up to a quarter of people who have NDEs have, as Chuck puts it, bad trips. The other cool thing, Josh, about this study is they indicated that 100 near death experience subjects revealed that prior religious belief and knowledge of the near death experience did not really have any kind of effect. Yeah. So it wasn't like, I'm really super Christian, and so I saw God. Right. And St. Jerome and St. Pete or I'm really into near death experiences. So I saw one. Right. That kind of thing. Yeah, there's a guy named Kenneth Ring who's also a very prolific researcher and author on near death experiences, Kenny, and he started to quantify what was going on among populations that have experienced indeed. Right. And he found that most people, a small percentage, again, feel like fear, depression, that kind of thing, afterward. But most people who undergo a near death experience have a new renewed appreciation for life and living. They feel that they are no longer afraid of death. Right. And a lot of them become a lot more extroverted, or I should say most of them become extroverted. They're basically changed by their experience and they are much more spiritual. But interestingly, he didn't see an increase of positive correlation between the increased spirituality and increased religiousness or increased church attendance. Right. It was like an inward spirituality. Right. Did you ever see a movie Fearless? Is that the Jeff Bridges plane crash driver one? Yeah. I have a movie poster, though. You know what? I had that movie poster. We were meant to be chuck. That is odd. It's a great movie. They should check it out. I hear Jeff Bridges survives and it's the only movie I know of that it goes through all the classic in a realistic way, it goes through the classic post near death experience trials and tribulations. See, knowing me, I would have just crippling survivors guilt for the rest of my life. He had that. And he also had the invincibility that they talked about, too, like the Shield of Invincibility. Cloak of Invincibility. Not literally, but yeah, I can't die. Oh, yeah, I remember. He's like on a ledge or something at one point. Totally. Who cares? You notice he didn't jump though. Of course. Yeah, right. Anyone can stand on a ledge. That's not going to kill you. That's like the Bill Hicks routine. Okay, so Bill Hicks is talking about people taking drugs like PCP or whatever and jumping off a building so they can fly. And Bill Hicks is like, if you think he can fly, why don't you just try taking off from the ground? Right, that's a good point. Sharp guy. That's funny you mentioned that actually, isn't it? It's PCP and what's that special Katamine. Yeah, that's right. Are believed to give similar feelings as near death experiences. Is that right? Yeah, actually, supposedly a lot of people feel like they're actually dying when they're in the grips of a trip on PCP or Ketamine. And actually, also there's a lot of similar near death experiences. Like people have reported being on Ketamine and feeling like they're spinning around and attracting light beings, like we mentioned earlier. Crazy. Yeah. And so there's some real similarities, especially with Ketamine and near death experiences, which is really odd, but that kind of undermines the spiritual theory of near death experiences and supports the scientific theories about it. Right. Let's talk about those. Okay. What we're talking about with the spiritual is more like a supernatural explanation. Is that you're talking about? Yeah, and I hate to put it like this, because I think supernatural kind of undermines it and makes it sound cookie, but I guess the supernatural explanation is that you possess a soul that lives on after your body dies and your passion goes on to another dimension. Just things that science or possibly can't yet explain. Right. Which makes them supernatural rather than natural. Right. Supernatural actually should be a good word. Yeah, it's a great word as far as I'm consumer. Right. Yeah. I mean, essentially passing on to the afterlife or in the case of reincarnation, maybe passing from one life to another. That kind of thing. Right. So that's the spiritual or supernatural reasoning. And then there's science. Are we there yet? Yeah, we were there a while back. Science. There's a few theories going on that it's really a lot of stuff happening in the brain. Well, you can't say theories. These are hypotheses because chuck, why does it say scientific theories, then? The grabster was totally overworked that week. But no, these are hypotheses because you can't test them. You can't kill somebody to see what happens to them. Like flatliners. Exactly. I mean, you can, but then you end up as Kevin Bacon found in big trouble. Yes. What, did he have the kids that he teased were after him or something? Yeah. Or was that the mouth breather? No, the mouth breather. I don't remember what happened. Oh, he had the little girl in the subway train that was after him. The mouth breather. Did he and Kevin Bacon no, Kevin Bacon had the girl on the subway and the mouthbreather was the one who teased the kid up in the tree that fell. Okay. That's right. And Julia Roberts had the kooky dad. And William Baldwin. Oh, yeah, not the kooky dad. The junkie dad. Yeah, the junkie dad. Yeah. And then I don't think Oliver Platt ever went under, did he? Was kind of a voice. And then William Baldwin's all involved ex girlfriends, which I thought was pretty silly. Yes. It's a good movie, though. Yes. It hasn't aged well. No, I haven't seen it. Not too long ago. Okay, good to know. Not bad, though. So, medical science. Yes. They say that the brain is perhaps getting the senses confused and your brain starts malfunctioning to the point where you see the lights as your brain is shutting down, that kind of thing. Your visual cortex creates that image and it's all easily explained. Right. So I'm looking at you right now. Chuck. And you are really just a cluster of light and shadows that forms a shape which I'm receiving through my retinas that are basically being transformed into electrical impulses that go to the visual cortex of my brain. Which takes them. Compiles them into what I'm seeing as you. Chuck. Sitting there right what happens if that part of my brain is malfunctioning? I still am getting sensory input through my eyes, but my brain is no longer making sense of it. So maybe it turns into what's called neural noise. Right. My brain still is struggling to make sense of it. Like, that's what our brains do. Remember the podcast on Dreaming. Dreaming that our brains want to make sense of things no matter what, and that's possibly what dreams are, right? Yeah. It's almost like the brain is still just struggling to operate. It's like a fish flopping in a boat. Yeah. At this point, it's not really doing what it wants to, but it still wants to do what it needs to. Right. So the brain is taking all this information, but it's miscategorizing it, whatever. So all of a sudden there's a bright white light or there's a tunnel or there's a being there. Right. And it's also possible that it takes all this information and it's jumbled, but it's not until after we wake up and our conscious memory is active that it's sorting it into those memories, these false memories or whatever. Right. And the other thing, too, your brain, your spatial sense is prone to malfunction when you have a near death experience. And that could explain, potentially, the out of body experience when you feel yourself floating around the room, looking down at your own body, that kind of thing. Right. And that calm sensation, being at peace. It's possible that it's the result of endorphins flooding our brain, which has been shown to they are released during times of, like, trauma and extreme stress. It's a coping mechanism, apparently, if you're drowning right. Before you drown, you've just become euphoric because your brain just floods itself with endorphins right before you die. So we know that that's a pretty good possibility too. Right. And I think they've explained or tried to explain the meeting with God, that kind of thing, as basically a combination of a bunch of things, maybe the sensory input combined with a lack of oxygen to your brain and the endorphins, and they all get mixed up together to create a really realistic far out experience. Far out, man. Yeah. So, Chuck, as far as near death experiences go, there's so much evidence and we have such a little grasp on the brain. It seems like the scientific theories are reasonable in some cases. And I like, there's a line that Grabanowski throws out there. He's like, but what about people who like Pam Reynolds who describe what's going on while they're actually dead? Sure. He's like, It's possible the brain is still getting sensory input. He goes, whether you think that that's more rational of an explanation, then the person's soul actually left the body, it's a matter of opinion. I thought he did a good job with that. I did too. Because there's no definite answer and there probably won't be. Well, I can't say that. But who knows. Well, I think a lot of scientists think that they have found definitive answers, that the brain is just screwed up right there. But I think this is one of those cases and I don't think this is true in every case, but this is one of those cases where science might be able to explain the how, but not the why. Right. Like, if we do undergo some sort of transformation or transition after death, wouldn't it be based on the chemical composition of our brains? Wouldn't that be the way we were most easily manipulated? I think so, yeah. That's where I parked my car, I would say. Well, thanks for parking your car, Chuck. That's a good one. Maybe we should kill each other tonight. Like, choke each other out until we're at the brink and then slap each other in the face and see what happens. Okay. Why don't we not do it at the same time? You go first. I'll put a belt around your neck and tie you to a piece of exercise equipment. And I'll just stand there because I think one of us needs to be alive while the other one is under. Yes, and we are not condoning this because that is very dangerous to do, and you should not try something like that. Agreed. We're trained professionals. Agreed. If you want to learn more about near death experiences, there's actually some pretty good articles there's, Grabanowski. I wrote one on. Has Science explained life after death? And the former writer Jacob Silverman wrote one on out of Body Experiences. You can type in near death, and I think it should bring all three of those up, type those in the handy search bar@houseoffworks.com, which means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this a pretty amazing medical story. More amazing than what we were just talking about? Well, and also, Chuck, we should probably give a shout out to that listener. Remember, he wrote in about his dad dying and he found out there were those cards on the high shelf that you could only see if you were floating at the ceiling? Right. So, hey there. You inspired this podcast in a way. Hi, guys. I'm propped up in a bed in a Sydney hospital recovering from a gastrectomy by catching up on a whole stack of stuff. Podcasts in the hospital, listening to all our shows. Do they stack? I thought they're digital file. They are. I've been here for two weeks after admitting myself to emergency with abdominal cramps. There's a lot of medical terms in there. I had a lebectomy of my left lower lung in December of last year to remove a pulmonary sequestration, and the initial CT scan, when I was admitted showed an abscess in the space where my lung used to be. Used to be? Wow, Scott. Like phantom lung. I know. I was very fortunate to have the same surgeon called in to repeat the procedure. However, once he got in there, he was met with something very unexpected. The abscess was actually my stomach, which had herniated into a cavity through a minute opening in my diaphragm created by this sequestration I. E. It's always been there, but it was only exposed when they removed it. So it was gone completely gangrenis. Just not a pleasant word to hear. Gangrene. Church. They immediately flipped me over and found that all but 10% of my stomach had been pulled through this tiny hole. What? So they had to completely remove it and attach my esophagus directly to my small intestine. I told you it was pretty amazing. Apparently, it's a procedure used on stomach cancer patients. And he was in surgery theater for almost 10 hours, from what I gather. It's a very unique occurrence. And all the nurses that have come by have asked me about it. And the doctors gave me this fascinated look whenever they pass by my word, like, wow, that's the dude. With the recent special in US healthcare system, I thought it would be interesting to both of you. That wasn't for the quick action and surgeons and the fact that I was in the hospital residence to some of the top surgeons in the state, I've been told there's a good chance I wouldn't have made it quite sobering. So where it is, after a month, my intestine will have expanded to the point where I won't notice a big difference in diet or capacity. The only ongoing treatment I'll need is a potential vitamin B. Twelve injection every three months. Cool. Crazy, huh? Yes. And he wrote in after that, I wrote him back and he wrote in and said that he wanted to add that it basically didn't cost him a dime. Who is it? This is Jeff. And Jeff is the owner of Grizzly Personal Training in Sydney, Australia@grizzlypcom. And Jeffrey is on the men, and hopefully he'll be physically training some people stomach lifts. Nice. Well, Jeff, congratulations on surviving. And thank you for listening and taking the time to write in. That's pretty awesome, actually. Thanks for having the stomach to tell us the story. Well, if you have any amazing stories about how bundled payments led you to find that you have a hole in your body that shouldn't be there, you can send it in an email to stuff podcast@howstepworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Want more Housetopworks? Check out our blog on the Housethepworks.com homepage, brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun is shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon music my Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, my Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarref and Georgia Hardstarkk. This true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you've 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." | ||
028791f4-3b0e-11eb-947e-276778f02c04 | How the Electrical Grid Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-electrical-grid-works | The electrical grid that provides power to the US is one of those things you don’t give a second thought to until it stops working – then it’s tough to think about anything else. Learn why this engineering marvel is past its prime and how to update it. | The electrical grid that provides power to the US is one of those things you don’t give a second thought to until it stops working – then it’s tough to think about anything else. Learn why this engineering marvel is past its prime and how to update it. | Tue, 13 Apr 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=13, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=103, tm_isdst=0) | 55364208 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know a production of. iHeartRadio. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Buzzing Clark. And there's Chuck zippy. Zap. Brian. Okay, it's just the two of us. I don't have to come up with any more stupid electricity based names. Jerry the con. Yeah. Not here. She just zapped off into the ether absent. Who knows? Yes. We should call world. Chuck. Okay. Yeah, Josh here. Chuck president. Jerry. Jerry. No, she's not here. Yeah, dude, I just had a shower today for the first time in a few days because we didn't have water at our house. No. And I put this on the Movie Crushers page just to get some feedback. I was like, would you rather not have power or water? And that kind of figures into today's episode, and 98% of the people are very sensible and said, would much rather not have power than water. Yeah, but there were a handful of psychopaths that said they'd rather be, I guess, just buying dozens of gallons of water to flush toilets and wash hands and not bathe. At what point, though, of going without water? And maybe you reach this point and you can tell me, do you get to where you're like, well, we're just going to save water and dig a pit and be in the batrene? Well, I mean, we were letting the yellow mellow, you know what I'm saying? Unfortunately, the brown you got to flush down. You should trademark that. And it really hits home how much water a toilet uses when you have to fill it up with those huge arrowhead five gallon jugs. It's just shameful. But I was happy to take that shower, I got to tell you. Yeah, but you go through three of those five gallon jugs before you realize that you're accidentally stepping on the handle and they're just going right down the drain. You're like, man, this is not my week. But this isn't about water. It's about power. It's a really good question, and I'm not surprised that you got the response that you got from it, because we tend to think of electricity as really nice, modern luxury, and that is basically not the case anymore. For most of the climates in the United States, electricity is an absolute necessity. It's not a luxury. Like you need it to survive in the modern world. You could try to do the Ted Kozzynski thing, go off grid. People do it successfully. But even then, if you look into what they're doing, I would guess something in the neighborhood of 90% of those people are still using something like solar power or wind power. They just aren't connected to this grid that we are going to talk about today. Yeah, and I should caveat. The question I posted the Movie Crushers was whether aside, like, obviously in the hot, hot summer, people can and do die from outages, and in the winter they do as well. But that wasn't the case here in Atlanta. Although it is cold today. Yeah, it is very cold. But I mean, not deadly cold, but it gets deadly cold once in a while here. But even beyond heating and cooling just to stay alive, electricity is so interwoven with our lives that you're like, okay, I could wash dishes by hand. It's not my preference, but whatever. Or I can use the old gas powered lawn mower instead of the electric lawn mower. But there's also, like, can you keep up in school or at work without electricity? It's a fundamental necessity in modern industrial life. And we get this based on this huge, sprawling, rickety, old black and white cartoon donkey of an engineering marvel that we call the electrical grid. It's crazy how held together with, like, duct tape and bubblegum this thing is, but it still literally delivers the juice for us. Yeah. And it is funny how power and water here in the United States is so ingrained. It's just something we kind of take for granted, that when you don't have it, it's the only time you notice. And the only fun thing about the past few days was hearing Emily scream from another room, because your instinct is, oh, I have grease on my finger. Let me wash it off. And just hearing her, like, flick some faucet or something somewhere in the house over the past three days, and nothing comes out. Because you just forget saying when the power is off, you're constantly flicking a switch and going, yeah, I hate life. It's not there. Yeah, well, that's why you'll see in a lot of different power companies names the word reliability, because that is key. Like, you can't have an electric company that's just kind of like, we work a lot of the time. You don't get credit for that. It's like, no, people want you to work basically 100% of the time. You don't want to sign up for a company. It's called partial credit. Right? Exactly. You want the full credit. One the real ambitious types that, like, with their hands shoot up into the air at every question. That's the kind of energy company you want. So should we talk about this big antiquated system? Yeah, so, like I said, it's considered a modern marvel. And part of the reason why it's considered a modern marvel is just from its sheer, enormous size. Yeah. I mean, big time. We're talking 19,000 generators, and in this case, it is literally generating the power, like a coal plant or a natural gas plant or a wind farm, that kind of thing. Sure. 55,000 substations transmission substations and we've talked about this before, and we'll get to it later, but this is when you're stepping up and stepping down power to get it in and out of your house. I guess not out of your house. It only comes in it depends if you have a good solar array and, like, a power company that wants your stuff. You can sell the excess stuff. It's rare. 642,000 miles of transmission lines. It's a lot. 6.3 million mile of distribution lines. And these are like the power poles, unless you're lucky enough to have buried power lines. I know. It looks so much better. They're doing that, actually in our neighborhood, finally. And they approached us with a dollar figure to say, can we put this huge big green thing in your front yard? And we said, thank you, no. Yeah, try someone else. Yeah. You're like, not these neighbors. We like them, but three doors down. They really suck. So try them. Well, it doesn't have to go in our yard, so I think they're just taking volunteers who want to make a little scratch, but you can't, like, plant bushes in front of it or anything. And our front yard is very exposed. It would look really bad. Yes, we'll talk about what those are, but they are seriously dangerous, too, if you end up getting into one of those the things that kids play on all the time. Yeah, it's crazy. Those are really dangerous. Basically mini power stations. They're transformers. They just happen to be, like, on the ground rather than up on a pole where everybody's used to them. Yeah, I mean, I felt kind of bad at first because I thought I might not do my part to make sure our neighborhood gets buried. But they said that it doesn't have to go there, and there are a lot of people that are going to want that, however much money it was. Were they like, okay, well, we understand your decision, but we noticed you have an empty lot behind your house and you keep walking. Oh, dude. Do you know what's funny? We found out once we assumed that property that we were squatting on, that two weeks later, Georgia Power got in touch with them. Now, I know that's why I made that joke, but that was exactly what was going to happen, right? Yeah, for this. Not a joke. I know, but I was joking about how close you came. Oh, goodness me. All right, so let's talk about the nationwide network. And when we're talking about this, keep in mind we're talking about the lower 48. Obviously, Hawaii and Alaska have their own grids and systems. Yeah, they were strangely left out of this. The poor deers. Yeah, but we're thinking about them. But on the lower 48, we have basically three big separate grids that are called interconnection. And really it should just be two. There should be eastern interconnection, which is basically everything west of the Rockies or east of the Rockies. A lot of the Great Plain State up to the northeast, the southeast. All that is the eastern connection. Then you've got the western interconnection, which is west of the Rockies. And then you got Texas. Those are the three interconnections of the United States electrical grid. Yeah. Here's my question, is Texas literally no longer connected at all? No, that's the big rule about the whole thing. They're connected to God and everybody. They're connected to Mexico. Mexico saved, they took us in 2011. They're connected to everybody. They just somehow are being left out of the law. It's ridiculous. No, but they are connected. Okay, yes, because I was going to say is it the lower 47? But technically they are connected. But they're just texas is going to do Texas. No, and that's exactly right. And then there's even parts of Texas, including El Paso and some parts of the Panhandle that are connected to either the eastern or the Western interconnection. But most of Texas by far is its own interconnection, it's own separate 90% grid. Even more than that, I would say it's probably closer to 95% or 98%, like almost all of it. Okay, all right. Well, this is good though, that we're interconnected and there are a lot of big benefits to that chief of which is probably reliability, because when you have such an interconnected grid, you can work together and there's a lot of backups and redundancies built in. So if there's a big demand in one place or if power goes down in one place, you can reroute and get some help from your neighbors, basically. Right, exactly. And that actually came about, as we'll see from a little bit of deregulation, but also it kind of developed from power producers realizing like, well, we'll talk about that in a minute. There's also flexibility. Right. So if you have a bunch of different sources so you've got a wind farm offshore in Florida and then you also have you're getting power from a dam in Georgia and all these are providing power to the southeast and you have all sorts of coal fired power plants and nuclear power plants. You can kind of put all these together into an energy portfolio and all of them are providing electricity to the grid. So the fact that it's interconnected, it can accept electrical production from generators all over the place and from different varieties and types. But as far as you're concerned, it all just turns into electricity after it's generated. Right. And then the last advantage is affordability. And this is kind of what you were hinting at. Deregulation sort of has given away in some ways. Starting in the grid was open to wholesale competition and private power companies started investing in certain efficiencies and that did really make electricity affordable in the US. But it also when it comes to insulating pipelines like Texas did not do, it makes companies more reticent to invest in money like that because they're like, why would we want to unlock our pockets? You know what I'm saying? You put all this stuff together, you put the power generation plants, you put the transmission lines, you put the distribution networks that all go into like people's homes and businesses and end up as like an outlet or socket or something like that. And that altogether, all those components is the electrical grid. And that's it. So let's take a break and we'll come back and talk a little bit about the history of the grid. How about that? Let's do it. Okay, Chuck. Also, before we talk about the history, I want to direct everybody to what I think is one of our better science based episodes, how Electricity Works. Yeah, that was a good one. We cover some of this stuff in there, but we really got into electricity. It was electrifying. You laughed. I know. I'm just laughing because you're my friend. Thanks, man. I can't punch you right now in a different place. That's true. I probably would have tried that joke. Were we in the same room? Right? You learned from the last one. And I know we talked, like you said, about part of this electricity, but our earliest power grids were built in the 1880s, and they were all very local and specific. And this was a time and place when Edison and Tesla were duking it out in a very public, sometimes grotesque way to prove that. In Edison's case, DC system or Tesla's AC alternating current system was better and Gruesome meaning electrifying large animals. No, man, that Sob. You always got to say that, right? Oh, yeah. He should go down in history as being reliable for that. Yeah, he's a terrible guy in that respect, for sure. But Tesla won out in large part due to a lot of financial backing from George Westinghouse. Right, but not just that. Like direct current. It was better in some ways, but it also has some serious disadvantages to alternating current, which was the Tesla Westinghouse version. And we'll talk about exactly why, but just remember that alternating current is way better for long distance transmission. The fact that we went with alternating current meant that we could create this huge, extensive grid with hundreds of thousands or millions of miles of transmission and distribution line. That's all thanks to Nikola Tesla's alternating current. That's right. So early part of the 20th century, there were about 4000 individual electric utilities with all these tiny grids. And then World War II rolls around, and there's a big spike in demand for more power because it was just after World War II, there was a big boon. Lots of new appliances and fancy new things that needed power. And the smaller little independent grids looked at each other and said, I guess we got to hold hands now and start working together to meet this demand. Yeah, there was this really big push to electrify America that FDR took up pretty early in his presidency. And he took on these really powerful electric utilities and got a bunch of black eyes as a result of it, but ended up winning, passing the Federal Power Act of 1935, which basically put a leash on the holding companies that there was like a handful of very large, powerful holding companies that basically ran electricity in the United States. And they weren't really innovating, they weren't doing much to electrify the US. So the federal government got involved and basically took over. And so we're going to regulate you guys from now on. And the United States became very much electrified, like as a whole country. But in return for this, it wasn't just the nanny state taking away from the corporate state. They said, how about this? We'll give you guys monopolies, we're going to keep a really close eye on and we're going to regulate strongly, but you guys can make your costs back and a reasonable profit. And so owning an electric company, it was like printing your own money. You had so many customers that you're making gobs of money. And every year your growth of the entire industry was about 8% each year. That's really good. And it was also money in the bank. They knew that America was just going to keep consuming and consuming and consuming, so they would just build more and more power plants and they were just going to sit back and collect 8% a year. And actually everybody was happy. There's a lot of innovation and everything. But one of the things that these different power monopolies learned early on is that everyone expected power on demand 24 hours a day. If somebody wanted to plug their vacuum cleaner in at 03:00 A.m., they better have power. There wasn't like downtime that these guys could factor in. And as we'll see, there was no storage capacity. That's something that we need to get that we don't have. Which means that power has to be generated constantly and you also have to have backup power. It was really expensive to build a backup power station. And so these early companies figured out that they could buy power from other rival companies that had some surplus right then, cheaper than it would be for them to generate it or to build a backup generating plant. And in this way, the early independent grid started to connect to one another to kind of buy and sell power as needed. And this kind of wholesale power market developed and that's where the grid started to connect together, right? And we should also point out that in 1935, with the passing of the Federal Power Act, that's when Texas said, nah, we're going to do our own thing. We're going to make our own power, we're going to keep our own power, and we're going to have our own body to oversee. It called the Earcott. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas. Millions of listeners just went boo. They created that 1970 and they manage about 90% of the grid in Texas. Right. And we use a lot of power in this country. I think the US consumed this is a couple of years ago in 2019, 3.9 trillion kilowatt hours, which is about 13,000 kilowatt hours per human. And you'd think like, oh, that's got to be the most in the world. There's about a dozen countries ahead of us. But those are countries where it can get really, really cold or really, really hot. Not places like the United States where comparatively to other places like us, we use a lot more per person. Yeah. So 13,000 kilowatt hours per person. It sounds like a lot, and it is a lot. But in Iceland, they use 53,000 kilowatt hours per person on average. They got to heat those sourness. Isn't that crazy? But in their defense, they're making most of the electricity from geothermal. Right? Who cares? Use as much electricity as you want. And then I know some of our other listeners don't just live in the US. So Canada actually beat the United States in per capita consumption. They use 15.6 thousand kilowatt hours. Australia is better at it than we are. They use 10,000. New Zealand, 9000 kilowatt hours. And then for our three German listeners, 7000 kilowatt hours. And then in the UK, I think it's about 5000 kilowatt hours. Yeah, exactly. Welcome. What was that? Cabaret, I think. Okay. Yeah, it is Cabaret. I think it's like the opening of it. I just know cabaret from Shits Creek, right? Same here before, but yeah, that's where I've seen most of Cabaret from that episode of schiz Creek. Yeah. Emily and I both are like, we need to see Cabaret, though, now. Dude. I started watching what we do in the shadows again. From the TV show? Yes. It's one of the best comedies ever put on television. Yeah. And it's sort of a rare case of taking a movie, changing the cast up for television, and it's just as good. Yeah, the movie was great. The TV show was great. I haven't seen all of the movie, but from what I saw, the movie, I prefer the TV show. I love them both. I think for a good six months after the TV show, we would walk around the house saying this if in gay, that's like every dude that we saw, every single character. And it's just great. Thank you, people who made what we do in the show. Thank you, Jermaine. It is wonderful. So as far as what we use that power for here in the States, and I guess this is lower 48, who knows what they're doing in Alaska and Hawaii. But 38% of that power consumption is residential. People like you and I, or you and me. The bulk of that is 44% of that is heating and cooling our homes and making hot water for showers, for sure, or washing dishes. And then the rest is running appliances, charging your laptop, that kind of stuff. Yeah. The other 61.5% is non residential stuff. Commercial things like office buildings and then industrial, which is mostly used for running motors because America loves its lathes. I thought of that earlier and I was like, oh, yeah, I've seen pictures of Lathe accidents before. So I spent a good 20 minutes looking at Lathe accident photos. Oh, my Lord. Which I do not recommend. But I didn't see that coming up. When I started researching this, I used to lay back in industrial arts in high school. Dude, once I found out how dangerous those things were, I would never go near one. You have all your baseball bats made by someone else now. Yeah, I sub out that part of my life. So the good news is, with energy efficiencies, they've really come a long way over the past couple of decades. The whole energy start program and just appliances being made much more efficiently than they used to be, it's only going to increase, I think, the demand by 1% a year from now to 2050, which is good, but that's still 31% increase, which is a lot. But it's astounding that as we keep consuming more and more electricity, and we do, we use a lot. They figured out, like, these Americans are nuts. They're just going to keep consuming and consuming. We better figure out how to make our stuff more energy efficient and that they've managed to offset all but 1% of that growth per year. Because I can only imagine if we were still working with 1930 style blenders and vacuum cleaners, good Lord, we'd be sucking the cold directly out of the earth, like straight into your vacuum cleaner. It'd be so wasteful. Yeah. And I imagine that they are always working on this. I assume the goal is to have the negative number there, don't you think? From your lips to God's ear. Chuck. Wouldn't it be great if they're like, it's going to go down by two or 3% per year? That would be great. That's actually, hopefully we're going to talk a lot about how to fix the grid. And one of the suggestions is to create the smart grid. And one of the big components of it is to basically allow you and me, or I and you, to see how much electricity we use through interfaces that are similar to online banking. Like, we would be aware and managing our electricity use with that level of minute interface. Right. And by doing that, we would start to consume less, would be certainly less wasteful. So it's possible that we might go down compared to like, 2020 levels. Who knows? That'd be great. It would be wonderful. One of the big changes about, I think, like, basically all of the coal, nuclear and renewable resources we have in this country are consumed, most of it, for creating energy. And I think about a third of natural gas. But natural gas has been a big boon. We did an episode on Fracking and say what you want about it, but there's a lot more natural gas now. It has lowered the cost. Gas fire generators are cheaper to build. They burn cleaner than coal. Dew. Yeah. By half. They're more nimble. They can respond quicker to big increases in demand. So it's gone up, I think, from 1990 to 2019, from 12% of our energy mix to 38%. Yeah. And we should probably just say, for full disclosure, we're deeply underwritten as a podcast by both enron and exxon. Right. So just heads up on that one. Brag tops. Yes. So when you do generate electricity, we don't create energy. Electricity is an energy carrier. Right. Which is why it's like it all turns into the same thing from all these different sources. But the people who run the grid have figured out, like, there's specific kinds of generation plants you want to run. There's basically three of them. One is base load, which is your average, say, usually coal fire power plant that's running almost all the time. And that provides the vast majority of the electricity that's being consumed at any given point. Then there's load following plants, which are at this time, natural gas power plants, but they may overtake gas or coal in the United States at some point. Those are a little less frequently run, if you're like. I think we're going to need some more juice because it's Christmas time and everybody's got their lights up. You might spark up the old load following plants. And then lastly, there's one called peaker plants, like a peak capacity, where when you start this up, you're basically like burning diamonds. It's so expensive to run these things, and that means that the demand is going crazy and the prices are going sky high. So turn up the peaker plant because we need that extra capacity. Yeah. And just quickly to tick through where we get the rest of the fuel sources. I said natural gas is 38%, coal is 23, nuclear is 20, wind is seven, hydroelectric is seven, biomass is 2%, solar, 1.8%, which is still pretty low. Considering how many people have gotten on that drain, I would say it's objectively shameful. Yeah. It'd be nice to see that number go up. But there are 145,000,000 households and businesses connected to this grid in the US. And the reason it all works, and we talked about this, it's still just amazing to me how it all works. We talked about it in electricity, but the ability to send electricity over long distances and step it up and step it down to make it power your coffee machine is a modern miracle. It's amazing. Right? And that's one of the big advantages of alternating current electricity, I guess. You can do it with DC, but it's way more difficult and way more expensive. So for all intents and purposes, it's AC that you can step up and step down. And when you do that, you did it because current, which is the flow of electrons, like down a line, is inversely proportionate to what's called voltage. Right? Yeah. It's a little confusing. It is. Voltage is kind of like the pressure you put on a line, like the pressure of the flow, where the current is the actual flow. Right. And if you have a very high current of electricity, you unfortunately get a lot of resistance on the transmission lines. And when you have a lot of resistance, you lose a lot of electricity to heat. But fortunately for power generators, if you up the voltage right up the pressure that you're putting on the line, it actually decreases the current. And if you decrease the current than you decrease the energy loss. So they figured out that if they can take when they generate the stuff at power plants, it's like 2000 volts, maybe up to 20,000 volts. But then they step up the voltage to hundreds of thousands of volts. I think some transmission lines are able to take about 750,000 volts, which is that's amazing. It is. Like if you get shocked by electrical socket in your house, that's 120 volts. This is 750,000 volts. The current goes down so dramatically that you lose almost none of the electricity over very long distances of transmission. So that's really a huge benefit of alternating current that you can step them up and then when you get toward neighborhoods and stuff step them back down. Yeah. I think they lose about 6% of electricity generated in the United States, which that's a fairly low number. But I think they're always trying to make that better. Yeah. Because let's see somewhere else where is that number? We do something like four and a half trillion kilowatt hours are generated in the United States. So 60% of that is lost. That's an astounding amount of electricity that's lost. Any improvement on that would be huge. Yeah, that'd be great. So in your house, like you said, here in the States, we have 120 volts. So you have these substations that step it down to about 12,000. Then it goes to your power lines. And then those gray sort of cylindrical cans at the top of the things, those are very important. They step it down even further to about 240. Then by the time you get into your house, it's down to 120. And you're supposed to say you're cooking with gas, but you're not. You're cooking with electricity. Nice. Yeah. So those gray can transformers are the same thing as that green death box that they want to put in your front yard, except the green death box. It's called a pad. Your front yard mount transformer, that's for underground power lines. The gray cans are for overhead lines, but they do the same thing. They step it down to a much less deadly and much more usable voltage of electricity. Yeah. Atlanta just has a lot of outages period because it's a city in a forest and we have a ton of trees, a ton of really old trees. Not most, but a lot of the old oak trees in Atlanta are coming down or at the. Very least, large limbs are coming down, and it's a problem. So my neighborhood especially, we have a lot of blackouts, so hopefully this Bearing the lines project will work out pretty well. Yeah, the tree thing, it's important. It's like kind of part of that whole reliability thing, as we'll see, is keeping trees trimmed away from power lines. Yes. Which is why a power company might knock on your door one day and say, hi, we need to cut a lot of your tree back. Right. And you have to say yes. Well, yeah, they might not even say that. They might just show up and start cutting your tree and be like, what are you going to do about it? And I'm just like, that was uncalled for. Should we take another break? Sure. Before you get in another fight with a power person. Yeah, they started at Chuck. All right, well, we'll take a break and we'll come back and talk about all this. gobbledygooks a little bit more. All right. So you mentioned earlier the monopoly situation that was broken up largely because of the energy crisis of the 1970s. And we said, hey, let's open it up. Let's get the market going and get some competitive pricing happening. And everyone did that. Not everyone in the Southeast, we still have a lot of the big utility companies, but they still needed some sort of oversight. And there are a lot of different ways that these things are regulated. If you look at a state level, you're going to be regulated by a public utility commission or a public service commission. And then when you start horse trading in Alabama, says to Georgia, hey, we need some power, and you're like, Wait, I'm getting some power from Tennessee right now. Hold on. The other line, that's got to be regulated, too. So the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission oversees those transactions. The FERC. Yes, FERC. So they're supposed to as we'll see, they fall down on the job kind of frequently, and huge catastrophic things happen when they do. But yeah. So when they started to be regulated, especially deregulated in the 70s, strangely enough, it was Jimmy Carter's administration who opened up competition. You would think that would have been a squarely or Ronald Reagan kind of thing, but Carter did it to encourage conservation of energy and to create that competition to see who could deliver this stuff and kind of innovate more, just basically shake up the stodgy old energy companies. But the problem is remember I said it was money in the bank. You could just kick back and expect 8% growth year over year, every single year, and people are just going to keep using electricity. All of a sudden, there's a totally new mindset in America, which is, whoa, whoa, we're using way too much electricity and energy. We need to conserve. And now all these power companies started kind of losing money, and when they started to lose money, they stopped doing important things like cutting down trees or cutting down off tree limbs or servicing their lines as much like all the stuff that made them more reliable just stopped happening quite as frequently. And so you started to see things like enormous massive blackouts that affected millions of people for days where you didn't really see that that often before. I think the first one ever was in 1965 but the really big ones started coming more frequently around about 2000. I think that was kind of kicked off by the California energy crisis. And then we were talking about the regulatory bodies. Those were just for the public utilities themselves. Then you have these transmission networks and they have to be managed as well. And I think Ferk stepped in and said we need some sort of independent management and oversight here because basically we got to make sure that everyone has equal access to this grid. Right? And so these interconnections that we talked about, those three interconnections, they're divided up into more than a dozen independent nonprofits that are called regional Transmission organizations or Independent System operators. And I think the idea there is they're not in it for the money. They're there to kind of really just make sure everyone is being treated fairly and doing the right thing, right. That everybody has access to the grid that's supposed to get access to the grid. But also they're also the modern incarnation of those power pools where utilities would buy and sell power to one another as needed. These are the groups that kind of oversee those transactions. Right? So you mentioned the grid failing in California. I was there at the time and I remember these rolling blackouts. California in the late ninety s and early 2000s, early odds had to institute these emergency rolling blackouts. And I remember when I was living there a couple of times it was all over the news. It was a big, big news. And I remember a couple of times like losing power because they just had to I guess California and Enron actually makes an appearance every time there was a huge colossal blackout. You could trace that it's origins back a couple of years to enron lobbying, to get things deregulated, get a wholesale market built up. And they managed to do that in California. And California found itself in this weird position where the really big utility companies like PG and E or Southern California Edison, they were capped at how much they could charge retail for energy, for electricity. But at the same time in this new wholesale market they had to buy electricity and it wasn't being regulated. Remember I said that perk sometimes falls down on the job? Well they weren't regulating this wholesale market in California like they were supposed to. And so one day in the summer or one month I should say starting in June of 2000, the wholesale prices went through the roof. It went from about $30 the year before to $375 a megawatt hour in 2000. And all of a sudden, PG and E is having to pay through the nose for this energy, but they can't pass the cost away to their customers. And yet they're also legally obligated to continue to provide electricity to their customers. So they found themselves in this impossible situation. Some people still today say that they turned off the power because they didn't have the supply, but they swear that they did not do that and that they just ran out of supply because they couldn't get it any longer. Well, yeah, and as a result, PG and E and Southern Cal Edison, they were financially strapped. So they were in a situation where they had independent energy suppliers in surrounding states that were like, I know you guys are in trouble, but I don't want to sell you my stuff because I don't know that I'm going to get paid back now. Right. So California was in a bind in the early odds, and there were also technical problems and stuff. I think there was low water levels in the Pacific Northwest, which was huge because California at the time I don't know if there is different now. They were not self sufficient energy wise. They depended on the surplus of other states. Yeah. So if there was low water levels in the Pacific Northwest, that's less electricity being sent south. And they also basically had these high voltage power lines from Southern California to Northern California. And they were crashing. They were failing because they were just overburdened, basically. So they said, we got to do these rolling blackouts. And I think the biggest one was March 2001. Affected about 1.5 million customers. Yeah. And like you said, that these independent energy producers wouldn't sell them electricity because they didn't think they were going to get paid back. The whole thing finally ended when the governor had the state Water Board go buy energy or electricity on behalf of them because the state had a good enough credit to buy electricity, but their two biggest electricity utilities didn't have good enough credit. Is that crazy? He's the governor. Background, David. I remember yeah. Gray Davis. I was like, Was that the governor? No, I think he was just after Gray Davis, wasn't he? And then I thought, was Arnold Schwarzenegger actually the governor? Yeah. For California, for years. That was after I left. Yeah, it was just after I left. 2003, 2011. At the same time that Jesse The Body Ventura was the governor of Minnesota. No way, man. All we needed was Carl Weathers as the governor of Georgia and Billy Roddy Piper. Yeah, no, I'm doing predator here. Oh, okay. I missed that. I can't remember the guy who played Billy. Or maybe just the predator. Sure. The Predator was president in 2005. Don't you know? I haven't seen that movie in so long. I bet your Predator holds up. Yes, I saw it in the last few years, and it does. Yeah. Check that out. There was a big blackout in the Northeast. I remember this one as well. In 2003. This was big time. This was 50 million people in the US. And even parts of Canada lost power for a couple of days. In some case, eleven deaths. And this one, it was like a movie or something, how this one started. Yeah. Remember I said that tree cutting kind of fell to the wayside a little bit when they stopped making as much money? Well, that's what happened here. It was really hot, and there was a lot of demand, and those lines were just blazing, so much so that they actually started to SAG. Like the atomic composition of the metal was put under that much stress, and they sagged into a tree branch and arced, which is basically like lightning, is produced. Right. There was a teenager in Ohio who noticed that his outlets were smoking throughout his house, and it just so happened that there was a tree cutting crew outside of his house on the other side of the street, and he ran out to tell them, and they basically told him to get lost. And hours and hours went by, and there was a bunch of cascading power failures, which normally would have been caught. Right. But there was some human error involved. Yeah, this was sort of the movie part. I mean, it might as well have been like a rat chewing on a wire or something. There's monitoring software that, like you said, it's usually like, hey, emergency, something's going on. But the software was being glitchy. And so a technician with, I guess, like, mustard stains on his shirt turns it off, tries to fix it and forgets to turn it back on. Yeah. That's crazy. Yes. And so because the power grid is especially interconnected up in the Northeast, this power outage in Ohio meant that there were power outages in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. And I think did you say eleven people died? Eleven people died. So the federal regulator stepped in and was like, we need a catchy new slogan to improve this. How about the three T's? Trimming, training and tools. And everyone rolled their eyes. Fine. Said, whatever. Boomer. Yeah, we'll get on those three T's. Toot Sweet. Turn the volume up on Wichita Lineman, which is the only song I ever listened to over and over again. The fourth. T was toot sweet. Nice. So now, Texas, we're not literally in Texas, but we're in Texas now in spirit, because very recently, a big freak winter storm hit, as everyone knows, and everyone needed a lot more heat than they usually do at this time of year in Texas. I think they usually require about 67,000 in the winter. That's what they plan for. Yes. Compared to 86,000 MW in the summer. And all of this makes sense. We're not saying like, you're wrong. Texas for not being ready for this weird freak storm. I mean, that was the cause of it. But you also have to take into consideration that, like we said, some of those lines weren't insulated like they should have been because of money and wind and solar is not going to work as well in the winter anyway. And I think those wind farms weren't winterized as well, right? Yeah, some of them did. Apparently a surprising number kept spinning, but the big problem was the gas pipelines freezing over. So instead of the planned for 67,000 power, they ended up with 31,000 because of those failures in the actual system. So they had 30,000 MW. They needed a lot more than that. They probably needed about 50,000 more megawatts than they had. And so all of a sudden, power just started going out. Texas supposedly isn't connected to anything, so texas went dark and everybody started to get very cold and couldn't cook and couldn't boil water, couldn't take showers to basically live. They lived in a very dangerous situation because this is sub freezing temperatures, and these areas are not set up for that kind of thing. Yeah. And if you want to get your feathers ruffled and get a little riled up, go read this new york times article about the exorbitant power bills that some of these people got that were able to stay online. There's a 63 year old army vet who had to pay $16,000 for his monthly bill, which wiped out his entire savings. A lot of people were reportedly including this guy, customer of a company called gritty. G-R-I-D-D-Y. Okay? I mean, you have to laugh at a name like that, but they provide electricity at wholesale prices. And the deal with gritty is it really quickly changes based on supply and demand. So they sell it to the customers as, hey, we're going to pass this wholesale price directly to you for a low 999 monthly fee, and the rate is going to fluctuate. But it's really no big deal because it fluctuates just sort of reasonably. They saw this huge jump coming, apparently, and they encouraged their customers, 29,000 people, to switch to another provider when the storm came, which is just not that easy to do. And a lot of it is through an app. A lot of people are literally connected to their bank. So people would literally watch 810 $12,000 drain out of their bank account before their very eyes, and they can't do anything about it. And the architect of the texas energy grid, his name is where is it? Here. William hogan. He said, you know what? This thing worked exactly like it was supposed to because high prices reflected the market performing as it was designed. And he said, as you get closer and closer to the bare minimum, these prices get higher and higher, which is what you want. What is that guy's nickname? Milton friedman. I mean, how heartless, but yes, it's true in fact, but it's pretty heartless way to look at it. Yeah, and I think Governor Abbott has stepped in and said like, wait a minute, people can't be going broke, like paying for three and four years worth of energy in a single month. Well, that's the opposite of what George W. Bush said when he was governor of Texas in 1998. He passed a bill that said you have to pay whatever the energy company charges you as a consumer. Yeah, so I'm not sure what they're going to do if they can retroactively reimburse some of these people. But I don't know. That's horrifying, man. 16 grand. I know, especially when it's taken directly. This isn't even like, hold on, hold on, I'm not going to pay this yet. I want to talk to somebody. That's gone now. I have to go try to get it back. Yeah, good luck. Yeah, that's terrible stuff. So sorry. Texas that happened. The other thing about it, chuck too is like yeah, they weren't prepared for it and it was a freak winter storm that just doesn't happen. But a lot of people are saying, hey, welcome to the age of climate change. This is not just a freak storm anymore, this stuff is actually going to keep happening. And Texas had virtually the same thing happened in 2011 and there was a panel that was created to figure out how to prevent that from happening again. They gave Ercott a whole list of things to do, including winterization, like insulating their pipes. Ercott didn't do it and it happened again. So I think Texas patience with Ercott not listening to that kind of stuff has probably reached an end. So how do we fix this stuff? You mentioned the smart grid. I think about just our infrastructure in this country is in bad shape, period. 70% of large power transformers and transmission lines are at least 25 years old. 60% of circuit breakers are 30 years old. And you mentioned the smart grid and I think they're starting to do some of it. But that's the solution going forward, right? Yeah, it doesn't matter where you are on the left or the right or in the middle, everyone is like, yes, smart grid, smart grid, we need a smart grid. And that's basically like the grid we have now, but just slowly piecemeal improved little by little to add way more back and forth communication between the generators, the transmitters, the distributors and the end user. And there's a lot more automated sensing built into the system which makes the whole thing a lot more clever and makes rerouting around problems a lot easier. But also one of the big things is making you and me and I and we a lot more savvy about the energy that we consume from moment to moment. Yeah, I mean there's that and I also feel like the smart grid, most of it kind of falls under the banner of real time micro observance. Right. Whereas what we have now is very sluggish, very old fashioned. I mean, it's like the difference between digital smartphone technology and the old crank phones from the old days, basically. Yes. If there's a power outage, the way that the electrical generators find out about it is there's a series of towers where bonfires are lit from mountain to mountain and they finally see one that's lit close enough and they start to ramp up production. That's how it happens now. It's amazing. But there's also I mean, you've got things like feeder switches that basically go around a problem area. If you got a down transmission line, it can just go around it and then it doesn't block everybody out smart meters. So you kind of see how much energy you're using and then also how much the price of energy is so you can actually save money if you want to kind of get into it in that granular level. And then also just making sure that there's storage. That's the big challenge. We talked about that in our renewable energy episode. They'll gain storage batteries. We don't have anywhere to put excess, so we shuffle it around the grid. But if we have storage places strategically put around the United States, that would change absolutely everything. Yeah. As well as getting more direct use, which is solar, actually. I have a little solar project going I'm very excited about. Very nice. Not for my house, but I know you know this. We have some acreage in North Georgia on a river that no house or anything. It's just land. It's just a van down by the road. There may be a van one day, but we call it the Camp. It's friends and family camp. And I'm trying to style it out like a legit, like, state park campground. And as of right now, as of like three days ago, I'm having a pavilion built. It's going to have three solar panels on it and little battery array. So I'm going to be able to power like a big giant ceiling fan under the pavilion and like four quad outlets and like a coffee maker. Nothing huge. But he said the guy said it'll be enough for three or four days of full power and then like a day to juice it up. And we're never there for more than three days anyway. So I'm technically going to have a little off grid campground soon. You have me a coffee maker, and I should mention you got me a very nice birthday gift that is going to live at that camp. I'm so glad you like it, man. I saw it and I was like, I know exactly where this will go. And it went exactly where I thought it would go. What is the exact name of it? I don't have the box in front of me. Oh, man. It's a kindling splitter, basically. Yeah, it's like a log splitter, but it splits it into kindling. So the coolest thing about it all is the story behind it is this, like, twelve year old girl invented it in New Zealand and for the last seven years now, she's in her early twenties, I think she was like 13 years old at the time. It's like a legit company and this thing, you screw it onto a log and then you put another log in and hit it with a heavy hammer. You even got me the heavy hammer. Yeah. You can't not get the hammer. It splits it into kindling. I'm just so excited. Yeah. Rather than bringing an axe down onto a log, the axe is coming up from the bottom. Yes. And it's very much safer. And I even looked at a YouTube video and review and everyone was like, these things are great, it's safer than an axe. I can't wait to wait to use that. Very thoughtful guess. Well, happy birthday again, man. I'm glad. And six bottles of champagne. Yeah. Did you drink it all in a weekend as suggested? Not yet, but spring break is next week and we're going to get into that champagne. Awesome. And enjoy very sweet gifts. Is that it? We stopped talking about electricity, I think, didn't we? I thought you meant, like, are those all the gifts I gave you? Right. You didn't get the other eight gifts. The half case of champagne and the log splitter and the hammer. The three pound sledge. That's right. Well, if you want to know more about Chuck's three pound sledge, you can email them. But also, in the meantime, if you want to know more about the electrical grid, you can just start reading about it. It's an extraordinarily complicated, complex, modern marvel of engineering. That's pretty engrossing stuff. So go to town. And in the meantime, I said go to town, which means it's time for listener man. I'm going to call this Titanic. Follow up from a friend in Ireland. This was a fun one. Hey, guys, been listening for a few years and now I currently work in Belfast Port, where RMS Titanic was built in 2012. The Titanic Museum was built in Belfast and the building is in the shape of a star, representing white star lines, and each point of the star is the actual size of Titanic's hull at 126ft high. Standing underneath it really gives you a feel for its size and makes you feel very small in a good way. Also, slip ways for Titanic are filled in for you to walk over and etched with an outline of Titanic. And it's sister ship Olympic to scale. Yes, it's very cool. Including the actual locations of the lifeboats and funnels. Again, it's very cool to walk down. You can check it out on Google Earth. Just search Titanic Belfast, check out the satellite view, keep up the great work. And that is Kyle in Belfast, Northern Ireland. And he has a nice little PS joke. He says there's a very overused joke here in Belfast when people ask us why we celebrate something that sank, which is this it was fine when it left here. That's great. That's the trademark Belfast humor. I was going to do it in an Irish accent, but I got stage fright. Oh, come on, let's hear it again. I don't know. I don't even know. It was fine when it left here. Oh, that was great, man. That just transformed me to my youth when I was eating a bowl of Lucky Charms or hey, Ma'am, it was fine when it left here. Well, let's see, Chuck. Is that it? That's got to be it. Who was it? Sammy Davis Jr. Thank you, Sammy Davis Jr. For the letter. That was Kyle. Kyle? That's right. Kyle from Belfast. We appreciate you, and if you want to be appreciated like Kyle, you can send us a good email like Kyle did. Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and ship it out to sea to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2008/1220455305760sysk-deodorant-antiperspirant.mp3 | What's the difference between deodorant and antiperspirant? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/whats-the-difference-between-deodorant-and-antiper | The function of antiperspirant and deodorant is to prevent sweat or to mask the scent of body odor. Learn about the function of antiperspirant and deodorant in this HowStuffWorks podcast. | The function of antiperspirant and deodorant is to prevent sweat or to mask the scent of body odor. Learn about the function of antiperspirant and deodorant in this HowStuffWorks podcast. | Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:01:18 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2008, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=4, tm_hour=12, tm_min=1, tm_sec=18, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=248, tm_isdst=0) | 13697469 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from howstuckworkscom Audi? Welcome to the podcast. Chuck Bryant. Josh Clark here. This is Joe. Josh, that's Chuck. Hi. Hi, Chuck. How are you doing? I'm doing well, Josh, but something stinks. That's not me, Chuck. That's actually Michael Wax. You play poker? Occasionally, but not really. Are you familiar with Michael Wax? No. He is a professional poker player. He's a big guy. \u00a3440 okay. And he was recently ejected from the Borgata Casino in Atlantic City for an unpleasant smell, basically. Wow. Like I said, he's a big guy. He'd been playing 17 hours straight, so apparently he was on a roll. But I guess he also failed to shower in between. I don't know. I guess they didn't compare room for him or anything for half hour or anything like that. But yeah, mr. Wax was ejected. No word on his winnings or anything like that, but I hope it was enough to buy some soap and deodorant. I imagine so. I imagine so. And if you were close enough to Mr. Wax, you'd probably think, well, this is body odor. It smells like any body odor I've ever smelled. Right. But were you to really get up under there and you had a really good sense, like maybe you're a professional sniffer for a perfume company or whatever. Right. You would notice that he has a very distinct what is called an odor type. Right. And all of us apparently have a unique odor type. Do you know much about odor types? Well, I know that we do all have one, and it's genetically based. It can be also environmental, too. Right. Like what you eat. Yes, basically. There was one study in 2006 that found that vegetarians emit a more pleasant body odor than meat eaters. Right. They smell like broccoli, and we smell like steak. That's gross. I would rather smell like steak any day of the week. Right. Me too. There's another study in 95 that found that a pregnant woman's body odor was actually a combination of the mothers and the fetus body odor smell. Yeah. That's fascinating. And based on my own personal observations, as unscientific as it may be, I've concluded, Chuck, that your body odor is based on your love of hot rod racing and those delicious morning smoothies you make. Yeah, well, Josh, based on my findings, I found that you smell like a mix of circus peanuts and old footballs. In desperation. In desperation? Yes. Strange combination. Yeah. So it works. The thing is, we do have our own specific odor types. We don't know precisely what makes what, and I don't think any has really been cataloged yet. Look for that in the future when somebody ends up with a lot of excessive funding. Right. But we do have a couple of theories of why we smell. There is this anthropologist named Lewis Leaky, and he postulated that we actually smell evolutionarily speaking, to ward off predators. Right. Which is something we had to deal with before. You don't sell much anymore unless you're like a lion tamer or a hillbilly. Right. That kind of thing. So now it's just kind of offensive to a degree. Right. So what do you do? Well, I would use deodorant or you could or I would use antiperspirant. Aren't they the same thing? Why would you even go so far as to say both? I mean, it's the same thing, right? Well, they're not the same thing. And I think anyone that pays attention in the supermarket or the pharmacy knows there's antiperspirant and there's deodorant. That is true. I just thought they were different spellings. Well, what's the difference? Well, one keeps you from sweating and actually stops you from sweating, and one is just a perfume to mask odor. Okay, well, that was very sustainable. That's the easy answer. Do you know that your body odor doesn't actually emanate from your glands? From your sweat? Do you know where your smell actually comes from? It has something to do with bacteria. And it does. It does. So you've got two kinds of sweat glands. One is the echoing gland, right. And it's just excrete salt and water and there's no smell to that. The other is the apocryne gland. And this one actually is in charge of carrying fat and protein secretions from your cells. I don't even know my cells secreted fats and proteins. Gross. Yeah, but it carries it through these glands or these ducks to the glands and then out onto your skin where there's plenty of native flora, which is another name for bacteria. Right. And your smell is actually the bacteria chowing down on these fats and proteins. That is so gnarly. I can't even get to this podcast. But yes, and of course you've got both of these types of glands, sweat glands under your arm. Exactly. Axillary area. The armpit, as everyone knows, is generally where the stink comes from. Right. Which is why we very infrequently put deodorant, or as Chuck calls it, antiperspirant on the back of your neck. Right. That'd just be weird. Although it would have a similar effect, I imagine. It's just nobody's neck smells all that bad. So do you know much of the history of deodorants and antiperspirants? Well, I know that it kind of started in the 1950s in the United States at least. Well, it became a social taboo to smell in the 50s. Right. You watch Mad Men? Well, I was just going to bring that up. Let's hear it. Because I don't want you. Yeah, it's one of my favorite new shows. I'm kind of late to it, but I've been watching it on the on demand feature and there was an episode that dealt with anti parchment spray and this is the 1060 is when the show is set and how they sold it to you. I think they said you're not afraid to get close or don't be afraid to get close, which recalls, get a little closer from, I think, arid extra dry. So it's interesting that what they're implying with a lot of advertising is sex. Get a little closer. Don't be afraid to get close to your husband. And I just think the show in general is really neat, that in the when the advertising boom really started is a lot of the things that we have today, and social taboos, they were told to us by these admin right. In New York in the 1950s, and people bought into it. Yeah. And all these years later, you don't want to stink because you want to get a little closer. Exactly. And conversely, if you do stink, you should be afraid to get closer. Right, right. So it's really paid off in 2006, just antiperspirants and deodorants accounted for $2.5 billion in sales. Yeah. And think about it, but they're four box tops for anything you find at the grocery store. Right. And it turns out I've developed a theory about deodorant and any perspirant sales. I can't wait to hear that. So there are three big things on the horizon that I think are going to cause the deodorant and any perspirant market to fluctuate. You want to hear? I'd love to. Okay. So the first is baby boomers. Okay. It turns out that in your 50s, right in the range, deodorant use kind of falls off. You don't need it quite as much. You don't need it or you're not bothered by your smell. Either way, people in their 50s start to use less deodorant than they did when they were younger. Interesting. That actually affects the market. And we've got a bunch of baby boomers who are hitting 50, 60, 70 now just walking around stinking. Pretty much. Have you smelled your parents lately? That's right. To keep my nose away from precisely. Right. So with all of this huge aging population going on right now, I predict that the deodorant in any perspective market will decline because of that. Right. But you're ready? Yeah. I also predict that market will be helped by global warming, because summer sales are just the biggest bulkiest season for deodorants and antiperspirants. Right. With climate change, we're going to have longer, hotter summers. Right. And hence the deodorant and antiperspirant market will soldier on. They'll be able to bounce back from that discrepancy. Right. And the third thing, I think, will bump it up even further. Bovine growth hormones. It's all over the place. It's in milk, it's in beef. I believe in chickens. And it's causing early onset puberty in children. Yeah. And I know that your glands that make you think, for lack of a better word, they don't come around. So you're like 11, 10, 11, 12, until by the time you hit puberty right. If puberty starts at age eight, all of a sudden now, thanks to drinking regular milk right. Then you're going to need deodorant soon, so that will expand the market, the younger market for deodorant, anti parchment companies, these are just some theories, some ramblings I come up with. They come to me in my sleep, that kind of thing. But I wake up thinking about deodorant all the time. So do I. It's more market stuff that I think of, but in this case, it was applied to deodorant. So Chuck, maybe we should get a little more specific. Like how does deodorant work versus how does this antipersport you keep talking about work? Well, I know deodorants don't keep you from sweating, so all they can do is you apply it to your Axela. Your armpit. Yeah, your armpit, sure. And that just masks the smell. It's a perfume to an extent. Fill me in. So basically most deodorant today include an ingredient that actually kills the bacteria triclosan. Yes. So you've got that native flora on your underarms, on the skin, and that your cells are still carrying the fats and proteins, or the fats and proteins from your cells are still being carried to your skin. There's no bacteria there to eat them, hence no smell. Right. And they also include perfumes too. Right. But what about antiperspirants? Well, the antiperspin actually plugs the glands with things like aluminum and zirconium, which is kind of scary if you think about it. And that keeps the sweat from ever being produced. In theory. In theory, right, yes. So any persons don't let you sweat at all? Well, it's their effective. So I was doing a little research, a little extra research for this article, and there's this 1990 New York Times article by a guy named Anthony Ramirez that he came across. It's awesome. And he was talking about a little bit about the history of antiperspirants. The first patented one ever was called Ever dry. And it came onto the market, you had to apply it using a swab to the armpit and it was so acidic that it actually ate through clothing. People were putting this on their underarms. Yeah, it's progressed quite a bit so far. Yeah. And I know that there's a lot of controversy over the use of aluminum in products. It could post some health benefits and actually, deodorants and antiperspirants are considered over the counter drugs and are regulated by the FDA. Right. That's crazy. Possibly in part because of the health hazards. Potential health hazards. Like what? Well, potentially could be linked to cancer. I think most people have heard that aluminum deodorants can be linked to cancer by causing DNA mutations. Right. And then there's another one that's a little weirder. Right. Oh, the kidney disease. Yeah. So I think 20 02, 20 05, something like that. All of a sudden this warning label pops up on deodorant and it says, ask your doctor about kidney disease, or something like that. Right. And it just came out of nowhere. And there was never any really good explanation for it, but it turns out that aluminum can also cause kidney poisoning. Right, right. Or if you have impaired kidney functioning, it can send you over the edge. Yeah. So it's possible all sorts of bad things could happen to you, which is why, from my understanding, 11% of the population doesn't use of the American population, I should say, doesn't use deodorant or uses an off brand. Which leads me to wonder, what is an off brand deodorant, and why would you use it? Like, do you have a friend on the street who whipped it up for you? Why not just go get it at the store? Well, I think maybe what they mean by Brandon might be wrong is maybe some of these all natural deodorants no, those are included. They have made such headway into this market that the niche market, like Tom's of Maine, you mean? Right. Has actually expanded their huge players. So what they mean, literally, are these hippies that make up their own, I guess. Their own. Although hippies aren't necessarily known to use the odor and let alone go to the trouble to make their own. That's a question for another day. The question for today, which I advise you to go check out on howstep works.com, is what's the difference between deodorant and Antip perspirate? And stick around to find out which articles homepage are really cracks Chucking me up after this. Thanks for hanging around, Chuck. Do you want to tell him? I will. It's actually an article called How Auburn Works or atubism either way. And that's when humans can grow little tails or little nubbins on their body. And for those of you who don't know, we have a homepage art that the writers themselves are in charge of finding pictures to represent what the article is about. And some articles are a little harder than others. And I Guess Atavism Is Hard because writer Katie Lambert clambert. Yeah, clambert. Her homepage art is a little baby kind of prancing around just from, like, the waist down. From the waist down with a cat's tail photoshopped onto it. Yeah. And it really just cracks me up every time I see it. Katie did a great job with it. You definitely did. Way to go, Katie. You can check out this homepage art when you look up how Atavism works on how stuff works.com, let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast@houseworks.com brought to you by The Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you." | |
4579c81c-ba8a-11e8-9ed2-93941497d545 | Short Stuff: Lake Peigneur | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-lake-peigneur | In 1980 something catastrophic happened to the quiet town of New Iberia, Louisiana. Their wide, shallow lake grew much deeper after it underwent an apocalyptic transformation. | In 1980 something catastrophic happened to the quiet town of New Iberia, Louisiana. Their wide, shallow lake grew much deeper after it underwent an apocalyptic transformation. | Wed, 10 Apr 2019 15:45:58 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=10, tm_hour=15, tm_min=45, tm_sec=58, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=100, tm_isdst=0) | 12960606 | audio/mpeg | "Hey there, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and there's Jerry just talking. Let's get started. Let's travel, my friend, to not only Louisiana louisiana in can you imagine? Which I believe the drinking age back then was still probably 18. I think so, too. They held out the longest, didn't they? I think they did. And the Feds were like, well, kiss decent roads goodbye until you've been to our will states. Right. Oh, goodness. Who knew that was going to come up? Me. So in Louisiana, in Iberia Parish, around the town of New Iberia, there is a Lake Chuck, and it's still there today, which is not that surprising. Although it will become surprising that it's still there shortly. It's called Lake Penure. P-E-I-G-N-E-U-R. Lake penure. Okay. Yes. And in November of 1980, which is where we are right now, there was, like, some Texaco contractors who were doing some exploratory drilling in Lake Penure. And Lake Penure was really big. How many acres was it? 1300 acres. I mean, at least like, five or six acres, right? Yeah, 1300 acres of land, but only 11ft deep. Yeah. That was like, I think, one of the deepest points. I think the average was just a handful of feet. So really, really wide, but really shallow. That's right. The other point about that is that Lake Panure set on top of what's called a salt dome, it's an accumulation of salt that builds up underneath the ground. And there is a company called the Diamond Crystal Salt Company and they like to mine for salt around Lake Pinea. And all this is going on at the same time, on the same day in November that the Texaco exploratory crew was drilling down through Lake Penure looking for gas deposits. That's right. And I think you see where this might be headed. But the details of the story are so bonkers, it's so nuts. It's just crazy. So Texaco is drilling and they're probing the floor and their drill all of a sudden just seizes up and stops about 1200 or so feet below the surface. So if you remember, this lake is only 11ft deep. So they are far below this lake. That's interesting. This doesn't usually happen. Yeah. So what happens when your drill gets stuck in something? You try and work it loose a little bit, which if it's shallow, it's no big deal. When it's that deep, it's a little bit different because you can't see what's going on. And all of a sudden, these workers heard pop and this big rig all of a sudden starts tilting toward the water. And they're like, this is not good, guys. No. Rigs are not supposed to tilt. No. And this thing, it's a $5 million drill and it starts to sink and it starts to buck and it starts to move. And all these dudes are like, all right, this is not good. At all. So we're going to release these barges that are attached. We're going to get out of here and we're going to get onshore. Which they did. Right. So they got out of there, they made it safely. But as they're on shore, like, trying to figure out what is going on, this is really weird. Their leaning rig starts to kind of tip further and further into the water. And surely at some point if it's just a few feet of water, it should stop and stay above the water. But these guys were really surprised when they saw that the rig kept going underwater and underwater and then it just disappeared from sight. Could you imagine? No, I can't. But as they're sitting there scratching their heads over this one, they notice that there was a whirlpool that was starting to form just a little bit at first around the point where the drill rig had just disappeared. And then it started to come into view, I guess, in their mind's eye what had just happened. And they realized pretty quickly that they had accidentally drilled all the way down into one of the main shafts of the salt mines, one 2300ft below Lake Penure. And now there is a hole connecting the air above the lake and the hole underneath the lake with a lot of water in between just waiting to get in. Yeah. So this whirlpool is growing and growing. It eventually grows in front of their eyeballs to a quarter of a mile in diameter. That is so enormous. It's so enormous. In the meantime, down in the salt mine, there's an electrician named Junius Gaddison. He heard bang, pop, bong. And he's like, that doesn't sound good. And all of a sudden, muddy water starts rushing in and it's bringing fuel drums along the mineshaft. And he was like, this is not good. He calls in an alarm, which is three blinks of the light. He heads out. All the workers are like, all right, we know what three blinks of a light means. That means we need to drop everything and get out of here. And these 50 or so dudes are 15ft underground, 1500ft underground. 15ft would be no big deal. Yeah, they'd be like, we're fine. And they start getting up to higher levels and higher levels where they can get to these elevators to get them out. They get to the third level and it's blocked by these rising waters on the surface. It's like something out of the Bible or an X Files episode or something. What was originally a 14 inch hole in the ground in this mine starts to fill up with water. And all of a sudden, water hits salt and that starts dissolving and dissolving. All these columns of salt supporting these caves and tunnels start dissolving. And this whole mind starts collapsing in front of everyone's face and chuck all that water that's flowing through dissolving away the salt. That was like three and a half billion gallons of water. So it's a substantial amount of water starting to fill up that salt mine underneath. And as the water is sinking down from the lake, it's starting to flood upward toward the bottom of the lake, which doesn't happen very often in Louisiana or anywhere else, really. All right, I think we should take a break. We'll come back and finish this amazing story right after this. This is an amazing story. I love this story. It's one of my all time favorites. All right, so below the surface, there are these miners trying to get out. They finally get up to level three where they can access these elevators, but there's a ton of high water blocking their route. They're using minecarts and vehicles powered by diesel to try and push their way through. And eventually, all those 50 miners, eight dudes at a time, are able to get into these elevators that carry them to the surface. And it's not like a speedy elevator. Imagine the waiting as this water is rising for the elevator to come back was some seriously scary stuff. Yeah, I mean, eight at a time, there's 50 of them down there, and the elevator is slow as Christmas. I can't imagine how stressful that must have been. And how did you decide who went that scary stuff. So as the miners are starting to slowly come up, like eight by eight above ground, back up on the surface of the lake, there's like this huge hole has opened up where the whirlpool was, and the suction from the whirlpool has sucked the Gulf of Mexico in. Now, there was three and a half billion gallons of Lake Penure to begin with, but that whirlpool that created sucked the water from Delcanberry Canal that connects the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Penure, suck the Gulf of Mexico into the lake. And eleven barges that happened to be in this miles long canal got sucked into Lake Penure. And not just sucked into Lake Penure, sucked down the whirlpool into the salt mines underground. Yeah. So eleven barges gulp. Jefferson island, 70 acres. Big gulp. Another drilling platform. Gulp. This little tug boats out there. God bless this little tugboat. Just doing everything it can to get out of there and fight that current full power to get basically sucked down what looks like a toilet, probably. These dudes are like, I don't think we're going to make it. So they managed to get this thing over close enough to the bank to jump off and then by tugboat gulp. Yes. Imagine that. Like seeing the tugboat. The tugboat is pretty strong, man. And the idea of it not being able to fight this current, that just tells you how strong that whirlpool was. So there goes the tugboat, there goes eleven barges, oil Derek, a lot of Jefferson Island. And finally, after, there was one other thing. So this made the whole thing even more biblical. Chuck there was a lot of air down there in these underground mine shafts. And as the water filled up the mine shafts and displaced the air, that air came shooting, pressurized up to the surface. And so every once in a while, like a geyser would shoot off like 400ft into the air right out of Lake Pin. Your all right. Is that your fact of the show? That's one of them. I think this whole thing is one big fact of the show because here's mine. Okay, so what happens when you suck stuff down there and then eventually that thing is going to fill up? It's not just going to fill up the entire center of the earth with water. Eventually the salt mine is going to fill up and it's going to sort of regulate and equalize that eventually happens. 3.5 billion gallons of water drain in 3 hours. And then over the next couple of days, that lake level eventually reaches that original water line. And then over and over, nine of these barges come popping back up like a cork that you've been holding underwater. Just boom, boom, boom. All these things just keep popping back up. It must have been amazing to see that a barge has come popping up out of the water. No tugboat, though? No, no tugboat. And I think two of the barges are still trapped down there along with the tugboat in the collapsed salt mine somewhere. Yeah, I guess they're just wedged in there, huh? Yes. So the fact that Lake Pane sucked the Gulf of Mexico into the lake, the fact that the salt mines collapsed lake Penure was completely changed by this. Here's the actual fact of the podcast. Not one person lost their life or was seriously injured. Yes. That's 50 miners made it out. The guys from the tugboat, from the oil drill rig, everybody made it out. Nobody was on Jefferson island that got sucked into the Whirlpool. Not one person died from this most colossal disaster, which is astounding. But the lake itself was changed too. It went from being a freshwater lake to a saltwater lake and one that was a handful of feet deep to about 200ft deep now. Yeah, it was initially, like really deep, but that eventually spread out. And I guess they settled on 200ft as a good new depth. Right. They had to pay out texaco, of course, had to pay out many millions of dollars to the salt mine company and other various companies that were around there that got destroyed. All these houses, of course, the lake really grew not only in depth, but in size. Right. So today it's basically sort of like a brackish sailing lake. You can see closer to the shoreline, like chimneys of houses that still pop above the surface. It's crazy. Yeah. It's really an amazing story. And all of this happened because the Texaco engineer mistook one kind of map coordinates for another and miscalculated where the salt mine was when they were drilling. I'm surprised to hear that an oil company was responsible for an ecological disaster. All right. Nice one, Chuck. Well, that's the short stuff. Hat tip to our pals Alan Bellows at damn interesting. And our friend Ken Jennings for writing some good articles on this stuff. And I guess that's it. So short stuff away. Stuff you should know is the production of Iheartradios how stuff works. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app ApplePodcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
3f435560-5461-11e8-b6d0-e319c9e3fd42 | SYSK Selects: How Tea Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-tea-works | Legend has it that tea was discovered by a curious Chinese emperor after leaves blew into his boiled water. Now tea is the second only to water in popularity worldwide. And despite the varieties of tea, they all come from a single species of plant. Learn all about it in this classic episode. | Legend has it that tea was discovered by a curious Chinese emperor after leaves blew into his boiled water. Now tea is the second only to water in popularity worldwide. And despite the varieties of tea, they all come from a single species of plant. Learn all about it in this classic episode. | Sat, 28 Nov 2020 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=28, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=333, tm_isdst=0) | 49822067 | audio/mpeg | "Hello, friends. It's Chuck here on a Saturday. I just had my bowl of cereal, I just watched my morning cartoons, and now I'm slogging into the studio to intro my pick for the Saturday select from March 12, 2015, how Tea Works. It's a really good one. They don't like tea. Right. Give it a listen. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry in Studio One a you just pointed us out to each other as if I was going to be like, Who's Jerry? And you're living with me, Jerry. So I'm chuck. You're chuck? Okay. That's Jerry. All right. I was a little confused right there. Got you. Tear your lady. I'm a dude. Yeah. All right, now that we have that sorted, let's talk to you. Or we could change the name of the podcast to Two Dudes and a lady. Yeah, we could. Maybe that'll be our sidecast where we talk about this podcast sidecast. That's right. Coined by Josh Clark. Circuit 2015. So now you own that? I just put it on wax. Pretty sweet. Yeah. Pretty slick. Yeah. So, Chuck yeah? You ever drank tea? I just finished up some green tea. You still a green tea drinker? Yeah, I like all kinds of tea, but I drank some green because I was studying for this and it just was like yeah, sure. You used to drink it by, like, the mini pitcherful. Yeah, I used to drink a cold. Yeah, you don't do that. I had this hot well, it is winter time. Yeah. Do you like tea? I like green tea. I like green tea the most. I like chilled green tea. I don't like woolong, which until I guess today or yesterday, I thought it was oolong. Did you know it was woolong? I had no idea, and I've never had it. I have. It's very woody. It's almost like roots. Like you put some roots in some water. Warm water. Yum. Steep for a while or steep. Steep. I don't know why I always have trouble with that. It's clearly steep. Steep is different. Yeah, it's a different word. But for my whole life, I've confused. Steep and seep when it comes. Oh, really? Yeah. Interesting. Anyway, Wulong not the biggest fan. I like green tea and I like it chilled. Black tea. I'm not really big on yes. I like a good English breakfast tea. Love it. Do you? Or Earl Grey. You like those, too? Sure, man. A little cream, a little sugar. Yeah. And then, of course, you've got your herbal teas. Yeah. I don't like those. You don't? No. I've been drinking. Celestial Seasoning Tension Tamer. That's not actually tea. Right. Well, that was the big reveal that I was working up to. I was just plodding along. But now that you've rushed me, I will agree with you. No, not all of those are tea. Right. Sorry about that. Those aren't tea. Here's the really big reveal. Okay. English breakfast tea, green tea. Oolong, white tearvan. You remember that snap a ad where the old man shows the backpacker? Dude, no. It's like a snapple white tea. And he just goes we pick the top and it's like, that's it. And he goes, that's it? That's white tea. All of those are the same thing. They're all the same. They come from the same plant. One plant. Did you know that? I did not know that until I researched it's. A camelia sentences. Is the tea plant the tea bush? Yes. And now we have to say there are different varieties of camellia. Synesis. C synopsis is what those in the know call it. Well, horticulturist. Sure. But the plant itself there's one species of tea plant and that's what it all comes from. It's how the tea is made. That explains the differences. Yeah. And then you add some stuff, like apparently Earl Gray has the essential oil of the bergamot orange mixed in, which is nice. Sure. But that's still tea. It is tea, yes. Right. It's got something added to it. Now, if you just took bergamot orange, dried it out, put it in a tea bag and sold it as herbal tea, as, like, Orange Dream, you wouldn't have tea. No, the tension tamer. It's not tea. It's a dried herb that you steep or steep, depending on your preference, in warm water. Yeah. It's a steeped, hot beverage. That's a good way of saying it because it's exactly what it is. So the cat's out of the bag. Which means now that we've done that, we have to explain everything there is to know about tea. That is right. And I guess there's no better place to start than the 27 37 BC. Of course. And the Emperor of China. No one knows if this story is true. Of course. It's a pretty good story, though. But it's a good story because we don't know the exact origin of tea. It's been around for a long time. But some people say Chinese Emperor Shin Nung, who ruled about 5000 years ago, was traveling through China and he was big into sanitation. Yes. Smart guys like boil your water kind of sanitation. This is thousands of years before germ theory. Yeah, totally. Which is a couple of hundred years old. I wonder what led him to that conclusion, which was spot on. I don't know. I don't know. We can get in the wayback machine and ask him. No, that's right. Okay. He's a lot of fuel for that one question. It's a pretty good question, because yeah, you're right. It's spot on. How do you know that boiling water kills germs if you don't know what germs are? Exactly. So he was traveling through China and reportedly stopped to rest and was preparing some boiled water. Some delicious boiled water. And a gust of wind blew some leaves from a bush into the water, changing the color, and he was like, hey, this is a different color now let me try it, and it's delicious. He was renowned as a scientist. Yeah, sure. He was definitely, at the very least, a curious fellow. And yeah, he decided to try it. He's like, different colored boiled water, of course. I'm going to try that and see what's like, I bet he had his right hand try it first, and then five minutes later, it was like, okay. Yeah, exactly. He didn't die. I think that's what all those fat cats did back then. Sure. So it turns out that that was debris detritus from the camelia sinensis t was born. Tea was born in China. No one knows that story is true, I think, like you said, but it's a pretty great story. And since we don't know the true origin of tea, why not? Yeah, I'll go with that. It's not that far fetched. When the Western Zao Dynasty was around, the tea was a religious offering, and during the Han Dynasty, it was pretty limited, so it was safe for royalty. By the time the Tang Dynasty came around, which was 618 to, they discovered a lot of more tea plants. Isn't that ironic that tea became from Tang, established during the Tang Dynasty? Yeah, that's pretty funny, because Tang is the opposite of tea, right? Yeah, I guess, in some ways. I mean, they're both water based, so probably not the opposite. Right. I don't know what would be the opposite of T. So, like I said, they found a bunch more plants in the Tang Dynasty, and the Chinese government actually said, you know what? Everyone should drink tea because it's good for you, and we can make money off of it. Of course. And then from the Tang Dynasty, it spread to Japan by priests who were studying in China. They also brought Buddhism at the same time. Both of them took root. The Japanese said, we like this, let's try making some other stuff out of it. And they actually created the tea ceremony, which is a big deal in Japan still to this day. You have you taken part in one of those? I have not. Yuumi took some classes when she taught in Japan years back, but apparently it's just one of these things where you're just constantly learning. Like I'm a master at T, right? You're always learning more. You're always trying to be perfect. And the thing that's so elusive about it is it's supposed to be utterly simple. Yeah, it's elaborate, but the steps are meant to be simple. Like, it's a very simple, plain form thing, like the sushi rice. It's like right. Why are the Japanese obsessed with doing things really well? They really are. They don't own it in right. But the whole thing behind the tea ceremony and the Japanese adoption of it is that there's this idea that sitting down and sharing ceremonially in a ritual manner. Sure. A cup of tea can bring peace between people. Yes. What's the the tea there's a saying, Cheno. There's another saying. Yeah. It's cup of tea. Hang with me. Ichigo. Ichie. One time, one meeting. Which is the idea that every encounter is unique and can't be duplicated. Right. Very nice. That is nice. So, in Europe, I think a lot of people associate tea, of course, with England and Europe, the UK and Britain. Took a little while, though, all those places. There was a lag. Yeah, there was. We're in the 17th century now, and the Portuguese were the first people to not import tea, but drink tea in England. Yeah. They were trading in the East Indies, specifically. Java. Yes. And the Dutch, if you remember, from did we ever do a full nutmeg episode? I think we did. Right. Cinnamon, too. All this showed up back then in the 17th century in the East Indies, around Indonesia, java, the Portuguese just had the place on lockdown until the Dutch came in and were like, we're taking over. One of the things that came out of that was the import or the introduction of tea to Europe through the Dutch. Yeah. They pretty much horned in on their trading routes and brought tea to Holland from China, and then from Holland, of course, it spread throughout Europe. And I think the King of England at one point married a Portuguese woman. A princess. Yes, princess. That had a lot to do with it, too, of course. Charles II did married Catherine of Burgar, it says in this article, a tea addict. And she was like, let's drink some tea, man. And all of Great Britain kind of followed suit, because back then, once a princess did something, everybody wanted to do that, even if she was a fiend of some sort, like a caffeine fiend. So the end of the East India Companies monopoly on trade in China, which happened in 1834, was a really big deal because basically everything was coming from China until then. And then at that point, the East India Company said, hey, we could grow our own tea in India and we're going to start doing it. And they did. And by 1839, they had enough cultivation going on that they had the first auction of Assam tea in Britain, which is a big deal. That's the variety that they use to make Darjeeling tea. I think they're number two in production today. Right, yeah. India, China, Kenya and Sri Lanka are the big four tea producers. Yeah. Indonesia. I think it's fifth. And they're like, can't you just say top five? Right. We don't produce. Well, they do produce a lot, but not nearly as much. The other thing, too, that happened during the monopoly was the T clipper was born, which is pretty neat. When the company had the monopoly, there was basically no rush to get it there because they had the monopoly right. Like, you'll get the tea, we'll sail over there and we'll all be good. You ever heard of slow boat to China? Is that where it came from? Could have. What about High Road to China with your boy Tom Selik? Oh, yeah. Remember that movie? I never thought it. Yes, it wasn't very good. That was his brief foray into a major motion picture. Yeah. Didn't he play, like, the King of Spain in one of the Columbus pictures back in the early ninety s? Oh, I think I remember that. What was that? Either 1492 or Columbus? Yeah, I can't remember. So the T clipper. Yes. There was no rush, but until when that monopoly ended, it was basically like the fastest boat to get there, the fastest ship will be the one that gets the sale. So they started making these new ships that had huge sales, and tall mass could go a lot faster. And it started the era of the Tclipper races. Basically, you would leave the Canton River in China, go down the China Sea, cross the Indian Ocean, slink around the Cape of Good Hope, up the Atlantic, pass the Azores and into the English Channel. Then you were towed up the River Thames by a tugboat, and the first boat to throw their load up on the docks would be the winner. Which is pretty neat. Until they built the Seaweed Canal. And then I was like, oh, well, I took all the fun out of that. It sounds like a pretty great race, though. Yeah. I wonder how long that took. I think they were just hauling butt the whole time, too. Yeah. But even still, it had to take weeks. Oh, sure. I would think so. And this we should say that was the mid 19th century. We would be remiss to do an episode on tea and not mention the Boston Tea Party, which is a thing everybody knows about the Boston Tea Party. What I didn't realize is that the British royalty, the British Crown, still, even after losing the colonies, in part over T taxes, still continue to just tax the heck out of tea for at least a decade afterwards before they finally relented and started to drastically reduce it in the face of tons and tons of piracy and smuggling. Apparently, in the late 18th century, \u00a37 million of tea were smuggled into Britain. Oh, wow. And \u00a35 million were legally imported. So the smuggling there was more smuggled tea than legal tea in Great Britain in the late 18th century. Right. But apparently, despite all this, it wasn't until 1964 that the British government finally said, you know what? We're going to stop fiddling with the T tax and just not tax T anymore. When was this? 1960s. Crazy. Yeah. Wow. T is huge in Britain. Yes. And at this point in the late 19th century is when I think the average Briton was consuming about \u00a36 a year per person. It's a lot of tea. Yeah. I wonder what that would be today. I meant to look that up. Is that wet harvest or dry harvest or? No, man. Is that a seep tea bag? It's not seeped. That's a lot of tea. Yeah, that is a lot of tea, man. So, Chuck, we got the history under our belt. We'll move into how tea is actually made after this. Okay, buddy. We were talking about the history, and then before that, we mentioned that there were four main types of tea green, black, wool, long, wutang and white tea. I just don't understand how O-O-L-O-N-G is oolong. It's Oolong. It's invisible, but not silent. Yeah. And like we said, all those t's come from camelia sinensis, and there's different varieties of them, like the Assam makes darjeeling. But the way that you process the leaves is where the differences come about, right? That's right. What's interesting to me is almost all tea in the whole wide world is harvested by hand. Yeah. I think what was the spice we were talking about? Nutmeg. Saffron. Saffron. Yeah. I think nutmeg, too. When did we talk about saffron? I think I mentioned it in the Cinnamon podcast. It's expensive because it can only be harvested right. And anytime you're involving people, it's going to cost more than some big stupid machine that can do tons of it at once. And that is certainly the case with tea, because there are only a couple of harvests a year. The first flush in the early spring, the second flush in the summer. And they really care for the tea plant. They pick and prune at them year round, but they only choose, what, a couple of leaves from each plant when they're actually harvesting? Yeah. So the top two leaves and the bud in between them, that's your tea. Everything else is just basically the home for the tea that's harvested. Like the rest of the plant, this huge, enormous plant bush shrub is just there to sprout out these little bits. And the little sprouts are the tea that we drink. It's amazing. And that's all the tea. That's the oolong, that's the black tea, that's the white tea, that's the green tea. That's all of them. It's from these shrubs. Just the top two little leaves in the bud? That's right. And from there, once they're picked by hand, they are taken to the factory, which is on the plantation, because something starts happening as soon as you pick it, and that's called oxidation. And oxidation needs to be very controlled because it's not necessarily a bad thing, because it actually is partially why you get certain varieties of tea, right? Yes. Depending on the kind of tea you want, either want oxidation or you want to prevent oxidation. And we should probably say oxidation, basically, is when any kind of molecule, but specifically an oxygen molecule or O two, interacts with something like the metal in a car the inside of an apple, the leaf off of a tea shrub. Once the oxygen interacts with it, it starts a chain reaction inside where these oxygen molecules that have two unstable or unpaired electrons, once the oxygen interacts with some other atoms in the cells of these things, it robs those atoms of their electrons. Right. Because it wants to pair up. And when it does this, it starts the process of oxidation. Yeah. Which is actually John Fuller, our old buddy, wrote this one, and he was a big tea guy. Big, I imagine he still is. He's characterized it as actually burning it. So, like, when you eat your apple bite and you go to your desk and you leave it there, and then you go to the bathroom for an hour or so to come back, the reason your apple is brown now is because you've exposed that inside to the two and it's burning it. Yeah. Because normally the inside of the apple is protected from the oxygen and the air we breathe in the atmosphere by the skin. Once you puncture the skin, once you break the skin, it's exposed to oxygen and that process of oxidation takes place. Same thing happens with a leaf from a t shrub. When it's attached to the shrub, it's protected from the outside air. Once you pluck it from there, and especially once you, like, break it or tear it apart or do something with it, it's exposed to the air and oxidation takes place. And it withers in very much the same way that a leaf on a tree, a dead leaf in the fall, withers and changes color. That's oxidation as well. Yeah. Like you said, to the same thing that can happen to your car if you don't get that true code. Yeah. That's why you pay thousands and thousands of dollars more at the dealership for that true code. That's right. Black tea is the leader of all teas, accounts for about 75% of production. And like you said, the Earl Grey or the English breakfast tea, that's black tea. Right. It doesn't necessarily look black. It's kind of a reddish brown when you seep it. Yeah. After you seep it. That's right. Yeah. I'm not going to help out your problem, am I? No, I'm just going to confuse you. I thought I might knock it out today, but now it's gotten worse, I think, actually. Yeah. You've also said oolong a couple of times. Yeah, that's kind of by choice. Okay. So with black tea in particular, that's like the oxidation master. That's right. That's the one you want oxidation for. So with the actual process of making tea, of processing tea leaves into black tea, you're actually inviting oxidation and you're doing that well. You want to talk about how you make black tea? Yeah. It's a five step process. There's a couple of methods, but they both include generally these five steps. Yeah. One is by robot and the other is by human hand, pretty much the orthodox method and the CTC, or the cutter curl method, which sounds cool, but it's not, because orthodox is by hand. Sure. Which means it's better. And all of this again, takes place in the factory on the plantation grounds after the human hands have harvested the tea leaves and brought them to the factory, a couple of fields over. Okay. The first step is weathering, and that's when you're going to spread it out and let them weather like we were talking about with the leaf that falls, it's just basically losing moisture. Yes. After that, you've got rolling, where if you're using the orthodox method, the human hand method, you're actually rolling out and pressing the leaves so that you're kind of pressing the moisture out, but you're also simultaneously pressing some of the oils, those beneficial oils, inside the tea leaf out so that they stick to the outside of the leaf. So they're kind of retained and dehydrated. Yeah. And if you're doing the hand method, it's a gentle process. You're trying not to break the leaf with the CTC method, they're just chopping it up because it's a big dumb machine. Right. And with, say, other types of tea, you wouldn't use that method because when you do chop it up, you're exposing it to oxidation. Yes. Even more. Right. Which is part of the process that's actually the third step is oxidation. So after the leads are either pressed by the orthodox method or cut by robots, it's left out in a kind of a damp, cool space to basically oxidize even further to turn copper, turn brown with her and then lose the rest of their moisture. That's right. Which is a good thing in the case of black tea. Yes. From here, you're going to dry it out with some hot air and the color is going to change even more from that copper that came from the green. And now you've got your brown and your black coloring going on. Yep. And then you put the leaves by size and by quality, or if it's going to become, say, bag tea or something, it's chopped up almost into, like, a powder, just little tiny bits and then bags and all that stuff. But if it's just loose leaf, then it's sorted by size and quality. That's right. And you're going to pay more for it. Yeah. That's black tea and that's 75% of the tea produced in the world goes through that process, either by human hand or by robot hand. Green tea is next. And that, like we said a million times, is from the same plant. So cool. It is very cool. But basically what happens here is it's pretty much the same process, but you're just not oxidizing it as long because you're going to steam it or I didn't know this. You could pan fry it, I guess. If you're just growing your own tea and doing it in your house. You're John Fevro. You just saw Chef, right? Man, that was a good movie. Very good movie. Way better than Birdman. The only thing I didn't like a spoiler about Chef was the whole social media thing. I'm a little weird underwritten by Twitter. Yeah, it was a little weird. I thought it was just strange that they're, like, willing to date the movie totally that much. Exactly what I said. You could see it in ten years. You're going to be like, yeah, this is so 2014. Yes, I thought it was not necessary either, but anyway, good movie. It was a great movie and I thought it still fit. It's just thinking ten years down the road, it's going to be odd. Right? Like the movies that talk about MySpace. Yeah. Sad, sad movies. But where were we? We were drying out steaming. And this is the point of steaming is it stops oxidation. Yeah. And keeps it green. Hence the name green tea. And it's not just that the tea leaves themselves are green or greenish, they're supposed to be, but also it imparts a greenish hue to the actual brood tea as well. And the way that the green from the original green color of the leaves is kept is from preventing oxidation. And that's done by steaming. And I looked everywhere to see how steaming prevented oxidation. I couldn't find it. I think it's one of those things where people are just like, yes, it does. It everyone's content to basically stop right there. And I'm like, no. How? And I tried to reword it a couple of different ways, and I'm like, okay, how does heat prevent oxidation? Couldn't find that either, but apparently that's what it does. So I don't know if it seals the cells off, maybe I bet some waterizes them somehow and it prevents the oxygen from getting to it. Yeah. We'll hear from someone. Yeah. If you know how steam prevents oxidation, please let us know. But as far as we can tell, it actually does. That's right. And we should point out here that there can be a range in hue. There can be a yellowish hue sometimes. And there's actually something I didn't know about that you told me about yellow tea. Yeah. So supposedly the steaming process can go a little awry, or it used to back in the day more frequently. The early steam days. Yeah. And it produces another type of tea. It's called yellow tea. And that's like sold. You can get it now. I don't know. I'm sure there's some specialty store that sells yellow tea. All right. So basically at this point, green tea is after it's frozen in time and staying green. The process is about forever young. It is. And the process from there is the same as with black tea. Pretty much, yeah. You're going to sort it, you're going to cool it, you're going to dry it out, you're going to sort it again, and then sort it one more time. A lot of redundancy in creating green tea. And now we're at Oolong or Oolong, which is basically like it's kind of like yellow tea. I don't think they're one and the same, but it's steamed. But it's steamed after the oxidation process has taken place to an extent. So it's oxidized, but not as much as black tea. And it's steamed, but not as early as green tea. So Oolong is between the two. What's crazy is it doesn't taste like black tea or green tea at all. It's definitely its own thing. Yeah. Still, it's from the same plan. I don't think I've ever had it at all. I need to just try something and see what all the fuss is about. If you go to a Lawson's, which is a chain of convenience stores in Japan, strangely enough okay, that is a little weird. And pretty much anywhere you can buy, like, water, green tea and oolong tea, like, in a cooler. Like, you can get it everywhere, those three things. And you should try all of them. You have to try oolong at least once. Yeah, I'll try some tomorrow. Okay. That's my dedication to you, sir. Thanks, man. Then you have your white tea, and that is very much a specialty tea, and somewhat rare. And it is only picked two days out of the year when the buds aren't open yet and it's less grassy. It's a little smoother, but it is similar to green tea. And it has only been available outside of China for not that long, just a few years. Right. Snapping has only been making it for a couple of years. Well, that should date it immediately, like Twitter dates, chef. And it was reserved for Chinese nobility because of how rare it is. Right. But now you can get it. And we talked about other kinds of tea, too, like herbal tea, again, is just basically dried herbs that you steep, just like regular tea. Like chai. Chai is actually tea. That's right, because it's tea, black tea mixed with spices, like cinnamon and pepper and stuff. So that still constitutes tea. But like chamomile tea, it's not really tea. Yeah. It's a tossain. Right. And it's just again, it's just some dehydrated chamomile flowers that use steep and hot water. Same goes for Rui boss, which is a mouthful, but it means red bush and Afrikaans. That's right. Same with mate, which is not to be confused with matcha. No, but we'll talk about matcha, right? Yes, let's talk about matcha, Chuck, because I love the stuff. I had not been maybe you can call me a matcha poser or jumping on the matcha bandwagon. Yeah. In that article you sent, it said that it's the darling of the T set now. Yeah. And my friend in California. PJ in La. You've met PJ. PJ, or was. He may have bailed on it, but he was trying to make his own. Special matcha green tea and bottle it and sell it. I get what you mean, but I don't think he got past the making it at home stage. Well, there's not a lot to it, but again, I think the Japanese tea ceremony is surrounded or surrounds matcha. That's what you're preparing is matcha. That's right. And all matcha is like really good green tea that's been ground down to a fine powder by hand, which automatically makes it more expensive than any other teeth, most other teas. And what you have is this really fine, beautiful green powder. And you put like a teaspoon of it in a bowl or a cup or something like that. And you're supposed to sift it, I think, through like a sifter? Yeah. Just to open it back up again. Sure. Make it pop. And then you add some hot water, and then you use a whisk to stir it. Yeah. I don't think we mentioned the other big difference with matcha is that the bushes are covered 20 days prior to harvest from sunlight. And that's the big distinction. And that means it's going to have a lot more chlorophyll and something called ltheanine. Oh, that stuff is good. This is the amino acid. Apparently, that's what allows you to feel both invigorated and calmed. Yeah. It works in conjunction with caffeine. Okay. And it's actually capable it's an amino acid, like you said, that is capable of crossing the blood brain barrier. So when you drink it, it goes right to your brain. It doesn't have to be converted or metabolized. Right. And it supposedly has all sorts of cool benefits, like cognitive enhancements. You're just kind of clear it's just neat stuff. Well, and that's what the matcha proponents will tell you. Like, have some of this stuff, man. Hey. It's like go juice. You'll be clear headed. Take a hit of this. But matcha, there's a couple of forms. There's the yosucha and the Koija. Or is it the koicha? Probably koicha. koicha? Yeah. koicha. Yusucha is thin tea and koichi is thick tea. And the koichi, man, that is something else. That is made with half the water, twice the matcha. That sounds like my kind of matcha. Well, they say by the time you're done whisking it, it's going to be like the texture of paint. Wow. Thanks. And serious matcha. Yeah. Because matcha has a distinct taste. Yeah. I love it. I get it at the Asian market near my house, and I'll just add it to my regular green tea. I'll whisk it up and then just add it there. It's a suspension. You're drinking the tea leaf. Right. Like, if you mix up your match and then leave it there, a few hours later it's going to be separated. Yeah. It sinks. Yeah. So it's a colloid. Is that what that's called? I think so. I'm not going to repeat that because I'm not positive. What the colloid thing? Yeah. Is it a colloid? I believe. So, like quicksand. A colloid is a moisture, something that's like it's not actually dissolved, it's just mixed together. I think you are right. It's a colloid. And people proponents will say that it's better for you because when you seep tea, I screw you up. When you sip steep tea right. You're only getting I don't know the percentage, but you're only getting some of the benefits of the tea because the tea leaf is still in there with a macho. You're actually ingesting the tea leaf. Oh, I see. You know what I mean? Yeah. And that jam goes right past the blood brain barrier. And it does. And it's pretty trendy, too, because you can now go to restaurants and there'll be, like, matcha sprinkled on a food dish. Or have you been to Umi Sushi yet? No, I went to Craft as a Kayak the other night, though. Is that in Krugs? Is it good? It was really good. And I actually had a cocktail thought about you because you don't drink cocktail that much. It was good. It was bourbon and, like, lemon and ginger. Oh, that sounds good. And Thai spice. Like one other thing, maybe honey. It was pretty tasty. Sounds good. And the food was excellent. It's a little pricey, but it's, you know, like when you eat the sushi, you can so tell the difference. It just melts in your mouth. Very much the same with Umi Sushi as well. It's just the quality between that and just about every other sushi you've had, it's just light years beyond. Yes, it is really evident when you taste it. I had some of the albacore and it was just like it was literally like melted butter, I'll bet. So good. Well, the point is, Umi Sushi makes a green tea matcha, souffle with cream on glaze that actually yummy. Replicated once. It was amazing. It's amazing. So Matcha really goes with a lot of really good stuff. Even though it is trendy, it's still good. It is good. And like I said, it's super earthy. I recommend you try it. I like it a lot. I don't know if I'm getting the good stuff from that Asian market. It's probably the cheap stuff, but it's still tasty. I honestly don't know if it's one of those things where you get what you pay for. If a lot of it is just jacked up price because it is much or what, I don't know. Now, this stuff is pretty inexpensive that I get, actually, for the amount you're getting. It's really not that cheap, now that I think about it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's a little canister of it. Yeah, it's pretty small. You're probably paying what you should be. All right, we talked a little bit about the blood brain barrier, but we'll talk more about the health benefits of tea right after this. So, Chuck, we're going to talk about the health benefits. As I said before the break, but first, let's talk about how to prepare t. Oh, yeah. There's a couple of ways. Depending on what you're dealing with, you can either be a loose leaf person or a bagged tea person. And I got the impression from this, like you said, Fuller was a tea guy and he did a very good job of trying to reserve judgment. Sure. But if I remember correctly, he was a loose leaf guy. And it comes through in this article. The loose leaf is better. Yeah. He had a special little unit there where he poured the water in and it kept the loose leaf separate, but it was all contained in one, like, cup that you screwed lid on or something. You can get those or you can just do there's all sorts of equipment you can have to make your tea. So if you're preparing tea in a bag, you just pop it in some hot water? Well, no, not necessarily. Depends on the kind of tea for what temperature you want your water to be. That is true. And I didn't know this. Black tea is the only one where you want it boiling at 200 degrees. Woolong, you're going to the next, and that's about 190, which is close to boiling. Yeah. Or you just use your finger to determine whether it's 190 or 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Green and white tea is just steaming water. It's only about 170 deg. And your black tea I'm sorry, black and white takes the longest to seep and steep at four and a half to five minutes. Yeah. Woolong is about three to four. And green tea, man, you can get that stuff going in 30 seconds. Boom. And you're drinking it. My tension tamer. Takes seven minutes to steep, it says on the box. Can you tell the difference to tame your attention? Yeah, I actually can. That's good. It's pretty neat. I can't remember what's in it, but it talks about the active ingredient, however the dried herb is. But with the difference between bag tea and loose leaf tea has a lot to do with the benefits from it. Right, yeah. So with the CTC method, which, again, 75% of the world's tea, a lot of that undergoes the CTC method because it's black tea, right? Yes. But you get like, this powdery, chopped up, little bitty substance, and it's put into a bag and it forms a little clump and water doesn't circulate as well. The benefit of loose leaf tea is that the water it's steeps through and circulates amongst the tea leaves more. I think it steeps through, man, I think you're right. But it circulates among the tea leaves. And the tea leaves, remember, especially depending on the type of tea, may have been pressed so that the oils are trapped, dehydrated on the surface of the tea leaf. Yeah. You chop those things up and turn them into dust, you're going to lose a lot of that stuff. But if you have just a dried tea leaf that is dehydrated and has the moisture on the outside, and some water rehydrates that, and it just kind of stirs it up and gets into the colloid, and you drink that. Bam. If there are health benefits, which we'll explore, you're more likely to get them from that loose leaf tea than a bag. T. Agreed. And then, of course, you also have your iced tea here in the south. Sweet iced tea. Yes, which is delicious to me because I grew up here. A lot of people think it's weird they had been drinking iced tea before 900. But the St. Louis Worlds Fair was where it really took off because the guy was selling hot tea named Richard Blockenden. I know. What a name I know. Even if you pronounce it the other way, like Bletchendon, it doesn't matter. He sounds like a made up Mad magazine staff writer or something. He was serving free tea, but it was hot and it was really hot, and so people were like, no, thanks. So he made it cold, and they said, this is delicious. Well, it was hot out in St. Louis that year. Of course, that summer. That was where I think hot dogs, hamburgers, and ice cream cones came from. And apparently iced tea, man, could you imagine, like, the world changing after that in St. Louis? So that's where they credit iced tea being born. And of course, here in the south, like I said, you dump a cup of sugar in there while you're brewing it, and it makes it delicious and syrupy sweet. Did you read the Slate article that was linked to in here? No. I started to. It's got peacock features in it. Who's that? He used to cook at Watershed. I don't know. He's good cook. And I got as far as page two when they compared the hospitality of offering sweet tea to passing adobe at a fish show, and I was like, no, I'm done with this late article forever. What? Yeah. What a weird thing to link together. It was that kind of article. That's so strange because there's like a thousand hospitable of things you could mention. I know. Out of nowhere. It's very strange. All right, so finally, Josh, health benefits of tea, true or not true? Jury's out, man. So it's possible if the free radical theory of aging is correct, then it's got health benefits and ages. People hear these things a lot, like antioxidants free radicals, and I don't think a lot of people have an understanding of what it is. And it's not super complicated. No, it's not. And I will explain it on the basis of you agreeing to doing a free radicals episode. The whole episode? Sure. Okay, cool. That was easy. Why would you say it like that? I'm just teasing. Okay, so Chuck with free radicals, right? We already mentioned oxidation. Yeah, that's what the free radicals are based on. So you breathe oxygen, and the O two molecule has two unpaired electrons. Well, those electrons want to be paired, so they go into your body and mess with your cells by searching around for other molecules or atoms that they can steal an electron from and repair. That's right, repair. Get it? Yeah. But it's actually the opposite of repairing it's damaging the cells because those atoms that just got their molecules stripped are now looking for their own electrons to pair with. Right. That's right. And it causes this chain reaction. Well, the whole free radical theory of aging is that this is why we age. This is where disease comes from. This is how our system wears down and breaks down cellular destruction. Yeah. And we know that this is a real thing. Sure. Like that really happens. It's the same thing as being exposed to radiation. It's a chain reaction where molecules and atoms just go around charged, looking to neutralize themselves by pairing their electrons or charged electrons. Right. So what tea is lousy with is antioxidants. Yeah. And that's what people hear that word a lot and don't even know what it is. It basically is just going to slow down that oxidation process because they can give up their electrons and still be fine. Exactly. Like vitamin C, ketikins, which is found in high amounts in tea. Yeah. Betacarotene. Yeah. Vitamin E. Just basically anything that you see is an antioxidant. Probably is an antioxidant. Again, the jury's just out now based on some recent studies that have found we don't know if this is actually a good thing. Well, yeah. And when it comes to t, people think basically it's certainly not going to hurt you. Right. And B, it's probably helping you, but we just don't know exactly how. And it's not all super confirmed, but drink tea and eat fruits and vegetables because antioxidants, we think, are pretty good for you. Right. Because it is correlated with a bunch of health benefits. It's correlated with a reduction in diabetes. It's correlated with a reduction in, I think, lung cancer, a lowered risk of lung cancer, heart disease, cholesterol. Yeah. Just tons of stuff. There's all these correlations. They've never proven definitively that it's not that people who drink tea tend to also lead healthier lifestyles and that it's something else. But there's a lot of evidence there that drinking tea does have some sort of healthful benefits or at the very least, it's not going to hurt you. Yeah. When they say they associate it with good health, then that's a pretty good sign that you're doing the right thing. They just can't say, we can prove this because this does this and we know it for sure. Right. So if that free radical theory of aging is true, is correct, and antioxidants are actually good for you, then the tea you want to go for to drink is the green tea because that's the one that has the highest concentrations of catechins, which include epicate epicatochan Galate, epigallocate epigallocate, which is known as EGCG. And it has a lot of gall. I thought that was kind of funny. Black tea has these, but they actually convert to other stuff. They're kind of like dumbed down versions. So, green tea again, it sounds like if you really want health benefits, if there are health benefits, you want to drink loose leaf green tea with matcha. Right, with a matcha chaser. Yeah, exactly. Tea also does contain caffeine. I don't know why some people think it doesn't or that it contains very little. I've heard people say that before, like, coffee's got caffeine. Tea doesn't have caffeine. Yeah, tea's got plenty of caffeine, sure. But generally not as much as coffee. Coffee contains about 80 to 120 mg for a mug. And tea is going to have 20 to 60, with black being the strongest at about 30 to 40 milligrams. And a green tea and woolong between ten and 20 milligrams. White tea has, like, 1% of the caffeine of cup of coffee. I want to give a shout out to my coffee, too, by the way. You know what we're on the cusp of, don't you? No. The USDA advising Americans to drink coffee to drink up to five cups. Five cups of coffee a day. Wow. And America right now drinks less than two a day on average. And the USA is about to say you need to more than double your coffee consumption, because it's not only not bad for you, it's good for you. Finally, on the cusp, everyone is realizing, well, there's a group that's I can't remember the name of it, but they come up with the guidelines for our diets, and it's this panel that's the Star Chamber. Exactly. The Star Chamber says, actually, we should start drinking a lot more coffee. And the USDA rarely ignores the advice of the panels. So we're on the cusp of the USDA saying, go drink more coffee, everybody. And everyone will be like, Josh was right. Yes. He's the only guy drinking coffee before this announcement. Even I don't drink five cups a day on average. Really? Not anymore. I'm trying to step it up. I have started drinking more coffee lately, actually, because we got a little machine here. Now, that machine is dynamite. Yes. What I do is I hit the regular coffee button and then add a shot of espresso. Yeah. Because that makes it the right size and strength. Right. Because the regular cup of coffee is not even the three quarters of my mug. I know. And it's not even a big mug. Yeah. It's not like I have some giant mug. No, that's your tea mug. That's my tea mug. Yeah. You can punch through a concrete wall with that coffee with the espresso shot on top. Yeah. It's good, though. If you want to know more about tea, go drink some tea. You can also type T EA into the search bar@housetoforce.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener ma'am. I'm going to call this left handed feedback. And boy, did we get a lot of it. I don't know why. I guess sometimes when you segment a certain part of the population, they're going to respond, especially one that's been so mistreated for so many years. Yeah, because we heard from a lot of twins and redheads when we covered that stuff. But boy, we heard from a lot of lefties. They're a proud people, as it turns out. Hey, guys, I am left handed. When I was little, my mom made me use scissors with only my right hand because of my aunt, my mother's sister, who is also left handed. She's very into sewing, and left handed sewing scissors are crazy expensive, or at least they were back then. They're not as bad now. In order to avoid the same ordeal, they thought it would just be better to teach me to cut with my right hand to never buy the expensive left handed scissors of any kind. Yes, I still have mixed feelings about this, but I don't think it harmed me. We did hear from a lot of people who were forced into right handedness from parents or teachers or whatever. Yeah, it was a thing. Toad's thing. It's so bizarre. I think there was a concerted, widespread effort to eradicate left handed people. One thing you only mentioned briefly, though, and the right hand dominance is with things like scissors and spiral bound notebooks. I'd also like to point out less obvious ones, like which side the paper is on in bathrooms. Never thought about that. Yeah, it's on the left, though, in most bathrooms, isn't it? Yes, it is, but that makes sense. But I reached over with my right hand to tear the paper. I know, but you're different. Yeah. Doorknobs, computer, mouse or mice and the smeariness of pins all can cause issues for lefties. Anyway, love the podcast, guys. Especially ones about people like me. So, Sharon and so on in Tennessee, what else about you can we talk about on a podcast? Yeah, let us know. And if you have something about you that you think would make a cool podcast, a whole podcast, let us know. What if she wrote back and was like, oh, gosh, I love lasagna and I hate dogs and I drive a Dotson. I drive a Dotson. Do a podcast on that. Dotson drivers. Yeah, let us know. Sharon, right? It was Sharon, right? Sharon and other people out there who aren't Sharon, let us know, too. If you have any ideas, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can post on Facebook. Comstuffynow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast HowStuffWorks.com. And you can join us at our home on the web. Stuffyouhno.com. Stuff you should know is a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app apple Podcasts or Wherever you listen To Your Favorite Shows, you." | |
43621960-53a3-11e8-bdec-b33469cb8a3c | How Existential Risks Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-existential-risks-work | An existential risk is a special kind of threat that are different from other types of risks in that if one of them ever befalls us, it would spell the permanent end of humanity. It just so happens we seem to be headed for just such a kind of catastrophe. | An existential risk is a special kind of threat that are different from other types of risks in that if one of them ever befalls us, it would spell the permanent end of humanity. It just so happens we seem to be headed for just such a kind of catastrophe. | Tue, 28 Apr 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=28, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=119, tm_isdst=0) | 53167829 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody, josh here. We wanted to include a note before this episode, which is about existential risks, threats that are big enough to actually wipe humanity out of existence. Well, we recorded this episode just before the pandemic, which explains the weird lack of mention of COVID when we're talking about viruses. And when the pandemic came along, we thought perhaps a wait and see approach might be best before just Willynilly releasing an episode about the end of the world. So we decided to release this now, still in the thick of things. Not just because the world hasn't ended, but because one of the few good things that's come out of this terrible time is the way that we've all kind of come together and given a lot of thought about how we can look out for each other. And that's exactly what thinking about existential risks is all about. So we thought there would be no better time than right now to talk about them. We hope this explains things and that you realize we're not releasing this glibly in any way. Instead, we hope that it makes you reflective about what it means to be human and why humanity is worth fighting for. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Brian over there. There's guest producer Dave C. Sitting in yet again, at least the second time. I believe he's already picked up that he knows not to speak. He's nodding the customs established by Jerry, but yeah, he did not, didn't he? So, yeah, I guess it is twice that Dave has been sitting in. What if he just heard two times from the other side of the room? You didn't have the heart to tell him not to do that, right? I think he would catch the drift from the record. Scratching materialized out of nowhere, right? Not many people know that we have someone on permanent standby by, a record player waiting just in case we do something like that. And that person is Tommy Chong. Hi, Tommy. I smelled bong water. Yeah. Betty reeks of it. Yeah, probably. I mean, hats off to him for sticking to his bit cheek. Was like, hey, I want a good long spot on Nash Bridges, so I'll say whatever you want me to about pot. Like, I'm just into gummies now, right? Tommy tong tripled down. Yeah. And he sold bongs, didn't he? That Ptest Beaters. Okay, suddenly think of how to say something like that a way to defeat a urine test. Oh, well, listen, you fancy. I would say I don't know. I know that a street guys call it PTZ Beaters, but Ptest Beaters is a band name about as good as, say, like, Diarrhea Planet. Sure. Actually, I think Diarrhea Planet's got to beat, but still. All right. So, Chuck, we're talking today about a topic that is near and dear to my heart. Existential risks. That's right. Which I don't know if you've gathered that or not, but I really am into this topic all around. As a matter of fact, I did a ten part series on it called The End of the World with Josh Clark, available everywhere. You get podcasts right now. I managed to smash that down. That's kind of what this is. It's a condensed version and forever. I wanted to just SKSK if the topic of existential risks, like, do it with you. I wanted to do it with you. This was going to be a live show at one point. It was. I think even before that, I was like, hey, you want to do an episode on this? You're like, this is pretty dark stuff, we're doing it now. No, the only time I said that was when you actually sent me the document for the live show. And I went, I don't know about a live version of this. So I guess it must have been before the end of the World then, huh? Yeah. This is like eight years ago. Well, I'm glad you turned down the live show because it may have lived and died there. Might not have made all those into the world. Big bucks, right? Exactly, man, I'm rolling in it. My mattress is stuffed with them. And bucks aren't always just the only way of qualifying or quantifying the success of something, you know? Yeah. There's also Academy Awards. Right. Oscars and that's it. Peabody's big money or public award ceremony. Okay, granted, the other reason I wanted to do this episode was because one of the people who was a participant in Interviewee in the End of the World with Josh Clark, a guy named Dr. Toby Orde, recently published a book called The Precipice. And it is like a really in depth look at existential risks and the ones we face and what's coming on the pike and what we can do about them and why, who's hot, who's not. Right, exactly. Cheers and Cheers who wore it best. Right, exactly. And it's a really good book, and it's written just for the average person to pick up and be like, I hadn't heard about this and reach the end of it and say, I'm terrified. But I'm also hopeful. And that one reason I wanted to do this episode, to let everybody know about Dr. Ord's book or Toby's book. It's impossible to call him. Dr. Horton is just a really likable guy is because he actually turned the tone of The End of the World around almost single handedly. It was really grim. I remember before I interviewed him, early samples. And also, you remember I started like, listening to The Cure a lot. Sure. Just got real dark there for a little while. Which is funny that The Cure is my conception of, like, really dark. Anyway, death metal guys out there laughing, right? Talking to him. He just kind of just steered the ship a little bit. And by the end of it, because of his influence, the End of the World actually is a pretty hopeful series. So my hats off to the guy for doing that, but also for writing this book, the Precipice. Hats off, sir. So we should probably kind of describe what existential risks are. I know that, you know, in this document described many, many times, but the reason it's described many, many times is because there's like, a lot of nuance to it. And the reason there's a lot of nuance to it is because we kind of tend to walk around thinking that we understand existential risks based on our experience with previous risks. Right. But the problem with existential risks are they're actually new to us, and they're not like other risks because they're just so big. And if something happens, one of these existential catastrophes befalls us. That's it. There's no second chance, there's no do over. And we're not used to risks like that. That's right. Nobody is. Because we are all people. Right. And the thought of all of human beings being gone, or at least not being able to live as regular humans, live and enjoy life and not live as Matrix batteries. Sure. Because technically the Matrix, those are people. Yeah. But that's no way to live. The people in the pods. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I wouldn't want to live that way. But that is another version of existential risk. It's not necessarily that everyone's dead, but you could become just a Matrix battery and not flourish or move forward as a people. Right, exactly. But with the central risk in general, the general idea of them is that if you are walking along and you suddenly get hit by a car, you no longer exist, but the rest of humanity continues on existing. Correct. With existential risks, it's like the car that comes along and hits not a human, but all humans. So it's a risk to humanity itself. And that's just kind of different because all of the other risks that we've ever run across either give us the luxury of time or proximity, meaning that we have enough time to adapt our behavior to it, to survive it and continue on as a species. Right. Or there's not enough of us in one place to be affected by this risk that took out, say, one person or a billion people. Right. Like if all of Europe went away, that is not an ex risk. No. And so people might say, that'd be sad. It would be really sad up to say, 99% of the people alive on Earth if they all died somehow, it would still possibly not be an existential risk because that 1% living could conceivably rebuild civilization. That's right. We're talking about giving the world back to Mother Nature and just seeing what happens. Do you remember that series? I think it was a book to start the Earth without us. No, I think I know that it was a big deal when it came out, and then they made, like, maybe a science channel or Net geo series about it where this guy describes how our infrastructure will start to crumble, like if humans just vanish tomorrow, how the Earth would reclaim nature, would reclaim everything we've done and undo after a month, after a year, after 10,000 years. Yeah, I've heard of that. It's really cool stuff. Yeah. There's a Bonnie Prince. Billy, my idol, has a song called It's Far from over. And that's sort of a bonnie principally, look at the fact that, hey, even if all humans leave, it's not over. Yeah. Like, new animals are going to new creatures are going to be born. The Earth continues. Yeah, and he also has a line, though, about like, but you better teach your kids to swim. That's a great line. Yeah, it's good stuff. Never tell you, I saw that guy do karaoke with his wife once. Oh, really? You know, a friend, Toby oh, sure. At his wedding. Wow. I would have not been able to be at that wedding because you would have just been such a fanboy. I don't know what I would do. It would ruin my time. Really? It really would. Because I would second guess everything I did about I even talked to the guy once backstage. That ruined my day. It really did. Because you spent the rest of the time just thinking about how you should have said stuff. No, it was actually fine. He was a very nice guy, and we talked about Athens and stuff, but that's who I just went to see in DC. Philly and New York. Nice. When I followed him around on tour for a few days, did he sing that song about the world going on or life going on? He did. So let's just cover a couple of things that people might think are existential risks that actually aren't. Okay? Yeah, I think a lot of people might think, sure, some global pandemic that could wipe out humanity. There could very well be a global pandemic that could kill a lot of people, but it's probably not going to kill every living human. Right. It would be a catastrophe. Sure. But not an ex risk. Yeah. I mean, because humans have antibodies that we develop, and so people who survive that flu have antibodies that they pass on the next generation, and so that that disease kind of dies out before it kills everybody off. And the preppers, at the very least, they'll be fine, would be safe. What about calamities? Like a mudslide or something like that? You can't mudslide the earth. You can't. And that's a really good point. This is what I figured out in researching this. After doing the end of the world, after talking to all these people, it took researching this article for me to figure this out, that it's time and proximity that are the two things that we use to survive, and that if you take away time and proximity, we're in trouble. And so mudslides are a really good example of proximity, where a mud slide can come down a mountain and take out an entire village of people. It has. Yeah. And it's really sad and really scary to think of. I mean, we saw it with our own eyes. We stood in a field that was now, what, like eight or 9ft higher than it used to be. Yeah. And you could see the track. This is in Guatemala. When we went down to visit our friends at Coed, the trees were much sparse. You could see the track of the mud. The people are still down there. It was a horrible tragedy, and it happened in a matter of seconds. It just wiped out a village. But we all don't live under one mountain. No. So if a bunch of people are taken out, the rest of us still go on. So there's the time and there's proximity. Yeah. I think a lot of people in the 80s might have thought, because of movies like War Games and movies like The Day After that, global, thermonuclear war would be an ex risk. And as bad as that would be, it wouldn't kill every single human being. No, they don't think so. They started out thinking this, like, as a matter of fact, nuclear war was one of the first things that we identified as a possible existential risk. Sure. And if you kind of talk about the history of the field for the first several decades, that was like the focus, the entire focus of existential risk. Bertrand Russell and Einstein wrote a manifesto about how we really need to be careful with these nukes because we're going to wipe ourselves out. Carl Sagan you remember our amazing nuclear winter episode? Yeah. That was from studying existential risk. And then in, the guy named John Leslie came along and said, hey, there's way more than just nuclear war that we can wipe ourselves out with. And some of it has taken the form of this technology that's coming down the pike. And that was taken up by one of my personal heroes, a guy named Nick Bostrom. Yeah. He's a philosopher out of Oxford, and he is one of the founders of this field. And he's the one that said, or one of the ones that said there's a lot of potential existential risks and nuclear war is peanuts. Bring it on. Right. But I don't know if Boston specifically believe, probably does, that we would be able to recover from a nuclear war. That's the idea as you rebuild as a society after whatever zombie apocalypse nuclear war happened. Yeah. And again, say it killed off 99% of people. To us, that would seem like an unimaginable tragedy because we lived through it. But if you zoom back out and look at the lifespan of humanity. Sure. Not just the humans live today, but all of humanity. It would be a very horrible period in human history, but one we could rebuild from over, say, 10,000 years to get back to the point where we were before the nuclear war. And so ultimately, it's probably not an existential risk. Yeah. This is a tough topic for people because I think people have a hard time with that long of a view of things, and then whenever you hear the Big Mac comparisons of how long people have been around and how old the Earth is and that stuff, it kind of hits home. But it's stuff for people living. They live 80 years to think about, oh, well, in 10,000 years, we'll be fine. And even, like, when I was researching this, she brought this up a lot. Where do we stop caring about people that are descendants? We care about our children or grandchildren. I just care about my daughter. That's where it ends. To heck with the grandchildren. I don't have grandchildren yet. Yeah, but wait till they come along. Everything I've ever heard is that being a grandparents even better than being a parent. And I know some grandparents. Okay, let's say I'm not dead before my daughter eventually has a kid if she wants to. I would care about that grandchild, right? But after that little whipper snapper, forget it. Okay. My kids kids, who cares? Granted, that's about where it would like, where it would end. I care about people and humanity as a whole. I think that's what you got to do. You can't think about your eventual ancestors, then you just got to think about people. Right? Yeah. People you don't know. Now it's kind of requisite to start caring about existential risks, to start thinking about people, not just, well, let's talk about it. So Topiod made a really good point in his book The Precipice, right. That you care about people on the other side of the world that you've never met. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like, that happens every day. Right? So what's the difference between people who live on the other side of the world that you will never meet and people who live in a different time that you will never meet? Why would you care any less about these people, human beings that you'll never meet, whether they live on the other side of the world at the same time or in the same place you do, but at a different time? I'm not speaking for me, but I think if I were to step inside the brain of someone who thinks that, they would think like a it's a bit of an ego thing because, you know, like, oh, I'm helping someone else. So that does something for you in the moment. Right. Like, someone right now on the other side of the world that maybe I've sponsored is doing better because of me. Got you. And I got a little kick out of it from Sally Strauthers. Yeah. Help put food on her plate. Is she still with us? I think so. I think so, too, but I feel really bad. I certainly haven't heard any news of her death. People would talk about that and the record scratch would have just happened. Right, exactly. So I think that is something, too. And I think there are also sort of a certain amount of people that just believe your worm dirt. There is no benefit to the afterlife as far as good deeds and things. Sure. So once you're gone, it's just who cares? Because it doesn't matter. There's no consciousness. Yeah. Well, if you are at all, like, peaked by that stuff, I would say definitely read the precipice, because one of the best things that Toby does, and he does a lot of stuff really well, is describe why it matters, because I'm a philosopher, after all. So he says this is why it matters. Not only does it matter because you're keeping things going for the future generation, you're also continuing on what the previous generation built. Who are you to just be like, oh, we're just going to drop the ball? No, I agree. That's a very self centered way to look at things. Totally. But I think you're right. I think there are a lot of people who look at it that way. So you want to take a break? Yeah, we can take a break now. And maybe we can dive into Mr. Bostroms or doctor, I imagine. Sure. Bostroms. Five different types. Are there five? No, there's just a few. Okay. A few different types of existential risks. We can make up a couple of no, let's not stop. All right, Chuck. So one of the things you said earlier is that existential risk, the way we think of them typically, is that something happens and humanity is wiped out and we all die and there's no more humans forever and ever. That's an existential risk. That's one kind, really, and that's the easiest one to grasp, which is extinction. Yeah. And that kind of speaks for itself. Just like dinosaurs are no longer here. That would be us. Yes. No more as. Cool. And I think that's one of those other things, too. It's kind of like how people walk around like, yeah, I know I'm going to die someday. But if you sat them down and you were like, do you really understand that you're going to die someday that they might start to panic a little bit and they realize, I haven't actually confronted that, I just know that I'm going to die. Or if you knew the date, that'd be weird. It'd be like a Justin Timberlake movie. Would that make things better or worse for humanity? I would say better, probably. Right. I think it'd be a mixed bag. I think some people would be able to do nothing but focus on that and think, about all the time they're wasting. And other people would be like, I'm going to make the absolute most out of this. Well, I guess there are a couple of ways you can go, and it probably depends on when your date is. If you found out your date was a ripe old age, you might be like, well, I'm just going to try and lead the best life I can. That's great. You find out you live fast and die hard at 27. Yeah, die harder. You might die harder, you might just screw it. Or you might really ramp up your good works. Yeah. It depends what kind of person you are, probably. Yeah. And more and more, I'm realizing it depends on how you were raised, too. We definitely are responsible for carrying on ourselves as adults. You can't just say, well, I wasn't raised very well, or I was raised this way, so whatever. You have a responsibility for yourself and who you are as an adult. Sure. But I really feel like the way that you're raised too, really sets the stage and puts you on a path that can be difficult to get off of because it's so hard to see. For sure. Yeah. Because that's just normal to you, because that's what your family was. Yeah, that's a good point. So anyway, extinction is just one of the ways, one of the types of existential risks that we face. A bad one. Yeah. Permanent stagnation is another one. And that's the one we kind of mentioned. Dance around a little bit and that's like, some people are around. Not every human died. And whatever happened, but whatever is left is not enough to either repopulate the world or to progress humanity in any meaningful way or rebuild civilization back to where it was. No. And it would be that way permanently, which is kind of in itself tough to imagine, too. Just like the genuine extinction of humanity is tough to imagine. The idea of, well, there's still plenty of humans running around. How are we never going to get back to that place? That may be the most depressing one. I think the next one is the most depressing, but that's pretty depressing. But one example that's been given for that is like, let's say we say, all right, this is climate change. We need to do something about that. So we undertake a geoengineering project that isn't fully thought out, and we end up causing, like, a runaway greenhouse gas effect. Right. Make it worse. And there's just nothing we can do to reverse course. And so we ultimately wreck the Earth. Yeah. That would be a good example of permanent stagnation. That's right. This next one. So, yes, agreed. Permanent stagnation is pretty bad. I wouldn't want to live under that. But at least you can run around and, like, do what you want. I think the total lack of personal liberty and the flawed realization one is what gets me. Yeah. They all get me. Sure. Flawed realization is the next one. And that's sort of like the Matrix example, which is that there's some technology that we invented that eventually makes us their little batteries and pods. Right. Basically someone is in charge, whether it's a group or some individual or something like that. It's basically a permanent dictatorship that we will never be able to get out from under because this technology we've developed like a global one yeah. Is being used against us. And it's so good at keeping tabs on everybody and squashing dissent before it grows. There's just nothing anybody could ever do to overthrow it. Yeah. And so it's a permanent dictatorship where we're not doing anything productive, we're not advancing, say it's like a religious dictatorship or something like that. All anybody does is go to church and support the church or whatever, and that's that. And so what Doctor Bostrom figured out is that there are fates as bad as death. Sure. There are possible outcomes for the human race that aren't as bad as extinction, that still leave people alive. Even like in kind of a futuristic kind of thing, like the flawed realization one goes, but that you wouldn't want to live the lives that those humans live. No. And so humanity has lost its chance of ever achieving its true potential. That's right. And that those qualifies existential risks as well. That's right. They want to live in the Matrix. No. At all. Or in a post apocalyptic altered Earth. Yeah. The matrix. Basically, like Thunder the barbarian. That's what I imagine with these permanent stagnation. So there are a couple of big categories for existential risks, and they are either nature made or man made. The nature ones. There's always been the threat that a big enough object hitting planet Earth could do it. Right. That's always been around. It's not like that's some sort of new realization, but it's just a pretty rare it's so rare that it's not likely. Right. All of the natural ones are pretty rare compared to the human made ones. Yeah. I don't think science wakes up every day and worries about a comet or an asteroid or a meteor. No. And it's definitely worth saying that the better we get at scanning the heavens, the safer we are eventually when we can do something about it. If we see the comedy, what do we do? Just hit the gas and move the Earth over a bit. Superman out there. Right. There's nothing we can do about any of these anyway. So maybe that's also why science doesn't wake up worrying. Right. Yeah. So you've got Near Earth Objects, you've got celestial stuff like collapsing stars that produce gamma ray bursts. And then even back here on Earth, like a super volcanic eruption could conceivably put out enough soot that it blocks photosynthesis we didn't show on that. Yeah. It sends us into essentially a nuclear winter, too. That would be bad. But like you're saying, these are very rare and there's not a lot we can do about them now. Instead, the focus of people who think about existential risks, and there are like a pretty decent handful of people who are dedicated to this now. They say the anthropogenic or the human made ones, these are the ones we really need to mitigate because they're human made, so they're under our control. And that means we can do something about them more than, say, a comet. Yeah. Yeah. But it's a bit of a double edged sword because you think, oh, well, since we could stop this stuff, that's really comforting to know, but we're not. Right. Like, we were headed down a bad path in some of these areas for sure, because we are creating these risks and not thinking about these things. In a lot of cases, they're actually worse even though we could possibly control them. Right. It definitely makes it more ironic, too. Yeah. Right. So there are a few that have been identified and there's probably more that we haven't figured out yet or haven't been invented yet. But one of the big ones, I think, almost across the board, the one that existential risk analysts worry about the most, is AI artificial intelligence. Yeah. And this is the most frustrating one because it seems like it would be the easiest one to not stop in its tracks, but to divert along a safer path. Right. The problem with that is that people who have dedicated themselves to figuring out how to make that safer path are coming back and saying, this is way harder than we thought it was going to be to make the safer path. Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. And so at the same time, while people recognize that there needs to be a safe path for AI to follow this other path that it's on now, which is known as the unsafe path, that's the one that's making people money. So everybody's just going down the unsafe path while these other people are trying to figure out the safer one. Because the computer and war games would say maybe the best option is to not play the game. Sure. And if there is no safe option, then maybe AI should not happen. And this is almost heresy to say we need to put the brakes on AI development so that we can figure out the safer way and then move forward. But we should probably explain what we're talking about with safe in the first place, right? Yeah. I mean, we're talking about creating a super intelligent AI that basically is so smart that it starts to self learn and is beyond our control, and it's not thinking, wait a minute, one of the things I'm programmed to do is make sure we take care of humans. Right. And it doesn't necessarily mean that some AI is going to become super intelligent and say, I want to destroy all humans. Right. That's actually probably not going to be the case. It will be that this super intelligent AI is carrying out whatever it was programmed to do to disregard humans. Exactly. And so if our goal of staying alive and thriving comes in conflict with the goal of whatever this AI's goal is, whatever it was designed to do, we would lose that. Yeah. Because it's smarter than us. By definition, it's smarter than us. It's out of our control. And probably one of the first things it would do when it became super intelligent is figure out how to prevent us from turning it off. Right. Well, yeah, that's the fail safe is the all important fail safe that the AI could just disable. Exactly. Right. You can just sneak up behind it with the screwdriver or something like that, and then you could get shot. The robots I see in a robot voice, that's called designing friendly or aligned AI. And people, some of the smartest people in the field of AI research have stopped figuring out how to build AI and have started to figure out how to build friendly AI. Yeah. Aligned isn't aligned with our goals and needs. Exactly. And desires. Yeah. And Nick Bostrom actually has a really great thought experiment about it's called The Paperclip Problem. And you can hear it on the end of the world. Nice. I like that. Driving listeners over the next one is nanotech. And nanotech is something that's very much within the realm of possibility, as is AI. Actually, that's not super far fetched either. Superintelligent AI. Yeah, it's definitely possible. Yeah. And that's the same with nanotechnology we're talking about. And I've seen this everywhere, from little tiny robots that will just be dispersed and clean your house to the atomic level, where they can reprogram our body right from the inside. So little tiny robots that can clean your car. Yeah, those are the three those are three things. Two of them are cool. One of the things about these nanobots is that because they're so small, they'll be able to manipulate matter on the atomic level, which is like the usefulness of that is mind boggling. Just send them in and they're going to be networked. So we'll be able to program them to do whatever and control them. Right. The problem is, if they're networked and they're under our control, if they fall under the control of somebody else or, say, a super intelligent AI, then we would have a problem because they can rearrange matter on the atomic level. So who knows what they would start rearranging that we wouldn't want them to rearrange. Yeah. It's like that Gene Simmons sci-fi movie in the want to say it was looker. No, I was confused. Those two, that was look or the other one. This is Runaway. Runaway. I think one inevitably followed the other on HBO. It had to have been a double feature because they could not be more linked in my mind. Same here. I remember Albert Finney was in one. I think he was in looker, he was. And Gene Simmons was in Runaway as the bad guy, of course. Oh, yeah. He did a great job. And Tom Selek was the good guy. Yeah, tom Selek. But the idea in that movie was not nanobots, but they were little insects, like robots, but they just weren't nano sized. Right. And so the reason that these could be so dangerous is because not their size, but there's just so many of them, and while they're not big and they can't, like, punch you in the face or stick you in the neck with a needle or something, like the runaway robot, they can do all sorts of stuff to you molecularly, and you would not want that to happen. Yeah, this is pretty bad. There's an engineer out of MIT named Eric Drexler. He is a big name in molecular nanotech. If he's listening right now, right up to when you said his name, he was just sitting there saying, please don't mention me. Please don't mention me. Oh, no. Because he's tried to back off from his gray goo hypothesis. Right. So, yeah, this is the idea that there are so many of these nanobots that they can harvest their own energy. They can self replicate like little bunny rabbits. And there would be a point where there was runaway growth such that the entire world would look like gray goo because it's covered with nanobots. Yeah. And since they can harvest energy so creepy. From the environment, they would eat the world. They'd wreck the world, basically. Yeah. That's scary. You're right. So he took so much flak for saying this, even because apparently it scared people enough back in. The nanotechnology was kind of frozen for a little bit, and so everybody went drexler, and so he's backed off from it, saying, like, this would be a design flaw. This wouldn't just naturally happen with nanobots. You'd have to design them to harvest energy themselves and to self replicate. So just don't do that. And so the thing is, yes, he took a lot of flack for it, but he also, like, it was a contribution to the world. He pointed out two big flaws that could happen that now are just like a Sci-Fi trope. Right. But when he thought about them, they weren't self evident or obvious. Yeah. I mean, I feel bad we even said his name, but it's worth saying Clyde Drexler. Right. Clyde the Glide. Clyde the Glyph. That's right. Biotechnology is another pretty scary field. There are great people doing great research with infectious disease. Part of that, though, involves developing new bacteria, new viruses, new strains that are even worse than the preexisting ones as part of the research. And that can be a little scary, too, because it's not just stuff of movies. There are accidents that happen, protocols that aren't followed, and this stuff could get out of a lab. Yes. And it's not one of those, like, could get out of the lab even things that it has gotten out of the lab I don't want to say routinely, but it happens so many times that when you look at the track record of the biotech industry, it's just like, how are we not all dead right now? It's crazy. Kind of lost broken arrows, lost nuclear war. Exactly. But with little tiny, horrible viruses. And then when you factor in that terrible track record with them actually altering viruses and bacteria to make them more deadly. To do those two things. To reduce the time that we have to get over them so they make them more deadly. And then to reduce proximity to make them more easily spread more contagious so they spread more quickly and kill more quickly as well. Then you have potentially an existential risk on your hand. For sure. We've talked in here a lot about the Large Hadron Collider. We're talking about physics experiments. I guess this is the last example that we're going to talk about. Yeah. And I should point out that physics experiments does not show up anywhere in Toby ord's Precipice book. Okay. This one is kind of my pet. There's plenty of people who agree that this is a possibility, but a lot of existential risks theorists are like, I don't know. Well, you'll explain it better than me. But the idea is that we're doing all these experiments, like the Large agent collider to try and figure stuff out we don't understand. Right. Which is great, but we don't exactly know where that all could lead. Yeah. Because we don't understand it enough, we can't say this is totally safe. Right. And so if you read some physics papers and this isn't like Rupert Sheldrick morphic Fields, kind of like Sheldrick. Right. Actual physicists have said, well, actually, using this version of string theory, it's possible that this could be created in a Large Hadron Collider, or more likely, a more powerful collider that's going to be built in the next 50 years or something like that. The super Large. Sure. Hey, drunk Collider. The Duper. Yeah, I think is the nickname for it. Oh, man. I hope that doesn't end up being the nickname the Duper. That'd be great, right? Yeah, I guess so. But it also is a little kind of I don't know. I like it. All right, so they're saying that a few things could be created accidentally within one of these colliders when they smash the particles together. Microscopic black hole. My favorite the low energy vacuum bubble. No good. Which is it's a little tiny version of our universe that's more stable, like a more stable version, lower energy version. And so if it were allowed to grow, it would grow at the speed of light. It would overwhelm our universe and be the new version of the universe. Yeah. That's like when you buy the baby alligator or the baby boa constrictor or python you think is so cute, right? And then it grows up and eats the universe. The problem is, this new version of the universe is set up in a way that's different than our version, and so all the matter, including us, that's arranged just so for this version of the universe would be disintegrated in this new version. So it's like the snap. But can you imagine if all of a sudden, just a new universe grew out of the Large Hadron Collider accidentally, and at the speed of light, just ruined this universe forever? If we just accidentally did this with the physics experiment, I find that endlessly fascinating and also hilarious. Just the idea I think the world will end ironically somehow. It's entirely possible. So maybe before we take a break, let's talk a little bit about climate change, because a lot of people might think climate change is an existential threat. It's terrible, and we need to do all we can. But even the worst case models probably don't mean an end to humanity as a whole. It means we're living much further inland than we thought we ever would, and we may be much tighter quarters than we ever thought we might be, and a lot of people might be gone, but it's probably not going to wipe out every human being. Yeah. It'll probably end up being akin to that same line of thinking, the same path of catastrophic nuclear war. Yeah. Which I guess you could just say nuclear war. Sure, catastrophic is kind of built into the idea, but we would be able to adapt and rebuild. Yeah. It's possible that our worst case scenarios are actually better than what will actually happen. Right, so just like with a total nuclear war, it's possible that it could be bad enough that it could be an existential risk. It's possible climate change could end up being bad enough that it's an existential risk, but from our current understanding, they're probably not existential risks. Right. All right, well, that's a helpful place to leave for another break, and we're going to come back and finish up with why all of this is important. It should be pretty obvious, but we'll summarize it. Okay, Chuck, one thing about existential risks that people like to say is, well, let's just not do anything. And it turns out from people like Nick Bostrom and Toby Ord and other people around the world who are thinking about this kind of stuff, if we don't do anything, we probably are going to accidentally wipe ourselves out. Doing nothing is not a safe option. Yeah, but Bostrom is one who has developed a concept that's hypothetical called technological maturity, which would be great, and that is some time in the future where we have invented all these things, but we have done so safely and we have complete mastery over it all. There won't be those accidents, there won't be the grey goo. There won't be the AI that's not aligned. Yeah, because we'll know how to use all this stuff safely, like you said. Right. We're not mature in that way right now. No, actually, we're at a place that Carl Sagan called her technological adolescence, where we're becoming powerful, but we're also not wise. Right. That makes sense at the point where we're at now, technological adolescence, where we're starting to invent this stuff that actually can wipe humanity out of existence, but before we reach technological maturity, where we have safely mastered and have that kind of wisdom to use all this stuff, that's probably the most dangerous period in the history of humanity, and we're entering it right now. And if we don't figure out how to take on these existential risks, we probably won't survive. From technological adolescents all the way to technological maturity, we will wipe ourselves out one way or another, because this is really important to remember. All it takes is one existential catastrophe, and not all of these have to take place. No, it doesn't have to be some combination. Just one just one bug with basically 100% mortality has to get out of a lab. Just one accidental physics experiment has to slip up. Just one AI has to become super intelligent and take over the world. Like, just one of those things happening, and then that's it. And again, the problem with existential risks that makes them different is we don't get a second chance. One of them befalls us, and that's that. That's right. It depends on who you talk to about if you want to get maybe just a projection on our chances as a whole as humans. Toby Orange right now is one in six chance over the next 100 years. Yeah, he always follows that with Russian roulette. Other people say about 10%. There are some different cosmologists. There's one named Lord Martin Reese who puts it at 50 50. Yeah. He actually is a member of the center for the Study of Existential Risk. And we didn't mention before bostrom founded something called the Future of Humanity Institute, which is pretty great. F-H-I. And then there's one more place that I want to shout out. It's called the Future of Life Institute. It was founded by Max Tagmark and Yon Tallinn, who is the co founder of, I think, Skype. Oh, really? I think so. All right. Well, you should probably also shout out the Church of Scientology. No. Genius. Yeah, that's the one. That's what I was thinking about. Well, they get confused a lot. This is a pretty cool little thing you did here with how long because I was kind of talking before about the long view of things and how long humans have been around. So I think your rope analogy is pretty spot on here. So that's JL. Schellenberg's rope analogy. Well, I didn't think you wrote it. I wish it were mine. I meant that you included it. So what we were talking about, like you were saying, is it's hard to take that long view, but if you step back and look at how long humans have been around so Homo sapiens have been on Earth, about 200,000 years. Seems like a very long time. It does. And even modern humans like us have been around for about 50,000 years. Seems like a very long time as well. That's right. But if you think about how much longer the human race, humanity, could continue on to exist as a species, that's nothing. It's virtually insignificant. And J. L. Schellenberg puts it like this. Let's say humanity has a billion year lifespan, and you translate that billion years into a 20 foot rope. Okay, that's easy. To show up with just the 8th of an inch mark on that 20 foot rope, our species would have to live another 300,000 years from the point where we've already lived. Yes. We would have to live 500,000 years just to show up as an 8th of an inch. That first 8th of an inch on that 20 foot long road says it all. That's how long humanity might have ahead of us. And that's actually kind of a conservative estimate. Some people say once we reach technological maturity, we're fine. We're not going to go extinct because we'll be able to use all that technology, like having AI track all those near Earth objects and say, well, this one's a little close for comfort. I'm going to send some nanobots out to disassemble it. We will remove ourselves from the risk of ever going extinct when we hit technological maturity. So a billion years is definitely doable for us. Yeah. And why we should care about it is because it's happening right now. I mean, there is already AI that is unaligned. We've already talked about the biotech and labs. Accidents have already happened all the time. And there are experiments going on with physics that we think we know what we're doing. Right. But accidents happen and an accident that you can't recover from, there's no loops. Right. Let me try that again. Right, exactly. Because we're all toast. So this is why you have to care about it. And luckily I wish there were more people that care about it. Well, it's becoming more of a thing. And if you talk to Toby orde so just like, say, the environmental movement was the moral push, and we're starting to see some results from that now, but states starting back in the nobody had ever heard of that. Yeah. I mean, it took decades. He's saying. Like. We're about that's what we're doing now with existential risk. People are going to start to realize. Like. Oh. Man. This is for real. And we need to do something about it because we could live a billion years if we managed to survive the next $100. Which makes you and me. Chuck. And like. All of us alive right now. In one of the most unique positions any human has ever been. And we have the entire future of the human race basically resting in our hands because we're the ones who happen to be alive when humanity entered its technological adolescence. Yeah. And it's a tougher one. Then save the planet, because it's such a tangible thing when you talk about pollution, and it's very easy to put on a TV screen or in a classroom, and it's not so easily dismissed because you can see it in front of your eyeballs and understand it. This is a lot tougher education wise, because 99% of people hear something about nanobots and grey goo or AI and just think, come on, man, that's the stuff of movies. Yeah. And, I mean, it's sad that we couldn't just dig into it further because when you really do start to break it all down and understand it, it's like, no, this totally is for real. And it makes sense. Like, this is entirely possible and maybe even likely. Yes. And not the hardest thing to understand. It's not like you have to understand nanotechnology to understand its threat. Right, exactly. That's well put. The other thing about all this is that not everybody is on board with this. Even people who hear about this kind of stuff are like, no, this is overblown. Pie in the sky, it's overblown. Or the opposite pie in the sky. In the sky. Shaking the ground. Is that the opposite? We're in a dark sky territory. It's a turkey drumstick in the Earth. Okay, that's kind of the opposite of a pie. Sure. Okay. I think I may have just come up with a colloquialism. I think so. Some people aren't convinced. Some people say, no, AI is nowhere near being even close to human level intelligent, let alone super intelligent. Yeah. Like, why spend money? Because it's expensive. Right. And other people are like, yeah, if you start diverting research into figuring out how to make AI friendly, I can tell you China and India aren't going to do that. So they're going to leapfrog ahead of us and we're going to be toast competitively. Right. So there's a cost to an opportunity. Cost. There's an actual cost. So there's a lot of people it's basically the same arguments for people who argue against mitigating, climate change. Yeah, same thing. Kind of. So the answer is terraforming. Well, that's not the answer. The answer is either one of those. Right. Study terraforming is right. Okay. The answer is to study this stuff. Sure. Figure out what to do about it. But it wouldn't hurt to learn how to live on Mars, right. Or just off of Earth. Because in the exact same way, the whole village is at risk when it's under a mudslide or a mountain and a mudslide comes down. If we all live on Earth, if something happens to life on Earth, that's it for humanity. But if they're like a thriving population of humans who don't live on Earth, who live off of Earth. If something happens on Earth, humanity continues on. So learning to live off of Earth is a good step in the right direction. But that's a plan B. That's plan A. One A or one B. Sure. Yes. It's tied for first. Like it's something we should be doing at the same time as studying and learning to mitigate existential risk. Yeah. And I think it's got to be multipronged because the threats are multipronged. Sure. Absolutely. And there's one other thing that I really think you got to get across. Like we said, that if, say, the US starts to invest all of its resources into figuring out how to make friendly AI, but India and China continue on the path, it's not going to work. And the same goes with if every country in the world said, no, we're going to figure out friendly AI, but just one dedicated itself to continuing on this path. The rest of the countries in the world progress will be totally negated by that one. Yeah. So it's got to be a global effort. It has to be a species wide effort, not just with AI, but with all these understanding all of them and mitigating them together. Yeah, that could be a problem. So thank you very much for doing this episode with me. Oh, me? Yeah. I thought you're talking to Dave. No. Well, Dave, too. We appreciate you too, Dave, but big ups to you, Charles, because Jerry was like, I'm not sitting in that room. I'm not listening to Clark lather on about existential risk for an hour. So one more time. Tobyords. The precipice is available everywhere. You buy books. You can get the end of the world with Josh Clark. Wherever you get podcast, if this kind of thing floated your boat, check out The Future of Humanity Institute. The future of life. Institute. And they have a podcast hosted by Ariel Con, and she had me on back in December of 2018 as part of a group that was talking about existential hope. So you can go listen to that, too, if you're like. This is a downer. I want to think about the bright side. Sure. There's that whole future of Life Institute podcast. So what about you? Are you convinced of this whole thing? Like, that this is an actual thing we need to be worrying about and thinking of? No. Really? No, I mean, I think that sure. There are people that should be thinking about this stuff, and that's great. As far as, like, me, what can I do? Well, I ran into that. There's not a great answer for that. It's more like start telling other people is the best thing that the average person can do. Hey, man, we just did that in a big way. We did, didn't we? It's great. 500 million people, now we can go to sleep. Okay. You got anything else I got nothing else. All right, well, then, since Chuck said he's got nothing else, it's time for listener mail. Yeah. This is the opposite of all the smart stuff we just talked about. I just realized, hey, guys. Love you. Love stuff. You should know on a recent airplane flight, I listened to and really enjoyed the Coyote episode wherein Chuck mentioned offtand wolfbate as a euphemism for farts. Yeah. Coincidentally, on that same flight were Bill Nye, the science guy, and Anthony Michael Hall, the actor. What? It was a star studded airplane flight. Wow. He said so naturally, when I arrived at my home, I felt compelled to rewatch the 1985 film Weird Science, in which Anthony Michael Hall stars in that movie. And I remember this now that he mentions it in that movie. Anthony Michael Hall uses the term wolfbate as a euphemism for pooping dropping wolf bait, which makes sense now that it would be actual poop and not a fart. Did you say his name before who wrote this? No, your friend who used the word wolfbate. Eddie? Yeah, sure. Okay. So is Eddie, like, a big Weird Science fan or Anthony Michael Hall fan? Kelly LeBrock fan. Yes, that must be it. Okay. It has been a full circle day for me and one that I hope you will appreciate hearing about, and that is Jake. Man. Can you imagine being on a flight with Bill Nye and Anthony Michael Hall? Who do you talk to? Who do you hang with? I'd just be worried that somebody was going to take over control of the plane and fly it somewhere to hold us all hostage and make those two perform. Or what if Bill Nye and Anthony Michael are in cahoots? Maybe. And they take the plane hostage? Yes. It would be very suspicious if they didn't talk to one another. You know what I mean? I think so. Who is that? That was Jake. Thanks, Jake. That was a great email and thank you for joining us. If you want to get in touch with us like Jake did, you can go on to Stuffysheno.com and get lost in the amazingness of it. And you can also 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 shows. Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | |
3fa387e6-5461-11e8-b6d0-53dbedfa6486 | Selects: How Cave Dwellers Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-how-cave-dwellers-work | You know the cavemen, a race of human cousins who lived exclusively in caves? They didn’t exist. Sure prehistoric hominids used caves sometimes but they lived in other places too. Luckily the time they spent in caves has given us a glance at their culture thanks to the protective environments of caves. Learn all about it in this classic episode. | You know the cavemen, a race of human cousins who lived exclusively in caves? They didn’t exist. Sure prehistoric hominids used caves sometimes but they lived in other places too. Luckily the time they spent in caves has given us a glance at their culture thanks to the protective environments of caves. Learn all about it in this classic episode. | Sat, 01 May 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=1, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=121, tm_isdst=0) | 37078496 | audio/mpeg | "Are you a cave dweller? I have been caving, and luckily, I went caving before I did this podcast on how cave dwellers work from February 13, 2014. Because I gotta tell you, if I had done this podcast first, I probably would would not have ventured into that cave. Very scary stuff down there. Everyone check it out and beware welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of. iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there. So it's stuff you should know. Wow. Energetic condition. A little bit. Yeah. It's cold. I'm energized by the cold. Energized and, like, just a little bit. Yeah. So you're not energized is what we're saying. I'm a little energized. Okay. I feel like I am. I'm fine. Why do you say that? Because you sound like you're sleepwalking. Oh, really? Yeah. I thought I was just speaking fast. Oh, no. I thought that's why you're I was being sarcastic. I'm sorry. To everybody who's sitting through this right now. You sound down in the dumps. You all right? Yeah, no, I'm fine. Okay. It's the cold. It's a little dreary outside. Today's the day it finally started to get some of it. So you're ready for spring? Yes, Emily is ready for spring. I'm like, It's January, and she said no, but it's Georgia, so we could have spring in a few weeks. It's true. We kind of had it yesterday. Yeah. You mean. I have been making these little bird feeders, like, with cookie cutters and shapes and all that stuff. I've been trying to get the physics of it down to hang them so that the birds can land on them. So I incorporate twigs in these things so they can spend a little time there. Yeah. And there's this little sob of a squirrel that has my porch all figured out and keeps getting these whole bird feeder cakes, and I realized I'm spending a lot of time trying to thwart this squirrel, figure out the physics of a bird feeder. I'm like, yeah, I'm ready for spring, apparently. Yes. We have one of those cake holders for birds, but it's really a squirrel feeder. Yeah. And they eat it in, like, a day. Yeah. This squirrel can eat several cakes, and it makes a mess. Yeah. All right. Cave dwelling. I can't remember I've asked you before, but I don't know if you've seen it since I asked you, because you hadn't caveat forgotten Dreams by Verna Harzo. No, I still haven't seen it. Well, I watched, like, 20 minutes of it this morning just to get the gist. You got the gist in 20 minutes? Well, I can't wait to watch the whole thing, though. It's pretty much that. Yeah, but I want to watch it. Oh, yeah, you should. It's neat. The whole thing is neat from beginning to end, but I think maybe a two hour long documentary on a cave. Yeah. In the cave art. It's phenomenal. Yeah, I know. The one in well, they're both in France, right? Yeah. The one that gets the most press is the Lasco, which is great. But this one, to me, the art is better. Well, Lasco and more press because it was discovered in this one that weren't. Herzog did a documentary on its discovered in 1994. Yeah. And it's called twice. Like 32000 year old art. It's amazing. Yeah, it is. And it's all spectacularly preserved. One of the benefits of discovering last go in 1940 was that when Chevy cave, the one that was discovered in 94, it's even older. Was discovered. We had already figured out a lot of stuff along the way and how to preserve it. Right. So we could go in there and sort of TCB. Yeah. You need to cut down on the carbon dioxide that people are breathing out. You need to let Vernon or Herzog in there. Yeah. You need to cut down on flashes, flash photography, because apparently flashes really do degrade. There's something called photo degradation of especially old pigments, and it's basically like releasing the sunlight over the course of a few milliseconds. That make sense. That's one flash. But if you add up all the tourists over the years, all of a sudden you're basically bringing the sunlight artificially into this cave, and it's degrading the pigment. So there's all sorts of stuff we learned from Laskao Cave. It's not being applied to Chauvai Cave, but yes, it is older, it is more awesome. And the very evidence of old cave paintings and all the artifacts and bones that are found in caves would suggest that there, in some distant past of prehistory, was a race of hominids that were cave dwelling hominids. They were a race of cave dwellers. That must be correct. Right. Ringo Star. Yeah. I saw the movie Caveman. Or was that a documentary? Was it a movie? Yeah. You're thinking of quest for fire. Yeah. Well, those are all great movies. Clan of the Cave bear. Well, I was setting you up, and you didn't well, no. Okay, thanks is the answer. They now believe that people through different periods of ancient history have dwelled in caves at times, but probably didn't, like, set up permanent residence in caves. Yeah. And the big pivotal evidence of this is that the people who would have supposedly lived in caves at that time were all nomadic huntergatherers. Sure. They wouldn't have been stationary in any kind of dwelling. Yeah. They got to go out and find the meat. Right. So there was no such thing as a species of hominid that you could say our cavemen. Right. Those were the cavemen. All the other ones just lived. However, most of the people who are alive in what we're talking about, the Paleolithic era, which went back from about 2 million years ago all the way up to about 10,000 years ago, that's the Paleolithic era. Yeah. They lived in all sorts of different kinds of shelters. Caves being one of them. Sure. Yeah. One reason to go into a cave is obviously and we've covered this is, I think, our third yeah. The cave suite. Cave suite, yeah. Biospeliology, which is awesome. Spelunking. Yeah. And then this one cave follows. Who thought that we would do a three part series on caves? Ever? Well, and this covers cave art, such that this will probably be it, don't you think? Is there anything else? I can't think of anything. No, not really. Nick Cave. Maybe we can podcast on him. So some reasons to go into a cave to begin with, obviously, is to protect yourself from the weather. I think it's probably the leading and it's raining. Let's go inside that room. Yeah. It's not raining in the cave. Yeah. To protect yourself from animals. Because if you go back and listen to our biosphere ilogy, only certain animals are in caves. Very few and not a lot of, like, big, nasty man eaters. Although back then, they would have run into cave bears. Clan of the cave bear. I don't know if saber tooth tigers were cave drillers, but I've seen a lot of Flintstone episodes, and from what I understand, they did go into caves. Of course, you would run into the proteus salamander, which you would not want to run into. Remember the three foot Long island salamander? Do I remember white nightmares, like once a week? Yeah. I don't think it'd do anything to you, but man alive. Yeah. I wouldn't want to see that thing. Like you wake up looking face to face with that eyeless monster. Yeah. But protection from animals, protection from weather, but protection from other people wasn't really a big reason, because this is good to know. They kind of got along and helped each other in general. Yeah. There's something called Paleolithic war lists. Yeah. Like the concept of war, organized war is apparently only maybe twelve to 16,000, 18,000, maybe years old. I think probably once people started getting comfy is when they started wanting to fight each other. Back then, they were just trying to survive. Yeah. Well, there's a whole idea that agriculture and sedentary existence is what led to warfare. I want what that guy's got. Exactly. Yeah. Basically. And it led to surpluses. So people fared over surpluses. That makes sense. You're starving over here and they've got all this grain over here. So you go kill all those people and take their grain. We should do A History of War. That would be good. That would be good. But obviously there were scraps in the Paleolithic. I mean, it wasn't all like wine and roses. Yeah. You try getting along with Ron Livingston now. It's not his name. Oh, everybody gets along with Ron Livingston. He's from office space. Right? Yeah. The other guy. Ron perlman. Yeah. That's a pretty good mess up. There were scraps every now and then, obviously, over territory or food or fire. But it wasn't like, hey, let's go to war with this tribe. We don't like them or we want what they've got. Because the consensus among anthropologists, apparently is that war is relatively recent. It's not that ancient. It's certainly not as ancient as a lot of the cave art we run into. 32,000 years. Yes. You've got shelter from the elements. Sure. Protection from animals, my steady temperature. That's a big one. Yeah. Because a cave typically is about in the 50s degree. Yeah. So if you are in a cave and you're living there and it's summertime, you are sitting pretty. Oh, yeah. If it's wintertime, depending on where you are. So you're in northern Europe, you're still sitting pretty. Sure. All you have to do is build a little bit of a fire and hope you don't smoke yourself out. True. And you're in some climate controlled luxury, especially for the Stone age. Yes. One reason that everyone didn't live in caves, and this is something I learned when I went on my Caving experience, which is detailed in the Speed Lunk episode, is that even though there's tons of caves, not a ton of caves are like, great to live in. Like a lot of them you might walk right past because it's just a hole in the ground. You have no idea. There's an underground cavern. A lot of them are inaccessible. A lot of them have an active, so that means they have water, which isn't super hospitable. No, it'll flood. Yeah. You don't want to be in there when it floods. Yeah. Generally they're not like these huge cavernous, like, oh, it's a big underground home. Well, plus, also there's a lot of gravel slopes, which if you stand on them, you can fall and die. You learn that pretty quick. Yeah. There's a cave dweller, lots of different exits and entrances and shafts and things like that. They can be misleading and confuse you and dark get you lost to your death, apparently. Just a couple of dozen feet. I don't remember. There's the light zone. The twilight zone in the dark zone. Yes. And I don't remember where the twilight zone ends in the dark zone begins, but once that dark zone begins, there's no light. Like, no light. And like you said, you can't start a bunch of fires because you can die from smoking yourself out. Yeah. You can hit your head on stalag tight. That's true. Yeah. So it's not the most common thing to find, like, a great cave for ten or twelve people to live in, but when they found them and they needed them, they would dwell in them. Right. And again, that's one reason. There are several reasons why people didn't just live in caves all the time, but another reason is because they knew of other ways to live. They could stretch animal hides over structures. They built earth and dwellings where they would build like, a lean to or something and then pack Earth over it, which is another way to control the climate or temperature in that little dwelling. And again, they were nomadic. They were following herds of bison and mammoths. It's a big, beautiful world, too, let's not forget. Yes. Why would you want to go live in a cave your entire life when you've got the run of the place of planet Earth and all it has to offer? You know, if there was a hominid that could be considered cave dwellers, though, it would probably be the Neanderthals, as we understand right now. It wasn't too terribly long ago that we discovered a new species of human ancestors. Well, at least they were contemporary with modern humans, the Denisovans. They're a type of hominid that lived in the 30 to 50,000 years ago at the latest, I think, maybe. Okay. And there's a cave in Croatia, I believe, where they discovered a molar, and they thought, well, no, they discovered a finger bone, and they thought it was Neanderthal or human. Okay. And they ran the DNA test, and they're like, this is neither. What is this? So they named it it's a Denisova Cave or Dennis Cave, one of the two. And they named this new species of hominid, the Denisovans. And then they looked at the human genome, and they're like, oh, we apparently in our bread with them because we have a little bit of Denisovan in all of us. Really? For most of us, yeah. People who stayed in Africa and didn't disperse, like Neanderthals or other modern humans, too, apparently didn't have the opportunity to mix with Denisovans or Neanderthals. So typically people of European descent. Native American descent. Right. They will have Neanderthal and Denisovan in them. But this cave in Croatia has evidence that these Neanderthals humans and Denisovans possibly shared these caves at the same time. Isn't that crazy? They did about yeah. They didn't necessarily sit around a campfire with one another. That's what I picture. But they may have been using the cave within the same year or something like that, depending on the season. Yeah, I pictured them making s'mores and saying, how do you get your back so straight? But I mean, think about it. If they were breeding, then maybe it wasn't those caves. Terry either laughed at that or she's choking on some food or both, perhaps. So, yeah, the Neanderthal was all over Europe and during a glacial period, so obviously they got harsh climates, so they might want to poke into a cave every now and then and warm up. Right. And there are a couple of strategies that archeologists believe were used back then. The circulating mobility and radiating mobility and circulating was and I kind of like this idea had several temporary camps kind of scattered all over the region, and it's kind of like just having different homes, and you would just go from place to place and live in your little home and hunt and gather. It's the same thing the ultra wealthy do today. Exactly. Or radiating mobility was when you had one main camp and you would just go out as far as you could to hunt and gather from that camp. Right. So you had other shelters along the way. I don't know. I thought the radiating mobility was just the one camp, and you came and went to that camp every day, and that was the difference. I see. Is that right? It's possible. I think that's right. And apparently some of these camps were in fact caves at times. Right. So they were using caves for sure. They were doing something else, too. They were creating art in these caves. Boy, were they? Which has people baffled. All right. Caveart. Yeah. And if you have in your mind, caveart is like super primitive, like, you know, is that a buffalo or is that a giraffe? You should go just Google the caveart in those two caves especially. Oh, yeah. Calvin Bay Chauvin. Yeah. One of the things that Herzog talks about that they figured out, if I remember correctly, is that the torchlight, the flickering torchlight, produces movement of these animals. Interesting. And they're wondering whether that was intentional or not. And they think it probably was intentional because they make a little movie pronounced. Yeah, interestingly. But it's like legit art and legit talented painters, when you look at this stuff, it's pretty amazing. They hadn't discovered perspective yet, so it's all flat, two dimensional. But first of all, they're creating these things in utter dark by torch light. Yeah. Using earthen pigments like ochre for yellows and oranges charcoal. Charcoal for black. What's the red one? I think for red, they used iron oxide. Okay. And they use charcoal and manganese for black. They're using very primitive brushes in the dictionary sense of the word. Yes. Or they're early airbrush artists, essentially, because they're blowing this pigment through a tube or just out of their mouth, right onto the walls. Yeah. And then they're also using their hands and their fingers. But you're right, there are some especially when you take all this into consideration, it makes some of the art that was made just staggering. Yes. Apparently they would use to some of the texture of the cave itself. Like if there was an indentation not an indentation, but what's the opposite of an indentation? Bump. Yeah. If there was a bump that looked like a rhino horn, they would incorporate that as the rhino horn. And all of a sudden, you had I mean, it's not quite 3D, but it's definitely more than flat. Yeah, right. They're like, it's not perspective, but it's going to have to do. They now have evidence in some of these 30,000 year old caves of scaffolding that they would use. Oh, I hadn't seen that. Yeah, it's pretty cool. And principles of stenciling. Early principles of stenciling. And apparently when Picasso visited Lascal, he said to his guy, they've invented everything and he was just, like, blown away, basically. Like, I'm just copying these early hominids. Right? It's pretty amazing. It's about right, too. Yeah. And actually, I don't know, casa is all right, but some of these cave dwelling, they haven't beat, maybe. Yeah, they didn't look funny, they didn't have one eye, they didn't wear berets. So most of the subjects of cave paintings that have been discovered so far, and there could be tons and tons of undiscovered caves like the one at Chauville, wasn't discovered until 1996 because at some point in the past, a rock fall happened and closed the cave off to view and happened to be discovered by some hikers. Man, can you imagine being the person that discovered that? Yes, it would have been pretty cool. Amazing. Most of the caveat that has been discovered so far depicts herd animals. Yes, by a lot of animals. By and large, they're herd animals. They're bison, they're buffalo, they're mammoths, things like that. There's very few images of vegetation, very few images of humans. The images of humans there are tend to be things like fertility idols. Like female fertility idols. Yeah. And there's a theory out there that those were painted by adolescent boys. Oh, really? Yeah, it's like basically Early Club magazine or something like that. And that may or may not be correct. Especially when they found that in France and Spain a lot, possibly the majority of cave art was done by females they recently discovered. Oh, really? The hand ones? Handprints. They figured out recently that most of those are female hands because of the giveaway of the 6th finger that only females have. There's an article that I can recommend that actually is what inspired Bernard Herzog to make his documentary called First Impressions. It was in The New Yorker in 2008 by Judith Thurman. And it's super awesome. And she basically says there's a couple of camps when it comes to caveart experts, those who can't resist advancing a theory about the art, and then those who say there never will be enough evidence to support one. So you're all just sort of making up these theories. Yeah, I think that's healthy. That second camp is much healthier because it is all theories. But I like the theories, though. Yeah. And I don't think we should just be like, we'll never understand these, so let's not even try. Yeah, I think we should just remember that when we are trying to understand them, they're all just guesses and not even really educated guesses at that. Yeah, I think my theory of why there are animals mostly is because it was super important to their survival and maybe it was some communication to leave for another person later or to each other, maybe. Yeah. There's lots of buffalo in this area, so get to hunting or don't hunt these guys, because I just killed a bunch of them by forcing them off a cliff. It was awesome, by the way, to see, but there's not that many less, and we need them to keep breathing, or I'm an eight year old Neanderthal, and I was a naked lady. Yeah. Here's a naked buffalo for your pleasure. Yeah. There's also lots of theories that these things were supernatural somehow, like they were trying to invoke the animal spirit for a successful hunt or gain some sort of power by creating an image of the animal. And it could have also just been like, this is what I see in my everyday life, and I have this desire to create art. So that's the subject I'm going to make is this animal that I am thinking about a lot because I have to hunt it for sustenance. Yeah, that makes sense. It's a conversion between this innate desire and the everyday life. Right. And that's bison on cave walls. Yeah. Well, some of them are pretty detailed, and some are life size. It's like they really took a lot of time. It wasn't something they just dashed off in a matter of hours. And they're using these torches, too. It's not like a modern electric torch known as a flashlight, also, but they're like stone torches with, like, a little divot in the top and some animal fat put in there, and then they light the animal fat, which I'm sure in and of itself is quite a task. Sure. So yeah, there was a lot of effort put into this, a lot of detail. Gathering the pigments, I'm sure, wasn't an easy feat, especially if you're doing, like, a lifesize bison. How long did it take to gather all that ochre? Sure. It's not a quick thing. And it's not just paintings. They found jewelry and other, like, engraved bone and ivory, and they think they probably engraved wood, too, but that obviously wouldn't survive that long. Right. But they suggest early religious belief and that they think they might have buried people with some of these things. Yeah. So it's amazing stuff. And unfortunately, when there's no written history, there's a lot of speculation. But I don't know, it's fascinating to me. Yeah. Their history has been largely lost. It just happens to be preserved in the caves. But since they weren't just a strictly cave dwelling society, we're only seeing a portion of their culture right. Because the rest of it was in animal skin shelters and earth and lean tubes that have been totally lost because they are exposed to the elements or caves that were flooded out and washed away, too. Well, that's why there's only, like well, there's more than that, but the two big daddies there's only two. No, there's another one. There's one called Altimira. Really? In Spain. Steely Dan had a song about it. The Caves of Altamira. And is it loaded with art? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, there's plenty more than that. It's just Lescoe is the most famous one, and then Chauvelin is the most recent most famous one. We get the Herzog, but there are others. All right, what about troglodytes? We should mention that. That's a great word to call somebody. Yeah, it always reminds me of Trilobites. You remember the little weird kind of insect, armor plated fossilized insect. No. I'll show you Trilobite. Okay. It was one of the earliest footed animals. Scary looking, really. But that's what I always get, the two confused. Chocolate. I mean, cave dweller. Yeah. Literally someone who lives in a hole or cave. Yeah. Named after there were apparently some West African tribes that the Greeks came in contact with, and they lived in cliff caves, and they were called truglet it or truggled it. Well, it's a nice insult that you can throw around these days and some sort of intelligent instead of calling someone like, a DBAG and say, he's a Troglody. I got Jerry too. Man, you guys are on the same wavelength today. I guess so. I guess we can fast forward down to the present day. Yes. Well, modern let's not quite go into present day. I think we need to give a shout out to the Anasazi and the Pueblos word. Cliff dwelling peoples from the 12th century ish of the southwestern United States, who basically showed up and started carving into cliff faces, carving out caves, and lived there. Oh, they built their own caves. Yeah, you should see some of these. Look up, like, just look up cliff dwellers us. And you'll see some really neat they had, like, whole cities wow. Like, carved out into these cliff faces that you could only reach by ladders. That sounds really dangerous. It was, but it was also very well defended and certified because people just be like, I'm not going up there to fight those guys. Yeah. I'm not climbing that ladder. It's crazy. Can we talk about Mount Hebron? Are we there yet? Yeah. Okay. That's in the West Bank in the Middle East, and a lot of clan of Palestinians live in this network of caves that have been around for about 100 years that their forefathers built. But of course, because it's in the West Bank, there's some disagreement over who should be there. Of course, it's been claimed by Israeli settlers as well, and the army has threatened to remove the people. I don't know what the current state is. I looked it up. I couldn't find it. The last I saw was that they basically designated a militarized zone. Really? Which meant that the Palestinians living there needed to leave. But are they still in there? I don't know. The most recent thing I could find was from 2005. Really? So I don't know. All right, well, southern Spain, is that what you're talking about? Nearby? I don't know if Altima is in southern Spain, but it's definitely in Spain. But there are, like, a natural cliff or cave dwellings that were carved out into even further cave dwellings in Spain. Got you. And have basically been continuously inhabited at one time or another. Now, there's a large homeless population there, apparently. Right. I mean, Spain's got, like, 25% unemployment, I'm sure. Really? The cave dwelling populations increase proportionately. Wow. Cappadocia in Turkey has an elaborate cave system, and it's not a very friendly place. There's not a lot of vegetation that's been described as lunar. Have you seen pictures of this? Yeah. Amazing. It's really amazing. Just the natural landscape itself is amazing. And then if you look closely, you're like, oh, those pock marks are caves like homes. Yeah. And these were manmade. These were carved out for people to live in, which is I guess we didn't even say. I guess that's the other type of cave. You can either find one or you can make one. Yeah. And by making one, I think anytime you kind of enhance or extend a natural cave, I would guess that would be man made, too. Yeah, probably so. But in Cappadocia in Turkey, anchorites, which were early Christians who were hermits yeah. They inhabited these caves and made the first dwellings. And then when the Christians were persecuted, they were joined by a lot more people, and they actually built underground churches that became an underground city. Have you seen these pictures? They're amazing. Just the masonry and the artwork that they made of just hewn from the rock that's still intact today. And apparently it was abandoned and then forgotten for a while and then rediscovered. But that was pretty neat to find. Well, I got another documentary for you like no place on earth. Have you seen that one? No. There was a guy in 1993, a cave that was exploring this cave in the Ukraine, and he found, like, shoes and medicine bottles and things. Well and he was like, wait a minute, this isn't paleolithic at all. This looks like it was from the 1940s. And it was. And it turns out there was 38 members of different Jewish families hid in this cave during the Holocaust for 511 days. Well, they lived underground for over a year and a half, and some of these people are still alive, and they found them. Do they still live in the caves? No. Okay. No. They lived there for a year and a half in the Holocaust. I got you. But they had never told their story. They just kept it a secret. Well, because they were like no one would believe it. Plus, also, in case they ever needed to go back to the caves well, they did go back. They took them back to the caves. No, I'm saying if they ever had to go back to the caves, you want to keep the cave secret because it was the first time, but it's pretty powerful. And they take some of these survivors back to this cave where they haven't been since the Holocaust. Wow. And they all survive, too. Really, really great documentary. That's cool. Yeah, very cool. Like, no place else. Like no place on earth. Okay. Or, like, no place else. There's also, apparently, a trend in parts of Europe to buy old manmade cave homes is this a thing? And dress them up. I saw this and I was like, really? I didn't double check, but I could see this. Yeah. I mean, this is a grabster. So he's good on his facts. Yeah. Outfitting them with electricity, installing modern plumbing, getting the ventilation system going, and just turning it into a vacation home. Yeah. Putting it on tile floor. And there's always the cave home. Weirdos. Yeah. Well, if you're seeing the shows on bizarre houses right. If you're a green person yeah. You could do a lot worse than build yourself a cave home, because the environmental impact is so much lower. It requires much fewer building materials. If you can deal with very low natural light and not go crazy, then a cave might be suited for you. If you can deal with the damp and moisture, cave might be suited for you. Yeah. And I shouldn't have said weirdos. It's okay to eat their own, but any time I see those shows of, like, extreme bizarre homes, just shoot the TV. This guy made a house out of, like Bob Guule was on it. Yeah, pretty much. I've never been in, like there was a cave house near us growing up, actually. Really? Yeah. It was when they built into the side of Earth. Where? In Stone Mountain. Is it still there? I assume so. Is it built in the Stone Mountain? No. Okay. And it was, like, kind of the people go by there and look at it and stuff. And even as a kid, I thought it was kind of dumb. Did you ever know Jack McBrayer when you were younger, kenneth from 30 Rock? He's from Stone Mountain. Conyers oh, really? Yeah, in the show, he's from Stone Mountain. Oh, really? Yeah. One of the other writers for 30 Rock, though I can't remember his name, I think went to reading. Is that right? Cool. But no, I didn't know. Jack Mcfarl. Got you. I wish. You got anything else? Oh, yeah. The last thing. One of the other benefits of a cave home, it's very difficult to break into, which is sad, because that is not the reason why they were initially used in paleolithic. Garrett but it's a quality point now. That's true. How far we see where was it that guy that built a house underground? No, I've seen those before. I've seen, like, missile silos converted into homes and things like that. This one was for sale recently. I can't remember who sent it to me, but he basically built it's not like a weird silo house. It's like a home he just built underground. Like, when you go down there, he's got paintings of the outside world on all the walls. It was this rich guy who built it, I think, as, like, a shelter in case something bad happened. And so there's pictures of, like, rolling fields. And when you're underground, obviously you can tell it's a painting, but it doesn't feel like some cave. It's like just a regular house built underground. Well, there's a theory that we're going to end up living underground because eventually arable cropland will become so valuable that we will basically be forced to inhabit the opposite of skyscrapers. They'll be going down instead of up because we'll need the land on top for crops. Didn't we do one on why don't humans live underground? Yeah, I guess I could be part four, then. I guess so. It's not really a cave. Yeah, that's true. This is the cave suite. All right, so let's see. You don't have anything else? I got nothing else there. If you want to learn more about cave dwellers, you can type cave dwellers into the search bar athowstuffworks.com and I said search bars means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this. We keep making the same mistake with acceleration. Oh, yeah. And I'm tired of it. If we ever say this again, I'm going to put us both in time out. You'd think Jerry would be paying attention, but I don't know why we keep making this mistake. But in the solar sales episode we talked about, in fact, I think it was you this time. Said something about the acceleration will kill you or the speed will kill you, or something going that fast. Yeah, I'm sure it was me. We got a lot of emails, and this was one of the nicer ones. Heads up, guys. On a few things, including on the solar sales, there's been some misunderstanding between speed and acceleration. Common belief is that traveling at high speeds is taxing on the body. Not true. It is the acceleration and not the speed which is dangerous. Take as an example, traveling in a car, changing your velocity from zero to 100 very short time results in a large acceleration. This is where you get that feeling of being crushed into your seat. But once you keep that constant speed, that feeling goes away. Same thing for a plane. Notice when you accelerate on the Tarmac, it's pretty intense, but once you're up in the air, you barely feel a thing. You think we'd know this. I know all sorts of research on the rocket fled test and acceleration, and it's just misspeaking in the moment. We know this. If I may interrupt for a second, I ran across this designer's Euthanasia roller coaster. What? It was basically this guy design. It's all conceptual, obviously. It's slightly tongue in cheek, but it was designed to kill you. Like the roller coaster was designed to kill you to go out with a thrill. Yeah. And he describes at what point you will die and from what. Basically, it's like you are going upside down so fast, the acceleration is so great that it basically keeps your heart from pumping. Wow. And just to make sure you're dead, he added, like, six of those loops. Right. But it starts with this huge hill. I can't remember what it's called. I think if you look up Euthanasia roller coaster, this guy's design will come up. It's pretty interesting. But it would be from acceleration, not speed. Yeah. Wow. That's a lot of work to put into a killing machine. I would destroy a length of rope and a sturdy beam. Right. You wouldn't be a successful designer, probably. So then he puts it in the context of the solar sale and says only very small accelerations are involved. So a human traveling in such a ship would experience minimal forces. So hope it clears it up a little bit. Beyond rocking it, guys. Thanks a lot. That is from Niraj. From Australia. Mauritius. Niraj. Thank you. We appreciate that. We will never make that mistake again. I disagree. I'm sure we will. Speed will kill you. Where is Northern Ireland? Great Britain? UK. England. We've been getting that one wrong forever, too. Yeah. There's only so much information a human brain can hold everybody. And we're trying to fill it with things like cave dwelling back and stuff like that. Yeah, it was the bass player for Poison. I can't get rid of that. Do you know that? Yes. Bobby Dahl. So there's CC. Who's the guitarist? Fred Michael. Bobby Dahl is the guy. He sounds like the drummer. You remember him, right? No. Ricky Rocket. Oh, wow. Yeah, now I do. I didn't even like poison. That's what's so funny. Poison is good. I wasn't a fan. They were good. Let's see if you want to know more about Poison. I already did that part, didn't I? Sure. If you want to get in touch with us how about that? Yes. You can tweet to us at xyskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com. Stuff you should know you can send us an email to stuff podcast@howtoforce.com. Stuffycheatnow is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts myheartradio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
5ab974c4-416f-11ec-8b4e-43f581059cf7 | What are blue laws? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/what-are-blue-laws | Blue laws are laws that restrict certain activities on certain days. Are they antiquated? Yes! Are they still around? In some places, yes! | Blue laws are laws that restrict certain activities on certain days. Are they antiquated? Yes! Are they still around? In some places, yes! | Tue, 09 Nov 2021 15:22:24 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=9, tm_hour=15, tm_min=22, tm_sec=24, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=313, tm_isdst=0) | 48009370 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W, Chuck Bryant. And, of course, the greatest the goat. Jerry is with us as well, quietly lurking in the background. The greatest goat. The greatest. How are you doing? I'm doing good. Chuck, this is one of your picks, but I think I might be a little more enthusiastic about this one than you. Why do you say that? Because I said, this is boring before you recorded a little bit. It may have something to do with it, and then me saying, oh, no, I think it's pretty interesting. Oh, I don't think it's really that boring. And it was my pick. Yeah. What made you choose that? Well, we're talking about blue laws, and just very quickly, blue laws are laws from ancient times that have carried over still in some places to modern day America and other countries as well, I guess that restrict certain activities on certain days. But generally in the United States, we think of blue laws are things that you can't do on Sundays. A lot of times, they're vices. Like, you can't drink or buy alcohol until sometimes at all or until certain times. Right. Or maybe restrict working or gambling or just various things. But we had our own blue law, one blue law, at least on the books in Georgia until just a few years ago, you could not buy alcohol on Sunday at all. Yeah, I think Georgia was the last state to repeal a full Sunday prohibition on buying alcohol. Full prohibition. But then it passed by a ridiculous measure, 98%. But you still can't buy booze before, I think, noon on Sunday. Right. And that's weird. And it seems like if you step back, if you were an alien, let's say, right? And you came down and you're like, that's a great one. Let's say you're mort from work. Right? Okay. That's what you just reminded me of. Jazz Bot. And you show up with your super cool block color puffy vest, and you say, I want to familiarize myself with laws. This one makes sense. This makes sense. What, you can't buy alcohol before noon on Sundays? That doesn't make any sense. That was my impression of Morgan. If he dug a little deeper, it would become obvious that it makes a ton of sense if you're coming at it from the vantage point of a Christian in the Western Hemisphere who observes Sunday is the day of worship and rest. Right? Sure. Outside of that context, it doesn't make sense. And therein lies the rub. There's the big push and pull between people who are like, america is founded essentially on the idea and promise of a separation of church and state. We're supposed to keep those two separate. So we shouldn't have the state making laws that enthusiastically support one of the tenets of this one particular church Christianity, which is you should not be doing a whole lot of stuff on Sunday, and you should probably be going to church and other people who say, no, it's actually a really good thing to do this. Even if you don't believe in religion, even if you don't go to church, blue laws actually still help us out. Right? There have been arguments, including, as we will learn all the way up to the Supreme Court, that say, well, it may have started religious, but there are many secular benefits to sort of forcing families to all be off work on the same day at gunpoint. Go play together, right? Take a walk. So I propose we talk about the history of blue laws first and then kind of get into some of the wackier ones and then talk about legality and so on and so forth. You could call what I'm doing now the table of contents. Do you agree to this table of contents? So are you saying you want to skip ahead to the where did blue laws come from? That is my proposal. Okay. I love you. Spring in this stuff on me. Spring. I am flexible, though. I know, nimble. I know crazy. All I have to do is shuffle some paper here. You're 18. I mean, it makes sense because if you are an outside observer, even if you're an inside observer, you might not realize how ancient that the blue laws are and that they actually conceivably. They don't necessarily predate Christianity, but they're pretty old. How about that? Well, yeah, I mean, anyone who grew up going to church knows about the Ten Commandments and knows that that Fourth Commandment says, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy or and keep it holy. And depending on what religion you are, that could be a different day. Judaism Saturday. If you're 7th day Adventist, that's Saturday. Yeah, but Christianity at a certain point between the second and fifth centuries were like, yeah, let's distance ourselves from Judaism, and let's move our day to Sunday, right? That way we can have our own day. We can tell everybody they're observing the wrong day, right? And it's a win win. Yeah. There's also the knock on effect of taking over Sunday from the pagans who observed Sunday as the day to worship the sun, hence the name of Sunday. So it was basically total and complete encroachment and actually moving the the day, Sabbath day to Sunday that caused that. That's pretty interesting. I hadn't known that before. So now we have, like, the Christian saying, okay, everybody change the plans. Like that guy in the Fidelity commercial, change of plans. I haven't seen that. Oh, man, he sounds like a Bond villain, and it's crazy. So the point was that the Christian said, okay, everybody, the Sabbath is now on Sunday. And then they followed that up with really enforcing that originally Jewish tenant, which was basically observed a day of rest and worship on the Sabbath and don't do anything else. Right. And we don't know exactly when the first laws were enacted, but it could have been and this is the grabster that helped put this one together for us. So thanks to Ed for that. But possibly in 363 Ad at the Council of Laodosia, I would say. Laodicea? Laodicea. That's my name. Right. I thought that a might be silent, but weren't you raised Baptist? You don't know about the Council of Laodicea? I've never heard of it. Surely you're joking. I am joking. All right. Because that was a meeting of leaders in the Christian religion who said, we need to get some laws on the books. I'm surprised I hadn't heard of it, but I hadn't. Or possibly the first laws were from ancient Rome and I saw various Roman emperors who could have been responsible for these. I saw Constantine in 321. Yeah, I think I saw one of the other dudes, but I got that from the Valdosta Times. Take that or leave it. That's right. So you had a bunch of Christian rulers, essentially, is the upshot of all this that kind of took over and started issuing these proclamations and decrees and stuff about observing the Sabbath. Right? Yeah. For like, hundreds of years. This happened in various ways, various losses. You can do this, you can't do that. I think the Protestants were a little less into it, but not really. I mean, they were still into it. I think it would be disingenuous to say the Protestants were just fine with it. Well, supposedly with doing whatever on Sunday. Right. I think it wasn't that they weren't cool with just not having a Sabbath day of some sort. Martin Luther wasn't big into following the old time rules. And he was saying, It doesn't have to be Sunday. Don't be ridiculous. But do a day a week. But the irony of the whole thing is that Protestants would come to be like some of the biggest enforcers and writers of blue laws in America, especially as Sunday being the Sabbath day. Like defending Sunday in particular. Right. And so these get enacted there. Obviously, when the colonies are being formed, they make their way over there. The Puritans were like, oh, great, this is perfect. This is right up our alley. We're all about restricting people whenever Sunday that's fine. We'll restrict people on Sunday. And by the time the colonies rolled around, they were pretty well in Scottsd. Such that there's even a story, I think you can really do much of anything on Sundays in the colonial times. Right. There's a story from 1789 where supposedly George Washington himself was tracked down or at least stopped by a sheriff for traveling on a Sunday even though he was traveling to church. Yeah. Because the premise was that saddling up your horse or connecting a team of horses to a carriage or whatever that constituted labor. And you weren't supposed to be doing any kind of labor on Sunday. And speaking of the colonies, took I turned up something about Jamestown's blue laws. They had their first blue law enacted in 1610, like, right out of the gate. One of the first things they said was, here's some blue laws. Everybody gather around. So basically you couldn't do like you were saying anything on a Sunday, and attendance at church was mandatory on Sunday. So the blue laws actually made a lot more sense in that context. Right. Did they call role? I'm guessing there was probably some sort of, like, social people snitching on one another kind of thing. Right. Like, you notice he's not here. Right, right. But in that context, the blue law makes more sense because it's like you're supposed to be in church, and if you do anything other than church, here are your punishments. Right? Yes, sure. But the punishments were really severe. Like, the first time you were caught doing anything but going to church on a Sunday, you would go a week without food. You got your food from the village. The village all gathered and shared food. It was super socialist. Right. And you were disinvited from that party until the next Sabbath, you did not get food, and that usually was enough to straighten anybody out. The second time, you would lose your allowance for a week. Okay. And then you would also be whipped at the stake. The third time, they just killed you. The third time they caught you doing something other than going to church on the Sabbath, even, say, after you've been to church that day, they would kill you. That was the punishment for it. So they were quite serious about that kind of thing. But over time, that kind of fell to the wayside, especially as America took up this project that was led by people like Thomas Jefferson called disestablishmentarianism. Right? Yeah. And that's from the original word, disestablishment. And then, of course, the very famous longer word that every elementary school student knows and can spell. It's the longest word. Is it still the longest word? I don't know. Anti disestablishmentarianism. Yes. Which I always thought was just like, what does that even mean? Is that a real word? But it's a real word. And now that we know what all this means, it makes perfect sense. Yeah, because disestablishmentarianism was that movement that basically said, look, we need to get the government out of the business of supporting churches because there's a lot more churches than there used to be when we were colonies, a lot of different Christian sects, and the government shouldn't really throw its lot into one against the other. That's a really English thing to do, because I think even in the 90s, there was a movement, or there's still a movement afoot in the UK to basically be like, okay, state, stop supporting the Anglican Church. There should be a separation. The Americans picked up on that very early on. And so that led to this, like, a bunch of laws and stuff that basically said we're supporting religious freedom, not casting our lot with one particular sector religion or another. So here in America, you can practice whatever religion you want and you can expect the government not to promote some other rival religion, somebody else's team over yours, because that's not fair. All right, you know what? That's a great cliffhanger. Okay, we'll take a little break here and we'll talk about what that resulted in right after this. All right, so here's where we are. The United States gets hit into disestablishment, which basically was, hey, we can't throw all of our eggs in one denominational basket because there are a lot of different denominations here and we respect them all as long as they're Christian. Basically. That's a parenthetical to that song title. What kind of happened was I guess there's no other way to say it other than Evangelicals Protestant. Evangelicals said. You know what? This is a great opportunity for us to really sort of grab the reins of power and to put our morals and our values on everybody else through law. Yeah, because every single average American wasn't like, yeah, government get out of the business of supporting churches and get into just freedom of religion. There are plenty of people this is the late 18th century, early 19th century, first half and 19th century. There are plenty of people who are like, no, you guys have supported my church forever. Let's just keep doing that. And so in that kind of sense of probably a certain sense of betrayal or loss of trust, a lot of religious leaders became political and stepped up that amazing word, anti disestablishmentarianism, which is fighting against that idea and basically saying, no, America supports Protestant churches. Basically, America is WASPy, is what they were trying to say. Yeah. And it's funny if you think that this sort of thing started happening in the 1980s that was just a re establishment. Like, it started happening in the 1780s. Really? Yeah. That was the anti disestablishmentarianism revival. That's right. They printed T shirts they did for Christian universities and they sold like hotcakes. I think they did. All right, here's what they're doing. They're trying to establish power. But there's a problem in that. As America grew, the economy grew and businesses grew. And it didn't necessarily jive with this shut everything down, one day of the week mentality. They were like, hey, there's money to be made on these days and there are things to do on these days off that you're sort of making a stake. So there was sort of conflict even way back then between, I guess, the secular and the religious. Yeah. And I mean, I think that's ultimately the thing that is the greatest tension at the heart of this, at least in America, this idea like, no, the whole purpose of government, the whole reason for everyone living is to make a lot of money for a certain select group of people survey to get back to work. What are you talking about? Taking the day off on Sunday? That's a full day. You could be making us profit. That became diametrically opposed to the idea of blue laws. And you had two really powerful institutions, the church or all of the churches that celebrated the Sabbath on Sunday, versus the captains of industry who are just now starting to really make ungodly amounts of money during the second Industrial Revolution in the United States. That's right. As well as Jewish people and 7th day Adventists and just regular secular people who are just like, no, we shouldn't be doing stuff like this at all. What is separation of church and state all about if we're still going to do stuff like this? I'm really glad you said that too, because one thing that blew laws do is make really strange bedfellows. So in league with the churchy types, you had labor unions and you still do. Actually, labor unions still typically tend to support blue laws because religious or not, their workers are still getting the day off on Sunday with their families. That's right. And on the other side, like you said, it's captains of industry along with 7th day Adventists and Jewish people, along with secular types. Those are not groups that you would normally put together on the kickball field or something. That's right. And they had a couple of names. The Sabbatharians were the Evangelicals, the Protestant Evangelicals, and like you said, labor unions and groups like that. And then the anti Sabbatharians were the others. And they kind of battled it out for a little while. And in the end, it turns out, and this should come as no surprise, there were more anti Sabbatharians who were like, no, we should not have these days off and we should separate church and state. But the Sabbatharians were louder and they were more fired up, basically. And they got people out to vote more and they got people to sign petitions more and to put more pressure on officials who decided these things. And so in the end, what they did, I don't know if it was a win win or a lose lose, the blue laws kind of stayed pretty firmly entrenched on the books. But the anti Sabbatharians were able to carve out certain exceptions, basically like, hey, we should be able to do this and this, and maybe stores can be open, but then the sabotage, but no alcohol whatsoever. So it kind of played out like this. I don't know if calling in a negotiation is the right term, but a long drawn out battle, let's call it a compromise. Sure. So the effect of all of this is that over time, it seemed like in the 20th century, it really started to erode. These exceptions got bigger and bigger and carved out more and more of these blanket blue laws that remember, originally started out as basically like, you cannot do anything on Sunday, and then it was like, except you can go and buy ice cream at the beach, or you can buy milk, but you're not allowed to buy anything to put milk in. Just all sorts of weird stuff that made the whole thing seem really arbitrary. And there's this idea like, okay, if you're going to the beach, you can buy ice cream at the beach, but if you went into town, you would not be able to legally buy ice cream. How does that make any sense? It doesn't. Well, it does in a certain way, depending on how you look at the role of government, and in this case, it is arbitrary. It does impact one group in town storekeepers in favor of another group, beachside ice cream vendors. Right. But if you believe that the role of government is in part not just to support the economic activity of the citizens of the United States, but instead to support their wellbeing as well right. Then it does make sense, because what they're basically saying is, okay, we want to encourage people to take that trip to the beach with their family on Sunday. And what makes a beach trip that much more enjoyable? Ice cream. I don't think I've ever had ice cream on the beach. I haven't either, but apparently it was like all the rage during the think I get it. I bet it's nice. Sure. I love ice cream and I love beaches. We got to try it sometime. We have to go to a beach and eat some ice cream very soon. Chuck. Okay, yeah, sure. So it makes sense in that respect, but yes, if you're one of those people who are like, no, these laws all need to make sense, they need to follow all the rules, then you probably have a pretty big problem with blue laws. Yes. Should we talk about a few of these blue laws still on the books? I think so. We mentioned Georgia. Like I said, up until just a few years ago, it was on the ballot to be allowed to buy alcohol on Sundays. But still, if you go to Sunday brunch, and this is the same, believe it or not, in New York until 2016, if you go to brunch on a Sunday, you couldn't buy booze at a bar or restaurant until noon. I think in New York they changed it to ten, but I think in Georgia, I don't really do brunch much anymore, but I think it's still noon. As far as I know, it's still noon. But yeah, I haven't done brunch in a couple of years now. So if you get the jump on things and you're like, oh, we got to beat those brunch crowds and get there at eleven, there's a reason the brunch crowds come later. And it ain't church. No, but church is the reason why they set that time on Sundays to start around noon, because it's like, okay, everybody has a reasonable chance to go to the morning services and then they can get drunk. Everyone wins, basically. It's funny, I remember growing up in the Baptist church, it was just sort of this implied agreement between the congregation, most of the congregation and the preacher that you wrap it up by noon because of lunch and football, basically. Totally. And there were some Sundays where the spirit was raging within the church and things would start to he'd be feeling it and things would start to go a little long and you would really since the shifting of bodies and looking at watches and the unease. The congregation usually like the dads that are like. All right. I'm glad everyone's feeling it and everything. But the Falcons kick off soon. Right? We need to get out of here. And I remember being a kid, like being like twelve years old and sensing that and being on the side of football. Yeah, that's funny. I have the opposite experience where I always dread somebody tying it up and going into overtime and preempting 60 Minutes on Sunday. It happened this past Sunday. As recently as that. I could tell at the beginning of the fourth quarter that the Cowboys and the Patriots were going to tie it up and go to overtime. And I, of course, was right. We could wait like an extra hour for 60 Minutes. Do you still watch 60 Minutes? Yeah, I watch it more than ever now. It's really great. I used to watch it as, believe it or not, as like, a high school student. I was really into it and maybe some in college, but I haven't really watched it in a long time. That's interesting then, because they had around that time, in the early 90s, they had a very famous piece on the Council of Laodicea. Did they still use that stopwatch? Yeah, totally. Good crew. They got a good crew together. Yeah. Are there any remnants? Anyone still around from the old days? Scott Pelle's on there. He's been on there for a while, I think. Right. See, that shows how long it's been for me. Is Morley Safer around? I don't know. I think Morley Safer might be dead. I think they're probably all gone. Anderson Cooper is on there, though. He's great, too. Sharon Alfonsi. Everybody on there is fantastic. They should have you on. There's no need for them to have me on. I'm just a fan. No, but that could be your next that could be like your retirement job, hosting 60 Minutes, doing pieces on 60 Minutes. Yeah, you'd be great. I don't know if that's true, but I appreciate the voters. How cool would that be? I can hear that ticking stopwatch behind you as you speak. I know. Makes me tense. Or it would make me tense if I actually worked for him. I think it would ruin 60 minutes for me, I'd just rather kick back and watch it. All right, yeah. Don't make me work so much. Some of the other really interesting blue laws, and we should say too, that there are blue laws on the books and a lot of places aren't enforced, and then there are blue laws on the books that are still enforced in Texas, Illinois, and I think North Dakota. I think it's North Dakota. You cannot sell a car or buy a car. I guess you could sell one or I wonder if you're breaking the law if you sell one, like on Craigslist or something. There's no car sales whatsoever allowed. And here's why. That one, I was like, okay, I do not get this one. And I had to search pretty far and wide for why. But apparently it was one of those things that's like a remnant from when you couldn't do anything. And then they started making exceptions and started making exceptions saying, okay, you can open this kind of store, you can sell this kind of item. And cars just never got accepted because the car dealerships didn't want that any longer. It made sense. Like they wanted a day off. It's really hard work. They wanted to give time off to their employees. They also didn't want to have to pay to keep the lights on and all that stuff an extra day. If even one dealership was allowed to stay open, then all of them would have to. Yeah. So if there was a state law that said no car dealerships can be open, then that gave the people in the car dealership industry that day off that they otherwise definitely would not have had. So it makes sense in that case, you know what I'm saying? Because McIntyre Hyundai would start selling. Exactly. And then everyone's like, you see what McIntyre is doing? We got to open up now. And in Texas in particular, they allowed for Jewish or 7th day Adventist car dealership owners by saying, okay, you don't have to close on Sunday, but if you don't close on Sunday, you have to close on Saturday. So one day out of the weekend, your dealership has to be closed. Which helped keep from promoting unfair competition. Right. Well, football is big in Texas. I wonder if it comes down to you, into college or into pro. I saw somewhere that the NFL played on Sunday because early on they couldn't compete with college games held on Saturday. But I'm not sure if that's true or not. That makes sense. And I think now they are almost expressly prohibited from having Saturday games in the NFL. Yeah. Because of an agreement with the NCAA. But I think there's the exception. I think at one point in the playoffs they have like one weekend where there's a Saturday game in like December or something like that. They're allowed to think so. It's like a law. I think so. Isn't that crazy? That's like a federal law that has something to do with broadcasting or something like that. The NFL plays in London occasionally now, too. And my buddy Justin from London was wondering, he was like, why are they playing these games at nine in the morning us time? Because they could have them at a more appropriate time in England. And I was like, Dude, that means it's because of advertising. That means from 09:00 A.m., they can lock up the entire TV day. Yeah, they did this past weekend. And they preempted CBS Sunday Morning, too. That's right. They can lock it up from 09:00 A.m. Till 430 or whatever. Yeah, it was a hell day, basically, this past Sunday. It was hellish for me. It was a hell Sabbath, I thought. You like football. No, no, I don't really watch football anymore, and I definitely have never been in the pro. I used to be into college. Yeah, all right. But that's fine. I don't poopoo it or anything like that. Yeah. I got you, Mane and Virginia. You're not allowed to hunt on Sundays. Makes sense. Maine is sort of we love our weird main or friends, but up until 1990, you couldn't shop in a department store on Sunday. That would make sense because department stores sold so many different items that they said it's just easier for you to stay closed on Sundays. Yeah, and it's interesting because there's the case of Bergen County, New Jersey, which here's the deal. In Bergen County, it's a holdover from the old days, but it has more to do with helping the mom and pop stores because I guess it was in the 1950s, bergen county was one of the first big suburbs outside of New York, and it was, I think, one of the first big areas of shopping mall retail experience kind of thing in the United States. I was trying to think of a different way to say that. It really is. The idea was, and still is, and when I said it a minute ago, we talked about mom and pop stores on Sundays, like having to pay employees. That's really what it came down to, was mom and pop stores were willing to close on Sunday so they could rest and chill out with their family or maybe go to church, and they wouldn't have to pay their employees, and they wouldn't have to pay as much electricity and just the cost of operating. But the big box stores moved in and they didn't care. They could afford to keep the lights on, they could afford to pay their employees, and they didn't want to lose that revenue. So all of a sudden, the mom and pop stores were getting crushed on Sundays by these larger chain stores and these shopping malls. And so Bergen County still is the one holdout in the United States, in Bergen County, New Jersey, where you can't shop basically on a Sunday. Right. And it's come up. Time and time again, and they keep saying no. Yeah, I think as recently as 2013, they couldn't even get enough signatures to get it under the ballot, let alone votes. I think they just like it. They do. And I saw it's not just because they know it helps mom and pop stores or it gives people a day off, but that apparently traffic around there is a living nightmare every other day of the week. So it's at least one day where traffic this one day. Yeah. The North Dakota Ban is really interesting. I think they had one of the last statewide bans on shopping, known as offenses against religion and conscience, repealed in 1991. But the exceptions are what's always strange. Their exceptions were ice cream, newspapers, cigars, medicine, of course, restaurants, hotels, and owner operated stores with three employees or fewer. Yeah, that is strange for sure, but I think it's not necessarily peculiar. I think that's how most blue laws ended up in states where they had prohibitions on shopping, because over time, a lobbyist would show up and one of their friends would end up as governor or legislature, and they would get their particular industry carved out as an exception. No, not that there are exceptions. I just think what's carved out is always really interesting to me. I found this article from 1985 when they repealed Texas blue laws. They were in force from 1961 85, and this article was just talking about how weird they were by 1985. And it said that you could go into a store and you could buy a blank video tape, but you couldn't buy one a video tape with something already on it, which is those little perks are so weird and interesting, and they made sense in some way, but then I'm sure somebody was like, that exception was made before there was even such a thing as videotapes. And then even now, it's even funnier because there's not videotapes any longer. They've already come and gone. Right, but like you're saying, it's all about who cares, like, what lobby cares the most. Like, the cigars thing in North Dakota just obviously somebody with a steak and a cigar company greased the right palms. Yeah. St, Maryland, as we'll see, had a lot of laws, a lot of restrictions on it, but they had all tobacco products were exempted because it was a huge tobacco state in, like, the mid century, during the mid century, last century. All right, I think we should take another our final break here, and we'll talk about whether these things are legal and what the supreme court and the feds have to say about all this, coming up. Okay, Chuck, so we're talking about legality because, like we said, anybody who takes even a cursory look at these laws can make a pretty great argument that these should not be on the books. Number one, the government shouldn't be regulating anything that has anything to do with religion. It certainly shouldn't be telling people who don't practice religion to observe this religious day. It's a big one. But then also they just don't really make a lot of sense. And that's another kind of litmus test for laws. They're supposed to be sensible and apply to basically everyone equally sure because this is America. Yeah. So you would think then that the Supreme Court would have taken one look at these things, have been like, get these out of here. Get them out of my face. And that is not the case because not only did the Supreme Court get its shot at ruling on blue laws as early as 1961, it has pretty much consistently upheld the legality and the constitutionality of blue laws ever since then. Yeah. And we should note that none of these are federal laws. They are all the most state laws, but many times even, like, local ordinances and city and kind of county laws. But I think it was McGowan versus Maryland v. Maryland in 1961, which went to the Supreme Court. And this you know, it's interesting that Maryland is the one that kind of keeps getting talked about because of their, I guess, their tobacco laws and then their beach scene. They want to sell that ice cream on the beach, definitely, and floaties and stuff like that. Right? Yeah. I think they went 81 in Maryland's favor saying that blue laws could stand. And Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote this opinion that basically says, yeah, it may have started out as religious, but as we said earlier, it serves the secular society and there's a benefit to everybody, basically to have a regulated day of rest. And William Douglas, I think it was the loan dissenter and basically, in his opinion, was like, that's a load of horse manure. Yeah, we all know what these are there for and, like, I'm not buying it. No. And Earl Warren, I don't know if his interpretation would be constructionalist or what, but in his opinion, he basically said the Constitution says that the government won't infringe on somebody's religious rights. And I don't see how anybody who is saying that they're being forced to take the day off has their religious rights being infringed upon. And Douglas is like, Come on, man, that's not what anybody's saying. They're saying that the government is basically supporting this Christian worldview of Sunday being the Sabbath by allowing these laws to enforce a day off on the Sabbath. And that is just how the government is supporting a religion. And that's not okay. But the Supreme Court is just, like I said, consistently upheld Warren's view that, no, these are actually okay because even if you're not a religious person, you're benefiting from them anyway. Yeah. And it seemed like William Douglas also wanted to make a point that he was like, we're so firmly ensconced in this Christian nation that we don't even realize Sunday shouldn't be different than any other day. And we have all these things in our society that treat Sunday different because it's such a Christian nation. And even though they're separation of church and state, we don't even realize that we're biased either for or against Sunday for those reasons. Yeah, a really good thought experiment I stumbled on was imagining the government decreeing tuesday is the day of rest for everybody. Yeah, exactly. And how bizarre that would seem to almost every single person in America. Yeah, our podcast would be over because that's when we respond. Yeah, but that really kind of supports Douglas point. You guys are really coming from this like it's so entrenched into your world view that you can't imagine Sunday is not a day of rest, and that's the day of rest. But that is a Christian belief. It's an ancient one, but that is at its root of Christian belief. And that if you are a separation of church and state type, that will drive you up the wall that there are such things as blue laws and they have been deemed constitutional. But see, I'm that way too. Like, that stuff drives me crazy. But as a secularist now, if I had a dollar for every time I complained about like, oh, come on, it's a Sunday. We all use Sunday as either an excuse to not do something or an excuse to do something. It's just become the national day. Right. I feel like, well, you're a Warren fan and you don't even know it. I read this really interesting article in Vox that was basically endorsing Warren's opinion. It was by this economist named Lyman Stone. It's called Why We Need Blue Laws. I think the title is a little longer, but if you search that, it'll turn this up. And Lyman Stone was basically saying like what Chief Justice Earl Warren is saying is actually a really progressive view of the role of government. And it was what I was saying earlier, that there's this interpretation that government can exist to help support the well being of its citizens. Right. And one way to do that is to say, hey, Sunday is a Christian day. Yeah. The churches are really making out like bandits with these blue laws. Bully for them. Over here. Come talk to me over here. You're still getting a lot out of this because you get the day off and your whole family gets the day off all at the same time. And trust me, you do not want to work seven days a week. This is a really great way for us, in a roundabout way, to make sure you have the day off. And that is something that is going to help you. And we as the government are interested in you not going crazy and shooting up your workplace because you work too much. Right. Ed points out something, too that I agree with. A bit of a paradox, though, with the blue laws. If you're giving people this day off together as a family, but you're also closing businesses that if that's your day to do stuff or to get stuff done, even then that's a paradox, because, all right, I've got Sunday off with my family, but I can't go to the mall if that's what you want to do if I live in Bergen County. Right. So Lyman Stone has an answer for that as well. What is the stoner have to say? Stoner says as follows basically TS. Yeah, the post office is closed on Sunday. Go take some time and mail it another day. Which, on the one hand, it's like there's a lot of people who have to take the bus and have to actually take time off of work and could conceivably get fired from their job for needing to go mail a package. I think Lyman Stone would say, well, you should keep the post offices open on Saturday. But the bigger risk to Lyman Stone is that if you keep some stuff open, like restaurants or something like that, you actually create a second class of workers who exist to serve the upper class of workers to get Sunday off. And after all, isn't that, like, pretty undemocratic and terrible to kind of separate people like that? Why not just close everything and give everybody everybody the same day off? Yeah, I feel that way sometimes when I'm doing something on a Sunday and someone has to work, and I remember having to work on Sunday, and I hated it. It comes home for me mostly, like, say, like Thanksgiving or something where people have to work for Black Friday or stuff like that. That to me, it's the same thing, but it's when it really sticks out to me. Well, this is something, my friend, that you would think that there are studies about commerce and economics, and surely they have proven one way or the other which is the best way forward. Right, right. The end. Well, they have done some studies, and it kind of depends on which study you're looking at as far as quantifying these effects and how they're measured. But when it comes to alcohol, that studies have shown that there are not more car accidents happening because people can drink on Sundays, and that's some people argue, like, hey, people aren't drinking. They may not be drinking and driving and then getting in car crashes, but that hasn't really turned out that way. Yeah, now that's pretty surprising, too, because a lot of these studies have turned up kind of counterintuitive things. There was a study conducted in Georgia. Georgia is a great test case because there's so many counties that have blue laws and other counties that don't have blue laws. So you can just compare these really similar populations with one another. And they found that if you have a county that has a blue law and one that doesn't, there's virtually no difference in alcohol consumption between the two. But there are like, little tiny changes. Like the employees in the county without a blue law might make slightly more money because they can work on Sundays. Or in counties that do have blue laws, liquor stores make a little bit less than their counterparts in counties without blue laws. Stuff you kind of expect. But the difference in alcohol consumption, I thought that was a little interesting. I guess people just load up more on Saturday night than they would if they lived in a county that wasn't dry on Sundays. Maybe they're hungover on Sunday. Maybe they just take it a little easier on Sundays. They have to work on Monday. Another counterintuitive effect as far as shopping goes in places like Bergen County is they have found that it doesn't decrease the overall retail experience in terms of dollars. I love that term now, the retail experience. Yeah. Because some people would argue, like, oh, if we close on Sundays, then we're just going to lose out on business. But I think they have found that when these laws are in place and people know that they're closed on Sundays, they just do their shopping Monday through Saturday. Right. Yeah. And they still buy the same amount of stuff. Exactly. I found one study from 2008 from MIT that was almost like, cartoonish in its results. Are you ready for that? They studied 50 years of repeal blue laws, and they found that repealing blue laws decreases church attendance and church donations significantly, although there's no other change in charitable activity. It's just churches who are basically now competing against other pastimes and activities, and the churches lose big time unless they have state enforced support for people to go to them in the form of blue laws. And they also saw that repealing blue laws led to an increase in drinking and drug use, and the increased drinking and drug use was most pronounced in those people who used to attend church but then stopped attending church after the blue laws were repealed. So basically everything that if you were into blue laws were afraid of, this 2008 MIT study said, like yeah, absolutely. It's as bad as you think, maybe even worse. Holy cow. Isn't that interesting? That's super interesting. Yeah. I guess the last thing we need to cover is why they're called blue laws. Yeah, indeed. There are a lot of theories. It says no one knows for sure, and I think that's probably true. But the one I've seen most often, although it is the Internet, so that really means nothing. Is that the Puritans? I saw that they wrote their laws in general on blue paper. Then I also saw where they wrote their Sunday law specifically on blue paper. That one makes sense more than the other. Yeah. The thing is, no historian ever in the world has ever turned up a real life example of one of these things. Right. So that one might be apocryphal. There's another one that ed makes a really good point that there's some slang terms that were in existence around the time that these laws started being called blue laws, about the end of the 18th century. And the two slang terms were blue nose and blue stocking. And both of them basically referred to a prudish, rigid person who was so miserly that they just saved money anyway they could. The one had a blue nose because they wouldn't cough up money for heating in the winter time, so their nose turned blue. And the other was that they had blue stockings because they used blue yarn to med their socks rather than getting new ones. But either way, it kind of like, paints a pretty good picture. Something tells me if you, like, saw somebody tip, they left and you're like, nice tip, blue nose. Right. They would probably think that's super offensive or something. Probably. And I'm not convinced there's not some really bad offense in there somewhere that we're just not seeing. It's possible, isn't there? Something to be taken offense to and everything probably blue nose. Ouch. You got anything else? I do not, sir. Well, if you want to know more about blue laws, start studying them. They are hilarious and entertaining. And since I said hilarious and entertaining, it's time, of course, for listener mail. I'm going to call this follow up, too. I don't know about that. Yeah, I think it was during the research bias episode, I talked about a certain breed. I'm sure it happens everywhere, but there's a certain breed of Southerner when they're being debated and presented with literal facts, they just go, I don't know about that. And that's sort of the end of things. And so this is from Rebecca. I was glad to see this email. Chuck talked about how much he hated it when people say, I don't know about that, when presented with evidence that contradicts their world view. There's a term for that. It's called a thought terminating cliche, almost a circle, which is a dismissive tactic. As a speaker, they will use it to end the debate when they encounter cognitive dissonance or when someone presents them with facts that run counter to their established beliefs. Other examples are, boy, I hate all these less agree to disagree. Yeah, sometimes it's like that's the only way to end a conversation. No, I think just say it a different way. There's something about that that I just don't like. Oh, so it's the cliche part you don't like more than the thought terminating part? It's both. But definitely if it was set in another way, I'd probably be more apt to accept it. How about let's continue to not agree on this forever, but both be okay with that? Yeah, there you go. That's just your opinion is another one, and it's all good. That's the worst. Yeah, especially when that's followed by bro and said by somebody who has a soul patch I unfortunately don't know what tactics there are to respond to such cliches and reopen discussion, but maybe an episode on intentional fallacies would be a great way to educate listeners on the rhetorical tactics the journalists, politicians and debaters used to sway the course of an argument. Anyway, it's all good. And that is a great email. That's from Rebecca in Chicago. Thanks, Rebecca. That was indeed one of the tops as far as emails we've received goes. Thank you for it. And if you want to see if you can put one up on Rebecca, let's hear it. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts myheartradio, visit the IHP radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
Why are honeybees disappearing? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/why-are-honeybees-disappearing | In this episode of Stuff You Should Know, Josh and Chuck examine the various factors that have caused honeybee populations to decline -- and what you can do to help the honeybees. | In this episode of Stuff You Should Know, Josh and Chuck examine the various factors that have caused honeybee populations to decline -- and what you can do to help the honeybees. | Tue, 19 Jan 2010 22:38:05 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=19, tm_hour=22, tm_min=38, tm_sec=5, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=19, tm_isdst=0) | 24214282 | 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. L w Bryant. This is stuff you should know. Oh, and hey, Jerry. Sorry. Jerry. Jerry is the unsung hero. Heroine. Yes. Little horse for a little monkey. What? It's an old Mr. Science Theater 3000 lawn. Oh, way through there. I thought she had a little horse and a little monkey or something under her. I'd be like, Jerry, what do you tell me? A little horse and a little monkey. She has a pony and a macaque with her. That's how we're starting this one. Why not? Okay. All right. Chuck? I have a pretty decent intro this time. Well, let's hear it then. Have you ever heard of the lost colony of Roanoke? I have, but I would like you to fill us in. Thank you. So back in the I think the early 17th century, roanoke was one of the very first colonies, if not the first American colony. Right. Yeah. In what is now North Carolina. Virginia. Right. And it was thriving for a little while. They had a nice little fort and I used to fight with the Native Americans and pretty normal early American colonial stuff, right. Sure. So, like I said, everything is going heavily along. And then about two years after the colony is established, an expedition bringing supplies comes along and they find the thing totally abandoned. No sign of life. I don't believe there is any dead bodies. Creepy. Or bones. Creepy. And the only trace of anything was the word crowatoan carved into one of the posts that made up the fort. You're kidding. I think there was a local tribe called the Crowatoan, but they were nowhere to be found. That's creepy, isn't it? Very creepy. This whole colony just vanished? Yeah. I thought you can say wolverines was spray painted on the front of it. But they think now that they may have been absorbed by another tribe, the Lumbi, which actually were completely alien to Whites until, I think, the early 18th century. Very late several decades after the colony at Row in Oak vanish. Right. And when the Whites did encounter and they said, hey, why does some of you look kind of white? And why are you building two storey theatch houses like we have in England? How do you know how to read? The Bible. Sure, right. Yeah. With this baseball thing. Exactly. So they think that the Lumbi tribe absorbed the colonists at Roanoke. Wow. That is among the very few lost colonies of human history. Yeah, sure. I'll tell you another species that has tons of lost colonies. Bees. Dude. Best setup ever. Really? Yeah, of course. Thanks, Josh. Really good. Yes. Josh. We are here today to talk about colony collapse disorder because bees are disappearing at an alarming rate, much like the people of the Roanoke colony right. And Chuck, I think that probably most of the people who listen to our podcast said, why do I care that bees are disappearing? I hate bees. They sting me and they chase me in my dreams. You know why? I do? Why? You want me to tell them? Yeah. Because bees are vital to almost any kind of vegetation you can eat. And not only that, let's say you're like, I don't eat vegetables, I eat meat. That's me all over. Did you know? Let me give you a little scenario that was posting this article, okay? Take the almond population, for example. My new favorite nut, as you know, is the almond. I know Chuck's crazy about almonds. They're so good for you. Beekeepers basically go to California every year with about 40 billion honeybees to pollinate the almond crop. Right. Every February. Every February. And over those few weeks, 80% of the world's almond crop is pollinated, and about a billion dollars in exports are generated. So you might think, okay, well, I don't eat almonds either, tough guy. Yeah. Those almonds, the almond hulls are sold as cattle feed, part of the cattle feed. Right. They're also crushed as shells for bedding, for livestock, and the almond dust is collected as an additive to the topsoil. So that hamburger has almond juice running through it, which has bee juice running through it. Yeah. And that's just almonds. Yeah. I think a total of $15 billion worth of agricultural products are pollinated by commercial honey bees every year. Every year. And we said that bees are disappearing. Mostly it's honeybees that are disappearing under the colony Collapse disorder, right, Chuck? Yes, specifically, that's what we're worried about. So it is important, obviously, that honeybees are kept happy and healthy big time, and that they not mysteriously vanish without a trace. Yeah. It's not just about honey, folks. Although honey is delicious, it is delicious and nutritious. Let's talk about what Colony Collapse disorder is. Chuckers. Okay. I think Jessica Toothman said in this article that attrition rates in a bee colony is normal because bees do have wings and they will fly away. And about 20% is an average of what you're looking for. I think it's like an average. Maximum. Average, maximum. Yeah. Because, I mean, when you let the bees out go pollinate, some are just going to be like, I like this colony, or I think I'm going to go hit the road with Neil Cassidy or something. Yeah, sure. They don't always come back. That's true. And so starting as early as 2002, but really in 2006 is when it really peaked, or not peaked, but when it really showed its ugly face, the bees started leaving and not coming back at it. And we suspect dying at a rate of anywhere from 30% to 90%. 90%. That's huge. And do you remember you said a minute ago that every February, about 40 billion bees that's in just 1 million hive. So if 90% of a hive is dying off or vanishing, it is a lot of bees. Just one hive, which we should probably specify is virtually interchangeable with the word colony. Hive and colony. Same thing. Yeah. You know what's creepy? What? Is sometimes when they come back and they see all the bees are gone, sometimes you'll just see the queen and larvae and a few younger bees, and that's it. And they're like, Where is everybody? Gone. And maybe what's the word again? Crowton. Maybe crowton scrawled into the beehive. Yeah. In honey. Yeah. So. Yeah, that's Colony Collapse Disorder. Most of the time the workers are just gone. Vanished. Or at least 90% of them. Right. And I guess another kind of interesting and almost unsettling aspect is that when a beehive gets abandoned and all that's left is, like, the queen and some larvae. Especially when there's tons of honey in it. Yeah. Moths. Other kinds of bees, wasps, any other insect with the taste for sweet, sweet honey, it'll fade it immediately. Not so with colonies that have been hit by Colony Collapse Disorder. Yeah. They wait a few days. Right? Yeah, they do. That's creepy. It's really creepy. That'd be like leaving some stake out in the hot sun in July and there being, like, no flies or animals buzzing around right. Until the following Thursday. That's really creepy. Yeah. And it definitely gives you an idea that something serious is up. Right. So we have mystery. Mystery, mystery. Tons of bees dying or vanishing. And like you said, check this. Really stepped up in 2006. Seven and eight. Right? Yeah. And it's still going on. From what I understand, this is not the first time that this happened, though. Yeah. You said it was the worst case ever. Was when it's not the worst. I think this is the worst case ever. But before it's been pretty bad. In 1995, in Pennsylvania, beekeepers reported 53% of their hives just knocked out. Just vanished. Gone or dead. We have mysterious beehive abandonments dating back to the 1880s, the early 20th century. And in Utah, 2000, colonies were mysteriously lost. Really? Yeah. Just gone. If you'll notice it's. Utah, Pennsylvania, here or there. With Colony Collapse Disorder. It's spread around. There's evidence of it in Australia, in Europe, in the US. Yeah. Actually, Australia said they've been doing okay. Okay. Well, there's evidence of it in not Australia, but in Europe, in the US. I apologize. Australia did say they had reported it, but things seem to be back on track in Australia. So you were right. Should I say it again? No, you just smack me. All right. So check the apiarists. You like that? Very nice. This is another word for beekeeper are getting a little bit concerned. It's widespread. The numbers are high. It's mysterious. What possibly is going on here? Well, they're not quite sure, Josh. That's why it's a little distressing. I know this mystery of the vanishing. They do have some ideas. And after reading this article and a few other supplementary articles, my belief is that it's a combination of factors. It's probably not one thing. Yeah. And actually, the USDA steering committee on Colony Collapse Disorder. It's a mouthful. They just released their first, I guess, white paper on Colony Collapse Disorder this past July and they concluded the same thing. Oh, really? There's a bunch of different factors at work. There were some ideas thrown out, like some unknown organism or pathogen was affecting them. They said, probably not. There's a study done in Germany as to whether or not cell phone and cell phone towers, I thought that was turning off radiation that was screwing with the bees homing ability. And these Germans did that study and they said, no, not happening. And apparently the opposite was picked up by the news cycle to the point where the guy who conducted the study wrote the AP a letter saying, we found no link between Colony Collapse Disorder and cell phones. Anybody who says or writes anything else is a liar. But they were linking that and journalists were linking that. Journalists love to link stuff. Rabblerous correlative, not causative. Let's talk about a couple of these things, Josh. All right, let's talk about the Israeli acute paralysis virus. This seems to be the most important factor. If there are several factors involved in Colony Collapse Disorder, this seems like right at the top. I would agree just from reading about it. It is a virus discovered by Israeli scientists in 2002 and it causes trembling, paralysis and death and bees, which just makes me really sad to think about a trembling, paralyzed and then dying b. What's cool is that these researchers in this study, in 2007, I guess, introduced IAPV into some hives and then kept some other ones separate so that they wouldn't become infected, because honeybees are very social and they frequently interact with bees from other colonies, but they infected them in this greenhouse. This is creepy. And then as the bees were dying, the researchers noted that the healthy bees were dragging the dead ones to the outskirts of the greenhouse, as far away from the hive as they could. I know. Quarantining these deadbeat realities. It is. That seems to me to be a real red flag here. You know, what else is that? When they studied some there was another study in 2007 that looked at already infected Colony Collapse Disorder hives and then non CCD highs. They found that in 96.1% of the infected hives, IAPV was present. Really? But it wasn't in any of the non CCD highs. So it's definitely a huge factor. Yeah, it seems like it, yeah. But not case closed, because there are some other factors that may weigh in as well. Right. Pesticides is a big one. Specifically, Chuck the neonicotinoid nice people knew that. It took 20 minutes for us to spit that out. They laugh. They are neurotoxins. Josh and they are pesticides. And they're used to protect crops against pests, which all pets, unfortunately, also honeybees as well. Yeah. And I think the Germans, once again, the beekeepers in Germany are blaming us for massive die off rates. Right. The same Germans who said that the cell phones had nothing to do with it. So much so that some countries are starting to ban this type of pesticide. Yeah. Even though I don't think there's been any causal link established the correlations enough. That right. Do you want to hear the saddest factor? For me, it's sad, but at the same time, I imagine some bee and like a crumpled Fedora carrying a briefcase, returning to the hive. Joe versus the Beehive. I love that movie. Me, too. Stress, Josh, is what we're talking about. And these poor little bees, because of beekeepers stretching out the pollination season, basically giving bees less time to recuperate before carrying them around to another crop, they're overworked and they're stressed out, and it could be disrupting their immune systems and killing them off. Right. And then the last factor in the article that was mentioned as a possible culprit was the varroa mite. What's the deal with these suckers? They actually transmit IAPV to bees? Well, there you have it. They're little jerks. Little jerky. Mites, like we said, $15 billion worth of agricultural crop products in the US. Alone were pollinated by commercial honeybees. So you can imagine that the USDA is a little worried about Colony Collapse Disorder, right? Yeah. They're actually looking to alternative methods of pollinating, like synthetic methods of pollinating plants because of this naked guys running through the fields that's one and other bees are trying to put other bees to work. Yes. Like, which one was it? The blue orchard bee? Yeah. See if that works. And then, of course, they're also trying to do what they can to take care of the honeybees and restore their population. But it's not just the USDA that has a hand in honeybee repopulation. No, it's you. And I, too, Chuck. You and I and haagendos. Oh, yeah. Let's hear it. Well, we're going to give you some tips here in a minute on what you can do as an individual. But I did want to point out that delicious Haagenda ice cream has nearly 50% of their all natural ice creams. It sounds like I'm reading an ad because it's from their website. Nearly 50% of them use honeybees in some way, shape, or form to get their ultimate ingredient. So they've got a little deal going. Where the ultimate ingredient? Well, there's 50 of them. Okay. Well, no, 50%. Sorry. They have created a special flavor called vanilla honeybee, and they call it a delicious tribute to these essential creatures. And of course, when you buy this kind or any of them, they have the ingredients that come from the honeybees help. They donate some money cool. Which is pretty cool. And you can donate just straight to the cause via the Haagen Daz side. Or you can be nice to your local apr, may be having a bad day and they could just help, right? Sure, that would help. So we have some tips for you, Josh. You want to go over some of these? My favorite is contact your Member of Parliament and tell them to start funding B research. More chuck I do contact your member of parliament. Throw their wig at me. Number one on the list, and this is clearly England, but I imagine you can do the same thing here, is to become a beekeeper. That's a good one. Sure. Cool job. The more hives, the better. Unless they're infected, and then the opposite is true. Yeah. Another thing you can do is protect swarms. If you see a swarm of honeybees, don't go out there with the can of Raid or your can of hair net and a lighter. Yeah, that's even your worst idea. You should contact a local authority and supposedly they will contact the beekeeper that will come and round them up. You want to make sure that they're going to contact the beekeeper. Actually, there's people who do swarm removals and just kill all the bees. Oh, really? Yeah. You want to make sure that they're going to be taken to a hive by a beekeeper, and then the guy comes out with this can of Raid and the lighter, some local redneck. Right. Plant your garden with beefriendly plants. This is the biggest one that you can actually make an impact here at home. So we're talking single flowering plants and vegetables, and they recommend the allium family mint beans, except for French beans and flowering herbs. And bees especially like daisy shaped flowers. So sunflowers, sunflowers are big, are really big for helping the honeybees out. And if you have your hands in your pockets right now and you're feeling nothing but lint, and you're like, I'd really love to help the bees, but I can't afford any sunflower seeds, man. I'm not like, rich. You can actually contact a group called the Great Sunflower Project. Yeah, that's cool. And they'll send you some seeds in return. All they ask is that you spend 30 minutes twice a month. If you can't swing that, then you need to take stock of your life. 30 minutes twice a month in the garden, noting arrival times, departure times, and whether or not you even see any bees on your sunflowers and sending in the information. Yeah, exactly. Because if you don't see any bees, that's really important to tell them as well. Right. And don't use pesticides midday Chuck oh, is that a big one? Yeah. Well, that's when bees are most likely to be out foraging. So if you're going to spray any kind of pesticide, don't do it in the middle of the day. It's bad news. Right. They also say if you're going to use pesticides or pest control to use insect specific pesticides. So don't buy kill all and don't buy kills honeybees. Yeah, exactly. A few other gardening tips for you. I know you're quite the gardener. They say if you have space to use ten or more beef plants in a group, you can group them together. That's a good thing. Sure. It makes pollination easier. Sure. And if not, do what you can. Plant as many as you can. They also require water when they're foraging in your garden, so put out a little bird bath. And if you don't have a bird bath, maybe just a dish of water in your garden. Didn't know that, did you? I did not. It's a good one. And they also burrow in the ground, so they say, not to completely mulch your entire garden, to leave some bear areas, maybe where you don't see it. Or maybe put a little mound of sand, and the bees can hone down in there. So another little tip you can use, and native plants are always good if you're a gardener, plant native plants to your state, because bees eat them up. And aside from gardening, you can also buy local honey. You know, I used to know an Apiarist. I interviewed him once for the Henry County Times when I edited it, and he sold local honey. I got stung by a bee, by the way, while I was interviewing him. Really hurt, man. And three years later, I was at someone's house, a friend's house, and they just happened to have honey from this guy's farm. I couldn't believe it. Yeah. If your city is like Atlanta, then they're all manner of farmers markets. That story sounded so much more interesting in my head before I spit it out. I thought it was interesting. Thanks. Can you tell by the way I just breeze right over it? Yeah. If Atlanta is like your town, you probably have all kind of farmers market, local markets, and I guarantee you there will be somebody with honey at those. And they say if you're into immunology and you believe that, you can immunize yourself from local allergies using honey, which is yet to be proven, but it makes a lot of sense. You want to buy honey that's created within 15 miles of your house. Right. And buying local is always a good idea. Sure. All across the board. I got one more. Unless you have one more now I'm done. Okay. Because I want to finish with this one. It's so good. Under the heading bee friendly. Terrible. Some tips on if you have bees in your area, don't SWAT them. Don't flap your hands around. Just stay calm and move slowly away into the shade, they say, and bees will lose interest. They also don't have as much interest if you smell like alcohol or leather, and they record dark clothing as a threat. So put on some dark leather pants, get drunk, and hang out in your garden. Apparently, I will never get stung by a bee. Wow, nice. I'd like to see that. If you want to learn more about this mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder, you can read Jessica Toothman's fascinating article, how Colony Collapse Disorder Works. I imagine if you type in Collapse Disorder, or Colony Collapse, or Colony Collapse Disorder into the handy search bar, howstop works.com, it will yield said article. In the meantime, let's do some listener mail. Josh, these are two from two kids, and we like the kid emails because they're always nice and super friendly and cute and not like a cynical, old rotten adults. So the first one is from Beto, which I love that name. Beto. What is Italian? Portuguese? I would think it's Italian. Okay. Hey, guys. My name is Beto, pronounced B-E-T-O-I know you're laughing, so laugh. I have listened to every single one of your podcasts since the 8th grade, and I am now a sophomore in high school. Wow. Now doesn't that really put it in perspective? Yeah, I feel old all of a sudden, and cynical people are actually seeing these people grow up. It brings a tear to my eye when we get a graduation invitation from Sarah, the eleven year old fan. Then it's time to hang it up. Yeah. All right. He says beto says I have to wake up every morning at 06:00 a.m. To catch the bus at seven so I can go to a school 30 minutes away from my house. It's about an hour bus ride. Not sure how that works. And all I can do is listen to my ipod. Every day, I download two or more and prepare for my day. And you two have become quite possibly my two favorite heroes. Besides Matt Bellamy, who? I had to look that up. He's the lead singer of Muse. So we're heroes along with this Muse dude? Yeah, because every morning I'm sitting on that crowded bus with loud people and I can listen to you to talk about a random subject, including ones that sound boring at first. But thanks to you, I learned something and get a few laughs along the way. You are the coolest guys I know. Kind of, since I don't actually know you, he says, and I hope that you guys never quit doing this. Your number one fan? For real, Beto, he follows up for you specifically. He says, Josh, you're amazing, and I have a man crush on you, but I have a girlfriend, so, you know ha ha. She doesn't know. That's what he says. Well, I know. Did Beto just come on to me? I think so. All right. Beto actually says he would be an awful shock if you read this on the air, but I doubt you will. I think Beto just use reverse psychology on the exam. This battle kit is sharp. Just got punked by a 10th grader. All right, here's another quickie from Nick and Alpharetta. Nick is 17 in Alpharetta, Georgia. And he has written this before, but he had a personal tie to Edward of Woodstock from the Mercenaries podcast. He was his great great etc. Or grandfather. How about that? Well, pretty cool, huh? He says, I know this because well, that's what he put. He didn't know how many grades it was. And he knows this because they have a family tree. And he is right near the beginning of it. And after he was Edward of Woodstock, he became Edward Prince of Wales. Yeah. And then that's what he says at least. And he goes and details a little bit of Edward of Woodstock's life and just says that. Thanks for mentioning he's related to him. Very cool. Right here in Georgia. Yeah, in Alfredo. Right up the road a piece. Right up the road. Well, thank you, Beto. And Nick. We appreciate both of you guys for writing in. And we love all of you who write in. And by love, I mean really appreciate and are fond of. If you want us to love you, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@housetuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. Want more housestuffworks? Check out our blog on the Housedefworks.com homepage brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's Criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Erkart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this 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." | ||
2a76ef24-3b0f-11eb-a672-33efce6e0ec5 | Tug of War | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/tug-of-war | Tug of War is a simple display of strength, but is there more to it than that? Listen in to find out.
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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Tug of War is a simple display of strength, but is there more to it than that? Listen in to find out.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Tue, 25 Jan 2022 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=25, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=25, tm_isdst=0) | 48913407 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry's even here, believe it or not. We're are thrilled for that. And this is stuff you should know. Okay, stop asking that's. Right. I want to say this is part two of the Rudimentary games that there is seemingly more, too, than you would think, starting with Rochambo or almost a tic TAC toe. Again, what's my deal with that? I don't know, man. Rock, paper, scissors, sure. But I must admit, there is more to rock, paper, scissors than tug of war. I am very glad that I didn't have to get that out of you. Yeah. I thought there was more to it than this, strategy wise, and I think I was suckered by Squid game, which we'll talk about a little bit later, into thinking that there could be some more depth to this. Right. There's not a whole lot now, apparently, Squidgames really took something and made something huge out of it because it was even an Olympic sport for a little while, and the Olympics were like, let's not do that anymore. Yeah. Although I have to say, growing up in this 80s, it was a lot more in the forefront because, like, Battle of the Network Stars did it on TV. Do you remember the superstars? No. It was a sports competition show on Sunday afternoons, and it took prominent athletes from all sports and pitted them against one another all season long to determine the champion. And there was this great obstacle course. It was one of the most sort of 80s, aside from American Gladiators. American Gladiators kind of things that you could watch. Yeah. And there was a tug of war, usually between two teams comprised of prominent football players versus prominent baseball players, and that was always a big deal. In fact, I just watched a recap of the 1 hour and 15 minutes epic battle from 1978 between members of the Kansas City Royals, and I don't know who the other side was. I think it was a football team. Was George Brett on that team yet? You bet. Your buddy was. Was that his rookie year? No pre bow Jackson, though, right? No pre Bo Jackson. Yeah, but that was pretty epic. And on that one, they were laying down in the sand and resting, some guys taking their hands off at times. It was all the rules. They tied the rope around their waist, as did Lu Ferrigo and Battle, the Network Stars, the Anchor, all kinds of things that you don't do, which we'll talk about in true competition, tug of war. But it was just sort of I feel like we saw tug of war a lot more in the 80s than we do now. Yeah, that and running under a giant parachute that your classmates were billowing up for you. It's a second reference. I've heard of that in a week. Oh, really? Yeah. I never did that. Oh, shock. We're going to get some stuff you should know listeners together and do that because you have to experience it at least once your life. It is thrilling. I need to. It was on the Three Dam podcast. So Paula Tomkins and Ocrman and Lauren Lapkiss. We're talking about that. It's a lot of fun. Like that is going to happen before you die. All right. You run under before it catches you. That's the key. So there's like a certain amount of tension to it. What do you mean, catches you? It touches you? Yes. That silky goodness. Don't you want that touching you? No. Or else you dissolve. Okay. But anyway, field day in the 80s, there was tug of war all over the place, but you don't see it much anymore until Squid Game came around. And I think that did sort of reignite some interest, including myself. Totally. And from this research that we've done on this, your experience and my experience, too, at that age where tug of war is like a big part of your life, that's the most you can possibly experience or get out of it. You got everything there was to get out of it. Pretty much. Except for knowing that it was an Olympic sport for 20 years. That's right. And Squid Games is a TV show, by the way. I know. We often just talk about things as people know what they are. Well, I mean, who has heard of Squid games? Did you watch it? Yeah, of course. Yes. Me and everybody else on the planet. That's why you just mistitled it. I just was curious. What did I call it? Squid Games. Is it Squared Game? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I really fumbled that one. Well, it's better than Squid's Game, because that's all it sounds like how Hodgman would pronounce it, probably. So, yeah. If you haven't seen Squid Game, go check it out. It's amazing. And it's on Netflix. And actually, it alone is worth getting a month subscription to Netflix if you don't have it. Yeah, but we'll talk about the strategy they use, which made for great television, but apparently it's not a thing. Disappointingly. Yeah. But if you haven't seen good games, don't listen to that part. Just put your fingers in your ears and shout, me, me. At the top of your lungs and very high pitched voice until we're done. Right. So we're talking about tug of war, believe it or not. And I think, Chuck, just in the spirit of people who say, stop saying unless you've been living under a rock, you haven't heard of something, we should explain what tug of war is. Okay. Yeah, let's do it. Okay. So in the modern sense of the word, tug of war is a game that's played between it can be as few as two people. It can be as many as your imagination can fit onto a rope. Yeah. And the people are on two sides, they're opposing sides, and they're pulling in opposite directions on that rope. And the point of the game is to pull your opponent past some line to where you've just won, or pull them, knock them down, pull it until they let go of the rope. Or there's a few different ways to win, but generally you're pulling your opponent past some line and then you've won. And you can run around shouting yes. And thrusting your fist in the air. That's right. I think the most fun versions, especially on television, are when there's a mud pit in the middle. Sure. In the case of Squid Game, it is a battle to the death. That's all we'll say in elementary school. It's usually on the gymnasium floor with some tape or like a ribbon hanging down from the rope. Or maybe if the phys Ed teacher hadn't pre planned it's, just their whistle and their lanyard forming a line on the floor. That's right. In the case of Revenge of the Nerds, the Nerds have no chance. I guess I should say, spoiler alert. Oh, I remember what happens there. They let go. They did. They won by losing. That's right. They let go. And the jocks fell into the dusty dirt and the Nerds just said, Congratulations, you won. Boy. Ogre was so mad. Ogre was so mad. So that's it, that's tug of warren. You've probably played it before, and it is true. I'm just giving you some grief, that there's nothing more to it. There is a surprising amount more to it, because it is a ridiculously simple game. But it's so simple, Chuck, that Ed, who helped us out with this, makes a really good point, that basically, if you threw a dart at any part of the globe, you would probably find some historic tradition of some form of tug of war. It spans millennia, it crosses geographic and cultural boundaries. It's just been invented multiple times in multiple places because it's just such a simple concept, and yet at the same time, it still gives you that thrill that any game or struggle should give you when you win, do you want to hit some history or do you want to say that I think we should hit some history? It just makes sense to put it at the beginning, if you ask me. Yeah, you're right. I mean, we're talking Vikings did it, the Nordic Sports did it. Across streams, there have been various versions of, like, man vs. Beast at times, or machine versus machine. Yeah. The British Navy in 1845, they used a tug of war to settle a debate on whether a propeller driven ship was better than the old paddle wheel and, of course, the propeller one. Yes. So it's been a way to settle disputes at times. Yeah. And I think it's not quite as good at settling a dispute to, say, Rock, paper, scissors. It takes longer. And there's potential injury, as we'll see. But yes, you can settle disputes. Potential amputation, which scissors will never do in rock, paper scissors. No. Try as hard as you can. You just can't do it. What about this? The Rasakashi? Yeah. So apparently India has a long tradition of tug of war like games. And I guess their version of tug of war is called Rasakashi. And you can still tune into game shows today where that's part of the game show, it's like a tug of war. And normally when you watch a game show, there's just a certain amount of peppiness and lightness to the whole thing. No, the one I saw, this Rasakashi competition, it looked like a game show was indoors in a stage and like, the host was wearing a suit or whatever. But they were dead serious about this. They took it really seriously. And that's apparently out of the Punjab region of India. There's an entirely different part of India called Konarak. There's a sun temple there that was built in the 13th century. And there's a depiction of tug of war on the wall there. So it's been around in India for quite some time. Hundreds and hundreds of years at least. Yeah. And of course, when Europeans came to the Americas and this is sort of unclear whether or not they brought it with them or whether or not it existed previously to indigenous people of the Americas, which is very possible because they had all kinds of folky sports that they played. And tug of war. I think what piqued my interest from the beginning was the rudimentary nature of it, which is, like you said, sometimes just one person on one side and one person on another. And can you pull them? Can you out either maybe outwit them or usually just outmuscle them to do so? Perhaps Native American tribes did this to begin with. But at any rate, the colonizers would play these games sometimes including tug of war. And Ed points out sometimes it was a friendlier way to say I can dominate you rather than just killing someone. Right? Yes. And again, that's a way to settle disputes or tension as well. It can be, if it's done right. Like, we'll take these 5000 acres because we want a tug of war. Because we pulled you over that arbitrary line. Right. There is tug of war in China. There's a long standing tug of war that started in the 14th century in Korea called the GC Jewel Darigi Festival. I think he nailed it. They have it every year. And it's substantially different from most other tugof war that you've ever seen. Sorry, tugs of war that you've seen and that the rope is enormous. Typically, it's about 200 meters long. That's 600ft for you American school kids, a meter thick, weighing 40 tons. It's big. And you're like, well, how do you even get your arms around a three foot circumference rope? Well, you don't. It has actual ropes, smaller ropes that you can handle coming off of it. And hundreds of people will participate in this, and the whole town turns out for it. And it's amazing to see. And I was like, that certainly rings a bell because Yummy has told me many times that one of her fondest childhood memories is the Tug of War festival in Naha in Okinawa, where she was born and raised. And they've been doing that since the 17th century. And it bears such a striking resemblance to the one from Korea that obviously the Koreans influenced them. But it's the east of the town and the west of the town, and their rope is even bigger and even more people come. Apparently, in 1995, they set the world record. There were 2700 people in attendance and 15,000 people participating on the east and the west side. And I can't remember which one that year. It was quite a party to see that video. And I imagine the Japanese festival is much like the one in Korea, where the tug of war itself is really not the fun. The fun is getting together, building this rope together. I imagine there's a little bit of drinking that goes on. Yeah, ted and everyone just has a good time. It's sort of in the spirit of friendship rather than let me try and dominate you. Right, exactly. Because, I mean, they're all from the same town. It's just the east side of the town, the west side of the town. So I asked you to me about that because I hadn't heard about the rope being constructed. Apparently at the Korean festival, they make the rope every year. And I was like, did they construct the rope every year? And she's like, I don't think so, no. And I said, well, where do they store this 43 ton, 600 foot long rope? And she said, don't know. So I need to get to the bottom of that, of whether they made the rope themselves. But she was a kid. They would go every year, and it was like the biggest deal every year in Okinawa, she was a anchor. She was she was cheering them on. I think she did participate at least one year. That's cute. You just grab a rope and pull. Yeah, exactly. I think some people say that it was one of the original ancient Olympic sports, but there's not a ton to back this up as being true. It may have been, but as Ed points out, it didn't get a lot of press. Even if it was so, it was never that highly regarded. And when it was an official Olympic sport in the modern Olympics, it was still in the early 1009 hundreds was still not super highly regarded in that you didn't feel like an American and official American team. There were club teams that would show up and could participate, like multiple from one country and then sometimes they would just feel the team from people in other sports, but if you were like a shot putter, they would say, no, go do the shot put. Like, I know you're on the anchor for the team, but the schedules conflict, and you should do the shot put because that's a real event. Yeah, for sure. Which is kind of sad. It is sort of sad, especially if you were, like, the one guy in the tug of war team who, like, really took it seriously, and all of a sudden your team dissolved because the shopper had to go shopping and so on. That's right. You want to take a break and then come back and talk a little more about the Olympic history of it? Yeah, let's do it. Okay, Chuck. So there's a lot of legend and lore around this very short period of Olympic history that tug of war appeared in, and a lot of it is wrong, like, you were saying that it was an original ancient Games event, and there's no real evidence of that. There's also a widely held fact that a guy named Constantine Enriquez de Zu Beera was the first black Olympic athlete and that he won a silver and tuggle of war and gold and rugby in the 1900 Olympics. And apparently that's partly true, but not 100% right. I think it was a case of mistaken identity, usually, which just one of those Internet things where it keeps getting repeated anyway. But there was a Colombian named Francisco Enriquez the Zooria. They did win a silver medal for tug of war, but a Haitian Constantine Enriquez won rugby. Okay, so Constantine Enriquez was the first black Olympic athlete. He just had nothing to do with tug of war. I think that's the case. But, I mean, that's the kind of depth that we have to get to to make tug of war interesting. His cases of mistaken identity, I wasn't even going to mention it, actually, but sure. Okay, so there was a 20 year period from 1900 to 1920 Olympics. You could find tug of war unless your team had gotten dissolved. And apparently that happened frequently enough that I believe in the 19 what Olympics was it to where so many teams got dissolved that they only gave out a gold and a silver medal that year, which means how many teams were there? Two. All the other teams got dissolved, and there were two teams left. So you had a 50 50 chance, I guess, of either coming in silver or gold and 100% chance of meddling that year. Yeah, that's not bad at all. In 19 eight, there was a police team, the Liverpool Police, at the Olympics. Again, you could field club teams, and that's what they did in England. They had these big boots because, as we'll see later, one of the biggest keys is the physics of feet on the floor and having big, heavy shoes. If you're doing this on an outdoor, like on the grass, you can dig in with some big heavy boots. And apparently the US team filed a protest because they wore these big giant dock Martins or something like that, I guess. Right, so that year, actually, the Liverpool police team got a silver medal and the Brits actually swept the podium. The City of London Police got gold. Liverpool Police got silver and the Metropolitan Police K Division got bronze. All these cops battling all these bobby is battling it out. It is. But the reason why is apparently it was a big deal in Britain, it was a big deal in Ireland as well. And your local police force probably had a tug of war team because tug of war was part of their training. And from what I saw, that actually originated from the British Navy using tug of war as training to kind of hoist sales and all that stuff. You got to basically do that in real life. So they would use tug of war and then the cops kind of picked it up as police forces came into existence in the UK. And then because with the Olympics, there weren't national teams, you could have club teams. That's how you could have three different police force tug of war teams sweeping the podium for Great Britain in the 19 eight Olympics. That's right. They still, I think, still use it in the American military because not only is it a good workout, but it's a morale builder. You get these divisions or platoons against one another and it's a good group sport, especially in the military, like sort of just a brute strength thing to try and rally your battalion. I keep saying all these different words because I don't know what they call each other. Sure. Platoons, battalions, groups, teams, book clubs. Book clubs against one another was the last time it was at the Olympics, because they looked around in 1920 and said, we have way too many events, and what gets cut? Of course, tug of war was one of those. And there is I don't know about a groundswell, but certainly after Squid game, there were a few people wondering if it should come back in the Olympics, and I doubt it ever will, but you never know. There were some things that happened, though, apparently back in 1999, the tug of war, international federation, who we'll talk a little bit more about later. It was recognized by the International Olympic Committee that's something, yes, that's a huge first step to ending up with your sport in the Olympics. But then, just three years later, the IOC told the media, like, the TWIFF is going to really have to get a lot better funding and a lot more international participation before it's going to end up in the Olympics. It has a long way to go, if ever it will show up again. Yeah. I hate to say it, Ed points it out. It's kind of true, though. It's not the most exciting thing to watch when you watch competition tug of war. Even watching that superstars clip from earlier in my childhood, it was an hour and 15 minutes long of these guys basically lying there in the sand with an equal tautness on both sides of the rope like nothing was happening. They're exhausted, like I said, they're taking their hands off to massage their hands and try and regain some bit of a grip, but it ended in a draw. No one even won. It was really oh, my goodness. I know. There's not even a great ending to the story. Like with Louferigno when he beat Billy Crystal. Billy Crystal? Well, they were on teams, but Billy Crystal was on one side, lufer Igna was on the other. Okay. Battle of the Network stars. I guess it was soap. Okay, at the time was the show Billy Crystal represented, but at least Lufferyo and Daisy Duke and his team won. But no one even won in the sand that day. They just dig in, lay there, and eventually they said, we got to stop this madness, so let's set a time limit. Like as they were going, they set the time limit. When it was cleared, nothing was going on and it was terrible television. And so they set it in an hour and 15 and it stopped and nobody won. And that was kind of it. And sometimes that's how it goes. Howard Cosell just comes on and goes, I'm sorry, folks, I'm very sorry. No, it wasn't Cosell. He did the Battle of the Network stars, though. Okay. Luffour rig now. That was Katharine Hepburn. Lou for Rig Now. Yeah, you're right. I don't even know who that was. So we should probably talk a little bit about the TWIFF. We revealed that there is an international federation of tug of war. And they actually came about, from what I saw, Chuck, because after the Olympics, people said after the 1920 Olympics I don't know if you did say that they finally said, we're cutting this tug of war is not making the cut. That didn't diminish interest in Tugovo and a lot of the countries where it was already popular. So they actually started assembling national teams. And some national teams have been assembled for the Olympics already anyway, but they had no way to compete against one another. They can only compete within their countries. And so the guy named George Hutton got together with the Swedes and said, hey, let's form the Tug of War International Federation back in 1960, and the rest is history. Known to half a dozen people. George EF. Hutton, remember that? Maybe I was thinking George Timothy Hutton, because when he talks, people listen. Oh, is that who that was? Yeah. Remember that commercial? Sure, I remember, but I could never remember what brokerage it was. Yeah, I mean, this show is just overflowing with 80s references now. All of a sudden. Yeah. Do you remember the Saturday Night Live spoof of that? No. I think it was Robert Smith. Wow. And they did they just nailed the commercial. It looked exactly like it, but he would just start saying all these bizarre things with the full attention of the room of these people just in wrapped I can't remember what he would say, but it's definitely worth looking up. I'm sure somebody did a documentary on smuggle. They did one on the Dana Carvey show. Have you seen that? No. Oh, it was on Hulu and they said Too Funny to Live is the name of it, or something like that. And it was about this show. Like Daniel Carvey just basically gave Robert Smiggle, like, cart blanc to make the weirdest, funniest show of all time. No, I know what you're talking about. I actually saw that. You saw the show? No, I saw the documentary about the Dana carvey show. I thought you made on the Dana Carvey show. They did a segment or something. Oh, no, but I'm saying that's probably the closest you can come to a smile documentary right now. Unfortunately. You're right. That's a good document, too. It was. But if you're talking international tug of war competition, it is not just on I hate to bring it up again, but on the superstars, as we'll see, weight is a really obviously huge key factor in whether or not you win a tug of war. So, like boxing and like wrestling, you have to match weights. So they actually had I think the baseball team had one extra dude even than the football side. This is not official in any capacity, from what you're discovering. Well, they had to match weight. That was what it was all about. Okay. You know what I mean? Okay, I got it. The baseball players were lighter than the football team, so they had one extra person. But in international competition, there are eight people on a team. I don't even know if there's a way in for these. Is it? Yes, most decidedly. It's extremely important. Well, then what do they say? Like, you just have to match weight with the other team and plan your team accordingly? Yes, and I don't think it's down to, like, the pound or maybe even the kilogram necessarily, but it's got to be close enough. There's a class, and your team has to weigh within this weight class. Okay, I got you. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. That means it's not pound for pound necessarily, but it has to be an eight person team, and they have to like the combined weight of the team has to fall within this window for the class. Okay, that makes sense. Just like boxing and wrestling, in fact. Right, but divided by eight people. Right? Yeah. The rope itself is and we should note again, like I said, you don't tie the rope around the anchor. There are not knots in the rope. Like sometimes elementary school versions, you have knots to make it easier for little kid hands to hold onto and stuff like that. Not true at all in international competition or any real, like, genuine tug of war. You're not going to have knots in the rope. No. And supposedly most people recommend although Ed, despite his best efforts, could not find verification. I couldn't either. That the Twi f. It's got to be Twist, right? That's what I call it. That TWIFF mandates that the rope has to be a natural fiber. But if you're doing anything kind of pro or organized, really, even any tug of war, you want to use a natural fiber rope because they're less prone to snapping, they're also less prone to stretching. And as we'll see, both of those are really bad things that can happen, especially if you use a synthetic rope. So you're not supposed to use, most likely a synthetic rope. You want to use natural fiber. Right. And in this case, it's 33 and a half meters long and between ten and twelve and a half centimeters in circumference. So it's 110ft long. About four to five inches in circumference, yeah. And the anchor, like I said, they don't tie the rope around their waist, but they are the only people allowed to manipulate the rope in a way other than just holding it palms up, which is what everyone else has to do. Like you can't wrap it around your wrists. That's a bad idea, as we'll see later. So on to your coding career. Yeah, exactly. But the anchor will pass the rope over their shoulder and then around their back diagonally, then under the opposite armpit, and then back over the front of their body, and then back under that armpit. So it's sort of like a little figure eight that they wrap around their body, but it's never tied. Right. And from what I've seen, it looks like it can be released pretty easily and quickly, too. It's not going to tear the person in two. And also they're the ones that are the furthest back, so they would be least affected by a catastrophic break of the rope. Right. Or fall into a pit of vipers. One thing that I didn't notice or realized before, that I thought was pretty interesting, but it makes total sense, is that if you are a puller so, like you said, the anchor is the only one who can do anything, like wrapping the rope around even their hand. You can grip the rope palms up, and that's it. You can't move hand over hand to gain length on the rope. That's illegal. You can't walk up the rope. Right. It's called, I think, climbing, in quotes, climbing the rope. Like, you have to basically keep your hands in roughly the same area, which means that all of the pull on the rope, all of the movement on the rope is created by your leg power. Like you're holding on to the rope with your arms to keep yourself from being pulled back, but you're mostly using your leg power. Like, almost all of the strategy in the point of tug of war is in the legs. Yeah. You're literally walking the rope backwards. Lou frigno and team. It's like the wild west. They were pulling that thing hand over hand. Right. You can't do that. Until Billy Crystal was in that water pool, I didn't know you can't do that. But now I understand. You can't do that. No, just for TV. Yeah. You got to just dig in and pull. Pull. You have a coach. Another name for a coach is a driver, and the driver is a big deal. The driver walks up and down the line. And there are, like I said, great periods of rest where you have to just sort of you aren't allowed to lay down, though. Again, like on TV, you can't do that. You have to keep on your feet. But there are still periods of what you would call rest. And then the driver will mount a unified in unison. Pull. Pull. And it's sort of like being the who's the person my mom does the Dragon boat racing. The person in the back of the boat steers in like cockway. Yeah, that's what I thought of, too, in the rowing crew. I mean, dragon boat, they actually steered do they do that in the rowing team? No, the Cox Wayne doesn't do anything except shouting to, like a little oh, boy. Like varsity. We're going to hear? It probably the Cox Wayne society. That's right. Who you've heard of? Unless you've been living under a rock. That's right. Hey, maybe speaking of rock, we should crawl under one and take a quick break before we talk about some of the supportive gear and footwear, which is super exciting stuff. Okay, cool. All right, we'll be right back. All right. Talking, I promise. Footwear and supportive gear. Yeah, supportive gear. You can wear, like, belts and knee pads and stuff like that. Like a weight belt, huh? Like a weight lifting belt? Yeah. You ever have one of those? No, I've never been quite that into it. Yeah, when you show up to the gym on one of those, you're sending a statement. You definitely are. You say, I'm into lift and weight. That's right. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm not making fun of it. Especially if you have, like, your name burned into it. Right. In some, like, steer horns or something. Yeah, like that filigree. Right. But the footwear I talked earlier about friction. I mean, tug of war is all about feet meeting the ground and that friction and being able to maintain your place and digging in. And if you're indoors in a gymnasium, you're probably just wearing some kind of good sneaker. But outside you're allowed to wear these big boots and with big heels. And I guess they regulate this for competition because you don't want to be like the English police team, the Liverpool police, and overdo it. But you are allowed to wear certain kinds of big boots. You are. And again, the reason why you're wearing boots is because that is where you're winning or losing the game is in your leg power and how much contact you have with the ground and how much of that you can use to propel yourself and your team backward, holding onto the rope, and then thus pulling the other team over that center line. That's right. Should we talk about a match? Yeah, I think we should. I think we've reached the point. We've laid it out enough, Chuck, that everybody's ready for a match for us to describe through audio a tug of war match. All right, so you got that rope laying on the ground. May or may not be a mud pit or water in the middle, but for competition, that's usually like TV kind of stuff. I don't think they really do that in legit competitions. No, they don't. It's got to be on turf grass if it's outdoors or either a gym floor or a special pad. That gives you a lot more traction on the indoor match. That's right. So there's a judge, I guess, like a referee, they would say, Take up the rope. Everyone on each side would pick up the rope. They would say, Take the strain. That just means you pull it tight and taut, but you're not actually pulling on each other yet. And then you have that thing they center it right in the middle. You probably got, like something hanging down or some tape in the center of the rope. It's going to line up with the center of the match floor and then on either side and in true competition, I think it's actually marked out 4 meters on either side of center. But depending on if you're doing playground versions or about all the network stars, that number can vary. But this is the official twist style. Is 4 meters is where you want to pull your opponent to? Yes. So that center line that's marked on the rope has to be pulled over either of those other lines on either side. The sideline marking is what it's called. So if you pull that center line over the sideline that's closest to you, you just won. And vice versa. That's right. Yeah. I think we're doing a great job here, Chuck. I think so. The judge obviously, is going to shout, Ready, pull. And then that's what shoots into the air. Yeah, they shoot a shotgun in the air. And then these are actually scored, though they're matches. Each match has two tugs or two poles. And if you win two to nothing. If you win both, you get three points. If you each win one, you each get one point. And then you just progress sort of in a round robin kind of way tournament style. Yeah. And then sudden death is best two pulls out of three, I believe. Right. And if you do dig in superstars way and you're there for an hour and 15 minutes and nothing's going on, the judge can say, call a no pull, which I guess is just like a tie. Or if one team is just really not doing anything, you can actually be disqualified. Yes, I think that would be a no pull call if you're not doing anything. Or I think both teams can get a no pull call if they both wear each other out and they both just kind of stop. If they both start laying around like the 78 Royals and whatever football team they're playing, that would be a clear no poll against both teams would be disqualified. Well, I guess it's high. You're both kicked out and James both lost. You all are thrown into the mud pit. That's right. By the judge. So this is still going on. These rules are still being followed in national and international competition. September of 2022, the World Championships will be in the Netherlands. Okay. There's plenty of, like, national and local polls, tug of war polls that go on every Sunday. I believe starting at eleven is the official time. Wherever your local time is, if there's a tug of war competition and they're doing it at 11:00 a.m. On Sunday, it's probably official. Yeah. This smacks of the kind of thing, like, I know, you know, there's kickball teams, recreational kickball leagues, because you and Jerry famously played on a kickball team together many years ago. That's right. It seems like 100 years ago, doesn't it? 1000, maybe. There's dart teams, there's botchy leagues, softball. I bet you they're local tug of war leagues. Surely there's just no way. Especially after squids games. Yeah. You just get drunk on liquor and pull each other into the mud. That's right. But officially, I think there's 73 countries that are members of TWIFF. How many? 73. By my account, according to the rules that were published in 2020 by your account, like one, two, three. Right. I keep getting messed up around 17 or 18 and start over. Here's what you do. You copy paste that into the Word doc. Oh, that's a good thing. Just hit number. Yeah, that's a great idea. But then it does the thing where it goes one A and B, and you're like, what are you even doing? Word formatting. And I want it formatted like that. Right. Some people need that program. Hate Word. Yeah, there's a big word anti Word backlash, I suspect it's really an anti Microsoft backlash. I think so. All right, where are we? So we're talking about how to be good at tug of war, I think. Sure. You got to be strong and have big shoes. Which I realized just now as I'm looking through my notes, I'm missing that page. Don't worry about it. It also doesn't matter because you basically said what you have to do that you need to wear like really good shoes that are heavy, you need to have explosively, powerful legs, you need to have arm strength, which is something I think it's worth pointing out. If you are actually good at tug of war and you compete in tug of war competitions and you are doing stuff like world competitions through Twist, you are an extraordinarily all around fit person and very strong person because playing tuggavore in any kind of competitive level requires a lot of different muscle groups. And all of those muscle groups have to be really strong. That's right. I guess we could talk a little bit about Squid Game here. If you have not seen it and you want to, or you don't want something spoiled, just don't listen for the next couple of minutes. But there's a great pivotal scene in that great show where and the concept of the show is that there are these people that have been gathered together who are all very desperate, usually because of money and financial woes, who are pitted against one another in these childhood games to the death. And the winner gets a lot of money here at the end. And tug of war is one of them. And this is a tug of war, though, that has staged many floors up and you fall to your death if you lose. And you lose like forever, as in your life is gone. The ultimate loss. So in Squid Game, the weaker team pulls out a victory against a stronger team because of a very brilliant strategy employed by the elder statesman of the weak team, wherein they all start out with their feet parallel to one another, dug in. And the first thing they do is lean all the way back and look up at the sky and just sit there and don't move. And then their strategy, I believe, was to at a certain point when one person says so, is to release the ropes to get the other team off balance and then grab it again and start this all pulling in these big unified tugs. And they won. They did win. Yeah. This other stronger, heavier, more fit team fell to their death because you left out that you're connected to that rope. Oh, sure. So when one guy goes down, they take the rope with them and thus comes the rest of the team too. That's right. It's pretty brutal. But there is a study that you found in Escrow magazine of all places. Some people basically experimented with it. They got a group of smaller, weaker people compared to the other team and used that strategy. And how did it pan out, John? Well, it didn't pan out like the TV show. Obviously the TV show was dramatized for to great effect. But I did read another article about that same quote unquote study that in theory it could work and this wasn't the best test of it and that there was something to that initial stance and dig in, at least. Okay. So I think we finally reached, like, far and away the absolute most interesting part of tug of war. It's getting your arm tripped off. Yeah. That you can suffer serious injury and potentially even death from playing tug of war if you don't know what you're doing and you don't do it right. Because people have before. Yeah. I mean, there have been amputations, obviously, some really awful accidents with kids when they would wrap their hands around the rope, around their wrists and stuff like that. Little digits that had to be amputated. A lot of the injuries come from the rope snap that we talked about using a nylon rope. It'll pull like a rubber band and then snap. And that has killed people. Yeah. Because teams of people and the more people you add to a team, the more dangerous the game becomes for a couple of reasons. One is the likelihood of snapping a rope increases. And then also when that rope snaps, all those people fall backward all of a sudden. And so people can get crushed and trampled, and that happens as well. But when you have two teams of people, even like little kids, as long as there's enough little kids, they're exerting tons and tons of force on that rope that's being stored in the rope. And as I was saying earlier, with synthetic ropes, they stretch more, which means that more tension is being stored, more energy is being stored in that rope so that when it does finally snap, more energy is suddenly released. And when it's released, Chuck, when that rope snaps backward, it snaps backward with so much force, depending on how much force is stored in it, that it has torn people's arms off. Like they didn't let go fast enough and their arms still holding onto the rope, flew away from them. That's like something out of Squid game. But it's real. Yeah, that happened. And I think Taiwan in the believe 1997 in Taipei, it happened to not one, but two people who were playing tug of war. They were the first people closest to the opposing side on either side. That's who had their arms torn off. Yeah. And here's a word of advice. If you ever see an ad that says, hey, come down and be a part of this Guinness World Record tug of war, don't do it. No, that's a bad idea. Accidents happen there as well. And like you said, also, if you loop ever even, like fun recreation tug of war, don't loop the rope around your hand because the force that's being exerted on the rope finds its way into that loop, which wants to close, and it's closing around your fingers. And like you said, not only have people had their fingers amputated later because they got so torn off, the rope itself can amputate your fingers. You can just lose some fingers messing around at a local tug of war competition. That's for charity. It has happened before, too. So be safe, everyone. I got one more thing on Squid game. Again. Big spoiler coming. Okay, don't listen. I'll give you a few seconds. Okay. The thing I didn't think about, you saw it through the end? The show? Yeah. The thing I didn't think about until today was that that tug of war game had to be rigged because the old man was the organizer of the whole thing. So he wasn't going to follow his death. No. So it was rigged. The tug of war had to be rigged. Yeah. But I'm not sure how you might have found, like, a plot hole more than anything. Well, I read online and some people say that it was a genuine win, but the people up there watching, like the guards were ready to step in in case it looked like that he was going to get pulled in or something. I got you. So they could have cut the rope or something to prevent that from happening, but then the jig would have been up. Yeah, or they could have maybe they had a plan to make it seem like there was something that however but those guards, man, how well done was their uniform just to make them just creepy anonymous? Yeah. That was awesome. I really love the show. I can't wait for what's coming in season two. Is there going to be a season two? Yeah, I mean, it ends with dude coming back as a genuine tough dude. Like going back. Remember, he could have left and he went back. Yes, but I didn't know that there was definitely going to be a season two. Oh, yeah. He's going to go back there like Linda Hamilton, Jack Black and Kung Fu Panda. Terminator two. Yeah. Okay. There you go. I think that's a more apt. Is her name? Linda Hamilton. Yeah. Okay. I thought I got it wrong. No, you got it right, man. Just like you got tug of war. Right. But did we? Did I yes, we did. We did. You got anything else? No, no tic TAC toe. I promise. We're done with this two part series. All right, well, since Chuck said we're done, that means we're done. And that means, of course, everybody's, time for listener mail. Unless we do thumb wrestling. If there's something to it, sure. Maybe a shorty. I'm always down with interesting stuff like that. As long as there's something to it. All right, I'm going to call this eagle versus hawk. And another chance to poke fun at Jerry a little bit. Okay, this goes down in history alongside the Wilhelm Scream. Oh, don't forget, same old blank zine. Oh, that's right. So, yes, our beloved sister and producer Jerry, who we like to tease occasionally, we will call for a special effect here and there and sometimes she has a neck for getting them wrong. And that's the case with eagle versus hawk. Hey, guys, just listen to the cookies episode and heard the eagle cry, quote unquote denoting the golden age of cookies. I want to let you know that bird cry you used was probably a red tail hawk. Hollywood prefers the red tailed hawk cry to the actual eagle cry because it sounds much more majestic. The first time I ever heard an eagle making noise, I thought for sure it was a giant mutant chicken. Much more of an aggressive cluck. Definitely understand why Hollywood makes his choice, but I remember being goofed by this fact. Never heard that used that way, so I wanted to share it with you all. Thanks and have a happy new year. In my defense, I knew that was a hawk, but the eagle sound was so pitiful, I didn't use it. Hey, there's Jerry. Guys, she actually stepped in to defend herself. There she is. Chuck, I feel like an error just ended. Well, she's been on before, but that was the most blatant. Jerry pretty blatant, but I think that was a good one. Jerry's, way to step in. PS. Is your board game sold out? I was sad to not see it under the Christmas tree this year. Cordially, your resident bird nerd, katie Rose. Souder, Katie, the board game did sell out and a lot of online retailers. But it's going to be back soon, right? Actually, Chuck, I don't know if they're sold out or not, but they were sold out everywhere in the world except for Indigo, which is Canada's largest bookstore. They had some as of the beginning of the holiday season earlier, but they may be out. But from what our friends at hasbro tell us, they should be back in stock at the end of this month. The end of January. That's right. But anyway, thank you, Katie Rose Salder, for that email. Yes. Thank you, Katie. Rose. And if you want to be like Katie Rose and send us an email, you can. You can wrap it up, spank it on the eagles butt, and send it off to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. You know you're a pet mom when you plan your vacation around your pet. At Halo, we get it because we're pet moms, too. We make natural, high quality pet foods that's rooted in science. It's the world's best food for the world's best kids. Learn more@halopets.com." | |
How Castration Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-castration-works | In this episode, Josh and Chuck teach you everything you ever wanted to know but were too freaked out to ask about castration. Learn about the history of removing male genitalia, why some parents had it done to their sons, how the state has become the mai | In this episode, Josh and Chuck teach you everything you ever wanted to know but were too freaked out to ask about castration. Learn about the history of removing male genitalia, why some parents had it done to their sons, how the state has become the mai | Tue, 03 Dec 2013 14:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=3, tm_hour=14, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=337, tm_isdst=0) | 39044147 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the allnew 2014 Toyota Corolla. Welcome to stuff you should know from housekeeper's. Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles WTO. Bryant. Jerry's over there, and we all want to work. Warning you that if you are squeamish, you should skip this one. And if you're a man, you may just sit there with your legs crossed the entire episode. Yeah. Don't be confused. We're not talking about circumcision. We already did that one. This one's castration, and it is nothing like Circumcision. Really? No. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty proud of our Circumcision episode. That one was really good. It had it all had history, anatomy, scalpels, controversy. Controversy. That was a good one. This one is a little different. The castration. It better not be anything like Circumcision, because that means something has gone very wrong or you just haven't finished. Yeah. All right. Castration. Yeah. Castration. I don't remember how this came up, but this is from a blog post I wrote. Yeah. You did a great job. Yes, well, I just wanted to find out everything there is to know about castration. I did, pretty much. I've got a couple of historical bullet points for you. Okay. Apparently, in 1778, Thomas Jefferson introduced a bill reducing punishment for rape, polygamy, and sodomy from death to castration. Okay. TJ and we should also point out we got a lot of letters from people about the revisionist history with Thomas Jefferson that said Sally Hemmings was more than likely forced into that relationship. And some people go so far as to call Thomas Jefferson a rapist himself for that relationship. I had never seen that. But then I did some reading, and that is a theory that we can't really base and say, hey, they were in love. Right. You took a long route. Right? Yeah. They're in love because they made love. I don't know that I'm going to go out and say that he was a rapist, but it's definitely some hinky history. Well, that's a really excellent point with revisionist history. Again, a lot of his interpretation. But if you do look at it like she was his slave sure. And they had a relationship, how can it be consensual? Right. At the very least, it's tarnished with the concept that she was a slave, and there's a chance that he forced her into it. So thanks for everyone who wrote in. Yeah. And also, the other quick thing is that Genghis Khan supposedly says that Genghis might have been castrated himself. Really? By princess seeking revenge. I can't remember his name. Jingis Khan? No. Hang Sea or hang sea. I can't remember. He was like the admiral of the Chinese Navy when they were undertaking basically, their own age of exploration that a guy named Gavin Menzies thinks beat Columbus to the New World in 1421. He was castrated as well. There's actually been a lot of very prominent people in history who have held positions of great power who are castrated people. It's very interesting. Hadn't heard of Genghis, though. Yeah. And that's not verified. No. You could see that being, like, a rumor that his enemies made up or something to make him seem weaker or something. Sure. But we should point out that with the concept of castration as shocking and as weird and horrific as it sounds, there is like, a certain group of people who are either castrated or interested in being castrated, that there's nothing really weird to it at all from their perspective. Sure. So let's talk about this. This is not like a widespread thing today. Right. But if you look back into the ancient world, it was actually fairly common, especially in parts of Asia like Korea and China. A lot of their high bureaucrats were actually castrated. And like I said, a lot of them went on to hold great places of prominence in history. And very oddly, there's been some sort of longevity research into the idea that if you're castrated male, you may live longer than the average male. Yeah. You found a study from 2012 from Korea that unit, and that's a word you're going to hear a lot the subject group produce more centenarians that's people who live 100 or older than 130 times more than just normal folks in the west not say they're abnormal, but you know what I mean. Nine units, right. Yeah. And their average lifespan of that group was 14 to 19 years higher than the control group. Interesting. The thing is, somebody pointed out, like, well, they were high bureaucrats, so their life was cushier. They were less likely to be killed in an ox accident or something than their contemporaries. They're also less likely to die from STD. Yeah, that's another really good point, too, that I hadn't thought about another study, though, that had similar findings, too, though. So it is possible, the theory goes, that without testosterone ranging through your body, your lifespan could conceivably increase over time. That's true. Okay, so who else is famous? I know Boston Corbett. Thomas Boston Corbett? Yeah. You said you knew about him already. I'm impressed. I had heard this before. It might have been like a Jeopardy thing, but he was the guy who most people believe shot John Wilkes Booth, who shot Lincoln. And he was castrated himself. He castrated himself. He was a case of autocastration, and there aren't that many on record of autocastration, but may I? Sure. So, Mr. Corbett, you said he was the guy who shot John Oak's Booth against orders even. He was to be taken alive, and this guy shot him. Yeah. I didn't know. It was disputed, but some people say he didn't do it, but I think he's largely held responsible. So later on in life, he became widowed. He was a widower. His wife died is another way to put it. And he was worried about being tempted by other people other women. So he one night took a pair of scissors and castrated himself. And then he went to church for the evening service, went home and had dinner, and then decided to go to the local doctor's house to see if it should get checked out. That obviously made national news. One of the ideas that suggest Corbett was crazy when he did this is that he was a hatter. That was his profession. And hatters at the time worked with mercury, which the phrase mad as a hatter, the mad hatter. It's because people who made hats worked with mercury. And all of that mercury repoising over time supposedly affected their personality and their IQ. What did they do with the mercury? Do you know? I think it had something to do with giving the headed shape. Okay. I'm not sure. I looked for this, and I couldn't find it. But I did find that the idea is in dispute. Well, I did see that Corbett cited a bible verse. It's not surprising they went to church after Matthew, 1912. May I? Please. For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother's womb, and there are eunuchs who were made so by man, and then there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who was able to do this, let him do it. Right? So there was another early church father who carried out auto castration because of that same bible verse. Talking about in the bible, if you're able to castrate yourself for the king of heaven, just go ahead and do that. Right? There is a passage in the bible that has led to at least two people cutting off their own genitalia. And this is a new testament, by the way. Yeah, I noticed you said Matthew, the super modern new testament. Right. Corbett was 19th century. This is a fairly recent case. The early church father was obviously in the first couple of centuries Ad. And then the Korean unix, although the last one died in 1096. Yeah, that's pretty recent. They were really operating in the more the 19th and early 20th century and then way earlier in the millennia. But there are cases every once in a while, like auto castration every once in a while. I think in 2006 or something like that, I came across a case study of a person who castrated himself. He was a 20 year old with what sounds like Cotard's delusion. He said that he had died and he was trying to wake himself up. That was one reason he was awake. He also said he felt guilty for experiencing lust. And then overall, he said he felt more female than male, but he was heterosexual, so it sounded like he was throwing everything at the wall to see what stuck. But ultimately, the thing that stuck out to me was he said he felt relief afterward, like he was fine. His affect was flat, but he was fine. He wasn't like, oh, my God, what have I done? And apparently he expressed relief at no longer having a sanitarium, which is something we'll get into. It comes up later on. But the point is, when he went into the hospital and doctors found out what he had done to himself, they thought he was totally crazy, and a lot of people would. But it's really important to point out that with castration, it's typically autocastration. That is deemed the results of psychosis. Right. And it's not the castration part. It's the fact that you've harmed yourself. Yeah. Just self mutilation. Exactly. That's the part that has the psychosis label attached, not being castrated. And so there's this Internet survey that I think kind of really explodes the idea that you have to be crazy to be castrated or want to be castrated. Yeah. 112 people responded, and 40% of those reported a desire to be free from sexual urges, and another 30% said they either wanted to be castrated for the cosmetics appearance I guess you referenced Kendall appropriately. Or as a way to act out a sexual fetish, which, as we'll learn later, is a thing. It is in North Carolina. Or was. Yeah. So as bizarre as it sounds, and I guess across the board and universal, it might seem that thinking that you'd have to be crazy to be castrated or you would never want to be castrated. There are some people out there who do. I don't think it makes sense for me, but that makes more sense to me than the people who say, I just feel like my left arm shouldn't be on my body. Yeah. Because at least castration is tied to lust and the other things that people think might ruin their lives, these sexual urges. Or in the case of, like, pedophilia, that comes up later, too. So that makes more sense to me than cutting off my left arm because it feels weird. Yeah. Like with your left arm. Ever do? Yeah, well, my left arm. Have you ever seen my left foot? I knew you were going to say that. I have. Of course I have not. Oh, it's good. That was the beginning of Daniel Day Lewis's mastery of acting. He was amazing. That was the first time I'd heard of him, I remember. Yeah. I think that was his first movie. I think my beautiful Laundret was before that. No, there was another one that I saw. That was before. That was a Merchant Ivory film. Yeah. Yeah. He was in it. And it was a Merchant Ivory film. I think he made his name, though, and won the Academy Award for that mileage. Yeah, for sure. All right, let's talk about the history. Yeah, I saw a thing that was disturbing that in Korea they would castrate boys. You might want to not listen to this. Fair warning me. Here it comes. I have to other people that they would allegedly dip the genitals in feces and have a dog eat the genitals off. Well, that's a really awful way to do it. Yeah, I can't imagine anything worse. Weird. Yeah, it's pretty awful. So let's get into why someone do this. If you're a eunuch, you are a trusted friend of the court, perhaps. Yeah, well, especially in Korea, the reasoning went. And again, like for millennia, eunuchs ran Korea at the behest of the royal families that had the dynasties in power. Well, you're not going to start your own dynasty, so there's one reason to trust you. That's the point. Units were allowed to have families, but they had to adopt kids, obviously, and any males that they adopted had to be eunuchs themselves to prevent them sounding since they were very powerful people, they had to kind of die out. That's so awful. These kids are like, Yay, I'm adopted finally. Yeah. Oh, you're a Unix. Can I go back to the orphanage thing? That Unix. The other reason Unix were trusted, obviously, because they weren't going to be making any moves on the queen. Well, in the Middle East especially, harms were very popular. And if you have a harem of wives, they need protecting, and you want the guy who's going to protect them to be physically incapable of doing anything with them. Hence Unix. Sure, but the point is, with the removal of these men's genitalia, they were automatically imbued with a trust because they simply were incapable of circumventing that trust. Yeah, that's like one of these weird things about Unix is like what goes hand in hand with being a unit, at least as far as government or power is concerned. Sure, trust goes hand in hand with it. Isn't the history of this world crazy when you really kind of get down to the nitty gritty? Well, that's what we're trying to show little by little, just how insane humanity is. So let's move on to the 18th century century in Italy, where in 1994, I saw a movie called Farinelli. Did you ever see that? No. Again, it was a movie about a castrato singer. I'm glad you said that. Castrato. The pillar is castrati. Yeah, same with Gelato. Little do you know, if your family goes out, you get Gelati. Yeah. Really? Yeah. So his name was Carlo Maria Michelangelo Nicola Broche. And his stage name was Farnelli. And it's a good movie, you should get it. It's a biopic. Yeah, it's a biopic about a famous castrato. And in Italy at the time, there were women weren't allowed to sing in church. So if you wanted that mezzo soprano. You just got a grown man with no genitalia. Yeah. Sing your heart out. The thing is, it was illegal to castrate somebody in Italy at the time. Well, in 1870 it became illegal. So before that, I think they were just sort of well, so from my understanding, at the very least, it was found upon because in the 18th century, the 17 hundreds, there was basically an underground network of castration surgeons and there was an anonymous book that came out that was published on it that basically explained how it was done. And apparently, they would basically take a boy here's the thing. You wanted your kid to possibly be a castrato because it could mean wealth for you and your family. So a kid's parents, a boy's parents would take him to this castration surgeon. The castration surgeon would pinch the boy's carotid artery until he passed out and then cut his testes off. The Vulcan death grip. Pretty much, yeah. And cut his testes off. And this is the way they did it, according to this book, from 1718, because they tried opium before, but too many of the boys, like, died from Odin. Yeah, they odd and died. So they would just pinch their carotid and then remove their testis. And a lot of people think that you could do this at any stage and produce a high pitched voice. Yes. That's like the whole thing. Like, even when you get kicked in the groin, a guy will go, Joke. You can thank Martin Short for perpetuating that joke. Yeah, but that's not true. It has to be done before puberty, before your vocal cords have lengthened, and those 95% of the male sex hormones are produced in the testes. If you get rid of those, what you've got is a man that continues to grow and interestingly castrate, their limbs grow really long and their rib cage gets bigger because without testosterone, their bone joints don't harden like they should. So that produces an effect of better able to breathe and so it makes you a better singer. But you're singing through the vocal cords of a child. Right. Because during puberty, one of the things your voice changed do you remember that Brady Bunch where Peter Brady's voice changed? What was going on was the testosterone in his body was lengthening his vocal cords by anywhere between 35 and 92 mm. So your vocal cords increased by 65% in length during puberty. Within a castrato, the vocal cords don't lengthen nearly as much because they've only got about 5% of the testosterone compared to an uncastrated person. But their pharynx grows, their oral cavity grows, their lungs grow, and then, like you said, their ribcage grows to allow their lungs to grow even more. Take a deeper breath. So you have somebody who has the ability to hold a note like a male adult, but a high pitched resident voice. Yes. It's a weird combination of, like, a super powerful, like an extra powerful singing voice through the vocal cords of a kid. But the upshot is, if you remove the testes of an adult male, his voice isn't going to change a bit, he's just going to be really mad. His demeanor might right, yeah. So I guess would you say 18? What? When they outlawed it 1870, is when it became officially illegal. The thing is, it was definitely frowned upon because I found criticism of the church, the choir at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, which is where the Pope says Mass had tons of castrati, even though you weren't really supposed to, and opera houses would have castrati. The thing is, it was very competitive. So there are a lot of boys who were castrated and never went anywhere with their singing career. And then over time, they outlawed it. And Italy was kind of like, we should probably stop doing this. Yeah, maybe we should just let girls sing in church. Yeah, I'm sure they had a pretty big impact. You should see Farinelle. You check it out. It's good. Okay, so you might think that this is the kind of thing that went away in, like, let's say, the 1018 hundreds. But no, it happened up until in England, at least chemically, the 1950s, because we've talked about this before. The great father of computing in Adventure of the Turing Test, alan Turing was homosexual, which is illegal. It was at the time. And he was given a choice and go to prison, or you can take these injections of still basraw, it's a female sex hormone, and it gave him boobs and made him impotent. Yeah. And he laced an apple with cyanide and died by his own hand. By eating the apple a couple of years later. Yes, and I don't think they called it chemical castration at the time. They just were like, this will limit your libido. Right. So I think that came up in the mid 1960s in the United States. So basically, we went from people's parents having them castrated as boys to the state taking over. So that's how castration is typically carried out at the hands of the state these days as punishment for crime. And in 1966, a guy named John Money, an American physician, he came up with this procedure, which is just a simple round of injections of something called Medoxy Progesterone Acetate, which is a birth control used by women. And basically, you just take the same round of birth control that you would give a woman and give it to a guy who was having sexual urges that he was scared of or sexual feelings for children or whatever, and it would reduce his libido and he would be cured. The thing is, this first chemical castration in America was voluntary. It was a treatment, basically, for a pedophile who hadn't committed a crime yet, and the state said, hey, that's a pretty good idea. We're going to start making that compulsory. And California was the first. I think that is a good time to break for a message. We'll learn about modern castration after that. Okay, so you said California, which is kind of surprising, as liberal as it is, to get on board first and allowing chemical castration. Well, was it still, like, an option or was it? No, before that, it was an option. Like if you were a pedophile who was caught doing something or a rapist or something, a sex criminal, sure. You could say, hey, I heard about this chemical castration thing. How about instead of going to prison, you just give that to me? It was a bargaining chip. So if you use your penis to commit a crime, they would give you this option, or your lawyer could bring it up. They may not give you the option, but it was something that was out there that you could use to bargain your way out of prison with, potentially got you in the mid 90s, California said, it's not a bargaining chip anymore. This is going to happen to you. Like, this is something that can happen to you. This is a sentence we can exact on you. Well, the Czech Republic surgically castrated sex offenders until 2008. So did Germany. Yeah, Germany did, I don't think nearly as long, but for a long time, like in Europe, that's how pedophilia was cured, was through castration or sex offenses. Yeah. And since theirs was surgical, they had 100% success rate of no recidivism. Is that the word, recidivism? Recidivism. It's a bonehead word. It is, but that ain't me no more. So yeah, the chemical one, the chemical variety can be reversed if you stop taking the drugs. It's generally thought that you can go back to achieving erections and doing things with your penis. Well, there's a study right, of German sex offenders. Let me tell you about Joseph Frank Smith first. So when you are chemically castrated, the recidivism rate drops from 80% for non treated. Like just basically you send the person to prison, there's an 80% chance they're going to commit another sex crime later to just 5% among chemically castrated people. Yeah. It takes the wind out of their sales, effectively. It does. And one of the reasons why America got really behind the idea of chemical castration is because of a guy named Joseph Frank Smith. Yes. This is unbelievable. So back in 1983, he was convicted of raping a woman for the second time. The same woman. Really? Yeah. And they were like, you're losing your junk, we're going to chemically castrate you. And he basically became this poster boy for chemical castration. He would give interviews about it. He would talk publicly about how it freedom and how it changed his life and how this is such a great humane treatment for people with sex offense problems. And all the while he was out there raping and committing other sex crimes while he was giving these interviews. And finally in 1998, he got caught and he was convicted of a few sex offenses, but he suspected of 75 more over the years. And the whole reason was he stopped taking his injections. Yeah, I see that's. The thing that I didn't get is that not they just said, here, just take these I guess over time enough trust. See, that's the thing that trust in Unix was still reflected all these years later on this guy because people thought he was castrated and because he was really working people with his public image as well. Yeah, I think the state would carry out that punishment for life, right? You would think so, but I guess every Monday hey, Joe Frank, you've really knocked us off our feet. You just handle this, we'll give you some needles. You do it at home. Yeah. Or maybe he suggested, maybe he's like, doc, yeah, I can do this. But however it happened, whoever was in charge of him getting that chemical castration injections really dropped the ball. And possibly as many as 75 or 80 people were victimized as a result. So you did mention earlier that something we should clear up. You said that even if the testes are removed, there's still that 5% chance that's because some of your testosterone is made in the pituitary gland. About 5%. Yeah. Not all of it comes from the old testicles, which is why your vocal cords grow some right when you're chest. So that explains that. Right. The thing is, now we've come to the German sex offender study called study, right? Yeah. So back in 1960, somebody carried out a study of German sex offenders who had oriettamies. Yeah, that's the testicle removal. Right. So even these guys, orchaekomy sorry, even among these guys, 18% were still able to have sex 20 years after the procedure. Germans, they have to stick to it. They're very efficient. But that's because their pituitary gland is still generating enough testosterone that they could get an erection. Well, you know what Germans say my pituitary gland produces more testosterone by 10:00 A.m. Than yours does all day. That's what I'm saying. Right. If they got a pen Actomey, which is cutting off your testicles and your penis, complete removal of all of your junk, followed by drug therapy to reduce the hormones, then basically that's the only way to get 100% chance of no following no crimes. That's the only way to reduce libido. Well, that was my two cent. Based on my research, it would take the removal of the penis, the removal of the testing and drug therapy to drop the I was really dancing around libido down enough. That was just my research. So you go on to point out, I think it's very fair to call out some of the positives that people feel for sex offenders. A lot of them say that, you know what? I feel freed, I feel serenity. I don't have these urges anymore. I did not feel normal and well before, and now I do. And I can go out and live my life as a normal person because no one else knows about what's going on downstairs. But there is criticism of the use of castration in any form by the state as punishment for a sex crime. Though, mainly if it is in the United States, at least if it is punishment for a crime, then groups like Amnesty International and ACLU say, well, then that's a cruel and unusual punishment. Sure. Secondly, if you're using it to prevent future crimes, I can't think of anything more unconstitutional than that unless it's voluntary. But if it's the state saying, we're going to give you this to keep you from possibly committing a crime that you may or may not commit in the future, you're not supposed to be able to do that. But society kind of looks the other way on that one. And then, thirdly, it doesn't always work. It doesn't always work, as the case of Joe Frank Smith shows us. Yeah, but you're right. There are some people who have had a liberating experience. Yeah, exactly. But they're not necessarily criminals. We should probably divide that right about here. Right. Anyone who's been castrated doesn't mean they're a criminal. Right. There's a lot of parallels between people who voluntarily seek castration and asexuals the third sexual orientation, who we did a podcast on before. Yeah, that was a good one, too. And I guess that brings us to the final piece of the pie, seeking sexual gratification. Right. It's a very small niche group of people. I would hope these are like the people who are the opposite of the people who want to be castrated, to be free from sexual urges and desires so they can just live their lives in a freer way. These people want to be castrated for sexual gratification? Yeah. Like masochists get into this. Not all of them, but the old saying, whatever floats your boat. Right. For some people, this floats their boat. And it may seem really weird to us, but in North Carolina, in Waynesville, which is right outside of Asheville in 2006, these are actually three men. They had mug shots. Have you seen them? Yeah. You could have just seen them without the storyman. Like, I know what those guys are into. Yeah. They had a quote, unquote dungeon fashion from an enclosed carport, and they carried out surgical castration for people voluntarily. At least six dudes voluntarily did this for sexual gratification in their little dungeon. They were like underground, unlicensed surgeons who did it in their own home. And the reason that people went to these guys was because there are supposedly surgeons around the world who will, for enough money, carry out surgical castration. But if you're into SM and that's why you're being castrated yeah. They don't allow that. Well, they're not going to torture you sexually before, after, or during the operation, which is what you're after. Right. And with the castration, for masochistic purposes, for sexual gratification, you're never going to have a penectomy because you still want to be able to have sex afterwards. Sure. But you may have your scrotum removed, you may have one testicle removed, you may have both removed, and you will. Probably do this under more than one operation over time, but you're being sexually tortured while you're being operated on. Yeah. That's like you said, another piece of the pie. That's right. And Richard master Rick Sierra. He was the lead physician. I guess you could say. Yes. He actually worked for 23 years as a physician's assistant. So he had a little background. Yeah. From what I understand that none of the surgeries were like nobody died or got an infection or anything like that. They seem to know what they were doing. So it was him. It was his partner of 20 years, Michael Mendez, and then a man they called their slave, Danny Carol Reeves, who all pleaded originally. They were charging them with operating medical establishment and practicing medicine without a license. Right. And we should also point out, like, every single one of their patients was there voluntarily. One guy flew from South America for his surgery. Yeah. Like, where do you go? Waynesville, North Carolina. Yeah, right. It's the home of SNM operations. In the end, they did not get convicted of those crimes. There were misdemeanors. They ended up pleading guilty to felony castration and maiming. Oh, yeah. And Master Rick served a year in prison. Michael Mendez served four months, and the slave man served eight months at the time of his life. He may have. So I think it's neat that those guys found each other. Like, three people who are in think about this. This is a small town. Yeah. I mean, I can understand the guy from South America finding these guys from the Internet, but if these guys were partners for 20 years and this was in 2006, that definitely predates the Internet. So, like, these guys who are into some very unique stuff found one another. Yeah. And it may have been thanks to an SM website, because I looked I was like, I got to see what this Master Rick looks like. And there was pictures of him from his profile@collarme.com. I was like, Collarmey.com? What's that? And I was like, oh, well, what do you think it is? Caller put a collar on, like a dog collar. Yeah, right. Yeah, that's what it is. I'm a hip. Yeah, you're in the know. But yeah, there was a picture of the dude with his buttless chaps on, and Master Rick served a year. Yeah. I feel like if there's anything about castration is that it encompasses a lot of different people with a lot of different reasons over a lot of period of time. Yeah. It's just another one of those weird human things that we have to let you know about. Yeah. Now we never have to talk about it again. You got anything else? I got nothing else. I got something else. We'd probably be remiss to not mention the Heavens Gate Cult. Remember them? Yeah. They were castrated and weird. Well, yeah. They were led by Marshall Apple White, and all the male members of Heaven's Gate, except for him was castrated. No, that's not true. He was castrated as well, so all of his followers had to be as well. So yeah, we should probably I don't think you could do a castration episode without mentioning Heaven's Gate. I'm glad we did. Yeah. So thank you for joining us. This was castration. If you want to learn more about castration, you can type that word into our website, stuffyshow.com, because this came from one of our articles. And since I said stuffyshonow.com, that means it's time for administrative detail. All right, this is the time in the show where we say thank you to you for sending us Bobbles and Trinkets and handmade goods. So I've got one. Josh. Okay. White River Knife and Tool of Coopersville, Minnesota. The student, Luke, sent me a really cool knife, and he sent one. And you were like, Here, you take the knife. Chuck oh, you spend more time out of doors. Yeah. You defend yourself against jack, rabbits and such. He sent the seven inch backpacker, and it's awesome. And it is super sharp. Yeah, very sharp. And it is from White River Knivescom. Yeah. We also want to say thank you to Jack Shaffer for sending us Life Is LARPing Bro bracelet. We should thank Anthony Lawson, who sent us some really cool gifts. Pricey gifts. Handmade gifts. Oh, yeah. Brass spinning tops and bottle openers. You should see Jerry spin this top. She's like, look. It just keeps going. I know. It's pretty awesome. These are machine by hand. So, like, when you look at something this intricate, like, made of metal, I'm like, how do you make this? But the dude makes them by hand, so you should check it out at Jllossonincompany, which is Jllossenco.com. Yes. Matt Rob. Rob. But I know him from our correspondence, but I don't know how to pronounce the last name. You mean Matt, broccoli rob. He sent us a School on Wheels mobile tutoring program, umbrellas and stickers, some good swag from his awesome program out in, I think, Los Angeles, I believe. That's right. School on Wheels. Go check it out. Thank you. School on wheels. And thanks also to Baby and the Nobody's band that sent us some shirts and CDs. Yeah. Thank you, Steve, with his plain number of N six NX. Send us a thank you card for accompanying him on a 49 state, three country, two any thousand miles Cessna journey. Wow. Yeah. We went on that. Did you know? Yeah. And thanks to Jane. Jennab we thanked her before Jane's creation. She does custom knit items to benefit Animal Rescue. 100% goes to animal rescue. So go to facebook. Comjanescreations. And we're trying to drum up some dough for her. Right? Yeah. Like, buy a little NIT cap for someone for Christmas. And 100% of that will go to Animal Rescue. We want to give a huge thank you to Anna Kruskowska. Yeah. Kukowska. She's got one of those last names. It's difficult to pronounce until you really look at it and then you're like, yeah, it's Kukowska. You remember her. She's at NS Sound. Oh, yeah. So you and I curated a sale at Insund. We just picked our favorite albums and they put them on sale. And as thank you, she ended up sending us gift cards. That's right. And thank you very much, because I got some pretty cool records as a result. And I got posters. Nice. Yeah. I also want to say very big thank you to Charlotte Alfred for sending me her copy of Dark Dungeons, the Jack Chick publications. Crash. Remember we talked about the Dungeons and Dragons thing? Very cool. I have an original copy of it. Well, that's nice. Yes, thank you. You want to keep going? I got a couple more. Yeah. Let's see. Thanks to Jim Moorehouse for sending us Sasquatch field guides for tracking yes. Thank you to Brandon Vasilia is how you pronounce that voiceka? I don't know. I can't read my own handwriting. He said handmade art books about asthma. Oh, that's right. I remember those. Yeah, the asthma book. Yes. They're pretty awesome. They were cool. He's like, Please do one on asthma. Some books to bribe you. We'll have to do that. I made myself. Thanks to Emily, who's working in the environmental conservation program in Paraguay. She sent us a postcard. We also got a postcard from Budapest from Kristen Kern. Yeah. And we got $100 trillion Zimbabwe note. You remember that? That's pretty awesome. Yeah, that was from Dave Stevenson. We appreciate you, Dave. Got a 66 postcard from Pauline S, and we got a postcard from Adam Pervez of Happinessplunge.com. So thank you very much to everybody for sending us some cool stuff. We appreciate it. If you want to get in touch with us, you can send us whatever on Twitter.com or Handle is syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffychannel. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works.com, brought to you by the all new 2014 Toyota Corolla." | ||
Was there a curse on King Tut's tomb? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/was-there-a-curse-on-king-tuts-tomb | When Howard Carter opened Tutankhamen's tomb, some believe he unleashed a curse on everyone associated with his expedition. But there's no such thing as a curse, right? Learn the scientific basis beneath King Tut's curse as Chuck and Josh Meet the Mummy! | When Howard Carter opened Tutankhamen's tomb, some believe he unleashed a curse on everyone associated with his expedition. But there's no such thing as a curse, right? Learn the scientific basis beneath King Tut's curse as Chuck and Josh Meet the Mummy! | Thu, 05 Jan 2012 17:05:15 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=5, tm_hour=17, tm_min=5, tm_sec=15, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=5, tm_isdst=0) | 36536826 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody. If you want a great website, you want to do it yourself with no must, no fuss, turn to Squarespace. They have everything to sell anything. They have the tools that you need to get your business off the ground, including ecommerce templates, inventory management, simple checkout process, process, and secure payments. And if you're into analytics, hold on to your hats, because Squarespace has everything that you need. Just head to squarespace. comSK and you can get a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code s YSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Picture this, friends. You could be packing a carry on for a trip to Hawaii when you realize you're going to need a bigger bag. But it's cool because you booked your flight with your city Advantage Platinum Select card. So you can check a bag for free on domestic travel and still have room for those souvenirs. And surprise, those souvenirs also earned you Advantage Miles. Actually, you earned Advantage Miles and loyalty points with each swipe. So let's start dreaming about your next next adventure. This could be you, and you could be anywhere with the City Advantage Platinum Select card. Learn more at city comAdventure and travel on with cityadvantage. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. This is Charles W. Chuck Bryant that makes this stuff. You should know the podcast. I'm walking like an Egyptian. You sure are. You nailed that, too. Gerry and I were singing the old Steve Martin King Tut song, and you were like, what is that? I know what it is. I'm young. I don't know that. I don't know the lyrics. Yeah, you were on the cusp there. That was a big deal when I was a kid. I was like two when that came out. Yeah, you missed it by a few years. I mean, I wasn't like 25 and going to see Steve Martin or anything. I'm like 60. So Chuck, I know you're familiar with Steve Martin, but are you familiar with a little boy king by the name of King Tutankhamen? Yes, I am. Are you? Yes. Well, let's wrap about it, man. Did you go see the exhibit? No. The Discovery One in Times Square. Well, it travels. Oh, yeah. Now you saw that one. I didn't see it then. I saw Bodies, so it was pretty neat. I think I told you about that. I didn't see bodies yet. I did the dialogue in the dark thing. Yeah, we talked about this. Disappointing. Yeah. Bodies was pretty cool. But you're like, wow, this is really nuts. Yeah, but no, I didn't see King Tut. Did you? Yes. Did you know there's a Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit now in Times Square? Discovery has, you know, Discovery has basically like a museum, like an exhibition show in times Square, and the newest one is the Dead Sea Scrolls. Like the Dead Sea Scrolls are there in Times Square right now. You can just sign your name on it. Kilroy was here, right? Yeah. All right, well, let's get back to King Tut because we got a little off topic, if you ask me. I'm going to tell you what I know about King Tut, okay. And then you tell me what you know and we'll combine the two. Hey, that's the show. So, like, for example, I found out that King Tut was an avid chariot racer. Did you know that? I did. He was buried, apparently, or entombed, I should say, with six chariots. It's kind of like your uber wealthy boy president right, who's like 16 and then dies at age 18, is buried with, like, his eight camaros or something. That's kind of what they did with King Tut. Yeah. He's also an avid ostrich hunter. He used to hunt in the desert with just him and his dog. This is pretty cool. He also married his sister and had two babies with her, both of which were born prematurely and died. Yeah, there's a lot of inbreeding going on back then. Yeah, there's a lot of rumors that he was inbred or a lot of speculation, or I should say a lot of factual conjecture that he was himself also inbred. And they think that there's this huge mystery going on right now that he was club footed. Did you know that? I did not know that. So they think that he may have been club footed, which would definitely support the inbreeding argument. Not that people who have club feet are inbred, but I think if you are in bread, you're likelier to have something like a club foot. Okay. But they can't tell. It looks like he's clubfooted. His cadaver's corpse has been so mistreated over the decades since it was discovered that they can't tell if somebody just broke his foot or if he was born that way. Club foot? Is that all you got? Yeah, that's all right. We should volley it. He was short. He had a weird shaped head. Have you ever seen a skull? No. It looks like an egg. It's really weird looking. And they measured it and found that it just qualifies as, quote, normal. But all the paintings back then showed all the pharaohs and the Egyptian pharaohs had these weird shaped heads, and they thought, well, this is just the artist. But then they found his skull and they were like, no, he is a weird shaped head. So Eric Von Dacon here would say something like, well, it's because aliens came down and bred with them. Who's that? The guy who wrote Highways of the Gods. I believe. I didn't know that. Runways of the Gods, basically the 70s dude who printed all these books basically saying that the ancient Egyptians were in contact with aliens and all this stuff. And there's all this evidence throughout, like hieroglyphics and things like Toothpump Commons Skull or whatever, that show that aliens came down and bred with the Egyptians. And that's how human civilization just advanced by leaps and bounds. I believe it already just from that. Anybody who disliked our acupuncture podcast came after warren, just turn that off at the mention of his name. Yeah, exactly. So let's talk a little bit about how he died, though, because that's the big we know that he ruled he was the boy king from nine to 19 and then just died. And over the years, there have been some theories. And the leading three theories was, one, that he died from war wounds. Two, that he died in a chariot accident. That seems possible. Or because of a chariot accident. Yeah. And the third was murder. That he was clubbed in the back of the head or poisoned. I didn't see the poison one. I saw poisoning. Well, let's get into this then. There was a lot of political intrigue going on and there were people that may have wanted him dead. Well, yeah. One of the high priests inherited the throne after Tut's death, and they were all in a very close position to have murdered him if they owned a big club. Yeah, exactly. They called him Clubby. Right. Clubby. The high priest. So his body has been we'll get to the beginning, but it was found at first in the just they mangled this dude. Yeah, I think now the hole in the head was when they were taking off his ceremonial mask, really punctured a hole in his head. That's where the hole came from. Well, they used a lot of resins and things back then to help mummify the body. And because of that, he was stuck to the coffin. And Howard Carter, who was the lead chief archeologist on this dig, had this guy heat up a knife and was just, like, cutting through his body. And in the end, there were like dozens of fractures and they couldn't tell. Are these fractures here because his team mismanaged it or were they real fractures? Right, so the mystery builds up over the years. Yeah, he had a broken leg, too, and that could have been from the chariot accident, could have been from that dude. Well, not anymore. They proved that it was pre mortem. Okay. And it started to heal. Well, it started to react. It wasn't healing yet. But all this came about because unnamed TV network funded, like, a million dollar dig to make the show the Secrets of Toot and Common or something like that. And they got a CT, a Cat scan on site, a portable one, and for the first time, we're able to run his body, or what was left of it, through a Cat scan, which is pretty cool. And they found out a few things. He had a severely impacted wisdom tooth, and you should have seen it was, like, literally growing sideways in his mouth. I had to hurt. I know they said it most definitely hurt, but through the CT scan, they were able to find there was no sign of infection, so that didn't kill him. He had the weird shaped skull, but they were shown that wasn't because of wrapping. They do a lot of, like, head wrapping when they were babies, but they said that that's just the way their family skull was shaped. Maybe because of inbreeding. They found he had no sternum or rib cage. What? But through the CT, they found that the ribs were shown to be cut away and not fractured. Yeah, I don't remember talking about removing the ribs, but remember we talked about them getting the internal organs out and then restuffing it in the modification episode? Totally four inch fracture in the back of the skull, not related to the little coin size hole. And later on, they found out that that wasn't actually a fracture. It was just where the skull wasn't fully fused because he was still a kid. Wow. So it's just a line. So they learn all this stuff. They end up finding that the fracture was shown to be premortem because they found embalming resin inside the fracture. And if it would have happened afterward, it wouldn't have gone in the route that it went in showed that it was beginning to react, which means it was healing. And they eventually found out that they think he died between one and five days after this leg fracture, which could have been a compound fracture, which they think might have been infected. So that's the leading theory. I didn't see anything on this bone disease in this special, though. Did you find out about that? No, I've seen that before, and it has to do with inbreeding as well, a vascular bone necrosis, which is a degenerative bone disease. And there's also malaria, people say malaria? Yeah. I didn't see that in the special either. The broken bone thing, though, is like I mean, that makes sense. Of course. You could die from an infective bone back then. Yeah. And his kneecap was gone on that leg. It was just man, that must have been a bad accident. Yeah. So they think it could have been a chariot or they think he could have been hurt in battle, which is why the chest was all messed up, too. Like, after he was down on the ground, they were just, like, pummeling them or it was clubby or it was greedy, which is not true. So just king Touch death alone is considered a world mystery, as far as I understand. I'd certainly consider it that, yes. Less of a mystery now, though. One of the reasons why he's such a celebrated king is because of his tomb. His tomb was the first and only royal tomb found that contained just vast riches, like everything that the Egyptologists, which were basically like antiquities crazed westerners who were running all over Egypt and bribing officials to get stuff out of the country. And it was a strange time but also you could call it the birth of archeology. The Egyptologist had always hoped for a find like this. Yeah, it was the only one that had been rated outright. Supposedly. There's a lot of speculation around that too, which we'll get to. Oh yeah, yeah there was. Supposedly it had been looted at least twice. And Howard Carter, the guy who led the dig that found King Touch tomb suggested that it was in ancient times, the Valley of the Kings we should say is this area in Luxor that qualifies as an acropolis. Right. Which is a city of the dead and it was a functioning city of the dead. There are a bunch of different tombs. There were local officials and administrators and a local police force and it was a very sacred place that was off site. But Howard Carter alleged that at least once, or at least twice, possibly more times, thieves had breached King Tut's tomb in ancient times and eluded it. But to an extent they didn't make it all the way in. So I saw that they weren't looted but they broke in but didn't have a chance to loote it. Oh he said they looted all sorts of stuff. He was basically saying like they looted this and then he was very specific. Really? Yeah. But when Carter found the king touch tomb, it's called KV. 62. It was the 62nd tomb found in the Valley of the Kings. There's still a bunch of them out there too. Well yeah, but the most recent one they found was KV 63 and that was just in the last couple of decades I believe. Yes, I think they said they found one every ten to 20 years at this point. Oh really? Yeah. So KV 62 is found in the KV 63 is found in the 21st century. It's a big gap. Yeah. So it was a big deal when they found King Touch tomb, which is one reason why I celebrated the riches inside were another reason. But I think there's like 4000 objects that they found inside this, his royal tomb. It was the big daddy. But one of the other things that has made King Tut so famous is the supposed curse that was upon his tomb that supposedly befell a large number of people who were either present when the tomb was breached or were connected, familiarly or financially to the people who were there. Right. Including a dog. Susie. I don't know the dog's name. Susie. Was it really okay? You think I just made that up? Yeah. Sounds like something I would say. I would have named it Susie. You know, Susie had three legs. She was a really good dog. I love three legged dogs. I want one. Well, you would love Susie. Well, yeah, till Susie died. So let's talk about this. Let's talk about the curse on King Touch tomb. Yes. It all started with the financier. Excuse me. Behind the whole operation. Or Carter's operation was Lord Carnavan. And he was a very rich guy. He was in very bad health. He had a really bad car accident and apparently was just kind of a wreck of a human. Like, during the day, he would sit in a suspended cage lined with gauze. I'm serious. He was in that bad of health until they actually opened it. And then he was like, I got to get in there. So he actually went in? Yeah. He made it from England to Egypt in, like, record time. He took a ship, a train and a steamer down the Nile to get to Luxur once he found out that they were making headway. Yeah. And he got there in, like, two weeks. That's like really fast back then. Especially if, like, you normally sit around in a suspended cage filled with gauze. Lined with gauze. I kept trying to picture that. I wish I had a picture. I wish I couldn't picture it. I feel like I'm going to vomit a little bit. Especially like old timey wicker, like those old wheelchairs that are so disturbing. Yeah. From the turn of the century. Oh, yeah. Those are so creepy. So what happened to him was he had a mosquito bite on his cheek. He shaved one day with a straight razor and cut that mosquito bite open and died because of blood disease from infection. Well, you're leaving a big point out. This was two months after he was there at the opening of King Tut's tomb. Not so. Yeah. This is breaking news. He had actually snuck in. Yeah. This is the unfit unveiling, but four months previous. They poke their head in to take a look around, I think so. It's actually six months later. I heard it was by Lord Carnival's own words. They did a lot more than poke their head in. Oh, really? They party, basically. They party. Supposedly. This is how Carter told it, and this is how he kept his job and his reputation still to this day. Right. They opened the door just a little bit, enough so he could peek in and there are so many riches. He pulled the door shut and went and alerted the Egyptian antiquities authorities. Right, okay. This is exactly what we're supposed to do. Sure. Carvanon said, no, actually, we pushed the door. Carnival, is it? Carnival? Yeah. He said carnival. Yeah. He said that they pushed the door open, went in, push another door open as far as the shrine pocketed. A bunch of stuff. There's like stuff in Kansas City, there's stuff in Cleveland, there's things at the Met, at the Louvre on display. Yes. They are definitively linked to King Touch tour that should not be there because under the auspices of the agreement that ultimately fell between Carnival and they were allowed to take nothing out. Wow. But they stole a lot of stuff, so yes, you're right. They entered in November, and then he died in April. Right. But in the meantime, though, and this definitely didn't help dispel any rumors of a curse, he kept losing his teeth. Like, one by one. His teeth were falling out before he died. I know the feeling. So imagine this Victorian era dude in a wicker cage with gauze, losing teeth. Yeah. That's what he looked like in the months leading up to his death. Yeah. He was in bad shape, supposedly, at the moment of his death, the power the power grid of Egypt failed. Yeah. And then Susie and then Susie, well, she died. Yes. Back in England, they said that she bathed once and fell over. Death. Yes. She said she let out a howl and died. Yeah. And Carter also had a pet canary that he got for good luck on this day, and it died on the day the tomb was officially opened. Some say it was killed by a cobra, which is a symbol of the pharaohs. So it must be a curse. Crazy. The rumor started spreading because this was a time when you couldn't readily get information. So they think that journalists got a little liberties, started making up some more stories, spreading the word that it's actually a curse. Oh, they jumped all over it. The British press was crazy for this, but I think they actually made stuff up. I'm sure. Like, it wasn't just reporting. Right. They still do. Have you heard of the News of the World? Yeah. And actually, I read two sources for this idea of a mummy's curse. Chuck. One was an American painter named Joseph Smith, who told the tale about King Tutt's father in law not King Tutt, but his father in law, akanatan one of the two. His father in law cousin, probably. Yeah. I cannot who was known as the heretic King because he stopped worshipping all the old gods, the pantheon of gods, and just basically created a monotheistic religion based on just raw. Yeah. Some huge deal, too. Yeah. I thought that was his dad. It was his fatherinlaw. Yeah. Okay. Like you said, what's the difference? Right. The Priests Club may have even been among them. Right. Because King Cut came to the throne right after a Canadian, the priest cursed him to separate his body and his spirit forever. So that's a possible origin for the idea of a mummy's curse, because, think about it, there's probably times when nobody thought of mummies and curses going hand in hand. Sure. Then the other one comes from a short story called Lost in the Pyramid the Mummies Curse by none other than Louisa May Alcott, who wrote Little Women. So she may have started the idea of a mummies curse, too. Really? Yes. You read Little Women? No, it's kind of a chick book. Remember most is lack credited. Really? Yeah, he was reading it to an orphan, I think. Crying at the end. 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 cyberattack slow you down. So you partnered with IBM to build a security architecture to keep your data network and applications protected. Now you can tackle threats so they don't bring you to a grinding halt and everyone's going places, including you. Let's create cybersecurity that keeps your business on track. IBM, let's create learn more@ibm.com. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but we're pretty excited about Summer. I mean, what's not to like? School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's right. And that's where True crime podcasts on Amazon Music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. Yeah. And with so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. Prepare to go deep and become your own detective in the world of serial crimes and unsolved mysteries. Get lost hearing spooky stories with a combination of detailed research and lighthearted analysis. Whether you're a lifetime fan of true crime or you just feel like being entertained while doing the dishes at night, there's a podcast out there for you to download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. So this whole notion of a curse is that something was inscribed on the tomb? I've seen a couple of different versions. One is, they who enter the sacred tomb shall swift to be visited by the wings of death. That's pretty cool. The other one was Death will come on swift pinions to those who disturbed the rest of the pharaoh. Yeah. Is it one of the other or was it even there at all? There was a third one. Oh, really? Yeah. No shirt, no shoes, no dice. So everyone in Europe and the United States at the time was really like they called it Egypt domainia, which kind of bothered me, but that's really what was going on. Like all things Egypt were really enthralling at the time to the public. Right. Because it was just like they seemed like a cult of death fetishists. Right, yes. And this is also the time when mediums holding seances all over America and England. So the Victorians are really into like, death and shrines to death. So the first thing was like they loved that. Loved it, ate it up. And it wasn't just Lord Carnavan who was the one who died, it wasn't just him. By 1926, which was three years after they opened the tomb, well, a little over, there were eleven people dead who were either at the opening of the tomb or were connected. And then by 1935, there were 21 dead. Westerners only. Correct. Just Westerners. Yes, that's it. That's very good to bring up. There have been two papers that have, over the years, that have debunked this. The first one came in a German Egyptologist named Jorge Dendorf. He was German. He wrote a paper that basically said, look, man, there is no mummy's curse. These people who are dying, who are struck by the curse, they're barely even connected to these people. Some are more connected than others. Like Howard Carter's personal secretary died, and then his personal secretary's father killed himself. He left a note. His last words were, it was the curse. I really cannot stand any more horrors and hardly see what good I am doing here, so I am making my exit. And then he left out a window. He went out the window. It sounds to me like he had mental instability. It's possible. And was not cursed. Possibly. Okay. But there was some, like, Lady Elizabeth Carnavon, who was actually there at the opening with her father, who, I guess changed his gauze. That was her role. She died as well. So people connected were dying, but really, for the most part, it was just wild rumor and speculation, according to Professor Steindorf. And then we come to the 21st century, and a guy named Mark R. Nelson of Monash University in Australia created a paper that ran in the British Medical Journal, which is pretty cool. Did you read it? Well, I didn't read the whole paper. It was neat. He actually got a little more scientific with it and examined survival rates of 44 Westerners identified by Carter as being in Egypt during the examination. And it just chose Westerners for a good reason. That was at the time, egyptian lifespans would have been so radically different, average life expectancy would have been so different from Westerners that it would have totally skewed the result. Yeah, which makes sense. And he also only included people that were there at the time because he worked on the assumption that the curse was a physical entity. So only if you were there when the coffin was opened or present, then you would be afflicted by this curse. Right. And there are four opportunities to be afflicted by the curse by being present. Right. Four official ones. Yeah. And actually, his whole paper is bunk because he has the wrong dates. He completely leaves out the first entrance. Well, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, the sneaky one. Yeah. Right. So he's got February 17, 1923, which is the opening of the third door. This is supposedly the first time Carter and his expedition have gone into the shrine, into the tomb. But it's not. This is months after they've actually gone in and already started diluted. Yeah. And it was found by accident, which is one of the cool things. Oh, no, no. I thought some kid happened upon the top step. Supposedly, Carter's team came within a couple of centimeters of discovering it, and then Carter they're working this one area for years and years and years come within a couple of centimeters of discovering it, and then Carter's like, oh, let's stop working here. Let's move over there. And then right when Carnival says, that's it. I'm not funding your expeditions anymore, carter talks them into one more try. And then all of a sudden, there's the tomb. The show I saw said a kid found the step and told Carter. Right. One of Carter's workers came over and said, hey, I found it. But apparently Carter was like, oh, that's great. Good thing. Good. Way to go. He was supposedly not quite the gentleman adventurer that he's made out to be. He was definitely a thief who sold antiquities on the black market for his own personal gain. Wow. It sounds like some Egyptian kid found the step and was like, hey, it's over here. Yeah. No, apparently he knew where it was all along. Yeah. Well, that kid begs to differ. Right, I'm sure. Well, and the reason it's so hard to find was because during construction of other tombs I guess you could call it a construction crew, an ancient construction crew set up their home base on top of what was touched to the ruins. There are kind of obscure things, I think was either in the 18th or 19th dynasty. Do you know 18th? And then the homebase construction crew were alive during the 20th dynasty. Yes. So it came much later. All right, so sorry about that sidebar. Back to the dates. You are 17. Yes. The opening of the sarcophagus, October 10, 1926. Opening of the coffins, and then November 11, 1926, which was when they actually examined and mangled and broke apart the body because they had to get that gold off. They disattached the head from the body. Yeah. I mean, they just mangled it all the bits. And what Mark Nelson found was that these exposures were absolutely no predictor of early death at all. Actually, I was looking at a graphic compiled. If you were exposed three or more times, your chances of dying early actually decreased. Not really. Yeah. His data showed that of the 25 Westerners present during an opening or an examination or both, 25 lived an average of 20.8 years after exposure. The other Westerners that were in Egypt at the time that were not exposed during those four times lived 28.9 years. Like an eight year difference. Right. That was the curse, I think, was, you shall die 8.1 year sooner. Exactly. The mean age of death. For people who are exposed to the curse, 70 years. For those who were unexposed, 75 years. You shall not see 71. Right, exactly, right. Yeah. Especially back then. Who wants to be 75 and 1930? So there you have it. There was no curse. There was no curse. But it is possible that there is a scientific basis. For people who were exposed to the tomb to have actually died younger than they would have otherwise had they not breached King Touch Tune. That's right. And this special on this unnamed network also covered this. So what we're talking about, for the most part, are bacteria, mold, fungus trapped in these tombs breathe and multiplies upon hitting oxygen. So when they open these things up, perhaps these people get sick, or people that were already sick get sicker and die. Yeah. And Carter, he was aware that this is a possibility. He took air samples. He took spore samples or he tried to take spore samples. He said that the place was sterile. No, he said there was mold and fungi, okay. But no bacteria. Okay. He said his air samples were sterile, which is just absolutely impossible. But he made a point that if Lord Carnavan did die of a bacteria or an infection, he was far likelier to pick it up in Cairo at the time than he was in King Tut's tomb. That makes sense. It does. And that's been confirmed. 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 hey, Chuck, it's summer, which means school is out, sun's shining, the daylight lasts longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story, isn't there? There sure is. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, you can tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right Media. That's right. Part true crime and part comedy, my Favorite Murder takes you on a journey through small town mysteries and major laughs, all in the same week. That's Right hosts Karen Kilgarif and Georgia Hard stark 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. There are some other deadly things that you might encounter if you were to breach a tomb that hadn't been opened in several thousand years. Formaldehyde, hydrogen sulfide, ammonia. They all build up from decomposition. One of the cool things that Carter noted upon entering the shrine, the coffin shrine made of gold. This thing was a room within a room. And this room was made of gold. Yeah. And there were coffins within coffins, too. Yeah, I think five of them. Nested coffins. But on top of the outer coffin, I guess which is the sarcophagus. There were still lotus flowers and berries that had been left. However, when did King taught live? I think that was like 3000 years earlier. 3000 years before they left these lotus flowers on and hadn't been touched since. It is pretty cool. It is pretty cool. These things also meet. You got to have your meat when you're traveling through the afterlife. Well, that's the idea. That's why you had six chariots, is you want to have everything you need for the next life. You want to have your favorite camaro or five. These things decompose themselves. They can attract mold like Aspergillus niger and Aspergillus Flavis. And there was a bacteriologist working in the late 20th century who looked at medical records of workers like modern Egyptian workers at the Valley of Kings and found that a lot of them had been exposed to these things too. And apparently you can find those in tombs. So it's possible to be felled by that as well. Yeah. On this TV show I saw, they found another sealed tomb, which was the first one in like 20 years. Really? They did. I mean, it wasn't a pharaoh, it was just like a priest or something. But they found a sealed tomb and they thought, this is our opportunity to test a seal tomb for pathogens. In the tomb itself, they found like vast quantities of mold, like tons and tons of mold, toxic mold. And then for the actual coffin, they used a vacuum sampler to suck out an air sample before they even opened it. From this 2000 year old grave, they use like a flobby. I saw the thing. It was something like that. And what they found was exactly what you said. Formaldehyde, hydrogen sulfide, ammonia gas, all these toxic fumes. But in the end, they don't think that it could have been at a high enough level to actually kill somebody. Got you. So while it was present, while all that mold was there, although if he was already sick, it certainly might have contributed. He does sound a little sticky. Yeah. And then one last one. Another bacteriologist from Germany at the University of Lipsig conducted a study of 40 mummies and found that every single one of them contained potentially dangerous mold. So of course it does. It's possible but unlikely. And it's almost definitely was not a mommy's curse. I would say it very much definitely was not a mummy's curse. Curse of Louisa May Alcott. It was the curse of science and mold growing. So there you have it, man. That's your answer. Was there really a curse on King Tut? Yes. If you want to learn more about it, you can type in King Tut. That'll bring up a bunch of stuff on the site. Yeah, you just have to type it into our handy search bar@howstepworks.com. And I said handy search bar? That means it's time for listener mail. They recreated a space too. I think that made a lot of press at the time. Yes. He didn't seem to look abnormal, though. Well, if you look from the profile, he's got a funny shaped head for sure. And it wasn't from rafting. They said it wasn't from wrapping. Craig, that's just the family head. You ever heard of footbinding? Yeah. What is that? I don't know if it was in China or Japan or both, but in the early 20th century, late 19th century, probably further back, it was considered attractive for a woman to have a foot like a triangle. So they would bind your feet, like bonsai into this shape for years, and then eventually you would have this deformed foot that was like the point of the triangle was your heel, and then it went out into the other two points, and there was your foot. And it was considered very alluring. Yeah, it was definitely outlawed in China, and you could get in big trouble if your daughter was found to have boundaries. Wow. I'd heard of that. I didn't know what it was. Odd. Mystery solved. All right, listener mail. Hi, Chuck. Josh. And Jerry, by the way. Josh, I'm going to call this s YSK saving lives. Oh, this is a good one. Yeah. Greetings from a longtime listener and your new Atlanta neighbor. I don't think he literally lives next door to one of us. I think he just is new in town. Got you, Jerry. Just laughed at that. I want to take a few moments to tell you how SYSK contributed to saving my friend's life. Back in January of this year, a coworker, a good friend of mine. I'm glad he said he was a good friend, because when I read it initially, I didn't see that. It's like this guy gave up a kidney for a co worker. Co worker was diagnosed with end stage kidney failure shortly after he told me, you guys publish how organ donation works. After hearing about how long it might take on the waiting list and how many transplants were done each year, I decided that the least I could do was get tested. As it turns out, the other members of his family were disqualified due to a number of reasons, including age and medical history. But lo and behold, I was a match. And in parentheses, he says, that will teach me to volunteer. What a good guy. No kidding, man. He even ribs himself. Over the course of the summer, he and I were run through a battery of tests to match blood type and to prep the anti rejection drugs he would need after surgery. And then on October 18, we did the transplant. I am thrilled to report now, only a little over a month later, both of us are completely almost recovered and doing great. I would love it if you would encourage anyone on the fence about getting tested to go for it. The process is a little intimidating, but definitely worth it. Also, the unlimited cranberry juice and chicken broth are great perks. And that is Dustin, who gave up a kidney for a coworker. Yeah. And you know what? It's one of our longstanding SYSK models. Give up a kidney for a coworker friend. Get a stuffy should know T shirt. Dustin, if you want to come down to the office, I will gladly shake your hand and give you your T shirt. Absolutely. If you are the type who doesn't like to leave the house, we'll also mail it to you. Just contact us via email if you like. I'll give off a kidney. We'll contact you. We have his email. But, yes, expect a T shirt at the very least. And if you want to come by, we'd love to meet you. So thank you for doing that. That's awesome. I mean, that is awesome. So cool. I don't be waiting. I don't even feel like a bad person or less of a person because it's so colossally out of something I would do for a coworker that we're coworkers. I give up a kidney for Jerry. I know. I know you would. You totally would. Yeah. You wouldn't for me, though, would you? Well, you wouldn't for me either, but we both do it for Jerry. It's a wash. Yeah, exactly. I just think that that's great. So thank you for that. If you have a fantastic, amazing story, you want to shoot your own horn, that's fine. That's cool, man. You do something like that, you get to once in a while. You can tweet it to us. If you can tell us your story in 140 characters or less, you can tweet that to Syskpodcast. You can go on to Facebook, go to facebook. Comstuffysheno. Or you can send us an email at stuffpodcast@housetuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetepworks.com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our home page. The House the Forks 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 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 Kilgara and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You know you're a pet mom when you plan your vacation around your pet. At Halo, we get it because we're pet moms, too. We make natural, high quality pet foods that's rooted in science. It's the world's best food for the world's best kids. Learn more@halopeet.com." | ||
SYSK's Halloween Scare Fest | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysks-halloween-scare-fest | Get ready to be creeped out and join Chuck and Josh as they read you with two spooky classic horror stories, The Striding Place and The Pale Man in this special bonus Halloween episode. | Get ready to be creeped out and join Chuck and Josh as they read you with two spooky classic horror stories, The Striding Place and The Pale Man in this special bonus Halloween episode. | Fri, 31 Oct 2014 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=31, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=4, tm_yday=304, tm_isdst=0) | 33453114 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hello, everyone. Happy Halloween. That was Chuck there. Not the wind. No, but it's it is windy outside side, as you can tell, and rainy and it's like kind of spooky. Yes. But fortunately, Chuck, we have a nice fire going here in our study. It is very nice in here. We're both wearing our best smoking jackets. Yes. I like the oak woodwork. He's done it with the place. It's very nice. I feel very comfortable. And it feels like a room to read scary things, then. Well, that's precisely what we're about to do, Chuck. And we waited for a stormy night, too, which I think we've been waiting for, like, two weeks. It's been really lovely weather. Yeah. The timing could not be better. It's perfect. And I don't have to tell everyone this, but you all know it's midnight. Oh, yes. So if you hear the clock strike there it goes. We're a little late. I thought I wanted to start reading right at midnight. It's okay. We're still within the witching hour. Okay. Which I don't think is necessarily midnight, but it's still scary. Well, now we have to wait for this thing to ding twelve times. So are we going to do the one by Gertrude? Atherton first? I think we should. This was originally published by Old Gertrude as the Twin. Old Gertrude? Yeah, they called her you kind of have to. She was 19 when she wrote that. Right. But her name is Gertra, so everybody called her Old Gert. Yeah, she published a thing called The Twins. That was the original name of the story. And I guess it didn't take off because about ten years later, she renamed it The Striding Place. I like The Twins. Do you? Sure. I did, too, until I found out that there is such a thing as an actual striding place. Yeah. It's a real part in a real river in real life. Yeah. The Wharf River, right. In Yorkshire. Yeah. This is the waterfall kind of takes center stage here at the end of the story. Yeah. It's like spoiler. We won't. But I just want to explain because I did a little extra research, even on the Halloween story episode, this river comes to a point where it's about as wide as a large stride, so apparently it beckons people just go ahead and jump. No reason to go walk to the bridge above or the bridge below. Just jump over. Yeah. But it's also a very treacherous spot in the river. So, Chuck, do you want to start reading this one or do you want me to? It's up to you. I say we trade off because we have two stories this year. We didn't tell everybody yet. Oh, yeah. We're doing two stories this year. These are great. They're a little shorter, so we thought we'd double it up. I've had a little cognac, I think I feel primed and ready to go. I've got a lot of cognitive. That's right. All right. So shall we get going here, Michael, you ready? Does everyone dim the lights at home? Yes, if you're like. On the subway or something. Then you should close your eyes. Save this for another time. Close your eyes very tightly. Okay. The Striding Place by Gertrude atherton Wiggle continental and detached. Tired of early grouse shooting to stand propped against the side fence while his host workmen routed up the birds and long poles and drove them towards the waiting guns. Made him feel himself a parody on the ancestors who had roamed the moors and forests of this west riding of Yorkshire and hot pursuit of game worth the killing. But when in England in August, he always accepted whatever proffered for the season and invited his host to shoot pheasants on his estates in the south. The amusements of life, he argued, should be accepted with the same philosophy as its ills. It had been a bad day. Heavy rain had made them more so spongy that it barely sprang beneath the feet. Whether or not the grouse had haunts of their own, wherein they were immune from rheumatism, the bag had been small. The women, too, were an unusually dull lot, with the exception of a newminded debutante who bothered Wegel at dinner by demanding the verbal restoration, the vague paintings and the vaulted roof above them. But it was no one of these things that sat on Eagle's mind, as when the other man went up to bed, he let himself out of the castle and sauntered down to the river. His intimate friend, the companion of his boyhood, the chum of his college days, his fellow traveler in many lands, the man for whom he possessed stronger affection than for all men, had mysteriously disappeared two days ago, and his track might have sprung to the upper air for all trace he had left behind him. He had been a guest on the adjoining estate during the past week, shooting with fervor of the true sportsman, making love in the intervals to adeline Cavan and apparently in the best of spirits. As far as was known, there was nothing to lower his mental mercury for his rent roll was a large one. Ms Cavan blushed whenever he looked at her, and being one of the best shots in England, he was never happier than in August. The suicide theory was preposterous, all agreed, and there was as little reason to believe him. Murdered. Nevertheless, he had walked out of the March Abbey two nights ago without hat or overcoat and had not been seen since. The country was being patrolled night and day. 100 keepers and workmen were beating the woods and poking the bogs on the moors, but as yet not so much as a handkerchief had been found. So this guy's best buddy is missing? Yes, and it's really kind of weighing on his mind. It's bestie. And he's hunting droughts and he's bored out of his mind, it sounds like. Yeah, well, his mind is elsewhere. Well, Lady Jeez going on and on about the painting. Do you blame him? Okay. You're ready for more? Yeah. Wegel did not believe for a moment that Wyatt Gifford was dead. And although it was impossible not to be affected by the general uneasiness he was disposed to be more angry than frightened. At Cambridge, Gifford had been an incorrigible practical joker and by no means had outgrown the habit. It would be like him to cut across the country in his evening clothes, board a cattle train and amuse himself touching up the picture of the sensation and west riding. However, Wegel's affection for his friend was too deep to companion with tranquility in the present state of doubt and instead of going to bed early with the other men he determined to walk until ready for sleep. He went down to the river and followed the path through the woods. There was no moon but the stars sprinkled their cold light upon the pretty belt of water flowing placidly past wood and ruin between green masses of overhanging rocks or sloping banks tangled with trees and shrubs leaping occasionally over stones with the harsh notes of an angry scold to recover its equanimity. The moment the way was clear again, it was very dark in the depths where Weagle trod. He smiled as he recalled a remark of Giffords. An English wood is like a good many other things in life very promising at a distance, but a hollow mockery when you get within. You see daylight on both sides and the sun freckles the very bracket. Our woods need the light to make them seem what they ought to be, what they once were before our ancestors descendants demanded so much more money and needs so much more. Various days Wegel strolled along smoking and thinking of his friend, his pranks many of which had done more credit to his imagination than this and recalling conversations that had lasted the night through. Just before the end of the London season, they had walked the streets one hot night after a party discussing the various theories of the soul's destiny. That afternoon they had met at the coffin of a college friend whose mind had been blank for the past three years. Some months previously, they had called at the asylum to see him. His expression had been senile, his face imprinted with the record of debauchery in death. The face was placid, intelligent, without ignoble lineage. The face of the man they had known at college. Wegel and Gifford had had no time to comment. There in the afternoon and evening were full. But coming forth from the House of Festivity together they had reverted almost at once to the topic. I cherish the theory, Gifford had said, that the soul sometimes lingers in the body after death, during madness. Of course, it is an impotent prisoner, albeit a conscious one fancy, its agony and its horror. What more natural than that when the life spark goes out, the tortured soul should take possession of the vacant skull and triumph once more for a few hours while old friends look their last. It has had time to repent while compelled to crouch and behold the result of its work, and it has strived itself into a state of comparative purity. If I had my way, I should stay inside my bones until the coffin had gone into its niche, that I might obviate for my poor comrade the tragic and personality of death. And I should like to see justice done to it, as it were, to see lowered among its ancestors with the ceremony and solemnity that are its due. I'm afraid that if I discovered myself too quickly, I should yield to curiosity and hasten to investigate the mysteries of space. You believe in the soul as an independent entity, then, that it and the vital principle are not one and the same? Is that a lady? No, that's a Wegel. Absolutely. The body and soul are twins. Life comrades, sometimes friends, sometimes enemies, but always loyal in the last instance. Someday, when I am tired of the world, I shall go to India and become a Mahatma solely for the pleasure of receiving proof during the life of this independent relationship. Suppose you are not sealed up properly and returned after one of your astral flights to find your earthly part unfit for habitation? It is an experiment I don't think I should care to try. Unless even juggling with soul and flesh had falls, that would not be an uninteresting predicament. I should rather enjoy experimenting with broken machinery. The high wild roar of water smote suddenly upon Wegel's ear and checked his memories. He left the wood and walked out on the huge, slippery stones which nearly closed the river wharf at this point and watched the waters boil down into the narrow path with their furious, untiring energy. The black quiet of the woods rose high on either side. The stars seemed colder and wider just above. On either hand, the perspective of the river might have run into a rayless cavern. There was no lonelier spot in England, nor one which had the right to claim so many ghosts, if ghosts there were. All right, so he basically was like, I can't sleep. I'm going to go look for my friend. Yeah, he's thinking a lot. He's thinking about his good friend Ryan Gifford. Yeah. He's thinking of walking along the river. He's thinking about why God tortured him with that voice. Yeah. He doesn't like his voice. He's not in the best way right now. No. All right. Are you ready to continue, sir? I'm prepared. You ready? Yeah. Wegel was not a coward, but he recalled uncomfortably the tales of those that had been done to death. In the strid wordsworth's, boy of Egremand had been disposed of by the practical whitaker but countless others, more venturesome than wise, had gone down into that narrow boiling course never to appear in the still pool a few yards beyond. Below the great rocks which form the walls of the strid was believed to be a natural vault onto whose shelves the dead were drawn. The spot had an ugly fascination wiggle stood visioning skeletons uncoffened in green, the home of the eyeless things that had devoured all that had covered and filled that rattling symbol of man's mortality then fell to wondering if anyone had attempted to leap the strid of Lake. It was covered with slime he had never seen it look so treacherous. He shuddered and turned away impelled despite his manhood to flee the spot as he did so. Something tossing in the foam below the fall. Something as white yet independent of it caught his eye and arrested his steps then he saw that it was describing a contrary motion to the rushing water in upward backward motion wiggle stood rigid. Breathless he fancied he heard the crackling of his hair was that a hand? It thrust itself higher above the boiling foam, turned sideways and four frantic fingers were distinctly visible against the black rock beyond. Wiggle superstitious terror left him a man was there struggling to free himself from the suction beneath the strid swept down doubtless but a moment before his arrival perhaps as he stood with his back to the current he stepped as close to the edge as he dared the hand doubled as if in aprecation shaking savagely in the face of that force which leads its creatures to immutable law then spread wide again. Clutching. Spanning. Crying for help as audibly as the human voice. Wiggle dashed to the nearest tree. Dragged and twisted off a branch with a strong arm and returned it swiftly to the strip the hand was in the same place. Still gesticulating as wildly. The body was undoubtedly caught in the rocks below, perhaps already halfway along one of those hideous shelves. Wiggle led himself down upon a lower rock raced his shoulder against the mast beside him and then. Leaning out over the water. Thrust the branch into the hand the fingers clutched it convulsively Wegel tugged powerfully his own feet dragged carelessly near the edge for a moment he produced no impression than an arm shot above the waters the blood sprang to Wegel's head he was choked with the impression that the strip had him in a roaring hold and he saw nothing. Then the mist cleared the hand and arm were nearer although the rest of the body was still concealed by the foam. Weagle peered out with distended eyes the meager light revealed in the cusp lengths of a peculiar device the fingers clutching the branch were as familiar Wegel forgot the slippery stones. The terrible death if he stepped too far he pulled with passionate will and muscle muscles flung themselves into the hot light of his brain. Trooping rapidly upon each other's heels as if in the thought of the drowning. Most of the pleasures of his life, good and bad were identified in some way with this friend. Scenes of college days of travel where they had deliberately sought adventure and stood between one another and death upon more occasions than one of ours. A delightful companionship among the treasures of art and others in the pursuit of pleasure flash like the changing particles of a kaleidoscope. Wegel had loved several women but he would have flouted in these moments the thought that he ever had loved any woman as he loved Wyatt Gifford. There were so many charming women in the world and in the 32 years of his life he had never known another man to whom he had cared to give his intimate friendship. So, Chuck, it sounds like he's pretty certain this is Wyatt, his long lost buddy. He's in the foamy waterfall and he's trying to save him. Yeah. This is getting intense. It's getting super intense. And it sounds like he really likes this guy. Yes. He really wants to save his friend. Sure. He threw himself on his face. His wrists were cracking. The skin was torn from his hands. The fingers still gripped the stick. There was life in them. Yet suddenly something gave way. The hand swung about, tearing the branch from Wegel's grass. The body had been liberated and flung outward. Though still submerged by the foam and spray. Wegel scrambled to his feet and sprang along the rocks knowing that the danger from suction was over and the Gifford must be carried straight to the quiet pool. Gifford was a fish in the water and could live under it longer than most men. If he survived this, it would not be the first time that his pluck and science had saved them from drowning. Wiggle reached the pool. A man in his evening clothes floated on it. His face turned towards a projecting rock over which his arm had fallen. Upholding the body. The hand that had held the branch hung limply over the rock its white reflection visible in the black water. Wiggle plunged into the shallow pool, lifted Gifford in his arms and returned to the bank. He laid the body down and threw off his coat that he might be the freer to practice the methods of resuscitation. He was glad of the moment's respite the valiant life. And the man might have been exhausted in that last struggle. He had not dared to look at his face to put his ear to the heart. The hesitation lasted but a moment. There was no time to lose. He turned to his prostrate friend. As he did so, something strange and disagreeable smote his senses. For a half moment he did not appreciate its nature. Then his teeth clacked together his feet his outstretched arms pointed towards the woods. But he sprang to the side of the man and bent down and peered into his face. There was no face, man. That was scary stuff. That's creepy. No face. Yeah. And the guy was struggling, helping himself up. Clearly dead, like they had spoken about previously in the short story. Yeah. And also, I think he was talking about the soul and the twins. Like maybe this was his soul or something. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, these guys were clearly related, Gertrude says, at least. So that was the striding place by Gertrude Atherton. And that was one of two. Yeah, she said that that was her favorite one she ever wrote, and so I can't disagree. Nice going, Gert. Old Gert. So Chuck with her. What's the next selection in our cozy, scary, creepy study? By the way, I appreciate the Halloween candy put out. That's a nice touch. I know. I sprung for the full sized ones. Forget that fun sized crust. It's a little weird to eat Reese's Pieces while I'm all creeped out. This is still delicious. It is still delicious. So this one's called The Pale Man by Julius Long, and it is from Weird Tails, volume 24, issue number three. Weirdtails was a pulp rag. Chicago started 1923 and has had several iterations over the years, including a modern one. You can still, I think, buy something called Weird Tales, even though it's been shut down here and there over the years. Well, I don't know if that's where he got to start, but he definitely supplied a lot of stories. HP. Lovecraft Weird Tales. Totally love Weird Tales. Yeah. I kind of missed the old days like this. I know you have stuff like this in the Internet now, but it's kind of neat to be able to buy a little pulp thing for $0.10 back in the 90s like I did. All right, so this is The Pale Man by Julius Long with the subtitle a queer little tale about the eccentric behavior of a strange guest in a country hotel. Nice. Kind of describes it perfectly. Sure. All right, ready? Has everyone got the lights down? Very important. Remember, close your eyes on the subway and get your brandy and your Reese's Pieces up. Drop your Reese's Pieces into your brandy. That might be nice. All right, here we go. I have not yet met the man in number 212. I do not even know his name. He never patronizes the hotel restaurant, and he does not use the lobby. On the three occasions when we passed each other by, we did not speak, although we nodded in a semicormal noncommittal way. I should like very much to make his acquaintance. It is lonesome in this dreary place. With the exception of the age lady down the corridor, the only permanent guests are the man in number 212 and myself. However, I should not complain for this utter quiet. It's precisely what the doctor prescribed. I wonder if the man in number 212 two has come here for arrest. He is so very pale. Yet I cannot believe that he is ill, for his paleness is not of a sickly cast, but rather wholesome in its ivory clarity. His carriage is that of a man enjoying the best of health. He is tall and straight, and he walks erectly with a brisk, athletic stride. His pallor is no doubt congenital, else he would quickly tan under this burning summer sun. He must have traveled here by auto, for he certainly was not a passenger on the train that brought me, and he checked in only a short time after my arrival. I had briefly rested in my room and was walking down the stairs when I encountered him ascending with his bag. It is odd that our venerable bellboy did not show him to his room. It is odd, too, that with so many vacant rooms in the hotel, he should have chosen number 212 at the extreme rear. The building is a long, narrow affair, three stories high. The rooms are all on the east side, as the west wall is flush with a decrepit business building. The corridor is long and drab, and its stiff, bloated paper exudes a musty and pleasant odor. The feeble electric bulbs that light it shine dimly as from a tomb revolted. By this corridor I insisted upon being given Number 201, which is at the front and blessed with southern exposure. The room clerk, a disagreeable fellow with a Hitler mustache, was very reluctant to let me have it as it was ordinarily reserved for his more profitable transient trade. I fear my stubborn insistence has made him an enemy. If only I had been as self assertive 30 years ago, I should now be a full fledged professor instead of a broken down assistant. I still smart from the cavalier manor in which the president of the university summarily recommended my vacation. No doubt he acted for my best interests. The people who have dominated my poor life invariably have. Oh, well. The summer's rest will probably do me considerable good. It is pleasant to be away from the university. There is something positively gratifying about the absence of the graduate student face. If only it were not so lonely. I must devise a way of meeting the pale man in number 212. Perhaps the room clerk can arrange matters. So this guy, he's a bit of a whiner? Yeah, he's like a little whiney assistant professor who was kind of told to go on vacation, it sounds like. Pretty much. And he took the room, the nicest room, even though it sounds like that was saved for prostitutes. It was being saved by the man with the Hitler mustache for prostitutes, I guess. For the transient trade. Is that what he meant? Yeah, but I think he's also saying here Mint's possible interpretation. Sure, but he appears to have settled in for a very long stay. Yeah, that's true. He might rather than like a traveling salesman. The brandy is getting to me. Gutter my mind is in the gutter. The Reese's pieces are getting to you. All right. So he wants to meet the man in 212. He just something about this guy. He's also just pretty content to whine. It sounds like that's true. May I? Please. Okay. I've been here exactly a week, and if there is a friendly soul in this miserable little town, he has escaped my notice. Although the tradespeople accept my money with flattering eagerness, they studiously avoid even the most casual conversation. I am afraid I can never cultivate their society unless I can arrange to have my ancestors recognized as local residents. For the last 150 years, despite the coolness of my reception, I have been frequently venturing abroad. In the back of my mind, I have cherished hopes that I might encounter the pale man in number 211. Incidentally, I wonder why he has moved from number 212. There is certainly little advantage in coming only one room nearer to the front. I noticed the change yesterday when I saw him coming out of his new room. We nodded again, and this time I thought I detected a certain malign satisfaction in his somber black eyes. He must know that I am eager to make his acquaintance, yet his manner forbids overtures. If he wants me to go all the way, he can go to the devil. I am not the sort to run after anybody. Indeed, the serving diffidence of the room clerk has been enough to prevent me from questioning him about his mysterious guest. I wonder where the pale man takes his meals. I have been absenting myself from the hotel restaurant and patronizing the restaurants outside. At each, I have ventured enquiries about the man in number 210. No one at any restaurant remembered as having been there. Perhaps he is entree into the brahmin homes of this town, and again, he may have found a boarding house. I shall have to learn if there be one. The pale man must be difficult to please, for he has again changed his room. I am baffled by his conduct. If he is so desirous of locating himself more conveniently in the hotel, why does he not move to number two, which is the nearest available room to the front? Perhaps I can make his inability to locate himself permanently as an excuse for starting a conversation. I see. We are close neighbors now, I might say casually, but that is too banal. I must have waited a better opportunity. This guy is whiny. Yeah. He's like, I'm not going to go chase this guy down. And then he's like, I wonder where he eats. He's sitting around thinking about him, and he's getting closer, and I don't think that's a good thing. No, I don't either. It's a peculiar behavior for a short story. Yeah, things like that kind of stand out. This guy's like, oh, he's moving closer. How delightful. What a dummy. He has done it again. He's now occupying number 209. I'm intrigued by his little game. I waste hours trying to fathom its point. What possible motive could he have? I should think he would get on the hotel people's nerves. I wonder what our combination bellhop chambermaid thinks of having to prepare four rooms for a single guest. If he were not stoned deaf, I would ask him. At present, I feel too exhausted to attempt such an innervating conversation. I am tremendously interested in the pale man's next move. He must either skip a room or remain where he is for a permanent guest. A very old lady occupies number 208. She has not budged from her room since I've been there, and I imagine that she does not intend to. I wonder what the pale man will do. I await his decision with the nervous excitement of a devotee of the track on the eve of a big race. After all, I have so little diversion. Well, the mysterious guest was not forced to remain where he was, nor did he have to skip a room. The lady in number 208 simplified matters by conveniently dying. That ain't good. No. No one knows the cause of her death, but it is generally attributed to old age. She was buried this morning. I was among the curious few who attended her funeral. When I returned home from the mortuary, I was in time to see the pale man leaving her room. Already he has moved in. He favored me with a smile whose meaning I have tried in vain to decipher. I cannot but believe that he meant it to have some significance. He acted as if there were between us some secret that I failed to appreciate. But then, perhaps his smile was meaningless after all and only ambiguous by chance like that of the Mona Lisa. My man of mystery now resides in number two seven. And I am not the least surprised. I would have been astonished if he had not made his scheduled move. I've almost given up trying to understand his eccentric conduct. I do not know a single thing more about him than I knew the day he arrived. I wonder whence he came. There is something indefinably foreign about his manner. I'm curious to hear his voice. I'd like to imagine that he speaks the exotic tongue of some faraway country. If only I could somehow in vegal him into a conversation. I wish that I were possessed of the glib assurance of a college boy who can address himself to the most distinguished celebrity without batting an eye. It is no wonder that I am only an assistant professor. This guy's really hung up on that. Yeah, he showed the kind of moxie at work as he shows in this man. No, he shows in his head. Really? Yeah. Maybe he'd be a professor by now. Jesus, guy, I hope somebody kills him. My money's on the pale man. I was guessing it was the old lady. In the other room. But she died. She got a chance. Who knows what will happen? Maybe the chamber made. Everybody wants to kill this guy. I do. I am worried. This morning I awoke to find myself lying prone upon the floor. I was fully clothed. I must have fallen exhausted there after I returned to my room last night. I wonder if my condition is more serious than I had suspected. Until now I have been inclined to discount the fears of those who have pulled a long face about me. For the first time I recall the prolonged handclass by the President when he bade me goodbye from the university. Obviously, he never expected to see me alive again. Of course, I am not that unwell. Nevertheless, I must be more careful. Thank heaven I have no dependence to worry about. I have not even a wife, for I was never willing to exchange the loneliness of a bachelor for the loneliness of a husband. Burn. I can say in all sincerity that the prospect of death does not frighten me. Speculation about life beyond the grave has always bored me. Whatever it is or is not, I'll try to get along. I have been so preoccupied about the sudden turn of my own affairs that I have neglected to make note of a most extraordinary incident. The pale man has done an astounding thing. He has skipped three rooms and moved all the way to number 203. We are now very close neighbors. We shall meet oftener, and my chances for making his acquaintance are now greater. I have confined myself to my bed during the last few days and have had my food brought to me. I even called the local doctor, whom I suspect to be a quack. He looked me over with professional indifference and told me not to leave my room. For some reason he does not want me to climb stairs. For this bit of information he received a ten dollar bill, which, as I directed him, he fished out of my coat pocket. A pickpocket could not have done better. He had not been gone long when I was visited by the room clerk. That worthy suggested with a great show of kindly concern that I used the facilities of the local hospital. It was so modern and all that with more firmness than I have been able to muster in a long time. I gave him to understand that I intended to remain where I am. Frowning sullenly, he's stiffly retired. The doctor must have paused long enough downstairs to tell him a pretty story. It is obvious that he is afraid I shall die in his best room. The pale man is up to his old tricks. Last night, when I tottered down the hall, the door of number two was a jar. Without thinking, I looked inside. The pale man sat in a rocking chair, idly smoking a cigarette. He looked up into my eyes and smiled that peculiar, ambiguous smile that has so deeply puzzled me. I moved on down the corridor, not so much mystified as annoyed. The whole mystery of the man's conduct is beginning to irk me. It is also, in name so utterly lacking and motive. I feel that I shall never meet the pale man. But at least I am going to learn his identity. Tomorrow I shall ask the room clerk and deliberately interrogate him. It sounds like this guy is really relaxing. His forced leave from work. He gets wound up about stuff. All right. I'm ready for this to happen one way or the other. Bringing on home. Tired of hearing this guy. Everybody's tired of hearing this guy. I know now. I know the identity of the pale man, and I know the meaning of a smile. Early this afternoon, I summon the room clerk to my bedside. Please tell me, I asked abruptly, who was the man in number 2200? The clerk stared wearily and uncomprehendingly. You must be mistaken. That room is unoccupied. Oh, but it is. I snapped in irritation. I myself saw the man there only two nights ago. He's a tall, handsome fellow with dark eyes and hair. He's unusually pale. He checked in the day I arrived. The hotel man regarded me dubiously, as if I were trying to impose upon him. But I assure you there is no such person in the house. As for his checking in when you did, you were the only guest we registered that day. What? Why, I've seen him 20 times. First he had number 212 at the end of the corridor. Then he kept moving toward the front. Now he's next door at number two. The room clerk threw up his hands. You're crazy. He exclaimed, and I saw that he meant what he said. I shut up at once and dismissed him. After he had gone, I heard him rattling the knob of the pale man's door. There is no doubt that he believes the room to be empty. Thus it is that I can now understand the events of the past few weeks. I now comprehend the significance of the death in number 207. I even feel partly responsible for the old lady's passing. After all, I brought the man with me. But it was not I who fixed his path. Why he chose to approach me room after room through the length of this dreary hotel. Why his path crossed the threshold of the woman in number 207. Those mysteries I cannot explain. I suppose I should have guessed his identity when he skipped the three rooms the night I fell unconscious upon the floor. In a single night of triumph, he advanced until he was almost to my door. He will be coming by and by to inhabit this room, his ultimate goal. When he comes, I shall at least be able to return his smile of grim recognition. Meanwhile, I have only to wait beyond my bolted door. The door swings slowly open. Yeah, I have a feeling the Pale Man now resides in Room 201. I think he resides inside Mr. Julius Long. Yeah, if that was autobiographical, he kind of sounds like the Slender Man a little bit. Yeah, I do know. So that's it. Happy Halloween, everybody. Let's have some more brandy, Chuck. I know. I feel like reading, like, six more of these. We don't have to not slur any longer. That's right. Pour it up. All right. Here you go. And some recent pieces. Thank you, sir. Very nice. All right. Enjoy Chuck Halloween tradition. Happy Halloween to you, Chuck. Happy Halloween to you. Happy Halloween to Jerry. Happy Halloween, Jerry. To all our listeners out there, be safe, be careful, and have a boot night. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com." | ||
4178d260-53a3-11e8-bdec-8304c8b3dde5 | How Rape Kits Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-rape-kits-work | Rape kits are simple forensic evidence collection kits used when someone is sexually assaulted. But the story is deeper than this. Learn all about rape kits, the sad backlog problem, and what you can do to help, in today's episode. | Rape kits are simple forensic evidence collection kits used when someone is sexually assaulted. But the story is deeper than this. Learn all about rape kits, the sad backlog problem, and what you can do to help, in today's episode. | Tue, 02 Apr 2019 14:57:44 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=2, tm_hour=14, tm_min=57, tm_sec=44, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=92, tm_isdst=0) | 48360037 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from howstuffworkscom? Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's Charles Deep. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there. And now whatever chipperness you might hear in my voice comes can decline from here on out. Yeah, man. This is another one of those that's a tough topic. It's not going to be loaded with jokes? No, I can't think of a single one. And anytime I started, it would be like, oh, maybe we should come up with jokes. No, it's not like we do that anyway. Right. Like, this would be a good place for a joke. Let me get our writers on. Is there a joke here in Bracket? Yes. Obviously, if you saw the title about rape kits, hopefully that is the trigger warning you need, but we might as well just say it out loud. The trigger warning for this one. That's all we need to say, I think, right? Pretty much. I mean, we're talking about rape, sexual assault in general, and specifically, I want to say, Chuck, I've had on the list for a really long time rate as a topic itself, I think it definitely deserves it, but I've just been kind of walking past it every time I go down the list. Right. I think it's due, especially after this one. Yeah, but it's almost like we needed to do this one first, or else it wouldn't be Stuff you should know, right. If we didn't do something tangential. Bigger topic. We'll do that eventually. Yeah. And also this comes out. This is one of those happenstance things. As I was researching and reading this stuff, I was like, oh, you know what? We should check and see when Sexual Assault Awareness Month is. And it turned out it's April and it turned out that April 2, the day that this drops, is Day of Action. So they encourage people to wear teal on April 2, which is today. And you're wearing teal today. It's mint green, but it's awfully close to teal. Yeah. It's weird how this is all coming together like this. You know what Action Day should be for sexual Assault Awareness Month? What? It should be like a purge. Like a purge. Yes, that's what it should be. I haven't seen the movie, but yeah, I haven't either. But I know the premise. And that Sexual Assault Awareness Month is carried out by Nsvrcorg, the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. And also, I know that we're doing a lot of precursoring here. Okay. But there is one section here on what to do if you've been sexually assaulted. Two dudes explaining this, like, just do this. We're not taking it that likely, you know? Right. Like, we know that it is extremely difficult to do anything, much less, like, follow all the exact steps. So many sexual assaults and rapes get unreported for a thousand reasons. So we're not taking this lightly, but this is our job. This is what we do, and this is an important topic, so please excuse two dudes explaining a section on what to do when you're sexually assaulted. But I think that also raises another point that I want to touch on to. Chuck, sexual assault doesn't just happen to women. Sure. It happens to men. The trans community is also a big target for sexual assault, unfortunately. So while it is largely women, from what I've seen, women between 18 and 35, it hits all demographics and targets for sure across the spectrum of human beings, including men. Yeah. So I wanted to say that as well. All right now on with the show. Should we do the history part first? I think I was thinking so I think we should say what a rape kit actually is. Oh, that's something we always do wrong. But we're doing it right though. We've hit everything right so far, I think a rape kit, and I'm so sorry, everybody can keep saying rape kit. They're also called sexual Assault evidence collection kit. You can understand why people call them rape kits. Yeah. But from here on out, maybe we'll just try to say kit. Sure. They are really simply a box. I saw shoe box size. Ed says microwave oven size. It depends on the oven. It's a big old box. Yeah. And inside this box is all the stuff you need to collect the evidence of a sexual assault. Yeah. That a professional uses. Yeah. It's not like a home thing. No. But it does include such thorough step by step directions that someone who's not specifically trained to do this can carry out this kind of examination. I wonder if anyone does this. Can you buy these and perform this at home? Is there 2000 reasons why you wouldn't go into a hospital? I think that you can buy them from medical supply or law enforcement supply places. Both of them sell kits and they're actually relatively cheap. I saw between 515 $25. So yeah, you totally could. Still empty though. Probably not. The defense would just shoot holes in it all day long and the jury would be like, sorry. Which they're already looking to do. Part of the process of collecting this evidence and combining it all together to create this kit, it begins a chain of custody and if you do it at home and then bring it in, they're going to be like, come on. Right. And there are a lot of problems with the chain of custody that we're obviously going to cover as well when you leave it to the professionals. Right. It's just a big mess. It is a big mess. But more often than not it seems to have been a good invention. Sure. And that is the thing, it is an invention and it wasn't always around. It's actually a relatively new invention. It wasn't until I think that the first ones actually came into official use by, I believe, the police department in chicago, and then later on, Illinois, which served as a bit of a laboratory for it. And it was so successful that within another year, it started to spread around the country. Yeah, it's hard to believe, but just collecting and having the tools in a box and collecting the evidence and putting it in a box for storage, just that alone coming around went a long way toward helping victims be taken seriously. Yes. Legitimizing rape and sexual assault. Yes. I mean, it's sad, but that's the case. When they were first brought out, they were called vitulo kits in a lot of circles. Vitullo and Louie or Lewis. I never know. I'm thinking since he's in Chicago. Louis oh, really? I thought you were going to say Louie because Chicago, I think it'd be ie if it were in Chicago Louie. All right, we'll go with Lewis. Let's just call him Chicago Lou. Chicago Lou. Vitulo. Now he sounds like a mobster. Yes. Chicago Lou v. Tulo. I think the vitulo is really not helping. No, but he was not a mobster. He was actually worked in the Chicago Pediat Forensic Crime Lab. He was a sergeant and lieutenant who did not invent the rape kit, but he was charged with sort of codifying it and putting his stamp, because he was one of the first people in law enforcement that was trying to create a standardized procedure. Yeah, he was already a very well respected forensic investigator. So for him to say, hey, I'm a big city forensic investigator, widely respected, and this thing is the bomb, this is a great invention, we should all start using it, and here's how it really helps spread and give it a boost early on. But even though they were called vatula kits, it's not to say, like, he was like, yeah, I invented this. Colin Vitul. No, not at all. I think he was just known in the mind of other law enforcement agents that they associated him in these kits. So that's what everybody else called it. But really, if you want to nail down an inventor of the rape kit, it was a woman named Martha marty Goddard. Yeah, goddard and Betula. I read some interviews with his grandkids and it's like a really proud legacy. They still get letters from people, from women. Goddard she has unplugged. Like, I saw one interview with her where they talked about, and we're going to cover this heavily later, but the kit backlog, she didn't even know about it because she's like, no TV, no Internet, no newspapers. She really just sort of checked out. Right. And she was like, that's really sad to hear about that. It is very sad. I saw a quote somewhere that I think is the ULA's. Grandkids said that he would be spinning in his grave if he knew about this backlog, which we'll get to later. So Goddard was a survivor of sexual assault and she got together with some other victims basically, the writing was on the wall like that things weren't being taken seriously. And many police departments yeah, she saw first hand that they weren't collecting evidence correctly, that they weren't taking it seriously, which is still a huge problem. Right. And she decided to do something about it. Well, the first questions, and still in a lot of areas, probably the first questions still are like, well, what was the situation? What were you wearing? And if it starts with, Well, I met a guy at a bar, then you're sort of discounted right out of the gate. Very sad and very unfair. But she formed a group called Citizens for Victims Assistance in the 1970s and went to work. Like she said, she was doing 16 hours, days visiting hospitals, talking to cops, going to police stations, lawyers, judges, basically learning and working on everyone she could about how to get a better system going. But she needed money, and she got that from, of all places, the Playboy Foundation. Yeah. Hugh Hefner's Foundation. His daughter Christie was friends with Marty Goddard, and I think Playboy gave her ten grand, which is equal to about 42 grand in today's money. And that was enough to go start assembling these kits, because one of the points from the outset of these kits was that they be inexpensive because they wanted to remove as many barriers as possible for hospitals to start implementing their smart widely. And one really easy way to do it was to say, here, these are virtually free, or in some cases these are free, because this community group raised a bunch of money to purchase the implements of these kits, put them all together, and now here you just use them, that's all. Which is a success story in and of itself. When you know how Big Pharma works in the medical community in America, I could have seen this being like, well, these swabs and envelopes and combs, this will be $7,000 per kit because we put it all in a box for you. Marty got her got in the way of that from the outset and still to this day. I mean, that's why they're not any more than five dollars to twenty five dollars, even from, like, a medical supplier. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. She's a hashtag hero. Are we doing that now? Hashtagging it. Yeah. Relate to the game, my friend, as always. Have you heard about this hashtag thing? Sure. You got to go. Keep doing your two fingers on each hand. Hashtag. See, I knew you'd get a funny in there. So they were developed before DNA evidence was even around. So this was back when it was just like hair and fiber, fingernails, stuff like that. Still very valuable. And I think one of the kits that's sort of common these days is what's known as the Southwestern Sexual Assault Evidence Collection Kit. It's like the gold standard. I guess so. And it's called Southwestern, obviously, it was in Texas. The Attorney General's office there in 1998 created this one. And that's sort of like you said, the one that people look to or base theirs on. Yeah. Because they took the groundwork that Marty Goddard came up with, going from to all of what you call in the corporate world and BuzzFeed all the stakeholders in the process of apprehending and convicting people who are, who sexually assault other people. Scumbags you can just say monsters. Yeah, monsters. And she figured out exactly how to put this together and laid the groundwork. And then, from what I understand, in the late ninety s, the Texas Attorney General's Office said, let's purify this, let's make it even better, like using what we know. And then that's what's in used largely today. Although you're going to find different kids, there's no actual standards, a de facto standard. Right. At the same point, different hospitals you go to, even in the same state, are going to follow slightly different procedures. They might use slightly different kits, but some states have said, no, this is important enough. Here is how you do this, here is the law of how you conduct a rape kit examination. Yeah. And so Goddard and Vitulo, his stamp of approval, her working hard to get these things built from the ground up, the work that they did together was really set the standard in the late seventy s for this across the country. Just becoming just a more normalized way to collect evidence and take it more seriously. Right. It was a big, big deal. Big one. Yeah. Not just literally having all of the implement you need to conduct this investigation, but just the very presence of these sexual assault evidence collection, the fact that they exist, as law enforcement is saying, okay, yeah, this is a bigger deal than we've been treating it. Right. You want to take a break? Yeah, let's do it. We're going to take a break, everybody. I don't know if you just heard, but we'll be right back. All right, Chuck. So the very reason that these kids exist is because sexual assault is a very unique kind of crime. In that the victim, the body of the victim is a crime scene. Yes. A walking, talking crime scene. I mean, like, if you're murdered or something and your body is dumped somewhere, your body is still a crime scene. Sure. But you're walking around, moving, you can actually contaminate the very crime scene from your assault just by doing things that any normal human being would want to do after being sexually assaulted. For sure. It's in that sense of very unique kind of crime scene. And that's what sexual assault evidence collection kids are for, is to step by step methodically, systematically collect the evidence and preserve it so that it can later be analyzed and used in court. Yeah. So these are the recommended steps if you've been a victim. And like I said, there are 1000 reasons that you would not want to do any and all of these things, and we totally get that. And I think Ed puts it in a really good way in this article. He said, to receive the best possible care, just medically for yourself, and to have the best chances of collecting good evidence, it needs to be within a 24 hours window. Ideally, the 24 hours is critical and apparently up to three days, it's still viable. But after three days, most experts are like, it's not going to get any as far as DNA, which is really what you're looking for. Right. You will be very upset and you may be in literal shock, you may have had one or more panic attacks. All of these things make it very difficult to carry out, like, logical steps. But experts say that the first thing you want to do, obviously, is get somewhere safe as soon as you can get away, if your attacker is around. And try and find someone an advocate for you, whether it's a friend or a family member who can kind of be with you in the first hours after this horrific event has happened, go to the emergency room. Even if you're not injured, quote unquote, physically, you really should go to the emergency room as soon as you can. This is a big one. Not just because the emergency room is where you're going to have this kit administered yeah. But also because it takes such tremendous reserve to draw in such tremendous reserves to take yourself out of the comfort and safety of your home, which is probably where you went to not take a shower, which is another huge step, too. Right. And to just say, I'm going to go to the emergency room and undergo this procedure and let a bunch of strangers poke and prod me and tell them about what just happened, that's the ideal of what you're supposed to do. But if you look at it in that respect, that's just such a huge thing on top of what happened, that this is required of you to catch the person who just did it. Right. I mean, from a bystander perspective, it just makes you want to catch them even more. But that's on top of the assault as well. Yeah. Because it's not like the trauma is over for you anyway. It may never be. But go to the Er as soon as you can. If it's not right. If you go to sleep and wake up the next day, you can go to the emergency room then it's just important that you go whenever you feel like you can do so. And like you said, it's probably the least intuitive thing you could imagine to not want to shower and bathe yourself. But that gets rid of a lot of evidence. So it's terrible. But they say, Please do not shower. Yeah, they say, Please. The capital P. You should keep the clothes you're wearing on if you can if understandably you can't or don't want to save them. Yeah. Put them in a bag and take them to the Er with you. Yeah. If you have the wherewithal to change clothes. And this is something that they will have you do in the hospital. Have you stand over. Like butcher paper or maybe even a towel. If you have the wherewithal to do that. Wherever you are. Whether it's at home or in a hotel or someplace. Put that in there. Too. Because when you're changing your clothes. That's when DNA evidence can fall out. Whether it's a hair or whatever in particles. Right. Just collect everything you can and put it in a bag. Certainly do not wash those clothes. And then take those with you to the emergency room. Yeah. And then the last thing you should know, just because you're going to an emergency room, and even if you are tested with this forensic kit, you're not required to file a police report ever. That's a big one. But especially right away, it's not like they're going to have a cop in there grilling you. You can file this police report whenever you want to. Yeah. If you are not comfortable filing a police report right. Then you can do what's called a Jane Doe. Or imagine a John Doe examination where they just go through all the steps and collect all the evidence. But you never see a cop. They don't call the police until after you've left. So that's a big one for a lot of people. Sure. Ed points out, though, in some states, there is still a statute of limitations of between ten and 21 years, although some states have removed the statute of limitations for a felony sexual assault. But there can be a clock ticking. But we're talking ten years at the least, right? Yeah. For sure. This isn't something you have to knock out that day if you don't want to, if you're not ready to. Yeah. When you go to the Er for this kind of examination, you are signing up for a few hours is going to take a few hours. It's not a quick procedure. No. And there's something else that you should know that I really hope won't discourage you, but you should go into it knowing it's an invasive procedure. Yeah. They have to collect evidence from everywhere that the guy who did this to you or the person who did this to you was right. And they're also going to ask you they're going to take an oral history and they're going to ask you to basically recount the worst thing that's ever happened to you within 24 hours after it happened. And then they're going to go over all the spots with things like swabs and tweezers and combs and things like that to collect this evidence. And it's going to take a while, but you should expect to be treated very gently and with a tremendous amount of respect from the people who are going to administer this examination. And I would guess to a hospital, there will be counselors available there to be there with you if you don't have like a friend or a family member there with you or anything. Yes, in rural areas are where they still need to do a lot of catch up work in hospitals and things like that. But if you're in any major city, there will almost 100% chance that you'll have what's called a sexual assault nurse examiner on staff. This is a nurse who has received extra training on how to administer this exam. Like we said before, any nurse can do this and do a great job, but if you have a sane, trained person on staff, then that's who you'll be seeing. And like I said, in rural areas, it's just tough to staff up for things like this. So they're still doing all they can to get grant money and stuff like that, to get these people trained up. Yeah. It's just a question of extra funding because if you give a hospital funding that's set aside for saying nurses, you just created a new position in a hospital that wasn't there before, you've given the nursing staff there an incentive to go further their education, invest in their education so that they can have this better job right. In the same hospital and help people as well. So it's really just a question of funding. That's it. I mean, a lot of this stuff, sadly, is a question of funding. Yeah. Luckily, there is enough agitation at the bottom up that the pocketbooks have kind of loosened up over recent years. Right. It is something that it's been as the result of agitation and bad press rather than this is the right thing to do. Yeah, for sure. Consent is a big part of the entire procedure. They're going to ask you basically before everything like, hey, I have a speculum here, we need to do a vaginal exam. Is that okay with you? And you can say no to any and all of this stuff. This is all up to you on how you want to proceed with this. They're going to ask for your consent for the whole procedure first and then step by step before each step, they're going to ask for your consent as well, and they're going to explain what's coming up, like you said. Yes. And as far as the interview portion, this is really important stuff as far as what will eventually wind up with investigators and the questions about, like, were you on drugs or had you been drinking? Like, this isn't to set you up for future grilling by a prosecutor necessarily, but you may have been drugged or you may have had a drink spiked or something like that. So all of this is just super important. So they need to know. They need to say, hey, future lab tech test for roof and all or something like that, whatever. If you were in a bar and you suddenly woke up on the side of the road right. If that's the kind of history they're taking for you for those reasons, not what were you doing in a bar by yourself? Yeah. That's not what this is. Again, this is not a detective asking you or performing this exam. They might not even be aware of your case yet. Right. This is a trained nurse, or at the very least a registered nurse, who is performing this with one would expect a tremendous amount of compassion and respectfulness. Absolutely. You're going to be giving blood and urine samples. This is super important to provide a DNA baseline. They will pluck hairs from your scalp, they will swap your mouth. They will use a comb to collect pubic hair. We already mentioned a genital exam, whether it's vaginal or analyt, like you said, they have to go over with a sort of a fine tooth comb everywhere where the assault happened. Yeah. Because they're going to ask you awful questions, like where you penetrated analy, was an object used? Did the perpetrator lick you or kiss you? Or anything like that. Right. And depending on these questions, they're going to investigate further, but they're going to follow certain steps no matter what. But then if you say, yes, the guy licked my face on my left cheek. Right. There's going to be a swab on your left cheek that they otherwise may not have included in normal steps. Yeah. And again, this is like I mean, I can't imagine having to relive something like this right. Within, like, 24 hours, ideally 24 hours after it happened. Like, the worst thing that happened to you in your life. Let's talk about it here. Point to where it happened. Yeah. From a stranger. Well, and there are plenty of interviews that we both read where women said it was reliving it. And I felt like I was being even with a great caregiver, like I was being assaulted all over again. It's just so important to try and do if you can get there. If you can't, there's no blame, there's no judgment. That's a normal reaction. This is a lot to ask from somebody, but this is what it takes to collect the evidence and preserve it in a way that you can catch the person who did this. Yeah. They're going to test for well, it's not required, actually, to test for STDs, but they will ask you about STDs, I would imagine. Ask if you want to be tested. Sure. They will offer emergency contraception as well. And you're not going to be charged for that procedure or the kit. Here's the thing. You shouldn't be. No, you won't be. Not for the administration of the kit. Right. That's great. That's substantial. I mean, it's a $16 kit, but this is also four or 5 hours of an era, potentially a highly trained Er nurses time. So that's great. They're not charging you, but what's shameful, I should say is that you will still be charged for any treatment of injuries. Say, like, you were hit and you need to be treated with stitches or whatever. You'll get a bill for stitches if you say, yes, I do want antiviral drugs because I'm afraid of having contracted an STD, or I do want emergency contraception. They'll say, here's your prescription, and the pharmacist will charge you for that. That's not okay. As a society, we should not ask rape and sexual assault victims to pay for their own medical treatment directly coming from a rape or a sexual assault. We should bear that burden ourselves, and then it should give us that even slighter additional incentive to go get the guy who did it. Right? You know what I mean? Nobody should pay a cent. And then even worse than that I'm sorry, I realized I'm standing on a pretty big soapbox right now. But worse than that, Chuck, prior to the Affordable Care Act, it was possible that you would be denied future health care coverage insurance if you were the victim of a sexual assault or rape who went to go get treatment because they treated it as a preexisting condition. Unbelievable. A preexisting condition was rape. Can you believe that? Sadly, I can. No, I stepped down. They're going to take this kit. They're going to seal everything up. They're going to store it. All the clothing and everything. And all the swabs are dried out and labeled. And then it's sealed back in that original box as part of the I guess the genius of this kit was that everything that comes out of it goes right back in. And it is also the storage device where it's labeled. And then it's all shipped to local law enforcement. And then it's stored quite possibly till the end of time. Sadly, yes, or destroyed. We'll get to both of those things. And ideally, and under just about any procedure, every single person who takes custody of that is supposed to sign the label on outside of the box. So there's a clear chain of custody, and it goes from the Er nurse to the cops to the prosecutors to the lab to the prosecutors and so on. But there's supposed to be a clear chain of custody so that there's no questions about whether it was tampered with or anything. That's the one thing that weirds me out about any kind of blood sample I'm ever asked to give or any kind of procedure I've ever tested for is when I see them take my blood or whatever specimen and they're writing on the little thing and it leaves the room. I don't know why. My first thought is always like, well, they're going to mix that up with somebody, which is not true, but I'm always just like, all right, well, it's out of. My vision, so I don't trust it. Right. I don't know what that is. It probably stems from having been switched at birth in the hospital. That's the only explanation. All right, we're going to take a break and we're going to come back and talk after this about the horrific problem of rape kit backlog and destruction right after this. All right, so we told you the history of the kit, how it works, your ideal scenario for what you should do if you're ever a victim. And the great ending to this story would be is and then those kits go off and they all get tested. 100% conviction rate and they have great conviction rates. There's no one right. So long. Right? Sadly, that is not the case. This is all over the news for years now, as it should be. Well, first of all, this is what happens in the ideal scenario. They do store this. It is tested in a DNA lab, and then it's checked against the cold is the CODIS, the combined DNA index system. That's the database from the FBI of DNA profiles of bad people. And if a hit comes up, then you have a pretty good chance then of finding this person. The other thing about CODIS is this when you submit a sample, a DNA sample to CODIS from a crime, like a sexual assault, and there's not a hit, that sample, you just go, okay, sorry, CODIS can have my sample back. Like, that sample stays there. Right. And so future detectives say they have a suspect or somebody who comes in, and as a matter of routine, they run the suspect's DNA, which I think is just a matter of course. Now, when you're charged with a crime, they swab your cheek and then run it through CODIS. That DNA may be hit, and all of a sudden this thing like you got caught robbing somebody's house, but now you're up for a rape charge from two years ago because your DNA was entered through this rape kit. So even if you don't get a hit, that doesn't mean that there's not going to be a conviction. That's not like the rape kit was all for naught. Yeah, for sure. Sadly, that's not the way it always works. In the 2000s, there started to be there were some reporters digging around, found a story, and found out that there are tens of thousands of rape kits all over the country sitting in warehouses and sitting on shelves for years and years and years, untested. It was so bad, Chuck, that it became known as the backlog. Right? Like some dating back to the 90s, where they just, like you said, sitting in warehouses, untested. And at first, I think some reporters started digging this up and found out, like, whoa, this is not okay. How widespread is this? And started looking around and found it's, like, everywhere. And some towns are worse than others, like Akron, Ohio, had something like 3000, I think, 2000 kits in Akron, Ohio alone. So Detroit had sorry, Akron. I didn't mean to put more on you than you had. I was confusing you with Phoenix. Phoenix had 3000 kits. Dallas had 4000. Memphis has 12,000. Wow. And in Detroit, a few years back, somebody wandered into a police storage facility and was like, oh, there's 11,000 untested rape kits that have just been that we just forgot we had. Here's the problem with that. There's a couple of problems with it. The but first one, Chuck, is that every single one of those kits represents a person who found the wherewithal to drag himself or herself to the Er and go through this hour long procedure and suffer a second violation, basically, is what it feels like in order to give the cops the evidence that they need. And the cops didn't even bother to send it to the lab. That is a third violation. Yeah. And the other problem is that this could be, like, while they're sitting in there and this often, sadly, is the case, is that these people commit more sexual assaults when they could be behind bars. Yes. In Detroit. So there's 11,000 untested kits they found. Let's say that each one was a different perpetrator. Right. The recidivism that's a bonus word. The recidivism rate, they think, for sexual offenders of sexual assault is between five and 32% over a 15 year period. Okay. So if those kits sat there untested for 15 years, that means that an additional 550 to 3520 rapes were carried out by the same people whose DNA was in those kits. Untested. Unbelievable. Yes. That's unacceptable. Right. And as a result, Congress is like, here's $150,000,000 to get rid of this backlog. That should solve it. It did. It helped a lot. Right. It got the labs going and everything like that. Still no. Right. The problem is it funded labs. That's what everybody said was, well, the labs are overworked. What are you going to do? So they got more technicians, they got more labs, and the backlog got worked through in a lot of cases in Detroit in particular, one of the prosecutors there named Kim Worthy, who's another hashtag hero of the story, has been like, this number is going down. We're going through those kits and it's systematically and methodically. That's what it takes. It takes someone or a body of people, not just, like, throwing money at something, but specifically following up on the ground. Right. Okay. So the funding went toward the labs, but that left another half of this formula, which is a big one. The cops. Right. So this backlog got moved through the labs, but that doesn't mean that the cops followed up on the results. And including cases where there were hits and CODIS later research by reporters found that a lot of these cases in the backlog that got worked through hadn't been followed up on. Yeah. Which is another problem. Yeah. There have been some federal guidelines laid down since then. Specifically, the Safer Act of 2013. Sexual assault, forensic evidence reporting. Different states have new laws in place. Like in New York State, it is law now that requires kits to be sent in within ten days of collection and tested by the lab within three months. And they set up a timeline for processing backlog kits. But it still depends on what city you live in and what state you live in, because it still happens. It still happens a lot. It says here, in 2011 report from the National Institute of justice, 18% of all unsolved rapes between 2002 and 2007 involved this kind of evidence that had never been processed. Right? 18%, yes. And so in the cops defense here, they're basically saying most of them are saying, okay, so great. That was great. You guys funded the lab. We're still overworked and understaffed and out of room. Out of room, literally, to store these kits. So here is another thing, right. So all this stuff went all this focus went on the backlog. As a matter of fact, the third hashtag hero from this story is Marisca Hargate from Law and Order SVU. Yeah, just from doing Law and Order SVU, her eyes were so open to this whole backlog problem that she started a foundation called the Joyful Heart Foundation that is basically dedicated to getting rid of the rape kit backlog. Yeah, well, actually, that's a larger foundation, but within that is in thebacklog.org and here's what you can do, everyone, since it is National Awareness Month, first, put on something teal. Something teal on April 2. Go to in thebacklog.org and click on Take Action, and there are a number of things you can do, but at the bottom, there's a donation button and donate. I set up a monthly today, but as far as I'm concerned, I'll donate monthly till the day I die. Sure. Which hopefully is a long time. Long time. Hashtag long time. Yeah. But just go to in thebacklog.org if you don't have money to give, there are other things you can do under the Take Action banner, right? For sure. Yeah. So back in 2016. While everybody was talking about the backlog. Worrying about the backlog. Doing something about the backlog. The Fayetteville. North Carolina chief of police held a press conference and said. Hey. The city attorneys told me not to do this. But I feel a moral responsibility to tell the public this. But we destroyed about 300 untested rape kits in cases where the statute of limitations hadn't run out. Yeah. This isn't sitting on a shelf. This isn't untested. This is we threw them away. They were incinerated. The evidence has gone forever, and it was never sent off to a lab. And the statute of limitations was not up in these cases. And that was huge. That was a big deal. And he committed his town, his police department, to going through all those cases, contacting the victims and seeing if they could still build a case for all. And they made it a priority, but it opened Pandora's box around the country, and CNN got a speculum of their own and started crawling around law enforcement agencies all over the country and saying, hey, have you guys ever done that? Have you ever destroyed rape kits? What's your policy for that? Right. When's the last time you did it? Were any of them still within the statute of limitations? And they found out that it happens a lot, actually. Yeah, like a lot police, to make room in evidence rooms, they will destroy rape kits. Some of them have official policies in place. Some of them is just a detective deciding that the case isn't going anywhere. And we'll say, yeah, you can destroy that rape kit. Sometimes it's a misunderstanding of what the statute of limitations is. Yes. But these kits have never been tested and never will be tested. That evidence has gone forever. And that is even worse than the backlog everyone has concluded, and I think rightfully so. Yeah. And like you mentioned earlier, just having this stuff entered into CODIS is huge because let's say you do NAB someone and it turns out that it comes up with like six hits from sexual assaults over the years. Prison sentences aside, the value that has for a victim to know that that person was caught and is finally going to pay for their crime can't be measured. Right. Also, if you go through this procedure and you still don't get a hit in CODIS, but that DNA evidence is in CODIS, if this perpetrator gets caught down the line, you've contributed to a much stronger conviction against them and probably a bigger sentence because you've helped establish a pattern of criminal behavior. And in fact, that's how they called the Golden State Killer, I believe is from this backlog of rape kits being put through. And that guy popped up. I think they got him for like twelve or 13 rapes during his serial killer career through this backlog being moved through. And that opportunity is lost if you just destroy this evidence untested. Secondly, it also ruins any opportunity for a wrongfully convicted person who was convicted previously before DNA evidence was used. Yes, I mean, that's happened a lot. If you destroy this evidence, it removes that possibility as well. So I think the Justice Department issued some guidelines that say you should hold rape kit evidence for a minimum of 50 years, or the statute of limitations, whichever comes first, and then that's that. And everybody said, that's really great, but we really only legally have to listen to our state's guidelines, which are all over the place. Yeah. I wonder if any kind of penalty and accountability would help. Well, I think CNN crawling up everybody's butt is helping, for sure. I think it's kind of open some people's eyes and that was the same thing that brought so much attention to the backlog. So hopefully the same attention will come to this too, and we can start funding police departments around the country to carry out the legwork on it. I just have one more thing and I imagine you could do this in any given week or day. Now if you just type in rape kit and hit news on your search engine, many articles will come up like that day of cases like this. Just today there was one austin police department could potentially reopen dozens of rape investigations after getting a backlog results from a backlog of almost 2700 untested kits. I believe they got a grant from New York. I'm not sure how that happened, but they got like a million bucks from a grant from Manhattan to Austin, Texas. We got a lot of money. You want some of it? Austin? Maybe. But that allowed them to test like almost 2700 kits. Another story, a Tucson man was convicted of raping seven women over twelve year period after police received a grant to test rape kits. And it said in a changed mindset over which kits get tested. And then Orlando, Florida man is now in jail today he fled the state and found him in Puerto Rico. And once again this was a long unsolved rape case that they finally cracked open that kit, tested it and bam, this guy comes up. Wow. And they got them in Puerto Rico. Yes. Still a territory. Doofus. If you want to know more about rape kits, just do what Chuck said and search it on your favorite search engine's news. Okay. Yeah. Go to inthebacklog.org. For sure. Even better, just poke around there for a while and put on something teal. Yes. And in the meantime, it's time for listener mail. I don't think I have anything teal. You can borrow the sweatshirt. Okay. It's mint, but it's awfully close. Yeah, I'm not good with my colors. I only think some partially color blind. I think you might be too. Might be. So I'm going to call this ASMR we've been getting a lot of follow up on this from people that get that tingly feeling and people like me that throw up in their mouth a little bit. Hey guys, been listening for a long time. I'm always intrigued by the topics. I'm a crafter and your show always keeps my mind moving so my creativity can flow in the background. Nice. That's the ideal situation. Crafting. Yeah. I seriously thought I was the only person who experienced ASMR friends. I've talked to about it in the past. Think I'm crazy. No one around here knows anything about it. I love the feeling I get when I can activate the sensation. The best way I describe it is like for me getting goosebumps inside my skull. It's pretty good. That's a great one. I wish I knew what that felt like. Yeah, I do. Too. I can do that. I want the sensation. I don't have it. The first time I found something that triggered it, I was working in a small office in the basement of a hospital. It was getting repainted, and the sound of the paint roller and the people near me in the office set it off. First I thought it was strange, but I really enjoyed it. As our office started to grow, I began wearing headphones on a regular basis and listened to the entire collection of Bob Ross painting, which I famously or not famously, but I go to sleep to that sometimes on Netflix. So you don't have a problem with Bob Ross? Oh, no. I love it. Okay. Very soothing to me. I don't think he's ASMR, is he? Yeah, we didn't say that in the episode. I didn't think so. Yeah, he's like a legendary ASMR trigger for some people. Legendary. All right. I listened to the entire collection and found the soft sound of his voice and stiff bristles on the canvas caused the same reaction. Helped me greatly with my anxiety and general stress in the office. Actually, I even created a playlist of people painting. Would listen to it when I was stuck in traffic. As I'm writing, I'm listening to your episode. And yes, swallowing sounds can give me the tingles, too. Bob Ross swallows a lot when he's painting. Gulp. And his mic is on his collar. I've never noticed the swallowing. Yes, you might have to have headphones on for that. Okay. I'm so excited, guys. You have changed my life. Thanks so much. Goosebumpheaded. Candace, tally or Katali is in there. Yeah. Middle name. That might be her surname. Got you. Yeah. Bear and mermaid art that I could see. I got you. It's just a whimsical name. Got you. It's something about painting, like, slows people down. Like when you're painting and you're talking, you're just that much calmer. No one paints fast. There's this dude. Some artists will paint, do instagram, live and paint. And I don't know if you remember them or not, but Gregory Jacobson, he was the artist who came backstage at our Chicago show last time. He did this for years or for a year. He had some show coming, and he would just sit there and paint. And Yummy started watching him originally, and then she got me into it, and it was just him painting. He wasn't even in the shot. Normally just his hand painting, but he'd be talking about what he's doing and maybe answering some questions. And I never really thought about it before, but it is like super laid back. Something about painting makes you slow, just slows you down. Well, you know what? You swallow loudly, you never hear from a painter. And artist is like, I'm in a hurry. I got to go knock this painting out real quick. Let me put some Deadline players on there. Or maybe, I don't know, I guess he could be under a deadline. He was under a deadline, Farmer. He had some huge show coming up, and I guess then he decided, well, I think I'll add this extra complication to this crazy deadline. But, yeah, it was interesting. Thanks a lot. Candice Nay. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at Xysk podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffyshno. Although who's on Facebook anymore? Am I right? Right? You can join us on Instagram at syskpodcast. You can go to our website, stuffyshno.com. You can go to my website, vjohnclarkway.com, and you can send us a good old fashioned email to stuffpodcast@housestepworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetopworks.com. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcast. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today." | |
4250a168-53a3-11e8-bdec-dbdb750562dc | We Are Running Out of Sand and That Actually Matters | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/we-are-running-out-of-sand-and-that-actually-matte | Sand, we’re beginning to realize, is a non-renewable resource - and we are consuming it at a voracious pace. We use it in every construction project around the world and to create new land. And we’re wrecking the ecosystems we mine sand from. | Sand, we’re beginning to realize, is a non-renewable resource - and we are consuming it at a voracious pace. We use it in every construction project around the world and to create new land. And we’re wrecking the ecosystems we mine sand from. | Tue, 24 Sep 2019 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=24, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=267, tm_isdst=0) | 44084348 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, friends. You know, dating is a journey with ups and downs, for sure. But all the effort is worth it when you meet someone special, right? And when you decide it's time to find a meaningful relationship, eharmony is here for you. Eharmony is passionate about creating real love for all. Rooted it in compatibility. Eharmony's process reveals truths about yourself, like, I don't know what you want in a relationship. And it helps you connect with a uniquely compatible partner who is right for you. Don't believe it? See for yourself. So start for free today, because every 14 minutes, someone finds love on Eharmony. Hey, everybody, it's me, Josh. And this Wednesday, October 2, I'm going to be in beautiful Austin, Texas, to do the live version of my End of the World with Josh Clark show. I'll be at the north door and you can get tickets and info@ndvenue.com. Just search for the end of the world with Josh Clark. And there's a few tickets left for the stuff you should know. Live show in New Orleans on October 10. For those tickets and more information, go to sysklive.com. Tickets are going fast to both shows. We'll see you in October. Everybody, welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And there's Jerry over there. And, like, staying through the hourglass. These are the podcasts of our lives. I love that beginning so much that I just made an homage to it. Didn't even realize I loved it until it's coming out of my mouth. Really? And I was thinking, God, this is so good. You know, we live in a cancel culture. We might get canceled for that one. For what? The Days of our Lives reference. Yeah. Just because it was so bad. Yes. Okay. Yeah. It's an odd time to be alive, isn't it? That's right. We're in the transition. But in true Stuff you should Know fashion, we are doing an episode on sand after about a month or so. After an episode on sand dunes. Right. And this is technically not even necessarily the sand episode. It may be. It may be. We're going to put it together like it is. But there may come a time 50, 60 years down the road OK. When Life Extension is really kicked in and we're still doing this where we're like, we got to do just sand now. Yeah. Except by then the episode may be titled What Was Sand? That's right, man. Because, boy, this episode is depressing. And it could be titled Sand Colon. Yet another way. Humans are destroying our planet. Yeah. Oh, look, another ecological disaster added to the list. But we need hotels and fake islands. Yeah, the fake islands kind of got me the most, you know. Yeah. We're spoiling this thing. Oh, sorry. So sand. There's a lot of it. So much so that way back in the day. Archimedes, one of our favorite people, used it in a thought experiment called the Sand Reckoner. And in the Sand Reckoner, he basically created this to start figuring out how to create numbers to express extraordinarily large values, because that's what it's used for. Still. Yeah, just because there's so much of it. Depends. The world is divided into two types of people, Chuck. People who point to the stars as an enormous example of enormous number, and people who point to sand, and then people like us that use Big Macs. That's right. That's true. That's size, though, not number. It's size. It could be length member. We've stacked them to the moon before. Sure. Archimedes came up with a base of 100 million. That's what he started with. And he figured out how to express numbers up to eight times ten to the 63rd power with the sand recognizing thing. And the point of it is, yes, there is a ton of sand. A lot of sand. So much so, I've seen that there's seven and a half billion billion grains of sand just on the world's beaches. That's from University of Hawaii. I saw another one from Chris Flynn from Turla Observatory in Finland. He estimated a million billion billion grains of sand just on the world's beaches. So I'm just going to say a Kjillion, Jillian Bazillion, because apparently you can just say whatever. Yeah, but there's a lot but the point is this. There is a lot of sand, especially depending on the math and the grain size, that kind of stuff. But there's a finite amount of sand. And what's been going on behind the scenes for decades now is a very rapid depletion of the available sources of sand. So much so that it is literally being shuffled from one part of the world to another, from poorer countries to wealthier countries, sometimes from some inland areas out to other areas, from the rural areas to the cities. There's a huge sand shuffle going on, and it is proving pretty rough for the environment as a result. Yeah. First of all, I'm 48 years old and this is the first I've really heard of this. I don't know, I thought there was just enough sand for all of time. You would think so. I mean, look at a desert. That's a lot of sand. Right. But here's the deal. We use about 15 billion tons for just construction every year, and they are mining worldwide about 40 billion tons of sand a year. I think that's sand and gravel, but still. Well, I do know that it is. I think, with gravel. There's a UN report called sand and Sustainability. I love that report. From Unemun Nations Environment program. So crushed rock, sand and gravel account for the largest volume of extracted solid material worldwide. Okay, so you're saying, like, more than oil, more than natural gas, more than any other. Is that solid material? Yeah. Okay. I think so. I'm not sure what they mean by that. Is oil a solid? I don't know. So I saw it also put as far as extractable raw material, sand and gravel is by far the most extensively mined, which is why I said that. And we'll get to it in detail. But the spoiler here is, although new sand is being made constantly by erosion, which are also going to cover not nearly quickly enough, our use is far, far outpacing it. Yeah. Which makes sand a non renewable resource. Technically, it's just like oil. Like, yeah. If the environmental conditions are right, over time, new oil will be made. But we're talking over very long periods. Sand doesn't take nearly as long to form as oil does, but it still takes way longer to replenish itself than we're using it up. That's right. So let's talk a little bit about sand. Yeah. So we get sand. Sand is the final product, I guess. I even hate calling it a product, but I don't mean it in the sense of something to be bought and sold, even though it is. Sure. But it's the final product of erosion. From everything from water and wind, of course, to ice and land, like glaciers grinding against stone creates sand and volcanic lava, even when that stuff chills and then shatters when it makes contact with air. That's how you get lava sand, like the black sand in Hawaii. Yeah. And that stuff's really good as a soil amender, apparently. Yeah. Because it's like a locked in carbon, I believe. Right. Yeah. I'm sure it's added to the red clay here in Georgia. Sure. And you're cooking yeah. You're cooking with volcanic ash. That's right. There's also rain, the mild bit of acid that is in rain. Still, even though we beat acid rain, beat it bad, there's still some in there always. And it weathers rocks, so that helps the road rocks and create sand, too. And you've got geological sources of sand, which is just straight up rocks. You also have biological sources of sand, things like coral. Foremanera I believe I got it. Very tiny shelled creatures that produce, like, white or pink sand sometimes. And then there's also we get sand from the poop of the parrot fish. Did you hear about that? Yeah, we talked about that before. It didn't strike me. It didn't ring a bell at all. Yeah, I don't think it was in dunes. I feel like it was further. It must have been coral reefs. Yeah, that's it. Because they actually eat parts of the coral reef accidentally while they're eating food. And then there's guts grind up the reef and then they poop out pure, beautiful white sand, like hundreds of pounds of white sand a year. Yeah. But when you really are talking about sand that most of us think of as sand, we're thinking wind and water generally. Oceans, rivers, and then in the desert, of course, wind. Right. And then in the desert. We must have talked about this in sand dunes, that the deserts are just ancient beaches from old, like, sea beds and things like that. River bed sometimes. That's right. And as far as what sand is, literally, it's parts of rock 70%. The hardest parts of rock 70% of sand is quartz. But you've also got gypsum in there, you got limestone. We already talked about lava. Like, there are other compositions, and it really depends on what kind of sand you're going to have on, obviously, what kind of rock it came from, like where you are in the world. Right. And then if you're an engineer or somebody who makes use of sand, they typically don't classify it or categorize it by composition. They more interested in the size. And there's not one universal definition, which I found kind of surprising. But depending on who you ask, civil engineering today says it's a small grain of rock, finer than gravel, coarser than silk. The American Society for Testing and Materials. They produce their standard practice for classification of soils for engineering purposes. Unified Soil Classification System. That's all one title. They say the sand is particles of soil between 75 microns and 4.75 mm in size. That's a big piece of sand. And then it comes in coarse, medium, and fine. And this is extraordinarily boring. I understand that fully. But it points out the fact that sand is still a rock. It's just a very tiny size rock. Right. Like, there's gravel, there's silt, there's sand in between, but it's still a rock. It's just a different size as far as, like, engineers and construction people are concerned. Right. And depending on, again, what kind of rocket came from and what it's made of and where you get it and how it was formed, the shape is going to be different. It can be very rough. It can be very smooth around the river. Sand, which is what's mainly used in construction, is irregular. And they need that irregular shape for that kind of construction because the middle sort of sand, which is the smoother ocean sand, isn't as good, and desert sand, which is the creme dela crim of sand, very polished, very uniform, and smooth and round, turns out is not good at all for construction. No. So the three types of sand that we find on Earth are river, which is irregularly shaped, ocean, which is smooth, and desert, which is billy D. Williams. Sorry for that. Wow. I was like, did Josh just pass out? Because I just said all that stuff. Right? I know. I just had to rebuild it, though, for the joke. I understand. Okay, so you said that. Hey, should we take a break now and come back and talk about how you stand? I think saying this is really boring. Let's take a break, is the perfect opportunity for people to leave and not come back. I do that. I'm thrilled. All right, Chuck, as we were saying, I'm thrilled by this because I know what we're building up to. The big payoff. Sam did it in the parlor. Right in I was going to say the candlestick. I always go to the candlestick for some reason. Oh, yeah. I think the idea of just hitting someone over the head with a candlestick really resonates with me. Wow. Not like I want to do it or whatever, I just am like, Jeez, yes, it's got a hat. I'm going to watch my back next time we're candle shopping. That's right. That's why I always take your candle shopping. I'm always right there on the edge. You're just trying to work up the courage. Yeah. Or just I'm like, just say the wrong thing right now. And then I always turn around and you go, oh, this one's pretty cut crystal. Chuck, look. So speaking of cut crystal, sand is not made. It used to make cut crystal. Oh, is that right? No, it's not. But sand is used to make glass. And we did a great episode on mirrors years ago. Yeah, that was a good one, where we talked a little bit about this. And then of course, silicon microchips are made from silica sand. It's also used in plastic. I know we plan to do one on plastic at some point so that'll figure in again, cosmetics, cleaners. Grit in a cleaner sometimes, yeah. If you use something like soft scrub or something like that, that grit has got to come from somewhere. And you can bet it's probably sand. Because again, sand is just very tiny rock. It's not going to break down or anything over time. And we've been using sand for industrial purposes, specifically glass making, for at least 5500 years. I believe they used it back in Mesopotamia and Egypt. They used in Egypt for construction for sure. Did they as well? They used it for glass too. So we figured out that sand is pretty useful. We also now today use it for fracking. We did an episode on fracking. Remember that our world is getting smaller. And when you inject, like, water and slurry, part of the slurry is sand to kind of use it to break up rock, to release natural gas. But just far and away the biggest use of sand today by human beings is to make concrete. That's right. And I'll say it again, we said it before, 15 billion tons of sand every year by the construction industry alone. And here's a few stats for you. A typical house, not sure what that means. What is that? Three bedroom, two bath, 1700 sq. Ft. Sure, I guess. Made entirely of concrete, I guess. I don't know what's typical these days. 200 tons of sand. A larger building like a school, maybe about 3000 tons of sand. Okay, all right. A nuclear power plant. About 12 million tons of sand. And we just did an episode on the US interstate system. Sure. Remember all those roads. Yeah. Think about 30,000 tons of sand per kilometer. Yeah. So I did the math and I converted about 200,000 miles because there's like 48,000 miles of interstate and about 150,000 miles of highway. Okay, fair enough. Converted that 2. No longer remember what it converts to. Sure. But times 30,000 tons a kilometer, that's 9,656,000,000 tons of sand locked into the highways just in the US. Alone that are constantly being redone. They are, yeah. And also, apparently it's used in asphalt, too, so just surface streets, too. And that's a big point. I used a really important word just now, locked. Like when we use sand for concrete and construction, it stays put. That's the point of it. When you use sand in concrete, it's part of the aggregate. It's also part of the binder because it's used in cement, too. So when you use a bunch of sand and you create something out of concrete, that sand is staying put. And because it's not a non renewable resource, you just used up some sand. You're no longer shuffling around from place to place. It's in construction. Now it's locked in. That's right. And as I mentioned before, it's locked together. Mainly that river sand. That's really irregular in its shape. Locked together better. If you think about it, it kind of makes sense. That really smooth, round desert sand. It's like putting a bunch of ping pong balls in a bag that's not going to lock together. That's a good analogy. I would have said more like putting a bunch of Billy D. Williams in a bag together. They're not going to lock. Hey, man, that's some schulzmat liquor and you've got a party. Wait, is that the one he used to no, he did 45. 45, right, sure. How could I forget? He never made Colt 45 taste any better. Which was the one with the oh, I guess it was Slitz that had the bowl that would charge into the bar. Sure. And Billy Dee Williams wrestled that bowl and one can you imagine working on those commercials back in the day? Yeah, I'm sure. Everybody was really drunk on malt liquor. It's like, we're going to build a big set here on stage, a bar set, and we're going to release a live bull and film it. Wouldn't you have to be drunk on malt liquor to do that? I guess so. What about Eric Morris directing all those Miller Light commercials? Those are great. Miller heavy. Oh, was it? I thought are you sure? I'm almost positive as light. I think those are Miller highlights. Okay, so here's the thing. I like Earl Morris. I like his work. I think Thin Blue Line is arguably the best documentary ever made. It's certainly up there. It's not my favorite, but I respect it. But I'm not like a junkie for his work. I just love the fact that he just does whatever project appeals to him at the time. Yeah, I mean, he directs a lot of commercials. That's where the money is. There's not money in documentaries. Okay. So he's not doing it because there's some neat philosophical bent that he has toward Miller at that moment. He's just hired, and I'm sure they hire him for his unique purview. Okay, not purview, but point of view. Sure. But yeah, he's a commercial director for money, and that affords him the ability to go make no money on documentaries. I may love him even more now. He's great. Okay, so we're talking about malt liquor. What was before that? Billy do. Yeah. Hey, hold on, though. This all comes full circle because Errol Morris directed a great documentary called Vernon, Florida. And one of the elderly couples in Vernon, Florida, there was a whole thing about this jar of sand that they had, and they talked about the fact that the sand they collected, I think, from the desert in New Mexico is actually growing nice. So I'm glad you picked up on that, because that is why I brought up Billy D. Williams again, so we could get to that point. Oh, man. Nice job, Chuck. So you said that the river sand is really the only kind you can use for construction. That's right. Okay. Which is true. And we're using a lot of it. So much so that every time a city gets bigger, they build a new high rise or something like that. Somewhere in the world, a river is scraped of its sand. A river, a lake, maybe a dam, but some inland system of water, because really, river sand, from what I can tell, is just beach sand that hasn't happened yet. Yeah. I mean, that's where it all wants to go there, right? It's all on the road. And then once it gets down to the beach, it's really broken down to, like, its most constituent, hardest parts that aren't going to wash away. But it's still a irregular. It's not smooth or polished yet. So construction is an enormous consumer of sand. I saw that China, either in three years or every three years, uses an amount of sand that's greater than the entire amount of sand the United States consumed in the 20th century. Yeah. And we'll talk more about this, but a lot of this is well, not in China, but in some of these vacation destinations, building these fake islands. No, China is doing that, too. Oh, are they doing that? They're using it for every possible idea you can think of. Well, fake islands and then just adding land to the shoreline. Yeah. You want to talk a little bit about beach nourishment here? Sure. So there's something called beach nourishment or beach replenishment or beach filling. And it is basically like people are saying, hey, our beach is wearing away. We really like this incredibly valuable coastal real estate. I paid a lot for this plot. Let's get the beach back. Yeah. So they will go and get some sand. Sometimes they import it, sometimes they go out offshore and actually, literally vacuum the stuff up. Or they'll use huge buckets to dredge it up and then they dump it on shore and then they run over it with some heavy equipment. And they have extended the beach significantly. Depending on the size of the project, it can replenish an enormous beach for a very long stretch. And that's beach nourishment, that's a huge use of sand right now, in addition to construction for river sand. But as far as like, sea sand and coastal sand, beach nourishment is a big use of it. And then, like you were saying, building artificial islands is a huge use. Like islands that just were never there. It's not replenishing an island, it's, hey, let's build an island here where there really wasn't one. Yeah. And the irony there is, there are islands that are disappearing because the sand is being taken away to build island shaped like palm trees off the coast. Yeah, literally, that's what those islands I think in Indonesia, at least 24 islands have literally vanished because they were mined for their sand. And it was moved over to, I guess, Dubai. Is that where it went? I think Dubai. Dubai or Singapore? One of the Singapore. They're both doing a lot of that. Singapore, I think, has created about 50 sq mi of land and grown by 20% to 25% as a country. Like physically grown because of adding sand. Yeah, but it's just shuffling sand from one part of the globe to another, one hand, it's like, that's terrible. Like, that sand was meant to be there in Indonesia, but Indonesia also has like 1700 uninhabited islands that are just basically made up of sand. And who said that they had to be there? There's also something to be said about human ingenuity to say, hey, let's move this island over here and make this other island bigger. Can we do it? Yes, we can do it. It's neat. Watch. So as far as this nourishment goes, though, it's called a soft armoring technique, as opposed to hard armouring, like building a sea wall. But here's the thing with beach nourishment, it sounds great, like, hey, the beach is eroding, let's just add a bunch of sand and now the beach is back. But think about everything on that beach. Just dumping tons of sand on the beach. They use a word like nourishment, I think very purposefully to make it sound like, oh, this is so good, we're nourishing something. Right? But when you dump thousands of tons of sand on something, you're going to kill a lot of stuff underneath it. Yes. So they're figuring out that beach nourishment in particular. If you're going to do it, it's preferable to building a sea wall. They're saying, like, everyone agrees with that. And the reason why is because once you build a sea wall, you're actually preventing erosion so that the beach can never replenish itself. Right. And you're not necessarily affecting your own beach. You're affecting beaches down the coast where your beach is being moved down to that beach. And now that beach is not being replenished because you build a sea wall. So bringing in imported sand is preferable to building a sea wall. But the problem is, like you're saying you're dumping a bunch of sand in a place where it wasn't before, so you're killing everything in there. And then we humans tend to think of beaches as just a deposit of sand. That's absolutely not correct. There is a lot of life and ecosystems going on in the sand that we can't see. Just because we can't see it doesn't mean it's not there. That are really vital to an area. And it has a chain reaction when you dump an enormous amount of sand onto a beach and that it kills the stuff that was already there. Which means that higher and higher up the food chain, the chain is broken or the food web is broken. And so you have a lot of animals that just move out of the area because you've just created a literal food desert in the area by dumping the stuff. So they figured out that there's best practices on how to nourish a beach and part of it is to do it in smaller incremental projects rather than one huge project that just kills everything off. That's a big step one to doing it, right? Sure. They also say maybe do it at a time of the year where there are maybe fewer seabirds because this has a ripple effect on everything. It's not just the creatures you're dumping the sand on, it's birds that feed on the things down there because all of a sudden they're going to different parts of the beach. It affects if they're dredging it from the ocean, you're not just scooping sand and everything's fine, you're creating like these big mud zones offshore that it's going to affect the sea life out there and creating construction projects on the beach, which is never fun, never good. So they're saying maybe do it at the time of year where there are less like sea birds around. Use sand that has a similar composition to the natural sand. Like try and match like sand with like sand at least. Yeah, because again, we think, well, sand is sand. That is utterly incorrect. It really depends on the size, the composition. A lot of different factors are involved in when you introduce a different sand into a native sand area, you've just utterly changed the habitat and that has a huge effect too. So they say you need to sample what your borrow source stand is going to be before you use it to make sure it matches what you're putting on shore. And they say to plow it afterward because that helps. But here's the thing, like none of this stuff is some kind of permanent solution anyway because you're not stopping the erosion process. It's just a stopgap measure, I guess that over time is just wasted time and money, really. Well, it depends. I think they're figuring out that there might be a useful, least harmful way to do this. And it seems like going out and getting the sand that you put back, that was washed out to see last time and bringing it back is probably the best way to do it. Although even no matter when you do it, every time, it's going to have some sort of impact just from the dumping, the introduction of all this new sand. Yes. And I wonder how much of this has to do with the fact that generally, like, wealthier people on this beachfront property right, and they're not having it, so we got to do something about it. That's a huge part of it. So there's a third option to building sea walls and replenishing the beach. It's called managed retreat, which is basically saying don't develop up on the beach, like, give it way more space than we give it and let the beach handle itself. And everyone just laughs at whatever ecologist brings that up every time. Yes. When I go to Iowa, palms their houses. Some people I think, don't like it because the houses don't sit on the sand. They're way back. They're like a couple of hundred yards back, which makes them a little bit safer, obviously, from tropical storms and hurricanes. But other beaches along the coastline, some of them have water splashing up onto the porches. They're so close. Right. And yeah, you want to build behind the dunes. But the thing is, if you remember from the sand dunes episode, sand dunes move further and further inland. So eventually you're going to be in front of the dunes even though you built way behind the dunes. So that manage retreat is saying, like, dude, build even further back than that. Like you have to basically drive to the beach, from what I gather. Yeah. And most of the ones that I've seen that have the waves splashing up on you are behind big rock and wood sea walls right. Which is not good for the coast down coast. That's right. You want to take another break? Yeah, let's do it. So we talked about Chuck, like when you go out and get sand and replenish your beach or nurse, sorry, your beach, you're actually going out and vacuuming it up. That's one form of what's called dredging. You also have huge things with enormous buckets that go out and scoop the sand up, just like a vacuum wood or the vacuum dredges would. And then you also have really low five versions too, where people just take buckets and shovels and start digging up the beach. And if you get enough people working and enough dump trucks in a line that are just getting filled up by hand, you can have the same. Effect as using a really fancy trailing suction hopper. Dredge. Yeah. About half or more of this stuff is usually illegally mined. So when you see humans diving, which they will do, I think, in Morocco, about half the sand is illegal from the coastline. And when you see these boats, there's a great article in Wired called the Deadly Global War for sand written by Vince Basir in 2015. I highly recommend people read this one because they get into the black market for sand and the illegal sand trade, and the fact that there's this one farming village where this man was straight up murdered because for ten years he'd been campaigning to authorities to get what's called the sand mafia shut down. So they will straight up murder people. In India, the sand mafia has killed hundreds of people. Yes. Including like, cops. Oh, yeah. Government officials. The bribes. I think in 2010, dozens of Malaysian officials were charged with accepting bribes, sexual favors. Even if you have a permit. I think in some of these places, I think Bali, for instance, 70% of sand mines have no permits. And even if you do have a legal permit, you're using bribes and kickbacks to dig deeper and wider. So there are at least a dozen countries where illegal smuggling is just perpetually going on. Right. Like sand. We're talking sand here. We didn't accidentally trip into heroin. We're talking about sand. That's how much of a demand there is for it. And what's crazy is it's still relatively cheap. I saw as low as $10 a ton ed has in here up to, I think, has $20 to $40 a ton. And granted, sand is very heavy. So like a ton is something like a cubic yard, I believe. Yes. But still, that's a lot of work and a lot of murder for something that you sell for $10 a ton. A lot of murder. But even at that price point, that's still something like a 700% increase in the price of that commodity since the 1970s. And the reason why it's been skyrocketing in value is because we're using so much of it and locking so much of it up in construction projects and using it also to create artificial islands. Yeah. This one article, I think it was the Wired one that was talking about Morocco, they said parts of Morocco now look like the surface of the moon, whereas years ago there were sandy beaches and now they're rocky. So the irony is they don't have any more beaches because they're taking all the sand to use to build hotels and fake islands to attract people to beaches. Right. So it's just basically a shuffling of sand around the globe in that sense, yeah. But river sand, that's different. And no matter how you extract sand or where you extract it from, you are deeply impacting the local ecosystem. Like turning a beautiful beach in Morocco into the surface of the moon is going to have some negative effects. Same thing goes for river dredging as well. The biggest sand mine in the world is Lake, which is south of Shanghai, which is helping fuel Shanghai's enormous construction boom right now. And there's also sand mining basically everywhere there's a river, there's probably somebody mining it. Including in the US. There's sand mines. There's one along the San Jacino River. Is that how you say that? San Jacinto? Yeah. Okay. I think so. One of the problems, aside from just impacting the local wildlife, that the sand, the silt and sand is part of the ecosystem, is when you take out part of the river bed, you expand that river's potential for flow. Oh, yeah. And they think that Hurricane Harvey in Houston was really exacerbated from this sand mining along the San Jacinto River that allowed way more flood and storm water to flow through it way more quickly. Yeah. And here's the other thing, is we've talked about, besides the fact that naturally sand isn't being produced nearly enough to account for what we're stealing and locking in. But 60% of the world's rivers are interrupted by dams. So even if it were, in an ideal case, like producing enough sand to kind of be equal, it's not getting down to the mouth of the river where it all wants to eventually go. No, but I did see that one thing you can do is if you're a sand mining company, you'd be very smart to make a contract with the dam operator. Sure. Say you need the sand out of your dam. Right. I can get it out. Let me take it for free. And you solve two problems. Right. But because we're consuming sand at about double the rate of production for river sand, about half of that sand you get out of a dam should be brought back up to the river and basically spread through the head of the river. But they're not going to do that because they can sell it instead. But, yeah, as Ed puts, like, our ecological disasters are creating problems for our other ecological disasters. Yeah. And going back to the ocean sand, which can be illegally mined from the ocean floor by people diving. They're also exploiting people and workers because I was trying to get a pay rate. And this one guy, 41 years old, dives 200 times a day. This is from the Wired article, and he makes $16 a day. And their families are all at work and they're literally diving off of boats with buckets and then swimming back to the top, like John Steinbeck style. And putting sand in a boat. Right. With a bucket of sand, which is not exactly light. That's a really dangerous thing to do. Yeah. In India, where I think it's got the worst problems, they're trying to do stuff. But from what I've gathered, a lot of it is for show. Like, anytime someone new is elected or there's a new person in power. They make a big show about stopping the sandwich and the sand trade. Right. But it's a country of a billion people, and it has got hundreds or probably thousands of illegal operations going on. And you shut one down, another pops, like ten more pop up. And it's so corrupt and violent that it's looking pretty grim as far as like, hey, let's really stop this from happening. Yeah, but also don't forget the fact that these mafia have proven that they will murder people, including government officials. So that's a really intractable problem. It seems like over there, people in smaller villages are doing they will block off roads with cars and stuff or with trees to stop the cars and trucks, but then they will get attacked. So it's really grim. And this is sand, right? It is sand. So if you wanted to address this, you have to think of it in just the same way that you think of something. Like anytime there's an organized crime involved, you have to think of it just like you're dealing with, say, like the flow of cocaine. Sure. Do you go after the farmers who produce the cocaine? Do you go after the cartels who are smuggling the cocaine? Or do you try to keep the end user from wanting it? Do you affect demand? And there's some proposals that seem to say, well, we're not going to be able to do anything about production. Let's try to see what we can do about demand. And one of the first things to do is to say don't use so much concrete. Like, let's figure out some other materials that we can use for smaller construction projects that really don't necessarily need concrete. Right. And we'll use those instead and save concrete for this stuff where it is really needed. Yeah, like if you're building a nuclear power plant, you need the concrete. But if you're building an average home, there are probably ways to get around this. Sure. You can use things like panda claws or condor feathers as building materials rather than precious sand. Well, there is glass, and we talked earlier about sand is glass to a certain degree, and why don't you just crush that down, grind it up again, there is also artificial sand because sand is just rock. Technically you can grind down rocks down to sand, but all of that stuff is I mean, no one's going to do that because it's so expensive. For now. For now. But that's the whole idea is to get these things in place. And the more scarce real sand becomes, then the cost might equal out and people might turn to artificial sand. Right. But the unfortunate thing is that implies that we need to keep waiting and just abide this kind of ecological disaster that is sand mining until sand becomes so scarce that artificial sand becomes a viable alternative. Which sucks. Yeah. Hopefully this falls under the umbrella of people who want to have best practices for the environment, but this is on their radar now, along with, like, solar power and everything else. Yeah, we need somebody to come along and figure out how to create artificial sand from gravel very easily. Although gravel extraction is not exactly environmental impact free, we need to figure out how to turn trash into vastly superior river sand. That would be great. Okay. Can someone get on that? Yeah. Can we divert one of our multiple ventriloquists who are apparently not doing anything useful in Chuck's opinion to figuring out how to convert trash into river sand? You know what? We didn't get one angry letter from a ventriloquist. I was surprised, as a matter of fact. You seem to have you enjoy wide support in your opinion of ventriloquist. You really do. Most people don't like them, apparently. So. You got anything else about ventriloquist or sand? No, I don't think so. I think this is a good one to put on people's radar during. Well, I guess this is sort of the tail end of summer beach season, but when you're out there with the sand and you're just look around and think about a little bit. I know that ocean sand isn't what they're using for construction, but next time you go to a lake or a river, just kind of keep this in the back of your head. Yeah, really let it depress your experience and watch your back in case Josh is nearby with a candlestick. Right. Well, I think that's it for sand for now. If you want to know more about sand and sand depletion, go check it out. There's a lot of ink that's been spilled over it. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. That's right. Before listener mail, though, we want to do a couple of things. I know we had at the onset of the show. We probably had a little pre roll for our upcoming shows, but we're just a couple of weeks out by my math from being in New Orleans and Orlando for live shows. So we'd love to just encourage people to go out there. We're going to be in Orlando at Plaza Live on October 9, in New Orleans the next night on October 10. And I don't know if tickets are going to be around, so hopefully you can still get them at this point. Yes, I would skedaddle over to the Internet and try to get your hands on some right now. And then our friends at Co ed, the Cooperative for Education, many years ago, they took us down, along with Jerry, to Guatemala, and we went on one of their tours. And it was great. Yes, it was. The stuff you should know. Guatemalan Adventure parts one and two. You can still go listen to those. And they want to encourage people to come out again for some tours. They've had stuff you should know. Members, army members, I guess. Yeah. Army members, listeners go down for these tours because of us mentioning on the show, and it's really life changing. They're still doing this kind of work down there. They're breaking the cycle of poverty in Guatemala through education and they are still hosting people just like they did us on these week long trips. It's a lot of fun. It's very eye opening, it's very meaningful. It's all these things put together. You're going to make some lifelong friends, I guarantee it. And we just can't encourage you enough to go on one of these tours. Yeah, coed really knows how to take care of their guests, too. They really get across what they're doing and they take you to the places that are being helped, but they also I mean, it is a lot of fun as well. And they take you some very beautiful spots. Sure. It's all these great things wrapped up into one great opportunity. Coming up in November and February, you can learn more about these tours@cooperativeforeducation.org. Tours. Nice, Chuck. Thanks. Now, finally, a listener mail. All right, lay it on, Chuck, because speaking of live shows, we just finished up our shows in Boston, portland, Maine. And they were great. And this is from an attendee. Okay. I wanted to write in to tell you guys how much fun your live show in Portland was. I am from Connecticut, but my sister just started as a freshman at the University of New England in Bedford, which is just south of Portland. I was already planning on coming up to visit her after her first week in school and I was listening, heard you were coming to Portland and it couldn't have been more perfect, timing wise. Coming to one of your shows was a bucket list item for me and it's cool that I got to explore a new place even though I myself was never big into topic redacted. You guys always know how to make all of the topics so interesting and reach different audiences. Plus, it was really cool just to be around so many stuff. You should know fans even better. My wife, who was not even a listener, was a great sport, came to the show. It was amazed to see how many people were there and had a lot of fun, although you hear it all the time. I want to say again, thank you. What you and the other podcasters out there do to cultivate learning and creativity for all ages and communities is awesome. And that is from Alex. And thank you. Boston and Portland, Maine. Great time on those shows. Yeah, that was an amazing time. And driving between Boston and Portland was really awesome, too. It was wonderful. Emily and my daughter came up and we spent the weekend in Portland and went out to kind of Bunk Port in Cape Elizabeth and Peaks Island and it is a pretty magical place there in the summertime. It really is. It's crazy. It was wonderful. Yeah. So thanks, everybody, for having us out, and we'll see you again soon. Well, if you want to get in touch with this, you can go on to Stuff You Should Know and follow us on our social stuff. And then you can also just send us a good old fashioned email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to Stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio's how stuff works. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio App, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun's shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarith and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite at Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | |
c8950eb0-3620-11ea-b32d-3725278932d7 | Short Stuff: Plastic Pink Flamingos | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-plastic-pink-flamingos | Plastic flamingos started out as innocent yard art, transformed into folk art, and have become a (kind of mean) symbol of high campiness. There’s a lot to this particular plastic yard art. | Plastic flamingos started out as innocent yard art, transformed into folk art, and have become a (kind of mean) symbol of high campiness. There’s a lot to this particular plastic yard art. | Wed, 11 Nov 2020 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=11, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=316, tm_isdst=0) | 12423469 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. And this is Short Stuff. We are talking at long last about a topic that has been on my list for short stuff since basically the first time we came up with short Stuff, which is pink plastic lawn flamingos, one of the all time great pieces of yard art anyone's ever come up with? Do you own them? No, I'm not mean. Okay, you're not mean. Oh, you'll see, I'll describe why I think owning a pink flamingo is kind of mean. Oh, interesting. All right. Okay. You can do that after the break. Is it going to be a setup for a teaser? Yeah, maybe that will be a set up. Let's tell them first about the origin of these things. Everybody knows what we're talking about, right? Like the plastic pink flamingos that people had on their lawns, especially in the maybe the 60s. Nowadays they're super kitschy and campy. But plastic lawn flamingos, right? That's right. They were created by a man named Don Featherstone, who is a sculptor, who was hired by Union Products from Leo Minster Mass, or however they pronounce it there. I'm sure there's some strange pronunciation for that. Right. And they are the plastics capital of the world. And he created the very first one as his second work assignment. Yeah, union Products had 2D flamingos, and they also had ducks. And his first assignment was to turn the ducks from 2D into three D, and the ducks were the longtime biggest seller. It was called duck and ducklings. And people would put plastic ducks on their yard as if they were just hanging out in their grass. Yeah. So Featherstone created the flamingos. They cost about 276 for two of them, because you got to sell them in pairs. I think they're still sold in pairs. Yeah, you got to have a little buddy. You don't just have one. By the way, that's about 25, 50 today. Yeah. So it's a pretty good deal today because they're like, 15 or $16 now. Yeah. So apparently they came about because this was the beginnings of sort of the cookie cutter subdivision revolution. And if you wanted to put something in your yard to make yourself stand out from your neighbor, pink flamingo was a fine way to do so. Yeah. And the pink flamingo was chosen to be, like, the second one because the pink and everything caribbean was super in, like, Tiki culture was kind of big around that time, and it was a smash hit. Like, people started buying them by the boatloads the moment they hit the market. It just was perfectly time. It was exactly what everybody was looking for. And they were still $25 isn't free, but they were affordable. Basically everybody you could afford them. And so they became this kind of emblem of suburban working class culture. Like, that was a certain group of people prized pink flamingo, law and ornaments, and put them on their yards. Non ironically, that's very important. Right. Which is a very big reason why in the 60s there was a backlash against them. Like so many things in the 1950s that mom and dad loved, the 60s came along and the hippie said, I'm done with that. Screw your conformity. I'm not going to play your games. I'm counterculture, baby. And those lawn gnomes and flamingos are terrible. Get them out of here. But then, of course, the 70s roll back around and they're like, hey, man, who cares? These things are cool. Let's bring them back. But the reason that they were cool and the whole reason they came back, you can make a really strong case is because of a single American director out of Baltimore, Maryland, named John Waters, that he is basically single handedly responsible for bringing back the pink flamingo. But the key difference is that when he brought the pink flamingo back. He brought it back and ran it through a completely different paradigm so that it came out the other end. Totally schlocky. Totally campy. And lost every bit of earnestness and was completely saddled with irony from that point on because he created a movie in 1972 known around the world. Is one of the most offensive movies ever made that he called pink Flamingo. That's right. And I guess before we take that break to find out why they're mean and why you feel they're mean, sure, we should mention that John Waters, who I just called Roger Waters and did a retake, I feel like I should point out, gay icon in the USA. And so as a result, gay bars started using pink flamingos as mascots. And you could find at drag shows, you could find them on earrings of performers and on their high heels. And then it kind of became sort of this symbol for gay America in the 70s in the United States. High camp. High camp. All right, let's take a break. We will take that break. Yeah, I think that's a good idea. All right, we're going to follow up with a little bit more right after this. If you want to know, just listening, when John Waters breathed a second life into pink flamingos, pink lawn flamingo ornaments. When they came back, they were brought back, like you said, in the gay community big time. But then they also kind of spread out further and further into the larger community in America and became kind of part and parcel with pranksterism. Like they were frequently putting on people's lawns prank basically. Like, what person could possibly want pink lawn flamingos, right? So if we put them on somebody's lawn, it's a hysterical prank. But also in some way, and I think a lot of people didn't realize that they were necessarily doing this, but it was part of the whole second life of it was mocking the people who originally enjoyed pink lawn flamingos earnestly in mocking their taste and that is why I think pink Flamingos are kind of mean these days. Oh, so you think if you put a flamingo up, it's sort of a hipster, ironic, making fun of it kind of thing? Yeah. So do you remember, you know, how mom jeans are back? Sure. I could not find this article. I searched all over for it. But I read this article, which is basically account of somebody in the fashion industry who was there when mom jeans were brought back. And they were brought back in this really mean spirited way among like, little 20 something wave models who basically wanted to rub it in the faces of moms, how good they looked even in their frumpy mom jeans. And that's how mom jeans came back. That, to me, is basically the same principle behind bringing back the Pink Flamingos. The way that John Waters put is that they become loaded objects, classes, tools of the well to do, mocking the taste of the less fortunate. And that he says that the real plastic flamingo is, in a sense, extinct. You can't have anything that innocent anymore. I get it. I realize I'm being a little high blown and high pollutant about this whole thing, but I just found it really fascinating that the idea that it has a certain level of mockery, that you're mocking the taste of people who ever thought those things were neat and enjoyed them on there at face value. Sure. And I think both of us are kind of anti flaunting. Ironically, yes. At the same time, though, sometimes we just got to mellow out. Well, that's true, too. I mean, we're not upset about this or anything, right? Are you mad? No, I'm just kidding. It's all good. So, a few more things about the flamingos, though. A couple of neat things. In 1979, if you are familiar with Madison, Wisconsin, and the university there, they planted over a thousand of these in the grass in front of the dean's office. And then many years later, I think they paid homage to that in 2009 and honored this prank. And the city town council named the Pink Flamingo the official bird of Madison. That's right. So the 70s were huge for the Pink Flamingo, but the 80s were even hugeer for the first time ever in the history of union products. I think in 1985, six or seven, the Pink Flamingo outsold the duck with ducklings lawn ornament. And some people say, well, it was the 30th anniversary of the Pink Flamingo, so it was getting more pressed and it had this revival. Other people say, no, it had nothing to do with the 30th anniversary. It was the popularity of Miami Vice that brought flamingos back, but again, brought them back in this way that people weren't really enjoying them at face value. There was something kind of campy or funny about having the Pink Flamingo in the front yard. Well, here at our zoo in atlanta. One of the very first things that you see when you walk in are the flamingos standing there on one leg. And I think we should do a full episode on flamingos at some point. Sure. Because they're really neat. And my daughter was so taken with them, we ended up getting her a large flamingo painting for her bedroom that was like $20 at a flea market. And she's enjoying it earnestly, isn't she? No, she loves it. That's great. Her little mom jeans. Who are mocking pink flamingos. You're mocking Chuck's daughter directly. Just think about that. There's this other cool thing that I hadn't heard of. It's sort of like a chain letter that gets passed around. So here's how it works. What you do is you're trying to raise money for a charity and have a little fun while you're doing it. So at night, instead of, like, teepee in somebody's yard, you will set up flamingos in the yard of a house or a business. And there's a sign that says, this block has been placed here for this charity. And we'll come pick these things up for a dollar a piece that goes to this charity. And then that gets passed on to another yard. Like a chain letter. Right. Which is funny. I got a shout out Smithsonian Mental Floss and thought code for helping us out with this. But I think in the Mental Floss article, the author is clearly much younger than us because they say, like, old school chain letters from the early 2000s. They go back a lot further than that. I just thought that was very funny. Yes. And I think the person, like, if someone put them in my yard, put, like, 100 flamingos for a charity, I would say, all right, I'll pay the $100. And then now I get to pick. And I would send them straight to your house, of course. Sure. Like an old school name letter from the I get to pick the next house and so on and so on. Yeah. So they're clearly still around. You can still get them today. And I guess from what I read, they still make about 1000 of them a day and use \u00a3270,000,000 of plastic to make pink plastic lawn flamingos in the United States. We'll boot to that. But gated the flamingos, there's also one last little tidbit. Chuck, there's a rumor, an urban legend who knows that if you see somebody with a plastic pink lawn flamingo in their front yard, it's a signal that they are swingers. Right. But I think it's a good time to remember not everyone with the pineapple on their grocery cart is looking to hook up. And not every flamingo in the front yard means you're a swinger. Hadn't heard the pineapple one. What if somebody has a pineapple and a flamingo in their front yard? Well, it's on like Donkey Kong. There you go. A big fishbowl with a few keys in there. That's right. Well, that's it for short stuff, right? That's right. Okay, well, then that means short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio's how Stuff Works. For more podcasts my HeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio App App, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
What made the donkey and the elephant political? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/what-made-the-donkey-and-the-elephant-political | Sure we take it for granted the elephant represents the Republican party and the donkey Democrats, but have you ever wondered why? Josh and Chuck explore the foundation of these bizarre political symbols in this old-timey episode of Stuff You Should Know. | Sure we take it for granted the elephant represents the Republican party and the donkey Democrats, but have you ever wondered why? Josh and Chuck explore the foundation of these bizarre political symbols in this old-timey episode of Stuff You Should Know. | Thu, 01 Dec 2011 15:48:49 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=1, tm_hour=15, tm_min=48, tm_sec=49, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=335, tm_isdst=0) | 32666953 | audio/mpeg | "You know you're the best pet mom. When you growl back during playtime, give epic belly rubs and feed them Halo holistic made with responsibly sourced ingredients, plus probiotics. For digestive health, find us at Chewy, amazon and haloopets.com. Com. 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. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And that makes this Stuff You Should Know the continued political edition because we did Presidential pardons, so we're all political now. This is the time of the year. Yeah. It's beginning to look a lot like a political season. I'm going today to cast my ballot for Georgia to start letting everybody buy booze on Sunday. I am, too. I appreciate you doing that. No, I'm voting against it. A lot of people on the AJC, they had the opinion, like, what do you think? And the people that were against it were all just like, well, you got six days a week. Why change it? Why bother? It's just the one day. Is it really that big of a pain? And it's like, what is lost on these people is that this is the United States of America. Yeah. It's about freedom. It's not about buying booze on Sunday. It's about somebody else telling you not to when this is 2011. Nice, Chuck. Yeah. Well, let's stop talking politics and instead, let's talk animals. Let's talk biology. You know much about donkeys? No. Okay, not really. Well, donkeys are a member of the horse family, but they're different species from horse. Donkeys and mules are not the same. Correct. Are we getting there? Because they're different species. It makes it really weird that they can not only mate, but procreate, but donkeys and horses do get it on. And what they produce are mules. So a mule is actually the offspring of a male donkey, a jack, and a female horse, a mare. How did I not know that in 40 years? A henny is the offspring of a female donkey, a jenny, and a male horse a stallion. So a mule or a hynny can be boy or girl. It depends on what their parents were. So this is actually the second podcast where we've started with equestrian definitions. Yes. Interesting. And I also want to give a little shout out to the donkey, apparently. A donkey. They're very well known for stubbornness, of course. Sure. But apparently it is a misinterpretation, as I understand it, of their incredibly welldefined sense of self preservation. They are not very easily frightened or forced into doing something they think is not in their own best interest, which comes out to us as stubborn jackass donkey, mule who won't go down the trail, and they're like the gold. No, I could fall off that trail. Exactly. Interesting. Yeah. So I think humans should start listening to their donkeys and to make sure that people don't accuse us of donkey bias. Yes. I want to talk also about elephants, too, because if you talk donkeys, you have to talk elephants and eventually electric eels, which we'll get to later. Is that the Tea party? No, I thought they might have had their own. I don't think it's electric eels. Pretty awesome. They do have that carved up snake. Oh, really? Yeah, they don't tread on me. Snake that was carved up into 13 colonies. That's definitely not an electric yield. Okay. Elephants are a horse of a completely different color. A few facts of them. Their societies are structured by female. If you see a group of elephants walking around, they're all female. Okay. They live in the same family their whole lives. That's nice. The elephant pack is led by a female It's matriarchal, and males spend their whole lives, like, just basically doing their own thing, hanging out and then coming around to mate every once in a while. And these lives can go for up to 82 years. And elephants are pretty amazing animals. They are very well known to mourn scientifically proven, to mourn their dead. The first study that established that was in 2005, that found that elephants will return to where their loved ones have fallen and visit their bones and skulls and tusks and stroke them and just kind of meditate over them for a while. That's very sad. Right. So you have donkeys, you have elephants, you have American politics. That I think is as interesting as the story of how they became symbols of politics. I would say it's more interesting. All right. It depends on your leaning. This one was written by Sam Everson. You remember him? Oh, yeah. Sam Everson. He was a good guy. I wonder where he is. I have no idea. I doubt if he listens. I do, too. So, Thomas Nast, if you're going to start the discussion on how the donkey and the elephant became symbols of our two political parties, there's only one place to start and end, and that is a German, oddly enough, a German born political satirist and illustrator cartoonist. That's the way to put it. Wood block cutter. Yeah. Really? Named Thomas Nast, who was born in Germany, came over to New York City when he was six and was natural. He was a shoe in right off the bat with this artwork. Stuff, right? Yeah, he was pretty good. You can tell. And if you haven't heard of him, you've still seen his stuff. Somewhere out there, you've seen a Thomas Nas illustration. Any time you think of 19th century political cartoons, what you're envisioning is a Thomas Nest illustration or Uncle Sam. It depends. What I always think of is flag. Thomas Flag. Can't remember his name. Anyway, he's the one who painted that I want you, Uncle Sam. Yeah, but Nas is the one who popularized the first images of Uncle Sam. Is that right? Well, Uncle Sam was around. He was the one who first put him in, like, a star spangled suit and made them tall and gaunt model after Abraham Lincoln. Got you. But Uncle Sam was if I may. Please. He was possibly named after a guy named Samuel Wilson. Not Abramson? No. Okay. Who was a meat packer from Troy, New York, in the early 19th century and who got a great reputation as being very honest. And so we got a government contract to send me provisions to the troops during the war of 1812, and these crates would come, arrived, stamped us, and the troops came to mention that this was Uncle Sam or Uncle Sam Wilson, who came to be a symbol for the United States as a whole. And they were providing uncle Sam was providing food for the soldiers in their minds. Yes. That's nice. Nothing but horse meat in Santa Claus. The modern Santa Claus as we know him was sort of captured by a Nast as well. Is that right? Yeah. You got a story there. I do. Okay, let's hear it. So people say that Thomas Nasty invented Santa Claus, and that is true. It's pretty close. There was St. Nick. There was Centric Claus. There was all these conceptions of Santa Claus based around St. Nick. Thomas Nas was the one who associated st. Nick, who still today in Germany, he's honored he has a day on December 6 where people give one another gift. But it's not Christmas. Right. Thomas Nest took the gift giving idea associated with St. Nick, put it to Christmas for Harper's, and then added the elves as well. So the whole idea of Santa Claus coming and bringing gifts was Thomas Nast. Wow. Like 1862, I believe, for the cover of Harper's Weekly. Thank you, Thomas Nasty. And then by 1881, he was fat and jolly, thanks to Thomas Nasty as well. How was this Santa going to be lean and mean? Yes, he was a little skinny, and it's off putting to see a skinny Santa Claus. What, the earlier ones? Yeah. All right. Well, you spilled the beans on that spoiler. Harper's Weekly was where Nast worked for 24 years from 1862 to 1886, and that is where he made his name, like, big time. He was influential. He was countrywide famous. I don't know about world famous. I don't know if a whole lot of people were world famous at the time. Yeah, he's definitely like a household name, I think. Yeah. He was a rock star. This is when a political cartoon really meant something and actually held sway in elections. Yeah. Not so today. Yeah, because so many people were illiterate, which is kind of unfortunate because Thomas Nash drew in a time where you could draw a bunch of stuff and be like, this doesn't make any sense, and just put labels on them. Apparently you can label absolutely everything. It's like, oh, okay, this tree. Sometimes he would come to your house and explain it to you. Still didn't get it. Well. And I mentioned woodcut. He did not draw these in pen and ink until later, which would end up being his endoing. We'll get to that. But he actually carved these things, and that's how they printed these. These are carvings. It's amazing, especially when you look at the detail. It's striking. Josh. I agree. I didn't realize there were wood carvings until about 30 minutes ago. Oh, really? Yeah. So you're still reeling? Yeah, I'm a little I'm still queasy. I still have the taste of vomit in my mouth. All right, so politically speaking, Nast was a Republican, but Republicans at the time aren't exactly what we might think of today. It was a shift over the years. Yeah. How many people know this? It's a big eye opening thing. It's like learning in 8th grade that the United States, like, pretty much brought genocide down on Indians in America. What are you talking about? There are cowboys and stuff. But what do you mean? Same thing with this. That Republican and Democrat is fluid term. Really. It's like conservative and liberal are the two opposing forces at all times. Yeah, that's a good way to put it, actually. And at the time, I guess, Republicans were very much socially liberal, and he was on board with that and ended up having problems with his own party because of that. Which influences cartoons. Yes. Can we call him cartoons? I think, yeah. Political cartoons. It's an acceptable term. So, donkey, should we start there? Yeah. The donkey first came about in 1870, was the first time the donkey made its appearance. And I have these printed out, too. That was this one right here. The Copperhead northern Democrats were called Copperhead Democrats. They opposed the Civil War, and he thought they were racists. Well, that's what Sam calls them. Well, that's what Nas thought of them, though. Right, right. But I think that's an over broad description. I think that the Copperhead Democrats were made up of, like they were the crux of the peace movement. Right. They also basically were made up of people who said it's unconstitutional to force a country together if one part of it wants to secede. Right. There were a lot of different voices, but yes, they were very powerful. Nest definitely opposed them, for sure. And a copperhead is a snake in case you didn't know that. So it's definitely a derogatory term. Deadly snake. It is a deadly snake that we have right here in Georgia. So in 1870, he showed the donkey kicking a dead lion, the donkey. And like you said, he would just literally label them. He would write words on the body of the animal saying, this is what this is. No subtext. The donkey was the copperhead press, which was he was taking a jab at the press and not necessarily the party. And then the lion was Edwin and Stanton Lincoln, Secretary of War, who was dead and dead in the photo. And it looks like there's a little eagle looking on, even from on high, like, what are you doing? But the eagle is not labeled, and I think that's the capital in the background. Yes, I think so. Yeah. He would just write on it, like, on the side of the donkey, it says Copperhead Press. And it looks like have you heard of I think his name is Vim vanderwal or something like that. He came up with the clawaca machine. He's an artist from the Netherlands. He has, like, this whole exhibit where he like tattoos pigs. Really? Yeah, and elaborate tattoos. And it looks a lot like this. Oh, really? Like the wood cut or just that style, like the donkey having writing on the side of it. Okay, I got you. It's been graffitoed. So that was the first appearance of the donkey. The next one was in 1874, when Republican Ulysses S. Grant Ulysses was vying for a potential third term, which freaked a lot of people out. Right? Well, he freaked people out twice. He tried to do that twice. Well, they tried to get him to run for a third consecutive term in 1876, but he poopooed it. But then he went and traveled abroad and came back and said, I'm a better man. I think I could be president for a third time. Third non consecutive term in 1880. Right. Yeah. Which is why this third term Panic, the 1874 cartoon, was when people were like, you can't have a three term president, even though you could constitutionally. That's right. So if you look at this one, this one is like, this is crazy. This looks like a Grateful Dead album cover or something. It's got a donkey and sheep's clothing labeled Caesarism, obviously referencing Julie Caesar as some mad, power hungry tyrant. And then there's all sorts of other stuff going on. And we'll get to that because the elephant plays a part in this one as well. I like the giraffe a lot in that one. Kind of upwards. It looks like he's wearing a vest. Yeah, he's wearing some sort of a suit. Geraff in a suit. And that was called third term panic. But again, even though he was symbolizing the Democratic press mainly with the donkey, it sort of stuck as the Democratic Party, even though that wasn't his original intent. Is that right? I don't know if, like I don't think he originally intended it, but I think over time he just came to see it as I think it popularly was picked up and kind of forced him to use it later on. Right. Even though the Democrats still haven't that's not their symbol officially. No. They've never adopted the brain jackass as their official party symbol under why? Although the Republicans have they've adopted their symbol. That's true, but there's some stuff in that third term panic thing that kind of pops up that was clearly important to nest, like inflation. There's like a plank he wrote inflation on. Yes. So apparently at the time there was a big struggle going on about abandoning the gold standard or printing as much silver as you wanted or issuing paper. Right. So you could basically cause inflation so people could pay off their debt, so they could buy stuff more cheaply, that kind of thing. And apparently NASA posted that the inflation because that's like a plank that's broken over this pit, the elephant. The Republican vote, I think is what it is about chaos. Right. Right. There's chaos because farmers can pay their bills kind of thing. So he was definitely a social liberal, but I get from this that he was also not a populist. I think he liked people in theory but not in practice. Right. And then this is important because he was a guy who only drew what he believed in, which would also further prove to be his undoing later on. Yeah, well, you got to take your hat off to somebody like that. Well, he'd made his name. I guess he was like, do you know who I am? I'm the nasty man. I'm not going to draw anything I don't believe in. What if you were a global energy company with operations in Scotland, technologists in India, and customers, all on different systems, you need to pull it together. So you call in IBM and Red Hat to create an open hybrid cloud platform. Now, data is available anywhere, securely, and your digital transformation is helping find new ways to unlock energy around the world. Let's create a hybrid cloud that can change in industry. IBM, let's create learn More@ibm.com you want your kid eating the best nutrition right. For all their days at the dog park and night sleeping in bed. Your bed. Yep. We mean that kid your dog. Halo Elevate is natural science based nutrition for their best health. It's guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leading brands. That means digestive health, heart and immunity, support healthy skin and coat, hip and joint support and strengthen energy. Find Halo elevate at Petco Pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores. Learn more@halopets.com. So where are we here? There was another example, a presidential candidate grabbing a donkey labeled Democratic Party by the tail. Yeah. So that was Thomas F. Bayard, and he was grabbing it by the tail. He was actually one of those guys who fought to repeal the issuance of paper money, legal tender that doesn't really mean anything rather than use gold. And so I guess Nasty approved of him even though he's a Democrat. And that's this one right here, right? Yeah. And he's trying to keep the donkey from falling into a pit, another pit labeled financial chaos. It's a very popular motif at the time, I guess. Yeah. And then in the background of this one, you do see the dead Republican Party elephant with is that Lincoln hovering above him? Probably. I think Nas kind of had a thing for lincoln had a thing for him. It's strictly in an idle way with an o. So that is the donkey. Is that fairly summarized how it got started? Yeah, like you said, I mean, he started just kind of using it and associating it with the copperhead Democratic press, and then ultimately people just said, well, I can't read, but I see that you're making fun of the Democrats, and that's a donkey. So Democrats are donkeys. Right. And I said, okay, we'll go with that. Oh, and also, by the way, the wizard of Oz apparently is a popular allegory for politics at the time, including that whole gold standard abandonment. Was it meant to be, or was it? It was, yeah. Frank Bomb, who wrote it, was a political writer for many years before he wrote it. And the Yellow Brick road is the gold standard. And then Dorothy shoes originally were silver, not ruby. And so silver and gold was a call out to this free silver idea of printing 16 silver coins to every gold coin printed to make money cheaper and abundant. Right. So interesting. Yeah. A lot of subtle stuff going on in the late 19th century. Well, they're way more obvious now, I guess, because they can be. Yes. At least we don't label our political cartoons as much. It's still a tradition that's upheld. It is. You just don't see words all over the place. I don't read a lot of political cartoons anymore, do you? I just don't run into them very often, but I almost always enjoy them when I do. Especially that Mike Lukovic guy. He is good. He's a local boy, too. Yeah, Luckovitch is good. I'm a big Family Circus fan. It's rarely political when Jeffy tracks mud through the house, and it's like, Jeffy, have you seen the altered version of those? No, there's altered versions of everything. These are pretty funny. They're really dirty, but they're funny. Dirty is not the right word. They're just, like, filthy. Yeah, they're filthy. Okay. All right, so moving on to the elephant. This was Nas party, the Republicans at the time. So obviously his cartoons about the elephant are going to be more positive, I guess, or sad. Yeah, true. Like the dying elephant. Yeah. I think he probably intuitively knew that elephants mourn their dead, which makes you sad when you think about elephants, which is why he chose the elephant. I wonder if he knew that. I don't think he did. It's appropriate, though, before he actually ever it keeps saying pinned in here, but carved his first element. It was used twice before. Once in 1864 in a Lincoln campaign literature piece and then 1872 by Harpers. But it wasn't until 1874 that he used it. So I can imagine the Lincoln use of it was very intended to be derogatory. Yeah. Probably all jackasses. Right. So that's third term panic when we already talked about was the first Republican elephant that he had carved. Right. Okay. But the first appearance of the Republican elephant and the Democratic donkey together as those two as representative of the whole party was the Stranger Things Have Happened cartoon where he's got the donkey by the tail. Okay. As far as I know, it's the first that's what that one was called. Yeah. Stranger Things Have Happened. In 1876 there was one called the political situation. Pretty straight up. Uncle Sam is confused. He has labeled the vote of the people, and there's a two headed elephant choosing to decide which road Democratic road or the Republican road to go down. That was fairly self explanatory, I think it is. But it's also kind of confusing because Uncle Sam's confused. Yeah. So what is he saying? The Republicans can go one of two ways at the time? Well, no, because it's two headed, so I would imagine it's more representative of the two party system. I think NASA was pretty drunk that day. What else do we have here? My favorite. I haven't seen it yet. Did you print it out? The one with the tombstone? No, I couldn't find that one. I thought this was very sweet, but apparently when Rutherford B. Hayes ran for president, he won the 1876 election that Grant didn't go for the third term for. Right. And Hayes apparently said that he would only run once. And I guess he wasn't a very well liked guy because he was one of those presidents who won the electoral vote but lost the popular vote and apparently lost the popular vote pretty bad. And so his whole presidency was in no way, shape, or form a mandate. It was very representative of the fact that this country, our country, was still very much torn apart from the Civil War. And so Nas created this cartoon where this elephant that Sam describes as bruised and battered is crouching down at a tombstone of the Democratic Party, which I thought was pretty cool because he had the sense that there was still, no matter how acrimonious things got, that these two parties were still American parties. Right. There's still a whole wild world out there for us to hate. Why are we hating each other? True. Yeah. That's sort of a nice sentiment. Yeah. But I don't want to characterize NASA's an isolationist or even a nativist. One of his Uncle Sam paintings. I'm sorry. Carvings was Uncle Sam and Columbia, right? Liberty hosting a Thanksgiving dinner with all the peoples of the world, which included some Chinese people, some black people, some Native American Indians, right? And a host of others, but not the Irish. I don't think the Irish were present, but it was like world or suffrage for all, equality for everyone in the world. Come on, come on. You're all invited, right? It was pretty cool. He was definitely not a bigot as far as I could tell. 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. You know you're a pet mom when you growl back during playtime and you insist on feeding them the highest quality food you can find. Enter Halo. Holistic made with only whole meat, no meat meals, and probiotics for digestive health. Our first ingredient is always responsibly sourced protein raised with no antibiotics. And bonus, our fruits and veggies contain no GMOs. It's a lifestyle and a pet bomb thing. Find Haloholistic at chewy amazonandhalopeets.com what Sam points out, and it's true, it's kind of striking that 150 years after this or so, that these are still the symbols. I mean, the Republicans officially adopted the elephant, but he points out that a lot of that was due to just how influential and popular Nast was at the time. Yeah, it just became part of the national fabric because of him. There was some good quotes about him after while he's working, even. Apparently Abraham Lincoln called NASA's best recruiting sergeant during the 1864 re election, and this is why he was traveling around the country. Heckling. What's his name? It's not Stephen Decatur. What was that guy's name? I don't know. We'll go with Ambrose beers. Even though it's not right. I can't believe we don't remember that guy's name. I know. My head is just bulging. Mark Twain said that Nast won a prodigious victory for Grant I mean, for civilization in progress. It's Mark Twain for you. What a guy. He can turn a phrase. So he said that he kind of gave up his career in a lot of ways by being stubborn as a donkey, especially. He was apparently in very good with Fletcher Harper, who founded Harper's Weekly. Do you read Harper's? No, it's monthly. No, lewis Lapam just left, and I got into it right before he left, and I got sucked into Harper's, and then he left, and now I'm like, it's not as good. Just not as good. Why did this happen to me? Why does everything bad happen to me? But it's still very good, and it's been around since the mid 19th century, which is pretty impressive for a magazine. Yeah, it endures. But Junior came aboard and didn't really side with Thomas Nast. Right. Yeah. I mean, Nas had a lot of freedom under Fletcher Harper, but Joe Jr. Kind of tightened down the ranks. It's like, hey, man, don't be so square. People want to be entertained. So there was a bit of a shift in the way American public wanted what they wanted to read in magazines. Yeah. People wanted to not be bothered anymore. Yeah. They were sick of it. So the other death knell, though, was they went to photochemical Reproduction, and they didn't do the wood block cuttings anymore. And apparently wood block, even though it looks to me, like, incredibly detailed, it gives you a lot of leeway to make mistakes that you don't get with pen and ink and paper. Right. So his shortcomings all of a sudden stood out. They were like, this guy kind of sucks. Santa Claus. Right? Yeah. So he ended up like, penniless as you love the term. I do. Yes. You love the term penniless. I was listening to an old podcast, and you're like, I hate that term. No one doesn't have the Niagara Falls one. Jeez, I need to lighten up back then. But anyway, he was very much broke, and he tried to open his own paper, Nast Weekly, which lasted six months. And luckily, he had a friend in Teddy Roosevelt. Right? Yeah. And he appointed him to council general to Ecuador. And NASA, I guess, is like, all right, I guess I'll go to Ecuador. She's like, Is there money there? Because I'm pennies. It's better than doing nothing. And it actually was not better than doing nothing, because he got yellow fever there and died six months later. Yeah. So that's a pretty weird end of that guy, if you ask me. But I didn't expect yellow fever. He was 62 and at the turn of the last century. The last turn of the century. 62 is not bad. It's a pretty good run for back then, especially being a household name. Once your celebrity is over, you might as well. I mean, you're dead anyway. You haven't actually died yet, but you might as well be Jeez boy. So there you go. The donkey and the elephant. If you feel like we've explained this, if you now understand it and gotten to the bottom of it, you are not paying attention, because it's still as convoluted as ever. No, it's not. That's all from NASA. Well, don't you wish, though, that there was some sort of, like, oh, here's the reason why he chose the donkey. Oh, of course he would choose an elephant. It's totally intuitive. No, it's the ramblings of a madman who used to carve stuff into wood blocks. And Fletcher Harper published it. For the consumption of everybody else. But now, you know, knowing is half the battle. That's right. So if you want to learn more about Thomas Nest, if you want to read one of the extraordinarily rare Samuel Abramson articles on the site, you can type in the words, why are a donkey and an elephant the symbols of the Democratic and Republican parties? Question mark. You could probably also just type in donkey and elephant, and it will bring it up. Sure. So I think I said that you should type it into the search bar. If I didn't, you should type it into the search bar@howtofworks.com. Since I said that, it's time now for listener mail. Josh Bison, feedback from Canada. Burlington, Ontario. Specifically, guys, your recent bison podcast put me in mind. One of the coolest experiences of my life. When I lived out in Alberta, I'd often go hiking in Elk Island National Park. I was halfway around one of the parks, along the trails one day when I looked down, saw a fresh buffalo chip. You know what that is? Scat. As I pondered what this meant, I heard a snort. And about ten to 15 meters in front of me, which is a length that I don't understand, it's 30 to 45ft, approximately. Okay, ten to 15 yards. Okay, I get yards. Ten to 15 meters in front of me was a bison. I froze. I was alone, hadn't seen another soul on the trail. I knew roughly 8 km, whatever that is. I have no idea. From the road I'm sorry. From the trailhead in either direction. And I knew this animal decided to charge. I was as good as dead. We stared each other down for a few minutes. I don't know what was going through its mind, but I was weighing my options. If I turned around and it decided to charge, I might not hear it coming and wouldn't be able to take evasive action. If I went forward, I might provoke it and be in deep trouble. I knew I couldn't stay there all day, so I decided to take a single step towards it to gauge its response. Good move. I think I moved towards it. It gave a snort and turned its head away from me and ran into the woods to my right. Very cool, I thought. No sooner had I thought that, then from my left came a thundering herd of bison stampeding across the trail. There must have been 20 to 30 of them running in front of me. Awesome. Following their lookout. That was a scout, I guess. Scout. Scout. Into the forest. I stood there utterly all struck for several minutes before I decided to move forward to where they had just been for the next 15 minutes. Bump everywhere, I bet. For the next 15 minutes or so, I kept looking over my shoulder just in case they were hiding behind a tree, ready to pounce on me like a giant cartoon kangaroo. Interesting imagination. So they didn't pounce. He made it back safe, and he just says, if anyone finds himself in this situation, probably won't happen. Don't do what I did. I got lucky. These are wild animals, not petting zoo. Bison. I could have easily been trampled and left to die. So that is Gordon C. From Burlington, Ontario, Canada. Weird ending there. He doesn't give any suggestions of what to do. No, but he did say that it was the most amazing experience of his life seeing the thundering herd of bison right in front of him. I will bet. I thought it was pretty cool. Yeah. I want to add something from the bison podcast. We got a tweet from some guy recently saying, hey, I was really disappointed you guys used the word Indian instead of Native American. And I was like, oh, yeah, Mr. Smart Guy. Well, how about I provide you with the link to an article that has a poll that shows that a clear 49% of all Indian Native American Indians prefer the term Indian over Native American? The 51% no, 37% preferred Native American, and then like 16% or whatever the rest is prefer something else. Don't call me, and I'll call you. Not a majority, but very close to it interesting for Indian over Native Americans. So chew on that, pal. We were doing something right for once. And he goes, no, I'm talking about people from India are offended by that, like me. And I was like, oh, your Twitter handle is Sanjay something, and I haven't responded yet. But I hadn't considered that. Yeah, I knew we were doing right by Indians of North America, but I hadn't considered how Indians of India, also known as Asian Indians, felt about it, and I'm curious to know. So I would like to hear from everybody from Asian Indians and North American Indians. And I'm sure I'm just, like, offending everybody in any way, shape, or form right now, but let's figure out how to establish this. I want to know how to consider that, either. And even if you're not Asian Indian or American Indian, we want to hear from you. If you have a good suggestion, too, about how to end this conundrum, you can tweet to us like Sanjay did at Syskpodcast. You can go to Facebook, also known as the 50,000, at facebook. Comstuffystemo. And you can send us a plain old fashioned email at stuffpodcasts@houseteporx.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff From the Future. Join House Depork 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 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." | ||
a658f4ac-5462-11e8-b449-0316c4c39312 | How Board Breaking Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-board-breaking-works | If you’ve ever seen someone break a stack of boards or concrete blocks with a single karate chop you know what it means to experience awe. Board breaking is indeed cool but there’s also a lot of physics to help it along. Learn all about this secret art. | If you’ve ever seen someone break a stack of boards or concrete blocks with a single karate chop you know what it means to experience awe. Board breaking is indeed cool but there’s also a lot of physics to help it along. Learn all about this secret art. | Tue, 14 Aug 2018 13:08:44 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=14, tm_hour=13, tm_min=8, tm_sec=44, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=226, tm_isdst=0) | 43117581 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W, Chuck, Bryant, and there's Jerry over there. And this is stuff you should know. Cool. All About Mars. Oh, wait. I mean it's all about board breaking. That's right. Forward breaking. I got to keep them straight. Do you want to explain what you just said? Sure. So when we pick our topics, one of us will send a topic, the other one will send a different topic. Then we go off and do our research and then we come back together and record it. That's the stuff you should know way. Right? That's the way. I want to preface this by saying we have more than 1000 episodes that we've done. Okay, just bear that in mind, everybody. More than I sent you. How Mars Works was my pick for this week. And I went about and started studying. I think you did some studying as well. And then I got an email from you this morning, early this morning saying we've already done how Mars Works. Hours of Mars research is totally wasted. I know so much about Mars right now, no one's ever going to hear it. I'm going to take it to my grave. Yeah. So we swapped it out instead with how board Breaking Works. Which is fascinating if you ask me. Yeah, man. Good find. Yes, I thought so too. I believe we covered Carate before. Who knows, Chuck? Who has any idea? Well, Jill Hurley knows. Yes, Jill Hurley, our minister of status, usually keeps track of this stuff. She does. We should just start emailing her every time we have an idea instead of looking at the spreadsheet that she sends us. Exactly. Like a couple of dopes. Yes. But board breaking I'm 100% sure we did not do before. No. We might as well go ahead and do a couple of things. First of all, COA and say do not try to break boards or anything with your hands and feet unless you are trained to do so. Yes. Don't get inspired by this show. If you are inspired, be inspired to go take up martial arts. Because from everything I can find, it's a really great thing to get into martial arts. Yeah, it is. It teaches you focus and discipline and training and strength and self confidence. And actually, like the injury rate is really low, way lower than you would think. So it's actually pretty good sport to get into. Yeah. And the other thing to point out early on is it is not just boards, but concrete blocks and glass and ice and what else? Glass, I think, is much more just for looks. Yeah. There's this one guy who I found because I was kind of looking up records and things and I'll get to that later, but I can't remember his name. But he seems to make a big show about chopping through a bunch of glass. If you could punch a hole clear through some glass without breaking the glass, that would be cool. Fish shaped hole. Like a cartoon. Yeah, like a bullet hole, but with a fist. No, that would be super impressive. Breaking a bunch of glass. I mean, that's not hard. And we'll find out why it's not hard later on, because we're going to talk about the physics of this truck, which I'm a little psyched about. Yeah. And another thing that I didn't see in my research that I always heard, which may be a wives tale, is that when they do the thing where they stack a bunch of boards, like, you're really just breaking the first board, and then the other boards break the other boards. Yes. Is that true? Yeah. So that was something that I came across. Board breaking, at least in Japan, is called temashawari. Yeah. And there's fake tamashawari, which is probably 99% of the tamashuari out there. Oh, wow. And then there's actual, real tamashiwari, which you have to be basically insane to try, even as, like, a black belt karate person. What do you mean by fake instead of fake? We'll call it physics assisted. Okay. Whereas with that 1% of tamasawari, it is what it appears to be. You're really punching through, like, a big, thick piece of wood or something like that. Well, I would love to cover the very beginnings of this article, though, because I thought I had never heard that story about the legend of the origins of pinchax salad. Take us to Storeville Chuck. So there's an island called Bawian in ancient Indonesia, and this is mainly legend, but who knows? It might have gone down like this, but supposedly there was a lady there named Rama Sukana who was washing her clothes in the river, looked up, saw some monkeys fighting in the trees, and really sort of got into studying them and how they fought each other. Started practicing that out by the river banks. Took so much time, she came home and her husband was ticked off and was like, Where's my dinner? And because this is ancient times, it's fully okay for me to abuse you because my dinner is not on the table. And she was like, oh, no, I now know the way of the monkey. And she fought him back, and it worked, and it kept working. He kept coming at her, and she kept us going caba shabbat. And she kept putting him on his butt, so much so that he said, Master, train me. Yeah, see, that's where the story loses me, where he gives up and says, you're pretty good at this, I got to admit. What do you say you teach the old man, right? I think that's what they call when you can't beat them, join them. Yeah. But it's a good story. And as the origins of the Indonesian martial arts pint Jacques Salat. Yeah. Which I thought that was very odd that this was included in this article, because I looked up Paint Jackson, and it looked like it was very much into fighting with knives and spears. Way more than breaking boards or using open handed stuff. And that's no monkey stuff. No, but it is based on strikes in the animal kingdom. Not just monkeys, but, like, cobra strikes and using those kind of approaches. But rather than with your empty hand, you're using knives. So I don't know why that was included. Instead, karate is much more associated with board breaking. Again, there's a Japanese word for board breaking. Tamashiwari. Yeah. And did you know that cobra Kai actually means knife wielding cobra? Does it really? No. Well, it could be like cobra knife, and you could just interpret it as knifewielding cobra rather than a knife made out of a cobra. Could you imagine anything more terrifying than a cobra holding a knife? No. Maybe a deranged karate monkey with a cobra wielding and knife. Yeah. Or an alligator with an assault rifle. Yeah. That's pretty scary. So karate is meant to be done with open hand. It actually means open hand, empty hand. Right? Yeah, one of the two. Yeah. And the origins of karate apparently came from when the peasantry was stripped of their weapons in the 16th and 17th century, because the Japanese government, feudal government, said, we're worried you guys don't really like our policies as much as you pretend to, and we're afraid you're going to rebel. We're going to take all your weapons. So they developed an empty hand technique for fighting, which is karate. And again, part of karate over the years I'm not exactly sure where Tema shawari originated or when, I should say, but over the years, the idea of breaking boards is a demonstration of skill and training and focus and strength has developed to work. Now, to me, it's basically synonymous with martial arts. Yeah. Breaking some boards. Yeah. And they had in here I'm not so sure this is right that they turned to breaking boards because hitting people wasn't a thing that you should do. But I don't think that's quite right, is it? I'm not sure, ma'am. I really am not sure. That's what I'm saying. The origin of it, no idea. I did see that it's been around for a little while, and there are some customary and traditional things with the board. Like, for example, you're supposed to use cedar, specific type of cedar to break there's, things like that. But no, I didn't see where it came from or exactly why, other than somebody maybe somebody was punching through a door, and that looked pretty cool. And so they started punching through doors, and then the doors got smaller, and then you have tami shawari, board breaking. Well, what we do know that there is a human instinct to not punch something with no give. Like, there is an ingrained instinct to pull back when you go to hit a wall or to punch a board or something like that. Or a person, even. Yeah. And we'll talk a little bit more about that in a few minutes. But I thought this is really interesting, this other article you sent, just about how strong bones are and kind of what happens when you hit another person. Yeah. So, I mean, if you stop and think about it breaking through a board, it looks awesome because it is pretty impressive. But your bone and your hand and your foot and your leg are actually way more impressive than would because they are capable of doing some amazing stuff. And if you stop and think about it, your bone is capable of withstanding tremendous amounts of pressure and force, but at the same time, you can use that bone to break another bone, which is kind of paradoxical about that. It's pretty neat. If you look at bone, there's a lot of stress. You can put it on before it's going to break. Yeah. So a cubic inch of bone and they point out in this article, in principle, I'm sure there are people like Samuel Jackson, an unbreakable Mr. Glass. Sure. He had a physical condition. I think they're doing another movie of him and the guy from what was the most recent one that they did? Split. Split. Yeah, they're doing basically a sequel to Split featuring Mr. Glass and Bruce Willis. It's all broken. Oh, wow. That's going to be good. Looks pretty good to me so far. I went back and re watched Unbreakable and I was like, this is much better than I thought it was the first time. It's good movie. I totally agree. I think people expected well, I think it got it to do at the time, but it was a movie about the beginnings of it was just an ultra long origin story. Right. Which you didn't realize until about two thirds of the way through. And then you really got it at the end. But yes, I think everybody was expecting. Give me another $0.06, baby. Come on, I need that jolt. And he just never delivered like he did on the $0.06. So he's kind of cursed by it, which is why you have to go back years later and see it again. You're like, oh, now that I'm out of, like, the $0.06 junkiness, I can appreciate Unbreakable and The Village, too. I saw that recently, too. And I'm like, this is better than I thought it was. Yeah, that was Mankey's pick on movie crush. Oh, that's right. Yeah. That was totally kind of on the nose for Aaron Rankey. Yeah. All right. So Mr. Glass aside, though, in principle, a bone can bear a load of \u00a319,000 or more, and that makes it, as your correct article said, four times as strong as concrete, whereas ours said 40 times. Yeah. Who cares? Which is not correct. Right. So this is, I think, a live science article. I found this in. But if you balanced five American pickup trucks, it says standard pickup truck. So I'm just going to go with a 150. Okay. Yeah, I wasn't going to say ford. Sure, why not? If you were in the no, I was just going to leave it at that. But if you balance five Ford F 150s nose to tail on top of your arm bone, theoretically it should be able to hold that up. You would wish that you were dead, but your arm bone would just be like, oh, I got this, I'm not going to break. And it might not break again. The point is this. That is the amount of actual weight. But weight can actually be combined in other ways and delivered in other ways. So if you delivered far, far less than that with a lot more velocity yeah. Your bone would just snap right into so there's a lot of variables there, including not just how that amount of weight is delivered and what kind of force, but also your age, your health, there's a lot of stuff. But like you said, generally speaking, your bone, a cubic inch of bone, could bear \u00a319,000 or about 8626 weight. Yeah. And although this gets away from board breaking, it was in the article you sent and I thought it was super interesting. When it comes to getting in a fist fight or boxing, when someone gets knocked out by a punch, it's not necessarily because they get hit so hard in the head. It's that if you hit someone in the cheek right there in the kisser and the jaw, it's the head spin that does it. So if your head spins around from zero to 43,000 RPMs in a second, your head stresses out and the brain shuts down as a protection. Yeah, I had no idea. So 25% of getting knocked out, 25% chance if it's up to 43,000 RPMs. So that's why boxers build up their neck muscles so their head doesn't snap to the side as much. Yeah, totally had no idea about any of that. Or getting hit in the stomach, like when the wind is knocked out of you, that's a spasm of your diaphragm. Right. And the reason why you can make somebody's head spin like that or cause somebody's diaphragm to spasm is because you're concentrating a tremendous amount of force in a fairly small area. Like if you make a fist and then look at the front of your fingers where the fist makes contact with whatever, that's actually a relatively small area that you're putting a tremendous amount of mass and velocity behind. And you combine those two, you multiply those two and you have force. And humans can concentrate a pretty significant amount of force. This Life Science article found that a professional boxer could generate about 5000 newtons of force. And a Newton, by the way, is the amount of force it takes to move 1. Which makes me want to go move a kilogram a meter so bad, just to be like, I just used a Newton. I just exerted a Newton right there. Is that just me? You don't want to do that, too. So a boxer can generate about 5000 newtons of force with a punch, which is about half of a ton of force exerted on the Earth's surface. Okay. Half a ton of force in your little fist right there. Yeah. And because force equals mass times velocity, if you can generate more velocity or you can use more mass, you can generate more force. And we'll talk more about that later on with the physics. But that's just a little teaser. Yeah. And this is also the point, and I've pointed this out before, I believe, where I would like to say that I am 47 years old and I have never punched or hit anyone in my life, nor been punched or hit. That's great. Ma'am never been in a fight. I kind of feel like I should get in a fight. I don't think so. I think you should feel the opposite of that. You should be proud of that. Yeah. Just be like, I've never been in a fight. I'm going to die having never been in a fist fight. You definitely don't need to. Don't listen to Fight Club. It was made up, by the way. All right, should we take a break? Yeah. All right. We'll take a break and we'll talk more about board breaking right after this. All right, Chuck, when you actually break a board, we can tell you how to do that. But again, I want to preface it with just don't go do this, don't listen to us and do this. If you want to do this, check out martial arts, go to your nearest dojo and see what's going down. That's right. But just for the sake of sharing information, that's what we're doing here. Okay. Yes. So if you watch somebody break aboard, you're going to see that there's actually, like, a fairly uniform shape to them. They're usually about a foot wide. They're usually kind of square, and there's something like about three quarters of an inch thick. And again, like I said, traditionally the wood is supposed to be cedar, but I think these days most people say pine. They use pine because it's a soft wood and then it breaks easier than a hardwood, like oak or something like that. Yeah. And they also suggest to not have, like, a big knot right in the center of this board or hopefully anywhere on the board, but definitely not where you're punching, because the center is where you want to be punching. And this is usually either held by somebody or you see them set up sometimes on stands and stuff being held. Yeah. If you watch Karate Kid Two when Daniel's Son breaks through those six sheets of ice, I don't remember that at all. It was like in a bar. He took a bet. Actually, Mr. Miyagi kind of forced him to take the bet because he was being betted against by Mr. Miyagi's rival's nephew. He's got to see it, but he got a good memory of Karate Kid, too. I just watched it, like, an hour ago. Yeah, they had, like, a stand that they put these sheets of ice in. It was pretty awesome. Pretty cool little gizmo. I don't think there's any reason to make it, unless you do kind of have a bar where people break ice and stuff. But I just thought it was pretty cool. But for the most part, you see somebody just standing there holding it like it's like a punching target or something. Yeah, it kind of depends. That's if you're punching straight through with your knuckles, you've also seen things stacked, like, spread between two bricks, a bunch of wood stacked. And you can use a few techniques. Here the hammer fist, which is like if you were just pounding on a table with their hand, like hulk smash. Yeah, HULKSMASH. Or what's known as palm heel. And that's when you yeah. With your palm. Yeah. If I saw somebody break a board like that, I would be truly impressed. I've seen that I have not seen have you seen somebody break a board in real life? No, not in person. No. I haven't either. And then the old knife hand, which is the classic karate chop. The reason why you want to hit the center of the board is myriad. Number one, that's where the least amount of strength is in the board. It's not around the edges. It's more in the center. And depending on how you're hitting, let's just go with the good old fashioned karate chop. What's that one called? The knife hand. Yeah. And you can also do this with kicks. You can, which to me, just seems terribly scary. I don't know about you, but I don't want anything to happen to my ankle or my heel or my Achilles heel or any my toes, nothing like that. The punching or breaking with your hands or fist, that's cool enough. But like your foot, it would take a tremendous amount of training for me to get to that point. Yeah. All right, so we're going with the standard karate chop, right? And when you're doing the standard karate chop, so the board is going to be flat relative to the earth, and you are going to bring your fist down or your crowdy chop down, going with the grain, you will have a tremendously difficult time breaking the board against the grain. You want to go bring the line of your hand parallel with the grain. Yes. I didn't fully get that. Okay, so if you have a flat board in front of you, you're on your knees, and you're about to chop it, and you hold your fists up like that, or hold your karate chop up like this. Right. In front of you and you start to bring it down. The grain of the wood should be going the same direction as your hand. But that makes sense if your hand is in karate chop mode, because there's a clear line. But what about when it's a fist? I don't know. Maybe it matters less because it's a fist. Okay. I could see it mattering more because there's so much less surface area that's making contact with the karate chop than, like, with the whole fist. So I would guess the grain definitely would matter more with that. Right. But regardless, supposedly they say going with the grain is easier. Yeah, it's just easier in life. That's a life note. Go with the grain, go with the flow. Actually, I don't necessarily espouse that. Yeah, agreed. Okay. So one of the other things you're going to learn is focus, Chuck, and you kind of touched on this earlier, but you're kind of talking about how you want to stop. If you go to hit a board or a piece of wood or a piece of concrete or something like that, your brain is going to scream, Stop, dummy. So how do you get over that when you go into training, where you're trained to break boards? Well, I mean, you try to focus as if the board that you're breaking is several inches behind the actual board to precipitate or encourage that follow through. But they also make a very good point about breathing. And if you saw Karate Kid, what does he say with everything? Remember, breathe in, breathe out. Well, they actually do that to prepare for the ice breaking. Yeah. So breathing is very important. And then if you hear that yeah. I mean, that's just not for showboating and flair. The same way a tennis player might grunt when they hit. Like Stephanie Graff. She had one of the best yup. No. Who was sellus. Didn't she have the really good grunt? I thought it was Steffie graff. I don't remember. I definitely remember Sellis had a yeah. Is that your impression? Yeah, that was my Monica selis. Okay, man. Remember she got stabbed on the court? Wasn't that crazy? No, I don't remember that at all. Yeah, she was attacked and stabbed during a tennis match by a crazed fan. Yeah. And it really derailed her career. I would imagine so. I mean, if you're not safe on the tennis court doing your thing, it takes a lot of concentration to play tennis. You don't want to think about what's coming up behind you while you're hitting a return. Good job. And I think most people take up tennis because you have a near 100% chance of not being stabbed. Yes, it is a pretty stabbed free pursuit. Anyway, where were we? We were talking about how breathing in the Kia, that is all to do with the focus, like bringing that whole routine together with the breaths and the exclamation as you punch supposedly a few inches behind where the board is. Yeah, and I actually looked that up where he came from or what the point is. And that's supposedly kind of an embellishment or a flourish on the actual breathing. You don't actually have to make a sound or say a word or say something that sounds like a word that you're actually expelling breath very quickly. And the reason why you're doing that is because you're meant to be focusing on your breath so that when you actually punch or bring your hand down or kick or whatever, what your brain is pretending it's doing is breathing in your hand or your foot motion is just kind of a byproduct and it distracts you from worrying or thinking about pulling your punch. Right. Because there's a real problem with pulling your punch. If you stop, if you pull your punch, if you try to ease off on the speed right before you hit, you're still going to hit. But rather than driving through the board or the concrete or whatever it is, the force of that is actually going to bounce off. The board won't break, and it will reverberate through the board and then back up into your hand and it's going to hurt terribly and possibly even break one of your bones. Yeah. So that natural instinct to pull up is what ends up causing the injury. Ironically, yes. So your brain is trying to make itself safe, but your brain hasn't really thought things through. But if you follow through, like you said, if you focus on hitting a place that's actually on the other side beyond the board, you're more likely to keep going through to follow through. And another reason why this is a good idea is because I think some physicists figured out that the peak of a blow or a strike or something like that occurs at about 80% mark of the arc or of the downward motion or of the motion. Right. So it's not like when you punch through or something, that's when you hit 100%, it's actually happening right before possibly you hit the board. So if your brain is saying, don't punch that it's going to hurt, and you already just naturally aren't delivering 100% of the blow right then anyway, you're really going to have your hand bounce off and it's going to be a problem. Should we take another break? Hey, man, why not? All right, we'll talk a little bit more about that physics in a very special astronaut right after this. All right, Chuck, we're back. And I think I speak for all of the world and I say, what do astronauts have to do with it? So this was pretty interesting to me. Apparently in the couple of physicists, dudes that were also martial artists decided to sort of look into the physics of board breaking and do that research. And what they came up with was speed is the overriding factor when it comes to board breaking. Right, because you mentioned earlier the more you increase that velocity or that force, or the more you increase the velocity, the more you're going to increase the force. Right. And you can increase your velocity just by doing something as simple as pulling your fist back further before you bring it down, giving it more room, more of a head start or something like that. Yeah. And it's the same with anything, whether you're chopping a tree or hitting a baseball. You hear about bat speed and baseball, you want your punch to be as fast as possible, not just to catch your opponent off guard, but because you generate more force in the end. Right, and you can also recruit more mass from different parts of your body. And you can recruit mass more easily with a kick than with a punch. Which is why you generate more Newton's of force with a kick than with a punch because you have more muscle mass that you can draw from to direct out through your foot in a kick. Yeah. And you always too hear about with kicks, punches, golf swings, baseball bats. It's like they say it's in the hips. Yeah, actually, that's what Daniel Sun said. Oh, really? Yeah, it's a real lesson here in Hollywood history. So apparently, if you are a typical beginner in karate, you can get up to about 20ft/second with your hand speed, which in terms of math or maths is enough to break a one inch pine board. Yeah, and I looked it up, I saw that something about like 10 00, 10 00 Newtons to break a pine board. Okay, good. And from what I saw, basically any beginner can walk up after about 510 minutes of instruction and break through a single pine board. Typically, if they do it right. Right. So if you're out there saying chuck still hasn't talked about the special astronaut. One of these physicists in the 70s. His name was Ronald Ron McNaire. And he was also an astronaut and he played the saxoma phone and he was all set to record the very first recorded piece of music in space in history when he boarded the space shuttle Challenger and as a black belt and saxophone player. And sadly, we all know how that ended. Yeah. So he was the physicist who did this research on board breaking, as it turns out. Have you ever been to Kennedy Space Center? Which one's Kennedy? The one on Cape Canaveral. Yeah, I think so. They have a museum there. Just fantastic museum. And part of it they have personal effects of all of actually the Challenger and the Columbia astronauts who were lost. And one of them is Ronald McNair's. Like karate uniform. Interesting. Yeah, it's really amazing to see the way they have this kind of memorial set up. It will bring a tear to your eye. Yeah. I mean, if I went it was before that even happened. I. Would have been very young. Oh, yeah. And I think the memorial is even fairly newish. Yeah, it's definitely worth a visit for just that, even. But the whole museum is really great. Yes. We should do an episode about the space shuttle disaster at some point. I think you're right. It'd be a good, somber one because we did one on the ISS, so maybe we could do one on space shuttles in general. Yeah. All right, so Ron McNair, long story short, he was so good, he could get his karate chop up to 46ft/second, which equates to about 2800 Newtons, of course, which is about a quarter ton. Yeah, that's a lot. Yeah. Because they say it takes 1900 Newtons to break a one and a half inch concrete slab, and he could put forth 2800 Newtons. Right. So there you have it. It's really just physics. So it's like, at this point, Chuck in research, where I was like, okay, wait a minute. If this is just physics, is this just like, circus stuff? Is this the circus arts? Really? Is this just fake? In other words, did Chuck dupe me somehow weirdly into doing another circus article? The thing is no, it's not like there are physics involved, and you have to know what you're doing, and there's definitely a wrong way. And you can injure yourself, especially if you pull your punch. The more boards there are, the easier it will be to hurt yourself, depending on how they're stacked. But it would be wrong to say that physics does not very much aid in this. Yeah, it's not a trick. It's not a trick. And it is very well thought through. And the more boards you add or the different materials you add, obviously the more skill you're demonstrating. But the reason why physics plays a part is things like the grain, like breaking along the grain. That means that the break is going to occur along the grain. It's going to be a lot easier for that break to propagate things. Like if you look at a board, the reason why you're using something like pine rather than a hardwood, it's not because hardwoods are, like, harder, they're more resilient. The pine is going to be more brittle. So when you hit something, you're creating a resonance in it. And I think this is in The Bridges episode, where if you get something into its natural residence and the natural resonances is overwhelmed, it will break apart. That's what you're doing. When you break a border where you break concrete or something like that, you're transferring force from your body into this inanimate object. And in doing so, you're creating a resonance in it that is hopefully enough to overcome the objects natural residence and break it apart. When you say it like that, it seems like a slow process, but this happens very quickly with oak or something like that, it's much more resilient, it's much more elastic. And so it's going to resonate more than break compared to, say, like, pine. Yeah. So this is another example of how physics comes in. And then also if you look at things like five stacked boards that somebody is punching through, they're not five stacked boards, one right on top of each other. No. Even the most battle hardened sensei in the universe would think two or three times before trying that. It would probably be like, I'm not going to do that today. You'd be a moron to do that because most people would not be able to break through that. But if you have space between them, that changes everything. Yeah. So is that true? Is it the boards that are breaking the other boards? Yes. And are you really just breaking that first board or is it the first few? No, because if you think about it, if you stop right, if the place where you're going to break through stops like, say, right before the third board, you're going to break your hand on that third board. So it does take discipline and focus and thought to where you're punching beyond that fifth board, right? Right. But yes, when you break through that first one, you're punching through to the next one and punching through the next one. So as each board gives way, it's helping break the next one, but really it's getting out of the way and you're just punching through another board and that one gets out of the way and there's another one you're punching through. But it's all in just one smooth motion as you punch beyond that, say, fifth board. Right. But if they're all stacked up right next to each other, you're not punching through five boards, you're punching through one board, five boards thick. And then that does not have that same effect because you're trying to punch the whole thing all at once and your hands is going to turn to mush. So in theory, you would only be able to punch through as many boards as your arm punch length. Yes. Okay, right. Well, so here's the deal. Is board breaking just for show? Is it an act? Is there any merit to it whatsoever? And the answer is sort of back and forth, depending on who you talk to. I think there are some martial arts purists. Well, it depends. There's probably purists on both sides that say this is an ancient tradition that we still like to practice. It's good for obviously, recruiting people to your dojo if you are a master board breaker in your town. But then other people say no, you know, it is only for show. Bruce Lee even said supposedly boards don't hit back. Like what you should be doing is training and focusing on things and not sort of like a sideshow trick, even though it's not a trick trick. And then it doesn't do anything to further martial arts. It's just sort of a thing to get attention and I liked how this article kind of put it. It was saying, like, you actually teach kids that they can get praised for doing unimportant things, like breaking through some boards, where really they should be being praised or being trained to do stuff that's actually useful. Right. It's definitely not a true gauge of your progress as a martial artist. No, but, like, I was reading about the 1976 Tokyo Karate Open, I think, and if you wanted to progress to the next round, you had to fight, and then you had to break some boards, and you had to break, like, X number of boards, and then you can move on to the next round, fight, break some more boards. So it's not like it's just totally useless in the martial arts world. And the whole reason it's there is strictly to attract new students. Although I think it really works for that. It does have practical use, but outside of the martial arts, like, competition world does, it, I think, is the larger point. Yeah. I'd like to hear from martial artists and get a true insider's take on what they think about it. Yeah, same here. Did you ever take any martial arts? No. I took taekwondo as a youngster, and I was like, Wait a minute, wait a minute. We're just, like, kicking the air. What are we doing here? And it became very clear there was a long path ahead of me to wherever I wanted to be. And I was like, I'm not doing this. I'm going to go home and eat some Twix. Peanut butter or caramel? Peanut butter. I'd eat caramel if it was around, but peanut butter is always my favorite. Yeah. Do they still make those peanut butter twist? Yes, they do. So good. Yeah, I think that's it. Yeah. I looked up some records just quickly here, like, world records, to see what was out there. And don't bother unless you have hours to sort through this, because there are literally dozens and dozens and dozens of variations of world records. Apparently, you can just make anything up. And if you're the first person to do that, there are records, like a couple that punch through this much glass and this much time, or a man who punched through. A lot of them are time based, like, this many pieces of glass while humming the theme from Match. Like, it seems like you can just make anything up. There's glass breaking ice boards, there's kicks, there's head stuff, hand stuff, concrete. It's just all over the place. And I finally gave up when I saw a record for a guy breaking boards in freefall. He skydived wow. And was surrounded by skydivers that would float up to him and hold boards in front of his face. It was very intimidating looking, like, just shoving these boards in his face while he's floating. Right. And he would gather himself up enough to punch through the board, and that's when I was like, I'm out. I think I'm done. That guy is the world record holder for awesome. It's pretty great just to even think about that. I want to combine my passion for skydiving with my passion for karate. Yeah, it was pretty dumb. Last thing I had was there's a legend that if you are in the UFC, the Ultimate Fighting Championship or whatever, and there's a rule against downward elbow strikes because it's thought that they're possibly lethal, so they're in a legal move. And the legend is that the reason is because the UFC commissioner was at a board breaking competition and saw somebody break a bunch of, like, boards or concrete with their elbow and did not realize that there's a lot of physics involved and went back and immediately made this rule, no downward elbow strikes. It's obviously you can kill a man like that because I saw some dude breaking boards with his elbow. Isn't that interesting? Yeah, I don't watch any of that stuff, so I don't know. It's just so brutal, man. Yeah, I can watch boxing all day long, but Ultimate Fighting? Oh, my God. It's brutal. I used to love boxing growing up. It holds up. Yeah. I think when the heavyweight division sort of got less interesting post Tyson. Oh, yeah, yeah. I was into it growing up with the legends like Marvin Hagler and Roberto Duran and Sugar A, Leonard Tyson and Spinks and Holmes Ali, of course, it was one of the premier sports, and it's just I don't know when I'm trying to figure out which Glitch co brother is who, I'm just kind of done. So, yeah, I don't know anything about it, I guess, post Tyson. Now that I think about it, I don't know anybody's name post Tyson, to tell you the truth. As far as heavy weights are concerned, there's a bunch of clutch coast, that's all. Okay, that explains it. Glitch coast. Well, if you want to know more about board breaking, get into martial arts, I strongly recommend it. Even though I didn't, don't make the same mistake I did. And since I said that, it's time for listing or mail. All right, I'm going to call this pinsetters. We heard from quite a few people who were pinsetters or had relatives that were pinsetters, and this one I thought was very sweet. I just enjoyed jobs of bygone eras guys. And I remembered that my dad once worked as a pen setter in his ute. I called him and talked to him about his experiences after your show, and here are a few highlights. The year was 1960 and he was twelve. This is Cleveland, Ohio, and he remembered that this particular bowling alley was the last one, I guess, in Cleveland. To convert to automatic setting, he was paid two cent a frame, or twenty cents per game. Bowlers would slide nickels, dimes, and quarters down the lane as a tip. That's pretty cool. Yeah. And you had to be quick to snatch up your tip because sometimes they would try to snipe you with a ball. I guess that's awful. Setters are responsible for three to four lanes at a time and he worked on a slightly elevated catwalk. My dad was hit several times with pins and he said it was just part of the job and if bowlers made him mad, he would offset one of the rear pins to decrease the chance of a strike. Good for him, sticking it to the man. This is from Ray Havorca and he says, thanks a lot. My dad is 70 now and always lights up when he gets a chance to regale in his youth. So thank you, Ray Havorca and Mr. Havorca for your work as a pin setter. Captain Dock Havorca, Esquire. That's raised dad's name now okay. I love it. So if you want to tell us some cool story your dad told you, we love those. You can get in touch with us through social media. Just go to our website, stuffieshando.com, and you can also send us an email. Just send it off to stuffpodcast@howstepworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstep works. Hey everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks or if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music you can access new episodes early. Download the app today." | |
How the Placebo Effect Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-placebo-effect-works | For centuries, doctors have prescribed drugs they knew weren't real - but that still somehow worked. It wasn't until the 1980s that the placebo effect, the phenomenon where an inert substance can have a genuine impact on a patient's recovery, was studied. | For centuries, doctors have prescribed drugs they knew weren't real - but that still somehow worked. It wasn't until the 1980s that the placebo effect, the phenomenon where an inert substance can have a genuine impact on a patient's recovery, was studied. | Tue, 10 Jun 2014 11:55:37 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=10, tm_hour=11, tm_min=55, tm_sec=37, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=161, tm_isdst=0) | 37052997 | audio/mpeg | "Ah. Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good, it's criminal. Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today, this July, don't miss an entire summer of surprises on Disney Plus with Disney's High School Musical, the Musical, the series season three Zombies, three Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and the wonderful summer of Mickey Mouse. Plus new episodes of Marvel Studios, ms. Marvel and National Geographics. America the Beautiful. From the award winning producers of Planet Earth, Frozen Planet, and the Disney nature films, america the Beautiful takes viewers on a tour of the most spectacular and visually arresting regions of our great nation. All these and more streaming this month on Disney Plus. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetuffworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And there's Jerry. Jerrybo Deucer. No. That was bad. Chuck. Yes. Have you ever heard of the word placebo? Deucer? Yeah, that's a placebo. You know what I mean? I do. Don't tell everybody. I shall see. No, I will please. I shall please. We'll see about that. I shall please is what I meant in Latin. Yes. Right. So, placebo. Everybody's heard of a placebo, and very famously, the placebo effect. You want to know where that comes from? The placebo effect? No. The word placebo. Yeah. 14th century, it referred to hired mourners at funerals. What? They would hire mourners in place of family members, and they would start their morning wailing with not morning, but as in M-O-U-R with placebo domino and region vivorum, which means, I shall please the Lord in the land of the living, but in that it means placebo. This article said it carries the connotation of substitution. Weird. Yeah. That is fantastic stuff. I thought so. This is from Placebos and Placebo Effects in Medicine colon historical Overview by Tissue Cap, Chuck Green and Cleveland Oh, Cap Chuck. That guy is high quality. Oh, yeah. A lot of skeptics. Ted. Ted does Chuck. He's at Harvard. Let me tell you a little bit about Ted Cap Chuck, okay? The Tony Allen captaucks, I just raised a lot of skeptics hackles because some people see him as a huckster, a fraud, or anything that's wrong with placebos. These people would probably have a problem with us even talking seriously about the placebo effect in the first place. So I don't know that it's a really big deal that I just raised their hackles. Okay. But Ted Katchuk is a former owes me $50. Right. Let me tell you about catching he's a former acupuncturist, and he apparently had some sort of epiphany one day when he was treating somebody, and they started to feel better before he'd even use the acupuncture. So he started wondering, like, okay, what's going on here? And started investigating the placebo effect. And in short order, he ended up as an instructor at Harvard and became one of the leading researchers into the placebo effect, which is a really strange journey because Harvard Medical School doesn't usually hire acupuncturists. Yeah. And he had kind of a rocky road at first. He didn't know what he was doing with clinical trials, and he got publicly called out in the New England Journal of Medicine. And over the years, over the decades I think this is the 80s that he really started to look into it. He, like I said, became the foremost researcher in coming up with quality clinical trials for trying to get to the root of what the placebo effect is and how to use it. What year was that? Do you know? He's still doing it. But when was this? When he was started, all that stuff. He got called out in, I think, a 2001 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, basically for not using a control group in this placebo study. Okay, so when you do a study, you have a placebo group, which is your control group, and that basically is I'm giving you real medicine, but I'm giving Jerry a sugar pill. And in a proper study, I don't know who's getting the sugar pill and who's getting the medicine. It's called double blind. Right. So if you're studying just the placebo effect, I should be giving you a placebo, and I should be giving Jerry no treatment whatsoever. To truly, I thought you needed three people, one with a real treatment, one with placebo, and one with no treatment. It's another way to do it. Okay. At the very least, though, you need the placebo group and somebody who's receiving no treatment. Got you. You see? Yeah, if we're skinning cats. Well, if you're doing good science researching into the placebo effect. But what's ironic is this whole double blind placebo study came about because the placebo effect was first noticed by a Western practitioner by the name of Dr. Henry Beecher, who in World War II supposedly saw a nurse give a shot of sailing to a soldier because they'd run out of morphine. But the nurse told them it was morphine, and the soldier responded to this shot of saline like it was morphine. And from that, Beecher was like, what is going on here? Started to investigate the placebo effect and ended up proposing the double blind placebo study to prove the efficacy of drugs. It goes back further than that, my friend. Let's hear it. Man try 1785 the new medical dictionary. They described the placebo as a commonplace method of medicine. And then a short time later, in 1811, in Quincy's Lexicon Medicine, he defined the placebo as an epithet given to any medicine adapted more to please than to benefit the patient, like heroin. So they were on it back in the early 1800s, which is surprising. Yes. That's the basis of, like, snake oil and hucksterism. Right? Yeah. Well, they called him bread pills back then because I guess it was probably some sort of, like, pill made of yeast is my guess. Okay. And Thomas Jefferson in 18 seven, even recorded what he called the pious fraud. He observed, quote, that one of the most successful physicians I've ever known has assured me that he used more bread pills, drops of colored water, and powders of hickory ash than all other medicines put together. And people treated people with bread pills in the early 1800s. It was the thing. And they were way onto the placebo effect and the fact that it seemed to work. And another dude named John Hagarth in the early 1800s actually started performing the first studies on placebo effect. And he said it went back to the Renaissance idea that imagination was the major mediator between body and mind, which is starting to be proven as possibly correct. Yeah, it's pretty interesting in the 1930 is when they started publishing papers on the placebo and actual doing clinical trials. And they said one of their points in the 1930s, with confidence aroused in a treatment, the encouragement afforded by a new procedure, even, like, just people getting treated in a new way, people would say, oh, well, this is going to work. Right. And it maybe did work. And then we're up to the 40s where Beacher comes along, notices the placebo effect himself, ultimately comes up with the double blind placebo based study. And what's ironic about that is the placebo based double blind study ultimately has split back off into the study of placebo again, because there are so many trials where the placebo was more effective than the drug, even though the drug worked, but the placebo worked even better. And finally, in the 1990s, people were like, what is going on here? We need to study this thing in and of itself. Well, yeah, because one of the things I had no idea, I thought placebos were only used in studies for efficacy rates. I did not know that. There are doctors always have been and still are prescribing placebos as medicine unknowingly, even though they're not supposed to. We'll get to that later. No knowingly, no unknowingly for the patient. Right. Even though they're supposed to tell the patient, yeah, we'll get to that toward the end. But I had no idea that they were prescribing placebos to people. Yeah. And in their defense, a lot of times doctors are carrying on a tradition where they don't have anything else to prescribe. Yeah. But if they say that to their patients, the patient is going to go off and suffer. So at the very least, they can use the last attempt of saying psychological trickery. Take this. Yeah. And I'm not knocking it. I just was surprised to learn that that still happened. And I'm wondering if I've ever been given a placebo. And it makes me feel dumb as a patient to say, like, yeah, man, whatever you gave me really helped. And the doctor's like, because it's the same thing as the high school prank of, like, giving somebody non alcoholic beer and telling real beer and watching them make a jerk out of themselves getting drunk. It's exactly the same thing. So let's talk about placebo. We assume that everybody knows what placebo is, but let's define it a little more clearly. The placebo effect specifically is the very real phenomenon that people, when given a pill or some sort of medical intervention that feel better. Yes, they feel better even though what they've been given is not medicine and was not actually a real intervention. Yeah. And the placebo is the pill itself. That is the placebo. And the effect is what you just described. Right. And it doesn't have to be a pill. It can be an injection. It can be fake surgery. True. And it doesn't even have to be pharmacologically inert. It can be a vitamin or, like, an aspirin, even though some argue that's not a true placebo. But sometimes that's what the doctor will give you and call it medication. But very often things like a sugar pill yeah, like you said, pharmacologically inert and astoundingly, depending on the size of the pill, the shape of the pill, the color of the pill, people will have different effects and responses to these things that are just sugar. So there's some really strange psychological things going on here. And at first, for a long time, everybody just kind of assumed it was just psychology, that we were tricking ourselves into feeling better or we hadn't really felt bad in the first place and we were being tricked into not feeling bad any longer or not thinking we were feeling bad any longer. Like an offshoot of hypochondria, maybe? Very much so. Yeah. This article says they've been shown to work in about 30% of patients that was actually based on Beaches finding. It was like 35.2. Yeah, that's what he found out in 1955. That's what they're still basing that on. Yes, but there's been other studies that have gone back through Beaches studies and said, no, not that much. Other people have found up to 60% respond through it. Right. And basically one of the big questions is is it a psychological effect or are there actual physical responses that are going on? And there's been a lot of research lately that's pretty interesting, I think. Right. So like we were saying, the initial idea was that it was all psychological. Right. Yeah. Well, I guess we can talk about the two effects. The subject expectancy effect which is basically, if you know the result ahead of time and the pill you're going to take, you're going to end up feeling that result. Right. So this is 30%. That's what a blind study seeks to prevent is a subject expectancy effect and also the observer expectancy effect, which is what a double blind study seeks to prevent. Yeah. And that's important because it's different because it's all self reported. Right. Which is always a little hanky. Right. So the other idea, if it has a psychological basis, is that it's classical conditioning that we are raised from birth to think that if somebody gives you a pill, you're going to respond to it because it has medicine. Yeah. And that is not self reported. That is actually seeing physical responses. Right. And with classical conditioning established very famously by Pavlov and his dogs right. You're responding physically to a psychological stimulus. Yes. Right. So you are getting a physiological response. So classical conditioning eventually kind of came to be viewed as the more reasonable explanation for what was going on. Right. Because study after study after study has shown that we are having a physical reaction to these inert placebos. Yeah. One of them, in 2002 from UCLA's Neuropsychiatric Institute, they had a couple of groups of patients, and a lot of the placebo studies are for mental conditions. Not all of them, but a lot of them are in, like, the clinical trials. Yeah, exactly. So this one was for antidepressants, and they had two groups that got experimental drugs, like real drugs, and then the third was given the placebo, they spent a few weeks on these pills and monitored their brain activity with the old EEG wonder machine. And well, it's not the wonder machine. The MRI is the wonder machine. It's a wonder machine, not the wonder machine. Right. And the patients on the placebo reported positive effects and showed greater increase of brain activity than those who had responded to the drug. You know, I remember that it was a study. Yeah. It totally undermined people's faith in antidepressants because on the other end of the whole 90s, where everybody was on antidepressants, I wasn't this study came out and was like, people are saying, do these things even work? It was kind of taken the opposite way. Rather than, wow, the placebo effect is really something. It was, wow, antidepressants are fraudulent. Right. Well, I wonder what they were trying to it was a placebo study, though. Right. Yeah. So it kind of backfired or did they even care? No, I think they very much cared because when compared to placebo, the whole point of a drug trial is to show that this drug is more effective than placebo. It's more effective than the imagination. Right. And if it's not, then that means that drug shouldn't be brought to market, even though now the thinking is more like that's not necessarily true because we're coming to understand the placebo effect can be very powerful. Yeah. Especially depending on the individual, too. Yeah, that's for sure. The interesting thing about that study is when the EEG lit up, the activity was in different parts of the brain. I think the placebo patient said the prefrontal cortex was lighting up. Right. And basically that says that the brain isn't being fooled, it's just doing something different. Yeah. They responded better to the treatment than the people who responded to the drug. So some people did respond to the drug, but different parts of their brain were activated by the drug than the people who responded well to the placebo. That's right. Even though they felt better. Yeah. That's mind boggling. It is. So they reached the same conclusion, but using a totally different region of their brain, and they actually felt better. Yeah. That wasn't the first study to prove that there is a physiological response to placebos or last. There was a dental study from the 70s that I think was the first that showed that if you blocked endorphins, which are nature's pain relievers, you can also block the placebo effect. So the people weren't responding to the placebo like you would expect them to a pain reliever placebo because they weren't able to release their natural pain relievers. Yeah. And that's backed up, I guess, by this 2004 study from University of Michigan. Go Wolverines. They basically demonstrated that it is related to endorphins specifically. So I guess that backs up that study, because if you can block them so here's the thing. That study was related to endorphins specifically. Other studies have found that it can be related to how much a person expresses dopamine specifically. Right. So there's like this idea that there's a genetic basis to our predisposition to placebos. Yeah, but I think that it's depending on the drug or the effect that you're trying to induce using the placebo effect. Because think about it, if you are somebody who naturally produces more endorphins than somebody else, you're going to naturally produce more endorphins when it's triggered by a placebo than somebody who doesn't produce more endorphins naturally. Yeah. So there's a genetic basis to it, I guess. But I think the genetic basis is that the individual must be predispositioned to be able to have that genetic response to the drug or the placebo and have that, I guess, response to it. Yeah. And like you said, it's also personal because they found that it is even affected by a person's personal experience with past pills. The color of the pill, the shape and size of the pill will have a different reaction because the person maybe took another little blue pill for something else. Sure. And actually, blue pills in particular are known to be have sedative effects as placebos. Red pills are known to have stimulating and pain relieving effects as placebo. That's odd that they made viagra blue. Yeah. Like In Heavenly marketed it as the little blue pill. Right. Interesting set of effect? Yes. I don't think so, Chuck. Not that I know. We've got more stuff about all this coming up. I don't know what we're going to talk about next. It's a grab bag right now. Yeah. But we're going to come right back after these messages. What if you were a trendy apparel company facing an avalancho demand to ensure more customers can buy more sherpa line jackets? You call IBM to automate your it infrastructure with AI. Now, your systems monitor themselves. What used to take hours takes minutes, and you have an ecommerce platform designed to handle sudden spikes in overall demand, as in actual overalls. Let's create It systems that roll up their own sleeve. IBM, let's create. Learn more at IBM. Comitautomation. It's 2022 and things look different. Like doctors visits, for example. Sometimes you don't have to go into a doctor's office to be treated for nonemergency situations, like a sinus infection or allergy. And that's why teledoc gives you the chance to connect with board certified physicians right from your home via phone or video. That's right. Doctors are standing by. Twenty four seven. So you can schedule a visit according to your schedule. You can see for yourself why teladoc is ranked number one by JD power and Telehealth satisfaction with direct to consumer providers. Tele Doc is available through most major health plans and many employers. But even if you're not covered by insurance, everyone has access to use teladoc. That's right. If you want to check it out, download the app today or visit teladoc. comStuff to register or schedule a visit today. That's teladoc. comStuff. For JDPower 2021 award information, visit JDPower. comAWARDS. All right, we're back, buddy. And I tell you what, we're going to talk about something that I had never heard of, which I think is super interesting. Oh, I know, the nocebo effect. Awesome. It is super cool. And that is when, well, there's a couple of things. That is when you are taking a placebo and you experience maybe the effects of the pill, which is great, and the side effects of that pill that you think might be you're supposed to have. Right. You're actually experiencing side effects that shouldn't be there. Right. The sugar pill. They noticed this in clinical trials, too, because when you're carrying out a clinical trial, you have to warn the patients, this drug may give you these terrible side effects. And so they started noticing, like, people who are on placebo were still experiencing the side effects, like physical reactions, like hives and itching and things. Right. So there's a negative side to placebo as well. And nosebo means I shall harm. Like placebo means I shall please. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And they found that this is definitely backed up by the idea that it's classical conditioning. They found that people who have gone through chemotherapy can become nauseated when they enter a room that's painted the same color as the room where they received chemo before. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. So there's all sorts of ways that the nosebo effect can pop up, but it's pretty mind boggling as well. Yeah. And the nosebo doesn't even have to be just with the placebo. You can experience side effects that aren't on the list of a real drug. Because of what we were talking about. Because it looked like another pill you might have had before. Yeah, man, the brain. Powerful stuff. So going back to Cap, Chuck, who I'm just kind of a fan of yeah. 50. Yeah. I think if you're into long form articles, which I love yeah. Go to Harvard Magazine and search for the placebo phenomenon. And it's a profile of him and his work. It's really interesting stuff. But he was saying that kind of in line with the idea that the color of the pill or the shape of the pill will have an effect either on the nosebo or the placebo effect. Right. He was saying that it seems like the basis of the placebo effect is what's called ritual. Yeah. And ritual, it involves everything from the physician's bedside manner to how expensive the patient thinks the pill is, to how effective the patient thinks the pill is. And he did a study where he carried out what was called schmaltzi, like a schmaltzi care, to where he was just lavishing attention on the patient and telling him how badly he felt that they were going through this. But this pill is really effective with your condition, and apparently not just this study, but other studies show that there's a positive correlation between the ritual and response to the placebo effect. So the more you think that this drug is expensive, that this drug is effective, that this physician cares about you, the greater of a placebo response you're going to have. Yes. Have you ever been accused of being a hypochondriac by anyone? No. It's got to be very demeaning. It is, because it happened to me. Oh, yeah. I went to the emergency room in New York. As you know, when we were up there recently for our trip, I went to the Er. Yeah. It was something, and it was a result of it was throwing up in nausea. I learned from anti inflammatory pills I was taking at the time for something else had nothing to do with being sick. Right. And they figured that out, but they kept this guy I called him Nurse Jackie. He was just like Nurse Jackie, except he was a dude. He kept coming by and treating me with things and giving me the IV drip, and I was like, Dude, I'm not feeling better, and I'm not a hypochondriac in any way. I didn't go to the doctor for, like, 18 years straight. Right. And I could tell he was looking at me like, oh, I got one of these guys. You're med seeking. Yeah. And I was like, no. And I could tell I could sense it. And so he finally gave me this thing to drink that knocked me out. I woke up, like, 20 minutes later and felt better. Wow. What was it? I can't remember. It was something to gatorade. No, it was like three different things. It was like a cocktail of stomach pleasing things. And what's the stuff that numbs you? Numb my throat. And I can't remember. Lidocaine, I think. Okay. And it works? Yeah, it worked. I woke up and I felt better. I said, I don't feel so nauseous now. And they were checking me out, and I reached up and I felt behind my ear. For some reason, it felt like a golf ball behind my ear, and it had popped up in the last 20 minutes. Wow. So I was literally leaving. I was like, Wait a minute. I got this thing behind my ear all of a sudden, and this guy looked at me like he called the doctor over. And she was like, yeah, it's very swollen. It's your lymph node. But he wasn't there for that. He came back over, he's like, what did you say? I said, well, she says the swollen lymph. And he said that you're a hypochondriac. And I was so mad at Nurse Jackie, I was like, Dude, look at it. It's huge. I'm not making this up. And I started defending myself. Like, I never go to doctors, and I'm not one of those people. And he was like, I was just kidding. I was just kidding. I was just kidding. Yeah. But it totally made me feel like a jerk. Yeah. I mean, imagine if that happened to you a lot, too. Well, that means you're a hypochondriac. No, it definitely made me felt and I know he was kidding, but it made me feel really bad, like I'm in there just what's the syndrome? 1000. Is that it? Yeah, we did an episode on that, too. Yeah. Anyway, sorry about that. Yeah, well, I'm sorry that that happened to you. Thanks. And that is BS. But you mentioned the IV. I guarantee you that was just sailing and that's a placebo in itself. No, they told me that. They didn't say, like, this is the wonder back. Right, but there's basically no reason to give you saline solution. Well, to hydrate me, I guess, if I'd been throwing up. Oh, yeah, okay. But yeah, I guess you're right, though. To see, like, something dripping in your arm, surely that's got to be doing something. Yeah. Well, one interesting thing is back to placebos. There have been studies that have shown that if you don't tell the patient what they're supposed to do, that they don't work as well. Yeah. They even found that with drugs that they know for a fact work. Yeah. If you don't tell them, it won't work. Yeah. They did a placebo based trial with a painkiller, and the painkiller proved more effective than placebo, and then they did another trial with the same painkiller. Didn't tell anybody what it was and it didn't work. Interesting. And then conversely, this is the one that gets me the study where they are so crazy I know where you're going. They used an injection that they put in the patient's jaws in the study, which sounds awful, means to induce pain. That was the point. They were trying to induce pain in somebody's jaw using harmless but painful jaw injections. And they would inject saline into the jaw to keep the patient's self reported pain level steady throughout the study. And then they used another injection and gave them saline but told them this was a pain reliever and everybody's pain across the board dropped as a result in the study. Unbelievable placebo effect. I could just sit around and rattle off studies all day. It's pretty interesting. What do you think about Opacalp? Yeah, it seems kids are dumb. You could just call a placebo anyway. I think it's unnecessary. Well, Opacalp is placebo spelled backwards, obviously. And that in 2008 was, I guess, sort of invented or not invented, but coined and packaged by a mother, I think, Australian, named Jim Boutner. She's Australian? No. I think so. Is that an Australian last name? I don't think there's such a thing. And so that's basically placebos for kids. It's marketed. You can buy a bottle of Obacalp and it's for when your kid isn't feeling good but you know, your kid is not sick. That kind of thing. Right. And so you give the kid the pill and it makes them feel better. And some people have problems with this and say you're teaching your child that you get relief from pills only when they don't necessarily need to be taking pills all the time. And proponents say, you know what? It's the same thing as putting a bandage or kissing a booboo. Like you said, these are dumb little kids. Well, I remember growing up with the children's aspirin the orange aspirin. I'm pretty sure those are just sugar pills. You think? I ate a whole bottle of them once and I was fine? No, but those are vitamins. It was children's aspirin. They were orange flavored. Yeah, I totally remember those. Yes, I think those are probably placebo. I remember the taste like I can still sense that very good. I ate a whole bottle of it once because I was a little fat kid. You didn't get sick? No sugar pills? I think so, because I even remember I was old enough thinking like I probably shouldn't have eaten that whole bottle of those things because it's medicine and watched it down with the sky. That was fine afterwards. Well, they do have legit baby aspirin now, though. Do they? I'm starting to doubt everything. So talk about doubt. There are plenty of criticisms of all this and we'll talk about them right after this. What if you were a gigantic snack food maker and you. Had to wrestle a massively complex supply chain to satisfy cravings from Tokyo to Toledo. So you partner with IBM Consulting to bring together data and workflows so that every driver and merchandiser can serve up jalapeno, sesame and chocolate covered goodness with real time, data driven precision. Let's create supply chains that have an appetite for performance. IBM let's create Learn More@ibm.com Consulting it's 2022 and things look different. Like doctors visits, for example. Sometimes you don't have to go into a doctor's office to be treated for nonemergency situations, like a sinus, infection or allergy. And that's why teletoc gives you the chance to connect with board certified physicians right from your home via phone or video. That's right. Doctors are standing by. Twenty four seven. So you can schedule a visit according to your schedule. You can see for yourself why teladoc is ranked number one by JD power. And telehealth satisfaction with direct to consumer providers. Teedock is available through most major health plans and many employers. But even if you're not covered by insurance, everyone has access to use teletoc. That's right. If you want to check it out, download the app today or visit teladoc. comStuff to register or schedule a visit today. That's teladoc.com stuff. For JD power 2021 award information, visit JDPower. comAWARDS so, Chuck, I'm bigtime into the placebo effect. I can tell you're big time into the placebo effect. There are people who are not. That's true. It raises plenty of skepticism, which, again, is one of the reasons why my hat is off to Ted Katchuk, because he has responded to the criticism. He's adjusted his methodology. He's doing really good science in the investigation of the placebo effect. I like that guy. Still, skeptics say there are a lot of things that you can use to explain away the placebo effect. For example, it's possible the person was actually a hypochondriac. They weren't actually sick in the first place. Yeah. It's possible that some people get better with no treatment. It's possible that some diseases do treat themselves. They just get better over the course of time. And if you overlay a placebo effect or a placebo, and you put that over the same course of time, it's going to look like it was the placebo that did it, when really it just healed itself. Yes. Which is why the critics call for studies where there is one group that is not given any medication whatsoever. Right, exactly. Which makes sense. So one of the other criticisms, though, is that if a doctor is saying, and there are, like you said, plenty of doctors who do this, there were studies that found that a 2007 study from the University of Chicago found 45% of 200 doctors surveyed in the Chicago area had prescribed placebos before some point during their career. In 2008, they did a little more robust 1600 doctors all across the US. And half of them said that they had prescribed placebos. So this is still going on. It's a thing. It's pretty widespread. Yeah. And the criticism is, well, that means doctors are lying to their patients. They're using deception to practice medicine, and that's unethical. So the AMA came out with a guideline that kind of flies in the face of the placebo effector. The idea that if you give somebody a placebo and tell them it's a placebo, that it shouldn't work. Which is not necessarily true. Yeah. In 2006, the AMA came out and said, quote, physicians may use placebos for diagnosis or treatment only if a patient is informed and agrees to it. To me, that means it's not a placebo. I guess it is, but if you know it is, I don't get it. Like, what's the point of a doctor coming in and saying, I'm going to give you the sugar pill. Right. Would you like a prescription for sugar pills? And you say yes. I would. Supposedly there are studies that show the placebo effect is still possible, still works? Yeah, sometimes. But across the board, pretty much everyone believes that if the placebo effect is a real thing, the cat's out of the bag. It is part of the imagination, and that you do kind of have to fool the person into thinking that it's a real thing. That expectation coupled with imagination provides the placebo effect. Yeah. And this article points out, too, we're not just saying these doctors are lying liars. Apparently one tactic that a doctor can take is to say, I have something that I think can help, but I don't exactly know what the deal is with it or how it works, but I'll give it to you if you want to try it. And how people are a lot of people are like, sure, I'll try anything. Right. Exactly. That's not really deception. Because if the doctor's prescribing a placebo, he or she obviously does believe in the placebo effect. So here she does think it could work, but doesn't know how. Yeah. Or if it only really does work in 30% of the population, then you've got a 70% chance of striking out anyway with this course of treatment. So you're back to where you started to begin with. Yes. And again, that falls into the what's the point category. Now, again, we should say that a lot of physicians who do prescribe placebos aren't just doing it to toy with their patients. They're doing it because they think that their patient will suffer more without it. Sure. Or they just don't have anything that could be used to address the patient's problem. They can't find anything medically wrong with the patient. But you're saying that the patient's not going to help. So here's a sugar pill. The other tech that a doctor can take too, Chuck, is to say, hey, new patient, welcome to my practice. Let me tell you about the placebo effect. And in the course of me treating you sometime during your lifetime, I may find that a placebo will be the best thing to use. Are you okay with me doing that to you at some point? Possibly basically like signing up for my own personal long term study, kind of as a doctor. But wouldn't you, from that point on be like, you gave me a placebo. It's a placebo I know it's a placebo. I wouldn't know which way it was up. I don't know how to feel that's. The drug better, worse side effects, none. Yes. And the other tech doctors can take is to knock off early and go hit the golf course. They do that one a lot on TV. That's just an old bit trope, like yeah, cops and their donuts doctors in golf. I think that one's pretty accurate. I mean, in caddyshack, the doctor was Dr. Pepper. He was the one who just got mad all the time, right? No, that was Judge Males. Dr. Beeper was he was just one of the guys, one of the forsome okay. That I think he played. Was it Buck Henry? Was he the doctor? No, I can picture the guy. It's Buck Henry, right? I don't think so. We'll figure this out offline. How about that? Yeah. All right. If you want to know more about the placebo effect and believe us, there is plenty more to know about it, you can type those two words in the search bar athowstepworks.com. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this Australian last name. He says dear Josh, Chuck and Jerry and anyone else, I should think. And I think we never mentioned other people that support us. Didn't we already talked about an Australian last name? Yeah, that was the joke. Oh, okay. It's called The Callback. Got you. I just felt like the joke. Listener mail, though, made me realize that we don't think other folks a lot besides Jerry and Noel and Matt. But let's do that now. Okay. Like Rebecca. Rebecca. What's your official title? I don't even know what titles are around that. Web producer, maybe. Yeah. I mean, she handles our website and makes everything look great. And Sherry, even though we do our own social media sherry does social media for how stuff works. Yeah. And she, like, throws to us a lot. Throws to us and helps us out a lot. And Joe, our buddy Joe is a huge help. And that's kind of the crack staff. I mean, we're answering our own emails and we're doing a lot of our own stuff, but doesn't mean we don't have help. You know what I mean? Yeah, we have tons of help. So I just want to say thanks to this. It is very nice of you, Chuck. Thanks, everybody. I figured six years in, seven years in, we might as well shout out some of our help. So this is from Alex, and he said to thank anyone else he doesn't know about, and he's from perth, Western Australia, which is nothing like Eastern Australia. I'm a 19 year old aspiring electrician trapped in the depths of Western Australia's mining downturn due to layouts in the mining sector, have been unable to find an apprenticeship, and I would have lost hope if it weren't for you guys. It was just after New Year's, january 6, 2014, when I came across the magical production called Stuff You should Know. At the time of this writing, it is May 10 and I have finished the epic adventure of 600 episodes, plus that's in a very short time, my friend. Yeah, it is. It's been an amazing journey and I want to thank you for pulling me through the hard days of resume writing and delivering. Long days of waiting previously were mind numbing, but have since been filled with interesting insightful and overall incredible enjoyable content. My favorites gene patents, Lobotomies and the Masterfully dictated Halloween episodes. We like those two. Those are some of my favorites, although Christmas, I think, is the best. So cue the existential crisis. After you guys forming such an integral part of my life over the past five months, I don't know how I'm going to acclimate myself to just two a week. And we hear that a lot from people who mainline the show. Yeah, there's like a withdrawal period. Yeah. And I've done that with TV shows. I do that for sure. You may want it. And then you're like, I need it. Yeah. I would just like to sincerely say thank you to both of you and Jerry and anyone else for pulling me through these times and hope the future contains a stable job for myself. More content for yourselves to pass on to the Stuff You Should Know army and an ever growing fan base that you can both woo with your dulcet tones and then lightning information. Yours faithfully. That is Alex Giddings from Pet. Thanks, Alex. Alex yeah, thank you very much. Hope you get a job, buddy. Yeah, for sure. If you're in person, you're looking for an electrician contact. Alex he's shockingly good. We're ending on that one. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com Stuffiestoodo, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@housetepworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howseefworks.com. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun's shining, the daylight's longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon. Music. My favorite murder from exactly right media. My favorite murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgueref and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of My favorite murder one week early on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You know you're the best pet mom when you growl back during playtime, give epic belly rubs and feed them halo holistic made with responsibly sourced ingredients, plus probiotics for digestive health. Find us at chewie amazonandhalopets.com." | ||
How The Iditarod Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-iditarod-works | Each year hundreds of dogs haul humans in sleds as part of the 1,100 plus mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. It's grueling and not without controversy but one thing is for sure, these are some amazing dogs. | Each year hundreds of dogs haul humans in sleds as part of the 1,100 plus mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. It's grueling and not without controversy but one thing is for sure, these are some amazing dogs. | Tue, 08 Mar 2016 18:57:45 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=8, tm_hour=18, tm_min=57, tm_sec=45, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=68, tm_isdst=0) | 55523861 | audio/mpeg | "This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Start building your website today@squarespace.com. Enter code Stuff at checkout and get 10% off Squarespace. Build it. Beautiful. You smell that, Josh? Smell of the Pacific Northwest. It's the smell of spring. Oh, yeah. That's where I was headed. Okay, so we are launching our Spring Has Sprung tour and other dates, TBD. But we know we are starting in the Pacific Northwest. Yeah, like I said, which is what smells like patchouli and liberalism and pine. Where are we going? Seattle and Portland. Right. On Friday, April 8, we're going to be in Seattle at the Neptune, which we were at last time. It was a great venue. Great venue. The next day, we're going to be in Portland at Revolution Hall. New venue for us. New venue for us. And we are going back there because two reasons. You both treated us so well last time, and we have a very special podcast tailor made for your neck of the woods. That's right. So come see us. You can get tickets on Sysklive.com, our website powered by Squarespace. That's right. And we'll see you guys April 8 and 9th. Come on out, Pacific Northwest. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W, Chuck Bryant. And there's Jerry over there. And there's some delicious Ritz crackers with peanut butter dipped in white chocolate, which means this is Stuff You Should Know. Yummy cookies. Yes. But we're not going to say who sent them just yet because that will fall under the administrative details. Which, by the way, while we're mentoring it, thanks again to Mark Henry. We're pretty sure we thanked for the awesome steel work that we got at the Pittsburgh show. Yeah, steel and barn work, right? Exactly. I thought we thanked him, but if we did, I want to make sure we did for sure. Because it hangs right here above our heads, proudly. It looms intimidatingly over our heads. Are you intimidated by it? No. I'm a little under the weather, though. Can you tell? I can, yes. Mostly because you said so. But now that I'm listening for it, I can hear it sort of that. It's like you got a stick of butter in each nostril. Yeah. Man, I wish. Do you can do that. How are you? I'm doing okay. I'm not under the weather. That's good. I am nice and warm here in Atlanta. It's like 70 degrees outside here on March 1. Yeah, well, I want to say the opposite, but not necessarily these days, thanks to climate change in Alaska. All right. Leo DiCaprio. I thought it was a great speech. Fantastic. Nailed it. The guy should be an actor in Alaska, where they're about to do the Adidarad. They're about to run it. As a matter of fact, when this comes out, it will have started a couple of days before, right? Yeah. So we'll be like, right smack dab in the middle of what's called the last great race on Earth, the Idittarod Trail Sled dog race. Also known as just the Iditarod or the Iditarod Trail Sled dog race. Did I say dog sled? No, you said it but you just put the emphasis on the weird words. Or the Idittaride Trail sled dog race. Exactly. We could do this several more times. We could. So let's get into this. We're probably both going to say poopy things about dog racing, aren't we? Probably. Yeah. I'm just waiting for people in Alaska to be mad at me. It's going to be years before they get their hands on this episode. Yeah, probably so. Because you have to fly it out. You have to fly the one ipod from town to town and everybody has to get their turn listening to it. Yeah. One thing I learned about people from Alaska is the reason they live in Alaska is because they don't like being told what to do by anybody. No they don't. They don't like getting pushed around. No. So they moved to Alaska where you can do as you please. Yeah, we'll see where this one goes. The idea for those of you who don't know is actually a grueling endurance race across some of the coldest parts of the planet. Sure. Over 1100 miles. So that's a long way. And it's not like people are running or snow shoeing or hang gliding. They are on a little sled on skis. You could also call it a mini sleigh if you wanted to. Okay. And these mini sleighs are pulled by teams of dogs. And that's the race. It's a dog sled race. That's a dog sled race held every year since 1973 and there is no set number of participants. It kind of varies from year to year right. Depending on how many people want to take part. And like you said, it's rough terrain, it's cold, brutal conditions. It could be anywhere from it could go down to 50 below zero. That's insane. With harsh winds and blinding snow blinds. Is that what it's called? That's what Ozzy called it. Oh really? Yeah. Do you remember the song Snow Blind? Yeah, I think so. Great blacksmith song. I don't think he was talking about snow though. Probably not. You know what I mean? Oh, is he talking about cocaine? I think he may have been. I never thought about that. Chuck, you said like up to 50 below I saw 60 below Fahrenheit, 60 below zero Fahrenheit cold. But I also kept running across people saying like negative 40 deg Fahrenheit. And I remember we said that once we were talking about Simon HIA, the Finnish sniper. He was like the baddest dude ever. The White Ghost or something. Something like that. The White Death. White Death. Yeah, I think that was it. And that guy is crazy. Anyway, we mentioned that he was out sniping people in temperatures as cold as negative 40 degrees Fahrenheit. And ever since then, people wrote in and said, dude, it's negative 40 degrees is the same in Celsius and Fahrenheit. It's where they converge. Wow. And ever since then, I've always noticed there's very few people who realize that. Yes, well, I forgot negative 40 degrees. You don't have to say Fahrenheit or Celsius. It's amazing, the magic temperature. Things are so cold, no one gives a crap. Right, exactly. So the route for the Iditarod, there are a couple of different routes depending on what year it is. This would be an even year, 2016. So that means they're going to follow the northern route last year. And every odd year they have a southern route. And they are basically the same route, except for 300 miles in the middle where it's different. Yeah. Between ofir and unka elite. I believe, uncleake. I think so. And it either shoots up or dips down, depending. But other than that, it's the same exact route. Yes. There are 26 checkpoints along the way on the northern route and then 27 on the southern route. Right. Because you need just that one extra by the southern route. Didn't they say the southern route is a little harder? Yeah, I think the general thought is the northern trail is a little easier, but I think there's a difference in terrain, typically. Okay, that makes sense. And you would think, okay, this is 1000 miles plus trek across snow in negative 50, 60 degree Fahrenheit weather. It's going to take forever. Right. And as a matter of fact, the first one in 73 did take, I think, the last place finisher more than 30 days to complete the race. Nowadays they're doing these things in like, eight and change. Yes. The first I did, it was like 20 days and change for the winter. For the winter, right. And now the record is guys named John Baker and finished it. So that would be a southern route even more difficult in eight days, 18 hours, 46 minutes and 39 seconds. I saw more recently a guy named Dallas Evie, who's part of, like, an Iditarod family. In 2014, he broke that record by 2 hours. Eight days, 13 hours, four minutes and 19 seconds. Oh, I thought Baker was a guy. No, and Baker, I guess, toppled another guy named Martin Booster, who he had the record for a little while, but yeah, it went from like, what did you say? 20 days for the winter? 1973? Yeah, 20 days. And now it's like just over a week. And within that week is a forced 24 hours furlough. So technically they might be able to do it in a week if they really tried. Yeah, 24 hours plus two eight hour breaks. I bet if it was up to the mushrooms, they would press on. Yes, because aside from those enforced brakes, they do typically press on. They'll stop every once in a while, like feed the dogs or something. Like that, but for the most part, they're not sleeping. They're staying awake, and they're just pushing forward. So they get sleep deprivation. They start to hallucinate. I read this really great New Yorker article called The White Wall, where the light from your headlamp, because you're traveling at night most of the time, the light from your headlamp is reflecting off of the fur around your parka, and it creates this kind of white screen in your field of vision, and it's, like, ripe for hallucinations. Wow. She just started to go a little batty. Yeah, for sure. I saw where this one lady who was a musher said that she slept while she was riding. Oh, yeah, that's what she said. She just taught herself to kind of hang on and off. Or maybe she just thought she was sleeping yeah, that's possible. And was freaking out on the snow blind. So we should mention mush. Apparently no one says mush anymore. Oh, as far as, like, the lingo. Yeah. Now they say, like, hike or all right. Or let's go. But mush originally meant, like, start going. Yeah, it's a French from Marshaw or marsh, yes, marsh. And they still call them mushers. It's a funny name. But apparently the mushers don't use the word mush when they're as far as, like, their command. Exactly. Yeah, that makes sense. So you want to talk about the history of this sport, this endurance sport, because there's really no way around it. The dogs are like peak performance. They're like LeBron James of dogs, all of them. Let's talk about the history of sled dogs, about the kind of dogs that are used for sled dogs. Like, most people, including me, assume that if you were riding around the snow on a sled, being pulled by dogs, you're probably being pulled by Siberian huskies, maybe. Or Alaskan Malamutes. Yeah. Or maybe Samoyed. Yes, perhaps. Thank you for being the one to say it. Why? Out loud. It's not the easiest one, just looking at it to pronounce. Would you say Samoid? Samoyed? Yeah. I watched the dog show the other day. That's why I love that they had who won? You know, I'd actually is how old I am. I fell asleep before. Okay. That's all right. Yeah, this is very fun. Watch. As long as you enjoyed yourself watching it. I want to go one year. Yeah, that'd be cool. I bet it is. Crazy partying the whole time. No, I think it would probably be a lot of fun to go see and cheer for dogs. Although I'm against dog breeding in general, so I probably shouldn't even go. What did you say? The Samoyed? The same. Oyed. And the Alaskan Malibu and the Siberian Husky. They are all AKC registered breeds. They're recognized by the American Kennel Club, and they used to pull sleds, especially Siberian huskies. There was a guy named Leonard oh, man, I can't remember his name. Sepola, I believe, is what his name was and he was the guy who first started racing Siberian huskies in Alaska and sleds. But if you go to Alaska today, you're going to find something called an Alaskan husky is typically the kind of dog that you're going to encounter as a sled dog. And this is like a mixed breed, it's a mutt breed. And they have been bred to just basically be mentally tough, physically sturdy, not too big, but also not too small. The thick coat, double coat. Yes. And not just quickness, but a strong inbred desire to run and pull stuff while they're running. Yeah, I saw this one guy called it, it's like they have a wanderlust. Like there's always some place else they'd rather be. Like they want to go over there. Yeah. Which is why when you're taking a break or something with your dogs on the editorod, you have to chain them down, whereas they're like, see you. And they also microchip them as well. They're tough dogs. I had a friend who had a husky and they are not easy. And this husky would get out and see you later for like two days. Yes. And he always came back. But he came back wearing like a Hawaiian shirt. Yeah, like a turkey drink. That would freak if my dog got out because my dogs are big dummies. They wouldn't know how to come back. Was this a pretty smart dog? Yes, I think the Alaskan husky is pretty smart generally. So it was an Alaskan husky? I think so, yeah. So Alaskan huskies are descended more from dogs called Inuit dogs and Eskimo dogs. And they are basically indigenous dogs to Alaska. They came over with the first humans who crossed the Beringland Bridge, right? Yeah. The dogs pulled them across that bridge. Probably not. Probably they did. Oh, they did? Yeah. So I saw that they didn't hook dogs up to sleds until this past millennia or the one we're in now. There was like 8800 or maybe 1200 when they were using sleds. Oh, really? That's what I saw. But I also saw that it goes back to time and memorial. Who knows? What I did see though, is that these dogs, these Inuit dogs and the Eskimo dogs were definitely hauling stuff like whale carcasses are huge parts of whale carcasses to be butchered back in town. They were hunting dogs. They were companions, they were protector dogs. They were just total butt kicking animals. They could stand temperatures well into the negative twenty s or thirty s or forty s degree Fahrenheit. Because that double coat. Yes. So the outer coat, I think, deflects the snow, and then they have the inner coat that is waterproof and insulates them. So when you see those dogs laying out in the snow, they're not cold. Right. Don't think, oh, poor dog laying in the snow. I mean, there can be problems, as we talked about with the Iditarod, when that one dog was buried. Yeah, they can also get frostbite. They can get frostbite though, depending. But yeah, for the most part, which I don't understand. Man, that's crazy. I was like, man, these checkpoints, they have like tents at the checkpoints. How big are the tents? I mean, what if more than one team has to put their dogs in the tents? And I was like, they're not in the tents? No, they put down hay. They might have a bale of hay that the musher has. And the dogs sleep on the hay in the snow and they cover their nose with their tails. They do, which is adorable. And at Kennels, for these dogs, some of them, they'll have like plastic barrels cut in half with a little hole for the dog to get in and out of when weather is really bad. But for the most part, yeah, especially if it's not snowing or windy. An Inuit dog or an Alaskan husky can just sleep outside on the snow. Exactly. They used to deliver the mail in Alaska in the late eighteen hundred s to early 1000 1900s. That was exclusively how the mail was delivered until the airplane became the primary mode of mail delivery. Yeah. And the last male dog in Alaska retired in 1963, so not too long ago. No. Pretty impressive. Yeah. Right before Hippies. Yeah. The dog didn't live to see Hippies. The police used them in the gold rush of the late eighteen hundred s. And of course, Alaska aside, they have long been used in Arctic and Antarctic expeditions. Yeah. There was actually a very famous Antarctic expedition in Japan where I think in the Antarctic expedition had to be abandoned and the Japanese researchers had to be evacuated by helicopter and they were like, sorry, dogs. Well, somebody will be back in a few days. We're going to chain you up here. Here's some food. Good luck. Fight over it. A year later a research team made it back to that outpost and they found two of the dogs were still alive, tyro and Giro. And they were brothers, which makes it even more awesome. It's amazing. And they became national heroes back in Japan. And I was like, well, yeah, of course they ate the other dogs. I read an article that said that there were no signs of cannibalism. Oh, wow. That they just hunted penguins and seals and stuff like that and managed to survive. Was it at the basis of the Paul Walker movie? Paul Walker. The Fast and the Furious. Same guy no longer with us too. No car wreck. Yeah. Was he a passenger? He was the passenger in that car wreck, wasn't he? No, I think he drove okay. He did have a passenger. What was it called? Apollo. Right, yeah. Which is he's not Japanese. No, but it was supposedly him. I think it must have been based on that or something. I haven't seen the movie. I got you. I think they thought an updated version would fare better. They're like who does everyone like Paul Walker. Exactly. They were used as war dogs in World War I and World War II hauling equipment. Search and rescue helped set up the Alaskan telegraph line around World War One. Yeah. And they also almost invaded Norway from the eastern coast of Canada. Yeah. They were attached to the 15th Mountaineering regimen of the United States Army. I think it would have been army for sure. And we didn't invade Norway, but had we, these dogs would have been there with us. Wow. Yeah. And by us, I mean specifically you and me, Chuck, because we were in the 15th. So you said that they are bred for not only endurance, but for their speed. And they actually have their feet have adapted to take on this terrain because a good sledder is that a sledder? Sure. All right. Good sledder has wide, flat feet, but they also have toes that are dense and together. You don't want splayed toes because stuff can get in between them. Yeah. So basically they have feet like hammers. It sounds like hammer toes, basically, but hammer feet. Yes. And the gender doesn't matter. Little lady dogs and little boy dogs are just as good, so gender isn't a big deal. Yeah. They're also big at trail breaking. Right. So if you want to go out and see if the ice is thick enough to cross, take a team of sled dogs. And they actually do this in Denali National Park. Yeah. And they do it ahead of the IATA ride. They send out teams to break the trails and make sure it's as safe as it can be. Right. And those trails, Chuck, were used for a very long time and still were. But then they started in, like, the 60s, say, maybe early seventy s, to be blazed more by snowmobiles. And this guy named Joe Reddington, Senior, was really sad to see the dog sled, the traditional sled, being replaced by the snowmobile, these manmade machines. And he said, you know what? We need to preserve this heritage. I'm going to start a race in the fashion of some of these old ones. There was this all Alaska sweepstakes that was much shorter. But, like, in the 1900s, people were using sled dogs a lot and actually using them, but then they fell out of fashion. So this guy, Joe Runnington, Senior, tried to preserve it by starting this race. Yeah. Didrothy Page, are they together or were they just fellow blushers? They were kindred spirits. Okay. Got you. So the first one they organized was a 50 miles race, right? Yeah. In like, the 60s, not like the 1100 miles journey that it's grown into today. They really stepped it up. Yes. And the sprints, they actually have sprint races. They have all different races. A sprint is a 30 miles sprint. Like, just go flat out for 30 miles. 30 miles? That's insane. It is. So there's this widely held misconception that the Iditarod was created to commemorate this very famous run that happened in 1925. Right? Yeah. The diphtheria outbreak they ran out of well, they needed to get medicine, and they used dogs to get medicine to the farthest reaches of Alaska. And like, nome, I think there's about to be a diphtheria outbreak. So that has nothing to do with it because that is all over the Internet, including on the Iditarod site. No, if you look at the I did a rod site, it says specifically what Joe Reddington's aim was. Wow. Yeah, I know. I saw that everywhere, including on our own how stuff works articles that people believe that they meant to commemorate it. And yes, this incredibly courageous emergency rescue operation of bringing vaccine, or at least antitoxin, I think is what it was to the children of known before this outbreak killed them all. It captured the world's imagination, and it did follow the same route, half of it, but the first half was delivered by train, and the Iditarod trail was starting to fall out of use by the time Joe Reddington and Dorothea Page came along and wanted to preserve it. So it's more coincidence than anything. They didn't intentionally create the Iditarod to to commemorate the diphtheria run from 1925. Well, if you go to New York Central Park, around 67th street on the east side, you can see a statue of Balto, the dog who was the lead dog on that serum run. They said, we're going to commemorate this in New York. Which I don't get, was like it would be in Alaska. Well, the reason why they did it there was because the whole country was paying attention. Much of the world was paying attention to this little tiny town up in Alaska was in real trouble. And this doctor had put all these telegraphs out, like, asking for somebody to bring them something, and the closest stuff was in Anchorage. And since this trek took like five days, people were covering it for the newspapers and people were reading about it all over the country. They got so jazzed up that New York was like, we're going to erect the statue of Balto. But that didn't explain why New York, they just got that excited. Yeah, that's the reason. Exactly why. So in the early ninety s. Ninety s. Well, let's take a break, actually, and then we'll talk about the so in the early 90s, as I was saying before they started, there's a ceremonial kick off they do now that's not a part of the actual race. So people can come out and cheer them on in Anchorage. Right? Yeah. So they have a big party, people line the streets, and they get all apparently it's a crazy scene because hundreds and hundreds of dogs and these dogs, I will say, I mean, we'll get to the downside, which is pretty grotesque if you ask me. But these dogs want to work, and they want to pull this sled. I don't know if they want to pull at 1100 miles, but they are sled dogs. And so when you get these highly energetic well, they're all kinds of breeds, but mostly the Alaskan husky is what they prefer. Mushers prefer. It's a crazy scene because they're not your average lap dog. Right. They're excited and they howl. Yeah, they have very shrill howls. A lot of them do, yes. Unless they have their voice box removed by their musher, which is the thing it can be. So they kick off an Anchorage, and the reason why it's just a ceremonial kick off, because there's usually not enough snow these days in Anchorage. Again, climate change. Yeah. So they used to go up to visita or was silly. I don't know how to pronounce it up there. Wasilia is it Wsilla? Yeah, that's Sarah Palin's. No, I know. I don't remember back then. Got you. And then they stopped getting enough reliable snow there, so they had to move it up even further to Willow. Zillow is, like, two and a half hours north of Anchorage. They always have snow there. That's their motto. Right. So they have the ceremonial parade of the dogs the day before, and then the next day is when they start. And, like, the race officially starts. Yeah. And it costs a lot of money to put on the race. And it's not cheap to be a musher with a sled team. You can put as much as, like, 20 grand into your sled team in the training, and it takes a long time. So some of these mushrooms have corporate sponsors. You can make money, too, like owning a kennel and leasing dogs out to other editorial contestants. Yeah. But yeah, I think corporate sponsorships definitely help quite a bit. Well, a lot of corporations have stepped away from it, though, in recent years as far as sponsoring the race, because of all the controversy surrounding it, which we will still get to. You got to be 18. You can't just be some dumb 14 year old or even a 17 year old, not even 17 and a half. You got to be 18, and you have to have completed some other qualifying races and placed I mean, we can get specific. If you want a Yukon Quest International sled dog race or two approved races, and you have to have at least 500 miles under your belt on those races and have finished in the top 75% or it says here, mind bending. Another way to qualify for an Idera rod race is to have been in a previous I did a rod race, which I guess yeah, I don't think that I guess once you're in your first one, then you're qualified. Are you sure? It wasn't like if you've won, then you get, like, a lifetime no, I don't think exemption, because that's what golfers do, is that right. Well, some of them, some of the PGA events, if you win that event, then you're automatically in for the rest of your life. Maybe not the rest of your life, but I think for the next five years or so, it depends on the then you get automatically qualified. That makes sense. Sure. All right, so what does the sled team look like? They look pretty good. You got your musher that's the guy standing on back telling the dogs what to do or the lady. Yes, that's right. I'm a gender neutral guy. Sure. And then you have a team of dogs and depending on what you're doing with the idea, in particular, you have to start, I think, with 16 dogs, right? Yes. And you have to finish with twelve no, twelve to 16. And you have to finish with ten. So you're can have up to six dogs die along the way and not get disqualified from the idittarod. Technically. Technically, yes. And in the lead, or the very appropriate named lead dogs. Yeah. These are your smartest, fastest dogs. I was reading about these dogs. These dogs are amazing dogs. Yeah. So smart that they will even disobey their owner if they're like. Dude, that's a cliff. Right. Don't tell me too much. I know you can't see because you're snowblind in the Ozzy fashion. Yeah. So just leave it to me to ignore your command and steer us to the left. And so when that lead dog starts to go, the dogs immediately behind them, the point dogs or the what are they called? The swing dogs. They also are called .2. I think they're the ones who actually get the rest of the team to turn with them. Yeah. And they call them swings because you can't cut it short. You got to swing wide around obstacles. And these dogs are smart enough to know to do that. So those are the first four dogs you have, are the lead dogs and the swing or point dogs behind them. You're going to have a couple of pairs of what are called team dogs. These dogs are just really good at pulling, working well with others. Yes. They're like the role player on the NBA bench. Yeah. They're the solid basketball players. They're the dream on greens. Sure. But they're not going to be starting an All Star game. No. But they may have enough spunk and spirit to get the rest of the team going. Yeah. They're draymond greens. Exactly. And then at the very back, right in front of the sled are the Wheels, the Wheelers. Yes. And they are the strongest of the bunch, supposedly. And those are the dogs. But the dogs are attached to the Sled or else you're in big trouble. You have a bunch of really fast dogs running together and a musher who's left behind. How funny would that be? It'd be funny to everybody else but the mushroom. Yes. And the sled connects to. The dogs through the main line or the toe line, right? Yes. Or the gang line, I think is the other name for it. And this is basically just a line that goes from the sled all the way up to the lead dogs. And all the dogs are connected to this thing. That's right. Then the dogs are connected to the lead line and they pull on that toe line via tug lines that are connected to their harnesses. That's right. And the dog is wearing a collar and a harness. They don't have rains like a horse. Right. They go on command. I have seen like a whip. They stopped using whips, but they used to fairly recently. Got you. They gosh, no more mush, no more whips. Right. Things are changing. Well, big time, as a matter of fact. And then you have the so the dog's collar is connected by a collar line, I think, right? Yes. So you have to condition these dogs. They don't come out of the womb ready to run 1000 miles. Yeah, they might want to. Yeah. They've got some genetics going on, for sure, but they definitely take some shaping as well. But you have to condition them over time from the time they're little pups to start them out, wearing the collar and the harness to get used to it, pulling little light things around the house. That's adorable. Yeah. To building up their endurance and their strength over time. Just like any endurance race. If you're a marathon or the same deal, you don't go out and run 26 miles. And you also have to understand verbal commands. Obscure ones, too, like hike. Not much, though. No one says much to a dog. Hike. Let's go. All right. All those mean let's go, right? Yeah. I think that's how they say, it easy if you want to slow down. And we couldn't decide. Is it g? I think it's g. I say g or come haw to go left or right. Haw is definitely haw. I agree with you on that one. Straight on. Yeah. And then, whoa. If you're going to stop, it makes sense, like, with a horse. And imagine straight on means keep on going. They also definitely need to learn to work together, which is not necessarily in every breed of dogs makeup. No. Dogs have alpha dogs and they're packed dogs, and you have a lead dog. That lead dog can fulfill that role. But you also want dogs that aren't, like, constantly jockeying for position, that they know their place and they're willing to work together with the other dogs. Yeah. Temperament is a big deal, for sure. And then when you're running the Iditarod and you're putting a sled team together, you want to pick dogs of a similar build, similar gate and speed. Yeah. You want them to basically move as one. And so a lot of the selection and your dogs that you put together for a team is going to have a huge impact on them. Yes. Like how they pair well together. Right, that makes sense. And not just temperamentally, but physically and in the way that they move as well. Yeah. And the dogs, they can be big, but generally, I think for the endurance races, you want to dog this between, like, 40 and \u00a360. And how old are they? Well, if you want to be a sled dog, you're probably at least two. But you would think, like, if you look at thoroughbred horse racing, those horses are retired by age three, I think maybe four. These dogs will pull sleds and compete in, like, races up until age ten. Yeah, not bad. And again, at Denali National Park, they get retired to age nine. They're eating a lot. They need to eat around 10,000 calories a day while they're doing these races. That's about \u00a32000 of food per team. And it's mostly just meat, but they have this stuff. It's sort of like hiking the Appalachian Trail. They have it flown ahead and dropped off at all these checkpoints. So the food in your bourbon is waiting there when you get there. Yeah. There was a guy. What was his name? Mackie. Lance Mackey. He was, like, the number one I did heroic Racer for several years. And he was not well liked among all Iditarod racers because he used to just do things like smoke pot while he was just riding along on the Iditarod Trail. I saw that drugs and alcohol was the thing with mushrooms. I don't know how widespread it is. Well, it's like marijuana is a banned substance now even. Apparently, they're talking about legalizing it in Alaska, and the Iditarod Committee is like, no, still can't smoke pot. Lance Mackie, we're looking at you. Right. But apparently, according to this New Yorker article great New Yorker article. The white wall. Check it out. Yeah. ESPN has a really good one, too. They said that he quit and did the race straight and still won once, I think, and then smoked tons of pot right afterwards to celebrate. Yeah. But along this trail, you were saying that the dogs eat mostly meat. They eat different types of meat. They also eat, like, nutritional supplements. And in The White Wall, the article, they describe what Dallas Evie is feeding his dogs at one stop, and it's like a four course meal. He starts with a broth with kibble and some nutritional supplements, and then they eat some fish steaks, and they have some beef, and then they finish it all off with chicken skin, like, all fat. That sounds delicious. Yeah. And the dogs are eating, like, ten to 14,000 calories a day, which is, like, ten times the caloric intake of an active dog of about the same size. Ten times just in a day? Yeah. Well, they're running, like, over 100 miles a day. It's crazy. They're wearing little doggy booties now because it's very rough on their feet, obviously running over this ice and snow and rough terrain, and a team will go through as many as 2000 pairs. It says 2000 Buddies. Maybe 1000 pairs. Yeah, 1000 pairs. What do you call, though? Would it be a pair before? Yeah, a dog pair would be four. I guess so. So 500 dog pair. We just created a new thing. It's like a baker's dozen. So 2000 Buddies, they will go through, but they're still going to get their feet beat up. Their paws beat up pretty bad. Well, yeah, because dogs perspire by panting and on the bottoms of their feet. So you can't just wear booties all the time. So one of the mushrooms things that they really have to be paying attention to is a good time to give the dogs feet a rest without the booties to let them basically perspire so they don't overheat. Yeah. And I get the feeling that if they're really hollowing and they see that they've lost a few booties, they're not like, oh, let me stop and put a fresh booty on. They're mushing forward. Sure. So, Chuck, let's take a break and we'll come back and talk about some other stuff you should know. All right. We've talked about dogs, we've talked a little bit about mushrooms. But one thing that makes a good musher is, granted, they are standing. They're not running well, sometimes they're running along, usually standing. But it's tough. I get the feeling it's like if you've ever been snow skiing or water skiing, it's hard on your legs. It's not like, oh, I'm just standing here taking a joy ride. Yeah. You have to stand up over bumpy terrain for hours and hours and hours, basically for eight days. Yeah. You got to be strong and have a lot of stamina in your own self. You also have to put up with again, you have to be mentally tough. You have to put up with the hallucinations and not make really bad decisions while you're on the trail and it's night and you haven't slept. And you also need to pack. Well, yeah, you want to bring everything. It's sort of like backpacking. Everything you need, but as light as you can make it. And there's actually stuff you have to bring. Sure. As part of the idea to survive, you got to have sleeping bag. Sleeping bag and axe, snowshoes, little cooking pot and fuel so you can boil water. Sure. And then most of them carry a gun. The Dallas TV guy said that he carries a 357 with them and he actually shot a moose with it that was charging him and his dogs a stoner. No, this is his longtime rival, the young upstart, the clean Liver, whose father, Straight Edge, was also I did a Rod winner from 2013. I think it very much seems like a family thing. I saw a lot of people with the same last names and then the other big essential gear is the sled itself. Yeah. Which there's not. Like you don't go to the official Dittered sled store and buy your sled and go, okay, I'm ready. You construct it yourself. Oh, really? Yeah, you definitely can. I'm sure there's sleds out there that you can buy. Sure. But you can also build them yourself. The Iditarod only requires that, quote, some type of sled or tobacco must be drawn. Right. So you want that to be light as well. Probably about \u00a3100 empty, more than twice that full, plus your own human body, which maybe drop a few pounds before the race. Sure. And again, I'm sorry to keep going to the same well, but the Dallas EVAT, the reason I keep mentioning him is he is really a hero. He's fine. Okay. I don't know enough about him to know whether he's my hero or not, but he has definitely reshaped the I did A Rod race with. Some of the stuff he's doing. One of the things he's doing is making Idittarod racers more athletic. Like if they're going up a hill, he'll jump off of the runners and run behind the sled rather than just get a ride with the dogs, which of course, increases your time. But it's also easier on the dogs. It's just you have to be not a tub, and you have to be able to run up inclines for eight days when you need to. Yeah, that can't be fun. Running in the cell is not fun. No, but it helps you win, and it's easier on your dogs. And if you win, you're going to get some dough. They split the money up. You can actually finish in last place and still get some money, but you're going to get obviously, the grand prize winner will win a nice fat purse in the six figure range. A really nice purse. Very nice. Then there are other little prizes along the way, like field day at elementary school. If you reach the first muster to go to the halfway point in odd number of years, it would be Iditarod itself. And then in cripple in the even number of years, you're going to get yourself the GCI. Dorothy Page Halfway award and $3,000 in gold nuggets. Gold nuggets? That's pretty neat. Yeah. Can you imagine? Every once in a while they're like, we didn't have the gold nuggets, but here's $3,000. I'd be like, I want my gold nuggets. Yes. $3,000 worth. You bite into it. It's authenticity. And you call the guy who gives you dinner cookie. Yeah, that's the Alaska way. What else? The top lead dog is going to take home the Lolly Medley Memorial Golden Harness Award. Of course, everybody knows that. And then there are other towns where if you're the first one to make it to, say, Onvik or Ruby, you'll get a seven course meal and $3,501 bills because it just seems like more. Yeah, not like gold nuggets, but $3,501 bills. Is pretty great. These are almost like joke gifts. Yes. Wells Fargo, which is $5,000 in pennies, right. Slows you down. Wells Fargo, which is one of the bigger, along with Exxon Mobile, the two biggest corporate sponsors of the Identitaride, offers the Red Lantern Awards the last place finisher. Yeah, I think that's from the widow's lamp. At the finish line they have the widow's lamp, which is a lamp that they leave burning until the last musher and team has crossed. Right. And that's from the old days, they would keep a kerosene burning for people that were still out there on the trails. Wells Fargo is the old timey multinational bank. Look at their homespun logo with the stage coach and it's pretty neat. They're just western cowboy bankers. Right. And it's funny you mentioned stage coach, too, because you're like, wow, this is crazy, using dogs to pull sleds. And you think, well, you do it with other stuff, horses. It's just using dogs as draft animals. Yeah, absolutely. That's all totally fine. So they have veterinarians on hand. This article said around 37. That was so weird. I know there's a little bit of weirdness in this article, Chuck, but they do have veterinarians on hand to examine them during the race, before the race, to make sure they're all healthy. But dogs die. Dogs can die of overexertion. Yeah. They can have trouble catching their breath. They can asphyxiate on vomit. They can fall through the ice is a big one. As a matter of fact, falling through the ice is not necessarily a death sentence, even when it's negative 40 degrees below. Yeah. Sometimes they'll run right out of that thing. Yeah. Because they're Alaskan huskies. Right. But there's this very famous story from 1984 there's I did herod winner named Susan Butcher, and she won multiple times, but her team in 1984 was let out after falling through ice by her two lead dogs. Pulled the rest of the team out just like one dog at a time until the whole team had made it out of the ice water. Amazing. And continued on. The ice water kept going. Yeah. And then the next year that same poor lead dog got kicked by a moose and they didn't finish that year. I believe it had to recuperate. He did had to recuperate for a year. I believe 144 dogs have died since the first race. In the past few years they haven't had any deaths, but generally one or two dogs are going to die. 2009 was a bad year, one of the worst and most recent years. There was like, I think, six dogs that died that year, 2000, I think eleven or twelve. There was one dog that died, but it died terribly. He died from being asphyxiated by the snow after he was left at a checkpoint by his musher, in the hands of the local vets at the checkpoint. And they tied him up and the weather got bad and no one brought them in. And a snow drift just built over the dog. He couldn't go anywhere and he suffocated in the snow. That was a big deal. Yeah. Peter actually had to apologize. They condemned the musher. They said that they just left this dog no. Like they left them officially. No, but Peter didn't say that. Peter said they just left this dog behind. Get it right, Peter. And they had a lawsuit brought against them and they came out and apologized. Actually, we know it wasn't on you. You left them in the care of somebody else. Our bad. And they said the person said that the apology was weak. If you're going to agitate, even if it's for animal rights, you should agitate correctly. No. Agreed. Like, get your facts straight before you agitate. You know, there's enough there sure. That you can get your facts straight and still agitate just as effectively. Yeah. We're talking about dehydration ulcers, hypothermia, heart problems. And let's talk about those ulcers. Chuck there was a study from Oklahoma State University of a decent number of sled dogs on the Iditarod trail that found a lot of them had anemia because they had stomach ulcers and they were bleeding slowly and developing anemia as a result. And they got stomach ulcers from being fed aspirin and anti inflammatory drugs like Advil to keep them going, then keep their joints from hurting. And the veterinary studies suggested that the dogs be fed an acids to combat the ulcers. So they're being driven 1000 miles, 1100 miles over eight days. They're given drugs to keep their joints from hurting. They're getting ulcers from the drugs, they're getting anemia from the ulcers. And this vet study said that they should be given an acid. Yeah. One of the vets, Scott Moore, he's a volunteer for the race a few years ago, said he saw dogs with tornadoes, dehydration diarrhea, hypothermia, hyperthermia, inflammation in the wrist and soreness in the shoulders from the harnesses. I didn't know much about this. I just saw it on the news every now and then I thought, oh, neat, these working dogs out racing. But I'm going to go ahead and say, no more Iditarod. Shut it down. Yes, you're killing dogs for the entertainment of people. I know it's rare, and I know 99% of these mushrooms really care for these dogs and care for their well being and do all they can to ensure their safety. But to me, if dogs are dying at all in training, in the race, after the race, then you just shouldn't do anymore or at the very least, shorten the race or do something to ensure that these dogs don't die ever. So there's a couple of schools of thought. PETA is very much opposed to the Iditarod and dog sled racing in general. They're like, just don't hook a dog up to a sled. That's our stance. Now, are they against recreational sledding? They're against all kinds of sledding. That's what I couldn't find. If you had like six dogs and you'd sled it over to your friends and like they were your family dogs. Yeah. Peter says, don't do that. Okay. I thought it was just competition. There's a group called the Sled Dog Action Coalition. Yes, they are opposed to the Iditarod, but they don't have a problem with humane and well done recreational mushing. Right. The Humane Society of the United States opposed to the Iditarod, but they don't have a stance on mushing whatsoever. But Peter says don't use the dog as a draft animal, even for your own recreation. But if you'll notice, the one common thread is that all these groups are opposed to the Idittarad itself. They are saying, like, even if you have vets at every checkpoint, apparently the mushers can overrule the vet ruling. If a vet like this dog needs to come out, the musher can be like, get lost. And the vet doesn't have any recourse. And that's totally well within the rules. But even if you do have vets looking after them. And even if PETA has successfully promoted change and the idea Rod is credited for really facing up to a lot of the problems that the dogs face and dealing with them and having like a very low tolerance for animal cruelty. Especially the very fact that you're hooking up animals to a sled and driving them 1100 miles over eight days is in and of itself. To a lot of critics. Inhumane. Yeah. For the entertainment of people even take that away for whatever reason, it's inhumane. Well, take it away. But it's not like the old days where you needed to deliver the mail serums. Right. I mean, it's purely for entertainment at this point, or glory. And I know it's tradition and people that are into this are going to say, like, you could do anything these days. Definitely this is a proud old tradition. We've moved to Alaska for a reason. Stay out of my business. Right. And they definitely do take that stance, for sure. But that's not to say that mushers are cruel, awful people. By all accounts. Most of them are very good to their animals because they want them to perform well. They are like family to them in most cases. But you still hear about these terrible things that happen in the training. And it's not just the race itself, it's the training. It's the breeders, the breeders they still call animals. There's one guy named Frank Winkler. Two time I did a ride racer. He was charged with 14 counts of cruelty to animals when an animal control officer found a crate of dead and dying puppies in his truck. He said he couldn't afford to take him to the vet. So they'll call the dogs, like if you have a deformity, if you're just not good enough, they will still kill. That's what calling means, kill the puppies. And they don't call them by injecting them with sodium penthol or some gassing them. A lot of kennels even like professional kennels will shoot them and the Iditarag committee that's within their rules. Like you can shoot a dog to cull it. Culling is fine and how you call it is okay. Apparently beating a dog to death is not really acceptable. That's what Frank Winkler did. But he did, he shot some and then I guess he ran out of bullets and started using an axe handle and even I did a rod racer. And that's the problem with the kennels. That there are a lot of kennels out there that don't treat their dogs very well. They don't feed them enough. They treat them fairly and humanely and just the very fact that the cold dogs that aren't good enough is reprehensible to a lot of people. Yeah, me included at the US. Me too. There's a part of me that I'm like this is not my thing that's up in Alaska. But dogs belong to humanity. Well yeah, it's like when we did the bull fighting thing. You can take your tradition and stick it where the sun doesn't shine. Yeah. And again culling isn't something that all breeders do. All kennels do many of the dogs now that aren't capable or adopted out to loving families which is great. But culling is still a part of the culture in some kennels. Right. The US crab Lunic Kennel in Aspen, Colorado say that as many as 35 dogs have been killed annually by gunshot to the head. And the manager said culling dates back hundreds of years is nothing new. It's part of the circle of life for this dog. Sled dog. The circle of life. The nine millimeter of the brain is part of these eight weeks old. Wow. It's part of the circle of life. What he said Chuck. A lot of this stuff is reserved for the Iitarad specifically and the kennels that supply dogs for the Iditarod. Yeah but just having a sled dog in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing. Or even using a dog for a sled dog is not necessarily a bad thing. I don't think I take a hard line as Peter maybe like if you want to recreationally much there is a long great history of it. I have no problem with it because these dogs do love to run, they love to pull and that's their job. But I just can't get behind endurance racing if these dogs are being injured or if they die from it. It's just my opinion. I know a lot of people disagree. We don't put opinions in here much. But one argument I don't want to hear is that we should shut down all endurance racing for humans in because humans can get injured and die. The key difference here is humans have free will and they elect to do so. Big difference between animals and humans. It's just not a comparison I think you should make. Okay, well, if you want to know more in the meantime about the Iditarod, you can go watch it. You can go to Iditarod.com, I believe, and track the racers. And you can also read how the Idittarod works on how Stuff works by typing those words in the search bar@howstepworks.com and search bar. It's time for listener mail. Hey, guys, I'm a registered dietitian. I realized I spent a lot of my day talking about the three things in my email title, which was poop. I listened to the Poop podcast on the way to work today and really enjoyed it. As someone who regularly discusses poop and digestion, it's great to hear it on a podcast. Also, I think you guys should do a breastfeeding episode. Breastfeeding is super fascinating. So thanks for being great in car entertainment. I came across this gym of a conversation a few years back because you guys were asking for different names for taking a poop, and she said someone had written, name your poop after a movie on a bathroom wall. And of course, a plentiful list ensued. And here are some of my favorites. The Great Escape. By the way, we heard from a lot of people with great names. Children of the corn. The exorcist. Operation Dumbo Drop. E t. The Extraterrestrial. I don't get that one. I didn't get the excess this either. Rosemary's Baby. Not bad. Okay. The Hurt Locker. Mud. Gross. Apocalypse now. Not bad. Easy Rider. And there will be blood. Gross. So gross. The first part, there's actually two emails. The first part was from Sarah, and then the poop movies was from Reed. Sarah. I don't want you to be associated with that. What was Sarah saying then? She was the one that said that breastfeeding would be good and she's a dietitian and talks a lot about poop. We should do a breastfeeding one again. It's going to be a horn. It's nuts, but we could do it. Sure. We just have to research it because there's no article on how Stuff works. I think about it. It's worthwhile. Okay, sounds good. But if you want to get in touch with us in the meantime, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffychnow. You can send us an email to stuff podcast@howstepworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howtofworks.com." | ||
421f60bc-53a3-11e8-bdec-e3fd27b8bf2b | How Peyote Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-peyote-works | Josh and Chuck have tackled a lot of drugs on the show, but peyote has loomed like a bad Jim Morrison poem. Learn all about this plant today. | Josh and Chuck have tackled a lot of drugs on the show, but peyote has loomed like a bad Jim Morrison poem. Learn all about this plant today. | Thu, 15 Aug 2019 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=15, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=227, tm_isdst=0) | 39093462 | audio/mpeg | "Hello, Maine in Greater New England. Hello. We're coming to see you guys in Portland, and we can't wait. We would love to see you there. Yup. We'll be at the State Theater on August 30, and if you're interested, you can get tickets and information@sysklive.com.com. Throw some lobster at us. Welcome to Stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there. There. And why haven't best record? No, hold on. No, it's not crooked rain. Crooked Rain. Crooked Rain. The one between them with Summer. Babe. Oh, no, that was the first one that's slanted and enchanted. Okay. That was their first album. What a classic, man. I think that's their best one, is it not? Well, Crooked Rain gets sighted a lot of times as sort of the peak pavement slanted is for fans of, like, the early sloppy days, lo Fi, which we both love. Sure. I like Wawi Zawi because it was so strange and weird. I haven't heard that one very much. It's great. Okay. They're all great. I like them even right down to the last one. That's good. The Weird Polka experimental album that they came out with, they announced they're playing another couple of reunion shows at a festival in Portugal. And we're in touch with Mr. Bob Nastanovich. And I texted him, I was like, do I have to go to Portugal? Is there anything brewing here in the States? Because I'll go. What do you say? He said, nothing as of yet. He's like, so go with God. Are you going to go to Portugal? Maybe. If that's the only chance to see Pavement again, sure. Because I want to go to Portugal anymore. Okay. You have frequent fire miles to use a ton. Do it. You totally should. And drink some port while you're there, too. Yeah. You know, my friend is opening up a wine shop in Kirkwood that is very not exclusively Portuguese, but that's where she's from. Oh, cool. Is going to be featuring a lot of Portuguese wines. That works really well with this episode. Chuck. Great. As we'll see later on. But just put a pin in Portuguese wine. Okay. For later. All right. So you started off by saying the words wowey's aui, because we're talking about peyote, which is an elucinogen. That's right. But from what I've seen, one of the oldest hallucinogens people were eating mushrooms all over Europe, north central Western Europe, for a very long time, sometimes accidentally, which is hysterical. But people have been eating peyote for a really long time, too, as we'll see, thousands and thousands of years. And as a result, it got a pretty interesting little history to it, both ancient and modern. Yeah. And really all it comes down to is it's a spineless cactus that has a very bitter taste. That's not nice. It never stays up for itself. But it is a spineless cactus, which means well, if it's a spineless cactus, that means that desert animals probably love to eat it. They don't, because there's a really bitter taste. And that bitter taste is an alkaloid called mescaline. Right. And it's a sign, it's a nature sign saying, don't eat me. Right. It just so happens that if we humans eat that particular alkaloid, we say things like, WOWe's, alley. That's right. Right. So, yeah. Let's go. It is native to Mexico in the southern US. It is technically the scientific name is Lofa fora nice, william C. E. Now, we decided that two eyes means you pronounce both. Right. You have to go E. E. And it grows in northern Mexico and South Texas, right along the border there. Sure. Peyote knows no borders. That's true. And it loves the rocky limestone. And in historical documents, it had a range all the way up to New Mexico, perhaps. And we've either changed that with human interaction or that was just wrong. Right. But it definitely grows along the border. Growing up, did you ever see those little tomato pin cushions? Yeah. Looks sort of like that, but it's not red. Yeah, I get and it doesn't have pin sticking out of it. No. Although you could stick a pin in it. Sure. You could put a bird on it. It'd be very disrespectful to the spirit within the peyote, though. That's right. It probably wouldn't like that very much. That's true. Like a little peyote voodoo doll. Sure. So, like we said, the mescaline is to tell animals, stay away. Don't eat me. They also think it's possible that it has something to do with communications between plants. It may do a number of different things, actually. But one of the things about peyote is it has this reputation, a very mystical reputation, not just because it's a psychedelic and a lucidgen, but because it is really hard to find until it's not. It's got this reputation where you'll be looking all over for peyote. It grows in the rocky soil, and typically it'll grow under, like, a creo soap bush or a mesquite tree or something like that. Yeah. Nurse plant. Right. But you could have looked all over underneath a creosote tree or whatever, and you walk away, and then you're like, I'll just go back and look again. And there it is, just staring you right in the face. Trip over a rock, and you land on it. Right. There's the peyote. So it's got this kind of neat little reputation for hiding and playing hide and go seek with you. And then it's like, okay, all right, go ahead and eat me and trip. Trip. I was going to say something else. Like I said, it's not red. They can be brighter green, but they can also look sort of bluish, which is interesting. That nice. Like steel blue green. Yeah. It's a pretty color. It is. And they grow usually in clusters with multiple plants, but sometimes you can find them individually, and I think they're very pretty. They have little pink, white and yellow flowers. They grow very low to the ground. And it looks like a little stubby. Yeah, a little stubby tomatillo with pincushion. Yeah. But it's not completely round. It has, like, sections. Yeah, it's almost cylindrical a little bit, too. Yeah, I see what you mean. You know what I mean? We're on podium right now. Everyone a little bit sorry. That's not true. So this plant in particular has a weird history of getting confused with other plants because some of the other plants that go around it are also consumed by some of the indigenous tribes in the area and have been. But there's like a type of peyote plant that it's not psychedelic. It just makes you kind of sleepy. Sure, there's something called a plant that has miscal beans that are intoxicants of their own type, but they can also kind of kill you. There was a while there where peyote was called both Lafafora Williams E and Anholonium Luini. Right? Both have two eyes on the end and then somebody's like, no, it's the same plant. So there's a lot of confusing horticultural history associated with I wonder why with peyote. Am I right? It was playing tricks, is what it was. People have used it not only for religious purposes, although that's a large part of it, which we'll get to in depth, but it does have some anti microbial properties. I've seen that in really low doses that certain tribes have used it for indigestion, to treat wounds, to give them energy, to work on a computer for days on end, your hangovers. And like anything psychedelic, technically you can use it to help treat mental illness. Right. But they don't study that stuff in the United States. So, again, it's always very hard to think about any sort of ecstasy or magic mushrooms or anything without studying, like, clinical studies. And they did study for a while, mesculing, once they isolated it from peyote, like LSD was in the 50s until LSD came along. Right. And they used it because they thought that maybe you could glean information about the root cause of schizophrenia by giving mescal into people with schizophrenia. But they found out it was too unreliable, people's experiences were too different, and there was no kind of structure that the individual followed. And plus, they found out people with schizophrenia could tell the difference between their delusions and delusions brought on by mescaline, which is pretty interesting. Oh, wow. Yeah. And when was that? In the Guess pre 50s, because LSD came along in the 50s, so thirty S. Forty S, wow. Yeah. So when you harvest peyote, you cut off that stem really close to the ground, and they're known as buttons. They look like I guess I've described as pincushions, but they look like little buttons. It makes sense to call them buttons. Yeah. And here ed wrote this article, The Grabster. He said a typical trip is four to six buttons. And I thought that seemed like a lot of peyote, because I'd seen photos of some buttons that were, like, as large as the palm of your hand, and I'm trying to imagine eating eight things that big, tomatoes that large, that's a lot of tomatoes. But then I looked at other pictures, and I guess those were, like, just super big peyote buttons, and most of them were a couple of inches in circumference. Were they that big? I thought they were more like the size of a quarter or something like that. I think between a quarter and, like, a silver dollar, maybe, or a shilling for our friends in the UK. Is that a pence? Is that a quid? How does that all work? Emails about that? No, that's okay. The shilling is like, 20 pence. I think you can go on record. Yeah. Okay. But four to six buttons, like you said, it's really bitter, so a lot of times people won't want to eat it. There are all different kinds of ways you can make the tea with it, and we're not giving you a how to. Right. But it's as simple as that. This is how people take peyote. Sometimes they'll grind into a powder and snort it or get into a pill. I saw that you can smoke it, too, when it's dried and powdered. Oh, yeah. I've never heard of that before, but I ran across it. But here's the thing. If you're down south of the border and you're out hunting for peyote, and if this is something you want to do, more power to you. But be respectful of the plant. Don't go digging it out with a shovel by the roots, because you're going to kill the plant. Yeah. That's extremely disrespectful to a peyote plant, especially in the tradition of, like, groups, indigenous tribes that take peyote for ritual purposes. You do not kill the plant. You don't cut off the peyote button so low that the roots can't regenerate, and you don't dig the plant out. Yet despite that, people do it all the time. Sure. And then that combined with feral pigs who like to eat it and trip. Do they really trip? I don't know. They definitely like to eat peyote. So probably those two combined have really kind of put a hurting on peyote and its range. So people who are, like, conscious of this stuff say, well, you can also get mescaling out of what's called the San Pedro cactus, which grows up in the Andes, and that's not threatened or vulnerable. Go get it there. Yeah, just go down in Peru. Don't stop in Mexico. Keep going south. Should we take a break? Let's take a break. Charles all right, let's take a break. And we're going to talk a little bit about that masculine right after this stuff. You should know Josh and Shawn stuff you should know, Go, that is the primary psychedelic chemical, and that was synthesized what did you say, 1918 or 19? 1919. By Ernest Spa. Ernst. Ernst Spit. That's how you'd say the A with an Oomlo. Yeah. So you Go. Ernst Smith, an Austrian chemist. Sorry, Ernst. I do like your name. Who. I did a little research. This is kind of the thing he did. It's big enough, don't you think? Sure. The guy isolated mesculin, for Pete's sake. Oh, no, I'm not knocking it. I thought it was going to be like and you know what else he did? Right. And this is kind of what he did. He's known for that. Right. Like Joseph Priestley, who was like, I discovered nitrous oxide, and I also discovered ten other things. Then start on Beverly Hills 902. I know. Yeah. Have you ever seen my shirt? It's the Judas Priest logo. But it says Jason Priestley. It's pretty great. Is his face anywhere in it, or is it just it just looks like the Judas Priest logo, but it says Jason Priestley. Nice. I got to see that. I like some of those shirts. It's one of the good ones. The one I used to hate was when Farfig Newgen was the big thing and the hippies would wear the Effing Groovin. Yeah, I hated those. Me, too. All right, so the following year, pharmaceutical company Merck is like, oh, we'll just turn this into pharmaceutical. Of course, they did start to get studied and released, and things were going along fairly swimmingly for it. It's a phenythylamine, which makes it different, actually, from LSD and psilocybin, which are tryptophan. They're in the Indole family. Phenylethylamine is the family that mescaline is in and MDMA is in. And it's no coincidence that MDMA and mescaline are in the same family, because the chemist who created MDMA, Alexander Shulgan oh, yeah. He was inspired to create something like mescaline from a mescaline trip he went on. Imagine being like, oh, I really like that psychedelic I just took. Let me tinker around and make my own version of it. And he created MDMA as a result. It's kind of an homage to mescaline. He created MDMA in twoCB. Yeah. Well, what masculin does, it binds to the serotonin receptors in your brain, and just like LSD or magic mushrooms and stuff, it's going to cause a sense of loss of the cell for ego and Ayahuasca. We did one on that, too. Right? Yeah. And the interesting thing is Ed describes a cross tolerance with other psychedelics. So, in other words, if you take a bunch of masculine, it will build up a tolerance for LSD, let's say. Right? Yeah, I guess it hits the same receptors. Yes. Which is, I guess, a problem if you take a ton of LSD. I have a friend from college, I won't name him, but one of the funniest quotes he has about the old days is, I've definitely forgotten I've taken acid and taken more acid. That's a T shirt right there too. That's deep. That's an 80s dead T shirt. Remember that? Yeah, I remember. Do you have one? No. Okay. No. Mine said Funk and groovin. So when peyote binds to those serotonin receptors, some of the cells that it binds to are responsible for something called nausea. Oh, sure. And one of the hallmarks of a peyote trip is you very typically feel nauseous and vomit for a couple of hours sometimes leading up to the trip. And it's really slow to cross the blood brain barrier. So it takes hours to come on. Oh really? Yeah. Okay. But it also has a real slow burn, a long burn to it. Right. So compared to other trips it's actually a very long lasting trip, sometimes 12 hours as opposed to say six, 8 hours for LSD or mushrooms or something, 12 hours is the trip you're going to be on on peyote. It's also like really well known for being extremely visual and having some interesting body feelings to it too. Yeah, like you can feel nauseous, you can feel euphoric. You can feel euphoric and nauseous but you're going to feel it in your body as well as have a lot of like really trippy visuals, I think. Didn't they take peyote in The Doors movie? Yeah, and that's a really good thing. He vomited, I think. Right or Meghan and did. That's where the whole Lizard King thing came from. They think they took peyote in the desert. But it's also related to peyote in a different way too, isn't it? The Doors? Right. Because Aldous Huxley wrote Doors of Perception. He was a big musculin guy, wasn't he? That book was about his first Mescaling trip. Right, and that's where The Doors got their name. Yeah. And then Jim Morrison went on to write a bunch of bad poetry. Oh man, I thought American Prayer was one of the coolest albums of all time. I bought his poetry book. I was, you know, I was way into The Doors for like everyone for a brief time in college. I bought the book and the poetry books and everything. Did you ever listen to the album? Yeah, I thought it was all great. Now though. I haven't. I'm kind of like it's not great poetry. Although maybe it is. What do I know? I'm no poet. You didn't even know it. So there's one other thing about Algorithm huxley, too. He coined the term psychedelic. Oh really? And he coined it after his first mescalin trip. Interesting. So Mescaline not even just peyote. Mescaline has given the world MDMA, the Doors and the word psychedelic. I'm going to have to tell Noel that because movie crush listeners will laugh at this. Noel describes about 40% of movies as psychedelics. Oh yeah. I'll bet he described Mandy as psychedelics in me. Oh, totally. I mean you could not describe it as psychedelic. Yeah, absolutely. All right, so let's talk about the history a bit. They've done some carbon dating. I read this one study of these peyote buttons at an archeological dig site that said that use it suggested that you went as far back as 5700 BCE and that those buttons still had mescaline in them. Crazy. That would work. Can you imagine tripping on 7700 year old peyote buttons? Wouldn't that be something that you shouldn't do? Well, I wonder if that makes it weaker or if it's, like, a fine wine, if it's, like, strap in. This is 7000 year old masculine. Yes. Can you imagine, like, a bottle of wine from Thomas Jefferson seller, which apparently that stuff is not very good to drink. It's just like a flashy thing that super rich people want on their shelf. So the name, though, they think is derived from can you pronounce that? Nawatal. Nawatal. It's the southernmost group of the Aztecs. Okay. But the word they use was payetul. P-E-Y-O-T-L peatol. Payotal. Payotal. Payotal. Yeah. I think we got there. And they don't know what it means, but some people think it might mean the word glistening. But not everyone is on that train. You could easily lose the meaning of a word for glistening. Sure, it's a high priority word. No, but it's a beautiful word. But the first mention of Westerners encountering peyote is in this 16th century study called the Florentine Codex. And there was a Franciscan missionary who wrote it named Bernardino de Sahagun. And he wrote, and this is in the late 1500s on him who eats it or drinks it, it takes effect like mushrooms. You know what I mean? Also, he sees many things which frighten one or make one laugh. There you have it. Pretty straightforward stuff. Yeah, for sure. But it definitely goes to show, like yeah. People have been eating mushrooms in Europe for a very long time. Yeah. So over time, from the 16th century onward in North America, people would come in contact with tribes that had, like, peyote rituals and they would try peyote themselves and they'd be like, this is crazy, this is great, or, I puked my brains out. This is awful. And so all these stories kind of started to come out and then over time, peyote use really diminished. They used to be very widespread, not just where it grew, but even beyond its range. Like, indigenous tribes in the area used to trade. So people who took peyote ritually even after Colombian contact, was pretty extensive. But then once, like, the missionaries took hold and European governments took hold, that really got outlawed to where it was basically boiled down to one tribe called the Hui Chal. Actually looked that one up. Is it we or who? It's Hoy, but the Chol is the one you emphasize, so it's Hoychol. Beautiful, Charles. That's even better than Toyota. At least that's what the YouTube told me. The YouTube? Am I saying the one with the spiral? Yeah. Is that one accurate? I'm pretty sure they're mostly accurate. Okay. Hoichol. Hoichol. Yeah. Okay. So the Hochel are very well known for being the tribe most associated with peyote ritual use these days, but they're also very much opposed to Western encroachment, sometimes violently so. But I think those two are very much interconnected. Yeah, I thought it was really interesting. I didn't know that. I mean, instead of getting rid of all the things that we did and just swapping it out for Christianity like they were being told to do, they would just say, hey, man, I'll incorporate some of your Christian ideas right into our peyote ceremony. Yes. And not just them, but the Native American church, which we'll talk about later. They did basically the same thing. That's right. So you've got a lot of peyote use that kind of went down to one tribe, and in a weird way, it rebounded. No, it shrank. And then it contracted eventually even larger than before to where it is today. Yeah. Peyote today is far more widespread than it was a thousand years ago. Wow. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. Well, part of it because of American tourists. That's definitely part of it. And American tourists were turned on to peyote by a guy who was a UCLA anthropology student back in the 60s named Carlos Castaneda. That guy did you ever read any Castaneda's books? No, but he has been sort of exposed as a fraud and a con man in most academic circles. Will they call him that right, in academic circles. Now, if you step over a few rings to the New Age circle, the guy is a legend. Sure. And he wrote these books that were supposedly ethnographic studies about Don Juan Mattis. And this is where Portuguese wine comes in. Chuck. Yes. Did you read this any Carlos Castnate? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Back in the day. Good stuff. Yeah, it was very interesting. I only remember I mean, I'd heard of them, but from the Bongwater Song. What is that? They had a song called Folk Song where she talks about went somewhere looking for that Carlos Castinato experience. Oh, Bongwater's. Name of band. Yeah, I got you. Yeah. That's a great name for a band. They were great. So Carlos Castaneda, he created these ethnographic studies that he turned into books that sold, like, 10 million copies. And it was him being indoctrinated into the peyote way of life by a peyote magician, a Yakui Indian named Donoan Mattis. Right. And the Portuguese wine comes in because his longtime companion is convinced that Don Juan didn't exist and that Carlos Castaneda made them up and actually named him after Mateus, the Portuguese wine that she and he used to drink together all the time. Wow. But she's saying, like, that doesn't mean he's a fraud, that he combined all these lessons and everything that he learned from his own peyote trips to kind of create this character that was like almost a spirit character, and everybody said, no, he's a fraud. This was put out there as actual anthropological fieldwork. Right. And he basically lied and made all this stuff up and was exposed later on by some colleagues who really went to great trouble to expose them and undermine them because he sold $2 million, 10 million books, still selling them to it's. Like that guy. Remember that big controversy like 20 years ago, or maybe not that long, when Oprah exposed oh, James Fry. Yes. She had him on the show. A Million Little Pieces. Is that it? Something like that. I read that book, I really enjoyed it, and then found out afterward about the fact that a lot of it was made up and I didn't care. I was like, well, fine, call it a novel, then I enjoyed it. Yeah, but Oprah really did not let that one go. Remember she brought him back on. She went on TV, like, vouching for the guy, or not vouching, but essentially you're sort of vouching if you recommend his book, I guess. But really, I don't know. I think the follow up episode was unnecessary and really put the guy in the stocks, basically. Yeah. I just remember thinking at the time, he just should not have called it a memoir, just called it a novel. And not to diminish anyone's experience in rehab, which I think was the problem. Might have offended people. I think so. I mean, he basically made up some stuff about a real life tragedy that people go through. Was that 20 years ago? I don't think it was 15. I think it was like 15 because it was right before I worked here, is when I worked for the chicken killers. We'll settle on 15 then. So, peyote, as far as Westerners go, it was really the 1800s. It's effects were first discussed by a doctor in Texas named Jr. Briggs, who apparently just kind of stumbled upon it when he met someone from the Kiawa tribe who sold him some buttons, tried it out, wrote about it in 1887. Get this. He wrote that it was a respiratory stimulant and his heart started racing. And within a year the company, Park Davis from Detroit, had a peyote tincture out that they said, we'll replace the addictive cocaine for a respiratory stimulant. And it was mescaline. Yeah, mescaline tincture. You just dropped some mescaline. Well, it used to be the Wild West, didn't it? Yes, but this is Detroit. Well, the wild Midwest. I've got one more story about this, too. All right? Park Davis out of Detroit, alistair Crowley, I don't know how he found out that they had this masculine tincture, but he shows up at their door in Detroit. You know Alistair Crowley, the occultist? Sure. He shows up and knocked on the door with his scepter and he goes, I hear that you have some peyote tincture. Do you mind whipping me up? A special batch, and they did, and he said it was like the best peyote tincture he's ever had. Really? Yeah. Out of all the peyote tinctures, I guess he had a lot of them. I believe it. He wrote a book called, like, the Diary of a Mad Drug Feed or something like that. So, I mean, he knew what he was talking about. He I bet that's a good read. But the chemist at a pharmaceutical company whipped up a special batch of peyote tincture for him because he showed up on the doorstep. I wonder if he goes by the lab and he's like, guys, this is for Alistair Crowley. Link eye contact. Yeah, it's a little extra mustard in this one. And there was a pharmacologist named Louie Lewis or Lewis Lewin, and he was the first to publish an analysis of these alkaloids that we were talking about. This was an 1894. So stuff was going on back then in the late 18s that they didn't quite understand, but they were writing about it. Sure. There's also an article from the Aspen Times, and I think 1896, that's just a newspaper article about some white pioneer types who found some peyote buttons from running into an indigenous tribe and took them in Aspen, Colorado. Yeah. Thompson eventually would settle. Exactly. That's pretty funny. All right, let's take another break here, and we'll talk about the Native American church right after this. Stuff you should know, Josh, and Sharp stuff you should know. So check. There's something really weird about peyote in modern times, and that is that the Native American church takes peyote. But the Native American church is made up of plenty of tribes that never were exposed to peyote. Traditionally, that was all a byproduct of the forced relocation and reservation settlements that the American government forced upon them. Right. So there'll be like, a Native American tribe in Canada that can take this. Canada is nowhere near the natural range of peyote. Right. And it's not like it was traded all the way up into Canada back in the day. It literally came out of this intermingling in the Oklahoma Territory. And what makes it even more interesting to me is that you can trace it back to basically one man named Kwana Parker, who was a Comanche chief, who was a bad, a dude. He was like one of the last holdouts and then managed to go from basically at war with white settlers in the American government to one of the leading politicians of the Oklahoma Territory who actually bridged the gap between the white government and the Indians who had been relocated somehow. Rather than just being he went from bitter enemies to, okay, let's figure out how to do this the right way. But he was the one who introduced peyote to the Oklahoma Territory. Yeah, he went to Mexico in the 1880s and I guess brought a bunch back with him. This stuff is great. He said. Let me just put a little bit of this in my hat and I'm going to ride back with it. But the Native American church became official in 1918, which I thought was interesting, like right around the same time that Mescaline was synthesized. And no one really knows how many people they have because it's not like Ed says, it's like not a tightly knit organization. It's more like a set of principles. Sure. And the first thing that came to my head is it's probably because they're not after anything. Sure. So, like, the Southern Baptist Convention is very everyone knows exactly how many members there are there because it's very strict and formal and codified because I imagine they have an agenda of some sort. Sure. I don't think there's anywhere near the same agenda as among the Native American church, but they do show the fact that they are a Christian organization. Oh, yeah. That's as far as I know, they are Christian based peyote church. Interesting. Yeah. Well, the other interesting thing is you said because it's sort of a mix of all different kinds of tribes and peoples that they have just sort of settled on. Like, it's not like if they use drums in a ceremony or a rattle in a ceremony. It's for that specific tribe. They're more like generic Native American items. Right. Yeah. It's almost like this is yeah. There's no better way to put it, really. Or even if they didn't use TPS in their tribe, they will have the peyote ritual ceremony in a TP right. No matter what representation, part of its representation. But also it was just a practical measure, too, because on the reservation, under the very watchful eye of the White Army officers who were in charge of ridding Native Americans of their customs and ceremonies, they couldn't do these peyote rituals out in the open any longer. So they actually took them inside in secret into teepees, which is why they're conducted in teepees still today. Got you. Originally, it was just to keep from under the eyes of the people who were charged with overseeing them, eradicating their culture. Interesting. Yeah. So they're like, let's just keep it in the teepee. What happens in the teepee station? You got it. So a modern ceremony in the Native American Church with peyote is usually specific, and it's focused on, like, healing, most likely. And it's led by something called a road man, you sit around that fire, you take your peyote and you strap in for an all night experience where you're supposed to really be into it. You're not supposed to lay back and look at the stars or take a nap or anything. You're supposed to really focus on, I guess, what you're trying to accomplish right. Or what the peyote is telling you to pay attention to. Sure. Yeah. It's not like checking on my hand, I'm waving it in front of my face. Everybody see that funk and grooving man how long has this been happening? Like 2 hours now. Man right. And there's a Scientific American writer named John Horgan who wrote about being in a Native American church peyote ritual. And he said, like man, people were sobbing, people were throwing up. It was very solemn, he said, and they were just being taught a lot of stuff by the coyote. Very interesting. And the Native American churches in the United States, the only group that is allowed to trade, sell, possess, grow, ingest peyote, and actually, I don't think all of them can grow. I think you have to be a licensed peyotero. You do. To grow or harvest peyote. Yeah, but you can be like, I'm a member of the Native American church and I can take this. And for a while from, I think, the 90s, you had to be a Native American to be considered a member of the Native American Church by the US. Government and be subject to be allowed to eat peyote. But that's not the case anymore. No. There's a supreme court trial. I think that's right. The American Indian Religious Freedom Acts 78 and 94 basically said it can't be raised specific, so it's unconstitutional. So you could technically join the Native American church? You could technically submit and petition the government and register with the government and be a peyoteero and grow peyote and take it and eat it. Yes. You Chris Ball. That's who Chuck is speaking to you right now. It's Chris Ball, the guy who's listening. Okay, got you. I hope there is one Chris Ball. I kind of hope there's not now for legal reasons, but this is all necessary because here in the United States, of course, it was classified as a habitforming drug in 1929. Which is not. Which is not. And let me see. In 1970, the US. Passed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act, where they had to put everything in categories, scheduled it as a Schedule One, labeled it as a Schedule One substance, which is of course, the worst of the worst, they say, which is not. And that's kind of it. You got anything else? Yeah, one thing I forgot to say is even though it's not related to LSD or mushrooms, it's frequently compared to it in potency. And I saw that it's 30 times less potent than psilocybin peyotes. Yeah, 30 times less potent. This just seemed really weird to me, but I saw it in like an actual study from San Diego State and Tijuana Tech Party School, and it's like 1000 to 3000 times less potent than LSD. Interesting. Yeah. Well, then what is this twelve hour like well, that doesn't mean it's not going to get on top of you and you can have a really bad trip and you're going to trip for 12 hours, but supposedly dose specific, like a gram of got you. Maybe mescaline gram of LSD is just completely bonkers. The difference between the two? Well, because LST they've synthesized down to a little tiny piece of paper. Sure. It's not eight buttons. That's right. I think that's it, then. That's peyote. Yeah. Okay. Well, if you want to know more about peyote, go read some Carlos Castaneda books. Since I said that, it's time to listen to mail. This is an eyewitness testimony. Hey, guys. I thought I'd chip in a little bit about my own personal experience. So I've been living and working in Japan for the last 15 years. I've noticed I'm perfectly capable of identifying Japanese. As a matter of fact, I can sometimes recognize and pick out students that I taught many years ago on the train or the mall with relative ease. I live and work in the Kansai area, which is a little smaller than New York City in terms of population. So I see a lot of people. Meanwhile, back in the States, during the holidays, one time I was shopping with my family, spotted my mom from across the store and walked over to her. When I got closer, it wasn't my mom. What? It was another woman that looked about the same age and height. And he wrote back after I told him I was going to read it and said, Just want to point out I'm just a white dude. Just a white dude. And he said so I think it's not that we are somehow magically better at identifying our own race, but are just better at identifying the kind of people that we are usually surrounded by, which is usually our own race. Good point. Very good point. What's this guy's name? Chris Ball. No, he said, I thought you might find that interesting. Anyway, if you're ever in Japan again, Josh, let me know. Sure. And just one small question for you. Did you ever take the Japanese language proficiency test, which I think they call the Janglage test? For sure. Did I ever take it? No. Had I would have failed spectacularly. It's one of the great shame of my life that after all these years and being married to a woman of Japanese ancestry, I speak very little Japanese. All right. Well, he says, I've just gotten done writing a book for the first level. I'd love to send it to you. Oh, yeah? Please. Grant is from Clayton McKnight. Clayton. And he said, PS. One of the textbooks I use in class has a hippie character in it named Rob. No. That's what he said. Wow. Yeah. I would love to have that book because I would like to learn Japanese. Yes. Clayton thanks, Clayton. I've been to Kansai, too, before. They have a beautiful airport there that was designed by Renzo Piano. Nice. It's worth even just looking up pictures of it. It's that nice. Did you ever stay in that TWA hotel in New York? No. Have you? No, but I saw it in a magazine article. I thought it looked pretty cool. Yes, it does look cool. I haven't been to New York for a while. Yeah, the problem is staying out of the airport. Yeah, JFK. I mean, I guess if you're just like staying there overnight for a connecting flight at work, yeah, why not? Let's do it. All right. If you want to get in touch with us, like Clayton did and offer us a language book or anything, or just say hi, you can go on to Stephysio.com and check out our social links there. And you can send us an email to stuff. Pod cast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts my HeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
d6b86366-3620-11ea-822e-47ab19ad42de | Short Stuff: Ig-pay Atin-lay (Sorry) | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-ig-pay-atin-lay-sorry | Turns out we have little kids from the 19th century, the Three Stooges, and an odd musical composer named Arthur Fields to thank for pig latin. | Turns out we have little kids from the 19th century, the Three Stooges, and an odd musical composer named Arthur Fields to thank for pig latin. | Wed, 30 Dec 2020 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=30, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=365, tm_isdst=0) | 12407170 | audio/mpeg | "What if you were a global bank who wanted to supercharge your audit system? So you tap IBM to UNSILO your data and with the help of AI, start crunching a year's worth of transactions against thousands of compliance controls. Now you're making small, smarter decisions. Faster operating costs are lower, and everyone from your auditors to your bankers feel like a million bucks. Let's create smarter ways of putting your data to work. IBM, let's create. Learn more@ibm.com. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck, and Dave and Jerry are both here in spirit. And this is short stuff. I'm sorry. This is orchef stay. I had a hard time with this episode, research wise, because this House Stuff Works article keeps talking about what a joke it is and how easy it is, and it's like, it's not the Enigma code. But I didn't do pig Latin growing up, so it just still confuses me. I get it, but I don't just hear someone speak it and I can say, oh, this is what they're saying. I have to write it down and move a bunch of dumb letters around, right? Yeah, I'm right there with you. Like, I have to stop and think about it, how to say a certain word or spell it or what somebody's saying is very difficult, too. But I think that's kind of because pig Latin wasn't, like, the cool thing when we were growing up. Where we're younger, we probably or I should say way older, we probably would have been a little better. At pig Latin. It is very easy to learn. The rules of it are very easy. But to speak it fluently would be, I'm sure, very difficult and take a lot of practice, for sure. Yeah. And there are so many more things that you can do with your time to try and be fluent in pig Latin. But when you're a little kid and the only thing to play with is a hoop with a stick that you chase down the hill, pig Latin is pretty attractive. You know what I mean? Yeah. So pig Latin is we'll talk a little bit about the history in a SEC. But basically, if you take the word cat, and we got this from the House of Works article at Wai igpe at nlay. What is pig Latin? See, that annoys me, just reading it. So what you do with cat, it would end up as ATK. So you take the letter at the beginning of the word, move it to the end, add the syllable A Y, and that's sort of it. Right? That is all there is to it. So you'd have ATK. That's pretty simple. At K. And that's it. That's all there really is to it. Like, if you run into a word that has a couple of syllables, they use the example of curtain. There's a couple of things you can do. You can say earton k. That's what I would do. But if you were, like, fluent in Pig Latin, you might say no. Each syllable gets messed around with this. Almost no one's going to know what you're talking about, especially at first. But if you and your buddy are really good at Pig Latin, and you've got your own little language that no one can come in to, and your world is shatterproof. That's right. And there were some predecessors to Pig Latin, Dog Latin and Hog Latin, which they think the name Hog Latin might have eventually gotten to Pig Latin, even though Dog Latin and Hog Latin were not anything like Pig Latin. Apparently, it was just, like, a fake Latin that people made up, like Shakespeare. I think it did a little. I think. Dog Latin. And it's funny, they really explained the Shakespeare passage, which I don't even think we should get into. All right, jeez, everyone, we present you a dramatic reading from Shakespeare's Loves Labor Lost. Oh, I'm co star. Yeah, you're costar, man. This is why a TV show didn't work. Oh, wait, I'm chuck all right. Coasttard, go to thou haste. Add dunghill at the fingers ends, as they say. Oh, I smell foss Latin dunghill for ungumseen. Okay, for the anthem. We can't go over that again. So this article takes great paintings to explain all that, and then at the very end says, the joke is much funnier when you explain it at links. And I'm like, no, that's never been true for any joke, ever. But the point is, what Shakespeare was calling this dog Latin, hog Latin or Dog Latin, is basically more like cockney rhyming slang than what we think of as Pig Latin. He was replacing dung hill for ungium, which is fingernail, which was pretty clever word. Smithery right. And it's funny. Like, it's pretty rich, the two of us just mocking Shakespeare right now. But this was, like, not it has nothing to do with Pig Latin, even though they're, like, clearly Hoglatin was a direct predecessor of Pig Latin, even if they aren't similar. Somebody said, oh, we'll call this one Pig Latin rather than Hog Latin. Yeah. And I think even Edgar Allenpo mentioned both dog Latin and pig Greek. And this was pretty disparaging of those. But again, it was not the Pig Latin that we know. And maybe we should take a break and talk about when that dumb thing came around right after this. Koa what if you were a trendy apparel company facing an avalancho demand to ensure more customers can buy more sherpa lined jackets? You call IBM to automate your it infrastructure with AI. Now, your systems monitor themselves. What used to take hours takes minutes, and you have an ecommerce platform designed to handle sudden spikes in overall demand, as in actual overalls. Let's create It systems that rule up their own sleeves. IBM let's create. Learn more@ibm.com It automation. 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. Okay, chuck so Pig Latin, as we understand it, was around by the late one thousand eight hundred s at the latest, they think. Yeah, I think in 1896 it was in the Atlantic, rather. It says, they all spoke a queer jargon, which they themselves had invented. It was something like the well known pig Latin that all sorts of children like to play with. And it looks like it was invented by kids to talk about stuff that their parents couldn't understand. That totally makes sense. And again, here's where that famous Enigma code line comes in that like, the parents could crack it pretty easily. The point was, I think maybe that it became cute and just widely appreciated because maybe this is my own personal theory. Kids thought that they were speaking in a way their parents couldn't understand, and their parents did fully understand, so they allowed it to keep going on as like the secret language with this kind of, like, little bit of delight at the childhood miss of the whole thing. That's why I think pig Latin got traction originally. Yeah. And it's kind of weird that I have such contempt for it because I've seen examples in movies and in real life where it usually seems like young girls have made up their own little secret language, and I just find that exhaustively. Adorable and very funny and cool. But there's something about Pig Latin that just UGS. Babe me. Oh, good one. Good one. Chuck that was very good. Yeah. So one of the things that I love about pig Latin are twofold, and they both come in the early 20th century. So Pig Latin basically had its golden age, it's heyday. Where it was like part of the popular culture in the first three or four decades of the 20th century. And it showed up, Chuck, in this song called Pig Latin Love, which was an Arthur Fields record from 1919. And did you listen to it? Of course. It's adorable. I looked everywhere to see if it's in the public domain and couldn't find it. So I'm not sure if we can play anything. It's got to be. I would think so, too. So we'll say, let's play a little bit here, and then if you don't hear anything, it means that we found out it is in the public domain, in which case, go look it up yourself. But here's a little clip of Pig Latin love by Arthur Fields. Maybe crack. My goodness. It really is. And so I just think it's an adorable song, but the fact that somebody had a popular song about this shows just how popular it was at the time, how prevalent it was almost in pig culture, in pop culture. I'm sure in pig culture, they're like, Stop making fun of us. We don't talk like that. Yeah, we used to have an old picture with some old records, and it was always kind of fun to put those on. Like, we never did it as a family, like, sat around and listened to them. But when friends would come over at Pop One on, it's kind of cool. My dad had Jackie Gleason records. Oh, nice. And I used to tell him that they were so square, the records themselves were square. He would be like, what do you mean? That's great. So the other use I think you were probably talking about was The Three Stooges, right? Yeah. Did you watch that, too? I didn't, actually. I didn't get around to that one. It's just adorable. I can't wait to do our episodes on the seven part episodes on The Three Stooges. But there's a particular one in 1938 called Tessels in the Air where Mo and Larry are trying to teach Curly Pig Latin. It's a good full minute or so lesson on Pig Latin. Curly just can't quite pick up, so I'm omay. And that's Arielay. And you're early. And Curly goes, Cute. They're like, no. And I think he gets slapped as a result, but it's pretty cute. So here's the deal, though. Pig Latin is not I mean, technically it's a language, but it's really something called backslang or a coded language. I know we covered Esperanto many years ago on the show, and like Klingon, those are really invented languages with vocabulary and grammar and syntax, and they don't rely on English as the basis of it. This is not that. No, there's no piglet without English. That's it. And it follows all of the same vocabulary rules. And like you said, syntax. And everything that English follows, it's just you're rearranging it a little bit. One of the other categories that Pig Latin qualifies is a coded language. Like, the reason that this is done is to disguise what you're saying. Even if it is not just kind of a feeble attempt at disguise, it still qualifies it as a coded language. Yeah. And there are examples of stuff like this in other countries. Apparently in France, there's something called Verlon that switches up the first and last syllables of a word. Spanish has hierganza. Oh, nice. I guess that's how you would pronounce it. I would guess so. Where you double the vowels and put a P between them. So Gato, which is cat, is gabatopo. Sounds kind of cool. It does. You take Japan. Okay. Japan has something I was asking Yuumi about this. She knew exactly what I was talking about. It's called Babigo. Babigo and G o indicates a language in Japan. So, like English Go or something like that, would be the English language. This is like baba language. And it's because you insert b sounding syllables into the already extant syllables of a word. So sushi becomes subushibi. I love that word. Yeah, subashibi. Yeah. And that's Babago in Japan. Let's go get some subashibi. I just think it's so great that everybody's like, yeah, this language is interesting, but we could make it even better. Let's try. Yeah, kids. Yeah, kids are great. Well, you got anything else? Got nothing else. I don't either. So here we go. No or Shea stay. All right. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio's how stuff works. For more podcasts from my heartrate radio, visit the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
db70907e-3f5d-11e8-b887-1b5c754c98db | SYSK Selects: What happens in the brain during an orgasm? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-what-happens-in-the-brain-during-an-o | In this classic episode, Chuck and Josh test the limits of their decorum as they explore the physiology of an orgasm. Learn all about this inexplicably taboo subject (including how even women who are paralyzed can experience orgasms). | In this classic episode, Chuck and Josh test the limits of their decorum as they explore the physiology of an orgasm. Learn all about this inexplicably taboo subject (including how even women who are paralyzed can experience orgasms). | Sat, 14 Apr 2018 14:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=14, tm_hour=14, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=104, tm_isdst=0) | 35968840 | 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, you want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that, we mean your dog. Halo Elevate is natural science based nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leaving brands. Find Halo Elevate at petco pet supplies plus, and select neighborhood pet stores. Hey, everybody, it's me, your old friend Josh. And for this week's, SYSK selects I've selected what Happens in the brain during an orgasm. It's a tardary, sexy look at things like oxytocin and vasopressin and stuff like that. It's pretty good, actually. It comes from Christmas time 2011. There's a festive spirit around it, and I hope you enjoy it tremendously. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. He's got a new haircut, everybody looks really good. You can take my word for it. Short, high and tight. Yeah, high and tight makes it stuff you should know. Chuck at his ears lowered. Have you ever heard that? Yeah. I don't think anyone under 70 has ever said that, though. Yeah, well, I just passed. I took the cake. Yes. Speaking of, have you ever heard of the origin of the word cakewalk? The term cakewalk? I wrote a blog on it. You should check it out. Very surprising. I'll check it out. Very eye opening. You can tell us or just go to the blog. Go to the blog. So, Chuck, are you ready? Yes. Chuck? Yes. I want to commend you. Okay. Just a day ago, I woke up, checked my smartphone, and found an email, and you said, how about these first stuff you should know? And one of them was, what happens in the brain during an orgasm? Give me a week ago. I'm sorry, last week, what happens in the brain during an orgasm? And I thought, oh, man, I don't know about that one. Like, we've got some younger listeners. Are we qualified to talk about this stuff? When I started sweating, it was a wreck. It was a terrible way to wake up. And I emailed you and was like, Are you sure? And you said something that I thought was, this is why I'm commending you. You're like, look, man, we've done a lot of stuff on, like, really violent things, which just off the top of my head, shrunken Heads, our step by step guide to shrinking heads, or Jack the Ripper cannibalism. Jack the Ripper. And we have. We've done a lot of stuff about violent stuff, and you're like, I don't want to just be able to talk about violent stuff, but not be able to talk about sexuality. Like, it's bad or worse than violence. Yeah, I don't want to play ball with that scene. And that is very especially in America, it's a scene we just celebrated Thanksgiving. We're a very puritanical country still. And that's absolutely true. Like, violence is celebrated and okay. Sexuality is hidden and it's not okay. Right. And yeah, I don't subscribe to that either. So I wanted to commend you for having that level of foresight insight, every kind of site. Thanks. And for suggesting we do this. Thanks. Having said that, if you're a parent, if you are a younger listener, maybe you should ask your parents. We're going to be very mature about this. It's not going to be funny. But if you don't think you want your kid listening to anything about orgasms, then switch it off. Hey, man, you're the parent. We're not. It's up to you to decide when you want your kid. Personally, I went to sex ed when I was either the fifth or 6th grade, so I learned about this stuff when I was from a teacher. Mine was like 7th or 8th. Really? I was younger. Yeah. Well, you're very experienced. I remember one very funny thing that happened. I can't say it. I wish I could. Oh, yeah. One kid in my class, I remember his name even, he asked a very funny question that he wasn't meaning to be funny. But now that I'm older, looking back, he was asking a legit question and it was funny. Yeah, that was a great story. Quite a few. Easily. My imagination is running wild right now. All right, let's get to this. Chuck. Yeah. This is a bang up way to start a podcast. Like what happens in the brain during an orgasm. Defining Orgasm from the Oxford English Dictionary. It's dry, it's stayed, it's like clinical. It's perfect. It was perfect. So let's do that. The first one, there a sudden movement spasm contraction or convulsion a surge of sexual excitement. Yeah, that's pretty much on the head there. Right. Miriam Webster. Explosive discharge of neuromuscular tension at the height of sexual arousal, usually accompanied by the ejaculation of semen in the male and by vaginal contractions in the female. Right. And then famous Smut Peddler, dr. Alfred Kinsey. I'm sorry. Sex Researcher Alfred Kenzie. What was the name of the movie that Ray Feins played him in? Was it just Kenzie? It was Kenzie and it was Liam Neeson. Ray liam Neeson. Come on. He called an orgasm. It can be like into the crescendo or climax and sudden stillness achieved by an orchestra of human emotions. Also, it could be compared to an explosion of tensions or to sneezing, which Shane of Freeman, who wrote this article, took issue with that's because it's not true. That's all myth. Like, if you sneeze five times, it's like an orgasm or you'll have an orgasm. I don't think that's at all what he was saying. Well, no, but that is a sense of tension and then immediate relief that washes over your body following like a heavy sneeze. I think that's what he was saying. Yeah, but there is an urban myth that if you sneeze like five or seven times in a row I don't think Kinsey dealt an urban myth. I'm a scientist. I'm saying since then. So the point of all this is that the orgasm, while it is this sensation that washes over your body, it's an explosion of tensions. It's like sneezing. It's accompanied by ejaculation and men. There's all these physiological experiences going on, but all of it is centered in the brain. The point is the orgasm takes place in the brain. And thanks to the wonder machine, we now know pretty much what's going on in the brain. We don't fully understand orgasms, but we have a much clearer picture than we did even ten years ago, 20 years ago. Did you ever hear the Billy Connolly, the comedian? Yeah. He had one bit where he talked about when he first learned of an orgasm when he was like twelve years old. Like some older friend of his or his brother or cousin taught him how to achieve it and what it was. And he's like, I did it. And it was the best thing ever. And he said then he came back to me the next day and was like, you only get 1000 of those. He was like, the next week I had used them all up. Well, I don't know if it was 1000 then. I don't even know if it's going to make it on the year we'll find out. So let's start clean. Okay, let's talk about where all this starts takes place. Orgasms begin in the genitalia and they end in the brain. Pretty much. That's it. Or they begin in the genitalia, go to the brain and then come back to the genitalia. Maybe. Or they begin in the brain and then go to the genitalia and then back to the brain. We're going to get to the bottom of this. But essentially there's a lot of nerves involved in this. And you're not going to be surprised to find that the genitalia, both male and female, are extremely sensitive. Nervewise. Sure. Apparently the clitoris has about 8000 nerve endings just in itself. Comparatively speaking, the penis, a circumcised penis, as I understand it, has about 40 nerve endings in the whole thing. The glands. Oh, really? Yes, and I didn't see this substantiated anywhere, but an uncircumcised penis supposedly has like 25,000 nerve endings in it. That's all propaganda. Is that brought to you by the Circumcision Society or the Anti Circumcision? It was on one of those sites. And also that reminds me, go listen to the Circumcision podcast. That was a good one. Oh yeah. Did you just want to remind yourself that we can cover these things without laughing? No, I just remembered that we did Circumcision and that's good. I thought you were just like, I got to do this. I got to be able to say the word penis without laughing. Penis gland. All right. So what happens is you get all these nerve endings during intercourse and at climax, there will be messages sent through these large nerves that run up your spinal cord, except for the vagus nerve, which is very important that we mentioned, that bypasses the spinal cord and to the brain and tells the brain, hey, this is great, this feels awesome. You want to do this again, right? And there's different bundles are, I guess, stimulated in different areas, right? Yeah. So you've got like the hypogastric nerve, which is located in the uterus and cervix and women and in the prostate and men. Yes. So if you tickle these areas, you can conceivably achieve orgasm through the hypogastric nerve. There's the pelvic nerve transmits from the vagina and cervix and women, obviously. Right. And from the rectum of both sexes. There's some overlap here. Go ahead and say that. Next one the padundyl nerve. Yeah. That's pudendal or pudendal, I'm not sure which. Or padundal, but either way, it's P-U-D-E-N-D-A-L. Right. That's the clitoris in women and the scrotum and penis in men. So that's like kind of that's the well established, long understood bundle of nerves. Is it? Yeah, because the whole concept that a woman could even have an orgasm is pretty recent. Sure. It's pretty new. Like the last century. Yeah. As far as science goes, you go to Europe and ask some lady 100 years ago, 200 years ago, she's going to be like, what are you, stupid? Yes. Watch this. They're like, oh, that's what that's called. We thought you just had the humors. Right. And then you've got the vagus nerve, which we said bypasses the spinal cord. It transmits from the cervix, uterus and vagina, and 80% to 90% of the nerve fibers are sensory in the vagus nerve. So the vagus nerve is the money nerve and it controls more than just orgasms. Apparently, if you have Vegas nerve damage, you choke when you try to swallow liquids. Yeah, we talked about that and something we said Vegas before, and it had to do with choking. I'll bet you it was either competitive eating or sword swallowing. Yes, sword swallowing. Was it sword swallowing? Yes. Okay, so the vagus nerve is involved in swallowing as well as an orgasm. And I could only find obviously then if it's involved in swallowing, it's in men and women, but I could only find reference to the vagus nerve and orgasms in relation to female orgasms. Yeah, me too, but we'll get to that later. And the vagus nerve, though, also, like you said, that's a pretty important nerve and it's very only recently discovered as far as orgasms go. But the big key to it is that it bypasses the spinal cord and goes straight to the brain, which is really, really good news for a certain subset of the human population. Chuck, aka park. People who have suffered catastrophic spinal injuries, even people whose spines have been interrupted, like their spinal cords are no longer connected top and bottom. They're totally paralyzed. They can still come to climax, which is new because that was, I mean, forever. They said, those days are over for you. Pretty much. Right? But thank you. Dr. Barry Kamizarok. St. Kamzarok. Who. We should just call this guy Dr. O because he is the as far as I can tell, the preeminent orgasm scientist he and Whipple are dr. Whipple? Yeah. Beverly St. Beverly. That's what the paraplegic people call it. Of course they do. They are at Rutgers, at Rhett. Go, Scarlet Knights. And they did some tests on women in 2004 who had severed spinal cords, and they found that they could feel stimulation in their cervix, they could reach orgasm. And they did the MRI and said, hey, it looks like this thing is bypassing. They're not just messing with us. Yes. They're saying this is real because the MRI machine lit up like it's supposed to. Right. And like you said, they showed that the areas of the brain that respond to the vagus nerve were lighting up. Especially. They're like, oh, it's the vagus nerve. I mean, we're not kidding around. That is great news, because that's one of the most upsetting parts, I would imagine, of spinal injury, is to say goodbye to that part of your life, to lose your sexuality like that. One of my good friends dated a girl who was paralyzed from the waist down and she was able to have an orgasm. Thank you. Vagus nerve. Yeah. The Vegas nerve is basically proof that women are God's favorite. Oh, yeah. No, actually, we'll see that's quite the opposite. That's right. I mean, the Vegas nervous, it's pretty great for women, but overall, dumb lumbering men have it way better, as we'll see. Okay. 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. 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Comconsulting so let's talk about the brain. Let's talk about the pleasure center, aka reward circuit. This is a pretty new, like the 1950s is when they first kind of discovered this. And it seems like we talked about this, too. They did experiments on rats, and they basically hooked them up in the Skinner box and said, hey, if you go push this button, you're going to get rewarded in a very pleasurable way in your brain. It was like cocaine or something, wasn't it? I think so. And they found out that the brats really loved it to the tune of about 700 button pushes an hour. Oh, yeah. And they didn't eat anymore, didn't want water anymore. They just lay there and push this button. And it wasn't cocaine. They had electrodes implanted in the brain rewards. It was going and just stimulating it every day. No, but I think it had to do with study on drugs, because the reward center, like sexual arousal and the high from drugs is what, a lot of it's going on there? Well, not only that. Eating, laughing, hanging out with other people. Sure. Basically anything that ensures our survival as a species or as an individual, the reward center has something to do with it. And the whole point of the reward center is we get this release of dopamine, this pleasurable chemical that teaches us, wow, this feels really good. I want to do that again so I will survive. These rats died of exhaustion, though. Yeah, so crazy. But that's where they discovered it, in the if we're going to talk about the pleasure center, and we should mention a few specific areas, like the amygdala regulates your emotions and we talk about the brain a lot. So this is sort of rehashed. This is kind of like up there with fight or flight. Like, we talked about the reward circuit quite a bit. We do, yeah, because we like it. Well, it's a great circuit. I wish I had that button. I'd be pushing it 700 times an hour, and I have to come along and be like, you need to stop, dude. The nucleus accumbens, which I don't think we've ever mentioned on the show, I think we have, that controls the release of dopamine. It's part of the limbic system. And this plays a really big role in sexual arousal. And like the high you feel from certain drugs got you. The VTA or the ventral tegmental area actually releases the dopamine. It takes its orders from the nucleus. Acumins. Acumbenz. The cerebellum, controls your muscle function. Muscles are very important in an orgasm. And the pituitary gland, this is a big one because it's not just dopamine this pleasure that you sense, you know, it's not just pleasure. There's other stuff going on. Like there's tristas, crying after sex, like that's not just pleasure. You're overwhelmed with emotions sometimes, and that is thanks to our friend, the pituitary gland, which releases beta endorphins that decrease pain, oxytocin, which increase feelings of trust, vasopressin, which increases bonding. And a lot of the same hormones and chemicals are released when you give birth. When a woman gives birth as well, which apparently forms bonds between mother and child. And also these things are released. I think like oxytocin is a lactation chemical as well. So both mother and child during breastfeeding bond, basically. Are you overwhelmed with the sense of, like, I really like you and I get this sense you like me too, so let's hang out. Yeah. Oxytocin is called the hormone of love and actually means quick birth in Greek. And not only is it released during childbirth, but it sort of facilitates childbirth. Got you. And nipple stimulation. It is released and that's what makes you lactate, which is pretty cool and calmness. It reduces your anxiety, it makes you calm. So oxytocin up with oxytocin. Yeah. And Vesipressin, too has similar effects as well. So you've got all these chemicals flooding your body, you've got your reward circuit going and all the right ways. Yes. And this is the orgasm, basically. Especially the female orgasm, we should say. Like the male orgasm includes ejaculation and it's been long understood what's going on there. Right, but like pretty much an A to B relationship. Yeah, but like I said, it was pretty recent, like the middle of last century, that people that science came to really say like, okay, all right, so this is real. Women aren't just trying to get on board here, they really are experiencing something. And then in the late nineties and mid two thousand s, a group of Dutch researchers said, we're going to take this MRI, we're going to stick people in this MRI, we're going to bring them to orgasm and we're going to watch what goes on in their brains. Yeah, well, first they use the Pet scan. Okay. You're right. I'm sorry. And actually, since you mentioned men, you told me in another email, said this article is sexist because it only talks about women almost. And I look that up. Apparently it's because the men's orgasm is so short it's hard to study it. Okay, so it's like boom, it's over. Whereas a woman can have a prolonged orgasm. Much easier to study. That right. All right, so, Pet scan. So the Pet scan. But think about this. It's like the swing in a study. It's like kinkazy. These test subjects were brought to orgasm. Their brains were watched with Pet scans later on MRIs. And what the Dutch researchers found was that there really aren't that many differences in the brains between men and women as far as the pleasure circuit goes. They saw all the stuff they expected to see. Apparently, the brain, if you take a snapshot of maybe the peak of it during orgasm, during peak orgasm, and you compared it to a snapshot of the peak of a heroin dose, it looks 95% the same. One of the Dutch researchers said. But there are differences between men's orgasms and women's orgasms as far as brain regions are concerned. And it's not really surprising what they found. When you hear it, it's kind of intuitive. Well, the other thing that they found was the same, though, was that the orbital frontal cortex shut down for both. And that is where the seat of reason and behavioral control in your brain. So it's no surprise that that thing shuts down for both of us. You just completely lose control. That's right. You're enthralled by your orgasm. So the difference is that you mentioned when a woman has sex I had this, so right. Earlier period, caductal gray P-A-G is activated. And it says in here it controls fight or flight. I got more that it provokes your defense responses, and it's not necessarily controlling fight or flight. Is that right? Is it activating it or stimulating it? What I saw is that it provokes your defense responses, which is interesting. Okay. Well, I mean, you can say defense responses, fight or flight. Yeah, that's true. As part of it, at least. Okay. The woman's brain show decreased activity in the Middla and hippocampus. This one made sense to me. Deals with fear, anxiety. So fear and anxiety are out the door all of a sudden. Yeah. Which makes sense, because for a woman to have and enjoy sex, just physically speaking, it takes far more trust than it does for a man. And emotionally right. You need to be relaxed exactly. In general. And then here is one that I thought was kind of interesting. The part of the cortex associated with pain, the insular cortex, which is used to judge the ferocity, basically, of pain, like, just how bad pain is activated. So it's basically scanning, looking out for pain, or judging the experience based on partially through the lens of pain. I think everyone's been there, whether it's, like, tickling or anything, where you're like, oh, I hate that, I hate that, but I love that, I love that. Got you. Very fine line. Sometimes there's a very egalitarian interpretation checkers. Thank you. Faking an orgasm, not surprisingly, of course, it doesn't use the same part of the brain. There's really bears almost no resemblance whatsoever. I didn't even think that should have been included. I didn't either, but I was mad at Shane of Freeman for being sexist at the time. When I read that, now that I look back on it, I still don't think it should have been included. That's right. So, Chuck, we've been giving all of the kudos and attention to people who have orgasms. No problem, right? There are people out there who are who can't have orgasms. An orgasmic? Yes, they have an orgasmia, which is an inability to achieve an orgasm. One of the big culprits are SSRIs serotonin, some reuptake inhibitor. What was the other s? I can't ever remember. Selective? Yes, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, which keeps serotonin in your synapses longer, so you cannot be depressed. The problem is it decreases the production, the natural production of dopamine in the brain. And dopamine, obviously, is how we learn to enjoy and go do something like achieving an orgasm again. So, fortunately, once people wean themselves off of SSRIs or start taking other drugs, that increased opinion production. Usually that anarchism goes away. Usually not all the time. No. Sadly, a very small percentage. I didn't get a number, but I did see that it was uncommon. Thankfully, post SSRI sexual dysfunction means after you have weaned yourself off and you're producing dopamine regularly, you're still not able to achieve an orgasm. They have no idea why now, because they're like, your dopamine is working. What's your problem? And this is thanks to Dr. O again, right? I believe so. It's all over this stuff. That's one of the main reasons he's studying the orgasm, by the way, is not just to be like, oh, cool, look at the brain. It's to help people that are an orgasmic or who suffer from persistent sexual arousal syndrome. Which sounds horrible. Yeah. That means you're always sexually aroused, but you can achieve orgasm. Right? Right. And you're genuinely always sexually aroused. Doctor O looked at women who have PSAs and put them in an MRI and looked at their brains, and their brains are showing, like, yeah, I'm turned on right now. I'm turned on right now for no good reason. I can't do anything about it, but I'm turned on right now. And then even if I try to have an orgasm, I can't. It's like a curse. But the science supported it in the MRI, right? Right. Yeah. So, I mean, these people were physically, sexually aroused, and they couldn't do anything about it. He figured out that they can use meditation techniques, apparently works. Basically, calming techniques. Apparently has an impact on decreasing the sexual arousal. I think he's still trying to figure out the an orgasmia apart, 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. 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Now you can tackle threats so they don't bring you to a grinding halt and everyone's going places, including you. Let's create cybersecurity that keeps your business on track. IBM, let's create learn more@ibm.com. Josh? Yeah? Did you know that some people can orgasm from being touched in other parts of their body other than the genitalia? I did know that. For instance, the nipples that happen sometimes, they think that these sensations are transmitted to the same areas of the brain as the ones that come from your genitals. And so it's just the brain saying, all right, I'll give you a little bonus there. It's lighting up the right part of the brain here's an orgasm, apparently also knees, nose, people. There are apparently women out there who can have orgasms just from imagery alone. No touching, no touching. And again, these people are in MRIs, the brain is lighting up and they're saying, yes, science supports this woman is actually having an orgasm from a no touch encounter, which is craig the phantom limb thing is what really gets me. Yeah. Do you want to talk about that? Yeah. Apparently some people can. Do they feel the orgasm in their phantom limb? Yes. It doesn't generate there. So you know how you have when you experience an orgasm, Chuck? Do you know how it's concentrated in your genitalia? I do know. Imagine if that sensation were in your foot, like that's what felt good just as easily could, right? Sure. Now imagine that your foot had been amputated years before, but you're still feeling your orgasm in your phantom foot. That's what they're talking about. That's nutty. Well, they think what happened is there's basically a map of your brain. The way we interpret it is as a map is called the cortical homoculus. And the cortical homoculus is like, okay, this part of the body corresponds to this part of the brain. Like the nerves here correspond here. And apparently if you suffer an amputation, your brain is like, well, I need to rewire myself. I need to remap a little bit. So I'm going to assign the sensation in the foot that's not there any longer to the genitalia. So the brain can become confused by the genitalia being stimulated. That experience can be felt in the amputated foot, for example. That's what scientists think right now. You can also say that they have no idea what's going on, but people are reporting having orgasms and phantom limbs. I think it's my new band name, too. Yeah. Cortical Humunculus. That's a good one. I've got. Some breaking news. Josh. Oh, wow. This is a surprise for you, my friend. Okay, doctor O is added again. And this was just released on the old AP Wire last week. Wow. November 18, they kicked it up a notch and had ladies sit in the fMRI machine, which has even kicked up a notch from the regular MRI. And they now have the first movie of the female brain as it approaches experiences and recovers from an orgasm. Wow. So they put this couple of ladies actually and one of them talked about it. She did a little, I think she blocked about it. She said that one of the problems in doing this, obviously, is you have to not move very much at all because it will disrupt the data. So they fitted her with a breathable plastic mesh helmet that was screwed into the bed and keep her still. Fidelio, he's got his eyes wide shut for some reason and they told her to practice being still while bringing herself to climax. Okay. So she duct taped a kitty bell from her cat's, what do you call it, the collar onto her forehead and for two weeks practice bringing yourself to climax without ringing that bell. And she said, you know, I got good enough at it to successfully do this in the experiment and it was successful. So you can go on the internet now and look this up and watch this video. The animation plays. You see the activity building up in the genitalia area of the century cortex like it should. Then activity is spreading to the limbic system, then it spreads to the limbic system which is involved in emotion and long term memory. Then as the orgasm arrives, activity shoots up in two parts of the brain, the cerebellum and the frontal cortex that control the muscular tension. So all of a sudden the muscles contract really heavily. So that shoots up during the orgasm. It reaches a peak in the hypothalamus and that's when it releases the oxytocin and all that good stuff and causes the uterus to contract. And I'm sorry, the nucleus acumbins, that's also firing off during the peak because controlling the release of dopamine. Yeah. And then afterward everything like you see it just goes from all colorful back to the cold, dead blackness of your brain. The doritos center starts becoming active. So Chuck, there's a very big question that we haven't really answered. We understand why men have orgasms. Why do women have orgasms? Evolutionarily. But why? I mean, it doesn't make any sense. If it's an evolutionary adaptation like it is for men, then why is it so hard for some women to have orgasm? You know, 10% of women will go through their entire lifetimes without ever experiencing an orgasm. How many? 10%. Wow, that's a lot. Yeah. So if it's evolutionary, that just completely pulls the rug out of that whole idea because then it should be really easy for women and men, right? Yeah. Okay, so one of the ideas that's long been bandied about is a byproduct theory. Like, do you know why men have nipples? Because women have nipples. We're all humans, so at some point during gestation or whatever, we still keep ours even though we don't need them. Men don't need nipples, but we're humans and women need nipples. So think for yourself. Makes sense. I don't use mine anymore. Okay. They think that possibly the female orgasm is the same thing. Men and women are both humans. Men need to have orgasms. So women do as byproduct in this really weird study that came out last year of twins, they studied same sex twins and opposite sex twins, and same sex twins had similar orgasm patterns. Right? Okay. Opposite sex twins who, if it is just a byproduct, should have the same or similar orgasm patterns. It didn't hold up. So where does that leave us? We have no idea. Confused. They think that it could possibly be an evolutionary remnant, like it was strategic to our survival at some point in the distant past. And it's just a relic that kind of hangs around, which is kind of a depressing thought because then that means we're watching it as it's endangered and it's growing extinct. And that's sad. And I think that it needs to be snatched back from the grips of natural selection. Well, some things maybe just shouldn't be studied. Maybe you should just I don't know. I'm sure there are women out there saying, just put those studies away. Yeah, let's just look at it as a big bonus. Right? And that's when thanks, big guy. That's when Dr. O flicked the switch and the disco ball comes down from the ceiling. So if you want to know more about orgasms and see some pretty cool stock images of lit brains and things like that, you can type in what happens in the brain during an orgasm. You probably just type in orgasm in the search bar athow Stuff Works.com. It'll bring up some interesting cool stuff. Sure. And I said, Search bar. I believe. So that means it's time for a listener mail. This is about gene patenting, I believe. And it's from Jim in New Jersey. Okay. Garden State. Loved your patent podcast. Guys at Dovetails love that word very nicely with the tech stuff. Patent podcast? Really? Yeah, that's what he says. I'm of the opinion that if you construct a new gene, then you can patent it. However, if you discover a gene already existing in nature, then I'm not sure that you should be able to patent it. This is just Jim's opinion. I like his opinion. Maybe you can patent the process of identifying the gene. Seems reasonable. Maybe you can patent a specific use of the gene, such as for testing, which you clearly covered as being controversial. However, you shouldn't be able to quote on the gene. What if it has another use it's a good point. Yeah. In the epilogue on the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, rebecca Sculot describes a disturbing scenario. If you provide a sample of our DNA to a medical professional of your own DNA, and it is found to have a mutation that's the foundation of the next wonder drug, you are entitled to nothing. Yeah. So legally, your sample is considered trash unless you've pre arranged some legal arrangement. That means you've abandoned it. It's like Henry Lack. Are you familiar with her? No. I've heard that, though. Have we talked about this? Yeah. She's kind of famous in this really weird way. She's like an African American lady from the somehow she donated her blood or some tissue or something to science, and it became the basis of all scientific research after that. So, like, all these breakthroughs in drugs and cancer blockers and all of this pharmaceutical research was based on this culture that's still around? Her line is still around while she's immortal? Yes. And her family has gotten nothing from it. Interesting. And companies have made hundreds of billions of dollars off of this lady's life. Wow. Like her biology, and they've got nothing. I haven't read the book, but I've heard nothing but good things about it. I'll have to check that out. So that's from Jim in New Jersey. Thanks, Jim. Thanks. Henrietta Lack. Okay. 1940s, you said? I think forty s or fifty s. Look that up. And it's probably even worse than that, I'm sure, than the way I described it, but we'll probably end up reading it. Yeah. Okay, I'm done. I'm ready. Let's finish this. That was a good one. Well done. Well done to YouTube, buddy. We kept it very mature. Tip of the cap to you too, sir. Stopping it as well. If you want to contact me and Chuck, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can visit us on Facebook@facebook.com, stuff You Should Know, and you can send us an email at stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetepworks.com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our home page. The House of Forks iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on itunes. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. There's a perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, My Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? 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." | |
4254ffe2-53a3-11e8-bdec-73cf50153c1d | The Skinny on Lyme Disease | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-skinny-on-lyme-disease | If you live in the Northeastern U.S. then you may know someone who has had Lyme disease. But it's spreading all over the country and parts of the world. Learn all about this tick-borne disease today. | If you live in the Northeastern U.S. then you may know someone who has had Lyme disease. But it's spreading all over the country and parts of the world. Learn all about this tick-borne disease today. | Tue, 17 Sep 2019 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=17, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=260, tm_isdst=0) | 45761593 | 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. 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. Hello. Stuff You Should Know. Listeners, if you want to come see us live, you've only got a couple of more cities this year that still have tickets, and that is Orlando and New Orleans. Yeah, we'll be in Orlando on October 9 at the Plaza live. And we'll be in New Orleans at the Civic Theater the following night, October 10. And, friends, like Chuck said, you better go get your tickets. Go to Sysclive.com for info and ticket links and everything you need to come see us. 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. Debbie, Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there. This is stuff you should know. The podcast. Chuck, I have a question for you. You know it ticks me off, Lyme disease. I'm so mad at you. Blame you me for that one. She's like, you should say this. And I said, you know what? I should totally say that. Yeah. This is sort of a follow up to our July 27, 2010 episode, Why Ticks Suck, which is sort of a legendary episode because we falsely promised to send people T shirts if they made it all the way through the episode. That's right. We were just kidding. But we still get those requests of, Where's my shirt? Yes. That's hilarious. I forgot about that. And also sued today. Yeah, probably so. Also want to point out and shout out our former website, Houseofworks.com, because a couple of the articles that we used for much of this episode is from the old HSW website. Nice. They're holding it down over there. They're holding it down. And this is good stuff. Yeah. So we're talking today about Lyme disease in particular, not limes. No, we should say it's. Capital L-Y-M-E disease. And the reason it's called that is because it's named after a town which is one of three towns where the initial outbreak of Lyme disease that led to this bacterial infection, persistent bacterial infection, was first described medically one of the facts of the show, I think. Oh, yeah, sure. Who knew it was named after a town, lime, Connecticut? I knew. Did you know that before this? Sure. Did we cover that? And why? Ticks suck? I don't think so. All right, well, you're smarter than me. No, it's not that. I think what got me was I heard about people saying, like, no. Lyme disease. People take it for granted, but it's actually this really mysterious illness. I'm like, what are you talking about? So I think I looked into this years back, and that's when I found out, all right, that was all. So we're equally smart, right? Exactly. I'm not smarter than you. What is smart? It's just like someone happens to know one thing, someone else knows another. Sure. I say they cancel out. We're all smart. There you go. I'm glad you pulled that out because I would have been like, what is smart? I couldn't have come up with the definition. So, Lyme disease. We'll go ahead and hit you with a couple of stats here. Lyme disease in the United States has more than doubled since 1997. That's astounding it is. And it is spread, too. It used to be very much localized in kind of the Northeast, sort of mid Atlantic areas, some in the south. But now you can get Lyme disease, and I believe the entire lower 48. Is that correct? There are cases in all 48 states. Supposedly half of the counties in the United States now are considered at high risk for Lyme disease. And all of this happened just in the last 20 or so years? Yeah, there's a lot of debate over the CDC calls Lyme disease endemic, which is a disease that has become an ongoing part of an area or region. And some other people are saying, guys, what we're talking about here is an epidemic. This is an epidemic. And you should start calling it that because it will kind of raise the alarm to the next level or two where it should be. Because this is a very alarming spread of disease that we're seeing right now. Lyme disease is the number one vector born disease in the United States. It's way more prevalent than things like West Nile or Chicken Junior or anything like that, but it's still kind of treated as, like, up there in the Northeastern US thing. And that's just not the case. It's spread in every direction except east, because it hit the Atlantic, but everywhere else, where it can spread into the interior of the United States and up into Canada. It's starting to yeah. And there's also a history continuing to this day even, where Lyme disease can be overlooked, misdiagnosed, not taken as seriously by your doctor as it should be. Yeah. Including what we'll get to later on, something called posttreatment Lyme disease syndrome. And it's all very frustrating. If you have been an individual that has had Lyme disease there's a big community out there of people, they're like, why won't anyone listen to us? Why won't our doctors take us seriously? And what do we have to do here? Do we have to start dropping dead? Yeah. There's a tremendous amount of frustration in that community because there's a sentiment among the medical establishment that, you know, hey, some antibiotics. Exactly. It's easy to cure Lyme disease here's some antibiotics. You still have persistent symptoms. Those are probably in your head. We're not going to say they're in your head, but they're in your head. And the people who are experiencing these symptoms are like, no, my life has been derailed by these symptoms and you guys aren't doing anything about it. It's frustrating. I know there's a lot of people out there that are pretty stoked right now to be hearing this. Yeah, for sure. We're advocating for you guys. Sure. Not patting myself on the back, although I am literally passing like I see you, Chuck. That elbow is sticking out pretty far. So Lyme disease is a disease. It's an infection caused by the bacterium Borlia. We're going to get you an apron and call you the word butcher, bergdorferry, mortgage, and we'll get to why it's called that in a bit. Okay. But if you haven't caught on by now, it is transmitted through tick bites. Right. So a tick, and in particular a nymph stage of a tick, which is a young adult or juvenile tick, will transmit this bacteria, the Borelia burgdor, ferry into a human. And the reason we usually get it from nymphs, Chuck, is because an adult tick doesn't find humans particularly appetizing, but a nymph tick will because they're stupid. They don't know anything yet. So as they're feeding on us after, somewhere, maybe around 24 to 36 hours of feeding this infected tick that has this bacteria in it, the bacteria will make its way from the midgut to the tick saliva and the ticket transmits it into the human bloodstream, where it just absolutely wreaks havoc on the human body. Yeah. And you said something really key there. 24, 36, 48 hours later, really important. They have to be attached to you for that long, sometimes even longer, to transmit this bacterium. So if you find a tick on you and you get it off, you don't need to sweat Lyme disease. No. If you get it off in due time right, exactly. Like you see, it's still crawling on you and unattached. Don't worry about it at all. But when it is attached and when it has transmitted the bacteria, what is transmitted? This bee burgdorfairy is really amazing at its job, which is infecting you, giving you a bacterial infection. It has figured out how to zoom through the bloodstream, but then also take itself out of the bloodstream by latching onto the walls of your blood vessels. Yeah. This is crazy about the cellular stuff that once it's attached to a cell, they said, it's like a slinky. It doesn't let go. It just basically reaches out and grabs the next cell without letting go of the previous cell and just sort of walks end over end, never unattaching itself. Right, exactly. So as it's moving along, it's not going to get kind of washed away in the extracellular matrix. It's stuck to the cell. If it wants to be stuck to the cell, it can do the same thing to the blood vessel walls to pull itself out of the bloodstream and then go attack specific parts of the body. So it's really good at hanging on. That's one thing that makes it kind of pernicious and then another thing. Exactly. It's basically yeah, it's like the bacteria version of a tick. I didn't think about that. And then another thing it does chuck, I think this is really, really recent research. It can actually change its protein expression at a much faster rate than the normal mutation rate for bacteria. Something like 15 times faster. Yeah. What that does is that just makes it really hard for our human immune system to catch up to it. Right. Because our immune system will produce antibodies based on the initial infection, but by the time the antibodies come around, the bacteria may have changed itself so that the antibodies won't recognize it, will just go right past it because it doesn't fit the description that the antibodies have that's right. And you'll know that something's bad is happening, first of all, if you find that tick, but if you get headaches, fever, fatigue is a huge symptom. But the real telltale is what's called em. It's an expanding skin rash called erythema migraines. And it's that circular pattern. And I know we did talk about this on the Tix episode, but it's a circular pattern with what looks like a bull's eye in the center of it. Yes. And you can take off your butcher's apron now because that was beautiful. Put on your chef's hat. You're sweating over there. Yeah. So that particular rash, that bullseye rash, that is like just an absolute telltale sign that you have a lime borleosis infection that only comes around in, like, maybe 70% to 80% of cases. I think if every person got that rash, we would not have this problem with Lyme disease because it would be caught very quickly, because you get that within usually about a week or less of getting infected, but it doesn't come up in all cases. And with some of those other symptoms, like you said, like weakness, headaches, flu like symptoms, there could be a lot of different other things. Joint pain. And so the Lyme disease infection goes undiagnosed or misdiagnosed in a lot of cases, are dead for many years. It's just now that they're starting to kind of recognize it or suspect lyme when otherwise they might not have yeah. Literally hundreds of things can have the same symptoms as Lyme disease. So lime has been around for a long time. We'll talk about the history here in a minute, as far as the 1970s go and official recognition, but it's been around. I believe Yale School of Public Health found the bacterium in ancient North America like, 60,000 years old, right before the arrival of humans. They have an autopsy of a 5300 year old mummy that had Lyme disease. Yeah, you know, otzi the iceman. Remember him? I remember. Uzi. Yeah. I was disappointed that they referred to him as a 5300 year old mummy. It's like, no, it's utzi the ice. Everybody knows him. Give him his name. But he had Lyme disease. He did. And there was a German physician named Alfred Buckwald who described that em skin rash that we now call Lyme disease about 130 years ago. Right. Lyme disease has been around a while, but we are just now seeing a huge again, an epidemic of it and a massive spread of it, not just in North America, but there are also two other kinds of ticks that transmit two other kinds of lime causing bacteria in Europe and Asia, and in all three places north America, Europe, and parts of Asia. The incidence of Lyme disease is picking up at an alarming pace. I think we should slow down our pace. Take a break. Okay. All right. We'll come back and we'll talk about Lime, Connecticut, right after this. What if you were a gigantic snack food maker and you had to wrestle a massively, complex supply chain to satisfy cravings from Tokyo to Toledo? So you partner with IBM Consulting to bring together data and workflows so that every driver and merchandiser can serve up jalapeno, sesame and chocolate covered goodness with real time, data driven precision. Let's create supply chains that have an appetite for performance. IBM let's create. Learn more at IBM. Comconsulting it's 2022. When things look different, like doctors visits, for example, sometimes you don't have to go into a doctor's office to be treated for non emergency situations, like a sinus infection or allergy. And that's why teladoc gives you the chance to connect with board certified physicians right from your home via phone or video. That's right. Doctors are standing by 24/7, so you can schedule a visit according to your schedule. You can see for yourself why teladoc is ranked number one by JD. Power and telehealth satisfaction with direct to consumer providers. Teleduco is available through most major health plans and many employers. But even if you're not covered by insurance, everyone has access to use teletoc. That's right. If you want to check it out, download the app today or visit teladoc.com stuff to register or schedule a visit today. That's teladoc.com stuff. For JD. Power 2021 award information, visit JDPower. comAWARDS. All right, so Lime, Connecticut, something that's very old hat to you, right? Brandon about it for years. Lime, old Lime. And what was the third town? I don't remember. No, let's just call it new lime. It was not. They're going to be so mad. Their high school football team is going to go berserk on Old Lime this year. In the 1970s, though, there were a group of children and adults in these towns in Connecticut that were having all these weird symptoms swollen knees, skin rashes, headaches, all this severe fatigue. And it's bad enough these days, but in the early nineteen s, seventy s doctors were definitely did not have this on the radar and were very dismissive of what was going on in these towns. And if it were not for the work of Judith Minch and Polly Murray, two just regular moms, although Polly Murray did work for the World Health Organization for a while. They were advocates. They were patient advocates because their families were getting sick and no one would listen. And they were like, someone's got to do something. Something's going on here and these doctors are not being any help. Right. And it's a big deal. Polly Murray ended up writing a book. She made it sort of her life's work in 1996, a book called The Widening Circle. And because of sort of the persistent sexism and science, they were largely discounted. Even though they had a list of 37 individuals they researched on their own, contacted scientists. We just really need to shout them out. Polly Murray died just about a month ago at the age of 85. Oh, is that right? Yeah. She was a persistent cuss, as they call him up in the Yankee state. That's right. On the one hand, yes. From everything I've read and all the impressions I have, they were very much dismissed and it was very much sexist. And also, I think, because they weren't doctors, but on the other hand, the doctors who were being presented with these cases were like, I have no idea what this is, so let's just pretend it's not real. But luckily, those two women in the groups that they established, they went on and they contacted Yale Medical School, they contacted the state and they really kind of put this on the map. They said there is a mysterious epidemic that's going on where you have a lot of kids who suddenly have juvenile arthritis out of nowhere. What are you guys going to do about it? And because of their agitation, this mystery made its way to the desk, or I guess the microscope, of a guy named Willy Burgdorfer. And he was at the time, the world's foremost authority on what's called Rocky Mountainspotted Fever, which is another tick borne bacterial infection. I remember that when I was a kid that was a big news item. It was a scary one. He was working out in Colorado and Colorado was ground zero for Rocky Mountain and spotted fever for a while, which is, yes, you do not want to have that. It's a really bad bacterial infection. But by this time they had done, thanks to the leg work done by the moms and the patient advocate groups in Lime, Connecticut. It had been pretty well established that the common thread between all these people, besides where they lived and by the way, it was Chuck Linee, Old Lime and east haddam sorry, east had them, aside from the fact that they all lived in the same region, was that all of them are almost all of them were called being bitten by a tick. And a lot of them had a mysterious rash right before the symptoms presented. So it came to this guy, Willy Bergdorfer's microscope, because they had said, there's something in the ticks here that is creating this disease that we haven't encountered before. That's right. And he had already discovered this bacterium called how do you pronounce that? Spirochet. Spirochet. But spirochet is a type of bacteria. Give me the apron. There you go. All right. Spirochet. And you just made me think of the older brother Chet and Weird Science. Now go make yourself one, buttwood. Yes. Man, that guy had some good quotes. Yeah. Rip. What? Bill Paxton, when he died a couple of years ago. Very sad. Are you sure you're thinking of Bill Pullman? No, Bill Paxton died. It was so sad because I had just listened to his Mark Marin interview and he was like, after that episode, I wanted nothing more than to be Bill Paxton's friend and neighbor. Oh, neat. He just sounded like the best guy and best family man. And he passed away way too early. Yeah. Really? I did not know about that. I saw Frailty not too many weeks ago. It's still pretty good. Was it the first viewing or no, I've seen it before, but great movie. Yeah, but he wrote and I believe directed and starred in it. Yeah, it was so good. I know. Love a good Powers Booth cast and call, for sure. It was unusual and surprising, but it was perfect. Very good underrated film. Where are we? Oh, yeah, we were talking about Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Willie Bergdorfer identifying the spirochete that was causing lines of spirit key. Right. Spirochetum. No, remember, we established we're all smart. Yeah. So he discovered this parakeet, and he was honored by this discovery and naming that thing after himself. That's why it has that interesting name. I get the impression he didn't name it after himself. They named it after him. He said no, go on. Yeah, okay. But there's a big difference between him saying this thing is called the burgdorferry bacteria and somebody saying, we're going to name this after you. No, I totally agree. Okay, so Burgdorfer, he figures out what is the basis of Lyme disease, which is great. That's an enormous breakthrough. It establishes that, yes, it is its own thing. It's its own disease. And because it was a bacteria, it's a spirochete, which, again, it's kind of a snake like shaped bacteria specific kind that walks like a slinky. Because it was a bacterial infection, the medical establishment said, oh, we got this here, take some antibiotics. And over the course of several years, starting in, I think the 90s is when they really started to say, okay, we can cure Lyme disease, especially if we catch it early on by a two to four week round of antibiotics. Right? Here you go. And they said, Case closed, we're the medical establishment, let's go have a party for ourselves. Yeah. And here's the thing, many times that can take care of the problem. So it's not like they were just lazy and not doing their work, but I think they closed the book a little too soon and a lot of people do, because that round of oral antibiotics, if you catch it early, it can really work. But and I think they say, what, like nine times out of ten, if you catch it early, then that will work. Right. They're so persistent with the assertion that if you find a tick on yourself and you live in an area where Lyme disease is known to thrive, if you can't say how long that ticks been on you, they're probably just going to give you that round of antibiotics. Again, like you said, in a lot of cases, and I believe, from what I've read, the vast majority of cases in early stage lime disease, that round of antibiotics should work. Yeah. And they say that if you and this is from the American Lime Disease Foundation. Quote, if you live in endemic area, have symptoms consistent with early Lyme disease and suspect recent exposure to a tick, present your suspicion to your doctor so that he or she may make a more informed diagnosis. All right? Show up to your doctor and say, madam, sir, I would love to present my suspicions to you. Please sit down. Well, they're saying you still sort of need to be your own advocate because it is so hard to diagnose still, because going on symptoms alone, like we said, there are hundreds of things that share those symptoms and Lyme disease may not be the first thing they think of. That's a huge problem with Lyme disease. Another huge problem is that the test we use to test for Lyme disease doesn't actually test for the Bburg Dorphy bacteria, right? It tests for the antibodies that should be present in your bloodstream if you have a bacterial infection. Not even specific to that one, but a bacterial infection, the problem is it takes days, if not maybe a week or two, before your body mounts an effective immune response against this infection. So if you find a tick and they give you a test, say within the first couple of days, it's going to come back negative, even though you very much have a burgdorferry infection, it's going to come back negative because the antibodies haven't been created yet. The other part of the problem is, even if you take a blood test that tests directly for the burgdorferi bacterium. It moves out of the bloodstream really easily and within several days, there's a very brief window of time where you can directly test for the burgdorfree bacteria and find it in a simple blood test. Yeah. You can also get false positives. And they're advocating now for two tiered testing for confirmation of the diagnosis. So if you get that first positive test, sometimes now you'll get a different test, a Western Blot test, that's going to really get more specific to that antibody, not just the general antibodies. Right. So part of the other problem is the reason a lot of patient activists and patient advocate groups say. No doctors. You're wrong. Like. This is not good enough. Is that there's a sneaking suspicion among people who have what's called chronic Lyme or posttreatment Lyme disease syndrome. Is that the round of antibiotics. The two to four week round of antibiotics that seemingly cured the Lyme disease symptoms. That you had actually failed to fully knock out the bacteria that created this infection. That created this Lyme disease in the first place. That it just burrowed further into your body and because the medical establishment said. We got it. It's fine. These antibiotics cured it and didn't go deeper. That bacterial infection is allowed to fester and then present in worse ways later. Yeah. And it's a really big deal because what will happen is they'll say, you're cured. We gave these antibiotics, they worked. But weeks and months and even years later, when people have persistent fatigue and muscle aches and headaches and your knee joints hurt, they said, like a brain fog can happen. These are all things that are I don't want to say generic, but if you walk into your doctor and say, I feel like I'm fuzzy and I have a brain fog and I get headaches and I'm tired of it's hard to pinpoint what's going on. Sure. And they think you're cured of the Lyme disease. So that's where some of the more dismissive, at least from the Lyme disease community, they're saying, like, I have this chronic issue. And they're saying, but no, there's no such thing as a chronic issue. Right. Well, they're also saying, like, look, we gave you a test for Lyme disease and you came back negative. We know you had it before we tested you. We came back positive. We treated with antibiotics. Now we've tested you again, and it's coming back negative. You don't have Lyme disease anymore. So there's a huge debate whether the antibiotic course is not enough and that the Lyme disease is persisting elsewhere in the body and that maybe it's changed its form so that it won't show up on the tests like it should, or there's remnants of it. I saw one article that suggested that the cell wall from the burgdorfree spirochet can remain even after the thing is dead and persistent like joint tissue and cause an immune response there, which would explain this. Longterm arthritis is like a posttreatment Lyme disease syndrome, symptom, or is it that it converts into an entirely different disease, like an autoimmune disorder? Yeah, some people think that it could trigger an autoimmune response and the infection is gone. And this is what's happening later on, is you have this autoimmune response that can lead to other things, like rheumatic heart disease, I think. Did we cover Guillainbar syndrome or just talk about it in different episodes? We've talked about it, and I think, if I remember correctly, is Guillebarre. Barr, give me a I'm pretty sure we could both be wearing the apron for this one, though. We'll split it up. I get the lower half. All right. I get the top half. I'm Porky Pigginit. All right. I'm going to just cover my bits down there. But regardless of what's happening, what people know is that they don't feel right, and it's extremely frustrating to feel these symptoms months and years later and not be taken seriously in a doctor's office. Yeah. So a lot of people are saying this course of antibiotics shouldn't be two to four weeks. It should be many months. Right. Because you really need to get all of the spirochet out of there or else it's going to persist and you're going to have big problems. And then the medical establishment is thing like what you're talking about doesn't even exist. So there's a lot of frustration when you're saying a big disconnect. And this is something that is probably going to keep playing out, although it seems like it may be on its way out because of the epidemic proportions lime is taking now in the United States. Yeah. I mean, the statistics are mounting up such that it can't be ignored any longer. Not that it was ignored, but that's probably a harsh statement, but it's being taken way more seriously now. Yeah. So something like there's an expectation that there's going to be something like 300 to 400,000 new cases of Lyme disease in the United States alone, and that 10% to 20% of those patients will end up with chronic Lyme disease. Yeah. I mean, I spend a fair amount of time hiking around the woods with my dogs and have pulled plenty of ticks off of them and plenty of ticks off of myself. And I have fatigue a lot because I have a four year old. And every now and then I'm like, do I have lime disease? Well, probably not. And here's why. Well, I've never had the bullseye, first of all. Okay, that's a big one. But also the ticks you pull off of your dog, those are dog ticks. They do not transmit lime. It's specifically the long or black legged tick, which is a type of deer tick. Well, but here's the thing. There are plenty of deer ticks in the woods. Are you saying that they would not latch onto a dog. And they'd be like, oh, no, I don't know, because there are deer ticks all over the woods. Sure, there definitely are. I don't know if deer ticks will latch onto a dog. That's entirely possible. They won't since there's such a differentiation between dog ticks and deer ticks. But I do know that dog ticks don't transmit lime. Well, I think we should talk about my favorite thing from the ticks episode, and this is when I will lay on people from time to time. Remember how tics attach themselves? Sure. They just hang out on blades of grass and things and just snap their little claws constantly, just waiting for something to pass by that they can latch on to. Right. They send the CO2 of the mammal that's walking past. So interesting. And Chuck, one thing I read is that somehow the lime infected ticks because they're infected themselves. Lime resides in, like, small mammals and rodents as a reservoir. They are infected, but they don't have symptoms. Ticks get infected with this stuff and they're just passing it along. It's not like they're the ultimate source of Lyme disease. No, ticks are misunderstood. They're really great. Right. But from what I saw, the ticks that are infected with the Lyme bacteria are actually better at finding hosts than noninfected ticks. Like it somehow enables them to be better parasites. That's interesting. Yes, that sounds familiar. Do we cover that, or do I just know that because I don't remember. But I remember you talking about in the Tips episode about how they wave their arms in the air waving somebody passed by. And I remember one of our listeners made some art of that. We got to find it. That's right. And from snapping their little fingers on a blade of grass to my dog's butt, to my scrotum, it's quite a ride. It's a wild ride. And then to Emily, eventually plucking that thing out for me. That's nice. That's what marriage is all about, folks. Yeah. You just have your forearm thrust across your eyes. You're like, Get it out, get it out. So let's take another break, okay? We'll talk a little bit about prevention and then a little bit about some very recent, interesting wacky things going on in Congress about Lyme disease as a bioweapon. Okay? What if you were a trendy apparel company facing an avalanche of demand to ensure more customers can buy more Sherpa like jackets? You call IBM to automate your it infrastructure with AI. Now, your systems monitor themselves. What used to take hours takes minutes, and you have an ecommerce platform designed to handle sudden spikes in overall demand, as in actual overalls. Let's create It systems that rule up their own sleeves. IBM, let's create learn more@ibm.com It automation. It's 2022. When things look different, like doctors visits, for example, sometimes you don't have to go into a doctor's office to be treated for nonemergency situations, like a sinus infection or allergy. And that's why teladoc gives you the chance to connect with board certified physicians right from your home via phone or video. That's right. Doctors are standing by 24/7, so you can schedule a visit according to your schedule. You can see for yourself why teledoc is ranked number one by JD power and telehealth satisfaction with direct to consumer providers. Teladoc is available through most major health plans and many employers. But even if you're not covered by insurance, everyone has access to use teletoc. That's right. If you want to check it out, download the app today or visit teladoc. comStuff to register or schedule a visit today. That's teladoc.com stuff. For JDPower 2021 award information, visit JDPower comAWARDS. Okay, Chuck, you talked about prevention. How do you keep from having to have a tick pulled from your crotch? Don't ever go into mother nature. Just stay in your mid century modern home with tiled floors and don't go into the woods. Sounds delicious. No, I love the woods. You love the woods, right? Yeah, I love watching the woods on television. Yeah. From your midcentury house. No, I do. I love the woods myself. Yeah. I'm just kidding. Get in the woods. But they recommend things like deep. I don't use that stuff on my own body, but some people will say, put that all over your body, and put it on your clothes, and put it on your socks and shoes. Just walk around spraying a cloud of it around you constantly while you're in the woods. What I do is I just check for ticks. Yeah, a good thing to do. Seriously, it looks super dorky, but what do you care? Is to tuck your pant legs into your socks. Yeah, sure. And then when you come out, like, wear light colors, too, because you can see the ticks a lot more easily. And then when you come out of the woods, take your clothes off and take a shower as soon as you can. And just inspect yourself, inspect your groin, your armpits, your scalp. Part of the problem with Lyme disease, though, is, remember, you get it from you get it from ticks in the Nymph stage, which are really smart all. So you've got to check really well to see if you have that tick on you. Yeah, and just while you're at it, take off the adult ticks as well. Yeah, don't just leave those. And check your dogs. You check your dogs under their haunches, like on the armpit of their legs, whatever that's called. Their leg pits. Check behind their ears, check under their collars, because ticks are trying to they're not going to hang out just like on the top of their back. They may start there, but they're going to try and find a place that's dark and warm and out of view. Yeah, I don't mean to say you can't get Lyme disease from an adult, Chuck. It's just that the Nymphs are far more likely to feed on a human than an adult is, but a lime infected adult tick will transmit lime to you, too. Very important distinction. So now we move on to the US. Congress. Very recently, about a month ago, end of July, I think, yeah. There was a US. House rep named Chris Smith, Republican out of New Jersey, who introduced legislation that said, hey, Department of Defense, you should review these claims that I'm seeing that our own Pentagon researched using Tics to spread Lyme disease as a bioweapon in the mid 20th century. I'm reading a lot about this in books and articles that we did research on Plum Island and other insects, too, not just ticks, of turning them into bioweapons. And this thing passed. And a lot of this comes from a book written by Chris Newbie called Bitton Colon the Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons. And this book, I think Chris Smith, the representative from New Jersey, said, this book really inspired me to take up this legislation. But in the book, Newbie basically says, the government at Fort Detrick, Maryland, and on Palm Island, New York, before it was turned into an animal disease research center we're doing it was an insect disease research center before that, I guess they were looking into well, they definitely were doing bio warfare research there. Yeah. And then Fort Dietrich, for however long, is they're not still doing it now. But they were apparently looking into ticks as delivery systems for biological weapons. I couldn't find that that is actually verified, but I find that highly believable. But what Newbie is saying is they were doing that research, and then the way we got Lyme disease is whatever research they were coming up with escaped, say, a tick attached to a bird that flew off of Plumb Island and landed in the area around Lime, Connecticut. And these ticks got off, and they started to breed, and they became endemic in this area. And that's where Lyme disease came from. There was actually a biological weapon that was produced and then inadvertently, probably not purposely released into the larger population in the Northeast. Yes. So here's my question. I haven't read the book, but are they saying that we created Lyme disease or that we just weaponized it? Because those are two very different things. Yeah, I don't know what she's saying either, and I think she stops short of saying that, but that it's implied that if you put two and two together, the government was looking into biological warfare, and they were talking about using ticks at some point, and it's really close to this ground zero where the tick epidemic began. You put two and two together. That's the impression I have, is that she didn't actually come out and say it, but that she lets the readers surmise for themselves, which is the problem. Well, I mean, that's very easy to disprove if she's actually claiming that they created Lyme disease because we just got through saying it was in who was the mummy? Otzi. It was in Oopsie over 800 years ago, over in the Alps. Well, true, but also in the United States. It came around we first discovered that in 1970s and like several different places. It wasn't just lime Connecticut. They found it in California. Right. And it doesn't add up that it would be popping up in all these random places if it escaped from Long Island Sound in 53. Right. Which I think somebody who subscribed to this conspiracy theory and it's very much what it is as a conspiracy theory, that well, then the release wasn't purpose or accidental. It was purposeful. They spread it around the Northeast, California, and then Spooner, Wisconsin, which supposedly is the actual place where the first case of Lyme disease was described in the United States in 1969. About six years before this cluster of juvenile arthritis cases popped up in old Lime. Lime and east had them. Well, it's a very bad idea if that's what went on, because you have to depend on a lot of things, which is a these ticks definitely finding their way to the enemy. B, they attach to the enemy successfully and transmit the disease. And then what does it transmit? A very slow acting disease that will give people headaches and fatigue over the course of a long time. Right. That also produces a one of a kind telltale rash. Right. That tells you supposedly in plenty of time that you have this disease that needs to be treated with a simple course of oral antibiotics. Yeah. And it has to be probably in the country. They don't thrive well in the city. Right. So it doesn't make a good biological weapon. No. And then again, people who subscribe to the conspiracy theory say, well, they can't all be winners, but maybe it was just something they were experimenting with and it wasn't very good. Trust me. I mean, we've done enough research on stuff our American government used to do and continue to do that. It's not the most outlandish thing in the world. No, it's not. And that's also why Chris Smith, the representative from New Jersey, shouldn't just be dismissed out of hand because it's entirely plausible. It's not just a complete wacko idea. Right. The other reason Christmas shouldn't just be dismissed out of hand is because he is a true lime warrior. He introduced other legislation called the Tick Act, and of course, he had to make tick. And Akronism, what does it stand for? Ticks colon, identify, control and knockout act. He was really grasping like a tick on a blade of grasp with that one. But the point is but knockout is not one word unless you use it as knockout. That's what he's saying, I guess. But it would create an additional $180,000,000 in federal funding for Lyme disease research, which is sorely needed right now. That's awesome. I didn't know he was such an advocate. That's good. He really is. He hates Lyme disease, like, a lot. I was about to say something, but I wish I could take a pill that would bulk up my analogy region in my brain. Oh, your analogies are great. What were you going to say? I want to know. We can beef it up. I was going to get political. I was going to say, he hates ticks like he hates okay, can we leave that and bleep it? Oh, no, we'll find out. All right, so the whole idea that it's a bioweapon almost certainly not the case. Right. But it makes for a good price if you look up, like, Lyme disease and bio weapon. There is a lot of recent articles written on it. Just because a member of Congress introduced this legislation. What a lot of people are saying is, look, it makes sense, like this conspiracy theory that people would go to that. But at the same time, there's another really great explanation for it. And it's climate change that this whole thing came about in the 70s because we're starting to see what was called the first epidemic from climate change. And there's a really great article on a on, which is a great website by Mary Beth Pfeiffer spells it like Michelle Pfeiffer with the P called Ticks Rising. And she's an investigative reporter, science journalist, who really went to a lot of trouble to explain how climate change has created a new world for ticks and we are now living in it. Yeah, I mean, in 2014, the EPA actually started to use four new indicators about what's going on with climate change and the impact, and one of them was the spread of Lyme disease. The EPA officially uses that as a factor and an indicator in determining the impact of climate change now. Right. And so the whole basis of this idea is that because of warmer weather, ticks are being killed off in far fewer numbers over the winter. So they're surviving longer. As it gets warmer, higher and higher up, their range is spreading rather rapidly. And wherever these ticks go, lyme disease is gained to go with them. So the spread of Lyme disease is increasing as the spread of ticks is increasing, too. And ticks have gotten totally out of hand in some areas. In that same Aon article, mary Beth Pfeiffer was talking about how moose are dying in their thousands in, like, Wisconsin and the Dakotas because they're being bled to death by 100,000 ticks at once. It's amazing that never happened before. And now all of a sudden, it's kind of becoming routine because the ticks aren't dying off in the winter like they're supposed to. And again, it's because of climate change. And then in the Northeast, Chuck, one of the reasons why there's been this explosion of ticks is because there's been an explosion of deer to support the tick population. Sure. Back in the day, there were things like mountain lions and there were predators that would help control the deer population. Yes. Wolves. Wolves. They are even suggesting reintroducing wolves to help control the deer population. Oh, yeah, you can bet that's going to happen. No, really? I mean, do you think so? Yeah, totally. If 300,000 people a year are coming down with lime in the United States, they're going to start reintroducing wolves to combat if it has even a half of a chance. I'd be interested to see if that happens for sure. Because humans are going to want to hunt those wolves. It just brings it out on us for some reason, huh? Well, I mean, they hunted the mountain lions, right? But I think that's the idea of, oh, wait a minute, really weird and circuitous. Bad things happen when we overhunt mountain lions and wolves. Maybe when we reintroduce them, we won't have to or we won't follow that impulse. We'll just let nature take its course, right? Who knows? You got anything else, man? I got nothing else. So there's a solution around of antibiotics and some wolves that will cure what ails us. Yeah. Advocate for yourself still, people. Sure. And the wolf. Be persistent. That's good advice for everything. Chuck agreed. Almost everything. There are certainly cases where persistence is not a good idea, but you know what I'm saying, right? I do know. Okay, if you want to know more about lyme disease, go check out all of the articles there are to read. And again, go check out the a on article by mary beth pfeiffer. It's really interesting. And since I said it's interesting, that means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this neat story about how great stuff you should know listeners are oh, I like that. From portland, maine. Hey, guys, my wife, daughter, and I all stuff you should know listeners for years decided last minute to buy tickets to the show while on vacation at old orchard beach, Maine, just a short drive south of Portland. We had nosebleed seats, naturally, because we waited until just an hour before showtime, and that was more than cool by us, and we were totally stoked just to be there. Whatever. The seats. When we got to our balcony seats, a friendly fellow named matt approached us, said he had three tickets for orchestra seats and asked if we'd like them. The tickets were intended for friends of his who were stuck in labor day weekend traffic, couldn't make it to the show. Turns out he had been scouting the crowd for 40 minutes, looking for a group of three, even enlisting the help of the ushers to find three people together. We were the first group that he saw a brief walk downstairs, and there we were, three rows from the stage for the supremely excellent show about podcast topic redacted. Thanks to matt and his friends being stuck in traffic, we went from not having tickets an hour before showtime to having third row ten minutes before you guys took stage. We considered it a little piece of true magic. So while I'm confident this lengthy setup and telling you the story is way too long for the heir no, not true, Richard Clark. The whole family would be forever grateful if you could give Matt and the Connecticut grounds keeper a huge thank you from Rich, Susan and Emily in upstate New York for sharing those seats with us. That is fantastic. I love our shows, man. It's great. People are so kind. And that is from Richard Clark. Not Dick Clark, but Rich Clark. Oh, that's even better. Yeah, Dick Clark's taken that's right. And good for Rich Clark for recognizing that, too. Yeah. Thanks for coming to the show, Rich, and bringing the family. And thank you, Matt, for being such a cool dude. That was very nice of you. I'm utterly unsurprised because our fans are pretty great people. Yes. Okay. Well, if you want to get in touch with us, you can go on to Stephysio.com and you can send us a tweet or Instapost or a comment or what have you, that kind of thing, because all of our social links are there. Or you can just do it the old fashioned way and send an email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom and send it off to Stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio's how stuff works. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio App, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder. From exactly right media, my Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarra and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You know you're the best pet mom. When you growl back during playtime, give epic belly rubs and feed them Halo holistic made with responsibly sourced ingredients plus probiotics. For digestive health, find us at chewy, amazon and halopeet.com. Com." | |
How Tickling Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-tickling-works | What's the deal with tickling? Why does it make people laugh, and what's the science behind the reaction? Join Chuck and Josh and listen in as they demystify the curious practice known as tickling. | What's the deal with tickling? Why does it make people laugh, and what's the science behind the reaction? Join Chuck and Josh and listen in as they demystify the curious practice known as tickling. | Tue, 22 Feb 2011 20:39:28 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=22, tm_hour=20, tm_min=39, tm_sec=28, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=53, tm_isdst=0) | 20976187 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetofworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. With me, as always with Charles. You Chuck Bryant, which makes this stuff you should know. How's it going, Chuck? It is great. How are you, sir? I'm fine. I can feel Spring right around the corner, and I'm getting a little excited, you know? Groundhog rasco Peak cole train. Yeah. Is that the Georgia guy? No, that's General. General Lee, right? Yeah. Is Roscoe the one in Pennsylvania? No, that's Paul Tucket. Pete. Oh, that's right. Tuck. It Pete. I think that's from fetch. That's just some crazy guy in Paul Tucker. That's Paul Tucker, Pete. This is the best start ever. Yeah, it is, because none of this has anything to do with what we're fixing to talk about. Spring is around the corner. That just tickles me to death. No. Have you heard, Chuck, of a guy named and? I'm sorry that I just shamed you on our podcast. It's that fun. It wasn't that bad. I've heard way worse. Sure. We've listened to tech stuff. That's right. Have you heard of a guy named Robert Waller? Sounds familiar, but I always say no and end up saying, no, you have not heard of this guy. Okay. I would be very surprised if you had. All right, let's hear. Robert Waller, in 1996, was a Walmart employee stalker, apparently, at the Frederickton, New Brunswick, Canada store okay. Okay. For a new toy that just debuted called Tickle Me Elmo. And Robert Waller was about to find out the links that people would go to to get their hands on one of these on December 14 during the Midnight Madness sale. Apparently, Walmart had sold out of these things, but that hadn't dissuaded customers from basically roving the Walmart impacts, looking for them. Where is it exactly? Behind stuff. Just knocking stuff over. And they see Waller accepting a box of these from another employee, and they went after him. Really? He suffered. He was pulled under, trampled the crotch was yanked out of his brand new jeans. He suffered a pulled hamstring. Back up a second. They physically tore the crotch from his jeans trying to get to this. Trying to get their hands on a tickle meal. Exactly. Yeah. But if there's, like, 300 people pulling in the same spot, it's pretty easy to strengthen numbers. Okay, so he was swallowed by this pack of 300 people who were trying to get to these Tickle Me Elmos. He suffered injuries to his back, his jaw, and his knee, and he suffered a broken rib and a concussion. Not funny. No, it wasn't funny. And we can assume that Mr. Waller, ironically, in the course of giving over these Tickle Me Elmos was in no way, shape, or form tickled. No. And that he probably didn't laugh, because, as we know, tickling is related to laughter as anybody who has seen a Tickled Me Elmo knows. Yeah, but have you stopped and wondered why we laugh when we tickle? I know you have. I have, because you've asked me before you said we should do this. As a side note, I read this awesome article in The New Yorker last week about crowd trampling and crushes and crowd waves and stuff. We should do a podcast on that. We talked about it in Riot Control, didn't we? Yeah. It's really interesting stuff and sad. I agree. And they wrote this one because of the Walmart incident last year at Black Friday. Somebody died at that one. There's no tickle me on, so I couldn't use it. But I saw that in my screen TV. I think we're the culprit. So messed up. What is wrong with people? I don't know. And Black Friday deals. Everybody knows they've gotten increasingly suckier in this economy. Oh, man. All right, so that was a little sidetrack. Sorry about that, Josh. No, that was the intro. Now. I mean my little New Yorker thing. Let's get back to tickling, okay? Because it's happier. Well, we have a question before us. Why do people laugh when we're tickled? This has been around for a very, very long time. People have pondered this kind of thing. Right? Sir Francis Bacon said that you don't necessarily have to be in a good mood in the 17th century. Kevin Bacon kevin Bacon was like, I'm neutral on this subject. And then Darwin was huge about tickling. He did a lot of studying of tickling. I didn't know that until I read this. He concluded that you have to be in a pretty good mood to be tickled, that you have to be in the right frame of mind, because both tickling and laughter require a good mood. He was wrong. And tickling and laughter are linked. We'll get into that. But it's a question that very smart people have explored and failed to explain. And we're not going to explain it in this podcast, Chuck. We're just not. No, I wrote this, by the way. I want to apologize to you. I wrote this within a couple of months of getting here, and I was just out to prove myself, and this is not my finest article. I confused myself when I went back and read parts of this. Can I read a sentence aloud written by your hand? Yeah. A gentle kiss can create physical arousal. So let's talk about what's the physiology of tickling is. That what you wanted to do? Yeah, let's talk about touch. You have millions, we all have millions of nerve endings, little tiny ones under our skin that tell our brain when touch is coming or something touched or something cold. That's how it sends alerts, like, Get your hand off the stove, that kind of thing. Right. It's one of the ways we survive. Exactly. When they are stimulated by something like a light touch, which is called what it's called? Nissmesis knismesis. And that's G. Stanley hall and Arthur Allen, who in 1897 decided that there's really just two categories of tickles, light tickling, right? Like, say by a feather, very light touch, and then heavy tickling, which, by the way, is the only one that can induce laughter, called garglysis. Not a very good name for it. So a light touch, let's say it sends a message through the nervous system. It goes through a couple of regions in the brain josh, to help us along, called the somatosensory cortex is right? And that analyzes touch and pressure, and then the interior cingulated cortex governs pleasant feelings. So you put touch, unpleasant feelings together, and your brain is going to calculate tickle and laughter, maybe. Right. So there you go. That's the physiology of tickling. As far as we know, anybody who's actually paying attention to that little spiel, your ears should have perked up because it's fairly incomplete. We gathered this information from the Wonder Machine. Yes. MRI. You and I both love the Wonder machine, but we both know that humans aren't fully capable of using it to its full potential yet, and therefore it doesn't fully prove anything. It just suggests everything. Let's just give a brief primer on the MRI, okay? Does it do? Chuck it's a fancy machine. Lights up and basically shows you what regions of the brain are activated when you're introducing certain stimuli. Right. And by activated, we mean, like, that they're suddenly getting more oxygen supply via blood than they had before. So there's a correlation, but the MRI doesn't show causation. Although a lot of people say, oh, well, the MRI shows this, so that's true. It's not it shows causation or correlation, not causation. Well, it also correlated in this case, why we can't self tickle, because the Cerebellum says, hey, body, your fingers approaching your armpit and you know it's coming. And supposedly if you know it's coming, you're not going to be tickled. And people as far back as Aristotle have wondered why, and he supposed that, yeah, that's probably it, like, you know it's coming. The thing is, that doesn't fully explain it, because think about it, like when somebody comes to you like, boy, yeah, it accentuates, it totally does. Yeah. But that doesn't mean that this is incorrect. Cerebellum is responsible for recognizing motion not just in yourself, but in others. So what they found is, for some reason, just based on MRIs, when you're doing it to yourself, the Cerebellum is less active. Basically, what they surmise is that your brain is judged that something totally insignificant is about to happen, so don't pay any attention to it. Let's just keep looking out for Antelopes to jump on her tigers that are coming at us. You know what that's called? What? Sensory attenuation. Yes. And that's when the brain filters out, like you said, anything unnecessary. True death. I wonder, though, I read this. I wonder if someone with alien hand syndrome could tickle themselves, I would think. Wholeheartedly. Because your brain doesn't know what's going on. And why? Because of an accident. Generally, with alien hand syndrome, your brain isn't receiving the message that your arm is moving. Right. That's true. Yeah. I don't see why you wouldn't be able to tickle yourself. So I guess one idea that explains ticklishness or the fact that we are ticklish is supported or supports the idea or the reason why we can't tickle ourselves, because it's insignificant. Right. And one idea why we are ticklish and why we tickle others is because it's a product of socialization and a tool of it, too. Right, right. Well, you're talking about Darwin. Hecker, yeah. Iwald hacker with Darwin. Like you said, they hooked up together and said you have to be in a good mood, but that's sort of been disproven. I'm not sure how they did these studies, though. They said that they would get people to watch, like, stand up comedy and get them laughing, and they found that they were no more likely to laugh when being tickled. I don't know about that, because if you're in a really bad mood and someone tries to tickle you, that's not working. No, that's not necessarily true. If you're tickled by means of gargleesis tickle, like tickling or laughter is involuntary. If you're ticklish and somebody gets you in the right spot, you cannot be in the right frame of mind and you'll still laugh and be ticklish. Yeah. Interesting. Come here. No. Well, think about it. If you were ticklish Chuck okay. I can suppose that. Okay. I'm sure you've seen people being tickled before. Like, if your neck is being tickled, your shoulders drop, and, like, your hands go up and you're trying to push the person off of you. Right. Yeah. Or someone goes at your armpit, you SWAT them away with a wax off. Exactly. Well, one theory goes that we are basically taught that these are very vulnerable places in our bodies and that we need to protect them. Yeah. That makes sense to me. Like the neck, especially. Yeah. There's a lot of important chunk in there. Yeah. And it's not even tickling with the neck. If someone comes at your neck, you're just natural responses to hunch up your shoulders and grab their hand or something. Somebody comes at you with the judo chomp. This goes back to when we were cave people right. And vulnerable spots on your body where you could bleed out. You want to protect no, this doesn't necessarily go toward that explanation, but what? You're talking about being encaed. Yes. This is extremely ancient, and that's proven or suggested by the fact that all great apes laugh when they tickle. When they're tickled. Right. Little bona bows. Yeah. And that's that orangutan orangutans pretty much all of the smarty pants primates right. Have the ability to laugh, and they laugh in different ways. But basically, what it is, it's a panting sound. Right, right. So that goes to show us that we diverge from apes ten to 16 million years ago. If apes can laugh and we can laugh, that means we both laughing is older than that divergence. Right. See what I'm saying? Yeah. Unless we evolved it naturally afterward. But that's less likely, I think, than occurring in such an ancient way. Also, the idea that it's even older than that divergence shows up in the fact that rats laugh when they're tickled. Yeah. And that's so cute. Did you see the video? I did see the video. They studied. I'm sure more than one person has done this, but jake Panscape of Bowling Green State University. That's right. That's where my brother went. Falcons. Go Falcons. They tickled rats. And they found out they have a little chirp that is ultrasonic humans can't even hear it, but they were able to record this. And not only do they chirp when tickled, but they have a similar reaction that you were talking about earlier, like a little kid. Once they got used to the tickling, if you started coming at the little rat with your little fingers, they started chirping and wiggling around, throw themselves on their back in anticipation. But that same study and video suggests that it's play as well, because when the person stopped tickling, he just put his hand in the cage and the rats would run after it in circles. Right. Wherever he moved his hand, they'd go after it. Like they wanted to play tickle. See, that's a rat study. I can get behind tickling rats. I'll do that all day long. Yes. So let's talk about some of the parts of the body, though, because, like, the soles of the feet, let's say you walk on these not exactly vulnerable. No, yeah, not vulnerable. You walk on these heavy plotting every day. You would think that a light tickle would tickle the feet, and they do. But if you press a palm, like, really hard against the sole of your foot, it would not tickle. That's all true because of the Meisner's corpuscles. Corpuscles. Corpuscles. They're very sensitive. And I get the indication that they're more sensitive than other areas of the body. Right. And the soles of the feet are loaded with these things. Yeah. Again, no one has any idea why. And the fact that the soles of your feet, which aren't very vulnerable, especially pretty tough feet when there was such a thing as shoes. Right, yeah. Yet the feet were still understandably ticklish. Probably. Sure. It kind of undermines the idea that it's socialization of the vulnerable parts of your body. Right. It doesn't make any sense. Right. But that is why your feet aren't tickled whenever you walk. That could be a much different world. Everyone would have, like, balloons and stuff. What I couldn't figure out, though, is how it's tied to laughter. You want to know why you couldn't figure it out? Because it's not proven. No one has any idea. Okay. We just know that it's involuntary. We know that it's not related to mood. Right. We know that not a light touch. That light touch, the nasmesis, can actually it can be arousing or it can be annoying, like a fly buzzing on you. Yeah. And that's like that doesn't cause laughter. Yeah. You see a horse or a cow, like, whacking flyers off of their hind end. Right. So that's why we have that touch. But it can also be arousing. It's considered a type of tickle. It's the gargolisus tickle that's laughter inducing. Okay. But we don't understand why. Another evolutionary biology theory is that it's a benign form of human conflict. So we get our aggressions out without actually causing any hurt feelings, and the laughter shows that it's all fine and dandy and nobody's really upset, but that's undermined by the idea that you can really upset a person by tickling them for a prolonged period past the point where they don't want to be tickled any longer. They can be kind of upset. As a younger brother, you know this. Yeah. Well, my sister actually, her husband, who was the boyfriend years ago, used to tickle her like crazy, and it got out of hand. She got angry. Tickle torture. Yes, it's exactly what did you look tickled torture? No, I didn't. You should. That's the other thing. It's the thing I looked up tickle torture, which I always thought was, like, medieval apparently, it's either Chinese tickle torture, indian tickle torture, some exotic land tacked onto the front, apparently. It may have been used in medieval Europe as a form of torture. Bring up the feather. Right. Nowadays it's used as a form of torture in a very sexual way. Right. At least as far as daily motion is concerned. Okay. But that kind of brings up something or it brings us back to Darwin. Darwin suggested that we tickle, and he probably has the most elegantly, simple explanation. We tickle because we form social bonds. Yeah. If somebody you don't know tickles you, that's an attack. If somebody you do know and you feel comfortable with tickles you, it's intimacy. It is. Whether it's parental or sibling or the creation of the strengthening of bonds between sexual partners. Right. Like you said, it's intimate. Interesting. Yeah. I wonder if the fact that we retreat or react because we're afraid of an attack and if it's the same with apes and rats, if that holds true for them as well, like it's a benign attack for them, too. Yeah. Well, yeah, because they were talking about the apes, like playing like they do it during play. Right. And the rats seem to take it as play as well. Interesting. But what that is useful for, we don't really know. Or maybe we do know we're looking too deeply into it. We should do one on laughter, period. Yes. Agreed. All right, let's do one. I guess the answer to the question then, Chuck, is we don't know why people laugh when tickled. That's disappointing. It's a little disappointing, but we'll come back to it when we do figure it out. Well, maybe we will one day. Okay. So if you want to learn more about how we don't have any idea why we laugh when we tickle, you can read this really kind of bad article I wrote years back, and you can read it by writing in Laugh and Tickle in the search bar howstephos.com, which will bring up that article and which brings up listener mail. Josh, I'm going to call this kind of a mean thing to do, but sort of funny as well. Is it a munchausen email? No. How to control a riot. This is from Eric with a K. Hey, guys. Hello. Stuff You Should Know. Staff. Like, we have a staff. Me. You and Jerry staff Tesla and Picasso. I listened to how to Control a Riot and you spoke of mob mentality. It brought to mind a game that my friends and I used to play when I was in the Disney College program. Oh, yeah. It's pretty good. If we were sitting around the apartment with nothing to do for the day, a group of friends would go into a Disney park until it was time to drink. So I guess you had pretty much free access to the Disney Park if you're in the college program. We would get ten or more people together and stand in a line. The line would be in front of a wall or a fence, away from any entrance or exit. It is really funny to see more and more people get in line behind the group of friends. The best part is when at the same time, the group just disperses at the same time. Like the original people would just leave and all of a sudden there's people standing in line were like, why are we standing by a wall? What was this year for? The befuddled look on their faces would really crack us up. I admit this is not the nicest thing in the world, wasting part of people's day at Disney. I still get a chuckle, though, when I think of it. It's funny to me. Now, let me just go with the flow. I group this in with face the wrong way and an elevator something he does it's very off putting, that. Yeah, I do it all the time. I don't do it to annoy people. I do it because I'm like talking to people. Oh, well, yeah, sure. But yeah, I don't just stand there like that with strangers. Usually I kneecap people who do that. You guys are the greatest. Is Eric with a K. All right, well, thanks a lot, Eric for with the K. Look for your knee capping if we're ever in an elevator together or if you're standing by a wall and coming after you, buddy. Yes. If you have any stories about Disney, we want to hear about them, especially the gnarly seedy underbelly of Disney. Like it's Disney jail. Yeah, I heard that there's just a whole underground under, the entire park filled with mutants. Well, we want to hear your Disney stories. Please send us any heartwarming, heartfelt ones. We can just find those anywhere. Send us your CD Disney Stores in an email to stuffpodcast@housetepworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit Howstep works.com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our home page. The House of Forks iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on itunes. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you?" | ||
45551a26-ba8a-11e8-9ed2-73793deca1d4 | Short Stuff: Ellen Richards | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-ellen-richards | Who is Ellen Richards? One of the most unsung scientists of all time, that's who. Her contribution? Bringing real science into the household and forcing the world to take "home-ec" seriously. We celebrate her today on Short Stuff. | Who is Ellen Richards? One of the most unsung scientists of all time, that's who. Her contribution? Bringing real science into the household and forcing the world to take "home-ec" seriously. We celebrate her today on Short Stuff. | Wed, 06 Feb 2019 16:39:19 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=6, tm_hour=16, tm_min=39, tm_sec=19, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=37, tm_isdst=0) | 11504020 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, there. Hi there. Welcome to Short Stuff. The shorter, stuff version of Stuff You Should Know, starring Chuck, Jerry and me. Josh. You get third billing. This is short stuff on short stuff. I do. Which is why I despise it. You're doing well. I am doing well. I love talking science. I also love talking history, and I really love talking his sigh, as it's called. And I love talking about undersung women in history and science. For sure. Chuck. This ticks. All those boxes. And what's sad is you could have just said women and science. Yeah, because almost across the board, women in science are under song or completely unsung. What about Mary Curie? She's such an outlier. Yeah, because that's the first name that pops into your head for a reason. Right. And it's like, well, she must have been the only woman scientist in the world. No, that's not the case. Supposedly, there is a long standing tradition in science of the men. In science, taking credit for the work of the women, whether it's something as outright fraudulent, is like just basically taking someone's work and not giving them credit because you can get away with it because you're a man and the other person was a woman or just not giving due credit. And over time, with history favoring men, typically, at least Western history, the original person who laid the foundation for it, the woman, will just kind of be lost to time. And this is what's called something called the Matilda Effect. Yes. And this is very evident in science. There's a couple of sort of horrifying statistics that they found here. One is that there was a scientific journal that changed their review process, reviewing things. Are we going to publish it? Are we not? And they switched theirs to leave out the names of the authors. So you don't even know who it is, male or female. And just doing that, the acceptance rate for women's reports rose almost 8%. And then a study in 2013 showed that the abstracts when you Google online and you read the abstract of a science paper, it's sort of like a summary, I guess. They were seen as being of a higher quality. If the author was male and wrote about things stereotypically, you would think of as male subjects like physics or math or something. Yeah. And this is in 2013. Right. So it's clearly still going on. And like I said, also, it's a long standing tradition, and it was kind of given this name, the Matilda Effect, back in 1993 by an historian of science from Cornell named Margaret Rossiter. And she named it The Matilda Effect after a woman named Matilda Jocelyn Gage, who was an abolitionist and suffragist. And she had written an essay in 1893 called Woman as an Inventor, which is basically like it is straight up BS, the way that women scientists are just being completely left out of history. She had a lot of foresight at the time and called this out and didn't really get anywhere with it, but at least documented it as far back as before the turn of the last century, that this was a problem and an issue. And so 100 years later, Margaret Rossiter kind of came up with this thing called the Matilda Effect. And there's a lot of instances in history it's not sporadic, it's not kind of scatter shot. Like, there are a lot of instances in history of women not getting due credit for the work that they did that established a field that created multiple fields or that their work grew to be misunderstood and almost kind of scorned. And that last one in particular is very much embodied by a woman named Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards. That's right. She was a woman who was the first woman accepted into a school of science, which, at the time, the MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology was male only. And they said, we'll do a little test and see if this lady can handle MIT. Watch this. And she was like, Great, I handled it. She was one of the first female chemists in the US. While her largest contribution I guess what she's remembered most for is her contribution to domestic science, aka home, which just saying that some people still might dismiss that as a soft science or nonscience, but it's not true because that encompasses everything from hygienic standards in the home to the clothes we wear being safe and the food we eat being healthy. And before she came along, not a lot of people were doing this, and it took her going to Vassar College, which is it still an all female college. Vasser, I think, actually is, yeah. She got a degree in chemistry in 1870, and then that's when MIT said, let me just see if she can handle this. And she got a Bachelor of Science and Chemistry from there in 1873 and then immediately started working, like, studying pollution and sanitary chemistry and things like that, which not a lot of people were doing it at the time. No, she was almost the first, if not the first person to say, okay, we're all like, eating food and drinking water, and has anybody stopped and asked, like, is the food we're eating in the water we're drinking healthy and pure? Is it toxic? What's the relation to pollution? What's the relation to industry? She started asking questions, and then in addition to asking questions, she started doing research and study, and she came up with this field called Oecology O-E-K-E ology. And it was the basis for what we recognize now as ecology or the study of the environment. And she was the first one to think about this back in, I believe, the it went along for five years, and by this time, she was an instructor at MIT. And MIT said, this sounds crackpot and whack. Stop talking about this, they literally forbade her to talk about ocology for a year. And so this discipline that she launched lasted for all of five years. And just kind of frustrated by that. She turned her attention instead to home economics, which is basically taking this idea rather than studying the water in the air and all of that, studying the results of the water in the air, like the food we put in and like the surroundings we live in and how they impact our health and how they can be made better. All right, we're going to take a break, and we're going to come back and talk a little bit more about how she managed to bring science into the household right after this. All right. So bringing science into the home environment was very different on the household level. To do that at the time. It was an unusual thing that she knew was important. It was a big passion of hers. Home equity also is cooking and cleaning and sewing and things like that. And it's not like she issued those things, but she was like, women are already in the home doing these things, so why don't I bring some science to it and talk about having sanitary conditions and organizing the household and raising a healthy family with science based techniques? Right. Because like I said, it was at the time this is in the late 19th century, right? Yes. When she started out right at the turn. Yeah. Yeah. She has gotten some pushback over the years from feminists, but I think they got it wrong. Oh, man. From what I saw, they got it really wrong. If you criticize Ellen Richards as anti feminists by creating home equipment, like, you just haven't really dug in very deeply into researcher because she was a proto feminist to the first degree. Yeah. It would have been really easy at the time as a progressive, to say, well, women ditch the household and get out there and try and take the man's job. But she knew the reality of things, I think, and she wanted to uplift what women were doing in the household. Instead of saying, no, ditch all that and leave it behind to go take a quote unquote man's job, like, what you're doing is important, and I want to uplift that and bring science to it. Well, not only was it important, she also realized that was the reality of the situation. Right. I think something like 97% of women at the time didn't go to college. They got married, and they became homemakers. So that's what she had to work with. So she was trying to, like you said, uplift women in that sense, not necessarily because she was saying, this is a woman's lot. This is what we're working with, so I'm going to try to make it better. She also very strongly advocated for women to be college educated. She thought that that should just be standard practice and she actually set up a lab, a woman's lab at MIT to teach chemistry to young women who are coming into college. And the lab was only open for a few years because from her efforts, MIT started to accept women into the general population. It wasn't like a special track any longer. But she set up a lab to teach women chemistry, and she did it free. She didn't get any money from it. And she taught chemistry for years for no charge so that these young women could learn chemistry. Yeah. And despite all this, I don't know about forgotten, but largely forgotten in history, especially in science, is a real pioneer and validating the home economic movement and bringing women into more traditionally male fields of science. And she doesn't get nearly enough recognition. No. Especially also, I mean, she was a pioneer in the concept, in the study of water quality, and that's huge. She had a really deep and broad scientific career, so I know she definitely doesn't get her to you. Yeah. Today she would be on the front lines in Flint, Michigan, in newspapers and on TV shows, but back then, she was discounted because it was kitchen stuff. Yes. So hats off to Ellen Richards for being just a total top notch scientist. Absolutely. And if you want to know more about her, go check out this article and how stuff works. How about that? Agreed. Well, that's short stuff. Send us an email if you like sending off to stuffpodcast@howstoughfworks.com." | |
8a182024-4a58-11e8-a49f-4f544da662fa | SYSK Selects: Who killed JFK? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-who-killed-jfk | Josh and Chuck delve into the killing, the investigations and the conspiracy theories to get to the bottom of an enduring national question. | Josh and Chuck delve into the killing, the investigations and the conspiracy theories to get to the bottom of an enduring national question. | Sat, 28 Apr 2018 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=28, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=118, tm_isdst=0) | 43610360 | 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, everyone, it's me, Josh. And for this week's SYSK selects, I've chosen our classic episode, Who Killed JFK? From November 2013. And it's a doozy. I hope you 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. And very appropriately for this one, we have our buddy Matt, who gets producing because he knows how to do that kind of thing, in addition to his awesome show Stuff They Don't Want You To Know, which he does with our other friend Ben. And it covers conspiracy theories. And we are podcasting on who killed JFK the day before the anniversary of that fateful day. 50th anniversary. Right. 50th anniversary, November 2263 in Dallas. And so you made a joke that Matt was just going to be over there the whole time going, really? Yeah. It wasn't a mob. Yeah, three Tramps. Whatever. I like the three tramps one. It's ridiculous, but it's my favorite one. Yeah, I got some good stuff on that. Okay, so do I. In 2003, josh an ABC News poll came out. Ten years ago, 70% of Americans believe the assassination of John F. Kennedy was part of a broader plot. What percentage? 70% believe that, and only 32% believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. So it's the thing. It will not die. No, it won't. It never will, I don't think. Well, it's very much entrenched in popular culture as well, too. Like, even it's become a parody of itself as well. And just the idea that there's this outstanding question that will never be put to rest. Yeah. Like JFK. Lone Gunman and Grassy Knoll. Like, all these are almost like buzz terms now. Yeah. The Lone Gunman. They made an appearance in The X Files. They were recurring characters, trio guys. The Misfits had probably the best song about the JFK assassination out there. Magic Bullet. I bet there's a band called Magic Bullet. Sure, there's all sorts of stuff. Yeah. So let's get into this because I think our colleague Jonathan Strickland of Tech Stuff did a really good job of handling what could have easily been like a 50 page quagmire. And he basically says, here's all the facts and this is why what's on the surface is probably the likeliest, thing to happen. Yeah. We should see away a little bit here. There are hundreds of books written about various conspiracy theories on the JFK assassination and we don't have, like, 18 episodes to dedicate to this. So this will be a skimming of the topic. I don't want anyone to be like, oh, Josh and Chuck are going to get down to the bottom of this. Right. That's some people's life's work dedicated to this. Yeah. I mean, if we're anything, we're dilettante that's. Right. Every week we go from one subject to the next. That is true. So I guess let's begin at the beginning, just to get it all out on the table. Okay. All right. Okay. So, Chuck yes. On November 8, 63, the Secret Service found the proposed route for the presidential motorcade visit to Dallas. And there was a reason the President was coming to Dallas. It was a very good reason. And this is why he was in Texas, why he was trying to basically sort of unite the Democratic Party. He was meeting with his vice president and the Governor of Texas, and there was some bickering going on within the party, and he basically wanted to he's trying to get reelected is what he was doing. Right. Well, that was a big part of it, but it is true. Governor Connolly and Senator Richard Yarborough were publicly feuding. And they're both Democrats. So basically, their great father was going to come and make peace with them, among them publicly tour the state of Texas to help himself get reelected, but also to show Texas, like, hey, the Texas Democrats are all family here. Family fights sometimes, but we're still all family, and we still have the same grand vision. I know I'm a Catholic from New England, but we're all the same. Texan. Okay, where are we? They found out the route from Lovefield to Dealy Plaza. They publicize that in the newspapers, so everyone knew about it because they wanted people to come out and wave like they did on November 19. The route was published in the papers on the 18th. Published on the 19th. Yes. Right. And then on November 22, 1963, that fateful day, air Force One lands at Love Field. The President gets in his presidential limousine, and they start making their way toward Dealy Plaza. Yeah. Along with Governor Connelly and his wife and, of course, Jackie, and then a couple of Secret Service dudes that's in the one car, in a car behind them is LBJ, Senator Yarborough and some other Secret Service guys. Right? That's right. Apparently, as they were headed toward Dealy Plaza, they got delayed because Kennedy stopped and kind of soaked up the people waving and cheering and all that and gave some back to them. Little fist bumping. Yeah. And so they were a little bit delayed getting to Dealy Plaza, but when they did, at about 1230, as they were riding in the presidential motorcade, a shot rang out, and then there was two more shots, at least. Yeah. And with the second shot, they think the President threw his hands up to his neck, and Jackie leaned over to kind of, like, say, hey, what's going on? And then all of a sudden, the back right side of the President's head blew off. Yes, it is very graphic. If you see the slowed down. Enhanced Zapruder film on YouTube today. Very affecting, too. It's really sad. Yeah, it is terribly sad. And this was not even a part of our generation. Like, this kind of stuff still makes people like our parents break down sometimes. Right. So that was 1230. Within about anywhere between four and 8 seconds, at least three shots were fired. One missed. Probably the second and third one hit the President first in the back of the neck, exited his throat, and the third one blew his head off. Yeah. Let's talk about that magic bullet since we should go ahead and just clear that up. Okay. I guess this is the second bullet that passed through his throat. It went on to hit Governor Connolly in the back. In his armpit, I think. Yeah. Below the right armpit, exited below the right nipple, then hit his wrist that was in his lap, and then continued through the wrist, through his left thigh. And that's why they call it the magic bullet. And if you've seen Oliver Stone's movie, they kind of make fun of it in court. Like, that is one magic bullet. That's where I got the name. Back into the left. Yeah, back into the left. Remember the Seinfeld thing? Yeah. With the Spit with Keith Hernandez. Yeah. And I remember my brother in law, the Marine, explaining to me years ago that bullets tumble and can do some really crazy things. Sure. Like, he's seen it happen on firing ranges. Plus, also, this is a very powerful bullet. There's a 6.5 millimeter bullet, which is basically like a little howitzer shell. Yeah. It's huge. And it travels very quickly. Yeah. And they have done tests that, even though it seems unlikely, that show that it is possible that a bullet can change directions and do kind of crazy things once it starts hitting bone and other things. Yeah. So that was, like you said, the second bullet. Most likely. Yeah. Within just a few seconds after the first shot, kennedy is lying there motionless. Jackie is, like, reaching back across the trunk of the car trying to get help from a Secret Service agent who I believe jumps into the car. Yeah, well, actually, they think that she was picked up part of his brain tissue. Okay. I heard that before, too. Yeah, I looked into that today, but I was watching the Prude film and it looked to me like she was reaching back, like, Help. But I've heard that before as well. Well, apparently she was quoted by, I think, Connolly's wife and one other person at the time is saying he's dead. And look, I have his brain in my hand. I read her testimony for the Warren Commission and she said she didn't even remember any of that. I'm sure. But whether or not that's true, it's awful. She was trying to hold his head together on the way to the hospital. Yeah. So in the car behind them, a secret Service agent pounces on LBJ and throws them onto the seat and lays on top of them. I think his name is Rufus Youngblood. The CIA or the Secret Service agent. The motorcade just takes off to the hospital. Park Memorial. Parkland parkland Memorial. Yeah. And again, the motorcade intermediate pause at 1230 by 01:00 p.m.. The president is pronounced dead at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. Yeah, it was just a few miles away. That was 01:00 PM. That was 01:00 PM. I guess we should talk about the grassy knoll real quick, because a lot of people have said there were a lot of misleading and conflicting accounts, which is where a lot of the trouble started. Eyewitnesses not cooperating stories. The acoustics at Deep Plaza were funky because of all the buildings. Yeah, it's three side buildings and then one side, like, grassy knoll, basically. Yeah. So, like, where did the shot come from? I thought it came from over here. From the sounds, it was basically pretty tough to pinpoint. And the grassy knoll, there was a police officer named Clyde Haygood that there are pictures of him running toward the grassy knoll. And a lot of folks thought, hey, he's running, like, toward a suspect, when, in fact, he was running toward another police officer to say, hey, what should we do? I guess so. I guess the way it's been explained away over the years is the acoustics and the fact that that cop was running toward the grassy knolls made some people think that there was more than one shooter and another shooter was on the grassy knoll. That's right. The official line is that that is not the case, though. That's right. So 01:00 p.m.. The president's pronounced dead at 238 johnson. Jackie Kennedy, Johnson staff. Pretty much everybody was back on Air Force one, and they called Bobby Kennedy to ask what to do and to tell them what had happened. And Bobby Kennedy said, you need to swear Johnson in before you guys leave the ground. So they found a judge, brought her on board, and she swore Johnson in as president, and then they took off and flew back to Washington. Very famous photo with him being sworn in onboard Air Force one. Right. With Jackie onassis or Jackie Kennedy's face, just like, the fact that she was able to stand is pretty amazing. Apparently, they turned her in such a way so that the blood stains weren't apparent in the photograph. Oh, man. I don't know if it was Air Force One yet. It was. It okay. All right, so where are we? Four minutes after the shooting, dallas police looked at the Texas schoolbook Depository building and said, hey, that might have been where this came from. It's a pretty prime location for a sniper. And there was an eye witness named Howard Brennan who saw a figure in the window and gave a description which fit Lee Harvey Oswald. So this one dude actually saw him in the window on the 6th floor. Pretty believable that you could see someone from that range. Right. The guy said, I knew it was Oswald all along. So there was a cop that was in the Book Depository within two minutes of the shooting. Yeah. Marion Baker was kind of took the initiative to go ahead and get in there. So he went in there and he met up with the superintendent of the building, a guy named Truly. And they started walking up the steps and at the second floor they came upon Lee Harvey Oswald, who was leaving. He was leaving truly vouched for Oswald and Oswald was allowed to leave. And the reason Truly vouched for Oswald is because just a couple of weeks before, about a month before, oswald had gotten a job at that Book Depository. So he checked out as far as Truly was concerned. The officer who was with Truly said, well, okay. They kept looking. And a few minutes after that, lieutenant showed up and took over the crime scene and they started scouring the building. And on the 6th floor, they found the sniper's nest. That's right. With three empty cartridges and the gun telescopic sight and a bolt action rifle. And it was pretty much a no brainer at that point, or at least on the surface. This is where it came from. Right. So after Oswald left the Book Depository, he went to the place where he was renting a room, the house where he's running a room and grabbed a pistol. And as he's walking along and this is about the same time that Kennedy is being pronounced dead, he's walking along the street, he encountered a cop named JD. Tippet. And apparently Oswald just opened fire on this cop, shot him four times, killed him instantly. Yeah. Well, he was investigating Oswald because the APB had already come through with the description of Oswald. And he was like, well, this guy fits that description. Let me talk to him. And it didn't take long, though I don't think there was much of a discussion before Oswald shot him and killed him. And actually, when Oswald was finally apprehended, it was for the murder of the cop. They didn't know he had anything to do with Kennedy at the time. Oh, yeah. Yeah. At the time, he ducked into a theater, the Texas Theater, into the movie War as Hell. And I think he snuck in. And that's why they called the cops, because they're like, hey, someone snuck in the theater. So if he had bought a ticket, he might not have ever been caught. You never know. You know what's interesting about that? There's all these parallels between the Lincoln assassination and the Kennedy assassination. Some are untrue, some are just ridiculous. But one of them was that John Wilkes Booth killed Lincoln in a theater and went and hid out in a warehouse. And Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy from a warehouse. And went and hid out in a theater where he was caught. It's a pretty good one. I like that one. Yeah. So he was apprehended in the theater and reportedly said, well, it's all over now. But he also said something interesting at one point to the media, I'm a patsy, which has fueled speculation over the years that, well, we'll get into the different theories before we go any further. Get this. The President of the United States of America has just been shot in front of a crowd in Dallas. That's right. That's huge. That's enormous. That's what's going on right now. And there's a manhunt for this guy who's just been caught for killing a cop. Yeah. So people don't know that the President's killer has just been caught as well. That's right. So this is a pretty emotional time, and let's talk about Oswald himself. But first, let's do a message break, and we'll talk about Oswald when we come back. Agreed. 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. 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I think that probably set the theme, because I read a little bit about what contemporary reports of him growing up concluded his problem was, and that one social worker said that he believes his mother doesn't give a damn about him, and that somebody else said that they've never met a kid more emotionally starved than this guy. So I'm quite sure that being left it in an orphanage, even being picked back up after a while. Yeah, yeah, it probably did have a pretty big effect on his development and how he viewed his mother. Well, yeah. And when you look at what he did for the rest of his life, it seems like he was always looking for a new family, quote unquote, whether it was the Marxist or the Communist or Cuba or Russia. It seems like he never is kind of a Psych 101. He was looking to fit in somehow, somewhere with somebody, but at the same time, it was always on the fringe of wherever he was at. You know what I mean? He's never happy with where he was. He wanted to fit into whatever was counter what he was doing or with the status quo of where he was. Right. So at 16, he drops out of school and tries to join the Marine Corps. He was too young, so they said, Come back later. He wrote the Socialist Party when he was Socialist Party of America when he was 17, to say, hey, I'm way into Marxism and, like, Can I come join your club? I guess at the very least, when you send me a free button. Yeah. And then at 17, he reapplied to the Marine Corps. And he was old enough at that point. It turns out he had quite an act for shooting guns. He's a sharp shooter during boot camp, but then during the actual ranking testing, only rated as a marksman, which is still really good. Yeah, just below sharpshooter. Is sharp shooter the highest, or is that Dead eyes the highest level? I think sharpshooter is highest, but at the same time, even while he was a Marine, a Marine marksman, he taught himself Russian. He studied about the Soviet Union and Communism. And this is during the Cold War. This is like during the most paranoid finger pointy part of the Cold War. But Oswald and the Marines like, teaching himself Russian and everything. See what I mean by a confused guy? Yeah, but even still, it's so strange to me, learning about his experience, that he was relatively left alone while expressing pretty publicly this interest in the Soviet Union, in Communism during the peak of the Cold War. I thought if you even wore the color red, people are like, Communists get them. But apparently you could just hide in plain sight or admire the Soviet Union in plain sight. Well, he eventually would find himself on a watch list because he went to Russia under. He obtained a passport falsely with an application to a college in Switzerland and got to Moscow, applied for citizenship there, and they were like, NIT. He goes, oh, yeah. If you know what I mean. I'm going to kill myself. He basically did. The same day he was rejected by Russia, he slid his wrist, and the warm hearted Soviets were like, well, okay, you can stay, young man. I thought that was interesting. Yeah, that's what allowed him to stay. Yeah. This is weird. Yeah, it is. So he said, I don't want to be well, he did not officially announce his citizenship in America, although he expressed interest in doing so. Yeah, he kind of mouthed off about it, but never actually did it. That's right. In Russia, he fell in love with a lady named Marina Prusakova. You're not going to try her middle name? Nicole Vena. Nice. Nicole Avena. Yeah, I think that's right. And basically, he was like, we should probably go back to the United States, because turns out Russia sucks. These bread lines. I weren't expecting them to be so long. Yeah, it says he'd become disenchanted. I think that's the nice way of saying that Russia sucked. Right. So he says, hey, I know a place where you're going to love. It's called Texas. Let's move back there. Just forget the fact that you don't speak any English. You don't know anybody in Texas. Everybody back in America thinks I'm a weirdo and I'm your husband. Let's go to move to Texas. And she said, what did you say in Russian? He's like nothing in Russian. And so they moved to Texas, and she apparently very quickly she felt isolated. She didn't have any friends, and a woman named Ruth Payne felt bad for her and took her under her wing, and they became kind of friends. And Ruth pain will come into play a little later on. Yes. And this is where he was finally sort of on the radar of the FBI. Yes. When he moved back. Yeah. You can't move to Russia and then come back, and they just don't even bother talking to you. No, but they did talk to him, and they said, okay, well, listen, if the USSR gets in touch with you and wants you to do espionage, just let us know. Sure. Okay. They're like, all right, have a great day. Thanks for the coffee, ma'am. She's like, what did you say in Russian? It's pretty remarkable. Yeah. So on April 10, 1963, another interesting thing happened. A few days after losing his job, he tried to assassinate Major General Edwin Walker. Yeah. This guy was a piece of work himself. Yeah. He was a hardcore right wing, conservative, possibly gay man. Oh, I hadn't heard that. Yeah. Later in life, in the 70s, he was arrested twice for fondling men in public. I wonder if he was the model for the dad in American Beauty. Oh, maybe I could see that then. Yeah. I mean, he never married, and I don't think they ever came right out and said he was gay. But he was arrested twice for fondling police officers. Well, Alan Ball, if that's the case, email and let us know. Okay. Yeah. Which is neither here nor there, but it's interesting. No, but he was, like you said, extreme. A right wing extremist in the very definition of the word. He was very well respected, decorated military leader. Like, he was commanding all the troops in West Germany. At one point, he was a Kennedy either. No, he hated the Kennedys. He called Harry Truman and Eleanor Roosevelt Pink, which means that they were Communist sympathizers, which is a big deal. He was temporarily relieved of his post while he was investigated for that, and he said, you know what? I'm not going back because the US. Has given up its sovereignty to the United Nations and I can't fight for it any longer. And this guy was so convinced by his own convictions that he refused a military pension for years afterward because he didn't want to have anything to do with it. Well, apparently he refused it, but then kind of quietly tried to get it right. Well, then they gave it to him. Yeah, but he was celebrated as a great soldier later on in life and after his death. Oh, yeah. So another example, though, of Oswald is sort of a confused guy. Like, he tries to assassinate this right wing conservative general. He also was a Marine. He also killed Kennedy. He was just sort of like it didn't seem like he knew what he believed. Well, he believed that what is the general's name? Walker was like Hitler in the making. Yeah, basically that he was an extremist who needed to be taken out. But he missed. Yeah, from about 100ft away. He shot into his dining room from the street where he was sitting at a desk and hit the window pane, and it made the bullet go a different direction. So he missed. So Lee Harvey Oswald is basically doing anything he can to insinuate himself in international global politics. Yeah, but he got away with it. It was a cold case. Right. Until they finally caught him and put the I think his wife was the one who fingered him later on. Oh, really? Yeah, because he comes home and says, hey, we're moving to New Orleans. And she's like, what did you just say? And so they moved to New Orleans, and while they're there, she's like, I've had enough. You're shooting at public figures now. We're moving from Texas to New Orleans. I'm moving back. And she moved in with her friend Ruth Payne. And that surely had an effect and impact on Oswald. There's no way it couldn't, because he already had abandonment issues from his mother. Now his wife leaves him because he's just crazy. And he's like, well, you know what? Fine. I'm going to stay here, and I'm going to start a chapter of a pro Cuba, procastro sympathizer club, and I'm going to be the one and only member, but I'm going to be a loud mouth member. Well, I think you wanted more than one member. But it was another example of, like, nobody was interested in this guy. Nobody. Russia didn't want them. No one joined his club. His wife left them. Cuba didn't want them. No, he went down to Mexico and visited the Cuban and Russian embassies trying to basically get in with them. And they were like, no, it's okay. Thanks, man. Yeah. I think the word Strickland used was no one was ever very impressed with Oswald. They were unimpressed. So getting Cuban officials I mean, if this guy was a patsy, he was the perfect patsy. Oh, yeah. But you can also take all of this evidence and say, well, this is what made him do this. Yeah. If he was a patsy, do you imagine how easy it would have been for, like, one of the theories is the Mafia, for them to put their arm around and be like, you're a pretty great guy. Right. You know what you should do? You should kill the president. Yeah. He would have been very easy to manipulate, I imagine, because he's also just 24. When he's Kennedy, he's a kid, which is crazy. He left New Orleans, went back to Dallas, got a job, and about a month later at the schoolbook depository, shot and killed John F. Kennedy. Yes. So Oswald's done a shooting. He's caught. They've started to investigate his background, and Lyndon Johnson ordered an investigation, a full investigation into the Kennedy assassination. What happened, lessons learned, all that stuff. And this commission, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, was called the Warren Commission. And the report they compiled several hundred page reports called the Warren Report. And in addition to the several hundred page report, they also released 26 volumes of transcripts of the hearings that they conducted. So it was this exhaustive investigation that was very transparent. Supposedly, there's so many documents to try to censor them, really censor them, it'd be virtually impossible. So a lot of people point to the very fact that the Warren Report is so voluminous that it is, in fact, correct and it's not part of a larger cover up, at least. Yeah, and I sent you that article. Did you read the one from The New York Times that some people think they're still documents the CIA won't release? Well, they won't. Well, but the one anticonspiracy guy that they interviewed said people that don't know how the CIA works, that believe this stuff, there would be no documents, period. They wouldn't be hiding things. They wouldn't exist. Operation Killed President Kennedy. Yeah. I mean, he's sort of like a little pat on the head. Like, you think there are documents, you sweet little conspiracy theorists. Yeah. All right. So the Warren Commission comes out, and immediately conspiracy theorists start to suggest different things. Like, one theory was that it was an outside job by the KGB and or Cuba. Right. We should say the Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald killed President Kennedy on his own volition, by himself, without acting at the behest or the benefit of anybody else. Yeah, just a loan, singular crazed gunman. Right. So the conspiracy theories are everybody else saying, no, that's not the case. And we gave the example of the grassy knoll, the. Acoustics and daily plaza, the fact that a cop was running towards the grassy knoll and conflicting eyewitness accounts. From the literal beginning of this event in history, there have been all sorts of hay that people have been able to make conspiracy theories out of. Like, there's been no shortage of all sorts of different weird things that you can start to piece together with other things and come up with these very interesting some sound conspiracy theories. Oh, sure. But when you really get down to them, they're not supported by evidence. Exactly. I'm glad you said that. The KGB or Cuba theory that maybe their governments were acting out and trying to kill Kennedy had some legs because the bad pigs had just happened. They were certainly no friends of Kennedy at the height of the Cold War. There was definitely a motive there. But there was no evidence to tie Oswald in any substantive way to either of these countries. No. They looked at his finances. They went back a year and a half and looked at his finances to see if there were any weird payments or whatever. And apparently the only amount total that they couldn't account for came to, like, $160. Yeah. Could have been cash and diamonds, though. Yeah, I guess it could have been. That's how they like the deal. Yeah. One of the other popular theories I mentioned was the mob and that Jack Ruby was working with the mob. And the second Oswald said, I'm a patsy, they're like, we need to go take care of this right now. Yeah. We haven't mentioned Jack Ruby. Two days after Kennedy was killed. They were transporting Lee Harvey Oswald. And a guy named Jack Ruby, who was a Dallas nightclub owner, came up and shot Lee Harvey Oswald in the chest and killed him. Lee Harvey Oswald actually died in Parkland Memorial, the same hospital that Kennedy had two days before. Yeah. A very famous photo which has since been made into a very funny photo. Have you seen the band one? No. You never saw that? No, it was big years ago. It was the photo of Ruby, Kelly Kennedy and someone went in and photoshopped in musical instruments because they all have different paint expressions. And Jack Ruby at the Keys, and I think Lee Harvey Oswald has a guitar and it looks like I haven't seen that one. It's pretty funny. Check it out. How about another moment here for a message break? Josh 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.com podcast. And start taking charge of your future today. All right, let's get back to it. So we were talking about the Mafia because Jack Ruby owned a nightclub. Everybody's just like, well, he's down with the mob. Sure. What's more, Lee Harvey Oswald probably was acting on behalf of the mob because he had an uncle in New Orleans who is Mafia connected. Mobbed up, as they say. Is that what they say? Yeah. But apparently there's no evidence that Oswald and his uncle communicated at all. And these connections are fairly tenuous at best. Yes. Jack Ruby himself said that the reason he did it was because he wanted to spare Jacqueline and Carolyn the heartbreak of having to come back to Dallas to testify against Lee Harvey Oswald. Oh, really? That's what he officially said. And apparently there is a transcript of and it is just hearsay. But it's Oswald talking with his lawyer saying he's saying, like, this whole charade we're doing, that he shot Oswald while he was blacked out, and he can't be held responsible, that it's all just stupid and they should go with the truth that he did this because he wanted to spare Jackie. Interesting. That's supposedly it but then apparently also supposedly he said that that was a charade as well. So who knows? Well, another theory is that it was the CIA and it was an inside job. Kennedy had criticized their practices and was trying to scale down Vietnam, and those weren't very popular things to do at the time if you were in the government. And so a lot of people say, you know what? Lyndon Johnson might have orchestrated this whole thing, and it was an inside job with the CIA. They're like, he barely ever wore pants, for God's sake. I don't know if this remained true to her death, but both Bobby Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy at one point believe that, quote, he was felled by domestic opponents. And of course, Bobby died not too long after. No, five years. But I don't know if Jackie held that opinion her entire life. I'm not sure about that. I'm curious. It seems to ring a bell that, like, she was suspicious of LBJ. Yeah, I know. Since 2000, there have been five legit tenured historians that have published studies, and four of the five concluded that there was probably some larger conspiracy at work, but none of them agreed on what it was. Right. So it's hard to get a consensus. So ultimately, what it came down to, the official line was that there was a rifle that had Oswald's fingerprints on it that was found at the crime scene, that there is a picture in existence of Oswald holding that exact same rifle. Before the crime was committed, he had already tried to kill a general. Yeah. And the fact that he said, while it's all over now, when he was apprehended, you take all this together. Everybody who a lot of people think it was Oswald. That's the official line, right? Yeah. And the subpreter film has been used to, hey, how can you shoot someone from this direction? And they had go that direction. There were other films of the incident, but the subruder is the most complete. I did look at some of the others. I've never seen any of those before. It's weird to see it from different angles. Yeah, sure. If you're used to seeing just the Prudor film. So the Warren Commission did not put this issue to bed at all. Even back then. There was another commission that took place in 1976, the House Select Committee on Assassinations. And they investigated both JFK and Martin Luther King's assassinations. And this is a group of House Representatives who, it's true, are known for being the rabble rousers of the government, that branch of government. But they basically investigated this, carried out a full investigation, and found that, you know what? We actually think that JFK did die as a result of a conspiracy. We don't think it was the mob, we don't think it was the CIA, we don't think it was the FBI, and we don't think it was the Cubans. But we do believe that it was a conspiracy and that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone. This is the House of Representatives saying that. Yeah, well, they initially said that there were four shots, but they were actually wrong. And then later we can't do that with acoustic evidence and said, you know what? We were wrong on that. And they did never find any hard evidence. But did they remain true to that statement? Yeah, that was never a final report. Interesting. Yeah. But it was part of a conspiracy, so that definitely didn't quell any rumors. No. And as a matter of fact, it's like, oh, well, the House of Representatives just said Kennedy was killed as part of a conspiracy. Like, if it was dying down before it flared right back up. And there was another one almost at the same time, a Rockefeller Commission by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. And a lot of people think that the Rockefeller Commission was basically just like a fact finding committee that was there to basically cover up and derail any other investigations. Really? Yeah. Kind of like, we got this, we got this. Right. It didn't work, though. Because of the House Select Committee. Well, they invalidated one of our favorite little parts of the theory, the three tramps theory at the time, there were these three vagrants that were detained by police that had been traveling by boxcar. Supposedly, that's how they travel. Often that is how they travel. And two of the men for a while were believed to have been E, Howard Hunt and Frank Sturges, who were the dudes who broke into Watergate, which that would be a nice little coincidence. Yeah, there's a whole side by side photographic comparison of the two. It looks a lot like them. Well, it does. The FBI got experts to do the same thing, though, that said no, it's not them. Right. And the third guy and if you're a conspiracy theorist, you're like, oh, okay, well, thanks, FBI. Appreciate that. I believe you. The third guy was rumored to be Woody Harrelson's dad. Yeah, Charles Harrison. He was a hit man. And they were estranged, by the way. Woody Harrelson. It's not like he doesn't talk about this much. It's not one of his favorite topics. Yes. Sorry, Woody. I know we got to talk about it, but he killed a federal judge, and then when he was caught in a standoff in high on cocaine, he said, I killed Kennedy, too, and then later on recanted that and said, I just said that because I was high on cocaine. Yeah, and I was trying to elongate my life, and I don't think they would have killed me if I had information. Oh, is that what it was? That's what he said in an interview from prison. But conspiracy theorists latched onto this and said, he's the third tramp. He was the youngest one of the three. Yeah, the pictures kind of look alike. Aldi Harrison's dad was one of a trio of men who killed JFK. Well, all of this could have been put to bed if the dudes looked nothing like the other guys, but they all kind of did. So another thing to add fuel to the fire, for sure. And we should say also, there's even more like you were saying the CIA still will not declassify documents that they have about the JFK assassination. That's not helping things. No, something did come to light, though, from investigations into the CIA. The guy named George Joannese was a CIA agent who was basically in charge of a group of anti Cuban student dissidents, or anti Castro cuban student dissidents. And he was running their operation in Miami and New Orleans. They actually beat up Lee Harvey Oswald while he was in New Orleans, handing out pamphlets that were pro Cuban and pro Castro, like, a few months before the assassination. So George Joannedys ran that operation, and then later on in 1976, when the House Select Committee was investigating it again, he was the liaison for the CIA. But no one told the House Select Committee the involvement he'd had before. Interesting. Yeah. Well, with Woody's dad, he actually had a co conspirator that said, you know what? He's confessed this before to me, and even drew maps about where he was hiding the day it happened. But in 1989, arrest records were released, and they identified the three tramps as Gus Abrams, Harold Doyle, and John getney those all sound like suspicious made up names. I think they interviewed a couple of these guys later in life and they were like, yeah, we were the guys. And we were just boxcar dudes, even though we had suits on and we're clean shaving. Well, everybody back then was even if you were like just a total complete hobo, you still wore a suit and a fedora usually. So again, people point to that and say, these clearly weren't these guys were paid. And then a lot of other hanky things happened. People disappeared. Witnesses disappeared. It's never going to die. I don't think anyone will ever let this go. No, but that's what makes a great conspiracy theory, right? There's just too many facts outstanding that just can't be put to bed. So you got anything else? I got nothing else. If you want to learn more about this or if this piqued your interest, you should definitely check out our buddies over at Stuff They Don't Want You to Know for sure. They have a huge awesome body of work that they've put together over the years and continue to do so. And you can also read this article on how stefworks.com by typing JFK into the search bar and see what comes up. And since I said search bar, it means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this Chinese Zombies from Sam Larusa. Hey guys. I don't know if you're aware of this, but you have a bit of a cult here in Wuhan, China. Awesome. A whole two people. My girlfriend and I still it's pretty great. Yeah, we listen to you all the time. And as you tell us about Stuff we Should Know, we're both English teachers, and outside of with each other, the Stuff You Should Know podcast is just about the only English speaking we get on a day to day basis. I have an incident, though, to write you about where Stuff You Should Know save my butt. And it just happened yesterday. Wuhan schools have a three hour siesta to avoid the hottest part of the day, and I usually use the time to plan lessons or take a nap. Yesterday, I decided to forgo planning lessons and just nap and woke up a mere 20 minutes before my afternoon 120 minutes lesson. Completely unprepared. I started to panic, but then remember, do zombies really exist? Stuff you should know, Podcasts. I listened to Just earlier that day. My students are well aware of the zombie apocalypse theory of the end of the world, but neither I nor they knew anything about the history of zombies, and I had been shockingly irresponsible regarding zombie apocalypse survival strategies. Oh, yeah. So I jumped online and ran off 22 copies of How Zombies Work from housetoporks.com, highlighted some very good vocabulary and some grammar patterns, and had a two hour lesson ready to go in 20 minutes. All thanks to you guys. So there you have it. How you saved my butt and turning otherwise really awkward 2 hours of nothingness into a kick butt zombie survival lesson. Hopefully your cult following will grow to five, maybe even six people. Would that be something? And Sam Larusa, thank you for being lazy and napping on the job and then using our work to do your job. Yes, but not really though because it could have just been like oh well, I guess they're just going to sit there quietly for 2 hours. He like really? Hustled. That's true. He took initiative. Way to go Sam. And thanks to you and your wife, right? Your girlfriend. Thanks to girlfriend. Thanks to both of you for holding things down for us in Wuhan. We appreciate that. If you are located at some remote outpost of the world or in some bustling cosmopolis whatever, we want to hear from you. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com and as always, you can join us at STUFFYou shouldeanow.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 podcast. Plus with Amazon Music you can access new episodes early. Download the app today." | |
c3b5ba64-5460-11e8-b38c-93495732c268 | SYSK Selects: Halitosis - Worst Smell Ever? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-halitosis-worst-smell-ever | Occasional bad breath is one thing, halitosis is another. Or is it? From its odd origins as a marketing ploy to modern weight loss diets that can induce this embarrassing condition, you can learn all about bad breath in this classic episode. | Occasional bad breath is one thing, halitosis is another. Or is it? From its odd origins as a marketing ploy to modern weight loss diets that can induce this embarrassing condition, you can learn all about bad breath in this classic episode. | Sat, 02 Nov 2019 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=2, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=306, tm_isdst=0) | 33448114 | audio/mpeg | "Good morning, everyone. I hope you've brushed your teeth, because if not, you may have stinky breath. And this is not about stinky breath from not brushing your teeth. This is about Halitosis, which is a real thing and people that are afflicted with it. I can't help it. It's really kind of sad. So from April 24, 2014. Please listen to Halitosis Colon. Worst smell ever. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryan. Do you realize some people this might be the first episode they listen to, and they've already turned it off and they're writing an itunes review? Yeah, something's wrong with that guy. Yeah, what's up with the main guy? I can't believe they're so popular. How does anyone listen to him? Yeah, what's up with the how are they in the top ten on it? That guy it must be like the AMSR thing. What is that? People make videos where they're, like, stroking your hair, but it's really they're just moving their hand by the camera. They're talking like this. What? Really wet and calming. But there's a subset of humans who have a central nervous reaction. I just had one, but it's pleasurable. They call them, like, a brain orgasm or ASR I think it's AMSR. I don't remember what it stands for, but it's like a meditative video type of thing, I guess to some people, apparently, you have, like, a reaction to it and it's very pleasurable, but it's nonsexual. Well, when you just whisper neurological to me, I had a bad reaction. Right. I can imagine. So I don't claim to be one of those people. Man, oh, man, this is getting off to a good start. But we should do an episode on that sometime. People have requested it a few times. Yeah. I'm going to go find out what it is. We have to go to the trouble of writing an article for it because there's not one that's okay. I got a few of those in the hopper that I'd like to do. I do, too. I just haven't been able to get around to them. You've been lazy. No, I've been busy. I said we are you ready? Yeah. Are you familiar with Halitosis? Hold on, I've got a little intro for this. Okay. You've heard the word halitosis, obviously. Yes. We're about to do an episode on Halitosis, so I hope so. Yes. But even before this you've heard the word Halitosis? Yes. Bad breath. It's like a clinical term for bad breath. And that is true, and it always was a clinical term for bad breath. But the reason, Chuck, that you and I know that the word Halitosis means bad breath is thanks to a nice little marketing scheme by the three guys who ran the company that made Listerine back in the 1920s. Yeah, we've talked about Dr. Joseph Lister before, and that listerine was an surgical antiseptic. Yes. And it was marketed as a surgical antiseptic and then a household antiseptic. And then they said, you know what, we need to expand our market share, so let's get into other markets. And so they said, mouthwash. We'll start telling people to use it as mouthwash. And they made, like, their office in turn, put some in his mouth, right. Switch it around, he died. So they went and reformulated it a little bit, added a little water, right? And then bang, boom, they had lister in the mouthwash. The problem was, they said, well, nobody's going to just start using a mouthwash for no good reason. We have to appeal to their low self esteem. And that's what they did by looking through a medical dictionary, finding the word halitosis and saying, that's it. Yeah. It's an age old trick in ads, is to prey upon how bad you feel about yourself on a daily basis. Yeah. Especially using medical jargon. Michelle Foucault called it the medical gaze, whereas basically, like, if you add something that sounds medically to a problem that your product can take care of, you've got gangbusters right there. Yeah. And it was an archaic term, Latin term that had gone away completely. Yeah. It comes from the Latin halideus for breath, and the Greek Suffolk OSUs, which is used to indicate abnormality or a disease state. Yeah, but prelisterine people weren't walking around saying the word halitosis. It had gone the way of the dodo as a word. No. And even still, it was kind of like people weren't really doing a lot to take care of their breath. Anyway. It wasn't a thing until this group from the listering Company said, we're going to make it a thing and we're going to make using mouthwash to combat this thing a thing. And they did within a decade. It was just basically like, that's what you did. You use mouthwash every morning? Yeah. And I thought it was pretty funny. Where did you get that? Cracked. Yeah. Cracked. Yeah. It was a great article. And they said they went on to use other words in advertising later on, like homotosis, which is if you didn't have attractive furniture and bromodosis if you had smelly feet. Yeah, and I don't think they didn't catch on as well. Not like halitosis. For some reason, halotosis did catch on, and as a result, there are people out there who have haloidophobia. Yeah. I'm one of them. Oh, yeah. I don't need to see a shrink, but my first girlfriend had halitosis, and I think I can say that because I don't think she listens and I don't think she knows she was my first girlfriend. OK. Like, I never said, you're my first girlfriend. Right. But, yeah, she had bad and I say halitosis. To me, there's a difference between everyone gets bad breath occasionally. Right. But there's a certain tang that's very identifiable that I call halitosis. She had it, and I felt like I had to kiss her and stuff because it's my first girlfriend. I had to learn how to do that junk. Yeah, man. And I have dreams to this day. Halitosis kissing dreams. Do you really? That I will see some gorgeous girl in my dream and I go to kiss her and she has this awful, rotten breath. It's a recurring dream, so I guess I have holodophobia. I'm very aware of it, in it. That's why I have a tongue scraper and all that junk. Well, apparently that's one way to treat it. Yeah, we're getting ahead of ourselves. So boiler, and I should say I have had a mild case of halitophobia. It may or may not have been warranted. I don't know. I have my own microphone cover for that reason. I know, but it's not because you're protecting other people from your halitosis. Right. You don't want your nose and other people's stuff. Right? Yes. Okay. Because the microphone cover at one point smelled really bad, and I got revolted, and I ordered one the next day. Right. So halitophobia refers to your fear of your bad breath. You fearing other people's bad breath. Yeah. That's a different thing then. Okay. Yeah, no, I was worried I had bad breath. I guess part of me, like, I have that concern because of other people's bad breath about myself too, though. I think that's why I'm, like, manic about brushing my tongue. Oh, yeah, that's where I really got it. I sat next to a movie I sat next to some dude in a movie theater once, and, like, he was facing forward. I was facing forward, and I almost couldn't sit next to him the whole time. It was that bad. He should have moved. I don't know why I didn't. Yeah, that's become my go to self punishing, I guess. No, I used to do that. Like at concerts, I always said that I would just always 100% of the time be next to the most obnoxious drunk place. Right. And it used to just bother me and get under my skin. But then I was like, you know what? I'm just going to start moving. Yeah. This didn't make me, like, I wasn't mad at the guy. I felt horrible for him almost to the point where I was going to get in my car and follow him home. And then after he got into his house, I was going to come in after him and then sit them down. And then maybe we have, like, some milk or something. Sure, get them all calm down, let him sleep. And then when he woke up the next morning, I'd still be sitting at his kitchen table. And then I would say to him, I have something to tell you. And then I would say, you have really bad breath, man. And he'd say, no, crap, dude. I have a condition. Well, that's why you don't necessarily want to say anything to anybody because they may. Yeah. So let's get down to this. Garlic, onions. These are the things that people frequently associate halitosis with. Yes. Which is a bunch of BS. Well, no, I mean, like, it can give you bad breath. Yeah. But to me, that's the temporary bad breath that one gets just from food. Yeah. And the reason why you do get bad breath from, say, like, onions in particular, is because garlic contains something called allison, which in the stomach is converted to alonethyl sulfide, which is not metabolized, and which comes back up as gas from your gut. So when you have bad breath from onions, it's not onion particles in your mouth still? Yeah. That's gas leaking out of your gut into your mouth and just kind of stick in there for a couple of hours. You ever take garlic pills? Yeah, it's weird. I'd just rather eat garlic any day of the week. Yeah, I mean, I eat tons of garlic. I love it. But I have taken garlic pills in the past here and there, and I will forget that I've taken one. And then you burp up like, I have lasagna for breakfast. But it doesn't taste like good garlic. It tastes awful. It's medicinal garlic. I mean, the pill didn't taste like anything, but my burp definitely tastes garlicky for me. I just thought it was different. Tastes different? Yes. I'd just rather, like, cut the top off of a whole bulb of garlic, put some olive oil on it, wrap it in foil, or put it in your clay garlic baker and put it in the oven for a little while and chow down, baby. Yeah. Just squeeze those things right into your mouth. Good for you. We are in sync today. So you say your bet is that your garlic and onions don't count to you. No, I think there is bad breath you can just have because maybe you forgot to brush or obviously morning breath, which we'll get to. And then I think some people, unfortunately, have a constant state of this very specific bad breath. Yeah. So I think one in four people have actual halitosis. Right. That seems a little high, but maybe people are just doing a good job of masking it. Maybe so, but some people aren't. So what it comes down to, ultimately, Chuck, halitosis is as simple as the bacteria in our mouth. The fact that we have bacteria, it's the same thing as our armpits. Why? They smell bacteria breaking down stuff from our bodies beneficially into stinky little gases. Yeah. And giving off little bacteria, toots. Yeah. The average person has 800 types of bacteria in the mouth, and they don't need, like it's good thing they don't tell kids stuff like this growing up in school, because French kissing probably wouldn't happen. Well, then maybe they should tell kids in school. But it's really kind of a disgusting thing. Like, you don't see people licking armpits. Some people might. Ben Stiller. What was that in? Was it Ben Stiller who was into it? No, I saw it. Or was it in a movie? Right? Yeah, I've seen that. Flirting With Disaster. Ben Stiller Movie Flirting With Disaster But I can't remember if it was Ben Stiller who was into it, or if it was josh Brolin was into Patricia Arquette's armpits. That's right. Okay. Yeah. And Patricia Arquette was married to Ben Stiller. Yeah. And she let him look her armpits. How weird movie that was. I love that movie. You can't catch the wind. You remember that part? Yeah. All right, back to the mouth and how disgusting it is. They say if you magnify just a single cell on the surface of that tongue, you would see about 100 types of bacteria right. Just on that cell. So this bacteria, when you eat and you swallow food after masticating, it, which isn't dirty, it means chew. You leave little particles in your mouth, it gets stuck in your teeth. Or maybe if you have beginning periodontal disease, it might get stuck in your gums, along your teeth a little bit. The very least, it's going to get stuck to the back of your tongue, and it just kind of sits there. And the bacteria in your mouth love this stuff. It's food to them. They break it down into particles and particles, and they're like, this is pretty good, but I can't get the energy from it fully, so I'm going to break down the amino acids even further, and then, bam. When I do, I'm going to basically emit sulfuric gases. Yeah. And that's where bad breath comes from. There's sulfuric gases that are, again, a byproduct of the bacteria eating the food particles in your mouth. Yeah. Leftover proteins. Yeah. And the mouth is a great breeding ground for it because it's clammy and warm, and it's just got everything that the bacteria loves to produce those stinky, stinky smells. But dry mouth can also cause halitosis, because that's what you get overnight and why you have stinky morning breath. Right. Because your saliva production decreases when you sleep. Otherwise you'd just be a drooling mess. I wonder why that doesn't work during naps on your school desk. I don't know. I guess because you don't go to sleep enough, maybe. Or if, like, your face is pressed against wood, it's a signal of your body to increase saliva production. Yeah. Wake up, the teacher is coming. But chronic dry mouth is something that can affect people during the daytime as well. It's called zero stomia. And if you have zero stomia, you're going to have a harder time fighting your bad breath because your mouth is always dry. Like the mouth. The saliva just acts as a natural mouthwash, right, exactly. It not only rinses away, like food particles, it rinses away bacteria. It rinses away the dead skin cells and dead mouth cells that the bacteria also eat and yeah. The drier it is, the less that action takes place. And you got stinky breath. Yeah. So if you're on antihistamines or antidepressants or painkillers, dry mouth is a side effect of some of those drugs, so you might have a harder time. And if you're sick anyway, you're going to stink your breath, too. Like if you're fighting a sinus infection, let's say it's gross. Yes, stinky breath. Because that mucus trickles back from your sinuses down to your tongue and sits there and gets eaten up, too. Nasty stuff it is. This whole thing I'm just cringing. I'm going to have one of those dreams tonight. You could? A sneaky halotosis breath dream? Yes. The hot girl bad breath. It's always the same. Does Emily know you're having dreams about kissing hot girls with bad breath? Yeah, she thinks it's funny. She thinks it's because of my repressed religious upbringing, repressed sexuality. Like I won't even in my dreams, allow myself to kiss the model. That's hilarious. Like she'll have I call it vomit tongue. It's so gross. Oh, yeah, that is pretty bad. Yes. They're the worst dreams I can't explain to you because they're really headed in the right direction at first, and it's terrible. And when you're an old married man, that's all you got. I got you vomit tongue? No, just your dreams. You can't be no, I know what you mean. You can't be assaulted for having a dream. I guess you could, but it's not a very nice wife. Give me my dream time. Right. I'm going to sleep. I'm down a slippery slope right now. Let's pull out with the ketoacidosis man. Okay, so, Chuck, when you eat onions, when you have garlic, when you have food particles, all the stuff that's normal bad breath stuff. There's also other things, metabolic things often that can give you a different type of breath that may or may not be bad. One bad one is if you have liver problems, your liver is shutting down. You're going to have what's called mousey breath. Can you imagine what mousy breath smells like? No. Apparently your breath smells like live, writhing mice. Interesting. Mouse breath. I can't think of what else it would denote. I don't know what a mouth smells like. Sure. I mean, have you ever smelled like a rodent cage? Yeah, but they smell like cedar and poop. Is that what it smells like? That's what they mean to cedar. So is ketoacidosis the no carb effect? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That is something that will warn you about if you are trying to attain what's known as ketosis with, like, an Atkins type diet. Some people, when they reach that blissful level of fat burning, it also takes its toll on their mouth and their breath. Yeah, it's like a fruity acetony smell. Okay, that sounds better than mouse. Yeah. When you're in ketosis, when you deprive your body of carbohydrates, it doesn't have that energy to burn right there. So it starts turning inward and going after your fat stores. And when the body burns, stored fat ketones are what is released as energy or burned as energy ketones. And the smell from burning ketones is what gives you that fruity breath. Yeah, I've seen websites. They now have the articles. Of course, if this is the diet you want, this is how you can help yourself. Right. And one of the things that's always eat bread, it's like yeah. But all of a sudden, you're not on that diet. Right. So that's no solution. Yeah. You can get knocked out of ketosis pretty easy, I'm sure. Yeah, I think eating bread would do it. So let's say you are, sadly just one of those people that just has that funky breath. One in four, right? Yeah. If you're among that 25%, that does seem high. Yeah, doesn't it? That's like chronic calatosis, right? Yeah. Where it's not just like brushing your teeth isn't going to do the trick. 25%. Yeah. That sounds like a fact brought to us by the listering Company. It might be, but like I said, maybe 15% of those people are really trying their hardest. So you don't notice it. Got you. And other people are just smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee all day, which is a bad combination. Yeah, it's a pretty bad combination. Somehow they become greater than the sum of their part. Yeah, but that's breakfast for college students. Sure. Coffee and cigarettes. So what do you do if you're going to battle this stuff, if it's more than just something like a breath mint can handle, what's going to happen here? Well, the breath mint is a good thing to mention that that can provide a little temporary relief, but it's just masking the funk underneath. Right. So you're really not going to get very far as a solution. No, because all it's doing is creating the sensation of freshness in your mouth. Because I don't know what breath mints do. I frequently wondered, what does menthol do? Does it open up your pores so, like, the air feels colder and fresher? Oh, I don't know. Like, what creates that sensation, you know? Yeah, it's like a don't be dumb episode to me, buddy. I think it might be. What you want to do is get to the root of the problem, which is that bacteria and like we said, food particles in your teeth is a big cause. So brushing and flossing and the old tongue scraper and brushing the back of the tongue. You scrape the tongue? Oh, yeah. Doesn't that make you gag? No, it doesn't bother me. I've gotten used to it. I mean, occasionally, if I overreach, that might be a little, but I'm not like, wretching in the bathroom every morning. I think we should keep a webcam in your bathroom when you're getting ready, just to catch those times that you do. Yeah, just make a vine compilation. That would be hilarious. So attacking the source of the food particles. And I have the fake tooth now, so I have to be extra careful to really brush along there because why? I think it would be like they made it out of some new super polymer that reflects bacteria. No, the tooth itself is not the source, but where it meets the gum is not a natural tooth. So I just have to really brush the crap out of that area of my gum. Get the crap out. I don't use mouthwash, though, which is interesting. No, I just do toothpaste. Well, apparently it's not necessarily and plenty of mouthwash is a suggestion for this. Specifically types that contain, according to the British medical journal Hexagine, gluconate are what you want because they kill bacteria. I take issue with this. One of the main functions of mouthwash isn't to just go in and kill bacteria, although most mouthwashes do that. The swishing action loosens food particles and gets them out from in between your teeth. So you should mouthwash before you brush. What I'm saying is you don't necessarily need to use a mouthwash that kills bacteria because you kind of want healthy bacteria. You want what's called an oral ecosystem in your healthy oral ecosystem or ecology in your mouth. Remember the poop shake episode? The poop transplant fecal transplant episode? Yeah. We ended up talking about the microbiome and how important it is to humanity. Sure. Same thing with our mouth. Yeah, you don't want to kill all that bacteria now. And there's plenty of bacteria that causes problems, like streptococcus mutants is what gives us cavities. But there's also plenty of beneficial bacteria where you would have a mouthful of dead skin cells all over your tongue if it weren't for this helpful bacteria breaking the stuff down. That's your problem. Everybody wants to kill bacteria. That's not necessarily a good thing. As a matter of fact, I think we're learning more and more that it's not a good thing. So I say avoid the mouthwash that kills bacteria and just use some sort of mouthwash that maybe has a minty flavor, but it's just really just swishing the food particles out and getting rid of the bacteria's food that's creating their stinky sulfur ducts. Yes, exactly. And because getting rid of the food is a big part of it, I would suggest brushing your teeth after lunch, too. Don't make it just when you get up and before you go to bed. I say go for three times a day. Whoa, man. Who has time for that? Everybody. Another good trick is to drink a lot of water. Just keeping your mouth hydrated on a daily basis is going to help. You said that saliva is like a natural mouthwash. Water helps. It does the same thing. Loosens food particles, gets rid of dead skin cells, and the back of your tongue, apparently, is like ground zero for it. Yeah, I think there's like 20 times more bacteria there than elsewhere because it's like this bumpy surface that's out of the way of all this other stuff. So things really stick and accumulate back there. So that's an area you want to target, apparently, with the tongue scraper? Yeah. And you could just brush it as well. I do both. But if you are a grown adult and you are not either brushing your tongue or using a tongue scraper, then you're not doing it right. Is that right? Yeah. Somebody needs to teach you. I give it a quick part of it, a quick brush with my toothbrush over my tongue. But I worry about killing taste buds. Like, I love tasting things. You're not going to kill any taste buds. Sure. You can kill taste buds with that. Well, I haven't killed any. Are you sure? Think about what kind of a super taster you could be without your paper. No, I do worry about that. I'm kind of like I'd rather have low level bad breath and be able to taste great stuff than have no bad breath whatsoever and not be able to taste. I would rather have no bad breath and still taste everything. Well, yeah. That's the Holy Grail. What kind of Flynn world are you living in? It's called Chuck's life. It is nice. If none of this stuff works for you, you may have a problem. Like, you might want to go see a dentist and maybe even a doctor. Well, yeah, the dentist might say, go to the doctor. Yeah, go to the doctor because you have mousy breath, which means your liver is shutting down. And find a new dentist. You know, there's a smell test that they do that dentists do. Oh, really? Yes. What they'll do is they'll say, okay, this is going to be gross, but I want you to breathe through your mouth, and I'm going to sniff close to your mouth. Wow. And then they say, okay, now I want you to breathe through your nose, and I'm going to sniff close to your nose. And they can determine whether it's a nasal, like a problem in your nasal cavity that can give you bad breath. You can have stinky sinuses so gross. Or if it's in your mouth, and then they can further deduct. And it's not the dentist doing this. Yeah. And if it's coming through your nose, it suggests possibly not just your sinuses, but it could be pulmonary, too. Like you could have some sort of lung problem that's creating gases that stink and are coming out of your nose rather than your mouth. So I guess they train you to do that in dental school, huh? They have to. That's not a very popular day. Everybody pair up. There's the one guy in the corner, like, eating a sandwich. Yeah. Like what? Can I give two more tips? Yeah, please. Get ten more if you eat a crunchy breakfast, like granola cereal or something like that. Okay. It's going to clear out a lot of the gunk from the night before. You just want to make sure you get rid of all those food particles afterwards. Okay. And then if you're interested in a mouthwash that is not antibacterial really? Sure. You take a half a cup of warm water, an 8th of a teaspoon of cinnamon, and one teaspoon of honey swirl all together and swish it around and gargle it. That's like old timey mouthwash, apparently. Yeah. And we could probably recommend apple cider vinegar just for anything that's like the wonder liquid, it seems like. Dude, I was once on my way to a full blown kidney, or maybe urinary infection, bladder infection. Something was going on and it was starting to go downhill fast. And Yummy was like, drink this and drink a lot of it. And I started drinking apple cider vinegar and raw cranberry juice. Like the real cranberry juice over like about an eight to twelve hour period, like really hit it and gone. Yeah. And it was happening. The happening was going on and I boarded it. He stopped the happen. Yes. I do a shot every morning now of apple cider vinegar. Oh, vinegar. Yeah. And don't get just the stuff in the store that you should be cooking and cleaning with. I can't remember the brand, but there's the super potable one, right? The one really thick. Yeah. The one that you'll find at a health food store. Yeah. I can't remember the name of it, but there's like one brand that everyone goes to. Right. And it's tough, man. If you ever just do a straight shot of it without diluting it, it's hardcore. Yeah. Everything I was doing was taking maybe a shot and then diluting it in like 8oz of water, and it's still very difficult. You can do it, though, especially when you're fighting off some sort of infection. Yeah. And you want to brush your teeth after that because vinegar smells gross. Just brush your teeth all the time. Yeah. If you want to learn more about halitosis, I don't know what more you could possibly learn, but you can try. You can type that word into the search bar, howstep works.com, and it will bring up this article. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener me. We're going to address our April Fool's prank officially here with this one. I want to say first of all, Josh, you and Ben was blown away by the performance. Thank you. You guys sold it so hard and we just threw it together. We were like, hey, let's just try. It wasn't some big plot. There's no practice planned for weeks and weeks. Like, hey, maybe we should do an April Fool's joke this year. And I said, hey, maybe I quit the show. And Ben took my place. And you guys just winged it and nailed it, man. I was sitting here beside you and I felt like I was watching my own. Funeral. Yeah, that's weird. Yeah. You kept going like cut. Stop. We're like, no, we have to press on. So we're not jokesters, typically, but I think it was the only one to be released on April Fool's Day. It was the first time we had the opportunity to release one on April Fools and look out two years from now, because that will be a thoroughly yeah, but if we do, like, Josh left the show, everyone would be like, no. Or they'll be expecting that and we'll do it. And they'll be like, well, wait a minute. They thought that I would think that maybe we could go from there if you like, I don't know, you could have a heart attack on the show or something. Right. But anyway, we got an outpouring of people because I was dead or missing. I know people really reacted to that. A lot of people said they didn't realize how much they needed you until you were gone. Yeah. There were plenty of people who said, like, Josh, if it had been you, I would have felt the same way. But I got to play the martyr. I got the plum roll. It was nice. I had to do nothing and just get showered with Adulation. But it was very neat to see, like, people were like, never leave. Don't ever do that again. It was pretty cool, actually. Yes. And also, I want to say on behalf of Ben, he asked us to let everybody know whenever we could that he actually was purposely sounding terrible. Is that what he was doing? That was playacting. Yeah. The whole point was, like, we wanted it to be super awkward, and I think he has achieved that. Okay, so go ahead. Back from the dead. Chuck. So this is for Matt from Athens, Georgia. Go, Dogs. Hey, guys. My girlfriend. I had been listening for years. I didn't realize just how important the show was to us, though, until your April Fool's Day show. I listened to the episode before she did, and he didn't even tell her. That's kind of mean. He did. And I was keen on setting her up for the gag. So I sat her down at the kitchen table and told her that stuff you should know. It's some big news. I knew she'd be sucked into the prank, but was not prepared for what happened next. She started to cry and denounced the show with one of you gone, saying she would stop listening. She was worried about Chuck. I even had people worried about Emily. They were like, they thought Emily was in the hospital. That's awesome. Chuck started she said she would stop listening and was worried about Chuck and started tossing out possible explanations like the best of conspiracy theorists. She was so sad that I had to fast forward to the reveal after her surprising, yet pretty cute reaction. I was hoping to swap out her emotional connection for a birthday shout out. She's a contemporary dancer and uses the ideas in your podcast and her classes and choreography. Think dance is about Alan Turing. I got to see this. Yeah, it's crazy. I admit this pretty crass way of getting a happy birthday, but I think it's worth a shot. So, Matt, you didn't tell us your girlfriend's name, so we're just going to say happy birthday to Matt's girlfriend from Athens. Happy birthday, Matt's girlfriend. I'm going to get to Jennifer. Matt, enjoy sleeping on the couch this evening. You know, we fooled some of our friends. Even Joe Randazzo texted me and said, you guys actually fooled me for about 8 seconds. Is that right? Yeah. We got a lot of people who said, like, I didn't fall for anything all day. And the only people who got me the stuff, you should know it's because you guys just destroyed it. And then the one pulled me. For a minute, I thought I was off the show, too. I have to leave. The ones that I felt bad about, though, were the ones who listened to it, like, after April 1. Yeah. And we're like, Australian. Yeah. They didn't realize it was the it was exactly. Thank you very much for the outpouring of emotion. We both feel very loved. Yeah, sure. I mean, we know people like the show, but when you hear stuff like that, it's like, wow, people kind of depend on this. And we know now that we're not allowed to ever leave. No. Go out and murder suicide, if anything. Okay, cool. Agreed. So, if you guys love us so much, you can hang out with us outside of the podcast, too. On social media. We're on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, just search Stuff You Should Know, s, Y, SK, Josh and Chuck and any of those, and it will bring us up and you will love it. And if you want to send an email to Chuck, Jerry and me, you can address it to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio's Housetoftworks. For more podcasts, my Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio App, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means schools out, the sun's shining, the 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's. 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How Snake Handlers Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-snake-handlers-work | Snake handling ranges from professional snake milkers for antivenin to religious handlers who tend to get bitten and sometimes die from it. Either way, it can be a dangerous business. Learn all about snake handling right here, right now. | Snake handling ranges from professional snake milkers for antivenin to religious handlers who tend to get bitten and sometimes die from it. Either way, it can be a dangerous business. Learn all about snake handling right here, right now. | Mon, 09 May 2016 17:02:40 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=9, tm_hour=17, tm_min=2, tm_sec=40, tm_wday=0, tm_yday=130, tm_isdst=0) | 52022200 | audio/mpeg | "This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Start building your website today@squarespace.com. Enter code stuff at checkout and you will get 10% off Squarespace. Set your website apart. Welcome to you stuff you should know from Housetepworks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And there's Jerry over there. And my hair is now a fourth character. Chuck laughed at my hair, everybody. Oh, my beard can be the fourth character. Your hair could be the fifth. Oh, really? Yes. We need actually, Jerry's got great hair. She doesn't have nice hair stylish. Salt and pepper. Amy Goodman level tasteful. Salt and pepper. I'm not sure what that means. Amy Goodman from Democracy Now. It's very tasteful salt and pepper hair. Oh, really? Maybe that's the thing. It is clearly between Jerry and Amy Goodman. It's the thing that beats shoe polish. Black trickling down your forehead. Yeah, but do what makes you happy. Well, sure, whatever makes you feel good. Yeah, I should get some of that beer blackener and combined into my beard and come in with, like, that jet black beard. Clyde Drexler will show up at your house, urge you on. What? Clyde Drexler? Isn't he in the ads? Yeah. Really? Former Portland trailblazer. Great. Yes. I'm pretty sure it's Clyde Drexler. Oh, wow. I think I'd have to check this out. It's him. And who was the one? I think Keith Hernandez. I was going to say the one that Cramer spit on or that got spit on. Cramer? Yeah, Keith Hernandez. I think it's Keith Hernandez and Clyde Drexler in the Just for Men commercial. Got you. Well, there's our free package of Just for Men coming our way now, which we should say thanks again to Crown Royal, man. You say you like Crown Royal? They send you some. You say you drank it and they send you more. I know, it's pretty awesome. I'm brushing my teeth with this stuff now. My lifestyle has improved for the better. Pretty neat. Thank you, dudes. So I was just discussing before we recorded, I said it's going to be hard to record a show on snake handling. And I'm talking about the religious aspect of it without sort of like I fear for their safety. And I want to say you people are crazy. A lot of people do. But we have a long standing tradition of, like, to each their own. I hate seeing people die from doing something completely preventable. Yeah, you definitely do. But handling rentals naked and kissing them on the face from what I've seen of this and from what I've researched, I've not actually seen somebody handle snakes in person. No, but from what I've researched, the people who handle snakes are doing it through total and complete faith. And even if you did judge them, I think it kind of rolls off their back quite a bit. So it's not so much judgment. It's just like it's judgment no, it's not. I'm telling you what is it my opinion, and I'm judging your opinion. Oh, that's what you meant by its judgment? No. Okay, now it's not judgment. I hate seeing people get hurt and die. Have you ever seen somebody handle snakes? No. You had a religious upbringing? Well, yeah. This is rare, though. Yeah, it is. Appalachian foothill stuff. Yeah, I know, but I mean, we're in Atlanta. We're in Georgia. I didn't know if you ever took, like, a field trip or something like that. You have no idea how church works. I thought there were a lot of field trips. No, I got you. In fact, you don't go to other churches. You're not supposed to do that. Oh, really? Yeah. Stay at your own church. You don't go on field trips to other churches. Aren't there like, interfaith banquets and stuff like that? Yeah, we had a field day right. With all the churches in the county. Right. No. I suppose other churches get together with some get together with other churches, but that wasn't my experience. It's typically found on in New York. You just keep it in house. Although we would go to the big youth conferences where all sorts of youth groups together that's a field trip. Yeah, just kids thrown in the big gymnasiums, struggling to fight their hormonal urges. You believe what right, so no, I've never done it. I didn't ask if you've done it. I never witnessed it. I've never been anywhere near it. Okay. Although I have a strange feeling, Chuck, that it's possible we've both been near it just from living in Georgia all these years without knowing it, because yeah. People who handle snakes religiously, it's actually called holiness serpent handling. Is that correct? Yes. They say serpent instead of snake. Yeah. And it has to be a venomous snake to be considered a serpent. Yes. But for holiness serpent handling until 2014, they kept a pretty tight lid on it for many, many decades. The handlers. Yes. The people who practiced this as part of their religious beliefs. Yeah. And I think still, even most of them are pretty media shy. You'll see the occasional interview when someone dies. Yeah. They'll go knocking on the doors and they'll give an interview to explain, like, why they do what they do. But of course, there was that TV show, which really you're clearly not media shy if you're doing a reality show. No, it was called Snake Salvation and sorry, not 2014, but 2013. It was on Nat Geo, and it was all about snake handling for religious reasons. And one of the main guys on the show ended up dying. He didn't die on the show, but he died the next year from a rattlesnake bite after it went off the air. Yes. It was only on for one season, but his name was Pastor Jamie Coots, and he and another guy named, I believe, Steven Amblen are they are holiness serpent handlers who believe in kind of bringing it out of the shadows and into the Christian mainstream. Good luck. Yeah. If you're at all interested in that concept, you should read Even Onto Death. It was in the Chattanooga Free Press. It's a pretty good examination of that whole movement. And those guys in particular. I guess we should talk a little bit about other kinds of snake handling first, though. Yeah. Because when you see snake handling, I'm sure when people saw the title of this episode, they just assumed we're talking strictly about religious snake handling. Like other people handle snakes as well, like professional non religious settings. Yeah, that's true. They're called herpetologists, or some of them are. These are actually people who study snakes and amphibians, reptiles, and we talked about them on our snake show. And I think we dispelled a lot of rumors not rumors, but myths on the snake show which come into play when handling snakes, namely that they aren't out to kill you. But we'll get to that later. But people display snakes. Well, there's a few different categories of people who handle snakes. There are people who display them. Like, you drive through Florida, you might see, like, a Snake and Gator Farm right. Where they do snake shows. And there's a really famous guy we'll talk about a little more in depth named Bill Host yeah. Who was like the man when it comes to that. Let's see. Yeah. And then there are people there are snake milkers, of course, there's veterinarians who care for your snakes. Yeah. Which, I mean, they have to handle snakes. There's also rescue and recovery people sure. Who come snake in my basement. Right. A guy will show up, and most likely he's professionally trained. At the very least, you would hope that he has a tremendous amount of experience in handling snakes. Yeah. And they will show up and you'll say, how much does it cost to get the snake out of my basement? And they'll say, how much you got? Exactly. I'd like to see your last three bank account statements, please. And in those cases, you'll probably see what's called an extension tool. If you've ever seen those tongs or those long, they call it a snake hook, sort of a long metal, not a prod, because you're not prod. It's like a good idea. Senior adults use it to grab cans off of the high shelves in their home. A grabber, yes. It's like that, sort of I haven't seen them that actually flex and grab. Do they? Yeah. If you get some money, you're going to spend it on that. The ones I've seen are just have a flat. It's a long pole, and then it has like, an L shape at a right angle flat piece coming off that they pin the snake with. Right. I've read this thing about handling snakes safely for, like, just normal people or people who are starting out in the rescue and recovery business. Sure. And you can use just about anything. The key is extension. You want to put distance between you and the snake. And I want to say, as a legal disclaimer, I'm not at all advising anybody to handle a snake. No. But what I read was that you want to put as much distance as possible. So if you have a garden tool and a long one, use that. But you also would want to use let's say you have a hoe. You would want to turn your hoe upside down and use just the wooden end to manipulate the snake, because you don't want to hurt the snake, you just want to get rid of it. Right? Yeah. I relocated a snake from my backyard a couple of years ago. What did you use? I used my hands. Oh, my God. It wasn't big, but it wasn't small. So how did you describe this interaction? I was cutting the grass, and I saw the snake. It was about a foot long. Did you positively identify it as non lethal or non venomous? Yeah, it was definitely not. Well, actually, it had the markings where it could have been a copperhead. Okay. It wasn't just like a green snake. Right. So you took a shot of whiskey and approached it. I approached it, and I did use an implement to pin it, but I can't remember what I use. It was something blunt and soft. It wasn't an accident head, because, like you said, it wasn't a standard block that you dropped on. Like, what did I use? I can't remember. Let's just say, like a wooden paddle. Okay. It might have been a piece of wood, actually. I got you. And then I did, like I saw on the TV shows, I grabbed it right behind its head, got a good hold of it, and picked it up. Not bad. And it wrapped around my wrist, and I went and then I ran across the street like BW herman. Threw it in the woods. Didn't throw it. I laid it down in the woods, and it was great. I think it was a successful catch and release. It sounds like it. You weren't bitten. Yeah. And I'm 99% sure I didn't hurt the snake. Good. Yeah. That sounds pretty successful. Yeah. What I was reading in this one article was that most snakes, if you just approach them calmly and I guess smoothly is a good way to put it. Sure. Don't lunge at the snake. Right. And also, don't be like, oh, my God, oh, my God. Just kind of come at the snake and pick it up like it's just a stick in your yard. It's probably not going to strike you. Supposedly, according to this website, of which I have no affiliation whatsoever. Yeah. And my story please do not take that as a that was probably pretty dumb for me to do that. Yeah. And even if it's not, I don't want to get bitten by a snake. I don't care if it's venomous or not. One of my biggest fears is seeing a snake attach its mouth to my body. Right. It frightens me. Well, I have to say also, this site, put pretty plainly, do not ever touch a snake that you haven't positively identified as non venomous, because you could have easily been bitten and lost your hand or died or whatever. Well, no, I could have get in the hospital pretty quickly. Okay. Yeah. I mean, if you're anti venom works, apparently 100% of the time if it's gotten to in a timely manner. Yes. And for the pedants out there, we will say antivenom and antivenom, because both are acceptable. Yes, they are. So, Chuck, let's take a break right here, huh? Sounds good. Okay. Did I say how far a snake can strike? No. Do you know? This is what I've got from the same place that said just go smoothly and casually up to a snake. Yeah. Introduce yourself. It says that any snake greater than 4ft can typically strike about one third to one half the distance of its body length. That's a good rule of thumb. Yeah. A snake between one and 3ft can strike about one half to two thirds its body length, and then a snake underfoot can usually strike about its whole body length. Okay. I would take all those numbers and double them. That's probably a good idea, just to be safe. Yes, of course. I'm the guy who picked up maybe a copperhead. Right. Man, that is scary stuff. You do the same thing. You don't want to pay a guy. Probably I would do with this site what this site was saying was made a lot of sense to me. Is. Like. Take a garbage can. Tip it over on its side. Take a shovel. Use the wooden end of it. The handling. And just kind of get it into the can. Turn it over. Put. Like. Something on top of the can. And then call somebody. Or you could take the can, like the woods or something like that. That's probably what I should have done. In retrospect, I was feeling brave. Those shots of whiskey I've watched enough nature TV. Right. I know how this is done. So the last thing that I think we didn't mention is snake milkers. Oh, yeah. Which snake venom is very valuable? 1 gram. What you do is you freeze dry it into a powder after you get the liquid, and you sell it to research labs. Big money. Yeah. 1 gram of freeze dried venom from an exotic snake can go up to five grand, but it might take 100 milkings to get that much. Yeah. So do the math. Yeah. Is it worth it? Yes. Especially if you love hanging out with snakes. And it's a legit job. You can make $2,500 a month or more as a snake milker easily, depending on how many snakes you have that's right. So there are a lot of people that handle snakes, but all of them well, I should say all of the people who professionally handle snakes have a rule of thumb, which is don't get hurt, don't be stupid. Sure. Because there are two ways that snakes can typically get you venomous. Snakes obviously, inject venom, and that's why people milk snakes, is to get that venom so that they can create antivenom. So that your life can be saved if you end up getting bit by a snake. Right? Yes. And venom is pretty nasty stuff. I think we did one on like, what's the most poisonous animal in the world? That sounds familiar. Yeah. And we talked a lot about venom, but it's worth revisiting. Basically, depending on the venom that you're injected with, it can cause tissue damage wherever it's spread. And by tissue damage, I mean just completely wipe out your tissue. And if that is blood vessels, your blood vessels bleed and you start bleeding internally. If it's your liver or your heart, those things start bleeding internally and end up shutting down. You can have multi system multi organ failure, paralysis, respiratory distress, all sorts of horrible stuff. Yeah. If it's on a limb or digit, you might lose that even if you get the antivenom. Exactly. Because it's so thoroughly destroys the tissue. Right? That's right. And it causes a lot of pain too, because I was reading about the Texas coral snake. It actually has this molecule that opens the gates to your pain receptors and just hold them open so that you're just feeling excruciating, unremitting pain. So it's bad stuff. So you don't want to get bitten by sick. You also don't want to mess around with constrictors either, because they will mess you up as well. They will, I guess, wrap around you and then suffocate you, break your back, stop your heart. It's big enough. Sure. Bad news. Bad news. So snakes can be dangerous is the point. Yes. But again, not to feed into that anti snake propaganda. Not trying to start a whacking day. No. So getting back to the milkers oh, yes, sorry. They are what's called free handlers. You would think, like, they should just wear anti snake gloves, but you need to really feel the snake. I read an interview with the guy that milk snakes for a living and he's like, no, you got to feel with your skin. The snakes are really fast and you have to react and adjust to every little movement they make. And even wearing a glove, even a thin glove, a thin glove wouldn't help anyway. But a chainmail glove or Kevlar glove, you wouldn't be able to feel what's going on anyway. Right. Plus, you accidentally crushed the snake's head. They're not exactly made of Kevlar themselves. That's true. So when you're milking a snake, when you're free handling it, you basically want to hold it the way you did behind the head, right? Yeah. Where the jaws meet using your thumb and forefinger. Yes, that is correct. And that does two things. It keeps the head from turning on you, and it puts your fingers and your thumb on those venom glands, which is what? They just kind of massage it. You can also use electrical stimulation, but the traditional way is to just get a little squeeze, and it will melt those little clans. Right. But first, before you start squeezing, you want to basically take the fangs the front fangs. Yeah. You're not, like, spraying it around the room into your hand. I miss that part. You put their fangs through a membrane that's pulled over a jar, and then the venom just pumps out of the fangs into the jar. Yeah. It's really neat looking. It is. It's pretty remarkable looking. It is, man. Agreed. And they recommend that if you are milking, if you're a professional milker, you should have a little buddy with you oh, yeah. In case something goes wrong. It's not a solo job, really. Anytime you're handling a snake, there should be more than one person. I agree. Yeah. Well, I didn't I should have called Emily outside, but she wouldn't have let me pick up the snake. I had to keep it quiet. I think I walked up to her and was like, look at this. Yeah. If I'm not mistaken. And they say for constrictors, they have a little handy chart, as well for at least one person for every 5ft of snake, unless it's an anaconda or reticulated python. In that case, you want every 3ft of snake. Right. Because human those are very heavy snakes. Yeah. Females can get up to, like \u00a3200, which is 90. Saw the Jackass bit the other day, again, where I think it might have been in the sequel, where they put python or anaconda in one of those pits of little red balls that kids jump in, and Johnny Knoxville and the gang get in there, and this thing bites. This huge thing bites Johnny Knoxville, like, two or three times. Wow. And things got the head the size of a baseball. It sounds like a jackass bit. Hey. To Lance Bangs. Yeah. Speaking of jackass, right? Yeah. He was one of the filmmakers behind that, and we had dinner with him in Portland. Very pleasant dinner, so hello, Lance, if you're out there listening I can't believe that they did that. Anyway, and he kept getting back in. He kept getting bit. He's bleeding, and he keeps getting back in. I don't know why this isn't ringing a bell. I'm sure I've seen Jackass, too, a bunch of times. Plus, Chuck, you also want somebody around anytime you're handling a snake, whether it's a python or a venom snake or any snake, really, because you want somebody to call 911 if something goes wrong. You want somebody to be able to drive you to the hospital if something goes wrong or if a python is trying to get around you, they can keep the tail from fully wrapping around. There's a lot of stuff that an extra person can do, and things go really horribly awry when that doesn't happen. There was actually a very famous case not too many years ago of a Venezuelan zookeeper. I think it was Venezuela, wasn't it? I don't remember who was, I think, a grad student working as a zookeeper. And he or she went into, I guess, a python's cage, a ten foot Burmese python cage, alone during the night shift. Boy. And they found before probably just to get something or to give it some food. Just something. I'm sure it was something mundane, totally not worth losing your life over. And they found the person the next morning, like, half swallowed by the python. Oh, my Lord. You always want somebody around. Yeah. Well, should we get into the religious nick handling? Yeah, for sure. All right. Well, you said it, dude. It's called holiness surpass handling. And actually, you might think, like, oh, they've done this for millennia, or at least since, you know, the 1718 hundreds. Nope. We have a definitive start date in Tennessee, the Dolly Pond Church of God in Birchwood, there was a preacher named George Hensley, and the legend is that he was having a faith crisis and was reading Mark from the Bible. 1618 thou shalt take up serpents, and if they drank any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them. That was a good Appalachian preacher. And so he supposedly turned and saw a snake there and said, I'm going to take this quite literally. The Bible says to take up snakes, so I'm going to pick it up. And he picked it up and the snake didn't bite him. And he said, well, there goes my crisis of faith. That's right. And apparently George Hensley didn't start out a preacher. He started out an alcoholic who had trouble keeping work. And once this happened to him, he found his religious calling and became a preacher in the Pentecostal tradition. And he actually helped establish this separate group that's kind of within the Pentecostal religion. But the Church of God of signs following is essentially the sect that he helped found. Yeah. These are subsets of subsets of Christianity. Yeah. And so Hensley's whole philosophy was, you read the Bible plainly, is how he put it. Which means if it says you pick up snakes, you pick up snakes. Right. That's God's command to you. Right. If it says you can drink any deadly thing and it will not harm you, you're supposed to do that. Right. All churches are independent, so you decide whether women can wear pants or not at your church. And it was about as simple as that. And it actually took off and became very popular throughout Appalachia from the 1940s. There was, I think, thousands of people who went to the Church of God with signs following churches. Yeah. And Hensley, for his own record, said that he survived more than 400 bites until 1955. He was in Florida in an abandoned I don't know if it was abandoned, but it was a blacksmith shop. He was doing a demonstration and I guess holding a little religious service. Right. And he got bitten and refused treatment. Because that's part of the deal, is they leave it up to you, like, coote I saw an interview with him and he said, if someone gets bitten, I call the paramedics, I have them come down, and then I say, well, now you have a choice. You can either do as God commands and refuse treatment and he'll heal you if you should be healed, and if it's your time to die, it's your time to die. Or you can say, I'd like treatment, please. Yes, but in the tradition of a true believer, hensley said, no, I don't want treatment. And he died the next morning. Yeah, but he survived a bunch of other bites, like you said. Yeah, 400, he says, although live by the snake, died by the snake is probably a pretty good motto. Sure. A lot of people think that holiness serpent handlers are either worship the snakes because they do keep them in cages on the altar during services, or that they're doing this as a show of faith, to basically show, look at how much I believe in God. Right. Apparently this is definitively not the case when holiness serpent handlers pick up snakes and this still goes on? Oh, yeah. Like, there are still churches throughout Appalachia, apparently, from Ohio to Florida, where hundreds, if not a few thousand people do this, go to these services. Yeah, when they do it, they don't do it at every service, necessarily. Right. But when they do do it, it's because they believe they have just been commanded by God to show their obedience to God by picking up a serpent and handling it. And when they do it, apparently they just enter into immediate religious ecstasy. Yeah. It's like they kind of jump up and down and maybe speak in tongues and sort of a trance like state, I guess. We haven't even really described it. I assume most people have seen this at some point. Look up a YouTube video. They're not holding the snake by the back of the head. No. They are literally just sometimes there are five and six snakes and they're just holding them and they're kissing them on the face. They're rubbing them on their face. They wear them like crowns. They'll throw them over their shoulders. Yeah. The big difference between religious snake handlers and professional snake handlers is that religious snake handlers go to zero degree to establish any kind of safety precautions. Right. That's entirely antithetical to the point. Yeah. They don't have anti venom shots standing by in a medical kit. No, they don't. No. There's 100 things that are different, but sure. Right. I know what you mean. And so this whole thing was very popular among the Appalachians for a good 2030 years, and then in the rash of people who died after being bitten, and all of a sudden, the outside world started to look in and say, what are you guys doing? Yeah. And the authorities were like, well, we don't think you should be able to do that. We started to try to pass laws, but none of them there actually are laws that indirectly prevent people from doing this. There's actually some that directly prevent them, I guess, in every Appalachian state except for West Virginia. But they're very rarely enforced because of religious liberties. Right? Yeah. Religious freedoms. Yeah. There have been some raids, notably, actually, Coots Place sounds like a sitcom. Hanging with Mr. Coots. Coote's Church was rated as a part of a series of stings in 2008 under the code name Twice Shy. Really? Yeah. You're kidding me. They did. There in one church, they confiscated 125 snakes and made ten arrests. And then at Coote Church, I think they got about 75 snakes and arrested a few others, including him. But I don't think they stay in jail very long. I can't imagine what the penalty is. Well, the grand jury typically refused to indict him. Oh, really? They just say they might be charged with them, they might be hauled to jail, but there's no indictment that's handed down, so they don't go to trial. But they confiscate the snakes, at least. Yeah. Usually, because in Tennessee, for example, it's illegal to keep venomous snakes, and the snakes that they're using are very venomous. They're deadly cotton mouths, rattlesnakes, all sorts of very deadly venomous snakes. So they're breaking the law just by having the snakes. But again, they're typically left alone as far as the courts are concerned. And the reason why you're saying at the beginning of this episode that it's hard to not just be like, stop? Yeah. I think the reason why I don't have that much trouble with this, I came to see it differently after doing research on it. Okay. They have mores involved with this stuff. More? No, I thought they handled those, too, because that would require, like, an aquarium, and nobody wants that. Sure. They have just kind of rules around the whole thing where you don't go handle a serpent unless you feel like you have been commanded by God to go do that right then, and you're imbued with the Holy Spirit, which is protecting you right then. Right. There's no pressure whatsoever to go do that. There's actually discouragement to do it for any kind of show of faith or anything like that. Yeah. And then children are banned from doing it. They're not allowed to handle the snakes. You were fine with it. Yeah. In the same way that you're free to walk into traffic if you want. I find it even less harmful than that, because you're endangering. The other driver's life. If you're walking into traffic, somebody might steer into somebody else to get around you. This is you and a snake. Yeah. I do have issues with how the snakes are treated. Well, that's one of my other big problems, so we'll get into that. We got to take a break. OK, Chuck, we're back. What's the problem? What's your beef? Well, over the years, let's get into some numbers. In about 100 years, they estimate about 100 people have died from doing it. And if you look at the numbers and the number of people handling snakes, you'd think there would be a lot more people dying from snake bites. Pretty surprising, especially considering that most of them do refuse medical treatment after being bitten. They still recover. Correct. That is unusual. It's remarkable. It is. NPR did a story on this in 2013 and some snake experts, herpetologists started coming out of the woodwork, specifically the Kentucky reptiles, who has been sort of investigating this on their own for years. And they said, you know what, there's a lot of things going on here. That is sort of a rigging of the deck, stacking of the deck, and the humans favor. For one, these snakes are mistreated, which is one reason I have a problem with it. By all accounts, from their investigations, they saw crowded cages, they were dirty, there was no fecal matter in the cage which looked like they weren't being fed. They asked Hoots about that and he said, well, my rat connection went away, my mouse and rat hook up disappeared on me. And he says, Besides, they won't eat anyway, I think was his quote, which I don't understand what that means. Snakes eat. They want to eat. That sounds like something someone says when they're pulling their collar away from them. And he said they asked him, how long have snakes lived? And he said, on average, three or four months. The reptiles do in Kentucky said snakes should live ten to 20 years. Oh, wow. He said they live on average three or four months. Yeah. They're being mistreated. So because of this mistreatment, these hungry snakes, there's a lot of things that happen once you have a hungry snake, and one is they are less likely to strike if they're unhealthy. Yeah. What else? When they do strike, they're less likely to inject venom. So it's likely to be a dry strike? Yeah. 25%, I think, are dry strikes, but that's just under normal circumstances. Oh, really? If it's a malnourished and less fed or underwatered snake, it's probably even higher incidence of dry strikes than that. Okay. The venom apparently isn't as potent if it's an unhealthy snake. In 2013, they rated a church in Tennessee, I think that's Andrew Hamblin like you were talking about. Yes, I think I may have said his first name incorrectly before, but yeah, that's who I was talking about. And they confiscated 53 snakes that most of them died within months, they were all unhealthy. And so basically, you've got these malnourished snakes that even when they do get bitten, they're maybe even not getting any venom or less potent venom. Right. Yeah. It's rigged in a certain way. Plus, also this article points out there's a Julia Layton joint. She points out that it's also possible that those of us here on the outside, maybe even the holiness serpent handlers, overestimate just how aggressive snakes actually are by nature. Yeah. Like you were saying, if you're handling them gently, they're not going to strike you, especially if they don't feel threatened, if they're just like, oh, this is just a religious person. Right. They're in the throes of religious ecstasy. I'll just ride it out. I've been wanting to be gently shaked for a while, so let's see where this goes. Plus, a lot of these snakes are raised in captivity and snake experts will tell you if you raise a snake in captivity, it's less likely to strike at you because they don't fear you as they should. Right. Plus, snakes don't typically speaking from an evolutionary standpoint, it doesn't make any sense for a snake to be like, yeah, I'm going to strike you thing that is way bigger than I am, that I don't prey upon naturally. I'm going to deliver all of my venom. Right. Because venom, they need it to actually eat, they need it for prey. Right, yeah. And the snake wouldn't know this, but natural selection would have figured it out by now that if a snake is striking something like a hippo that's coming at it and delivers all of its venom right. That hippo is still going to stomp the snake before the venom actually has any effect on it. Yeah. And you've lost all your venom. Right. And you can regenerate it, but it's not like immediate. Right. So in an evolutionary natural selection standpoint, it doesn't really make sense for a snake to strike and deliver a full venom bite. Correct. Right. Yeah. So you had all this stuff together and suddenly the mystery of snake handling still, it becomes a little clearer. It makes a little more sense how people are surviving, but it's still remarkable that more people don't die, considering how often these snakes are handled. Yeah. And if you look at interviews with Coots on the YouTube, he'll pick up his chunk of rotted finger that he keeps and show you. He'll say, look, my wife had to cut it off at the Mid Knuckle with Rose Pruners. That was a different guy. That was Bill Haas. No, coots it happened to him too. Oh, really? Rose Pruners again? Yeah, like, he literally held up his finger and showed it to the lady on CNN. She was like, yeah, you kept that thing. Yeah, well, Bill Hosp's wife cut his off with Rose Pruners. I think digits falling off as the snake handler is pretty common. I don't think it's like no, that was that one guy. There you go. I'm against it because they're mistreating snakes. Yeah, I have that. That's my issue with it too. Other than that, I'm like, if you want to do it just saying. Yeah, it's just one of those rare instances where you are, again, aside from the treatment of the snake, you're not harming anybody but yourself. There's almost no other instance that's just like that. You know what I mean? Right. I guess I'm getting to be a libertarian. So let's talk about Bill Hoffman, because that guy deserves maybe even his own podcast one day. Yeah. This dude is something else. Where do you start with him? Well, as a kid, he had a dream. He was always obsessed with snakes. And he had a dream to one day have a snake house open to the public where he could educate people. And he was an educator. He wasn't a religious snake handler. We should point that out up front. He was a self trained scientist. Yeah, for sure. That's a good way to say it. No, thank you. So little kid has a dream and he grows up and makes that dream a reality and really believed in his heart and through experimentation that snake venom could be very beneficial to a human. Yeah. He was actually after the Miami Serpentarium, which is his famous place that he opened, was in full swing. By the late 70s, he was in clinical trials using snake venom to help cure things like Parkinson's and multiple sclerosis with a doctor. And the FDA actually came in and shut them down because they were basically doing human experimentation. That was unsanctioned. But they were seeing results, from what I understand. Yeah. Apparently he was seeing results with his polio work earlier when Jonas Salk invented the vaccine. And he was like, oh, man, it's great that it's cured, but I wish it could have been me and the snakes. So this dude started self immunizing in 1948. He injected one part Cape cobra venom with 1000 part sailing solution into his forearm and started gradually increasing the amount of venom he would inject into his own body. Right. Within a couple of decades, he was injecting every day a cocktail of 32 different snakes and reptiles venom, which is a process called Mythrididism. Okay. Mythridides was this famous I can't remember. He was an ancient king, and he developed the tolerance to poison because he was so afraid of being poisoned. So he would drink a little bit. Right. Nice. So now anybody who does it, it's mithrididism. And that's what he was doing. So he actually did this for such a long time that his blood itself became antivenom and it actually saved 21 people's lives. Yeah. He would draw pints of blood from his body to keep on hand. And he literally, several times flew all around the world with his blood to give it to people to save them. Yeah. And apparently in, I think, 1989, he was bit by a Pakistani pit viper, and he didn't have any anti venom. And the White House used back channels to get their hands on some from Iran. I heard about that and saved his life. Yeah, pretty neat stuff. He has this famous quote, I could become a poster boy for the benefits of venom if I lived to be 100. I'll really make the point. And he lived to be 100, 100 years old with snake venom pumping through his blood all day long. Yes. And there's a really neat discussion about this guy in a larger article called The Mythridities of Fondue Lock. I can't remember the guy who wrote it. It's a really great article, tweeted out or something, but it has some stuff about Bill Host in it. But it's also about this other dude named Tim Fried, who in the article. He takes four venomous snake bites in 48 hours, although the whole thing is about whether or not he can live through five. But he's been doing the same thing. Wow. Yeah. So the serpentarium in Miami closed in. I saw that the accident was in 1977, so I'm not sure why it took seven years to close. But a six year old boy had crocodiles and other stuff right at the place. Six year old boy fell into the cockpit and was mauled, and it really obviously disturbed Bill because he wasn't a bad guy. He wasn't, you know, he tore him up and he shot this crocodile nine times of the Luger pistol, and I guess seven years later decided to close it. Apparently the dad didn't blame Bill, which is remarkable for the accident, which I just thought was strange. If he took safety precautions and the kid went around him, then yeah, maybe so. It's not that dude's fault either way. It's horrible and tragic. And he ended up closing the serpentarium as a result of it, although I didn't realize it was seven years later, too. But he kept his milking operation going. That's right. In his own self injection routine. Right. And he did. He flew to Venezuela once, into the Amazon to deliver some of his own blood to save a boy's life, and he was made an honorary citizen of Venezuela as a result. That is so cool. Yeah, pretty amazing. He claims to have never been sick a day in his life. Didn't take, never have the cold, never had the flu, didn't take aspirin. And this article that you sent says he was unusually youthful looking. I don't know. I looked at pictures. I don't know if he looked 100, but I don't know about unusually youthful looking, maybe. So he had a glow about him? Yeah, glow from venom. I'm going to start shooting that stuff, I guess. Oh, yeah. No, I'm going to stay away from it and just be fascinated by the whole concept. All right, you got anything else? I got nothing else. I don't either. If you want to know more about snake handling, you can type those words in the search bar. Howstep works.com. And since I said that, it's time for oh, you know what it's time for? Facebook questions. All right, so what we do here is when listener mails have dried up a little bit, we put it out to the people on Facebook to send in questions, and we'll answer over the next two episodes, as many as we can that aren't dumb. It's sort of a rapid fire thing starting. I'm like Billy on the street. Who? Billy on the street. Billy Egner. No. Great TV show. Yeah. I haven't seen it, but I am aware of it. It's wonderful. Let's start with Greg Storkin. Good old Greg Storkin. Yes. He says if you woke up to find that you would replace the character in a movie, you know, well, what moving character would it be and how would you handle the circumstances differently? This is a really good question. I feel like Josh has probably had an answer to this for years. For The Shining. Wink Emoticon. Did you spell out wink emoticon, or did it just print out like that? I don't know. I'm not sure. Oh, no, he spelled it out. I had my answer easy. John Rambo and what would you do differently? Would you just immediately surrender? I would have, in the very beginning of First Blood, when he drives them across the bridge and says, Keep going that way. I would have just kept going that way instead of turning around and going back into town. The end. Yes. John Rambo it'd be a boring movie. Well, it'd be very short. Yeah, it'd be a short film. John Rambo hitchhiker. That's a good one. Yeah. What about you? I'll have to think about that. All right. Hey, stork and we'll see you in Denver, buddy. All right. Smile. Emoticon. This is from Jamie Whitaker. Josh always refers to his favorite book. Josh, you want to say it? That's right. Yeah, but I'm usually driving and I never take it down. I can't remember. So he says it's 18 something. It's not right. Chuck, what is your number one recommendation? I don't know if I have a favorite book, but I always recommend the book Middle Sex just because it's one of the great books that I read. Jeffrey eugenie. Oh, yeah. Eugenie. I think that's right. He's written a lot of great books, but Middlesex is wonderful. Great all around book. Yes. Okay. Nice one, man. Let's see. Trey McLam has a great question. How different would our health be if we could sleep every day until we wake up naturally, as if alarm clocks were never invented? I would guess we'd all be a lot more mellow. We get less done, sure, but we'd be more mellow. Like our five day weekend. Remember that episode? I do. I think that kind of dovetails with that quite a bit. Just kind of doing what you do. There's your answer. Good one. I don't know about that. There's a good question. Terrible answer. Sam Horn, you've been dropping hints of late about live shows overseas. Would love to see you in the UK. We have loads of stuff you should know, Sam. We're hoping to come to the UK this summer. We're working on it. Hard. We're working on it. It may or may not pan out because planning shows overseas can be challenging. Yes, you have to take a citizenship test. Did you know that? I didn't know that. Weird. So we're trying. And listen up for updates on that front. Okay, let's see. Jessica Riddell says, I listened to your color podcast, Color with a U, and Chuck mentioned he might have a color deficiency. I'd like to hear a podcast about color blindness and color deficiencies, please. Smile. Moticon. I think people are putting this and it's typing it out when you print it. It's got to be maybe what's the question? That wasn't the question at all. With it? No. Okay. Donna angela. Good one, Chuck. Well, they say Josh, Diego, Leo, how's the property squatting coming along? That was me. I haven't heard anything from a few years and I haven't heard anything about Hippie Rob. I'm still squatting, everybody. It's working out great. And as far as we know, we don't own the property yet, but we think the county might and I don't think we're in any danger of losing it anytime soon. It's not your next door neighbor, back neighbor, behind neighbor, whatever. No. Yeah, the county. I don't know if you'll ever be able to own it then, even through adverse possession. Maybe not, but I don't think there's anything they can do with it. It's such a small strip. So I think we're good. Are they going to start parking like a tar truck back there? County land. What about Hippy Rob? Any updates there? Josh? Hippie Rob will forever live forever in the ether. Great. Claire. Dolby I'd say Dalbi, too? Normally, if you could revisit an episode and do it differentlybetter, which one? The sun. Not a bad idea. I would definitely like another crack. Yeah. Every once in a while I can't think of them. We've done, like, 800 plus episodes. Every once in a while, I will leave here and I say, every time I feel that way, I'll be like, that one just wasn't as good as it could have been. And it's always something that's really important. Like the topic is really important to me, so I'll overthink it. Yeah. And it always pans out fine, but I can't think of any that I would just like to go back and do over again. Yeah. My thought on you just kind of even if I'm a little disappointed, it is what it is. Yeah. That's a philosophy, I guess it is. It's a boring philosophy. Dan Floyd are we ever going to get a how Jerry Works episode? No, Jerry doesn't want people to know how she works. She operates in stealth and secret the CIA and she may or may not exist. Larry Tiffany says, what evidence will we see if the flood epic of Noah's ark were indeed true? Well, Larry, we've got something for you, buddy. It's a whole episode on Noah's ark in the flood. That's a pretty good one, if I remember correctly. I have no recollection. That's a good one. Okay, how about one more each? Luke Viscering, have you ever been told the topic is off limits? No, we have not. We are very lucky that we are free to program our own content and all the various bosses and company owners we've had over the years. We've always steered clear of that, which we're very thankful for. Yeah, we self regulate. One more. Josh Robinson asks Josh and Chuck, why do you hate the 90s? Why do you hate my childhood? Yes. I think the 90s were like, okay. I just don't think that they were. I don't think they produced that much great stuff. Everything just had this kind of superficial myth to it. It felt like, why I love the my twenty s in my college that's beloved very much to me, and things were great in the lot of ways. Are you nostalgizing right now? No, I thought we had a band on there. No, I love the 90s. Great music, great culture. See, I think the music thing is where I have the issue. I wouldn't say it was great, great music. There was some good music, I don't dispute that. But I think there's a lot of really bad music that's every generation not necessarily. I knew you were going to say that and I was prepared to respond. And it is as follows look at the lot of bad music. A lot of great music, but there was a lot more good listenable music. Like, think of all the one hit wonders in the were a lot of singles that were pretty good and listenable even at the time, not just in retrospect in the lot of stuff on the radio was awful. Yeah, like Nirvana and stuff like that. No, I mean, again, there was some good stuff, too. There are plenty of good bands, but for the most part it felt like there was just a lot of really bad stuff, too. I'll go back to the Spin doctors again, I think that is the emblem of the 90s, spin doctors. They were huge for a little while and then I think that also carried into the early 2000s with a lot of the terribleness too. Interesting. And I know the 80s were super vapid, very shallow, but almost to a cartoonish degree. The 90s were unaware of its superficiality. It felt like it was trying really hard to not be superficial, but it was failing at it. I think. I reject the notion that a lot of one hit wonders equals good. Not good. Better. I got three words for you. Walking on sunshine. That was Katrina and the waves. What was wrong with that? Well, maybe we just have different dates. Maybe so. All right, let's end this now. And don't it feel good? Yeah. Yes, it does. Chuck. So that was Facebook questions part one. Part one. I was never do that again. If you want to get in touch with us, you can join us on facebook. Comstepynow. We're also on Twitter at syskpodcast. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@housetopworks.com. And, as always, join us at our home on the Web stuffyouknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetopworks.com." | ||
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2008/1219093435157sysk-blood-pressure.mp3 | How Blood Pressure Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-blood-pressure-works | High blood pressure -- or hypertension -- is elevated pressure of the blood in the arteries. Hypertension results from two major factors. Check out our HowStuffWorks article to learn more about the causes of and treatment for hypertension. | High blood pressure -- or hypertension -- is elevated pressure of the blood in the arteries. Hypertension results from two major factors. Check out our HowStuffWorks article to learn more about the causes of and treatment for hypertension. | Thu, 21 Aug 2008 12:00:54 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2008, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=21, tm_hour=12, tm_min=0, tm_sec=54, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=234, tm_isdst=0) | 13464365 | 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 housetopworkscom. Stuff you should know is brought to you by Visa. We all have things we like to think about. Online fraud shouldn't be one of them because with every purchase, visa prevents, detects and resolve online fraud. Safe, secure Visa. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, a staff writer here at House. Upworkscom with me, as always, is Charles W. Bryant. Chuck, what's going on? It's good to be here, Josh, as always. Yeah, I'm feeling the same way, Chuck. I'm feeling pretty good. So you guys might not know this, but Chuck always kind of keeps me abreast of current events, situations going on in the world. What do you have for me today, Chuck? Today, Josh, I have the cause of death results for legendary soul singer Isaac Hayes. Yes. The man who scored Shaft died recently. Died, Jim. Yes, he did. He died, apparently while jogging on his treadmill, which is very sad. Yes, of course. And it looks like the cause of death is stroke because of high blood pressure. You know, that's funny that you bring that up, because I've been wanting to talk about high blood pressure, also known as hypertension, for a while lately. I'm feeling like this is a good opportunity to do it. Right? Yeah, let's do it. How stuff works. Stuff you should know, it's not always just fun and games. Sometimes we want to help people out with a little health advice. Agreed. So let's do that. Right? Let's do it. Well, Chuck, this doesn't in any way, shape or form qualify me as any kind of medical professional, but I spent a trimester in EMT school. Did you know that about it? Really? Yeah. Seriously, I had no idea. I did, and I was terrible at it. For the final exam, for the Trimester, the instructor brought in some of his former students who are now EMTs, and they acted like they were suffering from some sort of terrible medical condition, and we had to figure it out based on the symptoms. Right. Well, I am a terrible diagnostician. I landed a victim. I just made air quotes who was choking, and I treated her like a burn victim. I laid her down, and I think I started doing CPR or something on her, and I knew that I had completely missed the mark when she looked over at the instructor with this what the heck should I do now? Expression, and he's just like, Keep going, keep going. So she grabbed her throat and you thought that she had burned her neck? Pretty much, yeah. I failed miserably, but there were a couple of things I learned. One of them was how important it is to take care of the old ticker. We're getting to be about that age. Chuck, I hate to break it to you. I just reached 32. I'm very depressed about that. But we'll put five onto that, my friend, you'll know? So you're pushing 40 now. Pushing, yeah. And neither one of us are in prime physical condition, right. I think it's a fair assessment. Yeah. I'm no triathlete. No. And I love bacon. I love it. I love it so much, I can't even begin to tell you. Right. But one of the problems with bacon is that fat that we eat and digest gets carried through the bloodstream, and it doesn't always break down like it should. No. It starts to form plaque within blood vessels, which actually can lead to hypertension. And do you want to know how? Well, first of all, I think we should just tell people what blood pressure is, period, because people hear the blood pressure and they don't understand what that is. It's really simple. Blood pressure, actually, is all it is the measurement of the force of the blood going through your arteries against the artery walls. Yeah. Your heart actually creates it generates an electrical impulse. The electrical impulse travels across the heart and is picked up by the atrium, which contracts right, right. The blood is forced out of the heart and into the blood vessels. So there you've got your systolic pressure, which is the first number on a blood pressure reading. Right, right. It's something over something. And that's the first one, the one on top. And the optimal for systolic pressure, I think, is like 120 for the average healthy adult. Yeah. 120 or under is what you're looking for right now to measure this kind of thing. Luckily, we don't need trepidation in or any kind of rectal exam. You can just slap a blood pressure cuff on your arm. Right. And thanks to our good friend Mercury, we can measure the pressure exerted on any given blood vessel as the blood pumps through it. Right. And I personally love those things. When you get your blood pressure checked, ever since I was a kid, I just thought when it constricts around your arm and tightens up and you can feel your heart beating in your arm, I just thought it was really neat. And chances are if you go to a grocery store, a drugstore, you might find me sitting at one of their little machines. It's a great way to pass the time. Yeah. But actually, I did some research. It's not always the most accurate read. So people need to know this when they get their blood pressure checked by a machine at your local Kroger. It may have been accurate when they first installed it, but it needs to be maintained and recalibrated over the years. So if it's not, it may be off. You might get a good idea that you should look into it further, but you shouldn't make any medical decisions based on what you get when you're picking out your hot dog buns and your right, we hear how stuff works. Strongly advise you to consult a physician for just about anything, including blood pressure readings. But yes, at the very least, it's kind of a joy to have your arm squeezed by a robot. You never know if the thing is going to go berserk and just snap your arm right off. I think that is thrilled. Yeah. That's part of the fear is that it will take on a mind of its own and severe my arm on it. Right. I think that's everybody's fear. So what about diastolic? Well, that's a stolen that's the bottom number. Right. And I think for a healthy adult, 80 is a good reading. So the good. Blood pressure reading, a very healthy blood pressure reading is 120 over 80. That bottom number represents what the normal relaxing or relaxed pressure on a vessel is when the heart is at rest, when the blood is not being forced through, it's just the hearts at rest, blood vessels just sitting there like, oh, I'm waiting for the next pump. Right. So 80 is good. The thing is, those numbers can change just a little bit and make some really it can be really bad with just a couple of numbers being off. Right. Well, tell me more. Well, I will tell you more chuck, let me tell you about the third kind of pressure reading. It's called pulse pressure. Right. It's not necessarily widely accepted, although it's really gaining traction. So pulse pressure is just the difference between the systolic and diastolic pressure readings, right? Right. So if 120 over 80 is optimal health for blood pressure reading. Then 40 would be the optimal pulse pressure. It's the difference 120 -80 got you if it's high or if the difference is high, you've got problems. It can mean that your blood vessels are hardened, that they have lost elasticity. There's all sorts of problems with it. It can also mean that your heart is getting a little too buff. Hypertrophy. Right. Buff in this case is not good. No, it's good for the bicep, not good for the heart, because an overly buff heart can fail a lot more easily overworked muscle. Yeah. So we've got the pulse pressure difference, and I read that every ten millibars of mercury, which is the pressure reading difference, actually increases your chance of stroke by, like, 11%. So it's important to keep an eye on your blood pressure and to keep an eye on whether or not you're hypertensive or pre hypertensive. And again, the best way to find that out is to just go visit your doctor regularly and get some blood pressure readings. Right. Because hypertension, aka. High blood pressure, there's pre hypertension, which you mentioned, which is before it's a real problem, but it's when you can really correct it with your diet and things like that. Right. And then secondary hypertension and hypertension are when things get out of hand and when you're in danger of maybe cardiac arrest or stroke. And then the other thing I want to talk about, which I thought was kind of interesting, was white coat hypertension. Give it to me. This sounds interesting. Yeah. This is when your blood pressure actually elevates when you go to the doctor. Oh, from being nervous? I'm not sure if it's from being nervous or not, but you have a different blood pressure. White coat, obviously, is what the doctor wears at the doctor's office, and you went home. And I guess my easy answer would be don't go to the doctor and you won't get high blood pressure. But that's no good advice. Right. And you should also be wary of any doctor that doesn't wear a white coat. Right, yeah. That's good advice, too. That is interesting. They've also found that pregnant women can often demonstrate higher blood pressure just because of their pregnancy as well. It can be normal before the pregnancy, it can be high during the pregnancy, and then go back to normal afterwards, too. The impression I got was that we didn't have a really good read on exactly why that happens. We just know it does happen. Right, much like the white coat blood pressure. Exactly. And I've got some other stats for you, if you just want me to you know how I feel about stats, Chuck. Don't tease me. Well, they did some studies on percentage of adults 20 years or over that have hypertension or that are taking medication for hypertension, and overall, 30% of men and women are falling into that category. Really? It was more than I thought. Over 20. I would think that would be maybe a stat over 40 or 50. Sure. Women come in right at the 30% mark. Men a little bit less, believe it or not, at 28%. And the stat I thought was interesting is that poor people are at 34%, whereas non poor or 28%. Well, it makes a lot of sense. Poor usually have less access to a healthy diet. Right. Usually less time to eat well or take care of themselves, since they're working cheaper packaged foods and are loaded with sodium and sodium and salt. It's a big contributor to high blood pressure. So that kind of does make sense. Well, Chuck, why don't you tell us some ways that we can avoid hypertension? And if you have hypertension, I mean, what can you do? Well, kind of like with everything else the doctor tells you eat healthy, lose weight, lay off the salt, limit alcohol, and quit smoking. Yeah, and I looked into smoking. It turns out that smoking, I thought it would stimulate the heart and would wear it out faster. Turns out that doesn't happen. Smoking actually goes in and injures your blood vessels. That's how smoking can cause heart disease and hypertension, which I found interesting. But, yeah, you want to stay away from the cigarettes, the cigars. Any kind of smoking is going to be bad for your heart. Right. And as far as your diet goes, they have something they recommend called the Dash Diet. Dash stands for Dietary Approaches to Stopping Hypertension. And what you want to eat is whole grains, poultry, fish, nuts. You want to limit fats and red meat, not so much bacon, not as much bacon, steak, stuff like that. I'm doomed. Yeah, it's a nice treat, but that shouldn't be your regular. Agreed. Chuck, so what happens if you do have hypertension? I mean, obviously there's a lot of medications out there in the market for people who are hypertensive, right? Yeah, there's a lot of medications, but a lot of these have side effects, too. So it depends on how high your blood pressure is as to whether or not a doctor thinks it's worth it to get on these meds and potentially suffer some side effects. So it's a few points here and there. They'll probably recommend that you take care of it through diet and exercise. Sure. If you have a real problem, there's all kinds of antihypertensive drugs, diuretics, sympathetic inhibitors, calcium channel inhibitors, Ace inhibitors, and they all do a good job. But side effects like sedation, nightmares, depression, vertigo, stuff like that. Side effects? Yeah, those are my favorite side effects. Death. Yeah. I love it when they say that. That's a good one, as the pharmaceuticals. Well, you mentioned sympathetic inhibitors. Is that would have to do with the sympathetic nervous system, right? Yeah. That would control your fight or flight response, correct? Right. Which is something that we like to talk about, fight or flight response. Well, if you do have hypertension and you are being treated for it, take hope. I read somewhere that 64% of people who suffer from hypertension recover from it. They gain control of their blood pressure. Goodness. Go see your doctor. Eat well, quit smoking, watch the booze. All that. And if you want to learn a lot more about hypertension, read Hypertension in depth on how stuff works.com and stick around to find out how chuck and I know that the world doesn't have ends right after this. Stuff you should know is brought to you by Visa. We all have things to think about, like, say, what's the best site to buy a new leather jacket? Or whether to buy the three or six megapixel camera? But thankfully, we don't need to think about online fraud, because for every purchase you make, visa keeps an eye out for fraud with real time fraud monitoring and by making sure you're not liable for any unauthorized purchases. How's that for peace of mind? Safe, secure Visa. So, Chuck, you want to tell everybody how we're privy to the information that the world's about to end? Well, Josh, it's not because we're smarter than everyone else, because that's not true. It's because we read the article our Frogs on the Brink of Extinction. That's true. Frogs are an indicator species, and when they start disappearing, everybody else at the top of the food chains in big, big trouble. So this is something you might want to do a little research on. Go type in our Frogs on the brink of Extinction in the search bar of Housetepworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseworks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast@houseworks.com brought to you by The Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You know you're the best pet mom. When you growl back during playtime, give epic belly rubs and feed them halo holistics made with responsibly sourced ingredients, plus probiotics. For digestive health. Find us at chewy amazonandhalopets.com." | |
2a635cc0-3b0f-11eb-a672-7f2934160e89 | Ants! Part 2! | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/ants-part-2 | The exciting conclusion of Ants Part 2! | The exciting conclusion of Ants Part 2! | Thu, 06 Jan 2022 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=6, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=6, tm_isdst=0) | 40846798 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody, chuck here real quick with some bad news and sad news. Sketchfest this year in San Francisco, which is where we were going to have our first live show in two years here in a couple of weeks has been postponed. Believe there are looking to postpone to buy a whole year and kind of rebook the whole festival, ideally. But with what's going on around the country with omakaron, they didn't feel like they could press forward. And as bummed as we are, we think it's the right move as well. So if you have tickets, just stay tuned for an announcement. I think you will either probably be able to well, I'm not exactly sure what's going to happen with them. Maybe a refund, maybe if you hold onto them, they're good for next year because we're probably going to book in the same theater. But list it up for announcements soon. And again, all apologies. We're super sad about it. We're really looking forward to getting back out there again. But until further notice, five shows are still on hold. All right, now, here we go with the show. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chalk, and this is Stuff You Should Know, part two about ants, which is just knocking our socks up. We released this one on the first one on Tuesday. Chuck, my socks are still off and it's Thursday. That's right. And if you listen to part one, we tried to throw in some amazing anthrax and I think we came through there, but most of that was a little bit of the nuts and bolts. I think part two has got a little bit more wow factor, because we talk a lot more even about the social structure of these amazing insects. Yeah. So answer, great example of a social insect like bees, some wasps, but I think there's plenty of solitary wasps, too. But let's say, like bees, they really kind of resemble bees in that sense. Yeah, totally. And despite how many ants there are and how many bees there are, apparently social insects only make up something like 2% of all insect species. The rest are solitary or antisocial or drifters, that kind of thing. So at the heart of any social insect society is the queen. And usually, Chuck, the whole thing is so hierarchical. There's just like, one queen. Yeah, this is the one part that tripped me up a little bit. As far as that being a benefit for their survival, I would think, like, hey, more queens, more eggs. There should be not all queens, because obviously I get that queens need a lot of special care, I guess let's talk about it. Because queens get fed. One reason that makes them the queen is that they're the only sexually reproductive female and that's the only thing she does is mate and lay tons and tons of eggs. An army ant queen can lay up to 300,000 eggs in a few days and they're bigger. They basically sit around, they mate, they lay eggs and they get fed a really protein rich diet. So they grow up to like three, four times the size of all the other ants. Yeah. And so with the queen, like you said, one of the big differences, or the difference is that they're bigger than other female ants, which are worker ants. Genetically they're basically the same. It's just that they're much, much bigger. Which means somehow I think also from that protein rich diet they have ovaries that function as well so they're able to reproduce. But that's basically the only two differences. And that just goes to show you that any worker egg can be raised into a queen. Right, and we'll see cases where that might happen. Another difference is they live a lot longer. The queen ants of the black garden ant can live up to 30 years, apparently. It's amazing. Female workers live about a year. And I guess we can talk a little bit about the males, the poor male aunt, they only live a week. They are hatched from unfortunately, they don't even bother to fertilize eggs for the males. They hatch from unfertilised eggs, whereas all females hatch from fertilized eggs. And the males, they do their thing, they're there to impregnate the queen and then they die. Sex slaves is what they are. Yes. And Dave points out dave Russ helped us with this. He said basically almost any ant that you see is probably a female ant. Yeah. Not just because the workers are responsible for doing everything, but like you said, the lifespan of male land is so short the chances of you seeing one are pretty slim. Although as we'll see, there are some times where they're on such full spectacular display that you actually may have seen mail ants before. Sure, yeah, we'll get to that weirdness in a minute. But the females are the workers. That it's. Like, where was Wonder Woman from? Amazonia. Amazonia. It's kind of like the society there. It's all these ladies making things happen as a big group, all in service to this queen. And the workers do everything. They feed and care for the young, they feed and care for the queen, they go out and get the food. They maintain that nest in the colony which we'll talk about. It's just remarkable what they do. They're the police force, they're the army, they're the custodians. They do everything. Yeah. So everything that has nothing to do with mating and laying eggs, that's the workers doing all that stuff. It's pretty cool. And depending on the species, sometimes the workers are more specialized than in other species. Sometimes they'll be like major workers who are much larger than the minor workers. So they'll be the ones that go out and like forage and maybe defend the nest. While the minor workers, the smaller ones are left behind to tend to the larvae and the pupae and basically raise the next generation. So there can be like specialization of what you do as an ant, depending on your size or how you are raised. That's right. And so it's a very strict cast system, basically. There's no, like, working your way up the ladder. It seems like you kind of have your job. You're happy to do it and very happy. Emotional little insects, right? Yeah. They really wear their hearts on their sleeves. You can tell if an is having a bad day, but the good thing about it is you can cheer them up pretty easily to just hold your finger out, let them climb up on your finger. They find it so delightful. And if you have a little honeydew in your pocket, you can really turn their day around. Now, we mentioned the males just basically impregnate the queen, then die. But I didn't really quite get this part about the genetics of the chromosomal. Genetics. So basically a male is just an egg that has a genome from his mother, from the queen. Usually the queen, a female, is created. So that would mean that all unfertilised eggs are males. And then the queen comes along and fertilizes some select ones. And I think it's actually dependent on what the workers point out. I think the workers actually decide how many new female workers are needed compared to how many males are needed. And then the queen comes along and fertilizes some proportion of those unfertilized male eggs, and then those become workers, female workers. Okay. And then in some cases, when there's not a queen, say a queen died or something like that, a colony would find itself up the creek. But apparently there's plenty of ant species where the workers can actually lay unfertilized male eggs to raise a generation of males that can mate with a queen that the workers produce as well. So the workers can keep a colony from dying off if the queen dies. Oh, wow. Yeah. After I saw that some of these queens can live 30 years, I just became paranoid about accidentally killing a queen. But I think that probably doesn't happen because they're never out there to be stepped on. Right. No. You pretty much won't have to invade a nest like you're an exterminator if you're killing the queen. Oh, man. I know, but that's what they do. I mean, that's what they're trying to go after the queen. Sure. Yeah. We have a mole problem in my yard, and I'm just like, I guess we have a mole problem because I'm certainly not going to let somebody come along and drop madis into these mold holes and blow them up. But luckily, I found a service that uses something called Mole Scram, and it's just kind of like an irritant, but it doesn't actually hurt them in any way. They just don't want to be around it. So I'm going to give that one a try because they will mess up your lawn really quickly. I thought you were going to say a guy comes by with a flute I wish leads them down to your neighbor's house. I just did. Our pie pipe episode is a select, so I heard it recently and it's really good, but the first 20 minutes is really odd. It's like, oddly, we're challenging one another and it's just really weird. And then I don't know, we're just like showing off to one another. You'll just have to listen to it. It's pretty interesting, but it really comes out on top. It's a good episode. Interesting. That's not the stuff you should know, way. I know. That's what I'm saying. It's weird. It's a weird start to an episode, but it's usually shrinking the face of competition. That's right. We don't challenge each other. You can't. Very strange. All right, I guess we need to get to the nest here. This is kind of some of the most remarkable stuff that you're ever going to see. I saw this one. Do yourself a favor. Go to YouTube. And I can't remember what the search term was, but like, amazing ant colony or something like that. And it's like a three minute video where they found they wanted to research what these things look like below ground. And so they pumped concrete into the hole. I don't know where this was. It took ten tons of concrete now to fill this thing, and then they let it sit for a month. And then they excavated or whatever, like you would a fossil and dig around it. And they dug out what ended up being it looked like about the size of a little league baseball enfield wow. 26ft deep, 175ft across. And it was one of the most unbelievable things I've ever seen. It looked like, literally like an architect had designed it. They were talking about the efficiencies of every tube. It was the shortest route to get to the next thing. It looked like it had been purposefully designed that way. And it's just the DNA of these ants that know how to do this stuff. So, yeah, you mentioned something important, that the tunnels and the connections they make between all these chambers, they do tend to be like the shortest route between them. And ants also apparently will burrow on these really kind of steep angles. But they're at the angle of repose, which is the steepest angle that something like a pile of dirt or a pile of sand can maintain without collapsing. And somehow ants just know, like, this is the angle I need to be digging at. Yeah, I saw that one thing you sent, and I guess we can talk about the force chains here. It's pretty interesting. But when they were studying these ants, they thought maybe they're doing like a game of jinga when they're making these tunnels where they feel a little bit and kind of touch the block, which in this case are little individual grains of sand or dirt or whatever to see if it would weaken the structure. And I think after the end of this experiment, they were like, no, they're not doing that. They are just coded to do this. Yeah. And they were like, we have no idea how ants know what little grains of sand or dirt to pull out and what ones they shouldn't because they're load bearing grains, but they just do, and they're really successful at it. And what they somehow are aware of is that there are things called what you said, force chains, where if you follow like a force chain of soil or dirt underground, like in a cross section of ground, those are the things that are holding the soil in place. And not all of the pieces or grains of dirt or sand are responsible for holding the soil in place. So you could conceivably move one and leave another in place, and that column of sand or dirt above is going to stay in act. Somehow ants know what grains are load bearing and what grains aren't. And so when they're doing this, they're actually removing the sands that aren't part of the force chain. And when they do, Chuck, it actually reinforces the structure of the force chain that diverts it to the outside of the tunnel they're digging, which just makes it that much stronger again, they're not just kind of testing it like a game of jenga. That would make sense. And I see why they thought that might be what's happening, is like, they push a little bit to see if anything starts to give again. It's just like 130,000,000 years of practice. Yeah. And because they're so good at creating these burrows and tunnels and chambers that not only maintain but also actually reinforce the forest chains underground colony, a subtraining ant colony might hold up for decades once they dig it out. I felt terrible when I saw this thing being pumped full of concrete. Didn't know if it was vacant or there was a pretty decent pile of dirt on top. But I know you made the point with that stuff you sent over that it's sort of like the tip of the iceberg. If you see a little ant hill in your neighborhood here in the United States, that's twelve inches across and like six or eight inches high, there's a lot more going on under the surface. Yeah. I mean, tens of feet underground, like you said, the size of a Little League field laid out on its side, tipped up on its end and buried underground. That's enormous. Yeah. I mean, this thing was huge. It was really, really something. Okay, Chuck, we're starting to get a little worked up. I think we need to mail it out again. You want to take a break? Yeah, let's do it. Okay, we'll be right back, everybody. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office? And you could be using Stamps.com. Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need right from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. All right, so we wounded you with a little bit on these ant colonies in the nest and what's going on underground. I mentioned at the beginning of episode one these army ants who don't root down in a specific place. They're one of the only nomadic species, and they go miles and miles, which is a long, long way for a little tiny aunt, up to a million at a time. And to go to these places, they need to eat a lot of food. And they basically make what are temporary encampments out of themselves, kind of like fire ants make a raft out of themselves. These guys make a bivouac out of themselves? Yeah, they make a big I mean, look this up again with these pictures. It looks like a big ant ball, but I guess it's hollow on the inside, right? Yeah. And then underneath you've got a bunch of different kinds of worker ants raising and directing where to fertilize and feeding and creating a new generation of worker ants. And then after that generation is raised to adults, they break down their bivouac and decamp and just keep moving. Unbelievable. Truly remarkable, really. They also can form super colonies. I know that there is one kind of ant, it's an Argentinian ant that they don't do this in Argentina, but in Europe, there is one super colony that goes up the coast from Italy to Spain for 3700 miles. That is all technically one big panda of ants. Right. They just get together with their friends and they're like, hey, I know these people, like, behind me by 10ft, you want to meet them. And then that linked up for 3700 miles yes. From Italy to Spain to northwest Spain. It's just astounding. And you said something really important. You said that this Argentinian ant doesn't do that back in Argentina. And they looked into why. And apparently the reason why is because back in Argentina, they are very genetically diverse. So that neighbor 10ft away is basically an enemy because all of these ants are trying to preserve their queen's line as best they can. So another nest is just a totally different genetic line. So it's an enemy, but when they find land somewhere new, like, say, Italy or Spain or whatever, that's a much less genetically diverse group. So as it reproduces, they form nearby colonies that are pretty similar to the original colony or the last colony. And so you have these massive super colonies that are super cooperative because there are basically just extensions of the queen's genetic line. Wow. Yeah. And apparently, ants also get from places like Argentina to Italy and have spread throughout the world, largely thanks to humans who use soil and sand as ship ballast. And then when you get to the next place, you unload the ballast and there's all those ants you dug up from the last place you just set sail from. Wow. I know. Gotten around. That's how they think that the red and ported fire ant came here. All right, so that's pretty good. Here's another remarkable thing about ants. Okay. Ants don't fly. Generally, everyone knows that ants don't have wings. But if a colony is super successful and there are too many ants and they're outgrowing their own living conditions, they will just grow wings and fly up in the air, males and females and have a big mid air g. That's what it is. Yeah, for sure. They grow wings and they say, all right, we're going to have wings. Now, everyone, I know we don't normally, but we're getting too big, so we're all going to grow wings and let's go up and fly in the air and have sex. So when the colony gets too big, there's some sort of signal that the workers pick up on. They're like, oh, things are getting a little crowded here. I'm not sure what it is. Nobody's sure what it is at the moment, but there's some signal they pick up on, and so they start raising a generation of queens, of virgin queens called princesses. And those princesses fly off on this. Usually it's not really actually a day, but in some places, like the UK, they celebrate it as flying ant day. Kind of like how, you know, when cicadas come up after 17 years here in the States, I get the impression it's kind of like that. Although it happens every year. Right. And if it's humid out, if it's hot out and it rained the night before, there's a good chance you're going to see swarms of flying ants having air sex, like you were saying. But what? Those are different virgin queens, and they're going as far away from their nest as possible because that increases the likelihood that they're going to find some of the generations of winged male drones that were raised in other nests, and they're going to have sex, and then they're going to go off and found their own nests after that. Now that they've been now that they've gotten some sperm. That's right. And they can store the sperm for quite a long time. In some cases, the queen leafcutter ant can store viable sperm for up to 20 years and just eat it out one little bit at a time. Not going to use the word they've used, and just keep fertilizing generation after generation of eggs. And I don't think we said the name of this air sacs. It's called nuptial flights. Yeah. Remember in the firefly episode, they had like, nuptial gifts. I was like, we've talked about that somewhere. I looked it up. It was definitely fireflies. It's pretty amazing. And then after that, the males, as always, they die off. And then hopefully you got a bunch of new colonies. Yeah. So this is like the one time the queen is off on her own for about two or three weeks. She's busy founding an entirely new colony. There's nobody there to feed her. She's just laying a bunch of eggs and she's choosing which to fertilize, which not she's probably fertilizing most of them because she needs a lot of workers right then and not very many male drones to have sex with. So she's basically just laying and fertilizing worker eggs, hatches them herself, and then once she successfully has a generation or two of workers under her belt, now her colony has got a pretty good chance of becoming stable because the workers can start to take over and she can do what she does, which is lay hundreds of thousands or hundreds of thousands of eggs every day. That's right. So if you ever see ants flying around, you know what's going on. Yeah. And don't confuse them with termites. Apparently they do bear some similarities, but if you look closely, you can tell the difference. Like, just the color alone is a dead giveaway. Yeah. I think termites are usually kind of whiteish. Yeah. Station in your house, it's probably termites. Yeah. Because the answer flying around outside. They don't want to be inside right then. Not for their nuptial flight. That's right. So that must be, like a pretty lonely and scary two or three weeks for that new queen. I would say so. I didn't get a good sense of what the sort of survival rate for that was. I didn't either. I'll bet it's all over the place because, again, there's like 10,000 to 14,000 species of ants. Yeah. But it seems like a big deal when it happens, when they finally reach their carrying capacity or whatever, and they're like, all right, we got to do this thing. It seems like it's a big deal to kind of split up that colony. One thing I didn't see is if you could make a beard of winged ants, like you could have swarm of bees, because that would be really impressive. So that just makes me itchy just thinking about it. So maybe we should talk a little bit about the leaf cutter ant. If you see videos of the leaf cutter, if you've seen any documentary on ants, they probably talked a lot about the leaf cutter because those are the ones that literally cut the leaf with those mandibles. And you see them, looks like they got a carpet knife and how cleanly they cut through that Christmas paper. It's really neat leaf. And then one bit of leaf at a time, they're marching that stuff out of there. Yeah. And I mean, these leaves are enormous compared to the body weight. But again, remember, ants are super strong. And leaf cutter ants in particular can be very strong. We talked about how sometimes workers are divided up into different specialties. Leafcutters are one of those where they have majors. They're the biggest and the strongest of all of them. So they carry enormous leaves compared to their body. And they actually are basically like cutting down paths like machetes to clear a path for the smaller ones, the medie, and then the minimums. That's right, the medieval do carry a lot of the leafs, but the little minimum, those little guys are just the farmers, and they tend to dysfungus. And this is pretty cool enough that they take these leaves, they cut them up, and they transport them over these distances, considering how heavy they are. But the really remarkable thing about the leafcutter is that they are just as the other ants kind of raise the cattle of these little aphids, these are actual farmers of a fungus, and they have the symbiotic relationship with this fungus that they farm underground. So cool. Yeah. So when they cut these leaves, they're fertilizing the fungus with these leaves to let them decompose and let the fungus basically eat the leaves. The adults actually drink the SAP from the leaves because it's sweet, but they don't actually leave the leaves. They leave the leaves for the fungus. And the reason that they grow fungus and like, there's really no better word to describe what they do than farm. They farm the fungus. They tend to it, they heal it when it's sick. They know how to harvest it. They know how to get it to grow just right. The reason that they farm this fungus is because it produces a food that the ants harvest to feed their young, to raise their young on symbiotic is right, because they definitely want this fungus to be as healthy as possible. So the fungus really thrives in the presence of these ants. And the fungus, in turn, provides the ants with food for their young, but also, in some cases, chuck antibiotics like antimicrobials that the fungus produces. The ants will coat them, their bodies with, and it will prevent them from being infected as well. Yeah. And not only that if they need to split off, they don't, like, grow wings and fly up and have arab nuttials or whatever, they just leave. But just like you would carry a sourdough mother to your new bakery, they actually carry a big chunk of that fungus over to start their new crop in their new home. That's so cool. It's amazing. It really is. Especially if you imagine the fungus having a face and talking and also being really grateful for the help. I think in the movie they did in the animated film they did, I think of it as kind of like looking like have you ever seen the movie Basket Case? Have I seen what was that? It was a terrible, terrible b horror movie from the late seventy s. Yeah, like the guy carried his brother around in a basket. I don't think I saw that, but I think I remember that when I worked at Vision Video in college. So bad. It's really bad. But it looks kind of like a little piece of fungus that you would carry to a new ant colony. This is what kept flashing through my head. I wish it would get out of my head, but it won't. I need to look at that poster or that movie box because it's in my brain somewhere. I just can't call it up. Okay, let's watch that movie together tonight. All right, let's do it. I'll bring the truffle butter. Oh, man, you're making me hungry. First you wanted a Twinkie, now you want some popcorn with truffle butter. All right. What I really want to do is take a break, and then we will finish up all about ants, at least for now, unless we decide to come back to this well again. And we'll talk about how they communicate via these pheromones right after this. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office when you could be using Stamps.com? Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses. Because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need right from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial, plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. Okay, Chuck, so. I think we said at the top of the first episode that pheromones are basically it. They may be the thing that ants use to carry out just about all of their individual behavior, which, collectively, if you put millions of ants together doing the same thing, knowing what they're supposed to do, much more complex behaviors emerge. But it seems to largely come down to these pheromones, which are kind of like sense that the ants pick up kind of like noses using their antenna instead. It's kind of like a language almost, too, because they're communicating. We should also say that they can, like, drum on their abdomen to raise an alarm. They can make different sounds like crickets. They can rub different parts of their body. They can rub their legs against their exoskeleton. It's called stridulation. They can vibrate their mandibles. So they do sort of speak in some ways and hear in some ways. But it seems almost secondary to what's going on with this pheromone thing. Yeah, because there's just so many different pheromones, and they produce pheromones from a special scent gland. I don't know how they differentiate pheromones when they're producing them, but it seems like they have different pheromones for different things that they're trying to signal, like there's an alarm signal. They use pheromones to recruit some ants to go do something. Like if one's maybe tending to the nest and another one needs help tunneling, it will create some pheromone signal and recruit the other ant to come help it. They mark territory with it. They will use it to discourage rivals. Like if somebody's trying to lay eggs or cannibalize eggs, they can use pheromones for that kind of stuff. Basically, almost all of their communication seems to be pheromones. And that communication is really varied and wide. Yeah. So a great example, Davey's, is if there's an intruder, if, like, a spider comes upon an ant nest, the ants that see the spider come in that are, I guess, these soldier ants standing guard near the opening, they will start to admit the alarm pheromone, I guess, along with beating on their abdomens for this alarm vibration. And then it becomes sort of like a game of telephone. The next closest ants hear this stuff. Some of them might, depending on what their job is, rush up to help if they're, like, soldier ants or guard ants that will help guard the nest. Others run back, and they admit pheromones to tell everyone else, and then they all start emitting pheromones. And it's essentially like a volume knob going up until everyone knows what's happening or until the emergency is over or both. Yeah. And the emergency is signaled as over because the pheromones start to trail off. And one of the things about pheromones that we understand is that they're volatile organic compounds, which means they dissipate fairly quickly, because, again, they're volatile at room temperature in the air. So as long as you don't have a bunch of ants all pumping out this warning pheromone. At the same time, the volume is going to start to dissipate and turn down, and eventually the emergency subsides. And so the ants respond to pheromones, so their response to the pheromone is going to subside as well, and everything will go back to normal because the emergency is over. Right. And this happens to me. I don't have an ant problem here, but when we go to the lake, sometimes we have a problem there because it's out in the middle of the woods, of course, but I will clean up really good, I think, at the end of the night. And if I leave a crumb of a Twinkie out there, I'll come back the next morning just infested with these long lines of ants. And I'm always like, how do they know it's there? How do they tell everyone else it's there? And now I know it's pheromones. It's the same thing as if the spider invades. Some ant sees his twinkie crumb, and amidst the pheromone, it's like, hey, everybody, there's some Twinkie over here. Come eat. And it eats a little bit and emits a pheromone. And what's kind of remarkable is the pheromones? It's not just a pheromone. Like, they can differ what the pheromone is and the intensity of it, to tell everyone, like, what kind of food it is or how much food there is and how many of you should come and try to eat this crumb. Yeah. There's no way that the ants at your lake house haven't developed a special pheromone for Twinkies if you're leaving them out that much. No, but just like with the emergency, those other descriptions, not just foods here, but this kind of food or this much food that's can be described by variations in the intensity. So if there's a lot of food, the ants are really going to exclaim that there's a bunch of food with pheromones, it's going to attract more ants and they're going to exclaim. And just like with that emergency alarm, the volume is going to be turned up. And then because it's a volatile organic compound, as the food depletes, the ants that are coming along and grabbing the food are going to leave a more and more muted exclamation. So that that trail is going to eventually dissipate and no ants going to follow it anymore because there's no food there anymore. Yeah, I mean, it literally takes the place of the ant yelling back, hey, there's a lot of food. And then the last aunt saying, hey, we pretty much ate everything. Party's over. Yeah, they can't do that. So they use the pheromones, right? And they think that pheromones. Again, it's really tough to overstate the importance of them for every kind of amp behavior. I'm not quite sure what field it belongs to, but there's a concept called stigma g, which basically says that it describes a behavior or a trait or an action that's carried out based on some sort of signal that's left there. And so ants really respond to things like if a litter mate or a nest made is doing something, another ant is much more likely to do that same thing. And they think it's because a signal is left. Every time an ant does something, it leaves a signal, whether it's not doing it on purpose, it's not thinking about this. It's just part of this set of codes that ants follow, which if you run into this, if you are on a ball and there's water and you run into the edge of that ball, you form raft. Like, it's just this kind of binary set of very simple codes that ants seem to follow. And what code or what set of codes is triggered depends on what pheromone the ant is either laying down for the next ant or is picking up from the last ant. Yeah, I love lamp. Exactly. They also can communicate via touch. If you've ever gone to your kitchen counter like I have, and you've seen ants walking in a trail, you've probably seen a little two way street happening where a bunch of ants are going in one direction and a bunch of ants right next to them are going in the other direction. And if you look really, really close, if you have like a magnifying glass, maybe you might not get the sunshine. Oh, no, don't ever do that. Yeah, just get down there with your eyeballs then. Okay. They might be touching each other, antenna might be touching. They may be stroking each other's exoskeleton. And scientists basically think that these are also communicative signals to one another again saying, hey, there's some great twinkie over there. Sometimes someone might even have a little bit of a twinkie he'll give to someone midway through the line and say, hey, buddy, this is what's waiting down there. Pass it down. And that game of telephone happens again. Yeah, mouth to mouth food transfer. Nice. But I guess it's better than mouth to anus food transfer like you were talking about earlier. It depends on what you're into. I saw another explanation for why ants do that, because if you look closely, pretty much every ant does that to every ant that they come across going in the opposite direction. And one theory is that they're examining the ant to make sure it's one of their nest mates and not an intruder from another nest joining in the fun, which makes a lot of sense as well. Every time I see ants doing that, I just go in my head, good game. You're right. That's one of my favorite parts of Daising Confused. It's just like the nostalgia there. Like any kid who's ever played Little League knows that completely forced an enthusiastic good game line that you got to walk down. Yes, I remember that line. What else do we have here? Oh, boy. Chuck, we have a little more. We should branch off into another standalone podcast called Ant Rant. All right, let's talk a little bit more about nesting. I think that's kind of all we've got. If you look at how they build their nest, a lot of researchers have been looking at this. Speaking of which, this made me want to buy an ant farm for my daughter for Christmas. But when I looked into them, I read reviews where it seems like about a third of the review said the ants just sat around and waited to die in front of my daughter or my son, and it was traumatic. I don't really agree with keeping anything enclosed. I know the whole thing felt wrong, and so I didn't get it. Good for you, Jack. It was a little selfish in that I didn't want a bad experience to happen. But then I thought, you're also getting ants shipped through the mail. I know they're shipped at a certain temperature so they stay alive. And also saw success stories were like, oh, man, they did great, and they lived their whole lifespan, but it just wasn't worth it at the risk. Right. You should do is order some of those ants through the mail and just release them into your yard. Or just release them onto my daughter while she's asleep. There you go. And then mobile and see what happens. But researchers obviously have been studying ant nest and colonies for a long, long time. And all those tunnels that look like little sponges I mentioned the one on YouTube where they actually filled it with concrete, which is pretty amazing, but they decided to take this stuff and put it into, like, a computer model to see what happened when they came out the other side. And one of the things they learned was they had these very basic rules that kind of governed everything they did, one of which was each ant would pick up at a very steady rate, two grains of dirt or sand per minute and carry it, which that seems like a clue right there. If they're following some sort of time scale, especially if it corresponds to our understanding of time, that seems significant. Yeah, I guess they would do that because that's the most efficient rate of work. Like the most efficient speed of work, I guess, like, without getting overly tired or not getting enough done. You know what I mean? I think that's another example, though, that we watch ants do things and we don't understand exactly why. We just know it works really well. Yeah. What else did they see? They also saw that there was a preference for dropping that grain, that they were tunneling out, excavating by another recently dropped piece of grain, which I think is an example of that stigma g, where there was like, some yeah, they just saw their behavior is triggered by somebody else's behavior. Right. And then the last thing they saw they saw these three basic rules was they would drop them closer to the grains that were already dropped by another ant. And they think that it's like a pheromone marker. Like, hey, I dropped this grain here. Like, this is where we're building this thing. Right? And so they followed these ants movements like they really studied and tracked real ants. And then they created a computer model that simulated ants just following these three rules. And apparently the model created something that looked a heck of a lot like an ant nest that you would see in nature. So much so that there were connections that were developed between chambers. And these researchers were like, we didn't tell it to create connections that just happened on its own. It's a great example of that emergent behavior that comes from the collective actions of a bunch of individuals is doing their own thing. Yeah. If you look at this concrete, when they excavated, they have these big chambers, they have these tubes and then these big rooms, basically. And each of these rooms has a function. They're not just like, oh, let's just make a little space here. They take care of their dead a lot of times, and I don't think they quite bury them, but they tend to their dead. It's remarkable. Yeah, they have ant cemeteries that they dump bodies on. It's pretty cool. Very cool. So there was one last thing I saw. There's a type of ant that basically engages in nursing where these ants raid termite mounds, and the termites sometimes will take a leg or two. And if you're just missing a leg or two, you will be carried back by basically paramedic ants to the nest and then nursed back to health with an antibiotic that the ants produce themselves. Wow. Ant rant. Chuck aunt Ranch, you got anything else? I got nothing else. We think Joey from Tucson. Thanks, Joey. Great idea. Great idea for ants. We had no idea it was going to be a two parter. And this remarkable. Remarkable indeed. And if you want to be like Joey and get in touch with us to let us know a topic you'd like to suggest, who knows? It might even become an incredible two partner. You can reach out to us via email at stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts myheartradio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. 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." | |
What makes a genius? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/what-makes-a-genius | When you hear the word 'genius,' names like Einstein and Mozart probably spring to mind. Defining what makes them geniuses, however, is much more complicated. Josh and Chuck discuss the many theories about genius in this episode. | When you hear the word 'genius,' names like Einstein and Mozart probably spring to mind. Defining what makes them geniuses, however, is much more complicated. Josh and Chuck discuss the many theories about genius in this episode. | Tue, 27 Apr 2010 19:39:29 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=27, tm_hour=19, tm_min=39, tm_sec=29, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=117, tm_isdst=0) | 33936001 | audio/mpeg | "Sharks, the most famous and majestic apex predators on earth. Introducing Shark Week. The podcast. I'm Luke Tipple, the marine biologist and shark expert with over 20 years experience in the field. I'm gonna take you on a dive with to me, you are going to learn a lot about sharks. And you'll also hear exclusive interviews with the stars of Shark Week. To get a behindthescenes look, listen to Shark Week, the podcast on Apple podcast spotify. Or wherever you get your podcast, you know you're the best pet mom. When you growl back during playtime, give epic belly rubs and feed them halo holistics made with responsibly sourced ingredients, plus probiotics. For digestive health. Find us at chewy amazonandhalopets.com. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from Housetuffworks.com. Ahoy and welcome to the Love Boat. I'm Julie, your cruise director, with me, as always, as Isaac, your bartender. How are you doing? I just did the little double gun. The double guns. Looking good. You're a genius. Thank you for coming up with that. Thank you. You're a genius too, Chuck. Thank you. Do you want to know how we can call each other geniuses without cracking up? I'm cracking up on the inside, but sure. Because we have no idea what constitutes a genius, do we? Right. We like to throw the word around. As you were pointing out earlier. Oh, he's a genius. Or he's a socialist or he's a fascist. He's a genius. You should see the bathroom he designed. He's genius. Yeah, it definitely is a word that gets slapped around a lot. But the way that we use the word genius now actually is kind of a throwback to its original meaning. In the GrecoRoman era, the word genius, back when everyone was wrestling. Yeah. Okay. Like you could be a genius at wrestling. Sure. Really? What it described was somebody's natural enthusiasm, inclination towards certain activities, not just your abilities, but how revved up you were. So somebody who was pretty good at bathroom design would have been considered a genius at bathroom design. It's like the word vintage. People always think vintage just means old, but I think vintage specifically means like, characterized by that person's best work, like a tailor, their best five pairs of pants they made. Really? I think so. I just learned that just now. I might be wrong, thanks to you. Are we picking up Jerry laugh? Because we're in a two foot by two foot space right now. This room is not genius. No, it stinks of volatile organic compounds. Well, we should say they actually moved us for one day into an even smaller office, like the Seinfeld. Remember when Castanza, they kept moving him around because they didn't like him, and we're eventually going to end up in a storage closet like you did. Yeah, I think we've arrived there. Yeah, I'm sure it's lovely. It's just not for podcasting. Well, I'm a little light headed. So if this goes oddly, that's why it's the pink. Sure. And the airplane glue. That's airplane glue is genius. It is, yeah. We were talking about genius for some reason, weren't we? Yeah. Because this is about genius. Oh, yeah, okay. Yeah. I was saying the original idea of genius was enthusiasm, throwing yourself into something you were into. Right. And then thanks to a guy named Francis Galton, he was a pretty smart guy himself, but he had a long history of just kind of missing the big picture with his ideas. He came up with eugenics. Sure. He was the first one to start attributing genius to intellect. He kind of narrowed it a little more, and eventually this led to our idea of genius being quantifiable, eg through IQ test or g, which we'll get to. Nice foreshadowing. That's awful. I'll just go ahead and say I don't know how quantifiable it is. Well, it's not. And there's actually two pretty big reasons why quantifying genius is virtually impossible, at least with our current understanding of the mind. And they are. They are. Well, the first one is pretty obvious. Genius is a very subjective thing. Some people think it's like an IQ higher than 140 or 175. I've heard which. That's just a smart quantifier. And I'm clearly no genius. And the other thing is, like you said, it's a big picture thing. And science and medical inquiries, that kind of thing, is all about the detail. So it's really hard to analyze and study. It's like studying in accessory prayer. How do you study that? How do you quantify happiness or prayer or genius? Yeah. Our colleague Tracy V. Wilson, I like how she put it. Yeah, she did a good job just kind of getting rid of the crud that's often associated with genius. And just if you have, like, crazy hair and a big mustache and, you know, math, you're a genius. Get rid of all that. And for the purposes of this podcast, we'll adopt her description. Right, agreed. Which was that a genius is an extraordinarily intelligent person who breaks new ground with discoveries, inventions, or works of art. Right. Because you can't just be a really smart person. You have to do something with it to truly be a genius. That's what makes a genius. It's not just intelligence. It's intelligence with creative energy. Well, the creative part is huge, and we'll get to that. But she goes on to say, and I agree, that they usually will change the way we look at the world, or at least the way people in whatever field they're in, look at their field. They make a difference. They're difference makers. Have you ever heard of a guy named William James Citizen? No. He reportedly had the highest IQ in history. Higher than Ask, Maryland, as a matter of fact, yes. ESC, maryland says hers is 230. She claims the highest ever measured. This guy supposedly was 250. Really? Yeah. Did he do more than a QA at the end of Parade magazine? Sadly, no. Really? Okay, so let me give you a little background on citizens. Okay. He was 18 months old when he started reading the New York Times. Okay. So far so good. All right. At two, he taught himself Latin. Three. He taught himself Greek. Wow. He could speak more than 40 languages by the time he was an adult. Okay. He graduated cum laude at 16 from Harvard and became the youngest professor ever in the history of Rice University. I imagine he was, like, 17 or something. Okay. He was a young guy. Wow. And then within, I think, about a year at Rice, he dropped his position and spent the rest of his life working like menial jobs. He went from job to job just doing normal labor. He's not a genius, though. He would not qualify as a genius by this definition. You have a 250 IQ. You're clearly a prodigy. You're an incredibly brilliant person. Right. But if you don't contribute to humanity, what are you worth? You're like a Buddhist monk who goes and spends your life meditating in a cave. We get so much emails out that curse you. Sorry, but that's the point. In geniuses are incredibly valuable in society. I don't remember what podcast it was in. We were talking about malthus and the idea that the larger the world population, the more incidence of the births of geniuses sure happens. Right. And then the more geniuses you have, the further along society is held by leaps and bounds. Right. Well, if you think Mensa is a quantifier, then there's about 3 million geniuses in the US. But I don't buy that. Right. Because mental standards, they accept people who well, it's not just IQ, but standardized intelligence tests. Right. They accept people who score within the top 2% of those. So if you just extend that with basic math, 2% of the population in the US. Is, like, 6 million people. Right. And then 30 million worldwide. But I don't buy it anyway, because they don't even count the creative element. You know Gina Davis is in Mensa. Yeah. Everyone always says that. Any time you hear about mensa, people go, you know, Gina, I think we had this conversation. You brought up Ronnie Harlan and yeah. The pirate movie they made. Let's play the clip, shall we? No? Okay. We won't. Sherry, just get back to genius. She just spit bologna out of her mouth. She's saying she shouldn't be eating bologna anyway. I did her a favor. You're right. So you want to talk about the brain? Is that where we're going? Let's get to it. If you're going to go in search of genius, with or without Leonard Nemoy, you are going to start looking in the brain. Right? I love that show. It's awesome. So super 70s. So let's go into the brain. Clearly, we're going to find our answers here, right? Maybe. No, but we should talk about it. The cerebral cortex, as we all know, is the largest and outermost part of your brain. And this is where the higher functions, like thought and reasoning, happen, as opposed to lower functions, like just basic survival, that kind of thing. Right. And the most basic stuff is found in your brain stem, which is how Mike the chicken was able to live for so long. That's right. The cerebral cortex is divided into lobes, and within those lobes, there are regions that help you handle specific tasks. And we do know it has a big impact on how we think. But it's a little tricky to study because one reason that Tracy point out, which I thought was really valid, is to get an MRI done. You're lying there in a tube. They can't actively study how your brain operates on a day to day basis while you're functioning. Right. Which is the great failing of the wonder machine. Yeah. I bet you they can solve that one day. Oh, they will, definitely. And by they, I mean people other than youme or Jerry. Some genius, perhaps. Precisely. But she did point out a cool study from Cal Irvine in 2004, and they did pinpoint that the volume of gray matter in parts of the cerebral cortex has a greater impact on your overall intelligence than how large your brain is. Because we talked about that in the Einstein thing. Right? Yeah, man, I know. The white matter transmits the gray matter is like problem solving. I believe in white matter is used to transmit information. Right. But Einstein's brain was smaller than your average bear's brain. It was. Remember we talked about what happened to his brain and what they finally found? The big distinction they found in his brain that was abnormal was that his parietal lobe was almost missing this fissure within it that most people have. So it's a very narrow fissure, and it's also wider than most. So it's a big parietal load, which is responsible for sensory input, but it also handles things like mathematics. Unsurprisingly enough, sure. So he had a big bridal lobe with a small fissure in between it, which they theorized, or meant that his bridal lobe could communicate with itself more efficiently, more effectively. And a genius is born. Yes. By 26 Joshua, he proved that atoms exist. He figured out that light behaves as a particle and a wave. He developed the theory of relativity and the famous equation equals MC squared by 26. Where were you in by that age? I wish I could remember Chuck. Right. Me too. Were you following fish around or something like that? Widespread panic got you. Yeah, I think I was living in New Jersey at the time, but I'd goofed around enough in Athens. I wasn't coming up with theories of relativity. Nor was I. No, I was throwing a lot of darts. Some other interesting aspects of the brain is that it actually develops. It goes from thicker to thinner as we age. So it goes from undeveloped to the cerebral cortex thickening. Right. And then after adolescents, or maybe during adolescence, I think, during yeah. It begins to thin. Right. And what a study in nature, I think, 2006 found was that kids whose brains thicken faster in youth tended to have higher IQs. Right. And the reason that this could be significant is that we tend to find intelligence as an inherited trait or what appears to be an inherited trait. So this is a physical example of how intelligence could be inherited through organic structure of the brain. Right. So that's intelligence, but that's not genius. So we need to know the difference, but at the same time, we can't even really describe intelligence. Let's talk about the IQ test. All right. Okay. Our big arousal for the IQ test began in the mid 1920s when a psychologist named Catherine Morris Cox published the early Mental Traits of 300 geniuses. And basically, she went back from and it was exhaustive. She used, like, 1500 sources and studied the work, the traits, the contributions of actually, 301. I don't know why she called it 300, but 301 great minds. Right. And then basically gave them an IQ test based on this and came up and the highest rated one was Johann Gurta. Very nice. Thank you. Did you know he had a theory of evolution, like, 75 years before Darwin? Really? Yeah. Andy came up with human chemistry. He was a smart guy, but he clocked in at number one at 250 or 210. Wow. Not bad. Sorry. Not bad at all. But as this book came out and the public became aware of it, it was like, hey, we didn't know about these IQ tests. This is awesome. We can start measuring how smart people are. Right. Ironically, the earliest IQ tests were used to measure mental handicaps in children. Really? Yeah. But then they started figuring out, hey, you can use this for gifted kids to find the gifted kids as well. And the Stanford psychologist mixed with the first guy who came up with the IQ test, bay, the two together formed the Stanford BAE IQ test that we use today. I know. I heard that. Have you ever had yours done? No, I refuse to. I never will. I took one at one point, but it wasn't like the standard test. It was just some hackneyed version, and I scored really high. That's the reason I know that was pretty much BS, because I'm kind of smart, but not anything like I scored. I don't put any stock into it, but Chuck, I guess that kind of underscores. A really good criticism of IQ tests is that they may be standardized, they may be widely accepted, but we aren't 100% sure that they measure everything. Actually, I wouldn't even say we're 90% sure they measure everything. They measure mathematical aptitude, language, abilities, what else? Well, yeah, sure. Along with memory and spatial ability. Okay, but is that everything? Well, no. Any standardized test, the word itself kind of says it all. It's standardized, right? No, standardized tests that you give different people can really tell you the same thing about all those different people. No, it can't. And I mean, the very questions that the test asks wow, these paint themes are really getting on top of me. The very questions that these tests ask actually can be biased. I hope it wasn't an Sat questions. It's a little too easy. But some sort of standardized test. It asks the question, which of these places would you go to buy milk? And it was like, grocery store, convenience store, dairy, or something like that. Well, you can buy milk at all those josh well, you can, but I mean, like, for kids out in the sticks where there isn't a grocery store, but there's a convenience store, that's where they go to buy their milk. But they missed the question because the answer was supposed to be a grocery store. It's a pretty dumb example, but it's accurate. Right? I mean, the very people who write the tests are biased in some ways. And IQ tests have been shown to skew against certain ethnic and socioeconomic groups. Yeah, sure. Same as any standardized test does. So boo to that is what I say. Okay. And the other thing, too, is that geniuses people generally consider genius don't necessarily score well on these tests anyway. No, that's true, too. So throw it out the door is what I say. I will say, though, just while we might as well give a little information on the It test, the standard score is 100 with the deviation of 16. So the average score of the general population will be between 84 and 116 bell curve. Right. But no one knows what over that indicates a genius. A widely accepted number is 140, but somebody just made that up at some point in time. Well, like I said, I read 175. And that's not to say that a really high score doesn't mean you're a genius. Like, it could mean you're a genius. The IQ test is capturing something, probably. Right. But it's not capturing the whole picture, I think, is the point we're trying to make right here, right? Not at all. So let's leave the IQ test in our dust. Okay. Maybe we should go with Sternberg's triath theory. I kind of like that. Yeah. There are some competing explanations of what components there are to intellect, right? Yeah. Sternberg said that he thought human intelligence includes a few things, plus the triath, creative intelligence, so the ability to generate new ideas, interesting ideas. Analytical intelligence, so you can examine facts, draw conclusions. That's pretty good, right? And practical intelligence, which means you can fit into your environment, which kind of yeah, but I disagree, man. I went back and reread that a couple of times. And Tracy points out that there are a lot of critics of practical intelligence. Everybody has that to a certain degree. And does that really count toward being a genius? I disagree. I've met some people who think about it. It's the classic example of somebody who's very book smart, but you should never let walk down an alley by themselves. And I've known by himself or herself, many people like that. Sure. And then there's the super street smart ratso Rizzo, who can make his way hem, Jersey, Midnight Cowboy. I'm walking here. Exactly. Who can make his way in the world, but would probably do horribly on an IQ test. Sure. The very fact that there are those different polar extremes means to me that there's something to that. But that is an aspect of intellect. Right. And you remember I mentioned G earlier? I didn't want to leave people hanging there. But the IQ test, they have come up with a unit, and they call that unit for intelligence G. Right. And that's actually IQ tests are under a larger umbrella of what's called psychometrics, which is basically the study of an attempt of the measurement of intelligence. Right. Yes. Back in the 70s, there was a statistician named Carl Yorskog weird. And he figured out that he figured out a way to measure intelligence that basically led to the appearance of three different kinds of intelligence while we're on theories of intelligence. Right, okay. He came up with fluid intelligence. Right? Yes. Okay. And this is basically coming up with new ideas on your own to solve problems. Crystallized intelligence is understanding already established techniques of problem solving and being able to identify which technique will best work to solve a particular problem. Okay. And then there's visual spatial reasoning, which is kind of an aptitude at creating mental images in your head to solve problems. It's very important part of mathematics, actually. Right. So we have your SCOGs ideas. We've got what's your guy's name? Sternberg. Not my guy. Let's talk about Howard Gardner. And he has the feelgood we're all geniuses kind of theory, right? Yeah. Multiple intelligence. He thinks there's seven types linguistic, logical, mathematical, bodily, kinesthetic, spatial, which is always in there intrapersonal, and interpersonal. But that's, like you said, it's a little too broad, is what a lot of critics say. There's always a critic of each of these. It seems like one person comes out with something, and people say, Well, I think that sounds good, and then another part of the camp says, no, I don't agree at all. Right. Isn't that the way with everything there, Chuck? Pretty much. Like Mountain Dew. Code Red is the greatest drink ever. No, it's not. Regular Mountain Dew is way better. Good point. And then, I guess another hallmark of intelligence, something that can be measured, is geniuses aptitude toward social awkwardness. Yeah. A lot of them are generally known as quirky, odd characters. They make up friends as john Nash did. Yeah, absolutely. Einstein was sort of a wacky guy. Yeah. He liked to stick his tongue out. He was zany. Yeah, that's what people always point to that picture. Look how crazy he was. Got anyone else? Well, let's talk about studying that. Yes. Josh Purdue study. Purdue, you saw 423 students, gifted students, and suggested that they were more susceptible to being bullied. So they're little mammy panbbies, I guess, a little bit. Also, there was a study out of Stanford that it was a 20 year study, actually, that ended in 40, that actually gave children aptitude tests and personal adjustment tests and found that there is a negative correlation between IQ and social adjustment. Right. So basically, it's quantifying what we all already know, that if you're a smart kid, you're going to eat mud several times in your life. Yeah, I never ate mud. That's why I knew my IQ score was BS. Well, one thing that geniuses have in common, I think we can all agree on, that you need to have to be a genius and not just smart, because creative intelligence and high waisted pants. Creative intelligence and high waisted pants. This is where it all comes together to me. Right? Yeah. I mean, we talked about this earlier. It's not good enough to just be smart. Then you're just a really intelligent person. That leap between intelligence and gene is bridged by creative prowess. Yeah. That's how you break new ground. Right. Why did you point at me? Because prowess was a horrible word. I like that. Thanks, man. The thing is, though, Joshua, is that this is another thing that you can't quantify and study, necessarily. So once again, it's hard to kind of pinpoint creativity and imagination, although the researchers do think that creative people have less latent inhibition, and I completely agree with that. Right. Yeah, we talked about that with the Thinking Cap episode. Is that it? Yeah. Where schizophrenics have low latent inhibition. Right. They take this extra stimuli in their brain, constructs hallucinations out of it. Right. The idea was that creative geniuses who have low latent inhibition take this additional stimuli and use it in novel creative ways, right? Yeah, that's one way of looking at it. There's also a quantifiable method, or a couple of them, to determine how much creativity a genius has led to the world. Right. That Time article you sent me, I thought that was kind of lame. It is lame, but it should be funny that this is the level that we're at to try to survey genius, right? Yeah. Was this the guy who wrote the book, Simonon? Yeah. Dean keith. Almost said David. Keith. What a great actor. What a shame. Dean Keith Simonon wrote a book called Genius 101 creators, Leaders, Prodigies, and he came up with a little notion that add up. The number of times someone has been in a publication has been cited in a professional publication in the field or the number of times a composer's work maybe has been performed or recorded, and I just think that's stupid. There's one that's worse, and that's counting encyclopedia references. That's awful, because I think you can be a genius who is undiscovered. You may have written a thousand great compositions of music that you never show the world. No, I think so. The same thing is just holding menial jobs. That's virtually the same thing as holding that stuff in your head. You have to share it with the world to be a genius, or else you're just some smart schmo. I don't know if I agree with that. Well but I don't know if I do, either. I think you can still be a genius in and of yourself. You can be a genius in a vacuum, but not considered a genius by the populist. Right. Okay. Who wants to own you? Right. I guess that's the difference. The difference I see in the guy who wrote Gal Maybe who wrote several great compositions and they were never discovered. And the guy who just got the menial jobs is he didn't seem to have any creative genius going on. Yeah, he was able to smart learn. He was book learning good at Berkshire book learning. Although, if you are trying to come up with a measure of creative genius, then counting encyclopedia entries does work. It's the way to go. Right. Malcolm Gladwell. Should we talk about him? No. He is of the belief that, along with Galton, I think you're talking about with Eugenics, that practice is really what leads to genius. Hard work and practice. Practice and practice. Which I don't know about that either. What do you think? I told you, I'm not talking about Gladwell. Oh, really? Yeah. All right. Moving on, then. Well, fine. Forget Gladwell. Let's talk about Ericsson Anders. Ericsson as a rival. They call him a friendly rival. So I thought it was kind of funny of the Simonson guy I was talking about, their conflicts end in tickle fights. Right. It kind of reminded me of the goodwill hunting. Like, Robin Williams and that other guy, they were friendly rivals. But he is popular for the ten year rule, which has been around for a long time. But that's the notion that it takes ten years or 10,000 hours of dedicated practice to master a complex endeavor, and Gladwell is a believer in that. So, Chuck, there's a guy named David Gallonson, too, who's kind of come up with at least a qualification of creative genius. Right. I didn't like him, either. You didn't? Well, doesn't that kind of underscore, like, where the field of genius or intelligence research is right now, that we've just poo pooed? Absolutely. Every cell. It's all over the place. Yeah, but yeah. Say what he says, because I want to prove that. Actually, now he says there's three kinds. Originally, he said there's two types of innovators. There's conceptual innovators who think in bold dramatic steps which Einstein would fall into. And do you know that among very smart people, he's considered kind of a flash in the pan? Really? Yeah. Think about it. He did everything that he was going to do by age 26. After that, he just went around canoeing with Walter Matthew as Walter Matthew. Same thing, right. But then there's experimental innovators and they learn through trial and error over this would be the Thomas Edison of the genius world. And then everybody started shouting at David Gallerson. Then he said, Shut up, shut up, and went back to the drawing board and came up with the idea that genius can also be expressed on a continuum over time throughout a long lifetime of great contribution and work. That's my problem with it. Everybody shouted at him and he went back and was like, Here you go. He was like, well, you can either get everything done really early or you can produce all your great work later in life. And they were like, but what about people do it all in life? He went, well, yes, you can do that, too. It's like so lame. Right? So should we just list out some geniuses throughout history that people generally consider genius? I didn't like this list either, but we don't like anything about this one doing George Washington's, number 45. And who's number one? It starts at number two. And if one is Einstein, I'm going to literally eat this list. One was Einstein. I didn't copy paste all of them. We have geniuses like Tesla's three. DA Vinci number two. Isaac Newton, number Four. Hawking. Of course. Michelangelo Archimedes. Josh is eating his list. Warren Buffett is on there. Not bad. Sure, they had to round it out and make it as approachable to all the readers they could. Aristotle. Picasso. Niels. Bohr. Jefferson. Plato. Churchill. Benjamin Franklin. I think I'd agree with that one. Shakespeare. Sir francis Drake. Michael Faraday. Chuck Darwin. Renee Descartes. Or is it Des plane and Gary Casperov. And I think Bobby Fischer was on there. Both chess champions. I don't know. They're considered geniuses. It's all subjective, though. It is completely subjective. I think we're going to end this with this observation. Genius is like pornography. It's impossible to fully define, but we know it when we see it, right, Chuck? Who was that? Suter Bruce. Sutter Bruce. Jenner, do you want to learn more about genius? I think there's more than just this article. There's a bunch of good genius articles on the site@howstepords.com and there's also a bunch of articles on people that we've mentioned because we're doing a whole new series on painters, right? Yeah, we are. Casa and Van Gogh. You can type it in the handy search bar. Of course, since I said that, it means it's time for listener mail. Chuck first, before we do anything. Before anything, yes. Okay. We should probably plug our new Facebook page. Yeah, we were on Facebook for a. While. This is nothing new to us, but we streamlined our stuff. We got a fan page and a regular page, and it was all strange. So we consolidated. Right. And we're actually active on Facebook now. Yes, we are. Yes, we are. A brand new Facebook page is stuff you should know. Just type that into the handy search bar at Facebook or I think it's Facebook. Comstuffychulbebe. I'm not positive, but it's easy to find. And also, buddy, we're tweeting. You are tweeting. I have tweeted twice. Yeah. You're 68 and you tweeted. I know. I feel like a modern child. Right? If you want to follow us on Twitter, we have our Twitter name as S-Y-S Kpodcast, right? Yes. So that would be at. Is that how they do it? Yeah. Look at you guysk. Podcast. And we'll be saying funny things as well as sending out links to cool stuff. And we're active now. That is true. So check us out, will you? Yes. I'm on the show. Yes. All right, Josh. Listener mail. For goodness sake. Listener mail. I'm going to read a couple of quickies here from a young boy named Sam and from a trucker named Annette. Annette took us to task. Oh, no. What? We'll read it first. Annette says hi. Chuck and Josh. I am an over the road truck driver and love your podcast. Over the road? That's what she says. I would love for you guys to come along with me into the 21st century regarding truck drivers. I've been driving for almost 13 years. And guess what? I'm a woman. In fact, I have two sons y'all's age. When you talk about truck drivers is in the McDonald's podcast. You always talk about big burly guys. Well, I may be big and probably more surly than burly, but I'm definitely not a guy. Don't forget us lady drivers. Nice. Love the show. And how could we forget? I mean, Large Marge was a huge factor. Jerry's big adventure. Yeah. And that was Annette. That was Annette. And I told her that I would read this as our penance. Annette, I'm making the blow your horn sign for the tractor trailer. So if you're hearing this right now, to your horn. Awesome. Hope you didn't just cause an accident. This is from Sam and Sam. It's just another cute little kid. And I like these. I saw that. Lots of caps. Yeah. Hi, Chuck and Josh. I'm Sam Blank because I'm using your last name. Substitute. I'm eleven years old. You guys helped me get through many boring tasks, like dog poop pickup. My least favorite chore. Sure. I think it's mine, too, actually. That in the cat box. I just stopped as an adult. I don't pick up dog anymore. You just don't go into the yard? I just watch where I'm walking in the yard. Okay. I think the funniest podcast was the Twinkie podcast. You guys make me laugh in my bed when I listen also in the supermarket, so he listens when he goes to sleep and when he's grocery shopping. Or I guess when his mom's grocery shopping. Or dad or two dads. I don't know. Kids today are pretty independent. Yeah, you're right. I think you guys are the funniest people in the world. That's true. I have a few suggestions. Like what does cat got your tongue mean? And other phrases mean you love improper English. I do. Also, riot control really cracked me up as an eleven year old kid. Know what riot control is? And Legos. So he wants to know about cat got your tongue? Legos. And riot control. And trading cards and football. So could you please read my shout out on the air? And here's my shout out. This is an all caps I told you mom I would get my email read on air. Hahaha. That's from SAMW. And he said, I thought Josh look like Chuck. And Chuck look like Josh. But that changed when I saw your pictures on the site. Yes, we get that a lot. Yeah, well, not that I look like you and you look like me, but that we look like different people. Okay. That's always the case with the voice. Yeah, I'm much uglier than you would think. That is not true. You are a lovely, handsome man. Thank you. All right. Well, thanks, Sam. Keep on shopping. And Annette, keep on trucking. If you have an interesting email that you want to roll the dice and see if we'll read it on the air cost you nothing. In this digital age, you can send us an electronic mail. Just address it to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Want more? House stuff works. Check out our blog on the Housetofworks.com homepage. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You know you're a pet mom when you plan your vacation around your pet at Halo. Hello. We get it because we're pet moms, too. We make natural, high quality pet foods that's rooted in science. It's the world's best food for the world's best kids. Learn more@halopets.com." | ||
How Presidential Pardons Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-presidential-pardons-work | A presidential pardon is a unique, unchallengable power granted to the president of the United States by the Constitution. In this episode, Josh and Chuck discuss the origins, history and controversial use of the presidential pardon. | A presidential pardon is a unique, unchallengable power granted to the president of the United States by the Constitution. In this episode, Josh and Chuck discuss the origins, history and controversial use of the presidential pardon. | Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:12:39 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=29, tm_hour=16, tm_min=12, tm_sec=39, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=210, tm_isdst=0) | 40273943 | 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. 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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 housetuffworkscom. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, as Charles W, Chuck Bryant. Pardon me, josh, before we get down, seriously, I just had a flashback. I used to do the show with Chris Paulette and anybody who listens to tech stuff, if you don't, you should will know that he is among the puniest people on the planet. Are you invoking? Paulette and my name in the same sentence. Wow. You shoot puns like that at me? You get the big guns. All right. Pardon me. Then. Before we get to this business, right, I just want to say a big welcome to a certain individual. Right? Yeah. Little girl named Sophia Milan Harris was born today, July. She's the daughter of my future brother and sister in law, Josh Harris and Mika Harris. People are probably like, Josh had a baby and didn't even tell it right. Yeah. The other Josh. Yuumi and her sister, both with Josh's. Adorable. And I met both of them right. At your birthday party. Sure. Yeah. The one I was on a horse. That was awesome. Yeah. So welcome to the world, Sophia Milan, who's going to be called Mila from now on. So thank you very much, Chuck, for indulging that. Sure. And since you brought it up, I should point out that at Josh's birthday party, there were a pony, horse, bunnies and goats. Yeah. It was like the farm was brought in for the party and there weren't enough kids there to justify it, so we all know what really was going on. Yeah. Yuumi was like, you're so spoiled, I'm going to get you a pony. And she got me a pony. Of course, emily spent, like, half the party in the goat crate. Well, they were pretty cute goats. One looked like pure Satanic evil, but the other one was just beyond adorable. Little pygmy goat. Yeah. Plus, it was three months old, so it was really little and cute. That was awesome. Yes. So baby goats, human babies. So far, it's been, like, a minute and a half, and we're already, like, the cute factors through the roof, man. Well, we can take care of that with one salesforce. Let's talk about pretty much the exact opposite of that, shall we? Yes. Okay, buddy. I was disheartened to hear that July 10 came and went, and not a lot of people marked it. But this day was the day that Barack Obama changed. The president sure went past John Adams presidency or administration neglect of clemency requests. So he waited longer than any other president. Yes. Interesting. It is very interesting. John Adams went 536 days, and I should say July 10 of the day that Obama tied him. You mean John Adams? I'm sorry. The first vice president in the United States. Yes, that same John Adams. Okay. Yeah. So anyway, it's been several days since then. There's been no action taken on any requests for pardons from Obama. And a lot of people are like, that's kind of weird. He's in third place right now to Clinton and George W. Bush. He's busy. Yeah. But as you'll find out, he really doesn't have to do too terribly much. Right. And the other thing is what's odd is he's not doing anything. He's not saying they're just denying them. Denying? I'm denying them. Right. He's not doing anything. He inherited a couple of thousand requests for clemency and I think have had a few thousand more come up, and he hasn't taken any action on any of them. It's really puzzling, and it's not a very talked about news story, but I don't have a good answer why I haven't been able to find one. I've looked. Right. I mean, I looked. Well, you don't hear about clemency much till the last part of a president's final term. Not necessarily true. And I should say well, I should say that's when you really hear about it, right. Because that's when they come flying in. Yeah. They come hard and fast, and the real dirty ones come up around that. Sure. I should say that Obama has pardoned two individuals. Okay. They're two turkeys oh, yeah. That he pardoned last Thanksgiving. Yeah. And seriously, those are the only pardons that he's given so far. Who started that? Do you have that info? We don't really know. No one knows. Oh, really? A lot of people say it was Lincoln. Interesting people have turned up that it was actually Harry Truman, but Truman came up with the idea. Possibly. I think Lincoln made a joke about it. Truman came up with the idea, and I think John F. Kennedy was the first to actually ever follow through with it. Interesting. That's what I've heard. And I think we talked about our Thanksgiving podcast, but I can't remember. So Lincoln made a joke about it as he hatched it off the head of a turkey. Yeah, he said he was going to pardon Tad's turkey because Mom's so crazy these days, I'm going to do something for the kid. Right. Interesting. So then he cut off the head and said, lol. Just kidding. Right? All right, let's get down to this, shall we? Presidential pardons. And you wrote this, and this was an awesome article, dude. Thank you. Very thorough. It was one of those interesting ones. Like, the topic is just interesting because you think about it. Chuck, we have a government that consists of checks and balances, right? Ideally, sure. Well, the way it's set up, the Senate has final approval on the people the President tries to appoint to the Supreme Court. That's a check. The Senate can come up with bills, laws, but the President has veto power over them. And with the Supreme Court. You can impeach a Supreme Court justice. Did you know that? Yeah, I did not. Although it wasn't the article, so I guess I knew it at one point in time when I was reminded of it. So there's all these checks and balances, except the presidential pardon. It exists in this weird, vacuum, unchecked side of everything else. Totally unchecked. You can't do anything about it. Yeah. And I like you pointed out in the article that Congress spends a lot of time when all the pardons come flying in hard and fast towards the end, just kind of like, I can't do anything. But I noted that the same congressman, they want that pardon, too, for when they're in trouble. Right. There's a lot of disingenuous electioneering or politicizing, I guess, with pardoning, but originally, it's not what it was intentionally created for. It has become a political tool. Right. And as a result, it's really kind of generated this ire in public perception pretty famously. Gerald Ford took a hit in the public sector. Right. Yeah. He pardon Nixon. Yeah. That was not a very popular move. No. And that was kind of sweeping, because he pardoned Nixon before any charges were ever formally filed, which is a no no, technically, with pardons, but weird and hinky. Yeah. And a lot of people thought Ford was a dummy president, not a smart guy. Maybe football injury, they said on days and confused. Right. But I remember when he died learning that a lot of people considered him something of a hero because he fell on his sword. He gave up the presidency to heal the country and just get the Nixon era over with by pardoning the guy. Right. And just doing it himself, taking the full ire of the American public, just said, Forget it, I'm out of here. Right. Another big one was Scooter Libby. Right. Yeah. Every president has a slew of pardons. And every president has some shady ones where they kind of get their buddies out of trouble, because when big money's involved in politics, there's usually some malfeasance going on. Yeah. So Scooter Libby was pardon by Bush. Yeah. He was Bush Jr. Right. And he was convicted of obstructing justice, perjury, lying to federal investigators. Pretty guarding the whole stuff. Yeah, exactly. Except he got really thrown under the bus. But it was for the whole Valerie Plain thing, the CIA outing, supposedly. Allegedly in retaliation for Plain's husband coming up with analysis, saying, like, Iraq does not have weapons of mass destruction. Right. Yeah. Good times. Clinton was also under fire, of course. For Mark Rich. Yeah. Not Mark Rich. No, not harder. You can't pin anything on Mark Rick. That guy's so squeaky clean. Yeah. Mark Rich was the famous tax evader whose wife, ex wife, left a large sum of money to the Clinton library. Right. And so Bill said, yeah, pardon, I was hoping you're going to do that today. But one thing I thought was interesting was that it was a conditional pardon, which we'll talk about. You noticed that as well? Yeah, because he agreed, basically he went to Switzerland to, I guess, evade charges initially. Yeah. He fled the country. Yeah. Like Polanski style. Yeah. And Clinton said, I'll pardon you if you agree not to defend yourself against the civil suits brought by the United States government. And so he said, yeah, that's fine. Sure, I'll do that. But they were pretty substantial. It wasn't just tax evasion. I uncovered this when I was researching for this podcast. The guy was also indicted for selling or making oil deals with Iran during the Iran hostage crisis. And there was a full on embargo. Yeah. That's light treason. Right. Well, that's the funny thing, though, on that. Funny. But he said, sure, go ahead and pardon me, and I'll agree not to defend myself when I come back to the US. And he never came back. Yeah. He stayed in Switzerland. Thanks for the pardon. It's kind of nice here. So I think there's a couple of reasons the Mark Rich case stands out. The Mark Rich pardon stands out so much. It's just the worst kind of politics when some kind of elitist politician pardons one of his or her own. But so far, one of his own. Right. And then also there were questions about whether Mark Rich bought that pardon. Right. Whether that endowment to the Clinton Library was in exchange for a pardon. Right. Bought a lot of books, I'm sure. Yeah. The other interesting thing, you know who was lead counsel for Rich? William counselor for 15 years? Scooter Libby. Wow. He was his lawyer, and he defended him and said he didn't evade any taxes. And Clinton used Scooter Libby and said, we have a hardcore Republican lawyer that's defending this guy. Wow. Saying he didn't do it. So then it's just funny how embracing all this I think it's funny that people still differentiate between Democrats and Republicans. Yeah, that's a laugh. Also, lastly, this Mark Rich case, red Hot, it came back when Obama was trying to get Eric Holder appointed as his Attorney general. Oh, really? Yeah, trying to get him past the Senate. That was the big contentious issue. How did you sign off on the Mark Rich pardon? It was, like, arguably the worst pardon ever in the history of presidents. Right. And he almost didn't get nominated. I remember. They stretched it out for weeks. Crazy. Yeah. So, anyway, let's talk about this, and then we'll go back and talk about some more famous and not so famous, but interesting pardons. That sounds good, Josh. Thanks, Chuckers. Man, we are doing this on the fly with the record button on. What do we usually do? We usually go and then talk about it and then edit that part out. Right. So, Chuck, what does a pardon do? Why would Mark Risk even be interested in having a pardon like this? Why would somebody who's been convicted of a crime, sentenced to prison, served their time, and been out for several years be interested in getting a pardon? What's the point? Well, first, I would say, what, are you kidding? But we'll spell it out for you aparting. The main thing it does is it gets you out of prison, which is awesome. But the really awesome thing that it does beyond that is it restores your civil rights as a free, non, federally incarcerated individual, or somebody who hasn't been convicted of a felony as a felon. Chuck, you're not allowed to own a firearm. Right. Which is why you couldn't vote on Tuesday or jury duty, which is kind of nice, right? Yeah. I don't know if it's a disability, but that's what they're called collectively, when you lose those rights after being convicted of a felony and that goes on your record, you lose these rights, and it's called civil disability. Right? Yeah. And it restores every bit. It's almost like an annulment. It's as if nothing ever happened, say, for the fact that it does stay on your record. Right. And the records remain. It took several hundred years for them to finally establish that there's a Supreme Court case, and I think the 90s that said, the record stay there's. Nice. Right off the top of your head, too. But they don't have any effect on you as a citizen any longer. But that's just with the federal government, right. And that's not even with all branches of the federal government. Basically, when the president issues a pardon, the President is daddy of the country right then, and is saying, on behalf of the rest of the American family, we're going to forgive you for this transgression. Right. I'm your daddy. I'm everybody else's daddy. I'm going to make the decision and let's just move on past this. Now, your brother, the IRS. Your uncle, the IRS, I should say, is probably still going to sue your ass off your drunk uncle. Right. But I can't do anything about that. But you broke the laws, and we're going to forgive you for breaking the laws. Right. Should we talk about other forms of clemency just so everyone's squared away? Yeah, because clemency is the umbrella term. Pardon is one type of clemency. That's the best point. Yeah. That's what you're gunning for. Right. We can draw the distinction, though, my friend, with pardons commutes remissions and what's the last one? Respite. Commutation. When you commute a sentence, that means you just make it shorter. Right. That's not used a whole lot. You can also commute a sentence before it even starts. Yeah. That's weird. That's what happened with Scooter Libby. Sure, he got a commutation, but not a pardon. So he's a blemished individual as a citizen, but he didn't have to go to prison. He can't vote no or serve on a jury. Or own a handgun. Or own a handgun. That's probably a good thing. We already talked about the full pardon. The grandaddy of them all there is the conditional pardon, which we mentioned, which means, I will do this for you if and the Clinton example was one, another good one you listed was Jimmy Hoffa. Jimmy Hoffa. Nixon pardon Hoffa and said, I'll pardon you as long as you don't take part in any more labor organization. Right. And he was like, and go sleep with the fishes. Well, that's all I do. Right? Yeah. And he had to go full on with the mob after that. His inevitable course was set with that agreement. Remission we mentioned, that is like when you say you don't have to pay a fine, it releases you from a legal obligation again, but that's just with the federal government. It's not necessarily with the IRS. The IRS leaves you in civil court, a civil obligation you owe to a family for restitution. They can't remiss that. Is that right? Remit. But you would be remiss. You would be remiss. Right. Jerry's laughing in there. Respite is basically a temporary thing where the President's like, you know what? Let me hold this off for a month or two while we look at it. Right. Like an execution. Well, is that a stay or is it the same thing? I don't know. I don't know if a stay of execution is just issued by the governor, right. Or if a stay of execution is a type of respite, maybe because this is only federal cases, because the President can't touch state or local cases. Isn't that right? That's true, too. Yeah. So maybe that's the difference. Yeah. The Feds execute people. The President could keep somebody who is sentenced to death through a court marshall. They could give them respite. It's kind of like, hey, here's a nice hot towel. Go sit in the corner while we figure out whether we're going to kill you or not. And you can pile those on top of each other if you need more time. You can issue them in succession and it doesn't interfere with the trial or anything like that. Right. A lot of these kind of work in conjunction. Like the booya combo that you want is the commutation of sentence before it even starts, followed by or in conjunction with the full pardon or respite maybe than the full pardon. Right. But I mean, if you love a sense of drama, you can tack the rest of it on to the beginning. I just want to keep my butt out of jail. I don't care if it's dramatic or not. Right. Just give me whatever puts me back on the sidelines or back in the game. Sorry. Mixing sports metaphors. Yeah. That reminds me of a dream, Chuck, that I had. Okay. I dreamt that I was at a breakdancing championship, which I've actually been to before, but I was sitting there watching all these people break dance. Or watching it. No, actually, what I figured out was I dreamt that I was watching other people break dance. I don't even have enough of an opinion of myself to dream that I myself is an awesome break. Because that's what I was about to say. Dude, that would be the master champion break dancer in my dream. Right, but you just said that you want to be out of jail so you can get back to the sideline. That's what triggered that. Maybe we'll edit that out and post. No. So, Chuck, what doesn't a pardon do? It sounds like it's basically the hand of God coming down, touching you on the head and saying, go buy a gun, cause you can. One thing it does not do and you cannot touch. And they were pretty smart back when they wrote the Constitution. They made sure that A, you can impeach a president, and B, that you cannot pardon an impeachment. Right. They actually didn't include presidential pardons in a couple of the plans for the Constitution. The New Jersey plan and the Virginia plan both lacked presidential pardons. And Alexander Hamilton was like, I think Federal Paper number 74. Yes. Yeah. He argued that there are times when this could really come in handy, guys, so let's put it in. But let's make sure it doesn't apply to impeachment. Right. Because if the president can be impeached and if he can't pardon himself while he's being impeached, then he won't become this absolute authoritarian. He can't possibly. Right, sure. So that was how it ended up in there. But actually that went further back, and we'll talk about that in a minute. But they almost left the whole thing out and then they said, no, we'll just follow custom. Well, were you going to say it came over from England? Yeah. Say it, man. Well, actually, the whole idea is rooted in the prerogative of the king, the English king. Yeah. We got a lot of our early ideas, clearly, since we had just come from England, we're based on good old England. Right. English common law. Yeah. Or royal law, I guess, is what this would be. And I think that's probably why presidential pardons weren't included in a couple of the really popular plans for the Constitution. Sure is. Because it kind of smacked of royal tyranny. Right. Yeah. But Charles II, I think, is the one who originally thought of the impeachment idea. Right. Well, either he thought of it and was a fan, or he was one of the weaker kings or one of the more benevolent kings, because a parliament that was in session while he was raining managed to slip that onto the custom of the prerogative of the English king. So you can overturn any court case except cases of impeachment. Right. Yes. Which is, you know, there's some other ways that the courts over the years have sort of shaped, I guess you could say, limited or defined how you can pardon and how you can't right. Like we said, it's only federal cases. You can't affect civil civil cases at all. And like we also mentioned, restitution to a family. So let's say if OJ. Simpson, in a weird alternate world, were convicted of cutting his wife's head off, if he had done that, if he had really done that, he could have been pardoned for that. But let's say if the president was a big fan of the Juice, but he could not have been relieved of paying a Goldman all that money that he lost. Right. Which is weird, because he was found guilty or not guilty. But what do you call it? Liable. It's liable for her death and his son's death in a civil suit. Guilty in a court of law. Criminally. Yeah. Weird. So strange how that can happen in this country. Yeah. That was a really weird moment in this country's history, huh? Yeah. Chuck, there's some other ways that the presidential pardon has been shaped. You can't well, the idea used to be was that you can't force a person to take a pardon. That's my favorite little nugget in this whole article. Right. So you would think, like, yeah, here's your pardon. Especially if it's like a commutation of sentence and you get out of jail early. Not everybody's done with that. Some people are what we call institutionalized, can't make it outside any longer. Like Brooks and Shawshank. Yes. He was institutionalized. He couldn't make it. And he hung himself in the little halfway house, sort of that they set him up with. Right. It was one of the sadder moments of The Shawshank Redemption. There was another guy who that may or may not have happened to his story kind of ends slightly before that, as far as we can tell. As far as we know, calvin Coolidge, the Coolest, he gave a pardon to a guy who was in jail and the guy didn't want to leave, so he directly ordered the warden to get the guy out of prison and shut the cell behind him. Yeah. Well, the one caveat you did mention was you can refuse a pardon, but not when it applies to cases of life or death. So if you're on death row, you don't get a choice if you're pardoned. Is that how it works? Yeah, the Supreme Court worked that out as well. They're saying, like, no, if you want to die, we're not going to kill you just because you want to die. If we've decided that you shouldn't die. Right. And what's the deal with contempt of court? I didn't quite get that. Okay. So, Chuck, this is a very important part, because I agree. I went back and read it, and I think it was one of those things where I was just so hot and bothered about it, like, oh, yeah, here's the crux of my whole article. Yeah, right. I just kind of ran past actually explaining it well. So let me try to do it a little better here. Okay. Okay. You were saying that if the President, if for some reason, OJ. Simpson had been convicted of his alleged murder of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman right. Yes. And the President had pardoned him, that pardon would have had any effect on the civil case against him by the Goldman family, by the Brown family? None. Right. Because murder is legally in a front to the United States. It's an affront to the laws of the United States. Yes. And by the way, also, this would only if he had been convicted in federal court could the President pardon have helped him. Right. Yeah. Remember that because the murder also has an effect on his family. We have civil courts there's civil law and criminal law. President can forgive criminal law, can't do anything for civil law because pardons only cover in a front to the United States. So at one point in time, a guy named William Howard Taft, who is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and after his presidency it was after he was president, eleven years after he left the White House, he always said he felt like he fulfilled his destiny as Supreme Court justice. He didn't like being president. Interesting. Yeah. But as Supreme Court Justice, he helped give a tool to Congress by saying that the presidential pardon is only to cover up front to the United States. It doesn't cover upfront to a court. Right. A contempt of court charge. Sounds like a loophole. That is a loophole. Yeah. And Congress has exploited it because Congress actually has the ability to hold people in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify. So remember that whole impeachment clause right. Where it literally says in the Constitution, the President has the power to pardon people except in cases of impeachment. Right. Without that content of court loophole, you'd have another loophole where the President could be like, I'm going to do anything I want, and Congress can investigate me all at once, but none of my people are talking because they can be arrested and charged and sentenced and pardoned and keep their mouth shut the whole time and know there's a pardon coming. That doesn't work for contempt of court cases, because contempt of Congress is not technically in a front to the laws of the United States. It's in a front to Congress, in a front to the court, so the presidential pardon can't do anything about it. So there's the one tool Congress has as far as battling the presidential pardon. They can compel witnesses to testify, and if they don't, they have actually a little jail in the Senate and I think House chambers where they keep the person in contempt. That's a nice jail. Was that any better? Yeah, I got it. But however, if a president does, if it's legitimate and if it's legal and if he does it right or she's a woman president one day, it is completely irrefutable if they do it right. And it's on the well, we say on the level. Some of those last ones aren't really on the level, ethically speaking, but they're legal. But you can't challenge whether they're on the level or not. Right. Congress has tried to put a stop to this over the years. Here and there, they've introduced bills to limit pardon power, but they've all failed because of a couple of reasons. Because it's in the Constitution. Very clearly, article Two, Section Two, and Supreme Court likes to uphold the Constitution when they can, likes to stand behind it when they can. And the other reason is it's kind of a long standing power, and they're not hip to getting rid of these things that have been around for a couple of hundred years. Right. And for everybody who's just open their email client to send us all these examples of the Supreme Court not standing behind the Constitution when they can, chuck meant specifically standing behind the pardon power article. That's what you meant, right? That's what we're talking about. Okay, yeah. Sorry. Thanks for pointing that out and stopping the flood of emails. And not only that, Chuck, actually, in 1974, the Supreme Court decreed it is spelled out in the Constitution the President's power to pardon. And if you're going to find any flaws in it, you're going to have to go to that one two sentence section and find your flaws there because it's in the Constitution, and you really can't touch it outside of the Constitution. Right, right. Yes. So, Chuck, we were talking about the origins of this, that it was found in the prerogative of the English kings, and then they talked about it, and finally the Founders put it in the Constitution. Right. And originally it was to give the President the ability to say, quell rebellion, insurrection. Yeah. And just basically make. A deal with people who are rising up against the government and saying, look, if you guys go back home, we're going to forget all this happened. I'll issue a blanket pardon, aka amnesty, very shortly after the Constitution was written. And then I think 1791, 794, 1794, george Washington said, this is awesome. There's a whiskey rebellion going on. The farmers are uprising because they don't like being taxed. Right. I'm going to just forgive all you guys if you pipe down because you've been arrested. And they said, okay, all right, we'll go back home. And that was like, right after we take our whiskey with us. Yeah. And Jimmy Carter, like you said, to heal national wounds, ford kind of pardonics. And just to wrap that up, carter did a similar thing to sort of put an end to the Vietnam era by pardoning all the draft dodgers, which a lot of people probably didn't like that movie very much. Yeah, a lot of people didn't like the Vietnam War very much either. Good point. Yeah. One of my favorites, Josh, is when you point out that pardons a lot of times can sort of undermine laws, and that was the case with Kennedy in National Narcotics Act was basically one of the first big hard drug laws where they had mandatory minimums for kind of small time offenders. So Kennedy said, that's really not fair that these small time offenders are first time offenders are in prison for like, five or more years, and it's no good. So I'm going to issue a blanket pardon for all these guys and gals, and it kind of overturned the law, in essence. Yeah. He's not the only person to do that. There are calls right now for Obama to issue blanket pardons to people who are convicted under mandatory crack minimums because there's such a disparity between mandatory minimums for cocaine, which is predominantly or considered a white drug, and crack, which is considered a black drug. So if you get caught with the same amount of crack and coke, same value, you go to jail five times longer for crack under these mandatory minimums. He hasn't so far, but there's a call for that same use of the presidential pardon to use as a tool. Sure. Warren Harding basically overturned the Espionage Act. Right? Yeah. Was that the Tokyo Rose? No, espionage act. Was World War I. Basically if you were talking out against World War One, war in general, or were a conscientious objector, the federal government threw you in prison for up to ten years, right? Yes. So you're talking about Eugene Deb? This guy is kind of a hero of mine. He was a Socialist Party candidate. What I thought was funny, he was a candidate five times in nineteen zero, four, eight, twelve and twenty. So he took off 1916, I guess, to regroup. I wondered if there was a candidate or two in there that he was like, the guy's better than me, I'm going to let him run. Or if he's tired of the whole thing yeah. I would have thought after he lost four times, he's like, I can't do this again. Well, I think he's kind of like the Ralph Nader of the turn of the 20th century. The turn of the eight 19th century. Well, he spoke out, like you said, against our involvement in World War I, and he was convicted for treason of speech under the Espionage Act and then sentenced to ten years. And Harding said. Here in Atlanta? Yeah. In the federal pokey, he got a million votes from prison yes. For his 1920 campaign. A million votes. 1920. That's a lot of votes. It was a lot of votes. And he was enough of a contender that when Mr. President, Warren G. Harding issued a blanket pardon for people under the Espionage Act, he invited Eugene Debs to drop by the White House to hang out after he got out of the pen. Yeah. And what did say? No way. No. He went, oh, he did? Yeah, he had a visit. Just kidding. Ford that mentioned Tokyo Rose, he pardoned the only American woman that was part of the propaganda reading of Japanese propaganda reading on Radio Tokyo Zero Hour, and she was convicted of was it treason again? Yeah. And years later years later, reporters dug up some info that was kind of like, this is a trumped up charge and this isn't really right. So Ford said pardoned. Yeah. Her story is pretty interesting in and of itself. Oh, yeah. The whole Tokyo roasting is, I think Patty Hearst, she got a pardon. I love Patty Hearst. We talked about her, I think, in the Brainwashing podcast. Remember when I turned you into a preppy? Yeah. She was kidnapped and allegedly forced to commit bank robberies with the Symbionese Liberation Army, who also made an appearance, by the way, for you, stuff you should know. Fact finders in the SWAT podcast. What the SLA did. Yeah. Remember they got in the shootout with the first SWAT team where they were one of the reasons the SWAT team came up. Yeah. Anyway, well, we should point out who she was, just for those of you who don't know. She was the granddaughter of newspaper magnet William Randolph Hurst. Which is what? Citizen Kane. He was based on him. Right. Citizen Kane and Elvin and the Chipmunks, the Squeakler, that was based on hers, too. It was basically remake of Citizen Kane. I had no idea. So, yeah, hearst, she's like, oh, they brainwashed me, and they kidnapped me and brainwashed me and made me rob banks and shooting pigs. And so they said, no, I don't think so. You're convicted in prison for seven years, and Jimmy Carter stepped in and commuted it. And then later on, he asked Billy Boy to give her the full pardon, which he did. Yeah. And then she was in every John Waters movie ever made. I think since then. I've not seen a one. I think she was in Crybaby to begin with, and she's been in everyone since then, including his upcoming film. What is it? Fruitcake is the next one. He has the best mind. He said it's a Christmas movie. Fruitcake. I like that guy. Never seen a movie. I like John Water. She's cool. You know what you should see? I guess if you have never seen one, I wouldn't start you off with the early, like, really nasty ones. Why? Actually maybe hurts. Perfect for you. Pink flamingos, I would think, right? Yeah. Get pink flamingos and watch Divine eat poop. Okay. For the love of God. Okay. I would say cereal. Mom. Another one with Kathleen Turner before she was a man. I thought that was probably during the man transition. The transition, yes. Perhaps. Josh, I want to talk about Arthur O'Brien just for a second. He's my favorite one because President Abraham Lincoln pardoned him from a charge of attempted bestiality. Do you know what he was actually trying to do with what animal? I think I did when I wrote this, but I don't anymore. Not important. Let's just call it bestiality. But Lincoln said you know what? He's a really good guy otherwise, and he's led a really good life, and he was really hammered when it happened, so I'm just going to go ahead and pardon that. Yeah. And he did. Arthur O'Brien is now an unbesmirched bezialist zoo philosophy. I think so, Chuck. Actually, that Arthur O'Brien case is really exemplary of the kind of thinking that goes into a presidential partner is supposed to. Right. Lincoln said, hey, the guy was drunk. He's living exemplary life. Right. And he made a mistake when he was doing that with that animal. Yeah, right. And he knows it. Clearly. He hasn't tried to get with an animal since, so I'm going to pardon him. In 1893, the DOJ said, you know what? The President needs help with this kind of stuff, so we're going to take on this power. Or Congress said, DOJ take on this power. In 1981, the Office of the Pardon Attorney was created. Yeah, and he's basically I keep saying he. I feel like I should say she, because I don't know if we've had a female pardon attorney, but they're completely in charge of handling the thousands of requests that offices. So what they do is they do the same thing as they did way back with Lincoln. They dig around the case, they find out the circumstances of the case, whether or not they've made restitution and led a really good life, and maybe they've left prison or maybe they work with kids and have done really great things, and then they are the ones who make the recommendation to the President. But the President, I mean, if they're smart, they'll listen to what they say because they've done all the legwork, but the President doesn't have to follow the advice. And actually, apparently the DOJ or the Pardon Attorney's office said you probably shouldn't pardon Mark Rich. He doesn't really fit the criteria in Clinton went back door. That's going around. Yeah, right. Should we close with some stats? Yeah, let's do it. We can't talk about pardons without just throwing out who has done what, so we're going to go ahead and say that the all time granddaddy of pardons was Roosevelt. Not ted numerically. Well, numerically, Franklin. But he had three terms. Yeah, but there were over 3000 pardons. There were, and it's a lot of pardons, but that's, I think, 28% of the parts that come across his desk, he signed off on. Truman led the way with percentage wise. Right. 40 something. 42%. 42. And James Garfield and William Henry Harrison, of course, had no pardons because they weren't in office very long. No wheel of pneumonia after a month. Wait here's. William Henry Harrison. I died in 30 days. Yeah. Jimmy recently. Let's just go over the recent ones. Carter issued five six six. Reagan issued 406. Billy Clinton did 456. And then the Bush boys came along. And Bush senior. Herbert Walker. Only 77. And George W. I'm sorry. Pardon? 113. Right. And Herbert Walker. Pardoned? 77. You said total hand. One of them was Casper Weinberger, who is the Defense Secretary in the Iran Contrafare. That was his big controversial one. Everyone has at least one. Sure, why not? That's crazy. You're on your way out anyway. Yeah. Wacky commanders, you're cheap. You're going to work for Goldman Sachs afterward anyway. You might as well. Exactly. Who cares? So I guess that's it, right? Yeah. If you want to see some funny pictures of old timing presidents or George W. Bush pardoning a turkey, you should probably look up presidential pardons in the search bar@housetaforks.com. All right, so, Chuck, then what are we going to do then? Right now? A couple of little orders of business, little pitch, and thank you. So we need a new sound. All right. I have no idea what that sound was. Josh, we are recreating our awesome allstar trivia night that we did in New York right here in our hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. And we have not got a location yet, and we are not positive on a date, but it's looking like it might be the first weekend in September, the weekend of Dragon Khan, which is Labor Day. Labor Day weekend. We're looking at that. Friday, September 3. Don't hold us to that. But we are having an all star trivia in Atlanta. It will probably be the weekend of DragonCon. So we're going to say most likely. I don't know about the Friday or whatever. I think it's probably going to be that weekend. I don't see why we wouldn't. Why wouldn't we? Exactly. Let's do it. So, once again, we're putting a call out to people that have venues that might be interested in hosting suggestions. Trivia, guys. Sure. Yeah, whatever you got. And we also want to say thank you quickly to Mark Rhodes. Mark Rhodes is a big fan and he's been helping us troubleshoot this OS for iPhone update issue that we've been having where people cannot download directly to their phone. Mark has been a big help. So thank you, Mark, for that. And I want to say thank you to Tom Rhodes, the stand up comedian who was huge in the 90s, whose act I caught at the Gotham nightclub. The Gotham Comedy Club is what it was. He was hilarious. So thank you to Mark Rhodes and Tom Rhodes. And thanks to Dusty Roads. Yeah, for such a great wrestler. Exactly. We have another roads Chuck, Lieutenant Rhodes, who's in a rock right now. Sure. Yeah. We haven't heard from him in a while. No. So, hey, send in an email, will you? Lieutenant Roads, let us know you're doing all right. If you know roads that we should be thanking, let us know. Maybe we'll thank them. There are roads all over the place, apparently. You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom and send it to stuffpodcast@howtofworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Want morehouseafworks? Check out our blog on the Housetofworks.com homepage, brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means 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 Kilgarif and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen. Today. You 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." | ||
d63d7dc0-3b0d-11eb-aa42-5fb0d3ff70c7 | What Will Farming 4.0 Look Like? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/what-will-farming-4-0-look-like | The human population is expected to increase by a couple billion people in the next 30 years and those who are paying attention are wondering exactly how we’ll feed all those extra mouths. Will going high tech or getting back to nature save us? | The human population is expected to increase by a couple billion people in the next 30 years and those who are paying attention are wondering exactly how we’ll feed all those extra mouths. Will going high tech or getting back to nature save us? | Tue, 23 Feb 2021 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=23, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=54, tm_isdst=0) | 46746310 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W, chuck Bryant. And Jerry's with us as well. And we all have a nice bit of hay sticking out of our teeth. Got a hat on. The derby doesn't quite fit right, but it's still a hat. And I'm wearing overalls with nothing underneath and no shoes and socks. Have I told you my Olin Mill story? No, I can't not. When I lost my two front teeth, my mom promptly took me to Owen Mills. And there is a picture in existence. I'll try and find it and put it on my instagram of me in front of, like, a lazy river scene or a lake or something. With overall shorts and cut off overalls, I guess. Nothing else on. No shirt, no shoes. Well, and, like, I have to see it. I feel like I had, like, a cane pole and maybe a straw hat. Jeez. Did they have the engraving and Stone Mountain as the background? No, thank goodness. It was straight up cosplay. It's very embarrassing. But I'll see if I can find that and throw it up on Chuck. The podcaster Instagram. You should, Chuck. I think that would really garner some likes. I'm putting a few old pictures up there every now and then. It's fun. That's very cute. So I guess you're saying we're talking about wearing nothing but overalls because we're talking about farming, right? Yeah. I mean, that picture basically, I learned all I needed to know about farming that day. Yes. Which is I'm not cut out for it. Not cut out for it? I am cut out to be photographed for money. Whoa. That was me doing my impression of you. Yeah. I didn't get paid. Yes. I guess that's the opposite happened. Your mom paid somebody to take pictures of you. Regardless, none of that really happens in farming. Maybe people running around with overalls on probably have something underneath the overalls. But for the most part, this is a gross misconception of what farming is. Especially now that I've done some research on the current state of farming. We're pretty far from the whole idea of people running around with hay in their mouths and wearing overalls and nothing but sure. It depends on who you are. Have you ever seen and I've talked about it before the documentary The Biggest Little Farm? Yeah, I think you have talked about that. I don't remember what episode it was in there. And we'll get to that. That's coming up on the last part of this episode about agro ecology. But those are people that are adherents of bringing it back to what farming used to be, which was ecologically sound, harmonious with nature, that kind of thing. Right. Which makes a tremendous amount of sense. But we'll see if that's even possible in the future. Because here's the thing. There's a huge boom in demand for agriculture that we are on the precipice of. Actually, I guess you could make a pretty good case that we're in the midst of it right now. By the year 2050, there's a predicted somewhere around nine to 10 billion. It's a pretty big gap, but let's say nine to 10 billion people are expected to be running around on planet Earth, right? Yeah. And all those people are going to need to be fed. But the thing is, we're not exactly sure how we're going to reach that increased demand because there was a study by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN that said that we're basically going to have to increase food production compared to 2007 levels by 70% to feed all those people. That's if we hit the low and the 9 billion in population by 2050. Yeah. And you mentioned agriculture. We're also talking meat and protein because not only is the population increasing, but income is on the rise worldwide, especially in developing countries. And as you are a developing country that gets a little more money in your pocket as individuals, you want to eat more meat and protein. So I think they said global meat consumption is going to rise by about 70% by 2050 as well. Yeah. And when you're talking about meat consumption, as far as agriculture goes, like, you're talking about agriculture times two, because not only do you have to use all those inputs to grow the cattle themselves, the livestock themselves, so you can eat them, you have to feed them to get them ready to be eaten. Right. So you have to grow the food to feed to the cattle that you're going to grow, that you're going to eventually eat. So there's a lot of agriculture that's going to have to be going on. But here's the thing. Agriculture has handled this before. There was a time you and I have talked about countless times, the Green Revolution back in the early mid 20th century. There are a lot of people saying we're not exactly sure that agriculture is going to be able to keep pace with the growing population. And we think probably about a billion people are going to starve. And that may have happened. We will never know. But we know that it didn't happen thanks to the Green Revolution that was hastened by scientists like Norman Borlog. Yeah, we've been talking about that guy for years. And the irony of the Green Revolution is today's terminology. You might think that has something to do with environmentally sound practices. It was kind of the opposite of that in a lot of ways. They meet green just like a lot of plants. It was really harmful to the environment. It did feed a lot of people. And there's a lot of mixed reviews on Yelp about the Green Revolution. I guess that's an easier way to say controversy, because what happened is a lot of the greenhouse gas emissions that we see in the world today come from food production. We've talked about methane coming from cow poets before. We've talked about a big problem. It's a real big problem. We've talked about deforestation, obviously, transportation, getting this food and transporting it, because the idea we kind of went away from the idea of local farms feeding regions into shipping food across the globe if we need to. Right. And that's just a lot of pollution. I think raising livestock and fish accounts for about 31% of agriculture's greenhouse emissions, with livestock being about 25% of that. Yeah, we've reached an inflection point that really resembles the last inflection point where, okay, we're about to have a big increase in population. We need to make sure that agriculture can keep up with food production to feed everybody, or else we're going to have big problems. But this time there's an added twist in that we know the last thing we did kind of wrecked the environment. So now we have to figure out, okay, how are we going to meet this challenge, this time without further wrecking the environment and then maybe even figuring out a way to help the environment through food production. That's kind of where we're at right now. And agriculture has gone through different iterations. And right now, supposedly we're in agriculture 30, and what everybody's trying to figure out is what comes next. What's agriculture? Four dot zero. Yes. 1.0 you say dot. Yeah. Okay. One point was from Neolithic to the 1920, so that was boy, that had a good long run, didn't it? Yeah, it's a good long stretch. Very good long stretch. But that included a lot of labor from human hands and animal hooves. 2.0 was that green revolution we were talking about. 3.0 was about ten or eleven years ago when big data kind of came in to help maximize yields. And they're saying like, 4.0 needs to start happening now and sort of is we're just not exactly sure what the final iteration is going to look like. Yeah. And a lot of the stuff that's going on in 30 is going to make an appearance in 4D. That's a way to say it. Some people, yeah, of course. Although it reminds me, have you watched Cobra Kai? We watched the first, like, four or five episodes and then we're like, I get it, I'm done. Yeah, same here. But the one where Johnny's handing out flyers for his new website, check out this cool website, httpolon cobra a period. C-O-M. They just spelled it out while he was handing out a flyer. But he says period. He didn't even say dot. That's really funny. Well, two period, three period. I like that better. That was great. Yeah, it was a great premise that they really pull off for a little while there. So now whenever you say, do you have a problem, Mr. Clark? Yeah, and I'll say, no mercy. No mercy. Yeah. Okay, that's the new response to that question. Okay. But you don't say it like that. You don't go, no mercy. Oh, you don't how till I say it. Director no mercy. Okay, let me try it. No mercy. Very intimidating. Thank you. Where were we? We were talking about what Ford Auto is going to look like. Yeah. Because here's the deal. Farmers themselves, the human beings, are getting older. Farmers over 65 years old outnumber those under 45 years old by two to one. Actually, a little more than two dot. One to one. No, those are colons, my friend. No, there's a dot. Two dot. Oh, man. This is going to happen. So one of the first kind of things that people think may happen and that we're already seeing some, is consolidation of farms. Instead of a lot of medium to small size farms, how about fewer really big farms? And that's already kind of been happening yeah. In a normal industry, let's say the kazoo manufacturing industry, if, like, the kazoo makers were way old and there weren't very many young kazoo makers, that wouldn't fare very well for the kazoo industry, but no one would really care. We wouldn't miss kazoos all that much would be okay. Farming does not really fall within that same category as kazoos. Like, we need food. So rather than farming just going away, they're just going to figure out how to consolidate it with fewer younger farmers with bigger farms under their belt. Right. Which if you think there are fewer farmers so you can solidate the farms, that makes sense. But you're like, you still need people because these farmers are getting older, and ostensibly farm hands are getting older as well. But here's where four period o comes in, is robots, as John Hodgman would say. Yeah. Oh, man. I didn't hear it in any other way every time I read it. Yeah, because there's a lot of inefficiencies in traditional farming with farmhands. Just one example is when you fertilize an area, you can fertilize like a plat, but you fertilize that whole plat. If there's a part of that plant that doesn't need fertilizing, it's probably going to get fertilized anyway just because they just run the fertilizer over that area. Right, exactly. That's just what is the most efficient. And as we'll see, that's a real problem. That's sad that that's the current way to do it. But that's conventional farming practices. You just fertilize the whole field and go on to do something else because there's a million other things that need to be done as well. But one of the things that's going to be kind of saved in that way by robots is they're going to take these different steps that are involved in farm work and kind of break them down into what's the word I'm looking for? Chuck. Oh, specialties. Yeah. So a robot specializes in a certain task or whatever, and because you'll have a bunch of different robots doing the same task, they'll be able to kind of give more personal, tailored care to the plant. So, like, some plants need fertilizer, those plants will get fertilizer. A plant doesn't need fertilizer, it's not going to get fertilizer. And that's going to save a lot of inputs is kind of what you talk about when you're in talking agriculture, which kind of is generally a good thing, not just financially, but when it comes to the environment, as we'll see. Yeah. And you think about a tractor that requires a human to drive that tractor. They already have tractors that can drive themselves with GPS accuracy involved, and that's been going on for a little while now. And the idea, I think is and some of these tractors are something called the Lettuce bot, which is kind of cool, where you basically have a tractor, at least that's sort of the current iteration. And on the back of that tractor is a big row of I mean, we call them robots. It's not like George Jetson type of stuff. A robot just means it's a mechanical, automated system. Right. They're not looking for a husband like Robo. So the Lettuce bot is pulled along behind the tractor and it's got just a big row of little robots that can do everything from custom fertilization to picking out a weed using the same technology that they use in facial recognition, like there's a ragweed or something. Let's get rid of just that weed. Instead of like, let's just spray the whole field with roundup or whatever. Right. And it's going to increase efficiencies. And I think that's the first iteration and what they're looking at in the future is instead of even a big tractor, that still costs a lot of money. Yeah. Like hundreds of thousands of dollars for a new tractor, I think it doesn't really dawn on city slickers how incredibly expensive farm equipment is. Yeah. Those big tractors, not like your sort of fun tractor. No, not a fun tractor. Sure. That's like 50 grand, who cares? But like a really big tractor. Yes, it's a lot of money. So I think the idea is at least what I saw is conceptual drawings of smaller robot tractors that are, I don't know, it looks like the size of a six foot folding table or something. Yeah. Just kind of going over like a row of lettuce. It's in charge of that one row, probably. Yeah. But what I wonder is, how expensive are those? And do you have to get 50 of those to equal one tractor? And how does it suss out financially? I mean, I'm sure that there's a maximum number that you would possibly need or else you're like, I have more than I can use. Right, and then you have a farm that doesn't make quite as much money as another farm, so they make due with half the number of robots and maybe they have to supplement that with humans or whatever. Or it takes longer for that to be done, or they can grow less lettuce. But I'm sure that from what I read, there's a price point where having robots is going to be financially way better than having to sink several hundred grand into a new tractor, even like, 150 grand for a used tractor. And then the other thing and this is really important, too number one, you don't need a human to drive these things, which frees the human up to do other things, or you don't have to pay the human anymore, so that's going to save you some money. And then secondly, if one of those robots breaks down, you can still work all the other rows. If the tractor breaks down, you're done. You have to wait until the tractor is fixed, and then all of that work has to wait. This is just one single, say, row that isn't getting attended to right then while that one robot is broken down. So that's a huge advantage right there. Yeah. And you can just tell robot number two to scoot over and cover the ground that robot number one is missing. Exactly. And he's like, I got to pull a double, so shut up. You're a machine. You can't talk. The other thing robots can potentially do is harvest. Harvesting is very labor intensive, and it's also kind of inefficient, especially when it comes to something like maybe like strawberries, which you harvest one time during the year, and there's still a little bit of leeway in there. It's not an exact science in that some of those plants will have ripe fruit before you go to harvest, and it will rot and drop off. Some of them may need to wait a little bit and ripen afterward. So you're wasting a lot of fruit there on the ground. And robot harvesters would just constantly kind of patrol these rows of plants and harvest the berries when they're ready to be harvested, right? Which would make a lot more money for the farmers who are growing that stuff. It's pretty awesome. And then as we kind of evolve further and further along in our technology and we finally reach the capability of nanotechnology, one of the things that they are hoping that nanobots, which are currently just hypothetical robots on the scale of a string into DNA or an atom or something, they'll be able to manipulate matter on that scale. So what they're hoping for is, with agriculture, nanobots will eventually be able to deliver nutrients directly to the roots of a plant, like right when it needs it. Not from some human being like, hey, nanobots, go take this nutrient, this little bit of nitrogen, over to that plant right there. All of this stuff will be guided and directed by computers that are paying attention to the plants through sensors and then directing the nanobots to go take this nutrient to this particular plant because it needs it right now. And this kind of attention, this tailored, individualized attention, is what's called precision farming. And that seems to be something that's looming on the horizon that will be a big part of for periodo. Yeah, I think the nano is like serious future farming when we get to that point. But a lot of this stuff is on the imminent horizon. Nutrient waste is a really big deal and a big problem. I think about 60% of fertilizer that you apply to a field is lost to run off. So there's a big cost factor there that you're losing, and it just wreaks havoc on watersheds that are nearby, which we talked about a little bit in the watershed episode. And fertilizer production and then transporting that where you need it is a big part of CO2 emissions. I think five to 11 are emitted through the lifecycle of 1 kegger type of keg, of that fertilizer man keg stand, 1 fertilizer. And once you fertilize the plant, it gets in that soil, and these microbes have to convert that fertilizer into something that's useful. And when it does that, it emits N 20 nitrous oxide. And that's number three behind CO2. And methane is a big problem. Gas. Right. So there's a lot to be saved by cutting down on that. 60% of waste fertilizer. A lot of stuff would be helped by that. And the more you can precisely tailor agriculture, the less waste you're going to have. And I would say that for anybody who's interested in hearing how colossally wrong deploying nanobots into cropland could go, I would direct you to my ten part series, the End of the World with Josh Clarke, specifically the AI episode. It's pretty good, kind of eye opening. I think that's my favorite one, actually. Oh, thanks, Chuck. All right, so let's take a break and we'll come back and talk about big data right after this. Okay, we're back, and we're talking about Chuck three period o, which was already or is already using a lot of data. We talked about the GPS guided tractors that have been around for a while. They do use things like drones and satellites to get, like, literal big pictures of farms that can be really useful in determining, like, areas that are patchy or dry or hey, this looks ready for harvest, but they're going to bring LiDAR into the mix, which is something I know we've talked about before. L-I-D-A-R. When did we talk about that? I don't know. It's used most famously for mapping dense jungled ruins. Like, I was reading about it in this book called The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston, which I actually heard about and researching our episode on Fen treasure, because Douglas Preston was the friend of Forest Fenn who vouched for having seen the treasure in person before. I know that closet. Yeah. And I was like, oh, that book sounds pretty interesting. I went and read it. And it's really interesting. But he talks a lot about LiDAR being used to map these ruins that have been overgrown by jungle that you normally would never be able to see overhead. But the LiDAR is able to basically get beams of lasers through the breaks and, like, leaves and all that in the canopy to hit the ground below and then bounce back up. And so you get a picture of the understory, too, which would come in handy big time for crops, especially tall crops that are grown closely together, like, say, corn. Right? So you bundle all that together in a handy little app for Mr. Future Farmer and Mrs. Future Farmer or Ms. Future Farmer Or Ms. Future Farmer Or Doctor future Farmer Or future Farmer they or they the future farmers. Right. That's great. I think we covered all the bases, I think. So you have an app there, and machine learning becomes more intelligent. The Internet of Things kind of gets a little more robust. And then you have farmers that don't have to constantly make these tiny little decisions, these micro decisions that they have to make every day about keeping their farm healthy. They can kind of rely on this AI technology to figure it out and do it for them. And I guess they can spend their time building future weapons to fight the eventual robot uprising. That's right. But think about it. All this stuff is just using things that are popping up in other sectors right now, machine learning sensors that are connected to the Internet of Things, and then integration of all this stuff to oversee this so that the farmer doesn't have to make these decisions. And when you combine all this stuff together, you have, like, a farm that could be humming along, just an absolute peak performance with minimal inputs that are delivered at just the right time and just the right amount, with minimal waste, with the farmer having to make minimal decisions. And if you take this to its eventual conclusion, I mean, there won't be, like, young farmers running in huge farms. It will be like somebody who owns the farm. But really, it's like an AI that's overseeing the entire farm, communicating with everything through the Internet of Things, directing this nanobot over there, this lettuce bot over here. And then potentially, as we grow as an advanced society, there may just be one AI that we rely on to run all the farms everywhere around the world and then handle distribution and all of that stuff. So, I don't know, maybe that's agriculture, $5. Who knows? Maybe we'll never get there. There's some people that certainly hope that's not the direction we go, but we'll talk about them in a little bit. Yeah, like, if you're screaming right now how awful this sounds, we'll get to you later. Don't worry. Another part of 4.0 is trying to grow crops where it doesn't seem like you should be able to grow crops. Yeah, the desert is obviously one of those places. Saudis are already investing a lot in trying to figure out the genomic codes or genomic. Genomic. I think both work. One seems British. Well, it's a genome, so it's probably genomic. Genomic. That's how the British would say the genomic codes. Yeah, these plants that can withstand the desert conditions and figure out how to grow stuff there. And this is kind of where we wander gently into GMOs, which I think we have been dodging this one as a full topic for a while. We need to do it. We should at some point, because it is very controversial. It has a bad rap, some people say. Rightfully so, it has a bad rap. I think about 35% of Americans say they think GMOs are safe to eat, which is pretty decent minority there. Science says that they are safe to eat, but for all the sort of bluster about GMOs, they haven't really done a lot with GMOs yet, except for a few little kind of dirty, underhanded things. Well, yeah, like creating patented seeds that grow plants that don't produce more seeds. So farmers are forced to buy seeds every single year. Yeah, that was a big one. There's another one that only responds, or responds best to a specific brand of pesticide. So you have to buy that brand of pesticide, which happens to be manufactured by the same company that owns the patent on the plant. Kind of shady stuff like that. The thing is, it's not like that's all they've tried to do. They've also tried to have breakthroughs in plants that can withstand horrible droughts and they haven't been able to break through in that sense. Or plants that produce double the yield with minimal inputs. They haven't had that breakthrough. That doesn't mean they're not going to break through that there won't be huge advances in plant science. But even if we do reach that point, there's going to have to also be like a public information campaign that basically says, this stuff will not mutate your children. It's safe to eat, it won't make you glow. And there is definitely an enormous amount of fear of science, from what I can tell, involved in GMOs. I haven't done the research yet, so my opinion might change when we actually do the episode. But from the minimal research I did on it, it seems like a fear of science. And as far as science is concerned, everything we know about it, it's safe to eat. I don't know. That will remain to be seen. Let me do some more research first before you quote me on that. Yeah, and I think part of the bad rep too, is just like we were talking about the couple of three uses so far that have allowed certain companies to really take advantage of the situation. Let's just see. Yeah, it's not like giant mega corporations have garnered a lot of trust from the general public over the years and in fact, have squandered it pretty efficiently, actually. So seawater farming is another thing on the horizon, and there are a couple of iterations of that, one of which is actually using seawater to farm. And when we're not talking about spraying plants, obviously, we're talking, like, farming shrimp, things that like seawater. Why isn't this working? It's like idiocracy where they were using gatorade to water the plant. Yeah, like growing shrimp. Farming shrimp, because that protein demand that we were talking about. As developing nations get more money and they're going to want more shrimp, I'll eat more shrimp. Remember when you were allergic to shrimp? Yes. And I was like, I am not going to spend the rest of my life allergic to shrimp. And you figured it out sort of, right? I handled it. There's a Japanese snack called shrimp chips, and they're like little fried kind of like French fries, but they're crispy chips, and they're dusted with shrimp flavoring that include shrimp and immunotherapied or therapies myself. I immunized myself to them to shrimp so that I could eat them again. And it worked. You know, we should quickly thank our scallop buddy. Oh, I think that's a great idea, man, since we're on huge, huge thanks to our pal tog Braun, who just hooked us up, man. I mean, hooked us up with some amazing scallops from Maine. Yes, fresh ones. They had been in the water, like, the day before we got them, I believe, right? Yes, it was very fresh. And I think her boat is the down east day boat out of Maine. That's her company, for sure. Yeah. But you can order this stuff, and you can get the best scallops in the world sent right to your door very quickly. And boy, were they good. I mean, they were so fresh. Dude, that the first 2317 scallops I ate were raw. I ate them raw. They were amazing. Yeah, it's really good. So I strongly recommend them, too. Hats off. Thanks a lot, Toad. I'm not the biggest, raw, scala person, but there was a lot of butter and garlic involved in my CNG. Yeah, and they cooked up so nicely, didn't they? Perfectly. Yeah. Thanks for that diversion since we were talking shellfish. But yeah, farming shrimp for seawater farming. And another is where they actually have greenhouses built that will use seawater that evaporates the salt out of it into fresh water. They can sell that salt, which is great, and then have that great, delicious freshwater to irrigate their crops. Right. And then land use is a big problem, too. A lot of people are, like, running out of land. We need it to live on and do other stuff on. Some people said, well, how about this? We'll just grow stuff indoors, vertically, rather than outdoors horizontally. Yeah. I actually have a friend who's engaged in this endeavor up in Jersey. He broke his teeth. My. Friend Matt, he broke his teeth. Not literally, but he gained experience working on space lettuce for NASA. He cut his teeth, right? I was like, It doesn't sound right. He cut his teeth. And he's an expert in light spectrums, like artificial light spectrums to grow plants in space. It's pretty awesome. Yeah, it's amazing. Yes. So, hey, Matt, should we take another break and then talk about the other side of the coin here? Hold on. Let me think. Yes. We'll be right back. All right, so if we were talking about all the benefits of consolidation of farms, bigger farms, automation of farms, future farming, there is another group of people that have been screaming for years. We don't want to go that way. We should go back to the neat not within necessary, but we should go back to one period and practice Agroecology. And that's what that documentary I was talking about, the biggest little farm, these people that moved from La. To very impossibly or I guess and probably start their own farm where everything lives in harmony. There's livestock and there's wild animals and there's pests that they say are beneficial that they let live. And they really have tried to figure out this idea that you can have a small farm that feeds people locally with giving people fresh food and not transporting it halfway across the country or the world. And that is the way forward, not what we're heading toward with 4.0. Yeah. People who are proponents of Agro ecology are looking at the other proposals for fort auto, and they're like, you're talking about genetically modifying plants so you can grow them in the desert. Do you really not see that we've really lost our way here. Let's figure out something else. And they're saying, like, look, we've really tried to we tried this green revolution, which basically a good definition, I saw, for the green revolution is where you take ecosystem services, which is like natural pest control, like predatory insects or the natural nutrient cycle, and you manipulate them. You create an artificial version of it that you can control a lot more easily, and you use the heck out of it to grow the heck out of some plants. That's the green revolution. They're like, we tried this. It worked for a little while, but now we know for sure that it is really harmful to the environment. So we need to dial that back, not double down on it. And that's where there's a tension. Now there's this split. We've reached a fork in the road, and we're like, which way do we go? Do we just really keep hammering this traditional farming because we know that we can coax enough food to feed some people or 10 billion people? Or do we say, no, we actually need to go the Agroecology route because we have to take into account basically just as much as our ability to feed 10 billion people. The idea that we're not harming the earth with our agricultural practices. That's the split that we're looking at right now while we're trying to figure out what four dot o is going to be. Yeah, and it seems like Emily is way into this stuff with agro ecology for years now. And it seems like it's really all about the soil and the devastating effects on the actual soil that I guess the green revolution has caused by all that manipulation. And she has made an effort just in our little backyard over the past, whatever, how long we've been here? 14 years to reclaim that soil and to make it good soil again. That's awesome. We've got great soil now. And it takes a long time because so much damage is done over so many years. It's not the kind of thing where you can just be like, alright, we're going to stop doing that and then the soil is going to be great again. Right. It takes many years of really caring for that soil to get it back where it began or as close to it as possible. Yeah. And in some cases too, when you're talking about what conventional and agriculture does to the soil, as far as crop production is concerned, it's never going to get okay again. It's never going to come back. And so there's a process in conventional agriculture where you use up a plot of land and you move on to the next one. And when you run out of land, you bring more crop land online into the food production sector. And that's what you do. You use up land until you have to replace it by taking over more land. That's the current iteration. Agrocology is like, you don't have to do that. If you just treat the soil like Emily, this is their motto, it's going to be all good. You don't have to keep replacing land with more land because you don't use up the land. You actually leave the land better off than it was before you started using it. That to me is the thing that just makes my eyes pop open and my heart just swell. For agro ecology is like you're actually improving the land. And there have been studies, I ran across a study of a place called White Oak Pastures down in, I can't remember where it is, it's like south central Georgia, not too far from Albany. And they've hired independent researchers to come in and look at the environmental impact of what they do, which is regenerative grazing. And the study turned up findings that literally made international news. That's how eye opening what they found was. Yeah, so just a little backstory, man, I knew I was going to do that. Regenerative grazing is a very simple premise. Basically, don't let your livestock eat all the grass down to the nub where it will probably die, and then just move them onto another area to do the same thing. Move them more often, they won't eat down to the nubs, those plants and those grasses will grow back even better, probably. And like you said, you won't be using up the land. So this study, they wanted to compare the CO2 cost of industrial beef production, which is something that we've talked about before, but traditional grazing emits, and this is just astounding and awful, emits \u00a333 of CO2 to raise a single pound of meat. It's not nuts. It's nuts. So you go to plant based meat, like a beyond situation, which I still haven't tried. I want to try that. That's good. Impossible and beyond are both good. All right, so these meat alternatives made from plants, they really reduce that to about three and a half to \u00a34 of CO2 for a single pound. But at white oak, that's good. You're on the right track, but white oak is actually sequestering CO2. It's amazing. Yeah. So if meat alternatives emit about three and a half kilograms, or three and a half pounds of co, 2 meat alternative whiteout pesters is raising beef like actual beef. And when they do, they are sinking sequestering \u00a33.5 of CO2 for every pound of beef that's produced. It's like having solar power and creating more energy than you use. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's insane. These findings were and they've been looked at and studied and looked at again, and everybody's like, this can't make sense. Apparently, some of the meat alternative companies out there were like, this is all wrong, this can't be right. And they were like, no, it's actually right. Regenerative grazing produces livestock that actually capture carbon and store it's insane. What are you doing? We're just moving the cows a little more. Yeah, that's basically it. And then they move into another meadow and like, when it's belly high, and then they do it again. Here's the thing. The reason that everybody's not doing this already is because it's way more expensive to regeneratively graze. If you look at white oak pastures, you can order their stuff online. It's very expensive. It's not ridiculously expensive, like long established mail order beef companies that are three or four times the price. You know what I mean? Yeah, it does sound gross, mail order beef, but some of those companies are way more expensive. But it's still more than you're going to go pay if you just go to the grocery store and get whatever beef they have. But in buying that, if you can afford it, you're actually helping to save the earth. It's pretty impressive stuff. Well, yeah, and that also helps solve the issue if you need to feed, however, 9 billion people. But in the next 30 years, one of the big issues is, like, do we even have enough land to do that? Well, yeah, dummies. We might if we don't just use up land and move on to new land. Because that's a big criticism of regenerative grazing, is it requires 2.5 times the land that conventional grazing does, which is why it's so much more expensive. But, yeah, if you're not using up the land and having to bring more land in this crop land, then that issue might not actually exist. That might not be a problem. Right? Yeah. Pretty impressive. Super impressive. I think the last thing here as far as future farming goes, is we need to hit on food waste, which is, I mean, if they could reduce food waste by 30%, that would be a game changer for feeding the world, I think right now, it takes a landmass larger than China to grow food that goes uneaten, ultimately uneaten, the size of China. It's hard to even talk about without getting super upset. So food waste also needs to be an episode that we have to do because it is just so mind boggling. But from what I saw, up to 50% of the food that America produces is thrown away, or that Americans buy, maybe. I'm not quite sure. But 50% in America, about 30% to 50% in the world overall, a ton of water is wasted. I saw as much as a quarter of the world's water is wasted through this wasted food or fresh water intake. And if you can just dial back a significant portion of that food waste, not only are you going to save a lot of money and a lot of environmental harm, you're going to feed a lot of people. Because, like you said earlier, our food supply, our food chain is globally interconnected. So we make enough food already for a lot of people, probably everybody. It's just some people go hungry because we waste so much food and we're terrible at distributing it. Equitably. If we can figure that out, we may not have a problem at all. And it's possible that agroecological farming could supply food for 10 billion people. That's a big one. There are studies underway right now to figure out just what kind of gap we're talking about between, say, organic or agro ecological crop yields and conventional crop yields. And for a long time, it's like, yeah, you just get way more food from conventional farming. And some people are actually doing the studies and they're finding, like, yeah, that's true in some cases, not true in other cases. And if we can quantify exactly what the gap is, we can figure out how to close that gap, and then, yeah, we can just use agro ecology. Yeah. And I think the fork in the road where we are. Hopefully what it'll look like is not a hard left turn or a hard right turn. But maybe a gentle turn on both sides that eventually come back together down the road where there's a mix of both. Where there is precision farming used in agroecology. Because I suppose there are some really back to basics agroecological farmers that want to have an oxen pulling a plow. The Amish. Yeah, probably just them. Point is, they're into it, man. I mean, they don't mind the idea of a robot and precision weeding and stuff like that. It's these massive farms, and all this waste is what they're trying to combat. So hopefully there can be a marriage and that can be the best way forward. Yeah, that's what I'm hoping to. Pretty cool stuff, man. Who knew? Great. I love it. And we got two episode ideas out of it, so there you go. If you want to know more about the future of farming, just start reading about it. There's a lot of really interesting stuff out there. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. This is kind of fitting, actually. This is about hydrology. Hey, guys. I have a PhD in hydrology and teach hydrology and water resources at a university. One of the misconceptions I'm constantly battling in my courses is that water is a renewable resource, which is something we said in the episode on hydropower, because it's only renewable if we use it as such. I often use money analogies to teach this point to my students. Imagine your local hydrologic water balance is like having a rather large inheritance, and you are unable to ever work again or make money as long as you live off the interest. You and your family can live forever without ever working. But if you spend the principal, you'll eventually run out of money. It's the same with water. If you only use the renewable water, you won't have an issue, as Josh noted. But if you lower lake levels, deplete groundwater, melt ice caps, you will eventually run out of renewable water. You might ask, but it'll just rain again, right? And that's true, but not enough to refill the pot or the interest to refill the bank account. The money isn't gone. It's just in someone else's pocket. Similarly, the water isn't gone. It's just in someone else's watershed. We're most likely the salty oceans, which we can't drink. That is Dr. Pete Whittington, associate professor at Brandon University. Dr. Pete. Dr. Pete. Dr. Pete. Sounds like one of those people who still continue to insist that climate change is real even though it's cold outside Marty pants. I guess, yeah. Well, thanks a lot, Doctor Pete. We appreciate being sent straight. Thank you. And that is an excellent point. Yeah, I didn't mean to get across this idea that there's water everywhere and we don't need to worry about water. No, I think you got it mostly right, he said. Good. I love hearing that. So you got anything else from Dr. Pete? Nothing else. Okay, well then everybody, if you want to get in touch with us, like Dr. Pete did, you can send us an email. Send it off to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
c5c81266-5460-11e8-b38c-3b17504ebc5d | Selects: How Feng Shui Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-how-feng-shui-works | Feng Shui is an Asian concept that strives to unlock your chi by how your home or office is arranged. Or at least that's the simplified "Western" version. It's a little more complicated than that in reality. We'll unlock your chi by explaining how feng shui works in this classic episode. | Feng Shui is an Asian concept that strives to unlock your chi by how your home or office is arranged. Or at least that's the simplified "Western" version. It's a little more complicated than that in reality. We'll unlock your chi by explaining how feng shui works in this classic episode. | Sat, 13 Nov 2021 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=13, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=317, tm_isdst=0) | 39244775 | audio/mpeg | "Hi, everybody. I hope your couch is in the right place, and I hope the door is facing the right direction. And I hope everything in your house is set up exactly how it should be to bring you rate peace and relaxation tranquility. Because with the show from February 10, 2015, we will tell you all about the ins and outs of feng shui from our episode, how feng shui Works. It was a good one, and I think we got it mostly right, which is not bad for us. So please enjoy it all over again. 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 Jerry's over there. So it's the stuff you should know. Our chi is flowing, baby. Chi or key. Yeah, there's a lot of different pronunciations that are going to happen today. Well, supposedly it's just a different spelling, same pronunciation. Q I and C-H-I are both cheap. Yes. Unless they're saying chi for chi, in which case it's something totally different. Yeah, that would be the Greek letter. Correct. That means energy. Are we going to pronounce this feng shui? I usually say feng shui. Feng shui, but it could go either way. I mean, it depends if it's Mandarin that we're speaking. Chuck yeah, we should say feng shui. Feng shui, I guess. I usually say it in Mandarin. Feng shui. Okay. If we're speaking in Cantonese, we would say Fong sui. Okay. So I guess we're going to go with the Mandarin. All right, great. Is that okay with you? Yeah. And I even looked up because I've always said taoism. Yeah, that's right. Right. Well, a lot of people say there's been some confusion, so I actually looked it up. And this author, Derek Lann, had a nice little thing. The misconception, he says is that the first letter in Ta o tao is an approximation of a Chinese sound that does not have an exact English equivalent, because apparently in England, I think they say taoism. Okay. But he says that's actually not true. There is an equivalent, and it is a D. And he said the misconception was created by an author who had no understanding of Chinese, and that was spread around. He did not name the author, but apparently he had high academic standing, jonathan Franzen. And so he said it is taoism if you're speaking in English, and that this author has spread a mistruth that there is no real translation. I see. So that was Ki feng shui. Nice. There you go. That was the glossary of this episode, pretty much. So let's talk about chi first. Man okay. Because feng shui is the practice of allowing chi to flow in the best possible way. And qi is the Chinese concept of the energy that pervades and permeates the universe. That's right. Including us. And it is linked to taoism and goes all the way back to 6th century BC. And like you said, it's supposedly something that can't even be described in language. Right. So why even try? But you did a pretty good job, I think. Thanks. For someone who supposedly is not supposed to be able to do that, the thing is well, I'm obviously an incredible person. The thing is this energy can be blocked, it can fall out of balance. It's not self correcting, necessarily. Sometimes it needs help. That's right. And so when we inhabit an area, build a home, a community palace, what have you, we need to build it in such a way that it's not going to block this chi or it's not going to throw things out of balance because we will be impacted negatively if that happens. That's right. Because in the east. There is a long held belief that the space we inhabit is not just the space we live in. But we are actually connected to that spiritually and with our energy and the way you lay out your home and the way you build. Like even where you place your home on your property and the way you align it with the surrounding nature. It's actually a very important part of it. Right. That is feng shui, which is translated literally as wind and water. Right. Pretty neat. A lot of people in the west have jumped on this train since the 1980s. It's a very popular thing to do, often misguided attempts. As far as traditional feng shui, well, it's like a completely different school. Yeah. Basically. Entirely. Yeah. But a lot of people in the west also will poopoo this, and a lot of people in the east poopoo it. Now, apparently only about a third of people in modern China even believe it. Okay. Is a thing. Well, Chairman Mao rooted it out during the Cultural Revolution. Yeah. I mean, it's not illegal to practice it. It is illegal, though, to start a business in modern China where you say that you're doing feng shui. Got you. But they can't really like well, I guess they could outlaw the practice. They outlaw lots of stuff. Yeah. From what I've been told. But apparently the younger generation, it's even less than a third. It's just kind of going the way of the dodo. Got you. But hey, we picked up on it in California and ran with it. Yeah. Especially in the 80s. Yeah, sure, man, that was a super 80s thing. But a lot of people poopoo it, though, as they do a lot of things in the east, and saying, this is just a bunch of superstitious govity Cook there is no such thing as an energy flowing through your house or your body that needs to be aligned. So we're just going to explain it to you exactly. So just save your emails, people. So what's interesting about feng shui initially is that not just China, but also India lay claim to its origins, actually. That's right. I remember. I think you did a pretty good job defining it. But it's bear saying again, feng shui is this practice of arranging your abode, your life, your workspace, in a way that allows qi to flow freely. That's right. Okay. And there's evidence, I think, back 3000 years ago no, sorry, 5500 years ago. So about 3500 BCE. There is evidence of what the Indians call Bastu Shastra, which is basically a translation of building science, which is that you should follow certain practices, use certain geometries to allow energy to flow so that you can prosper and not be harmed negatively. Yes. And this has been seen many times. I read a great article, I think it was history today, by a guy named Anthony Avenue called Bringing the Sky Down to Earth with basically the idea that many cities through history have been built with this concept in mind that the gods bringing the gods down to your city, like he's a stonehenge. Beijing, Washington DC. And this place in Mexico that I will pronounce as Theoti Huacon. I don't know if that's right. I think it is. It's like in Mayan, ancient Mayan City, and they all have the same philosophy in mind, which is apparently, if you go to Beijing, it's very famous for its layout, as is DC. You can stand in Tiananmen Square and you can draw a straight line up the bell and drum towers straight through to the Monument to the People's Heroes, to the mausoleum of Mao Zedong on a perfect north south axis. Like everything is planned out. And this is I'm not saying Washington DC. Was necessarily feng shuaid, and I know that you shouldn't use that as a verb, but I'm going to. It works. But it's the idea like stonehenge, that these cities are aligned cosmically somehow with the stars in mind. And it can be as simple as the entrance to the dwelling or the city or the burial mound or temple or stonehenge, whatever is aligned so that the sun comes right up through it on the winter solstice thing. That is the basis of feng shui. And it does show up in other cultures across time. Yeah. One of the famous cities that was laid out, according to this Indian version of it, Vastu Shastra, is Angkor Wat. Really? In Cambodia. Very famous. Temple. Those were built in, I think, the 13th century Ce. So it's not evidence that the Indians were first, but there is evidence elsewhere that there were Indian cities and buildings planned out according to these. Yeah. And the idea was that a couple of thousand years later, some Indian monks, hindu monks, made their way into maybe Tibet or Mongolia or China sure. And started spreading the vasu shastra. And that's when China got their hands on it and turned it into what we now recognize as feng shui. That's one interpretation of the origin of the whole thing. Yeah. And either way, what both of them are doing is looking and taking into account the five elements earth, water, fire, air and space, and how they affect your pad or your city, like you said, or community or temple. And some people might say, well, you might want to call it feng shui, but I'm just building a house, and I think we've got this lovely mountain view, and I like the sunrise to come up through my kitchen because I like a bright kitchen. So that's how I'm going to build my house. People that practice feng shui would say, Brother, that's feng shui. They say, TS, that's feng shui. They say, no, it's just how I like to build my house. And they say, no, that's feng shui. Yeah. And then they fight. That's right. The leg wrestle for domination. So that, though, would be more Western feng shui. And we'll get into it. But basically the distinction between Western feng shui, 80s feng shui and classic feng shui is the amount of scientific formula put into it. Okay. The amount of calculations, at least that are put into it, the amount of thought. It's like Western feng shui is feng shui light, and not even li G-H-T like L-I-T-E like that kind of 80s light. Yeah. Well, we might as well talk about the schools then. That's a great segue. Before we do, though, sorry to interrupt the segway, because it was pretty good. Yeah. We should say that most historians now believe that it was actually China that came up with first and not India. Yeah. The evidence is just earlier for the idea that it originated with burials in China. Got you, you buried people a certain way, and you built the burial grounds in a certain way, according to feng shui. So what you're saying is they leg wrestled, they won the leg wrestle. Very good. So the different schools, there are a lot of variations, but the three main categories are the Form School, which was from southern China, and that is heavily based on the environment. Like we were talking about classic feng shui. It's the oldest form, and that's when you're talking about and back then it was practical because what they were trying to do is build a safe place for your house to be. Right. So maybe you set your house up with a wind block at the mountains with that landscape that slopes, or the water flowing down to you is super important. You may want to open your house up to that. Yeah, but it was practical, though, right? Exactly. And another practical way of figuring out where to put your house is found in the Compass School. That one just forget about it with me. That's the one I understand the most. Really? This one makes the most sense to me. Yeah, because it's math and you're like weird like that. Well, maybe a little bit, but basically what this says is it's kind of like the forum School, where you're looking for different features of the landscape to most benefit, where to build your house. Sure. But this is using that same kind of thought process, but aligning it with magnetism and the stars, too. Right, right. Well, you're using the stars to determine magnetism, like which way is north and south and that kind of thing. Sure. But it does combine some math, Chinese astrology, and then feng shui together, and you get what's called the Compass School, which is also very frequently known as traditional feng shui. And it includes a lot of detailed research to figure out exactly what you're supposed to do, where your house is supposed to be facing, if it is facing a certain way, what you can do to kind of correct it. There's just a ton of thought and calculation put into what we'll learn later is called the Bogua Map. Yeah. So that's mostly the traditional school is the Compass School, and it's based on the idea that magnetism dictates which way your whole jam should be facing and oriented. Okay. And I think to the north is the right way. That's the right way, yeah. Where as far as your entryway? Yes. Okay. And then we have what the Westerners have latched onto. The Black Hat section. Isn't that dominant? It does. Or the black sect esoteric Buddhism feng shui, which was founded by Professor Thomas Lynn Yun, who was known and believed to be an enlightened man. And he basically came to the west and founded this sect to feng shui, and it blew up. And Westerners love this one because it's the one that most easily translates to an HGTV show. Right. Yeah. You know, like, put this plant there, put a fountain there, put your door here and paint it this color. Right. And you're going to be wealthy and successful. Don't put this there, don't put that there. It's a lot of object placement, so it's easy for us dummies over here to understand. It's basically interior design, pretty much. So we'll talk a little more about the distinction and then what some of the commonalities they have are right after this. So, chuck, the black hat school. It's hilarious to me. Yeah. Like, why would you call it that? I don't know. I'm sure there was a great reason I couldn't find it anywhere. What I found instead is that most people call it Western feng shui. Sure. And a lot of feng shui practitioners poopoo Western, they're like, this is some perversion of an interpretation of feng shui. Yeah. It's Americanized, and it's taught by people who don't even necessarily aren't feng shui masters, even though if they can set up a website and say, pay me $1,000, I'll come and tell you where to put your plans. Exactly. But Thomas Lin Yoon and his followers say, no, we hit the basics. Like yeah, definitely. Traditional feng shui is very detailed, very mathematically oriented, but we're still getting the same point across and coming to the same conclusions in just an easier corner cutting way. That's right. Why go to all the trouble if you can get the same results? What's more Western than that? Yeah, good point. So, should we talk about the five elements a little bit? I guess. Yeah. Like I said, there is earth, fire, metal, water and wood. And these are the phases through which the energy or the key moves. And I think this article said it very well. It's like a sort of a game of rock, paper, scissors. If you look at a creative or productive way in which these elements can interact, you have wood producing fire. Right. Makes sense. Fire produces earth, as in ash. Sure. Earth produces metal, metal produces water, water produces wood. Metal producing water. Don't get that one. All the rest of them made sense. My refrigerator is metal and it has a water dispenser in the door. There you have it. Yeah. And then you have the destructive. This is when it's bad chi. And if you look at the little illustration on how stuff works, on the first one, you have this great circle of arrows and it's just lovely. And this other one has a nasty bunch of arrows just laying all over one another and it's just a big mess. Yeah. Like wood burdens earth. Yeah. Nobody wants that. Water doused fire. That's a clear one. Sure. Metal chops wood. Yes, it does. So the interaction between these elements in your house or the way you arrange your house will determine whether these phases of chi are destructive or productive in their interactions together. Sure. And if you have too much of one thing, you need to balance it out with something else. Productively. Exactly. The other two for destructive are fire melts metal and earth blocks water like a dam. You don't want a dam. You want that water flowing, baby. Right. You forgot Hulk Smash. Was that the other one? Yeah, the final one. Hulk Smash all and then the yin yang. We can't go any further without mentioning that. No, it's basically a really clever conception of chi. Yeah, the opposite states of chic. Light and dark, night and day, young and old, man, woman. Sure. And there's actually a way that it's supposed to be properly represented. The white is supposed to be on top, because the white represents impart heat. And the idea is that heat rises, but they're both constantly in motion. But if you ever see a yin and yang symbol displayed, the lighter one should be on top. That's right. And not only heat for the white, but masculinity and spirit and hardness and activity. Where it's Yang, by the way. Yeah, we didn't put that out. And it's not yang yang, by the way. No, I used to say it that way. I think everybody did it. Sure. At some point. Yeah. I quit in my early 40s. It's a yin and yang yes. The yin is femininity matter, nighttime, coldness softness passivity. And as long as you want those things balanced and the way they just fit together in that little circle, man, it's just like it's pleasing to the eye. And I think that's kind of says it all right. It just looks nice. It's not jagged. It's like two people just cuddling up sure. In the form of a tattoo. You wish you hadn't gotten that's right. With some maybe Chinese characters that you don't know what they mean any longer. Well, I guess we're at the bagua, right? Yeah. So it made sense to me. Right. Remember, what we're dealing with here is chi. Chi flows through the five elements, and you deal with the five elements in your house. To figure out where in your house you need a little more of one element than another, you have to construct a bogua map. Yeah. Like, this is where the rubber meets the road. We've been talking in esoteric terms, but if you're like, Great, dudes, what does this mean for my freaking living room? Right. This is what it means for your freaking living room. Yeah. And the Bogua map is based on boxes, squares. They are the basic units of feng shui. Yeah. Nine squares, three x three. Right. And you take those squares, and somehow this is really clever, too, but even though there are nine squares, you can take them and turn them into a hexagon. If you take the center square and convert that into, well, the center, and then the eight boxes around it become eight sides of a hexagon. If you shave off a little here or there yes. And all of a sudden, what you have is a bagwa. Yeah. And they can represent color as well as these elements, as well as for the actual map that you're going to use for laying out your home aspects of your life, like career and wealth and prosperity and love and marriage and things like that. Right. So there's multiple meanings. And also, if you've seen the TV show Lost, they totally ripped it off with the Dharma Collective symbol. It is just that is nothing more than the bagwa grid with the YinYang in the center. Right. And the yuan yang is frequently represented in the center. It's a yellow, correct? Yes. Yellow is the center of the Bagwa map, which is actually the center of this nine squared box called the Loshe square. And in each of the different boxes, there is a static representation. So this is what you need to know about the Bagwa map. It is a hexagon that the placement is always the same. What you do is you take your Bagwa map and you oriented a certain way over your house, over your actual house or the room in your house or something like that, and that's what changes. So if you look at the Bogua square, the yellow is always center, and then black which represents water and career, is always at the bottom. Okay. Yeah. Aka supposed to be the entrance to that room or your home. Okay, exactly. Yeah. So, yeah, it's not necessarily always at the bottom. It's always at the entrance. Well, you place the bottom at the entrance. So if I were to walk into my house, you can either visualize it, or you can literally draw this square. You want the bottom, which is the bottom. Center is career or water. Bottom right is helpful people in travel. Bottom left is knowledge and self cultivation. You just want to find out where your front door is. In my case, mine is pretty much in the center of my home, which would be Career, but it could fall if your door is on your left, it would fall under Knowledge and Self Cultivation. So it's not like you move the map over to help yourself out. Like, where your door is is where it is. You can move it if you want. Yeah, you could move your door, but basically the map is just supposed to be static. Okay. So and it's static. Like you said, it's oriented with the black on the entrance. Right. No matter where the entrance is on, the black is there. Yeah. So when you orient your black box onto your entrance, what you're doing then is using your bogua map to show you how you need to change your house in order to maximize the flow of chi through it. Yeah, it's basically and by the way, you shouldn't supposedly use any additions built. You should do those separately. Okay. So if your living room has a big new addition to the left, you shouldn't even include that. So basically what you're doing is you're dividing your space up into zones according to this grid. And so if you were to look at my house, according to the Loshu Square, my TV would be in the wealth and Prosperity corner, which is probably not good. You're going to make money on TV. That didn't exactly happen. My couch is the knowledge and self cultivation. I'm not sure what that means. Then my sunroom would be helpful. People in travel not sure what that means either. And in the center is my coffee table. If I wanted to have good chi, I'd have a yellow rug there. Yeah. But I don't. But you should. We have some nice tile squares of varying colors. Yes. So you can do that, Chuck, for every room of your house, and you're supposed to yes. Like what you just said. Well, now I know where I should put a yellow rug in my house. Like, you would want to put that in the center of where the bogua map falls over that room. That's right. Right. You might also, for example, if you just kind of had a dead space where the red boxes, which is for fame and reputation, and you want to foster that kind of thing. Oh, man, there's a dead space there. You would put something like awards there, animal related items. Maybe a stuffed jackaloped or something would be a good spot for that. Or a good thing for that spot. Yeah. And so basically what you're doing is using the bogua map to say you're just cross referencing spots of your house. And when you add these things and basically do interior decorating maximize the flow of chi? Yeah. If you look at my master bedroom and bathroom, I have bad feng shui because right in that top left corner, wealth and prosperity is my toilet. Oh, yes. So supposedly you're flushing it all down the toilet. Yeah. They say you should not put your bathroom or your toilet specifically in your wealth grid square. So what we've just described is what a Western practitioner would do. Yeah. Because again, Western feng shui has a lot to do with interior decorating, and so too does, to an extent, traditional feng shui. But a traditional feng shui practitioner, if they came to your house and they use the bogua map over your house, they wouldn't just align it to an entrance, right. They would align it to a magnetic direction. I'm pretty sure it's north. Okay. I think you're right. But the black square in the bogua map would be oriented in that direction, so it wouldn't necessarily be facing your entrance. And so there's this kind of reveals this really big distinction between Western feng shui and traditional feng shui. Whereas with Western feng shui, it's like, oh, we'll just line it up to the entrance, and maybe you got a problem with your toilet flushing your fame away in your bathroom or your money away in your bathroom. With traditional feng shui, there's no getting around it. Once it lays over your house according to magnetic north, it gives you a really clear picture of what you're going to have to do. And you may have to tear down your house and start over and rebuild facing the right way. It could reveal a lot of real problems with your house, and you may have to fill in more areas than others. Whereas if you're just orienting each room based on its entrance, like in Western feng shui right. You're not going to find quite as many problems in a lot more easy solutions. That makes sense. Also with a traditional feng shui consultant who is basically telling you what you need to do with your house. Sure. They're going to do research on your house itself, too. They're going to find out when it was built. Oh, really? When the roof was enclosed. That's a big one, too. Enclosed. And then they're going to also create this bogua map and a chart based on Chinese astrology as well, because time factors in a lot with traditional feng shui, way more than Western. Again, Western is very quick to the point and just put some stuff here another example that people criticize Western feng shui and kind of point like it's just basically interior design is plaid is considered a form of the wood element. Oh, really? So if you have too much, like, a plaid couch in a room, you might need to counter that with, like, a little fountain or something like that. Yeah, but where did the idea that plaid was wood come from? It's definitely not traditional Chinese. No, I don't think so. I don't think they have planned in China, do they? I don't think so. But that raises another thing, too. Another criticism of Western feng shui is that very frequently, feng shui consultants in the west will be like, oh, you just need to add a foo dog, like, that kind of lion looking dog. Or you need to add some you've seen a million times. Is it like a little statue or something? Yeah. Okay. Or you need to add, like, some Chinese pottery or dragon mural or something. Yeah. Traditional feng shui practitioners are like, yeah, art counts, but it doesn't have to be Chinese art. Right. So if your consultant is selling you Chinese art from your brother, who's the Chinese right. This is essential. Yeah. That's not correct. With red flag. All right, well, we have some more tips from feng shui experts that we'll get to right after this. All right. So we're talking the bagwa grid. Like we said, it's all represented with the different colors. Those colors also correspond to numbers. Yeah. And they also correspond to aspects of your life or chi. It sounds confusing. It kind of is. Yeah. Let's just say it. But here are some things that feng shui practitioners say will help unlock that chi. Black, which is your career. They say a fountain or a mirror might be a good thing to have there. Yeah. Blue, which is skills and wisdom. Maybe that's where you put your computer workstation or your library. Okay. Yeah. Books. Yeah, books. Green, your family. Maybe that's where you want to put your family photos. And you want to arrange them nicely, too. Yeah. Supposedly, if you have your family photos out of order in your green section, you're going to have misbehaving kids. Yeah, actually, that's the white zone. That's children. Oh, sorry. That's okay. But yeah, that's what they say. If you want good kids, keep those photos nice. I'm not sure about that one. Purple is your prosperity zone, and that's where you want to have it says healthy plants. Don't put your dying plants there. Or sailing ships. I guess that's just sailing towards prosperity. I guess. Maybe don't put a painting of a sinking ship. No, that is Western feng shui there. Yeah, sure. That whole kind of psychology would be detrimental to the health of the area. Yeah. Why would you want that anyway, though? Like, who paints a sinking shit? Yeah. A depressed sea captain probably would be my guess. Red is family and reputation. That's where you want. To put your various awards. So yeah, we got a couple of those. And your jackalope head. Yeah. Animal related things. You're right. We should lay out our next studio according to feng shui. Did. We totally should. You know, I just noticed this red supposedly is what you want to put on the back of your chair to block bad chi. Yeah. And we've got a huge red foam thing in between us and Jerry. Oh, wow. So we got to get rid of that. I was going to say that explains why I've been able to put up with her cheek for so long. No, Jerry, she has the good flow our way. So we need to open that up. Okay. In our new place, pink Love and Relationships. That's where you want to put maybe photos of your family or paired items? Again with the family photos. Yeah, I don't have that many family photos. Paired items. That's cute. That makes sense. Sure. Like bookends salt and pepper shakers. Yeah. Boxing gloves. That's where you hang your boxing gloves. Yeah. Remember Joe Garden from The Onion with those giant boxing gloves he had? Yeah. Those are so much fun. Yes. He had a thing where he just wanted to get as many people to pose with those as possible. Yeah. And take a swing at him. White. What we already mentioned was children or creativity. That's where you might want to put some art or pictures of your little brats. Gray travel or helpful people. Put your souvenirs from Disneyland there. And not just Disneyland, any trip you've taken. Sure. The Disney Company wants you to just put Disney souvenirs there, though, in yellow. Finally, health pottery and stone objects will help unlock your chi there. Yeah, but speaking of Disney, Hong Kong Disneyland, they apparently had a feng shui expert consulted and they made some changes because of that consultation. Yeah, that was probably a nice paying gig. Yeah. Because someone was like, Catch you. Yeah, they were saying eating. Anyway, the opinion went on September 12 because they were told that was a lucky day. According to the astrological chart their consultant drew up, they changed the entrance by twelve degrees. Obviously, it was a traditional feng shui practitioner. Sure. And added some boulders. Apparently one of the restaurants has a projection of a fire, which to me that wouldn't count, but maybe it does. That's kind of lame. That seems pretty Western to me. Because one of the big bases of Western feng shui is psychology. If traditional feng shui is based on magnetism and astrology, western feng shui is based on psychology. And it is as simple as you don't put a painting of a sinking ship in the office of a business that's struggling to stay afloat because the mind makes those kind of associations and it messes up your chi. That's right. And a lot of this stuff as well. Like we said, I think, like you just mentioned, maybe it just seems like common sense, like a horseshoe shaped building that opens up into a courtyard. It's going to feel good. It's pleasing. Feng shui practitioners say that's energy or, hey, don't build a house on a dead end street because it blocks the chi. I had a friend who lived at a dead end street and it just felt like every time I went over there, I felt closed in and sort of weird. Did he end up killing his whole family? He did not. He did move, though. They were saved. They were, thanks to him, moving your office. A lot of times these days, people will their new offices, they will take this into account. Some very famous people, like Richard Branson and Donald Trump have enlisted the help of feng shui experts to design their offices because they want that chi and ergo money flowing. Yeah. You don't have to be Richard Branson or Donald Trump to arrange your office, whether it's a cubicle or what have you, so that you can maximize the flow of chief if you want to do a little messing around. Supposedly the one thing that you want to ensure as much as possible is that you are facing the entrance to your office. Yes. That way the chief flows correctly towards you, not towards your back. Yeah. You don't want the chi at your back. No. Remember the southern China feng shui placement? The form school? The entrance of your house is facing away from a hill, so the back of your house backs up to a hill, so the chief flows correctly. Right. Same thing. You want the entrance to your office to be flowing towards you, facing it. If you can't do that, then you just put up a mirror so you can reflect the chi towards you. Yeah, that makes sense. Like you said, you want to put something red on the back of your chair to block the chi from your back. Yeah. Actually, now that I think about it, this isn't so bad in here because the red is to our side. It's coming in that door and bouncing off of that. Right on. So Jerry is really the one who's getting the short end of the cheese stick here. Really short into the cheese stick. What else can you do? You can put a fountain or a plant, obviously water and wood. Yeah. And they said even a picture of a waterfall in your cubicle could help your workplace chi. Again, there's a lot of disagreement about what works and what doesn't with traditional feng shui. It's like you need to know where magnetic north is and you need to orient your building according to that. And whatever you do inside is almost irrelevant. Yeah. Get rid of those fluorescent lights, though. They all agree on that. Sure. I don't know anything about cheating to know that fluorescent lights are terrible for you. Agreed. Anything else? No, it's a pretty good overview, I think right? Sure you feel good about it? I feel better than I expected. How's your chi? It's fine. Yeah? All right. It's not out of balance. It's not jumping for joy today. Got you. If you want to know more about chi or feng shui or any stuff like that, you can type those words in the search bar. How stuff works. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this GED success story. Oh, that's good. Hey, guys. I got my GED way back in 1986 so I could attend college. Back then, the University of Illinois, Chicago co flames allowed you in as a freshman. If he graduated high school and had a pulse, they called the student body. After the first year, though, you didn't perform. You're out. I did reasonably well there and ultimately ended up at the University of Cambridge in England. Got my PhD in archeology there and worked in the field for a few years. Great. I am now a stay at home dad of three boys. Five, three and one living in Carls Rurmany. One of the things I love most about the American education system is that a guy who dropped out of high school at 17 still had the opportunity to attend college and ultimately end up with a PhD from one of the greatest universities in the world. Thanks for another great episode, guys. Been listening since 2008 and actually remember the before Chuck days. And that is from Chris. So where to go? Chris Way to go, Chris. That is pretty awesome story. Yeah. GED archeologist, stay at home dad, five, three and one. Sounds like he's doing it right. Nice job, Chris. If you want to let us know about your personal success story, we love hearing about those. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffychnow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@houseworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the Web. Stuffychannow.com. Stuffy Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My heartratio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2008/1223045975862hsw-sysk-cannibalism.mp3 | How Cannibalism Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-cannibalism-works | Cannibalism is one of humanity's near-universal taboos, but it has been practiced in widely varying circumstances throughout history. Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn the difference between the three types of cannibalism. | Cannibalism is one of humanity's near-universal taboos, but it has been practiced in widely varying circumstances throughout history. Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn the difference between the three types of cannibalism. | Thu, 09 Oct 2008 12:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2008, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=9, tm_hour=12, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=283, tm_isdst=0) | 17963958 | 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. Josh and Chuck here. Say hi, Chuck. Hi, Chuck. Chuck, have you been paying attention to that story that came out of Canada this past July? That grisly murder on the Greyhound bus? Yeah. You couldn't write something that gasly. No, you really can't. So I guess we should probably fill in anybody who's not aware of it. There's this guy named Vince Lee who allegedly, out of nowhere, leans over in this bus in the dark of night that's just traveling down the plains of Manitoba, I think. Right. And he just leans over and starts stabbing this guy sitting next to him, who he's never met before. And apparently witnesses say that they hadn't even spoken. Now, completely unprovoked. Yeah. And just stabs him and stabs him. And everybody just starts fleeing the bus, and they end up locking this guy on there. And he starts walking around back and forth. I got the impression kind of like a caged animal. Right. And then I guess he gets the idea to go back and cut the victim's head off. He's not dead. Right. But he cuts his head off, and he's walking around with the bus showing people outside. Exactly. Apparently, he dropped this poor guy's head in front of the witnesses, like, at the steps at the front door of the bus. Right. These people were holding doors closed to trap them on. And there was this one other this is bad enough. Right? Right. But he did something else that I think it makes everything kind of even worse. He walked back and started cutting off pieces of the guy and eating them. Right. And you should have had a little warning before this podcast. Yes. Hopefully, from the title, people will be a little prepared. So basically, I started researching this I'd heard about it, this incredibly ghastly murder, and at the time, I was writing or researching an article, how Cannibalism Works. Right. So I'm thinking, as grim as it is, this is a pretty good story to use as a lead, as an introduction for the article. Right. Right. And the more I started researching it, the more I realized I had this perfect line. It was like when Mr. Lee, I should say, allegedly, he's been charged, but he hasn't been convicted, ate those bits of flesh. He went from a mere murderer to something like a monster. Like a cannibal. Right. But the more I looked into this story, honestly, the cannibalism almost falls in line with everything else he was doing. Right. It was such an unspeakable act, it didn't stand out. The cannibalism was also almost muted by the rest of this stuff. Sure. So instead I went with Armin Maivis. Right. Which was another really bizarre and ghastly story. It really was. I don't find it nearly as disconcerting as the Greyhound bus story. Yeah, that one's a little more frightening. It's definitely creepy, though. I mean, this is a consenting adult, right? Right. So you want to tell them about Mr. Mavis? Well, yeah, this is a guy, I believe he put an ad in the newspapers or on a website, personal website. Yeah. Looking for someone who would allow themselves to be eaten by this guy. And that's remarkable enough. But he had to take her. Well, he got close a few times, apparently, but yeah, this one guy named Burnt Jurgen Brandis, right. 43 wasn't exactly what Mavis was looking for. Mavis was advertising an 18 to 30 year old, well built guy and apparently a little less picky as time went on. Exactly, yeah. So Brandis comes over and they basically get them drunk. Right. He's taking some painkillers and Mr. Mavis cuts off his penis and proceeds to cook it for the both of them. For the both of them. And I didn't put in the article, but what I gathered was that they both ate some and didn't really like it. Right. So by this time, Brandis, who's like, totally content and fully aware of what's going on, what's going to happen, that he's going to die tonight, this is what he came over for. Right. He goes to take a bath because it's bleeding everywhere. His penis is cut off. Right. And he goes to take a bath and he loses consciousness in the bath. So Mavis is like, all right, you're done, and cuts the guy's throat and actually had set up like, basically a butcher room where he butchered the guy and I guess made stakes out of him flank over a period of time. He ate his body. Right. \u00a344 of this guy's body over a few months. The thing is, he had totally gotten away with it. Right. The police had no idea this had happened. There was no missing persons report as far as I know, or anything like that. And the way he was caught was some fellow chat room dwellers knew what Myvis was doing and apparently got wind that it had been successful or whatever. An alerted police and they found out and he's like, oh, yeah, totally. It was great. Right. I think what's most remarkable about this story is not only that this guy did this, but there was no law against cannibalism at the time in Germany. So he was tried from, or is being tried for murder. First they had them on I think they had them on manslaughter. Right. And because the other guy consented, he consented and there was such outrage in Germany against it that they're retrying him somehow for murder. But yeah, there is no law on the books. I think there is now. Right. And the same goes for the UK. I really tried, could not find any federal statute outlawing cannibalism in the US. But I did find vague references that it is illegal, but I couldn't find any actual law. But the thing is, it's almost like you don't really have to outlaw cannibalism because it's a taboo completely. It's beyond the law. It exists beyond the law. It's something way worse than anything that we need to sanction legally. You would think. You would think. Right. So Myvis and Lee, allegedly, and Albert Fish, who is murdering Peter, asked cannibal of the 1920s, and of course, one of the most famous of all, Jeffrey Dahmer. Right. What they were doing is called pathological cannibalism, which basically it's psychology that has very little to do with anthropology. The rest of cannibalism falls very much into the realm of anthropology, and it's been studied and studied. It's actually one of the more interesting fields of study, or subfields of study, I think, in any aspect of anthropology. What do you think? Well, I mean, as far as cannibalism is religious custom. Sure. And offering up to the gods, that kind of thing with the ad. That's part of it, yeah. There's a bunch of different yeah, there's different subsets of different kinds. Right. Quite disturbing. Well, I don't I know you do. You school me. Okay. So you got survival cannibalism learned cannibalism, which is subdivided into endocannabalism, which is eating, like, members of your family or your tribe or whatever, and exocannabalism, which is the opposite. It's eating members of outside your tribe or family. And that's mainly for a religious service. Not necessarily. We'll get to that in a second. There's also pathological. Right. And then there's another one that I find arguably the most disturbing. Autocannibalism that's eating oneself. Correct. Yes. Now, I didn't find any examples of an actual documented case of a person voluntarily eating themselves, aside from Jurgen Brandis, who apparently ate some of his penis but didn't really like it. Right. So usually autocamplism is forced. Yeah. But what about, like, I know I bite my nails, and a lot of people think that that is technically. It is technically. Do you eat your fingernail clippings or do you just bite your nails? No, when I was younger, I would swallow my fingernail clippings, and it would have, like, stomach problems and stuff, I would imagine. So I'm not supposed to swallow. Well, I did. Those little kid. I didn't know that. I didn't realize I was a nervous poor kid. Right. Kind of, except a little more fortunate, I take it. So I don't do that anymore. I don't swallow. That's good. But yeah, people do consider technically that biting your fingernails is a form of autocannibalism ism more often it's forced. Autocannibalism is forced. I think in 2003 or 2004 in the Congo, some Congolese rebels were accused of killing Pygmies and forcing other Pygmies I'm sorry, forcing Pygmies to eat parts of themselves before killing them, and also practicing cannibalism by eating the Pygmies themselves. Just some pretty terrible stuff going on down in Congo. Yeah. And I know in the early 1930s in the United States, even they had a lot of racist fuelled acts of autocannibalism. I don't think enough people know about this. I hadn't heard about this guy until I wrote this article. Claude Neil. Had you heard of him before? No, I hadn't. Okay. Because they don't teach this stuff in history class. No. And they really should. So I think it's kind of up to us to teach it. Right, right. In 1034 in Florida, about 2000 white Southerners gathered and basically sacrificed this black guy named Claude Neil. Right. They advertised in the paper. They sent out invitations. I know. Sick. Right? And so all these people show up and it's like this kind of orgiastic sacrifice or ritual where they tortured him, they cut off his penis and made him eat it. It was forced AutoCAD and his testicles as well. Right, right. And one thing that didn't make in the article is that they forced him to say that he liked how it tasted. And then finally, after a couple of hours, I take it, they finally lynched him. They killed they hung him. And the sad thing is this doesn't go down as, like, a sacrifice or an autocannibalistic. It's called a lynching. Exactly. Which lynching is bad enough, but this seems so much further beyond well, it is. And it's kind of a way of even whitewashing I mean, lynching is bad enough. You're right. But when you don't hear about those details no. You think this guy was taken out and hung, which is already horrible. But it just goes so far beyond that. It's just it definitely isn't. And like you said, they don't teach that in the history books. And then I think they should. Those are the types of cannibalism. Right. You know much about survival, cannibalism, like, alive and all that. Yeah. Well, the Donner Party was one of the earlier ones. That was the group of settlers that were heading out west. Right. And splinter group went off in this year in Nevada mountains, kind of encountered some badness weather and the like, and they resorted to cannibalism and then the film and book Alive, about the soccer team that crashed in the Andes, I think. Yes. You're going to yeah. And they ended up resorting to cannibalism from some of their comrades who had already died. They survived, like 71 days like that. I know. And that's one of the more forgivable, probably the most forgivable formula cannibalism. Definitely. Because it's survival. You're surviving. Right. None of these guys wanted to do what they had to do, but they needed to agreed. And this is or something like that, I think. Yeah. It was the early 70th. This is really recent. The thing is, this has been going this has happened many times. Donner party. There was actually something in the 19th century called the custom of the sea. Right? Right. Which is where you're not happy with your lot in life. That phrase that actually comes from the customer where you're drawing lots, drawing straws. Right. So you have the straws cut up to different lengths and everybody draws them. And as per the custom of the sea, the person who drew the shortest straw and this is like if you were stranded, if you were shipwrecked and you were forced to resort to survival cannibalism, whoever drew the shortest straw, that person was tapped to die. And whoever drew the next shortest straw was the person who had to kill them. And then everybody ate the person that was killed. It was like basically a codified, survival cannibalism because it happened. It was just a fact of life when you were a sailor. Yeah, I guess it's I mean, because there were no rescue parties or anything like that. If you were rescued, somebody stumbled upon you. Right. So it did happen a lot. And like you said, it is the most forgivable form, at least in the eyes of Westerners. It's survival. You did what you had to do to stay a lot, but at the same time, it's kind of chilling in how easy it seems like it would be under those circumstances to eat another person. Right. Which kind of points out that at any given point in time, we're like one plane crash or shipwreck away from eating one another. Yeah. It's a little kind of spooky to realize that it's there. It's innate in all of us. Right. Nobody would think that they would want to do something like that. But when push comes to shove and you're facing death and there's a difference also. I mean, I guess you're lied in life, that story. You're actually killing somebody to eat them. But in the case of the alive ones, they ate the dead. Yeah. They're fallen comrades. Right. That's the difference. Yeah. That's survival cannibalism. And then you've got learn cannibalism. Right, right. And this is the stuff that's really heavily studied. Basically, they call it learn cannibalism or customary cannibalism because it's socially indoctrinated. Right, right. With endocannabinisms, generally, it's part of like, a funeral. Right. The foury people in Papua New Guinea and the ware in the Amazon were very well studied for their practices of cannibalism. Like the warrior, for example, what they were doing. This anthropologist named Beth Conklin found out that by eating their recently deceased, they were transforming them. The worry were really big or are really big on changing their surroundings so that they are not reminded. No, actually, it's for the survivors. Okay. They're supposed to change everything that reminds them of the dead person so they're not sad or depressed, pressed. It's their way of getting over grief and eating the dead body. It's a method of transforming it. So that's a pretty peaceful method of cannibalism that's endocannablysm the four. They do the same thing for slightly different reasons. They're actually looking to gain certain attributes like, say, wisdom or strength or that kind of thing. And it's very specific to the body part. Right. Only certain people can eat certain parts of a deceased relative. It's really interesting how over the course of centuries or millennia, humans can really slap labels on all sorts of different stuff. Yeah. But this kind of deserves to be broken down because they're all different, all the different forms. So I don't think it's just willy nilly the way they slap different names on the no. But that raises the question, why do cultures around the world have codified socially sanctioned cannibalism? And I think, really, in the article, I divided that between two approaches in anthropology. It's materialism and idealism. Right. Did you get this far in the article? And actually, I fell asleep at that point. I think our readers listeners are asleep as well. It's my voice. It has a very low right. So basically the materialists say that cannibal isn't generated from necessity. Like there's a drought, that kind of thing. And some people who adhere to that are saying, hey, it happens. Cannibalism would just be logical when you don't have a grocery store. Right. We didn't know how to tame crops and we're just hunter gatherers, and all of a sudden there's a drought. You got to do it's. Survival cannibalism. And then the idealist say no. We interpret the world through symbols, so the human brain represents wisdom. And then cannibalism came after we started interpreting things as symbols. Right. And nobody has figured out who's right. But I tend to lean more towards the materialist. You think so? Yeah, I think cannibalism, that makes more sense to me. Yeah, it's like we were saying, I think it's innate in all of us. And when the chips are down, I would eat you. Well, it's good to know. You know, Candace Gibson already told me that she would eat meat. She called me meaty. Well, I think I'd provide a hearty meal as well. You would? I think we're about on par. I think at the very least, Arman could live on us for a very long time. Well, I'm hungry. I'm a little hungry too. Chuck, do you want to go get something to eat? That's a great idea. A nice rare burger. I might go with a salad. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseworks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast@houseworks.com brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, 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. 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028c59aa-3b0e-11eb-947e-1bb246946199 | Hair Loss: The Pits | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/hair-loss-the-pits | Losing your hair is a situation that seems to be universally considered to absolutely stink. Unsurprisingly, humans have been trying all sorts of weird stuff to combat hair loss for millennia, but we’re only just now starting to get a handle on it. | Losing your hair is a situation that seems to be universally considered to absolutely stink. Unsurprisingly, humans have been trying all sorts of weird stuff to combat hair loss for millennia, but we’re only just now starting to get a handle on it. | Thu, 15 Apr 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=15, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=105, tm_isdst=0) | 54785324 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Cuball Clark. There's charles W, Mr. Clean, bryant and Jerry Shanado. Connor roland rounded out for stuff You Should know. The hair loss edition. Remember when Shannon O'Connor whenever got mad because she ripped up a picture of the Pope to protest Catholic Church? Yeah. We talked about this, like, a couple of weeks ago. Did we? Yeah. Did we? Yeah. Say it again. There you go. You're going up an octave each time. That's pretty impressive. I don't remember that. Oh, boy. We talked about Saturday Night Live sketch where Frank Sinatra had her on, of course, the great Phil Hartman as chairman of the board. But Shannon O'Connor wasn't losing her hair. She made a conscious decision to basically stick it to the establishment and say, hey, I'm shaving my head. Yeah. And, you know, I know that we haven't seen each other, but I'm starting to get a little thin on the crown after my hair being, like, my only decent defining feature as a man for many years. Sure. It's starting to thin out a little on the crown. It happens. Mine has been doing that for a little while. It is distressing at first, and then you just get used to it, especially when it plateaus for a while. Mine is in a plateau stage, and I'm like, okay, I can live. Let's hold here. We're okay holding here. But yeah, it's a thing, for sure. It's not the funnest thing in the world to realize your hair is thinning. Yeah. I mean, I'm not doing anything about it, certainly, because I don't know. I don't have that kind of vanity. I have other kinds of vanity, and I don't see it. So I was talking to Noel about it on Movie Crush, and he was like, she's got to back out of every room you walk into. That is good advice. That's like hair club level advice. Yeah, but I've shaved my hair about once a year anyway, so I'm fine to live that life, too. Yeah. And, I mean, it just happens. It's one thing that really kind of came through in researching hair loss is like, there's really nothing wrong with it. It's not medically debilitating in most cases. We should say pattern baldness. The far and away. The most frequent reason people lose their hair, both men and women. There's nothing wrong with you. There's no disease. There's no problem with your metabolic functioning. Nothing like that. It's strictly cultural. Like cultural norms and preferences of beauty. That's it. That's the only thing. You're just kind of involuntary violating beauty norms of your culture. And if the rest of the culture can just get over it, which they generally do, you can get over it, too, and that's that. And I've just dug my own grave because now I'm going to have to take my own medicine and get over it. I'm sure all my hair is going to fall out in the next hour. No, it's not. But we're going to cover types of hair loss and also some remedies. And we'll get into the couple of sort of prescription remedies that they have found over the years. Which really hit me today more than ever. Sort of how cruelly one of them at least is. Which is like. Hey. If you're young and single. Man. And you're starting to lose your hair and you're worried about attracting ladies. We have something for you. And it might give you erectile dysfunction and you might not be interested in sex. But you'll have your hair back. You're going to have some hair, baby like, man, what a weird, cruel trade off. I know. Chemistry giveth and chemistry taketh away. So I guess that was a spoiler. But I think most people know that and know what we're talking about. Yes, we'll get into that in a little while. But first I think we should talk about if we're talking about hair loss, which we are talking about hair loss, we should talk about how hair grows in the first place, because it is just part of the natural order of things that your hair falls out. There's like three stages of hair growth that applies not just to human hair, but also to animal fur, too, because don't forget, you are an animal to human. And so we have the same three stages of growth, shrinkage and then resting. That's basically the broad strokes of them, but it's a little more interesting in the details. Yeah, I kind of thought of it as little gremlins under your scalp with little knitting gremlins. And when you're in that antigen phase, A-N-A-G-E-N that is when your hair is growing and cells are forming a little protein root at the base of every little hair follicle that produces hair. And that's when those gremlins are down there knitting the hair, and they're continuously knitting. Like when hair is growing out of a follicle, they're hard at work and it just keeps going and keeps going, and you're cutting it, and they keep sending it through that shoot and everything's. Great. Yeah. And like that, those gremlins basically form an organ. Each of your hair follicles is basically an organ. And there's a lot of stuff going on down. There is a lot of growth factors and proteins working and cells being converted from stem cells into epithelial cells, and the follicles lined with muscles that are pushing the hair up as new hair cells are formed. It's pretty interesting stuff. And this phase that you're talking about, where the gremlins are really working in overdrive, is called the antigen phase, and it lasts anywhere from two to six years for your hair. And you get haircuts so often, we used to, before the pandemic, that you don't think like a single hair that you're getting cut like every six to eight weeks. However often you go in, it's trying to grow out for like six straight years, but you keep cutting it. It must be very frustrating for the hair follicle. It must be. The next phase is basically gremlins go on vacation. This is, I guess, the catagin phase, and at some point, this little protein cells, this matrix at the root of the hair follicle is going to run dry. The follicle stops growing new hair cells, and those gremlins are taking some time off. And that hair strand, though, it's not like that hair falls out immediately. Right. It still is getting kind of pushed through. And you think it's growing. Almost said it's growing. It's not it's not growing anymore, but it's being kind of pushed through to the very end, and finally it just pop, goes through. And that's it for that hair and that follicle. Right. That happens at any given point in time. I think there's like, oh, I saw the percentage, I can't remember it now, but there's like somewhere, I think maybe 6% of your hair is in that catagen phase at any given point in time, and you lose something like 50 to 100 hairs a day off of your head. Totally normal. Those are just hairs that have reached that category phase and finally got pushed all the way out. And I guess between the hair we lose and the dead skin cells that we slough off of our epidermis every day, if you could manage to sweep it all together into a little pile, it would weigh about 1.5 grams every day on the hair and dead skin, you're losing weight. But imagine if you could collect that and really get a pretty good pile going after a few months. Well, I think there are some people who might do stuff like that. Sure, there are definitely. There's somebody who does everything. And there's probably also there's somebody who's turned on by the idea of that as well out there, too. That's off to you guys. There's dead skin cell collectors and the dead skin cell kink. Kinks, yeah, for sure. We don't judge. What about the last as long as you're not harming anybody, right? That's right. What is the last phase? Because there's a third phase, too, that this is really like the resting phase where it's kind of regrouping. Like the gremlins are laying around, they're spent, they're exhausted, they're catching their breath, basically. I think their vacation is kind of winding down at this point during the telegen phase. And like you said, that's dormant. The follicle is sort of resting. Those gremlins are resting. They're getting those needle sharp again, those knitting needle sharp, which in the body means they're forming a new protein matrix and they're getting ready to punch the clock and go back to work. And that dormancy is a few weeks. They get a few weeks, maybe a few months off before it kicks off in that antigen phase. All over again. Yeah. What's interesting is hair loss has been viewed as basically cosmetic, like almost all cultures. I couldn't find any that seemed to really have no opinions about it. It seems like all cultures view hair loss as sucking. Right. But in the west, it's viewed as a cosmetic problem. So there hasn't been, like, a ton of research into it. Certainly very little government funded research into it. I'm surprised. I am, too. But it was explained in something I read that it's just cosmetic. It's like, TS. That happens. Get over it. But in the east, in Asian countries in particular, it's a much less frequent occurrence. But it's picking up. They think because of a more hectic, unhealthy lifestyle, more Asian men in China, Korea, Japan are losing their hair, especially in a younger age. And that is a big deal in those cultures. And so there's a lot more government funding that's being put into it in the last decade or so. But the interesting thing that stuck out to me is that we are learning about how hair grows by doing research on how to prevent hair loss. And we know less about how hair grows than I realized. So basically everything we said is a pretty good understanding. But there's still a lot of different components to the whole thing that science doesn't fully understand that we probably will have a better grasp on than in the next ten to 20 years. From hair loss research. Yeah, I think it's Asian heritage and African heritage, and it seems like there was one more native American. Native American. Right. I think they suffer hair loss less frequently. Yeah. From what I saw, it's Caucasian, white and African American tend to be the two dominant groups for hair loss. But far and away, white men lose their hair more than any other group. Well, that's why I was surprised that there wasn't more research, even though it's cosmetic. The kids are largely white men. I was like, well, we need to get on this right now, gentlemen. What's happening to white men? Do I have to repeat myself? Yeah, that's a great point. Let's take a break here. And is that good with you? Yeah, I think that's a great idea. Okay. I know that it's funny. We get emails where people want us to come to blows over taking breaks. I know. Do you guys ever get mad and not want to take a break? Not really. Do you? All right, well, we will take a break then, since Josh agreed, and only because he agreed. And we'll come back and talk about some of the less common causes of hair loss right after this. Okay. So, Chuck, you've heard the word alopecia before, right? Yeah, for sure. Anytime I've heard alopecia. It's in reference to the condition that I didn't realize, but it makes sense as an autoimmune disorder where you have no hair whatsoever, no eyebrows, no head hair, no hair on your legs anywhere. But it turns out that all hair loss, scientifically speaking of any kind, including thinning of the hair that you and I have, is considered alopecia. And alopecia actually comes from the Greek for the Greek word fox, which makes tons of sense, right? Yeah, I thought that was kind of interesting. Supposedly in ancient Greece there were some foxes that could get a type of mange that caused them to lose hair and big patches, and that's where the word came from. I'm not sure how it got transferred to humans, but the ancient Greeks marched to the beat of their own drummer. I think somebody was being droll and said, oh, that's fox like, oh really? That's what I'm getting from And I know it was hippocrates that popularized it. That guy. Yes, that guy, that guy. What we do in the shadows. Yes, but you got to go, that death in guy. I know you're re watching that, right? Yes, it's so good. It's a good time, isn't it? Yes, it is. So there are a few, like you said, it means any kind of hair loss. So obviously there are a few different kinds, but alopecia areata, that is the autoimmune condition specifically that's going to fool your body into attacking its own healthy cells because it's an autoimmune condition and especially the hair follicles in this case. And if you have alopecia ariata, you're going to lose hair in patches. If you lose all the hair on your scalp, that's alopecia totalis. And then I think what you are talking about there is the most severe condition where someone doesn't have any hair on their body at all. I can't remember the actor's name. Who? Hank from Barry? I don't know who that is. From Barry. What's, barry or Barry? Yeah. Remember Hank, the gangster? You know, I didn't only watched a little bit of the first season of Barry. Which one was Hank? Hank was the super lovable, murderous psychopath who is like the I can't remember if they're Ukrainian. I think they're Ukrainian, right? It doesn't even work for the Ukrainian mob. I don't know, man, I didn't get far enough into Barry. You met Hank. I promise. All right, I don't know if that's the actor I'm talking about, but there is a famous actor who suffers from alopecia, universalis, and that's the one where you don't have any hair on your body. Right, but again, any kind of hair loss medically speaking is referred to as alopecia. That is correct. And so alopecia, like I was saying, it's an autoimmune disorder and they're working on it, but basically they don't really have much of a cure for it right now. And the same goes, from what I understand, for another condition that has to do with hair loss called telogen effluvium. And fortunately for people who have intelligent effluvium, that hair loss is kind of temporary, but really interestingly, it can come as a result of a profound emotional hardship. Yeah, it could be a life trauma or something. If you're suffering from any kind of traumatic event, that could be the case. And this is when basically the Gremlins are like aerosmith. They are on permanent vacation and it is stuck in the dormant phase for basically longer, I guess, semi permanent vacation, because as you said, it is temporary, but it's stuck in that phase for longer than usual. And it could be anything. You could have a big surgery that was stressful or given birth or any sort of I mean, there could be just a traumatic emotional event in your life that cost that kicks us off. Yeah. And when your hair is in a normal cycle of growth, like I said, there's constantly hair that's in the category phase, the resting phase of the telegen phase, the super resting phase, or the regrouping phase, I guess. And then most of them are in the antigen phase. With telogen Effluvium, you've got the same cycle going on. It's just they stay in that catergan phase longer. So there's less hair coming out at any given point in time or growing out at any given point in time. So it seems thinner. But again, it's just temporary. Once your body kind of goes back to its previous normal or baseline emotional state, it can be fine. This can also come about from a thyroid deficiency or an iron deficiency. And both of those things are involved. Thyroid growth hormone and iron are involved in cell division. Remember you talked about the Gremlins working overtime? But one of the things they're doing is growing cells, dividing cells very, very quickly to turn them into hair that's growing. And so if those two things aren't feeding this hair growth, that can cause this telegen Effluvium too. That's right. And then, of course, there's chemotherapy. Anyone who's ever had a family member or themselves been through the really powerful medications you have to endure with chemotherapy, that can also lead to temporary hair loss. And it's targeting cancer cells, but it's also targeting hair cells because what they're trying to do is stop the fast growing cells and the hair cells are among those. So it is one of the unfortunate side effects of chemotherapy. But again, temporary. And our heart goes out to anyone that's had to go through chemotherapy. It's really rough and most of us have probably seen it through someone that they know pretty closely. And hair loss can be a big, big part of it. Yeah. Android, genetic, alopecia. And this is the one that is far and away the type of hair loss that most people suffer, both men and women. It's called male pattern baldness is another word for it. But there's also pattern baldness for women as well. It's just that, again, if you're a white man, the chances are that you have some form, or some degree, I should say, of androgenetic alopecia. Yeah, I think it's about 40% of anyone who suffers from pattern baldness are women, but it's not talked about as much, and it's not like it's only 10%. I mean, 40% is substantial, but it's usually not as severe. And it happens in a different way, which we'll get to, but it may not be as noticeable to others. And I think in that just with probably male bias is the reason why you don't hear pattern baldness talked about for women as much. I think you're exactly right, for sure. Plus, also the basis of it, too, seems to have to do with male sex hormones. So it seems like it's more directed toward males in general as well. Oh, yeah. So what's the deal with that? So androgenetic refers to the Greek root word ander for man, and what it's really talking about are androgens, which are sex hormones. And in particular, one of the culprits is a form of testosterone called dihydrotestosterone, which is like testosterone on testosterone. Basically, when testosterone comes in contact with something called five alpha reductase, which is some sort of enzyme that you can find in muscle tissue, it gets converted into this dihydrotestosterone DHT. Yeah. I feel like we talked about this. Was it in the male puberty? Maybe. Probably. I would guess either that or ballpoint pens. One of those two. You know, it's funny, as you're saying that. I was trying to think of a funny one, and then there you had it under control. Nice. Thanks. One of us always has it under control, and if one of us do, then we're in big trouble. Yeah. That's when it's time to go away. So this DHT stuff, this is the weird thing. Like, there is a general understanding that dihydrotestosterone has to do with pattern baldness, whether in males or females, but it's not exactly understood how it produces pattern baldness. We just know, and have known since, I believe, the late 1940s, that if you have pattern baldness, you have a higher concentration of DHT in your scalp than people who don't have pattern baldness. So that seems like a pretty big clue. Yeah. And the reason it happens to both men and women is because both men and women produce testosterone. I think most people know this, but if you didn't pay attention in biology class, you may not know that women produce testosterone in their ovaries and just not as much as men, obviously. So they have lower levels of testosterone, lower levels of DHT as a result. And so that's why they're in the minority as far as suffering from pattern baldness and why it happens to a lesser degree when it does happen. Right, but it's a really weird paradox that dihydrotestosterone would produce pattern baldness because we actually need it to produce pubic hair and armpit hair. Right. So you wouldn't have either of those if you have a DHT deficiency or testosterone deficiency, you have less pubic hair or armpit hair, and you don't develop those types of hair until you start to develop testosterone and then intern DHT after you reach puberty. Head hair has nothing to do with DHT. And yet, at some point later in life, DHT, for some reason, starts to accumulate in the scalps of a lot of people, and it actually causes hair loss rather than hair growth, which at the very least, you'd think, what if it converted our hair into pubic hair later in life? That would be hilarious. Especially in the areas in the same pattern that you bald. What if that just got replaced with pubic hair? Hey, that'd be pretty sweet. It'd be the 1970s all over again. It would be. It'd be awesome. You wouldn't have to be Mike Brady getting that tight curl going. Love that, man. I remember that smell, man. I don't know if your mom ever did that, but my mom would get the perm. The at home perm. Oh, yeah. Every now and then for a few years in the that smell, for some reason, you know how you just tie these things together in your brain? She was doing it one night while the Circus of the Stars was on. Yeah. So to this day, I can't think of the Circus of the Stars without thinking of that smell. Of that yeah. I guess it's better than elephant poop. Sure. I associate well, the smell of elephant poop is not pleasant. There's the firm. No, I think the perm is probably worse than elephant poop, at least. Elephant poop is like inorganic smell. This is just straight chemical nightmare. Yeah. I always associate Pizza Hut home delivery with solid gold. Okay. Because my parents would if they were going out on Saturday night, they'd be getting ready and they just order Pizza Hut or something for us to eat, and we would sit there and watch Solid Gold and eat Pizza Hut. So funny, man. I always thought even as a kid, too, it was funny that they called it a perm because it wasn't permanent. I learned it stood for permanent. And I remember being like, eleven and saying they should call it a temp glaving. Yeah. Getting beat up on the playground, probably, while we were standing around talking about permit or being the most popular kid at your experimental middle school. High school, perhaps. So back to DHT, we should point out that that was discovered in 1949. This anatomist named James Hamilton discovered the role, or I guess uncovered the role of DHT in Pattern Baldness. So that was a big step forward as far as kind of getting the semi understanding. Yeah. So what they think happens. Think we still don't understand it. Is that testosterone comes in contact with that five alpha reductase in those muscles that push the hair up in the follicles. And that in those follicles. It's converted to DHT. And then for some reason. Somehow. Some way. The DHT shrinks the hair follicle and the hair follicle stays in the antigen. The growth phase far less frequently. Produces thinner. Less robust hair. And then eventually just stops functioning at all. Yeah. They say, enough of this DHT stuff. I used to enjoy this neighborhood and now the DHT came along and I don't like it. He always wants to fight and push people around and talk about how much he can lift. And you want to come to his CrossFit class because he'll show you what real working out is all about. Yeah. And his dad's an attorney and he'll sue you for all the money you got. Yeah, exactly. It's just a general pain. So if you recognize the name, if you suffer from pattern baldness, you probably have done a lot of research. And the name Hamilton might seem familiar because he is also one of the cats who identified first those stages of the pattern balding. And it's called the Hamilton Norwood scale. Sure. So you've probably heard the Hamilton Norwood scale. That is when really? Yeah. I think if you have an Internet connection and you start to lose your hair, you probably find out pretty quickly. But it's not just like something people talk about. Okay. Unless it's people that are all suffering hair loss and they're all talking about where they are on the scale. It's not like the Bristol Stool Scale, which everybody knows about. No. What is it? The scoville hot pepper thing. Right? Yeah. Not commonplace like that. Right. But the common pattern that emerged, that was recognized by Hamilton and I don't even know who was Norwood. Do you know Norwood? Was Mr. Glenn Norwood? I can't even make this show go anywhere. Just stop here. All right. So the common pattern is you get an M sort of at the front of your hairline, at your forehead. The upper corners start to recede and you might hear it call a receding hairline. And it sort of looks like the letter M because like the little eddy monster, it kind of comes to a point and then goes in on the sides. And that's step one. I think it's a very handsome look. It's an M hairline, receding hairline. I think it's sharp. No, I do. And mine went straight to the crown. I don't really have same here, much of the receding hairline up front, but that's what's next is the bald spot on the crown or the vertex of the head. And the idea is in the cruelest possible form is the crown is losing it, the forehead is losing it. And they say, hey, why don't we meet in the middle and talk about this? And that's what happened. The crown creeps forward and the hairline creeps backward and eventually they meet in the middle and they go, hey, it's nice to meet you. Let's go on vacation forever. And then you have no hair on the top of your head. And if you let all your hair grow that's still there, you're going to have that hair on the sides and in the back because it's weird, but it doesn't affect the sides in the back of the hair in the same way. The follicles are different. Basically, you go from Gene Hackman in The French Connection to Gene Hackman in Absolute Power. And eventually, if it keeps going, you end up as Gene Hackman and Superman. Okay. And then eventually the royal Tannon bombs, and then you retire. Right. There's also this possible outcome of the M receding hairline meeting up with the bald spot on the crown in that there's a little island tuft of hair in the forehead that was like the dip or the lowest point of the M or the downward point of the M that got left behind. So you still have a little cute little tintin patch of hair right there that is a possible outcome of this. But more likely than not, you're going to end up with just that ring of hair, kind of like Patrick Stewart and Star Trek The Next Generation. Yeah. And again, it's because the hair on the sides, the follicles on the sides in the back are naturally DHT resistant. Even if you have that pattern baldness. It's just a shame it wasn't reversed because maybe it would be different. But people, it is a hairstyle to shave the sides in the back and to have the fohawk or the Mohawk or the sort of military looking cut. There is no hairstyle that is male pattern baldness. I mean, you can grow it out and rocket. Kind of like Phil Collins did for a while in the 80s. Definitely. And that's fine, man. We're not yucking anyone's yum. But if it were somehow reversed, I don't think it would be as big of a deal. Like if you lost your hair on the sides and in the back, you know? Sure. I agree with that. Or would it be culturally shifted to where that was like, oh, boy. Yeah, that's exactly what happened. Because everybody's always going to have a problem with something on everybody else. Is that what it is? Yeah, I think it'd be bad either way, but I think you're right. Phil Collins managed to rock it out. I think Bruce Willis did a great job with it as well. And he started shaving pretty early on, too. He just went with it eventually, but he still had the stubble. He didn't go, like, straight up like Jeff Bezos or anything like that. Yeah, he eventually did like Travolta. Now props to Travolta for finally giving in and getting rid. I think he probably had hair plugs, which will get to, or at the very least, whatever. We'll talk about the newer treatments. Yeah. And it's one of those things where there are certain male actors where when you compare photos of them today to photos of them 15 years ago and they have more hair now. It's one of those things where you're like all. Right. It's the Jeremy Pivot effect. I think we know what's happening here. Sure. And especially if you're an actor, it may be harder to just embrace the like, all right, I'll just shave my head thing. Because you may think you may not work as much or something, or you may not be appropriate for certain kinds of roles you want to get. So I could see them tying it into work somehow. And certainly actors are not historically short on ego, so that plays a part as well. Sure. I was reading a BBC article and they interviewed an actor named James Nesbit, who's fairly well known, and he credited his hair restoration with basically restoration of his career. He started getting parts again that he was getting passed over for. He said his confidence went up and I mean, more power to you. If you want to do something about your hair loss, that's fine. If you want to go the travolta away, that's fine, too. I think people who are like, yeah, there's before and after pictures. There's a very famous one of Elon Musk in his PayPal days. He was very young when he started to thin pretty dramatically. And then now, if you look at Elon Musk, he has a beautiful full head of hair. Look at that. He cares exactly. beggle of whether you realize that he got hair plugs or not because he's got hair again, he probably invented some treatment that only he is privy to. That's right. But then if you look at Jeff Bezos, he went the other way. He's definitely got a few bucks that he could spend on that, I would guess, and he decided not to, which I'm surprised by, actually. He seems like the type who would go full like Bob Ross, maybe. Yeah. I mean, he could have an underground illegal scalp farm for all we know. Sure. That he's mining. Right. It has nothing to do with hair growth. Yes. He's looking to sell that stuff. They'll deliver it to your porch via drone one day. Right. Something like robot just dropped a bloody scalp on your porch and a big thud. There you go. Put it on. I didn't know to this put it on the drone. Watching you tremble. So that is male pattern baldness with women, if they suffer from pattern baldness, it is going to be not as predictable. It's not like male pattern baldness in that the thinning kind of happens more everywhere. It's not like it just happens from front to back and then you lose all your hair and that U shape, that kind of horseshoe pattern, it is much slower than male pattern balding. And again, it's because they have low testosterone and low DHT as a result. But again, it's 40% of women, or I'm sorry, 40% of pattern baldness are women who suffer from it. And it is the thing a woman's hair is very important to their esteem and their body image. So when a woman's hair starts thinning and falling out, it is just as traumatic? I would say more. I would argue much more. Yeah, maybe so. It is certainly not and maybe more so because there's not as much attention paid and maybe like, hey, is anyone even listening that this is an issue? Well, I think women are unfairly held to even more beauty standards than men. Oh, yeah, guys can be good to shave your head. Who cares? That's a cool look. Yeah. Women also have their own scale, the Ludwig scale, or if you want to get fancy, the Ludwig scale. They have type one to three, and apparently the thinning is tracked on the Ludwig scale along the natural part. And type one to three is just different degrees of how thin it is along the natural part of the woman's hair. That's right. Should we take another break? Yeah, let's take a break, and then we'll come back and talk about all of the things people have been doing for thousands of years to combat hair loss. All right, so this is one thing I know for a fact. If you are a young man and you are wondering if this is in your future, just look at your mom's dad and you've solved the problem. So that is a myth. Allegedly. Yes. I'm being coy. Oh, you will hurt man. You are just an amazing actor. You always say you're not and you really are. Allegedly. I don't think they said outright. It has nothing to do with it, right? No. There was a German study from 2005 that actually found there's a little bit on the X chromosome that bald men share in common. So it's possible because you get your X chromosome from your mom and there's a 50% chance that the X chromosome came from your grandfather, that's where the basis of that old myth came from. It may be true, but what they seem to be thinking is that there's way more genes involved in, say, just one on the X chromosome that are involved in pattern baldness. But the upshot of it is, if you really want to know whether you're going to go bald or your chances of going bald, how many bald men are there in your family? That's really what should be, like, on both sides to start looking at old family albums and maybe pour yourself a drink sure. To steady your nerves. Yeah, I mean, we have pretty good hair in my family. My brother, he has this legendary, thick, black, wavy hair. It's just infuriating. It should get a trophy of some sort. But like my grandfather, my mom's dad, he died with a big, thick head of curly hair. And my uncle's, my mom's brothers, both have really robust hair. Still, my brother does my dad's I'm pretty much my dad. I mean, my dad now is 80 ish, and he started thinning on the crown quite a few years ago. And it's pretty thin on top, but it never went away on top. It's just pretty thin. My dad did the same thing. It's like he's got a pretty decent circle you can calibrate a compass by, but it's stayed. He's going to be 83 this year, and it's state. He's still got hair in between his forehead and the crown of his head. He got it on the sides. So I anticipate mine will probably be similar because I'm tracking a very similar pattern that he tracked as well. That's right. Yeah. I even have the same haircut these days as your dad. Yeah. From the 70s. Is it pretty long right now? Yeah, it's pretty long and thin. Yeah. Which is good. It's good. I'm happy with it, but I definitely have that bald spot just like just like your old dad has. Well, I had shaved my head, I think, more than ever before in lockdown over the past year. I shaved it fully, I think three times and then did a couple of sort of drunken, late night, completely bald on the sides, sort of Hawkeye and the Last Avengers movie look. Okay. And it was kind of cool. I kind of liked it. Cool. I have not been doing anything experimental with my hair, actually. Yummy has been doing a good job of keeping me from looking, like, totally shaggy. She's getting cutting hair. Yeah, that's good. And definitely shaving the neck. That gets kind of burly back there. But I haven't shaved my head in years and years and years. It's just not a very good look for me. No, I liked it. I never did. I never liked pictures of me. Yeah. Especially the shaved head with glasses. I'm like, Boy, I saw an old picture of us the other day. I'll just say it was pretty funny. And I was going to Instagram, and I was like, Josh would be really mad if I Instagram. Oh, yeah. Would I? Oh, it just wasn't your best look. You've come a long way, baby. Oh, I'm not shy about that kind of thing. I know. Now I'm in a daunting though, so who cares? So again, look at the pictures of all your family. I think it does increase with age. If you're a white man, about 20% of us are going to experience some sort of pattern balving in your twenties, and that can be rough if you're in your twenty s and you start to lose your hair. 30% in your thirty s, and then so on and so on. I think women, I think, usually see it later, usually in their forty s and fifty s, and menopause can actually kick it off for women. Right? Because again, hair growth and sex hormones are very much tied together, so any fluctuation, weirdness, any sudden change, all of that stuff can have some sort of effect on your hair growth or hair loss. So that must mean if you have like tons of testosterone. And you're that, dude, you must be really bald super early. Right? Right. No way. You keep hitting me. Another myth, right? Yeah. Supposedly people who are bald have no more testosterone levels in their body in general than people who have a full head of hair. So we're busting myths all over the place. Chuck. Well, why don't we talk about some of these? It's always fun, saw bone style, to talk about some antiquated medical practices in the 1550s BC. Egyptians would everyone's always been rubbing stuff on their head to see if they could regrow it. It was hippopotamus fat, porcupine hair. They would boil in water. They would grind up donkey hooves and rub that into their scalp. Yeah. And then that was on the Ebbers papyrus, which I think we talked about in the ethnic episode. And then about 1100 or so years later, our buddy Hypocrisy shows back up, makes the comparison with foxes with mange, which is not very pleasant, and then also says, hey, get your hands on some opium and horse radish, get some pigeon poop and some beets and spices. Like you suddenly Colonel Sanders or something. Smoked opium. Put it all together. Right? Yeah. And then there you go. You're fine after that. You don't care about your hair loss. That's right. And then put it all together and rub it on your head. And apparently he also said, you know what? Court units tend to have really nice hair, which I've never seen. I've always seen them bald, boy. But he said, if you have really bad hair loss, just go ahead and castrate yourself. And there you go. I'm hippocrates. Go ahead and base all medical science after my teachings. About 1000 Ad, there was a Celtic remedy for you had to hunt down a raven, burn it, and then mix up those ashes and render with some sheep fat and rub that on your head. Right. And then, of course, the Kellogg brothers. I don't think it wouldn't surprise me if they had a machine, but they were very Kellogg like machines, right. By the 20th century, where I think there was one called the Crossley Servak that if you look at a picture of this, it is very Kellogg like. It's this big machine. And you would sit with a bowl on your head that it was connected to. And I think it would supposedly try and literally suck hair from your scalp. Yeah. Apparently Fred Astaire had one. And I mean, the crossley companies still to the state has on their blog a little article about it. And they say that it worked, seemed to really work. Something about it worked, but they're not exactly sure why. There's another thing called the thermo cap that use heat and blue light. And I know there's one today called the Capella, which uses some sort of maybe red or infrared light. And there's a class action suit against Capella right now because they have a claim that it's clinically proven to regrow hair. And apparently that clinically proven is based on a single 2014 clinical trial that was sponsored by Capillas. So somebody who tried spent $700 on a capilla system is suing them and a bunch of other people have joined. As far as real things that work, we mentioned at the onset of the show there are a couple of drugs that have were sort of accidental in so far as the side effect they found was that it helped regrow hair and mendoxidil. Active ingredient in Rogaine is one of them. In the was developed as a blood pressure medication and it's a vasodilator, so it's going to enlarge blood vessels. And they think that what it does is enlarge hair follicles that are shrinking due to that pattern of baldness and just slows that process down. Makes sense. And it works pretty good. I think supposedly it depends on what you're after. I think they say hair regrowth because that's what you want. You want to start early and stop it in its tracks and try to regrow some. So for hair regrowth, it was found to be very effective and only 16% effective or moderately effective, and 69%, which is pretty good. Of men, you should say. Yeah, of men and then ineffective. And 16%, I think, for women, 19% reported moderate hair regrowth with medoxidil. And that's just for hair on the top of your head. It has apparently zero effect on the hair on the side of your head. Yeah. Like that crown, if that's where you're losing it and you get in there early with that rogue, you might want to give that a shot. Yeah. And they think basically it's just opening up the blood supply to those withering hair follicles and gets those gremlins working again. That's right. Makes sense. There's also finasteride, which was originally under the trade name Propecia. I think the patent ran out on it, I think by now, if not minoxidil. Definitely did, because that was Rogaine. One of the two is not in the patent phase any longer, but it was originally developed to shrink enlarge prostates because it's a five alpha reductase inhibitor and enlarged prostates are the result of dihydrotestosterone. So Rogaine or Finasteride basically inhibits five alpha reductase from converting testosterone into Dihydrotestosterone or DHT. So that would reduce hair loss because there's less DHT in the hair follicles. Right. And finasteride, I think Rogan is a foam like hair mousse or maybe like a gel or liquid too. And then finasterite, like, we don't know. And then just kidding. I actually did buy some real gain. I used it for like two weeks and I was like, I'm not going to do this for the rest of my life. Yeah, well, that's it. And I stopped. We should say, like both minoxidil and infantasteride have to be used forever for as long as you want to keep trying to work on your hair. Yeah. I ran out, and it was just one of those things. I have a hard time doing a thing every day anyway, and I was like, it just did not last. So I've got three or four things. If anyone wants some free Rogain, I'll send it to him. Oh, that's nice of you. I'll just mail you my left over things. I'm sure that's nice. If it's over the counter, I think we're okay, legally speaking. And one more thing about Finasteride, Chuck, is it's like you're saying it produces erectile dysfunction and loss of interest in sex and men. And then in animal studies, it produced birth defects in male genitalia for pregnant animals. So that's been kind of extended to pregnant women, human women, saying, like, if you don't get anywhere near Finasteride because it may produce birth defects in your baby. I did not know that. Well. One of the reasons you did not know that is because apparently there was a 9098 lawsuit against Merck. And this judge in Brooklyn. Judge Brian Cogan. Allowed these documents. Merck internal documents. To be sealed that basically said. Yeah. We're well aware of this. And we can't let this get out because people won't want propecia any longer if they know about the prolonged sexual side effects. Which is terrible. That is terrible. Yeah. So then you got the hair plugs that we talked about. This was from the 1950s. Sometimes it looks that way. Doctor Norman or orange Tree, I'm not sure which it is. Came up with this sort of crude method where they would punch out little circles of skin from a donor site on the back of your head where you still, like we said, the follicles are working great back there. And these were little plugs about 4 mm in diameter. And then they would transplant those to where you were balding and hopefully regrow your hair. And it didn't look great. It left scars in the back, and it took time for it to grow in up front. So it would look very sort of planted, if you will. Well, yeah, I mean, it's like in these neat little rows, these little plugs of hair. It left a lot to be desired, for sure. It has come a long way since then. Now they use something called fuel follicular unit extraction, and that allows them to extract what they call follicular units, three or four follicles. And there's no scarring back there. And they can transplant them much more closely and fill in, if you were liking it, to, like, a row of corn filling in those rows in between as well. So it looked better, much more natural. Yeah, where it was thinning. You know, something interesting I saw is that Dr. Oren Treach, he followed in the footsteps of some other people that dated back to 1897. There was a Turkish stock named Menachem Hodara who apparently was the first one to really do a hair transplant procedure. And then there was a Japanese guy, Doctor shooe Okada, who in the 30s was the one who pioneered that punch technique. But in the West, Dr. Orange Reach usually is credited as the pioneer of hair transplants. Now they are starting to look into stem cells. And this has a lot of promise because researchers found out, or I guess figured out through a lot of study, is that one of the reasons why hair follicles can continue, those gremlins can keep working is because each hair follicle has a little well of stem cells, including those follicular stem cells and dermal papilla cells that you were talking about, I think at the very beginning. And in Japan and here in the States, there are scientists who figure out how to extract those stem cells, grow these new follicles in a lab. And the thing with anytime you're doing that, you have to shape this thing. Like if you're going to do something in the shape of an ear, you would 3D print out this model, this Scaffolding model, to allow it to grow into the right shape. Because growing something from stem cells, organs from stem cells, you got to shape it yourself. You can't just say form of an ear or form of a hair follicle. It just doesn't work that way under twins. Yeah, exactly. This woman at Columbia University named Angelo Cristiano, who was threatened by Alopecia areata, started basically this 3D hair farm, creating these printed molds that mimic the underside, the internal structure of a scalp so she can grow these it sounds so gross, but grow these little hair fields that I was kind of talking about with Bezos. Yeah. Because here's the thing. If you are already bald, you don't have any donor sites to get the follicular extraction from, right? Yeah. And if you do have some, eventually you're going to start to thin that out when you're harvesting it. This stem cell like hair farm that's grown in vitro solves that problem. You got all the donor follicles that you need right there without having to take any from the head, which is beautiful, pretty cool. And this could be the future. I think. It definitely is. They're basically at the point where they can grow hair. They just are now trying to figure out how to make it not wiry or pigmented the right way. And all it seems to be is it figuring out in more granular detail what the actual conditions are in your hair follicle in your scalp and then recreating that in vitra. Yeah. And how to name it something other than a hair farm. Right. So I think we should close with the idea we like to talk about evolution and whether or not something was an evolutionary adaptation to stick around. And you might think if women are always being surveyed about attractiveness of men and balding men rank low on that list, why on earth would it stick around as an evolutionary trait? And I think it took a doctor named Frank Muscarella to come around and say, maybe we should ask women a lot of things attractiveness. But also, does this guy look smart? Does he look trustworthy? Does he look approachable? Does he look like he might be a good long term mate? And balding men did rank lower in attractiveness, but they ranked a lot higher than all those other areas. So that might explain why it stuck around as an evolutionary adaptation, even though not everyone agrees. Yeah, and there was another study from the University of Pennsylvania that basically said that I think bald men are viewed as 10% more masculine, more confident, stronger, even. And they're like, this doesn't really jive with what our understanding is. So they got another set of photos, and they showed people with a guy with hair and then digitally manipulated without hair. So to make sure it wasn't like there was some difference among the actual guys that they were controlling for hair loss, basically, sure. And they still found the same results. But it's like you said, they keep trying to pigeonhole things into, like, what the evolutionary fitness is, and some people are like, not everything fits that in a neat, tidy way. It's possible baldness is just an aberration. Like, it's not something we're supposed to do, but it had nothing to do with helping the species along or holding it back. That's right. You got anything else? No. I hope we displayed the proper sensitivities here. If anyone is suffering from hair loss, then it can be a tough thing. And handle it the best way you know how. Yeah. And since Chuck said the best way you know how, I think it's time for listener ma'am. It is. Believe it or not, Sammy Davis Jr. Enters the picture. And this is from Molly. She says, I recently found out I have a distant but kind of wild Sammy Davis, Junior connection. Turns out my great great aunt is the one who caused the car accident that caused Sammy Davis Jr. To lose his eye. Oh, my gosh. Her name was Helen Boss. She was 72 when she stopped in the middle of the highway in California and started to reverse because she missed her exit and caused the infamous car wreck. She missed her exit and was lost because she was from Akron, Ohio, and had just done a cross country road trip to California. She says, My whole family is from the Cleveland acronym area. Shout out Ohio. Molly my wife's as well. There was another woman in the car with her that had been taking turns driving. They both suffered from some injuries as well, and there were some lawsuits flying from all parties post accident. I believe Sammy was cleared of any wrongdoing, even though he rear ended them. This isn't really a proud family moment, but when my mom told me the story, I thought it was pretty interesting. Love the podcast. I'm a tax accountant. I wanted to say there's at least one person that absolutely loves when you cover tax and financial topics. That is from Molly B. Nice work, Molly. I appreciate that. That is a random family history if I've ever heard one. It's good. I agree. Totally interesting. If you've got some weird part of your family history that you want to share with us, we'd love to hear it. You can send it in an email to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My heartratio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you're listen to your favorite shows." | |
a67ed848-5462-11e8-b449-bf373f334a01 | Roundabouts: The Problem Is You | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/roundabouts-the-problem-is-you | They’re as American as Washington, DC yet most people in the US are terrified of them, hate them or both. What is it about traffic circles and roundabouts - which do nothing but safely, inexpensively and greenly direct traffic – that America can’t stand? | They’re as American as Washington, DC yet most people in the US are terrified of them, hate them or both. What is it about traffic circles and roundabouts - which do nothing but safely, inexpensively and greenly direct traffic – that America can’t stand? | Tue, 18 Sep 2018 13:58:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=18, tm_hour=13, tm_min=58, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=261, tm_isdst=0) | 55902123 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W, Chuck Bryant, and there's nobody else because this is the man ghost producers left and right. Yes. Does it bum you out to be I'm just going to come out and admit it. Yes, a little bit. It just makes the whole thing feel so workman like and unimportant yeah. With just you and me in here. I'm happy to be here with you, but it's just no, I'm with you. It's another thing that has to be done for court Josh and Chuck. It's not an event anymore. There's no streamers like there used to be. Nobody cares. Well, luckily, the people who are listening care. Yes. And you really have to care if you listened to an episode about roundabouts. You know, it's funny that you picked this one because just two days ago I was driving home, went through a roundabout in the neighborhood of Lake Claire, okay. And I was like, I love roundabouts. I love roundabouts. I wish Atlanta had more. And Atlanta has a decent amount now, a lot of them newer. But I was just thinking about how much I loved roundabouts, and then the next day you said, let's do one on roundabouts. That's really interesting, man. Yeah. I like that kind of not syncretism. That's where Catholicism and indigenous religious beliefs merge. I can't remember what it's called, but synchronicity, that's what it is. I like that kind of stuff. Yeah. So I'm right there with you, man. I love roundabouts, too. And here's why, to me, the second worst thing in the world after slow driving people in the fast lane, which, by the way, you can see my Twitter feed, josh underscore Clark for how I feel about slow drivers in the fast lane. I have a feeling I know what you're about to say, but go ahead. The second worst thing that could possibly happen to a human being is to sit there at a red light when there's no traffic coming. Okay, that's not what I thought you were going to say. What did you think I was going to say? I thought you were going to say, people who do not know how to manage a four way stop sign. Stop the third. I'll put that third. Yeah, you're right. I'll put that third, man. Yes. It is annoying sitting at a traffic light. And it's even more annoying these days when you sit for an extra 3 seconds at every stoplight because everyone is just finishing up that email. Oh, man. Yeah. That drives me crazy. I'm so quick on the horn now. I used to be very polite and just like a little hey, you might not notice tap tap. But now when I see that head down, I just lay it on thick. I cannot tell you how proud I am of you right now. It's really like I love it. And I usually scream some expletive attached to you. Get off your phone, Chuck. You are really coming along, buddy. I remember aggressive. I remember one time when we were driving together years and years ago, and I was doing I was, like, shouting at people and stuff, and you're like, really? We're doing this? And I was like, yeah, isn't this normal? And then now to hear that you're doing the same thing, I'm glad I'm actually dialing it back. Apparently, it's just kind of transferred over and made its way to you. Yeah, I guess it's one of those things like anger in a car can neither be created nor destroyed. It just goes from person to person. I just got no patience for cell phones and driving. None. Agreed. I'm over it. Well, that's another great thing. It's a great thing, dangerous thing about introducing roundabouts, the idea that people are on their phones now more than ever while they're driving. But again, if you're doing that, just stop. It's so dangerous. It's so reckless and irresponsible. Stop doing that. Okay. Yeah. The problem is, if you have people on phones and you introduce roundabouts, it's good and it's bad. It's a double edged sword. It's good because if they have even a shred of survival instinct, they'll just drop their phone right to the floorboard and grab the wheel with both hands in terror and panic because suddenly something's different and they have to really pay attention. That's one of the great things about a roundabout. It makes you pay attention. Right? Oh, for sure. The problem is, ideally, if you don't have that survival instinct and you don't drop your phone, then all of a sudden conditions suddenly change and you might find yourself in an accident with somebody else. Fortunately, roundabouts are designed so that the accident will be minimal compared to one that you may have gotten into at a lighted intersection. For sure. However, there is a newer roundabout over in Emery Village. I don't know if you've seen that one yet. No. And that Emery Village is tough because it needed one, because I don't know how many points. I feel like it's like one of those kind of weird five way intersections. So those kinds of intersections are screaming for roundabouts. Right. So they finally built one. It's very pretty, very functional. But just yesterday, I was driving through that one thinking, I love roundabouts, and this dude just barreled through and did not yield, almost hit me, and I had a few choice words for him. But I'm like, roundabouts, to me, are so intuitive, our article says are counterintuitive. I disagree. I did, too. I think there's nothing more intuitive than not to just go barreling into a whirly, go round circle of cars, which this guy did. Right. But what's ironic is if he had done that in, say, like, the 1950s in the United States, he would have been in the right. You would have been in the wrong, which is just crazy to me when I read that. Do you want to start with some history about roundabouts? Because, believe it or not, everybody, they have some history. Yeah. I mean, should we quickly say what they are? But we're doing that thing again. You're right. So a roundabout is frequently called a traffic circle over in the UK. And I think in other parts of Europe, they call it a gyratory, a one way gyratory. Of course they do. And sometimes previously they were called rotaries. But what it is is instead of an intersection where, say, two or more roads cross, rather than just having it be all right, angles, you take that intersection and kind of break it out and put a circle in the middle, and all of a sudden, everybody going through that intersection has to go around the circle. Whether you want to go right, straight, left, or do you turn, you've got a circle to circumnavigate. And there's a lot of reasons to do this. It slows people down, it makes them pay attention. Ideally, it cuts down on congestion, and I think it's just much safer than a lighted intersection. So that's what a roundabout is. And specifically also, Chuck, it's a specific kind of this traffic implementation. It has specific traits that we'll talk about that make it unique among traffic flow management things involving circles, which I think is the technical term. Yeah. If you don't have them in your town, which is possible. We'll get to some USA stats at some point. But you can think of as a tiny little circular expressway with different exits oh, yeah. All along the way. So as you approach one, if you want to go straight, if you want to just keep going straight, you have to enter the roundabout and go halfway around and then take your little exit to continue straight. If you want to take a left, then you have to drive all the way around the circle and then get off taking a right, if that makes sense. Yeah. This article says it's a 270 degree turn. Yeah, that tracks. I think I won't contest that. All right. So I think we can do history now. Man that was a really great description of a roundabout. Man which was the tiny circular expressway. Yeah. We have 285. The perimeter here in Atlanta, like a lot of cities, have perimeters around the city. This is just like a tiny little perimeter. Yeah, I guess it's a really good way to put it. Thanks. So if we're going back to the beginning of roundabouts, most people would expect to find them in Europe because everybody has seen National Lampoon's European vacation with the very famous roundabout scene. Right? Yeah. Actually, the first contours of what would become roundabouts are found in Washington, DC. In Europe's defense. They were designed by a European, Pierre Lamfonte, who designed Washington, DC. He actually worked in some traffic circles, which is weird because there was no such thing as cars at the end of the 18th century. Oh, yeah. So it's very odd that he worked traffic circles in but by God, he worked in traffic circles. Well, there were horses and buggies. I wonder if there was horse and buggy traffic, surely. Right. I don't know. I'm not sure why he created these circles if it wasn't for traffic flow or if it wasn't just for aesthetics. It's possible it was for aesthetics, too. Although it was probably some weirdo Mason thing that has to do with taking over the world in five centuries from now or something. I just think it's funny. I never really thought about in a big city like Washington, DC in the 18 hundreds, sitting in a long line of horse and buggy traffic, like, for God's sake, this guy this guy in front of me, he's sitting there writing a letter with a fountain bin. Right. Settle thee used to settle thee. Get off your paper. Get off your paper. They'd have a quill is what it is. Yes. Would I say fountain pen? Yeah. No, you said ball point, I think. No, I'm pretty sure you said ballpoint. We'll rewind and find out one day. So Dupont Circle, the very famous and beautiful and I really like that area of DC. Oh, yeah. Dupont Circle was, I believe, kind of the first big one in the United States, right? Yes. And so people say, okay, all right, whatever. Pierre Lanfonte designed one in Washington, DC. And that's it. That became the first one later on. But that doesn't really count because he wasn't really anticipating cars. So surely the first one really is in Europe, right? Actually, no, that's not correct either. No. In Brian Eno. Not Brian eno his brother Bill. Yeah, Bill William Eno constructed he was a businessman, and I don't think he constructed it, but he designed at least and implemented the very famous Columbus Circle in New York City, which everyone, as far as automobiles go, consider the first traffic circle in the United States. Yes. So definitively, the first traffic circle, the first circular means of directing traffic around a circle. Circularly four cars. Right. It finds its place in history in New York City. And then the first one came in the UK. At least, if not Europe. Four years later, the British one way gyratory in Lechworth Garden City. That's adorable. Lechworth Garden City. Doesn't it make you feel like everybody dresses like undertakers there and they have, like, claw fingers or something? Lecheworth. Welcome to Lecheworth. Yeah. Okay. So finally, Europe gets on board with the traffic circle in the early 20th century. Yeah. We should point out, though, that with those earlier roundabouts, they were not like we see today. They didn't have this gradual sort of flowy motion. It was sort of a circle with these sharp right angles where you enter and exit, which is not flowy and intuitive. No. It's not. And there's this other thing too. You can kind of interchange roundabout and traffic circle and then something else called rotary. It's all a circle where traffic is meant to go basically one way around it. And there's exits that are actually streets that form up the intersection. Right? Yes. All of those things have those elements in common. The differences between rotary and traffic circles and roundabouts is the rules. Right? So when traffic really started and people started building these, especially in America, in Europe, like in the when they really started to begin to take off, the rules were different and they had it dead wrong. And it was a really simple traffic rule that they had going on that was screwing everything up. And what it was is that if you were in the traffic circle, if somebody was waiting to get into the traffic circle, you yielded to the person coming into the circle. It's just so backwards. Literally backwards. Totally backwards. They basically had a 50 50 chance of coming up with the right rule and they chose the wrong way. And for decades, people got nightmare headaches from traffic circles, which back then were called rotaries. Yeah, they had congestion, they had a lot of accidents. And this was in the 1930s through the mid 1950s, for close to 30 years, they were just like, well, we just can't figure out what's wrong here. There's just something wrong and I can't put my finger on it's. Crazy. Finally, in England in 1966, they went, well, why don't we just reverse that and reverse the yield? Literally all they had to do was as you approach a traffic circle, you are yielding. Once you're in the traffic circle, you're fine. And that changed everything. Changed everything. All of a sudden, they used to have to call in cops to undo the gridlock that would form in these traffic circles because of this. And they changed this flow of traffic pattern. The old one was called weave theory, where the people in the circle would stop and the people coming in would weave into whatever they wanted to. It was just madness. And then they went to gap theory, which is you basically get in where you fit in when you're coming into the circle, and everybody else in the circle is like, just get out of my way, I'm in the circle. I've got the right away. And like you said, it changed everything. And all of a sudden, these delays and congestion dropped by half overnight. Yes. Capacity increased by 10%, crashes and delays decreased by 40%. And everyone went, wow, I can't believe it took us 30 years to think of this. Yeah, and it took off big time in Britain after that. But because of the hullabaloo in the United States previously, there was a long time where the US was like another 20 plus years where the US was still like, no, I'm not falling for this traffic circle thing again. Yeah. Because they had built rotaries all over the place in the United States. But they worked so poorly because of that one stupid rule that by the time America gave up on it, and the time Britain picked up on that rule change, america had said, like, we're done with these. They were actually tearing out their old rotaries and putting in new for a traffic lighted intersection. We marched down with their pitchforks and their torches and stop signs and Jackhammers destroyed these traffic circles and smashed stop signs through human bodies into the ground. It took, I think, in 1988 in Ohio california. Lovely. Oh, I there was a proposal for just a little three legged roundabout, and everyone in Ohio is pretty laid back area. They were like, no. And so they didn't do it. And then two years later, finally, in Summerlin, nevada. Nevada. Everybody got on board, and I think they had a couple of them in a planned community there. Well, that's why I think it went through, is because the community was being built from the ground up. So there was nobody to say no, they moved in and they were there. Exactly right. All right. So that was 1990 when America got its first actual roundabout. And again, it's because of that one stupid rule that had just plagued everybody and driven them crazy, starting in the 30s up to about the saw one other reason why America didn't have roundabouts to chuck. After World War II, when Eisenhower was over there, he saw a lot of gridlock in Paris, especially around the place. DeWalt Gyratory, the one that's around the Lark de Triomphe, which is huge, it's like a twelve lane traffic circle. And he saw it was gridlocked all the time. But then he saw in Germany how fast the auto bond had gotten the Nazis around. So America got interstates instead of traffic circles because Eisenhower was basically the architect of America's interstate system. Oh, wow. That was the other reason. I saw another thing. I was reading an article and I think I can't remember where it was, but it was basically like why there might have been price anomics, why America has been so reticent. And there is another theory that this one and this was a bit I don't know, they call it controversial, it's really not that big of a deal, but they say the roundabout is said to have flourished in Britain because it requires the British virtues of compromise and cooperation. They said the US is more aggressive and confrontational in culture and may explain why the roundabout has not been more widely adopted. Yeah, I mean, it is a group cooperation moving through a roundabout, for sure. Whereas with a traffic light, the traffic light says stop, the traffic light says go. And all you have to do is know whether you're allowed to whether you have the right away or not to punch it. Right. And I actually saw. There's something called the UK Roundabout Appreciation Society. That's lovely. The guy who runs that says that traffic lights are fascist because they tell you to stop or go at any given point in time, whereas a round about is much more group cooperative and people make their own decisions together as a collective. Yeah. That's why it's weird that in Ohio there was an outcry in the guess they were just so new that they didn't get it. And I think that's ultimately why people don't like roundabouts. It's a new thing and everybody was raised with their traffic lights and they know what they're doing with traffic lights. And this is a big new scary thing and we're not in the mood to learn a new thing. So get that plan out of here and give us a stupid dumb traffic light that we're going to have to sit at at one in the morning even though there's no one in sight and lose our minds. And then you finally get sick of it and decide to run the light and out of nowhere there's a cop behind you. Yeah. All right, let's take a break. Okay. And we'll talk more about roundabouts right after this. Okay. So we should talk a little bit about how to design a roundabout. If you have a neighborhood that you have under your control, maybe you're going to want to put a roundabout in after you listen to this episode. So if so, there are some things, some design principles that you want to follow if you're the king of your neighborhood or the dictator. Sure, why not? Apparently, according to our article, there are five characteristics, one of which I wouldn't even count as something you would need to well, I'll just say that the big dumb dumb one. That should be assumed. I'm going to see if I can pick it out. Okay. Alright. I bet you will. First you enter. The entry is controlled by a yield sign. Okay, that's smart. But there are no signs or anything else you have to do while inside the circle. Right inside the circle. Use your turn signal. Yeah. That's the one thing you're supposed to do. But everything else is like thunder dome like no rules. Actually, that's not true. There are plenty of rules. Plenty of rules. The second one is vehicles inside the roadway always have the right of way. That's a big one. Again, that's gap theory. You get in where you fit in if you're coming into the circle because everybody else in the circle already has the right of way. Did you make up get in where you fit in? I mean, I've heard it before, but as far as traffic circles go yes, because it's a heck of a slogan. I think that is probably what's going to lead America to a deep and abiding love of roundabout. I think so. We love things that rhyme. Yeah. We're a dumb culture. Third pedestrians can only cross the legs of the intersection and you can only do it behind the yield sign. Does that make sense to people? Yeah, you're not supposed to cross to the center island. No, I have a little story about that, actually. The very famous Arctic triumphant. Paris, france. That's the one I was talking about, the Place de Tuol. Okay. Is that what it's called? Yeah, that's the name of the traffic circle. Yeah. The very first time I went to Paris, when I was, I don't know, 22, 23 years old, my friend Brett and I were standing on the outside looking at the arc to Triumph and all of that traffic. And how many lanes is that, did you say? Twelve. Okay, twelve. But there are no lines. Right. It's just twelve space for twelve cars. Think about that. We don't even have twelve lane highways in the United States, as big as our highways are. Yeah. So we're standing there and we're looking across and we're looking at the traffic like, man, I don't know about this. And then we see an elderly woman standing under the arch. And I was like, dude, if she can get over there, we can get over there. And we did the frogger dash across the street, made it in one piece, and then realized that there's an underground walkway. I have the exact same story. Really? Yes. When I was there with my family, my sister and I tried to we made it across. We're like, how is this legal? Couldn't Paris have come up with a better way? The answer is yes. And they did. That's pretty funny. Yeah. I bet we're not alone as Americans. No. I'm thinking that happens multiple times a day. Yeah. All right, so the fourth one is that parking is not allowed within the circular roadway. I'm going to go ahead and say that I think this is a dumb one. Yeah, that's the one. Has anyone ever just stopped and been like and like, all right, I'm going to the store. Maybe there's one. They put a roundabout in Atlantic Mall, do you know that? I don't think I've seen that one. It has backed up traffic for miles. Somehow the traffic backs up to Tennessee now because no one knows what to do there. Wow. They do stop in the middle. I don't think anybody's parked in it to go into the mall, but if they had, I wouldn't be all that surprised. Is it in the parking lot or part of the road? It's in the parking lot, but it's part of the road, you know what I'm saying? There's not like a parking space on it or anything. Yeah. To get to and from the mall, on the mall property, there's a roundabout now. Got you. And people do stop, though, like just as the guy barreled in without yielding. I was also in a roundabout the other day where a lady jammed on the brakes when she saw a car approaching to get into the roundabout. And that mucks everything up too, right. That's the weave theory that screwed things up with Rotaries. You do not stop when you're in the roundabout. And I think this is what really freaks people out, is you realize that once you pull into that circle, you're expected to keep going. Like that's just the way it is. You're not supposed to stop technically. You're not supposed to change lanes and you're supposed to go. And I think that's probably what unsettles a lot of people about the roundabout. That and the fact that it's unfamiliar and new and it's not what they learned to drive on starting at age 16. Yeah. And if you get freaked out, the ones in Atlanta are all pretty small neighborhood ones, just single lanes and you're going super slow. But if you get in a large one and you get freaked out and you don't get how to get over or get off the exit, just keep circling, calm down. Because you can keep driving in a circle. Just like European vacation, Big Ben, Parliament, just keep hugging the circle until everybody leaves and then you can do what you want. Yeah. Till two in the morning and everything's gone. And then finally, the fifth characteristic is all traffic must pass to the right of the Central Island in a counterclockwise direction. Yeah, that's a big one. And it depends on where you are and what traffic circle it is. But in the United States, traffic circles and roundabouts typically go counterclockwise, like you just said, right? Yes. There are some out there that go clockwise. It depends again on where you are. The point is all traffic is going in the same direction around the circle. I think there's a couple out there that of course are going to undermine what I said. There's always somebody who's going to but traffic circles typically all flow in the same direction. Yes. So what we're talking about is sort of the standard. There are many different kinds. We'll go over here in a second. But the standard one is just a circle around Central Island. Most of the times there's something lovely in that island. Right. A planting or a statue or something. Which is another reason why people like roundabouts more. Sure. Stop signs. Never planted or in the middle of a fountain. No, there's just some person wandering there in the middle of the intersection, you know? Yeah. And someone has put a sticker over the stop sign that says Trump or logging or animal abuse or whatever. Right. I get it now. Stop. Whatever. I got. You have you never understood that? No, I'm kidding. Okay. I think I do remember it taking me longer than it should have, though. And this is the first time I've ever really admitted it. Yeah. And yield signs. You wouldn't be prone to yield to yield. To logging. Everyone yield to logging. Well, the logging industry, they might put those up. That would never take off, though, because it doesn't rhyme you're right. So they have many roundabouts that are 40, 50ft in diameter, and then what they call rural roundabouts, which are very large. And the reason they're large is because it's rural and you can go a little faster. That's the thing. Like the smaller the radius of the roundabout, the slower you have to go around it. Which is one reason why in Atlanta there's so many of those ones just in the middle of the neighborhood, rather than a speed bump, there's a nice little lovely fountain just smack dab in the middle of the road, or maybe it's a tree or something like that. And it's a barrier, an impediment that you're being forced to go around. So you can't go very fast. Right. Yeah. With the traffic circle. That is one of the main goals of any traffic circle is to slow you down and to direct you safely to where you're going at a slightly slower rate of speed. But depending on the radius of the circle, you can go a lot faster on the bigger ones. And there's some I saw that are up to like 100 meters across, or 300ft, which is basically like a football field. That's an enormous traffic sample. On something like that. You can just haul haul butt. Yes. I live near Memorial Drive at a very dangerous intersection where Memorial Drive, kind of in the neighborhoods where I live is dangerous anyway because it is a 35 miles an hour street, supposedly. That's three lanes that people go about 60 on. Yeah. And there's a lot of hills and like blind hills, blind streets, side streets or whatever. Yeah. And it's one of those that has the reversible it has a sign above that either has a green Arrow or red X for that center lane. So depending on the time of day or the lane's mood yeah, or the lane's mood, it will switch. And we probably have eight to ten serious, serious accidents at the intersection near my house a year. Really scary ones. And so they're not doing roundabouts, which they would, but they are doing what's called a road diet. Have you ever heard of that? No. That's when you actually lessen the you shrink. Not in size, but what's the word I'm looking for? I don't know. They're basically shrinking the travel lanes to make it safer. So that middle lane is going to be a turn lane now and not a reversible traffic lane. So there will only be one lane of traffic going each way with the turn lane, with the idea that that is less confusing. It slows things down, supposedly, and gets people that are turning out of the way. Yeah. A reversible lane is just a bad idea, especially a memorial. It's not a 35 miles an hour road. No. Atlanta has two very notable in that area. A. Memorial Drive and De Cab Avenue that are both people drive way too fast on these roads, and they both have these reversible lanes. I wish they would do a big roundabout right near my house, but they'd never go for that. Yeah, I actually just barely escaped death once on Decab Avenue because I hadn't noticed that the lane was reversible. And I took a left in front of a guy in the reversible lane next to me, and he just stopped just in time. I had no idea that he was there because I didn't realize the lane was reversible. Yeah, it was. Man, even just thinking about it now, I get the shivers. You see the chicken skin? They're like quills. All right, so there are more types of than just the regular roundabout, and they are as follows. To me, I couldn't tell the difference in the dog moan and the dumbbell. I got this. Really? Because they look just the same to me. Did they? You looked them up and they look the same, huh? I thought so. Okay, but that just may be the Internet messing with me. Could be like a dog bone. One is two traffic circles, but it's one contiguous road going around both of them and connecting the two. Okay, so it's like you go around one circle, and then you go on a little bit of a straightaway, and then suddenly you're in the next circle, and you go around that circle, and you're back onto the other side of the straightaway, and then you're back onto the other circle. Right. That's a dog bone one. Just imagine what a dog bone looks like yeah. From the sky. Sure. A dumbbell traffic circle is a traffic circle and another traffic circle, and they're two distinct ones, and they're connected in the middle by a roadway, like a dumbbell. So it's not one contiguous road, even though it kind of is. It's much more of like a right turn when you get into one circle or out of one circle to get to that main road. How about this? Everybody go look up a dog bone traffic circle and a dumbbell traffic circle, and you'll say, okay, the way that this article put it is the dogbone traffic circle. It looks like you took a big traffic circle and pinched it in the middle, and then the two circles form on the outer edge, and it's kind of flattened in the middle of the two. I think that's a pretty good description. Again, just go look up pictures of them. Yeah. If you're listening, I'll pull your car over, though. Oh, good point. Put your phone down. Yeah. The hamburger roundabout is just like a regular roundabout, but the main road there crosses the center island. So if you want to go straight, you can just go straight. If you accidentally, let's say, get in the roundabout, you can still exit and go like you were going straight on that main road, though. So you have two options, basically. Yeah. If you want to go straight. And then from what I saw, that road, the hamburger line road that goes straight through the circle is the one with the right of way, and everybody else getting into the circle and going around the circle has to yield to that road. Going right through seems okay. It seems a little much like you've taken roundabout design too far if you've made a hamburger. That's my opinion. Yeah, agreed. So there's a flower one, too, Chuck, which is pretty. Yeah. It doesn't mean the flowers in the center circle, although they are often there. But this is where you have a regular, traditional roundabout, but the right hand turns. There's another little slip road outside the roundabout. It's called a slip lane. And I think that just I don't know, maybe that makes it a little easier. Yeah. So if you're actually entering the traffic circle, that means you're either going straight, turning left, or making a uturn. If you're doing right turns, you're just directed right. You don't ever make it quite to the traffic circle. It's just like, here, take your right, go over there. At the very least, it would cut down on congestion. And probably because there's fewer people entering the traffic circle, it would just cut down on accidents altogether. Yeah. And then another one is turbo, a turbo roundabout, which is basically like a flower roundabout. But the thing is, it's multiple lanes, but you have to choose what lane you want to be in, depending on what you want to do. If you want to take a right turn, you get in the far right lane. If you want to go straight, you have to get in the middle lane. If you want to turn left, you get in the left lane. And depending on what you're doing, it will direct you around the traffic circle to where you want to go. But the reason you have to choose, Elaine, is because once you're in it, you can't move. Like there may be a curb or there's some flowers or something like that. And these are supposedly way safer. I saw something like 50% fewer accidents. Yeah. They allow for more cars. They make you think about what you're doing a lot more, so you tend to go into them a little slower, even though it's called the turbo roundabout. And the reason why there are fewer accidents is there are fewer conflict points. Right? Yes. Did we talk about conflict points yet? No, not yet. So if you enter an intersection, a four way intersection with a traffic light, there's actually 32 of what are called conflict points, and they're basically 32 places that you could possibly get into an accident. And some of them can be really bad. Like a T bone right, where you turn left in front of an oncoming car and it hits you right in the middle. Man, those are bad. They are bad. I got turned over once hanging upside down in my car, getting T bone. Yeah. Seatbelts man. And then you could also get a head on collision. Those are particularly bad, too. Those don't exist in traffic circles. It's not possible for you to get Tboned or to get into a head on collision in a traffic circle. Right. There's actually only eight conflict points in a traffic circle rather than 32. So that automatically means there's going to be fewer accidents. And then with a turbo traffic circle, they have fewer conflict points. I didn't see where, but I think because of them and the flower ones that they direct right hand turns outside of the circle, it probably cuts it by half, maybe even the number of conflict points. Right. And we're talking about cars here. Pedestrians and cyclists also figure in. And like we said before, pedestrians, they usually have a crosswalk on the legs behind those yield signs and some kind of they call it landscaping buffer, something sort of there to intuitively keep you out of that intersection and directed toward where you should cross. If you're a cyclist, you have a choice. You can either get off your bike and then act like you're just a walking pedestrian and go that way, or you can get in that traffic circle and they should treat you like a car. And they suggest that you ride kind of in the middle of it so cars aren't incentivized to try and go around you. Yeah. Right in the middle of the lane. Yeah. Because a car going around a cyclist in a traffic circle, that's probably a recipe for accident. For sure, dude. And then did you say that pedestrians are actually the ones in a traffic circle who have the right of way above everybody else? No, I didn't say the right of way, but pedestrians always have the right of way or should have the right of way on roads in America. But I mean, not like expressways, obviously, but be smart. You still just don't go like a running through there saying, I've got the right of way, right? If you hit me, you're in trouble. It's your fault. You want to take another break? Let's do all right, dude. So there are some real benefits to roundabouts. One of the things we already talked about is that they're safer just by definition. They have fewer conflict points. So with fewer places that you possibly can get into an accident, there's going to be fewer accidents. And I've seen a lot of different statistics. There's some old statistics. There was a study from 2000 that looked at 24 new roundabouts in the US. And found that there was a 76% decrease in crashes that resulted in injuries and a 90% decrease in crashes that were fatal or incapacitating. And then there was about a 40% reduction in crashes overall. These are big numbers that's enormous, and they seem to be held up. Like, I've seen different studies that have slightly different numbers, but they're all definitely in that same ballpark. And they all amount to the fact that traffic circles are just way safer than intersections with lights. Just ridiculously safer. Again, it's impossible to get into a head on collision and it's impossible to get Tboned. And those are the two most dangerous kind of accidents you can get into. Yeah, they're also cheaper over time to build around about it cost about the same, roughly, depending on the size, obviously, as a regular, like, traffic lighted intersection or traffic lit. But these traffic lights over time cost a lot more to maintain about $5,000 a year in maintenance over their life of 15 to 20 years. I would think that's how much like a traffic light cost, and then that was it. That's an enormous amount of money. Yeah, well, these are government money, though, I guess. I wonder if that's for all the lights in an intersection that can't be per light, right? I don't know, man. Yeah, I don't know. Who knows? But yeah, that's a lot. And that's the thing with traffic circles. You don't have lights. You got four yield signs on the outside legs and everything else is basically just paying somebody to keep the grass cut and the flowers watered in the center island. Yeah. Maybe some paint on the road. That's it. And eventually they said about 25 years. You might need to do some reconstruction on the roundabout from dummies hopping the curb and stuff like that. Yeah, over time. I couldn't think of why I'm like you're really wearing your roundabout out if it only lasts 25 years. But yes, of course people do hit the curb, especially. Apparently 18 wheeler drivers are not particularly big fans of roundabouts because if the radius is really tight, they just can't navigate it. So some roundabout designs have included an apron, which is basically like a curved curb that you're not supposed to drive on. But if you're an 18 wheeler, it's just a little extra bit of room that you can get through the traffic circle with. Yeah, what else is there? Oh, I know another benefit. They're love this one. They are green, man, and I hadn't thought about it, but when you stop at an intersection, come to a complete stop, especially if you're sitting there idling at a stupid red light, you're just sitting there burning gas, and then you burn a lot of gas to go from a complete standstill up to accelerate to the normal speed again, too. You don't have that in a traffic circle or you have a lot less of it because people can just go right into the circle if they're getting in where they're fitting in America. Yeah, there are some numbers around that. It reduces delays depending on the roundabout, anywhere from 13% to 90%. And this improved flow reduces fuel consumption and emissions by about 30% or more. Yeah, I saw 28% less gas used from a study back in 2002. Again, an old study, but I didn't see anything newer than that. Should we talk about some tips? Yes. This is the public service segment of this episode. Chuck and I really feel like we can do some real good here. Yeah, I mean, we've kind of covered some of these, but if you don't know how to navigate around about, you approach it. As you approach it, take a deep breath, relax, you can do this, no big deal. And you're going to see that diamond shaped. It's actually not diamond shaped. It's an upside down triangle. Right. It's two triangles. Put bottom to bottom, butt to butt, backside to back side. Are they? They're not diamond shaped, are they? Yeah, it's like yield triangles. No, these aren't yield signs. This is a roundabout sign. Beware of approaching roundabout. Yeah, it's basically like a quick graphic that's like basically a rough map of the roundabout. You're dealing with the number of legs, the suggested speed, all that got you. So take a look at that. So you know what you're about to go into. Our article is so dumb. It says it has a suggested speed, usually around 20 or 30 mph. Don't just default to that. Look at the suggested speed, if there is one, or just slow down. It's pretty intuitive of how fast people are going. I feel so bad for pumps right now. For what? Pumps. Clint pumpfree. Oh, yeah, he wrote this one. I thought it was pretty good. No, it is good, but there's a couple of things he should clean up. Yeah, the counterintuitive thing, we definitely disagreed with that. All right, so slow down to that speed. Look for people, look for bikes and the crosswalks. And again, if there's somebody in that crosswalk, you stop because they got the right away. Yeah, you yield to them. But if it's clear, you go to that yield sign, you look left to see if anyone's coming. And if no one's coming, you ease into that traffic circle. Ideally, you don't have to stop at all, but if there's cars there, of course you do. But if not, you just keep that flow going and go around that circle as many times as you need to feel comfortable exiting the circle. Right. And when you're in there, don't stop. No, do not stop while you're in the traffic circle. Again, if you're freaked out, just drive around the circle and hum to yourself. Give yourself a little like, mini lobotomy, right? And then when you're comfortable, do your thing. But remember, you still need to use your signals. Right. So if you're taking a ride at that first leg, it's going to be pretty quick and painless. You just stay in the right lane and you go around and you turn right. Turn your right signal on and make a right hand turn. Yes. It gets a little more complicated if you're going straight, but really it's not, because if you stop and think about it, all you're doing is swerving around an island and going back into the path that you were on before. Yeah. Then there are multiple lane roundabouts. I don't think I've ever been in one of those. Oh, yeah. I think I have. I mean, it's a little more complex, but it's really not. And the key to those are you just don't change lanes. You pick the lane you need to be in, and once you're in it, you don't change lanes. Right. And it's just two lanes going in the same direction together. So if you're going to turn left, you already want to be in the left lane of the two lanes, and you're going to go into the inner lane of the traffic circle. Right? Yeah. And then when you take that left turn, what you're really doing as far as the circle is concerned, is taking a right. But let's not confuse things further. When you take that left turn or make that left under that left leg, you're staying in that lane. There's going to be a lane for you to go into that whole time. So you just stay in your lane and go to where you want to go and everything is totally fine. It's not that much more complicated for a two lane one. No, not really. Just be careful with all this stuff. Don't go barreling in there. Even if you do feel comfortable with your own self, not everyone else is. Yeah, that's a big one to remember. So just remember, even though you're slowing down maybe more than you want to, it's still better than stopping in a stoplight. Yeah. And I have to say also, it would not hurt to go watch a two minute video on how to navigate around about it's not hard, but it's a lot easier to see it with some video than it is to hear somebody describing it. Yeah, for sure. So we got to talk about a couple of roundabout things in pop culture. Okay. Yeah, let's do it. We already talked about European vacation. Right. But there's actually a dude who holds a record for I guess, the longest time driven on a single roundabout. Oh, really? Yeah, a guy named Orin Sands from Carmel, Indiana, which, as far as I can tell, carmel, Indiana, has 60 roundabouts, which is more than any other city in the United States. Yeah. How many did you say? 60. Carmel, dude now has 105. Wow. Man. They've gone bonkers with 100. That was in July of last year. And they have 140 proposed. Wow. It's the roundabout capital of the United States. Well, they also have that's appropriate because they have the roundabout king or in Sands, who on October 3, 2015, drove his 1987 Volkswagen cabriolet around a dog bone roundabout in Carmel for 3 hours, 34 minutes, and 33.24 seconds, which set a record only because it must have been the first time anybody has ever done that. Wow. Was he just one of those guys that not comfortable so he just kept going, or was he upset a record? He out to set a record. He was out to set a record, but it all started because he got distracted once and ended up having to go around a dog bone roundabout and decided, you know what? I'm going to just set a record here. So he did. He's that kind of guy in that kind of town. I got some stats for you. As far as the United States go, american drivers, on average, pass through 1118 intersections before you encounter a roundabout. And in France, you are more than 25 times more likely to go through a roundabout than the states. Also very big in Germany, obviously. Great Britain, Spain, Australia. And in fact, Australia, I think, is second to France. You go through one roundabout every 65 intersections. Yeah, I saw that. Australia's roundabout crazy, too. And as far as the US. Goes, the state of Florida has the most although the state of Maryland has the highest concentration of roundabout. So in Maryland, I believe you're likely to pass through one once every 363. And South Dakota is the least likely state number 50. And I guess there's no one in South Dakota. You don't need roundabouts. It makes sense. But on average, once every 22,806 intersections, which I think means there's only one roundabout. I think. So it's right in the middle of a wagon trail. Yeah. And we got to talk about Swindon. Yes, we do. So Swindon has something that's actually the actual name of it is the Magic Roundabout. It was originally called County Islands Ring Junction, but it's so nuts that they renamed it Magic Roundabout. And that was a nod to a kid's show. And that was very popular in Europe, in the Swindon, obviously, in England, if you're a fan of the original BBC Office, then you know about Swindon. It takes a lot of guff on that show. It's sort of a running joke. Okay. Just setting the stage. Is that where the British Office was set? No, but they take on very early in the show, they take on workers from the Swindon branch that had closed. And I don't know what the inside joke is, but they're just a lot of little barbs kind of thrown at Swindon throughout the show. Yeah, I could see that. Yeah. Who knows? I've never really watched the British version. It's so good. The American version is pretty great, too. They're both great. It's one of those rare cases where they just nailed it in both countries. Nice. So in Swindon, swindon's big claim to fame is that they have that Magic Roundabout. So get this. The Magic Roundabout is five clockwise roundabouts, mini roundabouts that form a circle outside an internal big roundabout that goes counterclockwise. Well, no, inside and external. Wouldn't it be? They're contained within the outer one. Okay. I thought it was that they were around the outside of an inner one. So there's an outer one that goes, the five are inside. That makes way more sense. Yeah. Just go to Wiredcom and there's an article called The Brilliant Sorcery of England's seven Circle Magic. And they have a little moving graphic of how this thing works. And it will as an American and maybe even as a European, it will break your brain as a human being. Yeah. When you look at this thing, when it shows how everything works in motion with different color arrows going around, it looks like chaos. But apparently it works. You got to really know what you're doing. But if you do know what you're doing, it works. I saw over a 25 year period again, so what I'm seeing here is that there are five of these roundabouts, all connected. There's an inner anticlockwise roundabout and an outer clockwise roundabout. So it's technically seven roundabouts all forming one giant circle. Yeah, that's what I'm seeing. But despite all this, in 25 years, they've only had 14 serious accidents and about 100 lesser accidents in 25 years. Yeah. And I think a lot of those involved bicyclists. And now they have solved that, they think, because there is now a cycle lane on the outside of the whole thing with something called the Pelican crossing. I don't know what that is. Do you? Yes, I looked it up. I'm like, this doesn't make any sense. It's called a pedestrian light controlled crossing. It's kind of like a terrible acronym, but it's when you want to cross rather than wait for the light to change, you can press the button and the light comes on and everybody has to stop. Yeah, that's a pelican crossing. Okay. So they think that solves what little problem they had with accidents. Yeah, it's pretty impressive, man. I think one of the other reasons is there's not more accidents. People who don't know what they're doing just stay out. Yeah, for sure. Rent a helicopter. Why not? You got anything else? I got nothing else. I like this one. This, to me, is one of my favorite kind of stuff you should know. Episodes. Civil engineering ones, traffic ones. What? No, just sort of like ballpoint penins, like a very rudimentary thing that's actually brilliant in its simplicity and has a unique history. I love this stuff. Yeah. Well, if you want to know more about traffic circles and roundabouts, go watch some videos. They're actually kind of mesmerizing. And you will learn to be a better driver as a result. And maybe none of us will ever have to wait at a red light again. Ever. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. Oh, no, it's not. What is the time for then? Well, I didn't get one, so when occasionally that happens. Okay. Not to say I didn't get an email I just did not prepare one. I see. But sometimes when that happens, we will do this. We will encourage the sharing of stuff you should know. Oh, yeah. Tell some friends. Tell one person you know. Tell two. Tell two people that you know how much you love the show. If you have not left a rating or a review on itunes that helps us out, we encourage you to do that. Yeah. And anywhere you can leave a rating or a review for us would be great. Absolutely. So we don't do this much, but we appreciate the support. And we encourage you to help spread the good word of this little show that's been around forever. Oh, yeah. And we should say also to Chuck, another way to spread the word is to go to our merch store at tpublic. Comstynow. And you could buy shirts that are pretty straightforward stuff you should know stuff, and then some really arcane ones that are basically like oneoff joke references that sometimes even me and Chuck are like, wait, what does this mean? But they're good. Like the Lewis the child Skeptic shirt, which I love. Sure, we got great band name shirts. We got wayback machine shirts. Yeah. Don't yuck someone's. Yum. Yeah. We have the standard Stuff You Should Know logo and all kinds of shirts and coffee mugs. And we're finally doing merch right. And have a good little store going. Yeah. So there's a lot of ways to show your love for us, but the biggest way of all is to just say hi once in a while and say, hey, dude, I like to hear what you guys have to do that makes us feel like a million bucks. And you can do that by going to our website stuffyoushino.com and finding all of our social links there. And you can also drop us a line by email at stuffpodcast@howsteporks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetopworks.com. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun is shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgaref 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 up and listen today." | |
c3de3278-5460-11e8-b38c-bfebfbe5e0be | SYSK Selects: How Wine Fraud Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-wine-fraud-works | Wine fraud may be a case of rich con artists tricking wealthy people into parting with money, but it's still a crime. Learn all about this weird, widespread practice in this classic episode. | Wine fraud may be a case of rich con artists tricking wealthy people into parting with money, but it's still a crime. Learn all about this weird, widespread practice in this classic episode. | Sat, 28 Dec 2019 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=28, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=362, tm_isdst=0) | 46238492 | audio/mpeg | "Happy Saturday, everyone. This is Chuck from Stuff You Should Know. And welcome to my select pick for the week. This is from October 15, 2015, and it's called How Wine Fraud Works. And I selected this because it's been a minute since I've listened to it. It and I love wine, as you know, and I hate wine fraud, as you probably know as well. So let's learn about it together. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, chuck Bryant and stuff, you know? Man, that coffee smells good. You want some? Have a sip. Yeah, I'm fine. But I just love that smell. So nice. Even though I don't drink much coffee. Oh, yeah, I'm with you. It's just a delicious smell. Sometimes I'll go to a department store and just walk through the fragrance aisle and just smell the coffee samples they have there. Oh, I thought you were going to say you go through the lingerie and just brush up against things after the coffee sniff. After the coffee sniffing is done and I can't smell anything anymore. Right. How are you? Thanks for outing me. Man, that's creepy. I'm sure there's weirdos out there who do that. Are you kidding me? There's probably websites dedicated to it. Yeah, I'm fine. Good. Do you like wine? I love wine. How do you know, Chuck, that the wine you're drinking is actually the wine you think it is? Because nobody bothers to fraudulently rip off a $15 bottle of wine. Not true. Yeah, there's a famous dish in the world of wine fraud. Watch people. Okay. From Tesco, which is, I think it's just a straight up, like, supermarket kim Britain. I saw that, actually. Yeah, you're right. And there is a Louisa Dough, which normally goes for about \u00a315. It was selling on sale for \u00a35. That's a good deal. But one of the guys who purchased it contacted some people who are into wine and said, I think this is phony, because the label looks like it's a photocopy. So somebody was doing Knockoff Louisianot, which normally goes for not that much, and sold it to Tesco, who was in turn selling it. And this is a huge thing, and there's a big debate even still on just how widespread wine fraud is. And it's really difficult to get to the bottom of because there's so many people who have their fingers in this fraudulent pot. Whether or unwittingly. And either way are unwilling to admit that it's as extensive as it is. Or the people who are burned are making a bigger deal out of it than they are. Than it really is. Because they have the money and the context to get CBS to do a story on how they got burned by buying some fake wine. So it's not entirely clear how widespread it is, but there have been some really great, very famous almost proven stories of outright wine fraud, but it's a pretty new phenomenon. Well, if you think ancient Rome is pretty new, let's hear it, man. Well, ever since there was wine, people were making fake wine or trumping it up as something other than it was. So the newer practice, you can divide it into two things. There was an ancient Rome, they were doing stuff like this and adding, like, lead to wine to sweeten it while they were killing people. But then there's the new practice of, like, hey, this is a Thomas Jefferson bottle of wine. Right. And you can buy to the Christie's auction for $100,000, and it's really not that at all. Do you remember back in the think Ryanide was adding, like, windshield wiper fluid or something? Yeah. It was, at the very least, an urban legend. More recently, there was something added to wine to make it sweeter that was really bad for you. But I don't know. I can't confirm if it was that case or not. This is specifically reunited in the again, it could have just been an urban legend, because at the same time that there were spiders eggs in bubble. Yum. Sure. Yeah. There was a lot of, like, consumer panic, I think. Yeah. It was a golden age for urban legends. Yeah, agreed. And you know what? We need to do one on wine, period. Yes. This is so us. Yeah. We'll do episodes on everything but the actual thing, and then we'll finally get to the thing. And we could also probably do a completely separate podcast on wine tasting, because, again, that's a really bitter pill, because there are some people who say there really is no difference in these wines, and there have been numerous occasions over the years where jerks have set up wine tasters to fail by just switching out wines and saying, this is a really nice bottle. What's? Really crappy. And they say, this is lovely. The tannins are really coming in. It's jammy and full. And they're like, you're drinking two buck chuck. People love that stuff. It's a big bone of contention with wine drinkers and also people who like to poopoo that right. And say it's all subjective and you're all just snooty, and there really is no difference. But there really is a difference. Okay. Like you say, there's a big debate over that, right? Yeah. But if you dive into the world of high end vintage wine collecting yes. It's like an aura. Boris right. That snake that eats its own tail. Right. In that the people who are in charge of judging whether something is real or not are basing that on their previous experiences, which may or may not have been an experience with the fraudulent wine. So even if you can tell the difference, if you've only been exposed to, say, fraudulent 18th century wine, then when you are asked to judge a bottle of 18th century wine, you're going to compare it to that, and if it's ultimately coming from the same counterfeiter, you will be like, yes, this is the real thing, because I've had that before. And it tastes like that. Well, yeah. And here's the other thing is. There is vintage, appropriately aged wine that tastes great because it has aged in such a way. And then there are these super old bottles that apparently taste like canned, asparagus is the note that it brings out. And these don't even taste that good. It's just the fact that you can own it and show people you don't even drink it. In most cases, you don't drink a Jefferson wine. No. You have it in your collection. So some people say, look at my collection. Exactly. That's the whole point. For a lot of people, that's the whole point. It's just own this bottle. It's like owning a piece of Thomas Jefferson. You get to show off and tell people how great you are. Right, yeah, exactly. So that's how a lot of wine counterfeiting has gotten away with, because the people are never going to open the wine. Exactly. So whatever tampering you did with the seal is never going to be discovered. They're never going to taste the wine inside. So it could be two buck Chuck or whatever. We'll see the quirk. Yes. And they're just happy to have this thing and their status to be elevated to the point where they don't really want to know if it's a counterfeit, so long as they can walk around and tell people, this is Thomas Jefferson. Right. Well, we should go ahead and start talking about Bill Coke. He is one of the other brothers. He is not Charles or David Koch of the famous Republican Koch brothers fame. Billionaire supporters of the Republican Party. Yeah, yeah, sure. He's saying that's like the nicest way to describe them. It really is. Yeah, it is. He is the brother, one of the brothers who got out along with another brother. Not another brother from another mother. No, they all the same mother. Right, right. Okay. Yeah. He got out of the family business and said, you know what? I'm a billionaire. What I'm going to do is I'm going to start collecting really rare and expensive things. One thing he has is a gun collection. He owns Custard's rifle. Billy, the kids pistol. Does he? Yeah, he owns the gun that killed Jesse James. Oh, I'm sorry. He has Jesse James pistol and that gun. What was his name? Robert Ford. Yeah. And that was a good movie. Oh, boy, was it really good. Beautifully shot as well. Wyatt earp rifle. Doc holidays rifle. He owns a lot of vintage guns. He has a lot of very famous works of art, like original Picassos and Monets. Right. It's hardly enough. Yeah, exactly. He sounds like a big sucker to me. And he also owns, as this article says, several hundred bottles of what he calls moose pits. Yeah, that's what he calls it. Well, he's saying that for all he knows, that's what's inside. He got duped, very famously, many times. Yeah. And he has had many lawsuits over the years that have come out. This guy loves suing people. Oh, sure. He does what he calls dropping subpoenas on people. Oh, yeah. He sue people almost recreationally. He drops a subpoena on their head. Yeah. What a guy. So, Bill Coke, again, very famously, he's probably the most famous victim of wine fraud because he sues everybody he possibly can, who may or may not have sold them a fake. Sure. He really takes it personally and he really goes after people. And he did a lot of media about this, too. So he's very famous for this. And he brought in some wine experts and said, here are 30,040 thousand bottles of wine that I have in my sellers. Wow. How many are fake? And they just took a random sample of 3000 bottles. Are you kidding me? No. They said, what are you paying me again? Yeah, exactly. They're like, we'll bill you for this. They took a random sample of 3000 bottles and it yielded 130 fakes. So, I mean, he has hundreds and hundreds and hundreds by extension of fake bottles of wine in a seller. And that was actually about on par with what the average, not necessarily uninitiated or uneducated wine buyer, but fervent vintage wine buyer would have. That about $4 million seller. About a million of it will be on fakes. Yeah. And he supposedly spent close to $5 million on fake wine over the past quarter century, including some of those Jefferson that we'll talk about. And a lot of this wine came from a man named Rudy Karniawan. That's good stuff. Yeah, it's even better than I had in my head. What do you have? I like that. I think carniawan is good. And this guy was one of the most famous really? Alongside another guy that we'll talk about, one of the most famous wine fraudists. Fraudsters. Fraudster. Counterfeiters. Counterfeiters of all time. And he was sentenced to ten years in prison and supposedly was to pay close to $50 million in damages, which is easily what he made by selling fake wine. Sure. In two sales in 2006, he made $36 million selling fake wine. What a jerk. And it's easy to sit back and the defense team even used this in court to say, these are rich guys. Like, no harm, no foul. Who cares if you're ripping off the rich? Yes, very easy. And I even found myself kind of thinking that. But at the end of the day, it's wrong. It's wrong. It's wrong. Sure. I mean, I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't sell a counterfeit bottle of wine. Yeah, it's wrong. It's illegal and it's gross. And just because you're ripping off the rich, it's not like he's Robin Hood and giving that vent to the poor. He was having rich himself. I didn't have the idea that he was doing that. No. Plus Dave Rugs, who wrote this point, but I take issue with it that ultimately, vintage counterfeit wine fraud affects all wine drinkers because that stuff trickles down. I don't think that's true, because from reading this, there are two really great long form articles that this article was partially based on. One was in The New Yorker and one was on Vanity Fair, and both of them were totally worth reading. Yeah, agreed. But just from reading those, you get the impression that those are two very different worlds, that the world of just regular wine appreciation and vintage wine collection form, a Venn diagram that just barely overlaps, and that one really does not affect the economics of the other. So if there's a bunch of counterfeit stuff going on in the vintage wine world, it probably wouldn't drive up prices for the wine that you're buying. That's ten years old, tops. Yeah, so I don't think that that's necessarily true. His point that we all shoulder the burden that counterfeiters do because these two worlds are so divorced, but even still, like, if you are, people are losing money and reputations are being built up and lost. Yeah, I get that. All right, well, let's take a little break and we'll come back and we'll talk about the two ways that you can generally go about trying to fake a wine. All right, we're back. We're drunk on wine. So drunk. I wish. What's your favorite wine? My favorite wines are big bodied California Cabernets. Generally, like, not a specific, like, winemaker, if that's what you were asking. I'm not going to like yeah, there's no wrong answer. Yes. No. How was that funny? Because it made me think of fat bottom girls. That Queen song. Big Bodied, California Saturday's. Yes. It just popped in my head and I laughed like a goon. Yeah. I like really full bodied wines. Zinfandels and Cabernets. I think California, they're doing it right. You know, they say Petit Sarah is the Rodney Dangerfield. The wine world. I've heard that. So if you're going to go about faking a wine, there are two things you can do. You can either fake the wine inside a real bottle, or you can fake the bottle with real wine. Yeah. And it's all real wine, different vintage, maybe. Yes. But it could be, like, a really nice 1947 wine that you say it's actually from 1914 or even 1941. I mean, it could be within a couple of years. It depends on whether it was a good year. Yeah, good point. Or if there's a scarcity of it, that kind of stuff. And actually, Bill Cook makes a pretty good point. His whole thing is he wants to have, I think, 150 years of lafitte or somehow, like, every single vintage that they released of every single variety over the course of 150 years, which is extremely ambitious. Sure. And he said it's easy to get the really prized ones because those are the ones that people saved and all that. Right. He said it's the mediocre years that are old that nobody bothered to save this drank and threw away the bottle or just didn't keep it. Right. Those are the ones that he has the most trouble finding. Or they did the skeet shooting. They just had the servants throw it up in the air and they shot them with shotguns. Yeah, that's what they do. Richie Riches well, you make a good point, too, because Kearny Allen, although he dealt in the super high echelon, he would also take a 200 bottle of wine and fake it to be like $1000 bottle of wine. Yeah, he did it both ways. He would take an old bottle, legitimate real bottle, put in his own mix of wine and cork it again and make it look like it had never been opened. Or like you said, he would take just say, a 47 la ft and mess with the label to make it look like a 41 la Ft, which would be worth ten times what the 47 la Ft would be worth. Right. And clearly I also want to point out lafitte is obviously the only fancy wine that I'm familiar with because that's my go to. So if you guys are out there and you're getting the impression that I know what I'm talking about, as far as wine goes, you have been duped. Well, you're not a big wine guy. You're on record as such. I like wine. I'm definitely not a wine guy. Yeah, exactly. And I'm not wine guy either. I'm wine guy in the bare sense of the word. I like really good wines. I like going to wineries, but I'm certainly not like I'm not saying I have some amazing palate. I can't pick out vanilla notes and things like that. I'm just like, man, this tastes really good. When will you pour up a bottle of it? And I tend to fall into that camp where I'm certain that there are people out there, literal taste makers, who can tell the difference between wine. Sure. And I've had wine that I didn't like before. I've had wine that I do like, but I fall into the camp where I'm ultimately like it's. Whatever you appreciate, there's no hierarchy. There doesn't need to be. A $2,000 bottle is not necessarily going to taste as good as a $20 bottle. The whole thing is just about individual enjoyment, and it's kind of snobbery associated with it to me, just misses the point. Yeah. Here's my deal. I can really tell the difference between what I would consider cheap wine and like, a decent bottle or a good bottle, but that's where my taste level maxes out. I can't tell the difference between a $200 bottle and a $40 bottle. Okay. But if you gave me like a $6 bottle, you can taste the difference between then, like, a $20 bottle. Yeah, but even then, if that's what you like, that's what you like. I'm not really scoop. It's just not what I want. Oh, man. A lot of caveats there. So we were talking about Rudy K. Yeah. And how he faked wines because he got real bottles correct, in general. And made his own wine concoctions. Here's what this dude did, right, to get to the point where he could even counterfeit. Yes. He got his hands on real stuff, and he ran up some serious bar tabs while he was doing it. There's a very legendary story of him hooking up with this guy who was the head of wine sales at an auction house called Acker Merrill. They factor in big time into this guy's assent, into Rudy K's counterfeit ascent. Not wittingly, necessarily, but they let him use their reputation to build his own. But he did it by duping them, by throwing these crazy parties at restaurants and having, like, $250,000 tabs, picking up the tab himself. But then after everybody left, going to the staff at the restaurant, being like, mail me every single one of those bottles. Right. And they go, okay, it's your wine. But that's weird. Not enough to make mention of it, but it was odd to them. His big thing was that he did it at the same place over and over again. So they did start to notice. But while he was doing this, he was also collecting wine, too. Really expensive vintage wine. And there was already a market for it, but it didn't look anything like the market that he built almost himself. He drove the value of vintage wine up almost single handedly by buying up as many bottles of old stuff as he could. And while he was doing that, he was building his reputation. He was making connections, and he was getting his hands on legitimate wine that he could use to resell now that the market was up at a higher price after he had already consumed it at, say, like a party. Yeah. And one thing he was doing that tipped off some people early on was, like, you were saying he was buying off years of good vintages, great vintages to where? There was one guy, jeffrey Troy was his name. He's a wine merchant, and he said he was buying these good bottles for French burgundy, but they weren't great. They were off years. And if he was a collector, it was just weird to buy these and to be adamant about buying these because he could get them for cheaper and fake them easier. Exactly. Like, he could just kind of smudge the year, and all of a sudden, it's a much more expensive vintage. Yeah. So he's driving the market up. He's buying legitimate wine. Apparently. He's taking out loans that he defaulted on to build his reputation. And so when the market hits, he starts counterfeiting. And there was one story that actually was pretty prominent in the vanity fair article, where he was apparently confused. He thought and there's no way that any of us would have ever thought this, but he thought that a ponzo closed st. Denis was the same thing as the christine ponzo cloe st. Denis. Right. He was way off. So it turns out that he figured that ponzo made this wine in burgundy in the 40s because christine Ponson denise made this wine in the 40s. Turns out that the regular ponso, the very famous ponso family, made their close end starting in the 80s. So he actually got found out because of this one mistake. This led to his unraveling, and he was going to auction or sell about, like, 95 bottles of the stuff that was overtly counterfeit. It had never existed. Which also said a lot about the collectors at the time, too, because they were coving and paying for wine that they'd never even heard of. Yeah, it didn't exist strictly because these people were attached to it. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. It really is. And that's how he was able to get away with it for so long, because that dinner, the guy ponsel himself, the guy who was the proprietor of the vineyard, showed up at that dinner, flew from paris to, I think, new york to be at the dinner to make sure that they didn't auction off those things because he knew they were counterfeit. And rudy k still was left to just keep going for years after that because of reputations. Well, and like you said, he had built up this reputation, which is a big part of it. He's have to be a true con artist. You can't just go in there and say, hey, I've got all these jefferson wines. I'm chuck. Right. You have to be known in the community, and it takes a long time. And they have to build that rep. Right. Yeah. They have to think you have money, real money, which he did. No, he borrowed it all. Well, I thought he came from money. No, that was well, he had money at one point, he borrowed it. Oh, I know. But then he made a lot. Right. So think about this. I think he defaulted on a three or $4 million loan and then another one or $2 million loan, and then he also borrowed privately from other, like, wine collectors that he knew. But even still, let's say he borrowed $10 million that he defaulted. He made tens and tens and tens more millions. $34 million in one year, just from two sales. Yeah. And he currently is appealing his conviction on the grounds that when he was arrested, he was arrested on his front porch. Then they searched his house, and they said, you can't do that. They got the search warrant afterward, and he said, you can't do that. I should have never been searched. Yeah. Really? And it's looking like they're saying, no, you know what? They had reasonable doubt to search your home. Yeah, exactly. So I don't think that appeal is going to go anywhere. But this is as recently as, like, this year. I think he still appeals. Yeah, but he got ten years, right? Yeah, ten years, man. So he got caught and he got caught red handed, it sounds like. And the people who were attached to him that helped build up this market definitely suffered some dings to their reputation. Oh, yeah. But are saying, like, we had no idea we trusted this guy. We were duped, too. And to their merit, Aker Merrill offered money back guarantees on anything that was considered or found to be fake and paid up on it after one auction. Well, one of the guys Coke is suing is I can't remember his name, but he supposedly is like, I didn't know I was selling you fake wine. Like, I got duped and he's saying, no, you knew. So they're trying to prove whether or not this guy actually knew. And so that's another part of that debate where how widespread is this? Who knows what? Yeah. And how far do you go back before you find the person who did it? Right. So we'll talk about one other person who allegedly did it right after this break. So, Chuck, there's another man, very famous man in the wine world. His name is Hardy Road in Stock, but I don't believe that's his real name. His real name is what minehard? Gorker. That's right. What a name. That's his given name, but he goes by Hardy Road and Stock in Hesitance. The he to be a truly great wine counterfeiter. Not only do you have to build up a reputation as rich and willing to crack bottles of ridiculously expensive, historically valuable wine at parties sure. Where there's wine critics and auctioneers and wine experts, but you also have to have a certain love for wine. I think Rudy Kay definitely loved wine. Yes, but they all have. Yeah. And Hardy Rodenbach definitely does, too. And apparently there's a big question about whether he is one of the better wine mixers on the planet. Who rodent Stock? Yeah, because that's a real job where someone will work at a winery and they'll take a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and then all of a sudden you've got their blend. Yeah, they're blend. Some blends are better than others. Apparently, Rodentsock is a master blender if he is, in fact a counterfeiter. This article on how stuff works makes it sound like Bill Coke's hired FBI gun, closed the book and it's done. But it's never been proven in a court of law that Rodentsock actually was this counterfeiter. And he still denies the allegations. The circumstantial evidence is pretty substantial. Yeah. I mean, I think the only reason is because he refuses to come to America to go to court. Yes, but there's no criminal prosecution. It's all civil, as far as I understand. Yes, I think that's the case. So he was a former music manager, and I think there's a book called The Billionaire's Vinegar about this, about the Jefferson wines. So interesting that they're making to a movie with McConaughey, of course. Oh, yeah. Does he play Bill Coke or Hardy rodentstock? I don't know who he's playing, or does he just kind of, like, wander around days in the background? He's the wine maker man. Yeah. I'm not sure who he's playing, actually, but it was a big book, and it was about the famous Jefferson wines. And basically the deal is Thomas Jefferson, as we all know, was way into wine, way into France, big Francophile, and he had either bottles in his collection or he had his own vintage as well. Thomas Jefferson wines, and very famously, Hardenstock was rooted out. Allegedly, I guess. Do we have to say that as faking these Jefferson bottles? Yeah, he would force you're supposed to spit out when you're drinking wine tasting. Yeah, I don't know about force, but highly encourage his guests to swallow so they would be drunker by the time he got to the real good stuff at the end. Again, so it's unusual to force your guests to drink rather than spit out the wine at a tasting party. And then it's also unusual to bring out your best stuff at the end because everybody knows your palate is saturated, and you can't really tell the difference anyway. Well, if you've ever been on a wine tour and go to, like, several wineries, you definitely at the last winery. You're like, Give me a case. Right? This is great. Yeah. So when he's throwing these parties and these tastings, again, he's invited and they're very smart to invite wine experts, wine critics, wine journalists. It's an event. It is an event. And again, all these people think that this dude is just this eccentric, extraordinarily rich dude who is literally opening to drink and share with them these people who are pioneers compared to this man. He's such a great man because he's opened a 1787 bottle of Thomas Jefferson's wine, and he's given me a glass. I've got to go right about it. I got to talk about how good Hardy Rosenstock is. So he's very smart to have surrounded himself with the people he did. Yeah. So his story was that he said he claimed that he found a batch of Jefferson bottles behind a brick wall in a Paris Parisian basement that he still hasn't revealed where. This is a little suspicious. A little. Especially if he already got all the wine out of there. Yeah, exactly. And then he went and sold a lot of these to people like Coke and Christopher Forbes and other billionaires for hundreds of thousands of dollars per bottle. I think they were, like, about $120 a bottle. Yeah, it's a ton of money. Sure. And they were fakes. And it all came down onto a little matter of punctuation, which is hysterical to me. The Thomas Jefferson bottles. Well, first of all, he kept really meticulous records because he was so into wine. Jefferson TJ did. Yeah. So on the bottles, Chuck, it said it was engraved Thapital J, period. Right. Supposedly Jefferson, when he wrote his initials, it would be Thapital J, period. So that fatal flaw of the matter of punctuation is what gave them away, basically. Yeah. There's a larger question, too. So the idea that Thomas Jefferson would have his bottles engraved was based on a letter, a verified letter. It was an order that Jefferson placed for French wine on behalf of himself and George Washington, which makes these bottles even more amazingly awesome, because they think, well, these came from an order that Jefferson placed that were also in George Washington's shipment as well, and that they needed to be separated out by initials. But if you step back and you think they wouldn't go in engrave all the bottles, they just mark the crates that the bottles came in. This crate goes to George. This crate goes to Jefferson because he was ordering it by the case, not by the bottle. So the idea that the bottles would be engraved is also dubious in and of itself. But Monticello historians are like, number one, this is wrong, the way that this is engraved. It's not how he would have done it. And secondly, we have the records for this era, and there's nothing in there about these vintages being in Monticello or being ordered by Jefferson. And then also, once Bill Koch put his FBI dude on the case, it turns out that it's likely that this engraving was done by modern instruments. Yeah, he hired a guy named an ex Fed named Jim McElroy. I'm sorry, Jim Elroy. I know. I kept telling him to say McElroy, too. Really? I guess because of the McIlroy brothers. So he hired this guy, paid him a lot of money, I imagine, to try and do some digging on this. And one of the first lines of defense was there's something called cesium 137, and that is a radioactive isotope that exists because it's a product of nuclear fission of uranium. So it didn't exist until we started doing that, before we started launching nuclear bomb explosion tests. Yeah, exactly. Now it exists, and you can actually test for this stuff, so if you find it basically convey something back to right. However, in the case of hardened stock, he was smart enough at least to use wine older than 1945, so that didn't really help him much. Yeah. And I wonder if he just surely he just lucked out. I don't know, because I wonder if that caesium test was around when he did this, because he supposedly found him in 85 and started selling them immediately. Yeah. Who knows? Maybe he got lucky or maybe he just was like, I need to use some really old nice wine to at least try and get away with it. So again and then one other part of the case against him was that he had a tenant once at his family's house who had an apartment near his in the house and in the basement. The tenant said that he saw basically tons of empty bottles and stacks of labels and all this stuff which to the tenant meant well, this guy's forging wine. Right. That's a little more that's probably what I would think. I hope he doesn't go by my recycling every Wednesday. Pure wine counterfeiter. It could be. There's nothing you can do about these old you can have people inspect them and try and verify them but there's really nothing you can do as a foolproof method. But really nice wineries now are doing there are a lot of methods you can do now for future generations of wine fraud. Yeah. For the vintage stuff, your sol basically. Yeah. You just have to really trust where it's coming from, probably hire an expert and maybe stay away from rodent stock if you're Bill Coke. Right? That's right. Like you said, the modern guys are using things like RFID tags, QR codes that you scan and it takes you to a website or something. Yeah. Microchips like you have in your dog. Yes. So you can track the actual bottle. There's also like tamper proof capsules that the wine is encased in the bottle's neck that when that's opened, it changes color if it's ever been opened. And some actually alert the Internet, I guess, back home at headquarters. Yes, they alert the internet once it's been open. And there's another one that's pretty cool. There's this company that inserts a specific DNA marker into the ink on the label that can't be counterfeited and that they can go back in later and be like no, this is real. At the very least we know the label is real. Yeah. In Rudy case he had a bunch of credit card charges for glue and labels and ink. He had a pretty nice trail of evidence behind him. Yeah, I'm sure he's not very smart with it. Well, I mean, if his apartment was just a counterfeiting factor yeah. And then lastly check one of the pieces of evidence that a lot of people point to when they say that wine fraud is a big deal is ebay bottles. Yeah. You can go on ebay and spend $100 on an empty bottle that if it weren't empty, would go for a thousand or 10,000 or whatever. And the idea behind it of course, is that somebody filling it up and putting it back on the market as a counterfeit. Why would someone sell that? That reason to make $100 on a $10,000 bottle of wine. Sure, some people love money. I know. It just seems like a lot of people who buy that kind of wine. I don't picture them going on ebay and running auctions over. It makes you wonder also if those are people who they're just working at a restaurant. Well, that's what it sounds like to me. I can take that home and put it on ebay. The service of throws the cleans up after the dinner party. That's what I figure is going on. And apparently a lot of restaurants now because of guys like Rudy K and Hardy Road and Stock, now smash vintage bottles once the wine has been ordered and drunk. Well, with the shotgun and the skeet shooting, I got one last thing. Supposedly, there were only five magnums of produced okay. Between 2005 and 2000 and 718 Magnums of 1947 La Flora were sold at auction. Wow. That's so easy to how can that happen? That's so easy to check when there's only five of something. The argument is that either the guy who works at La Floor and did in 1947 and says, no, there are only five magnums, doesn't remember. Right. Because the record keeping in, like, Burgundy is terrible back in the day. Sure. Or that there's just no will. There's so much of a market for counterfeit wine and there's not enough pressure being put on the people who are actually selling it or allowing it to happen. That it's just whatever. And supposedly, now that America has gotten more and more savvy, this counterfeit market is moving over to China, to where there's, like, a lot of wealth coming up and not a lot of wine education, and people are just getting taken for rides. Man good stuff. Yeah, this is a good one. Man good pick. If you want to know more about wine fraud, you can type those words in the search bar houseofworks.com. And I said, search bar. Should I chuck, what is the time for Facebook questions? All right. Sometimes we pull questions from Facebook to answer them. That's what we're doing now. This is from Diane Martin, f. Martin, since your podcasts are essentially what would be called literature reviews and research lingo, how do you decide which references to include and exclude? Use any kind of quality indicators to decide what you will and will include, especially when they're deeply debated is a good question. We've talked about our research process. I think we tried and use peer reviewed journals. And if we find something on the Internet, we try and double and triple check that information. I know a big giveaway you always talk about is if it's the same exact thing, printed a bunch. That's usually a sign that it could be bogus. Like Rodney Dangerfield being in the scout. Yes. In the movie the Scout. But it still bears mentioning. Sure. You just have to mention it at the caveat. We don't find it credible, but it's out there because it exists in some form or fashion. Scientific journals, medical journals. Sure. I mean, peer reviewed is just a great way to go. If you can get your hands on it. I remember this great article called, like, why Is Science Behind a Pay Wall? About basically the science publishing cartel. But if you can get your hands on peer reviewed stuff, that's the best stuff to work with. Agreed. Go ahead. Another question. Yeah, Chuck. For me. This is from Shane Elliot. I knew I think you might know this question will find a special place in Chuck Hart. What are your favorite types and kinds of beers and why do you grow your own beer? And somebody else said recently on Twitter that you said in the beer episode that you were going to get into homebrewing. Did you ever? So that's a two part question for you, Chuck, from Twitter and Facebook. Well, you're a beer guy, too. Sure, I like beer. I do not brew my beer, but on the Record is really liking IPAs. I know there's a backlash going on now. Why? Because there's so many of them and people are like, these are all the kinds of beers in the world. IPAs tastes like soap. I love anything that's super hoppy. Yeah, I do. That's what I like. Our friend Dave dropped by Sweetwater and brought us some hop hash. I haven't tried it yet, have you? No, but all that stuff is good. Sweetwater does a great job, and we've always both kind of agreed that Sierra Nevada Pale Oil is one of the great all time pale oil, for sure. But there are so many great ones. Bell's Two Hearted. I love. Oh, man, that might be the best ever. Yeah. And that plenty of the elder. We got sent some of that. That was delicious. Oh, here in Athens, Georgia. Creature Comforts tropicalia. I've not had that one. Delicious. Orpheus brewing is here in Atlanta, and they make a sour that I tried. That was really good. I'm not into the sours. Have you tried it? Sours? Yeah. I don't seem like it. I loved it. So it was weird that I was like, this is kind of good. Yes, it was weird in a good way, because sometimes weird can just be novel and you're like, okay, I tried that. It's done. I like it. Yeah. I don't like wheat beers. I don't either. Belgian whites. No, not a fan. All right, there's your answer. Fishbowl. I'm thirsty. Jackson Bly. Other than Atlanta, what are your top five favorite cities each? New York, San Francisco, seattle. Does it have to be American cities? In that case. Then I'll throw in Paris and London. Look at me. Well, fancy things. I know. Let's see. I love Hiroshima. Japan is a really neat city. So Kyoto. I'm going to make those tied for one, though. Of course. New York. Sure. Let's see, where else? I like DC. A lot, too. Yeah, that's a great town. Rome, italy is surprisingly neat. Surprisingly? What? Are you kidding? I mean, it's a major city and it's packed with people. So you would think, like it's a city. Sure. But it also has like you're just walking along the street and all of a sudden you're walking next to like a 3000 year old wall that's not even part of a museum. This city just built up around it. Yeah, dude, there'll be like a fountain on a corner that blew up like somebody's peeing in. It's 1000 years old. Right. It's a very neat city in that regard. Where else? That's all I can come up with right now. You know what? I don't have to go all fancy pants like Charleston, South Carolina one of my favorites. It's a great place for food. Savannah. Yeah. I like Charleston and Savannah. Yeah, they're similar to me. Yes, charleston is a little more refined, but also a little more modern. Yeah, it's not fancy pants to like cities overseas. No, I know, but when someone says Paris, you're like, yeah, but Paris is awesome. It is a great time in London. When's the last time you're in London? Like 20 years ago. Okay. You should go back because London is like a brand new city. Yeah, I bet there is something to do at all times now they have cabs, which is apparently the big thing that changed there. And it's just an awesome little town. Beautiful. Well, maybe we can go there on a tour. Yes. Well, that's your turn for the question. This is from Gus M. Parker. Why did Josh grow his hair? Gus, there's a simple answer to that. That's a good question. Because I can't. Because I realized that I have hair and I'm going to live it up while I got it. I'm going to go with Gary. Rickleman, what is the best flavor of poptart? Hint there is only one correct answer. That's not true, Gary. I think the answer you're looking for is brown sugar and cinnamon. It's a good one. There's nothing wrong with blueberry or strawberries. Strawberries. Really good. Frosted strawberries. As long as it's frosted. That's the key. Well, here's another key. And here's the tip for you that don't mind clogging your arteries. Pop it out of the toaster. I know where you're going with this. Get a stick of butter, rub it on the back, the dry side and then around the edges of the other side and just thank me later. I have not tried that. And I actually heard that before from Jessica Simpson when she was pregnant. Oh, really? Apparently just went berserk on the buttered pop part. Never heard of that. You got time for one more? Yeah, we got time for a couple of more. This an unusual one from Michael snively or Snively. One of the two probably Snively. If the Bryant and Clark were units of measure, what would they measure? Oh, man, mine would probably well, I know what mine would be is some sweat level, like units of sweat per square inch or something. That's a good one. Yeah, mine would measure the distance between any one place and awesome. Oh, wow. How's that? That's good. Thank you. I got one more. Chelsea Hamilton, what's the most rewarding thing that Stuff You Should Know has brought to you or allowed you to do? We've done a lot of really neat things that we're very thankful for, but I'm going to just say the live shows because they're so much fun. They're a lot of fun. And it's fun to go to cities that have never been to, and it's fun to meet people and get out of this whole room. So it's very rewarding and very fun. I'm going with Chuck Mantle as well. All right, well, thanks, everybody, for those Facebook questions. If you ever want to get in touch with us on Facebook, you can go to facebook. Comstuffysheaknow. You can also tweet to us at syskpodcast. That's our handle. You can send us a good old fashioned email to stuffpodcastosteforks.com. And as always, join us at our homeonthewebuffyoushow.com. Stuff you should know is production of Iheartradios how stuff works. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon Music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death Again, 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." | |
The Real How Jack the Ripper Worked | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-real-how-jack-the-ripper-worked | In this Halloween episode, Josh and Chuck go way back to late 19th century London to examine the grisly details of the Jack the Ripper murders. They also discuss Ripperology, Jack the Ripper suspects and theories, and the legacy of the murders. | In this Halloween episode, Josh and Chuck go way back to late 19th century London to examine the grisly details of the Jack the Ripper murders. They also discuss Ripperology, Jack the Ripper suspects and theories, and the legacy of the murders. | Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:46:08 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=29, tm_hour=14, tm_min=46, tm_sec=8, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=302, tm_isdst=0) | 38155732 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. 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 HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always. It's Charles w chuck Bryant. I love England. Yeah. We're partying outside of the Britannia pub. It's Saturday, September 1888. Right, Chuck? Yes. I feel a little funny in my modern clothes, but everyone seems to accept us. Yeah, they're pretty wasted, Chuck. I don't think they've noticed yet. Yes, we came back here because we're about to stumble upon the second victim of Jack the Ripper. And please don't hold it against, as part of our contract for use of the Way Back machine, that we can't actually prevent any historical occurrence from happening. Right. Doc Brown says that we could not prevent the crime, so we won't even try. Yeah, so sorry, Andy Chapman, but it sounds like here we go. Chuck, did you hear that? Yes. That's the end of Annie Chapman. Let's get over there. You want to yes. Crime scene number two. Okay, let's run over chuck, hang back, man. Let the cops do their work. But I just want to show you a couple of things, okay? Why, by the way, are we at victim number two and not victim number one? Well, victim number one was the one that kicked off the canonical murders. But Annie Chapman, whose dead body we're looking at right now, her wounds and what happened to her is much more characteristic of Jack the Ripper. I just kind of wanted you to get an impression. I am impressed. Then, yeah, some bad things happen to this poor lady. Okay, hang back, Chuck. Let's let the cops do their work. I just want to show you a couple of while. Just bear with me for a second. All I see is blood. Yeah, it's pretty bloody. But there's actually a lot of detail that these investigators are eventually going to pick up on. Yeah. Which will be an ML. Should you suggest something at this point, or do you want to hang back? I think we should hang back. Okay. But notice that this is Annie Chapman. She was a casual prostitute. Yeah. Now, what does that mean? It means that she made ends meet by engaging in prostitution. I'm sorry. By the way, Ms. Chapman, I know I feel kind of bad standing here like this, but it's true, though. So if you'll notice, Chuck, she's on her back and she's blood out of her throat. Unfortunately, yeah. But one thing I want you to notice, and this is going to become, I guess, characteristic of the Ripper murder. Sure. Calling card, if you will. Sure. Her legs do you see how they're at the knee? Yeah. They're arched up and then they're laying off to the side. Yeah. It looks like some sort of childbirth thing. Actually have a theory about that we'll get to later. Oh, theory. Okay. Yes. All right. Well, that's pretty much all I wanted you to see. These guys we're witnessing and exercising, futility. These guys are never going to figure out who did this, but yeah, it looks like she's been cut up pretty good. Yeah. So you want to get out of here? Are you okay? I'm feeling queasy. All right, well, let's get out of here. That could just be the mead. Okay. All right, let's get to the Wayback Machine. Chuck. Okay. So, Chuck, how do you feel? Nauseous. A bit hungover. You look sober as day. Yeah. That's frightening. Yeah. So. Chuck, that was Annie Chapman. Yeah, it was. And she is the second of what they call the canonical murders, or the Ripper murders. Right. Yeah. The White Chapel murders. Right. So in the fall of 1888, from August 31 to November 9, there were five murders that are among the grislier murders ever committed in Great Britain, possibly anywhere. And there were other murders, but these are attributed to one Jack the Ripper. Yes, that's right, Chuck. These five, as we said, the canonical murders at the time and throughout history since then. Right. These five are definitely attributed using Mo and comparing the bodies, that kind of stuff. Which we'll get into later. Yes, we will. It's possible that there are other murders in particular. There was one woman who was murdered on August 7, 1888. Remember the first one? Maryanne paulie Nichols was murdered on August 31. So it's possible he had another first victim named Martha Tabram, who was a murdered prostitute. Right. And he may have started are practicing on hers was a little less precise than you'll remember, Annie Chapman was, right? Yeah, I think so. The reason people think that she might be an extra Ripper murder is that her legs were spread. You'll notice that, like you said in the childbirth position yeah. Most of the women, if not all of the canonical murders were found like that. Yeah, I have a theory on that. We'll get to that, though. Okay. All right. So, Chuck, London, let's talk about the backdrop. Yes. London's, East End at the time, very poor, extremely poor. And the pubs were open all night. And a lot of alcoholism, a lot of disease, a lot of opium. As you know, it's not a very pleasant place to be. No, it's not. But there are families trying to make it here. Again, it's mainly just poverty. Yeah. A lot of, like you said, casual prostitution. There was a lot of that going on just to make ends meet. Absolutely. One of the things that makes the Ripper murders stand out so much is that they weren't the only people that we murdered. There were some really brutal crimes committed around that same time. Yeah. Not a great place to be. No. But it really said something about the Jack the Ripper murders and the grip that it had on the people in London's East End. Sure. That they stood out against this backdrop, this horrible, bleak, violent backdrop. Yeah. In a way, actually, people have later on talk about how it sort of exposed this dirty secret of the poverty in London and kind of brought it to light more so than anyone else could at the time. Yeah. I think George Bernard Shaw, the playwright, said that Jack the Ripper succeeded where social reformers had failed right. By shining a spotlight on the living conditions in London's Eastern. So that's one way to do it. Yeah. And he had a whole lot of other impacts. He was a lot of firsts in a lot of ways. And we'll talk about that in a little bit. Yes. But let's go over the victims, the canonical victims. Chuck okay. How much detail do you want to go into here? Because it is grizzly. As much as you'd like, buddy. As much as you can stomach. Well, the first, like you said, was Marianne Polly Nichols, and she's 44. She was an alcoholic, like most of her cohort victims. Yeah. That was definitely the common thread for all the women, is that they were either drunk at the time or were known to love the liquor. Right. And the other through line there is that they were all known to be prostitutes, at least casually here and there. And a lot of people suspect that Jack some people thought he may have hated prostitutes, but it was probably just an easy mark. A drunk hooker sure would be an easy person to kill at 530 in the morning in London. Definitely. Especially a drunk hooker in need of money. Exactly. Yeah. So Polly was the first one she was killed at about or she was found at 345 in the morning. Yeah. Severe lacerations in her throat and further incisions to her neck and violent lacerations to her abdomen, which makes her a lot like Martha Tabram. She was stabbed, I think, 39 times to her abdomen. Yeah. They're all slightly different, I noticed. But if you look at it, especially if you start with Martha Tabram and go all the way up to his last known victim, Mary Jane Kelly, it's almost like a pro. You could see the progression. First it's all just rage, and then it becomes much more methodical after he gets more comfortable with what he's doing. True. So we talked about Annie as well. We witnessed Annie. Yeah. Then I think next was Elizabeth Stride. Right. Yeah. Lizzie Stride. She's 45. Right. And she was drunk at the time. She also engaged in casual prostitution, but she was seen alive refusing a proposition. Right. And she also was seen speaking with a man and holding a parcel within, like a newspaper parcel. Yeah. This man pops up several times, actually, in the canonical murders. Yeah. The Shabby genteel. Yes. So she's last seen at 12:35 a.m.. On Sunday, September 38, and 25 minutes later, she's found in dark alley off Burner Street called Dutchfield Yard. Yes. Her legs are very familiarly by now, pulled up toward her body, knees in the air spread, and she has a critique tied around her neck. Yes. But she, interestingly, was not mutilated, which suggests to historians that he may have been interrupted before he could complete his whole thing. Right. And they definitely think he was interrupted, because about an hour or so later, another Ripper victim turns up. Yes. Catherine Edalls. Yes. She was 46, and she was a heavy drinker as well, but she was intelligent and educated. And actually, I just read a thing last week where they just discovered census. Yeah. The census records, I believe, just like, a week ago, revealed some of these people for the first time. And their backgrounds weren't as grisly as you might have thought. A lot of them were smart and had families. Right. But, like, what was her name? Annie Chapman's daughter dying, broke up the family. When you talk about them, you think, oh, engage in casual prostitution and were drunk. They were obviously idiots. But these people had actual real lives, and real things happen to them that led them to these points where they were murdered by the Ripper. And also, that's a really good point, Chuck, because it's really hard for us to put ourselves into that situation of what it was like at the time. Sure. But these were real people dying in really brutal ways, and at the time, it had a real impact on the collective psyche of the people who lived in London. Oh, yeah. We're talking paranoia mobs forming. Yeah. Let me tell you a little story about a guy named squibby. Okay. There's a man named squibby who used to have run ins with the police. He was tattooed from head to toe is how they described it. And squibby you want to go see him, Chuck? Yeah, let's go see him. Yeah. He's a weird looking little guy, isn't he? He is. Do not make eye contact with Squiby, Chuck. I will punch you in the face as soon as look at you. Well, my eyes are closed. Okay, well, squibby is tattooed from head to toe. He's a short little guy, but real stocking, strong. Kind of like Glenn Danzig. Sure. And he has run ins with the police routinely. There are a couple of detectives who were down in White Chapel around the time of the Ripper murders. By this time, the public had been whipped up into a frenzy, big time. And they knew squibby by site, obviously. He's a pretty notable guy. Right. And they had a couple of trenches. Each one had a truncheon. They started chasing squibby, and this crowd, apparently, who had gathered outside of, I think Catherine Eddow's murder saw the police chasing squibby and just immediately assumed that it was Jacked the river. So this huge mob formed. Right. And they're running through the streets after squibby. And the police actually, they were chasing him because they figured it was the Ripper and they were going to kill him. Finally, they get Squibbie to the police station, and the mob just throngs the station and stays for, like, several hours until they finally realize it wasn't Jack the Ripper, just some guy. That's good stuff. Yeah. Poor Squibbie. Yeah. So, Chuck, while we're here, do you want to just fast forward a few days? Yeah. Since we have the way back machine, can you do this one more time? I will be there blindfolded, and you can just describe it to me. All right, well, Chuck, listen, we're going to go into a place called Miller Court. It's an apartment house. It's about 1045 in the morning, and a rent collector has just found the body of Mary Jane Kelly. Yeah, because he ran screaming from the apartment, like we should be doing right now. Well, let's just steal yourself, Chuck. Courage, man. Okay? We're going to wait for the cops to show up, because this is hands down the worst mutilation of any of his victims. Yeah, because she's clearly inside here, the only one that's inside. So I guess he had a little more time to get busy, right? Yeah. I didn't bring you back here just to make you vomit, Chuck. This crime scene in and of itself is very important as far as Jack the Ripper goes and as far as the murders go. Right. How so? Well, for one, there's evidence that an axe was used on this poor lady. Yeah, which is unusual for Jack the Ripper, but he also did a lot he used a lot of surgical precision and removed organs and chunks of flesh and all sorts of disgusting things. Are you okay? Yeah. It looks like her face almost has been removed. Here. All right. Over here, buddy. The cops are coming. Okay, well, watch. Right. Did someone just take a photograph? Good eye, Chuck. That's exactly why I wanted you to see this. What's up? That is arguably the first crime scene photograph ever taken in the history of humankind jeez. Yes, it turned out pretty grainy, but if you ever see it and you're aware of what happened to Mary Jane Kelly, it's a pretty disturbing photograph. Like, if you're just looking at it, you see what the guy is working with. It's not like the most high tech camera around. Sure, there's a sketch artist over there, too. There's got to be a lot of fun. But what we're witnessing right here is the culmination of this string of murders. This is the last canonical murder, as far as anybody knows, that is definitively attributed to Jack the Ripper. Well, in most people's minds. So you want to take off, pal. You look a little green. Well, I just feel like we should say before we go, if I'm not mistaken, I see body parts under her head and on the side table. Yes, you do. Why did he do that? He was a sicko. He was Jacked the Ripper. Yeah. There you go. Right there. Let's get out of here. But a cop just kind of looked over at us. Yes. Seriously, let's go. So, Chuck, we now have the canonical victims. We've seen two of them. We've talked about the rest of them. There were some other ones that are possible. There's the Whitehall mystery victimless limbless torso that was found actually in the basement of Scotland Yard as it was under construction on October 2, which is actually within the time frame of the Ripper murders. But they never said that this one is a Ripper. And there was one body found in New York, actually, that people think that Jack the Ripper might have fled England, which is why the murder stopped in London and then did a little handy work there in New York City. It's possible. And there's actually a suspect who was there at the time of the murder of Kerry Brown, aka old Shakespeare, as she was named, because she used to love to get drunk and quote Shakespeare sonnets. That's nice. Yeah, until she dies. Right. So there are actually plenty of other ones that were never definitively attributed to them, but let's just stick with the five, possibly six canonical murders. We talked about that, right? Yeah. So, Chuck, now that we have the five bodies, we can put together what's known as a modus operandi, aka an Mo. Yeah. And Aka. By the way, stands for also known as right. His Mo. Josh, he struck in the early hours. He struck on weekends, which, Chuck, why is this significant? Well, because it would lead the detectives to believe that he probably was a regular guy and had a regular work day job. Right. And was probably single because he wouldn't have aroused suspicion from the wife by leaving at all hours of the evening. And, Chuck, that also kind of sounds like, well, maybe his wife is loyal. No. Neighbors were turning in neighbors for suspicious activity, saying, my neighbors check her. People were going absolutely nuts. So they think that he was single, or else somebody would have come forward and been like, my husband's been going out and coming back with blood on his clothes on the night of the Ripper murders. I have a theory that he was previously married and his wife couldn't give him a child. That's what I think. That's where the childbirth position came up. Chuck, my friends, has just turned into a budding Ripperologist. I'm proud of you. Thank you. Other clues. Josh, he strangled all but one of his victims initially. Right. That was the method of death. And then he would cut their throat. And remember, he cut from left to right. He was right handed, and he would kneel on the victim's right side and cut so that the blood spurted away from him and largely drained out of the carotid artery. Yes. My idea is he probably bled them out, so when he was doing all his handiwork, he wouldn't get sprayed. Yeah. And there wouldn't just be blood everywhere. So right, now that suggests, number one, a working knowledge of anatomy. Sure. Number two, somebody who is clever and doesn't want to get caught. Right. That's a huge one. Back in white chapel, during this time, the police were working on the theory that he was clearly a raving madman. And it was actually a really bad time to be insane in white chapel because the number of people were just committed. They be picked up during police dragnets and taken to insane asylums for the rest of their lives. The police spent a lot of time in white chapel chasing squibby, corralling the insane and interviewing suspects. And modern forensic investigators today believe that Scotland yard or the metropolitan police probably interviewed the ripper at some point, but let them go because they were looking for somebody crazy. Right. And they don't think that Jack the ripper was they called him frighteningly normal. Sure. Today. Yeah, exactly. So, Chuck, what are some other clues? In six, scotland yard actually put together a physical description that's 2006. Right. Just a few years ago. Right. They reckoned he was between 25 and 35, medium height, stocky, and a resident of white chapel. And like you said, very much normal. Right. And in 1988, the FBI actually did a psychological profile. This is the case that just won't die. Oh, no. I mean, ripperologist. I literally looked the other day, and there were four or five new possible suspects within the past year that people are still naming. Right. Who will get to in a minute. Yes, we will. Okay, let's talk about the FBI profile. Yes. Special agent John Douglas is who did this. He said he was opportunistic, like you. Yeah. Like you said, I should say I'm an opportunity killer. Right. Like I said, with the drunk prostitutes being a pretty easy mark. Right. They also think that well, Douglas also suggests that he was a lust killer, which is not to be confused with any level of sexuality. Yeah. He did not have sex with any of these women. No. But some people do think it's possible that Jack the ripper was a cannibal and possibly that some of the stuff he took along with them weren't just trophies, but were food as well. Well, actually, there's a letter called the from hell letter. The controversial from hell letter. Yeah, there are a lot of letters. There were a couple of hundred, from what I understand, sent to the cops, sent to the press, sent all the way up until the 1960s. They were still getting letters from jack the ripper. Right. A couple of women were actually prosecuted for fraud for writing fake Jack the Ripper letters. There was one letter out of these many hundreds that a lot of Ripper all just today believe actually was written by Jack the Ripper. It's called the Dear Boss letter. Dear Boss, I keep on hearing the police have caught me, but they won't fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about leather apron gave me real fits. I am down on horse and I'll shack. Quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work that last job was. I'll give the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now? I love my work and I want to start again. You'll seem here of me and my funny little games. I'll save some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with, but it went dip like blue and I can't use it. Red anchor is fit enough, I hope. The next job I do, I shall clip the lady's ears off and send to the police officers. Just for jolly, wouldn't you? Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work? And give it up straight. My knife is so nice and sharp. I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good luck. Yours truly, Jack the Ripper. Don't mind me giving the trade name. PS. Wasn't good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands. Curse it. No luck just yet, they say. I'm a doctor now. And chuck, one of the reasons why this letter is so significant, number one, it's the letter that gave the name Jack the Ripper to the killer, right? And number two, it made a reference to taking a piece of his next victim's ear. Right? Well, that letter was received September 27, 1888. And on September 30, Catherinetoes was found, right. Remember, she was the second victim in the same night, and part of her ear was removed. Indeed. Was it published before that? It was, which, I mean, you can definitely take that as evidence that the Ripper read about it and decided to take the ear. Right, because there's a historian this was actually this year, he wrote a book named Doctor Andrew Cook, and he thinks that there were a bunch of different killers. And he actually allegedly says that Frederick Best was a reporter for the Star newspaper, and he said he forged it, your boss letter. Really? Yes, he said he forged it, invented the name Jack the Ripper to sell newspapers because they were a new startup newspaper, and they were about to close their doors, and their sales just, like, went through the roof after this letter. So that's what he alleges. There are also a lot of Ripperologists believe that none of the letters were written by jack the ripper and that they were all pretty much made up by the press or made up by crazy people or whatever. But none of the letters were written by jack the ripper is another way to look at it. Right. And he unearthed an interview given by a guy named Percy Clark, and he was the assistant police surgeon in whitechapel, and he said, quote, I think perhaps one man was responsible for three of them. I would not say he did the others. And then another senior investigating officer said the same thing, that he didn't think that the last victim, that Kelly was a victim of the ripper, but a copycat killer as well, really? Who knows? Yeah, well, that's the point, though, isn't it? If you're looking for one murderer 120 years on, that's difficult enough. Sure. Imagine looking for three or five killers 120 years on. One of the other reasons why this case will likely never be solved is a lot of the evidence is just gone. They investigated jack the ripper for three years, then finally closed the case as unsolved. And around the time and probably before then, cops working the case or cops that had access to the evidence room just took evidence as souvenirs memorial toes. I believe a lot of the records, if not all the records, were destroyed in a fire. Right, or destroyed because they had reached their shelf life of being kept as records. Right. So, I mean, there's really not a lot of evidence anymore. No. And this is clearly a different day. They would have caught them today probably pretty easily. Maybe. That's what I think it's possible. So let's talk about some of the suspects. Chuck well, there's more than 100 that have been named throughout the years. Yeah, I've read 170 different people named a suspect. Well, there's looks like three or four new ones a year now still. Right. Do you want to talk about the most recent one? Man yeah. There was a discovery channel show it was on last week where historian named my trial used modern forensics, and he identified one Robert mann. This one, actually. See, that's the thing. Anytime I read like I thought Walter sickert was after hearing that Cornwall lady talk about sickert being we'll get to him. Right. But my point is, anytime I've seen a show or a special, I come away thinking, oh, well, that was jack the ripper. Makes a real convincing argument. Yeah. I went on casebook.org, which I wrote, how jack the ripper works, the article that we base his podcast on. And I defer humbly to the people who run and go on casebook.org facebook. If your interest has been the least bit piqued by this, I strongly recommend, well, number one, going to houseofworks.com to read the article, but then number two, going to casebook because they have everything, right? So I went on to facebook to see what they thought of man and sure enough, I don't think the documentary even premiered yet, and everybody had read the Man's book, and we're just tearing him apart. Which, coincidentally, is the second book to be titled Case Closed. Yes. Which I think is pretty funny. Everyone says, I found it case closed. Right. And Ripperlogists don't take very kindly to this kind of thing. These people are amateur historians, amateur criminologists, all rolled into one, and this is just what they do. And once in a while, somebody will come along, do some research, write a book, and slap Case Closed on the title. And they do not like that. Well, let's go over man real quick. Okay. He was a mortgage attendant in Whitechapel. He was an inmate at a prison. When he ran the morgue, he was an attendant at the morgue. He was in charge of receiving bodies, I think. Yeah. Specifically the bodies of the people that they believe he killed. Three of them. And interestingly what they say. Damningly. In this article. He actually undressed Polly Nicholls body with his assistant, and he was under strict orders not to do anything like that. And a lot of people say that this is why he may have been trying to admire his handiwork right. And show it off to his buddy. And I think somebody made a point on Facebook that this would probably be the first time that the body revisited the killer rather than the other way around. The problem with man, as I understand it, was that he was an inmate in a prison. Right. Pretty much as simple as that. Even with a tremendous amount of freedom that he might have had with a job, he would have still had that job at the prison. Could he have just come and gone as he pleased I don't know. To go murder women, especially on weekends. Right. So I think that was the biggest problem that I ran across with man. And also his testimony was discounted at the time because his boss basically said, this man is prone to fits. Sure. And he's not to be believed. Right. But modern what the forensic psychologist at Liverpool University said in terms of psychological profiling, he's one of the most credible suspects from recent years and the closest we may ever get to a plausible psychological explanation. So who knows? Once again, case closed. But is it? Yeah. So now Cornwall. Yeah. Let's get to Cornwall. She had a particularly, let's say, difficult relationship with Ripperologists. Yeah. They don't like her. No. She blamed Walter Sickert, who was a painter, very famous painter. Yeah. At the time. And he was known for painting nudes of women. Who were they butchered or were they just it depends on your interpretation. It's wide open for interpretation. Some people said they were dead women. Dead nude women. But when you look at, like, what's the one painting? Camden Town Murder. Yeah. It's called the Camden Town murder, and it's a naked. Woman on the bed, and there's a man sitting on the edge of the bed with his hands in his face. Yes. And he looks like he's overcome with guilt for just murdering the woman. But what is the alternate title of that painting? What Shall We Do for Rent was the alternate title, which, if you look at it through those eyes, it could be a Depressed Man and His Wife. She was naked, sure. But who wasn't? And from what I understand about Walter Sicker, I would not put it past him to be fully aware that he was toying with the public with stuff like this and enjoying it. But it doesn't necessarily mean he was a murderer. Cornwell was one of the ones who titled her bookcase Close. Right. And she apparently strode into the world of Ripper, allergy fairly arrogantly, one could say. And she used to, I guess, on her book tour, her lecture tour. When the book was released, it was heavily attended by Ripperologists, who are looking to rip her a new one. And she did not like them one bit. She compared them to Trekkies. Very demeaningly. And she also came out that during the course of researching the book, she purchased a secret painting for a substantial amount of money so she could tear it apart to look for clues. She found nothing. And the curator of a major secret collection in London called her monstrously stupid for doing that. So I was always amused by that. Yeah, she kind of hung her case on. She collected M DNA, mitochondrial DNA, and she was able to rule out, comparing it to the letters that were sent, that 99% of the people could not have been responsible, but Walter Sickert could have. And the other thing with the mitochondrial DNA is why she'll doubt that 99% of the people are excluded. She doesn't really point out that that still left about 50,000 other people that could have been the murder. Sure, she made it sound like everyone but Walter Sickert been absolved. Well, on the other side, walter Sickert was very well known as a prolific writer of letters to the editor. Right. And so he very well may have written a Ripper letter, but that's a huge leap in logic to say that he wrote a Ripper letter. So he was the Ripper. So, Chuck, my money is not on Walter sickert. And he's not the only famous person to be named as a suspect. Louis Carroll was suggested as a suspect, I don't think by any of the police. No. They supposedly pulled anagrams from some of his books that everyone else is like, come on. Prince Albert Victor was thought to be maybe some diabolical madman when mad with syphilis. Yes, that's what they say. Yeah. And the entire royal family has been implicated in another theory. The Freemasons. The freemasons can't forget them. They're implicated in everything, aren't they? Yeah, but then there's some lesser known people who usually actually make better suspects than the entire royal family, right? Chuck I would say so. And they actually will they end up naming officially three suspects in the actual case before they closed it. Right. Police commissioner sir Neville McNaughton wrote in 1889 who he thought the three best suspects were. In his final report, he named Michael Ostrog, a Russian physician and convicted thief montague john drew it, who is a physician and who was found drowned in the thames the December after the murders, and Aaron Kosminsky, who was an insane man. And these were McDonald's three top picks, right? Unfortunately, probably not. Michael Ostrog was found in 2002 in a book by Phillip sugden that he was actually in police custody during the time of the murders in Paris. Mini de john drew it. Possibly. If he died in December, that would definitely explain why the murders ended suddenly. Sure. And then Aaron Kosminsky, he was crazy, but he wasn't violent at all. Right. And most people don't think it was him. I shouldn't say most people. There are some that probably think it's him, but I don't, personally. My money, instead, is on severing klazowski, george Chapman. All right. Why do you think he did it? Well, let me retract that. I don't know enough about it to say that he's my lead suspect. From the people I know of, he's my lead suspect. He was a man who had a nasty little habit of poisoning his wives, and he did it to three of them after the ripper murders. He was finally caught on the third one because somebody finally figured out, hey, this guy's wives are in no way related to one another, and yet they keep dying from this mysterious illness, and they found that he had poisoned one, exhumed the other two, and he was convicted of all three. And this is in the United States, but he'd been living in white chapel at the time. During the murders, he was trained as a physician, and he moved to America and lived in new jersey at the time that one New York possible ripper murder took place. So the big question is, if klaswski was the guy, why would he change his Mo. So drastically from butchering women to poisoning wives? I don't think anyone's ever switched gears like that. Right. But out of all of them, out of all the ripper suspects, he's the only one that has been convicted of three murders. He's the only known serial murderer in the bunch, which is why my money is on him. That's a good one. Who is your favorite? I like the Robert man. That makes sense. Do you? Yeah. That's who my money is on. I think you said 170 suspects have been named. And, again, if you're interested in this, go on to facebook. They have detailed descriptions of every single suspect. Indeed. But let's talk about the legacy left by the ripper. Chuck? Yeah, it was probably the first crime scene photo ever taken. Yeah, it was the first big, I think, international murder case that was known throughout the world. It was the first case of the now well known symbiotic relationship between a serial murderer and the press, big time, where the press gives the serial murder infamy that he or she requires, and then the serial killer gives the press fodder for articles. Sure. And I think further, I think the Zodiac Killer sent letters to the editor and that became kind of a thing for serial killers to do later on. Yeah. And this is one of the first times that comparing the bodies to establish an Mo has been used. Basically, you can argue that the all modern forensic techniques started kind of piecemeal, but they all started with the Ripper murders. I would agree with that. And like we said before, the Ripper murders shone a light on the living conditions in the East End of London and led to real change. I think sanitation was introduced largely. There was a lot more interest in the plight of the poverty stricken than there have been before. Right. And Chuck also, there's clearly a pretty big legacy left behind in the form of Ripperologists. Countless TV shows, movies from hell. From hell. That was unsettling. You know there's a video game coming, I heard, and Jack the Ripper is going to be a superhero that fights demons. Yeah. He's actually an antihero, but he's misunderstood the killings. Was it demons or vampires? Both. All manner of imps and lesser demons. It's going to be awesome. And there's a conference every year, right? I don't know if it's every year, but this year, actually, it was just last week in London. First time they ever had it in London. They rented a pub for the entire weekend. So that sounds like an awesome conference so far. Yeah. They have speakers and from seven to eleven every night is entertainment and disco. Disco. Check the Ripper conference. Disco. Yes. So that sounds like a nice way to end this. An upbeat way to end this, which, if you consider is highly ironic because this is definitely our grizzliest podcast yet. Yeah, it's not going to get any more grizzly. Yeah. So obviously we did this one for Halloween, so have a safe and happy Halloween, everybody. And if you have any ideas about who Jack the Ripper might be, and if it's not your neighbor, that would be fantastic. You can put it in an email, send it to stuffpodcast@howstepfours.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Want more housetofworks? Check out our blog on the housedefworks.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 shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from exactly right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarra and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | ||
40223a94-121b-11eb-ba6a-1b0f26c49e5e | Short Stuff: Most Haunted House in England | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-most-haunted-house-in-england | In the 1930s paranormal investigator declared Borley Rectory the “most haunted house in England” – and with good cause! | In the 1930s paranormal investigator declared Borley Rectory the “most haunted house in England” – and with good cause! | Wed, 27 Oct 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=27, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=300, tm_isdst=0) | 12387532 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff, the very special Halloween edition of Short Stuff. Chuck WA about the Borley rectory. And I'd to say this one's good, but I think it still doesn't hold the candle to the one you put together that kicked off our Halloween content, which is the most sterile way of putting it, the two parter of jacko lanterns and sleepy hall. Really? It was wonderful. We even got a message from Dave the producer saying, like, this is the greatest thing I've ever heard of my life. I'm paraphrasing, but that was basically it. Well, thank you, Dave. Yeah. So I like this one, too, though, because this is about the most haunted house in England. Yeah. Which a lot of people automatically know what we're talking about just hearing that phrase borderly rectory, which a rectory, by the way, is a place where a pastor lives, I believe, for the Anglican church, maybe for just Protestantism in general. But pastors are allowed to marry and they have a family, so you got to put them somewhere. You can't just make them sleep under the pews in the church, so they get their own house, and that's called a rectory. And it just so happened that the one in Borley, which is this little village an hour and a half northeast of London that no one would have ever heard about had it not been for the rectory. There was a very haunted place. That's right. And by the way, do you know what we called those in the Baptist church at my church? What? The preacher's house. The sin box. No, we called it that crappy little house next to the church. No, that's what they get. It was a great dedicating themselves. So the rectory was built in the 1880s. It burned down in the 1930s. But that property itself has a long history of haunting, supposedly going way back to the 1360s, when there was a monastery there and allegedly, a headless monk would roam the fields and a nun would haunt the place who had been walled up alive inside the monastery walls. Yeah, there was another nun, too, that would have come later, who ran away from the nunnery and tried to join the Waldor Grey family who owned this property and instead was, like, strangled and buried in a seller there. So you got at least three good ghosts wandering around the site that the first Reverend Bowl and his family come along in the say, this will be a fine place to build our rectory. And of course, the townspeople were like, this is a really bad idea, but we're just going to sit back and not say a word because we really could use the addition to our tax base here at the town. And then they thought it through a little further, and we're like, Darn it. Is that true in England, too? I don't know. It's a great American joke, though. They would hear certain things in the night, like servants bells ringing, keys flying out of the locks. There always a little tinkling of the keyboard with no hands nearby. Yeah, phantoms. There was a phantom stagecoach that supposedly used to arrive, and the townspeople were like, of course, this is a really haunted site. It makes sense that this house would be haunted, too. And so the rectory itself was built in 1862, and within a year, there were reported sightings. But it wasn't until the 1930s and over time, it wasn't like this just started in 1862 and then stopped in the 1930s. Like, every family that lived there reported something, some more than others. In some cases, the family there was just clearly afflicted by a terrible poltergeist or horrible ghost activity, just constant stuff. Others were not quite as bad, but every family that lived there reported something. And so the house itself got a reputation even before it was known as the most haunted house in England. That's right. And, you know, while this stuff is happening, the old German phrase geist is going to geist pretty great. So poulter means loud. Isn't that what poltergeist means? Loud goes I don't know. Is that what it was? I'm pretty sure I should know that with my vast German knowledge base, but I don't remember. I think another translation is Toby Hooper didn't actually direct this. That's the other translation. Do you think was Spielberg pulling the strings? Yeah. Don't get me started. Yeah. The 1930s, I believe. In 1929, the Daily Mail sent Harry Price, who was sort of the foremost paranormal investigator of the day. He worked with the Society for Psychical Research, and he was like, houdini and that he was a debunker of mediums, of fraudulent mediums. But he was also sort of probably a bit of a self promoter and blow hard. And the people at the SPR were like, I don't like you so much. And he went, well, I don't like you either. I'm going to go find my own jam. And he founded the National Laboratory of I said physical before Josh corrected me. Psychical research? Yeah. It'll trip you up for sure. I was raised on this stuff. Like, I used to want to go to Duke and study parapsychology when I was a kid. You can do that in retirement one day, my friend. Maybe I will one day. I don't think they have that research anymore. But anyway, like Mr. Clark, we discontinued that program. Well, could you start it up again? So Harry Pricey was, because he was such a good self promoter, he wrote a lot of books, and he wrote his books to be easily consumed by the public. Like, they were very readable, I saw. And so he became a very, very well known debunker of mediums and well known skeptic. So when he went to inspect Borley rectory himself at the behest of the Daily Mail, and he came out of there and said, yeah, this actually checks out. This place is a haunted house. People definitely took notice. Like, he lent his credibility to it, and not because he was a fraud or sham, necessarily. He seemed to have really been convinced, at least at first, maybe always. All right, I think it's a good spot for a break. Okay. And we'll talk a little bit more about this victory right after this. So one interesting, interesting thing that happened at the Borley Rectory was it burned down. This is in. If you believe the story, then it seems very suspicious. But the owner at the time, Mr. William Gregson, said that he saw with his own eyeballs a stack of books that were sitting there on a shelf, flew off on their own, and ended up knocking over a lamp, a paraffin wick lamp, and that ended up burning the house down. Yes. Unfortunately, that happened after Harry Price had spent the previous year there. So he leased the place in 1930, 719, 38. That's committed. Yeah, he went and lived there for a year with 48 assistants that he hired so that they could all work basically around the clock, studying and recording all the ghostly phenomenon that was there. And he made his career, like, even further. This cemented Harry Price and the annals of Parapsychology were his studies on Borley Rectory. And he published two books, the Most Haunted House in England, which coined that phrase, I believe. I don't think he used it before then. And cemented in everyone's mind, like, yeah, Borley Rectory is proof positive. There are haunted houses. And then after the fire, I believe he wrote a second book, a follow up book called The End of Borley Rectory. And so for years until Prices death and a few years beyond, anybody who believed in the world, basically in ghosts had probably heard of Borley Rectory and considered it, as I was saying, proof that haunted houses can exist because of the work of Harry Price. But then his work was kind of undone later on. Right? Yeah. So his old I don't know about enemies, but at least his rivals frenemies yeah, frenemies at the Society for Psychical Research said, you know what? This guy is dead. He was a bit of a jerk to us, and so let's go undo the work that he did. Let's debunk the debunker. They gave alternative explanations rather than ghosts for some of this stuff. But the thing that really kind of, like, pulled the wall down or the curtain down on the whole thing was apparently these guys found in Harry Price's unpublished notes, he implicated a woman named Marianne Foster, who was the Reverend Foster's wife, who lived there for several years, and she apparently was at the center of carrying out a lot of these ghost hoaxes. And Harry Price knew it too. So that was a really he buried it. Right? He definitely buried it. And also, the SPR researchers suggested I don't know where they found this out, but they suggested that Harry Price was also not shy to do things like throw pebbles in a darkened seance room, to just scare people and make noise and just kind of add to the whole thing. So the book really kind of cut the legs out from under the idea that Harry Price had discovered a real haunted house. Not entirely. There's plenty of people who still believed, but it definitely put a debt in the whole thing. Then there was another book. This one came out in 2000, and this was a memoir by a man named I don't know if it's Lewis or Louie Mayerling who said, you know what, I lived at that home a couple of times. I live with the family of Reverend Henry Bull in the 1910s and 1920s, and then with Bull in the ten s and 20s. Then the foisters. That Foister. Mrs foister in the 1930s. And he said, I worked with both of these families and we did a bunch of these hoaxes. We would tickle the piano strings behind a hole in the wall and stuff like that, and it was kind of really all us. But here is a twist to that story. A twist. He said he could explain everything. Save one. That in Easter. He and the aforementioned Marianne Foster and some other folks attended a seance there and went to an underground cellar about midnight. Sat there in the dark in the quiet. And someone gave a little nervous cough as if they were about to speak. And all of a sudden all those kitchen bells start clanging together at once. Which is supposedly impossible to ring all those things at once. And supposedly no one else was there. Yeah. So Mrs. Foister was there at the time, too. And Lewis, Maryland suggests they looked at each other like, what's really going on? These hoaxers were suddenly hooked or overcome with ghostly phenomenon. Right. But then, Chuck, there's another twist. That's right. It turns out that the Louis Mayerling who wrote this book in 2000 was researched themselves and found that there was nobody by the name of Louis Maryling who has ever recorded living at Borley Rectory, let alone twice. Wow. Yeah. Which, I mean, technically could just mean that that book is a work of fiction or whatever, but still, it's a great extra twist, don't you think? Sure, I love it. You thought the ghost twist was it, and then there's like the anonymous book twist, and then M. Night Chamaland delivers flowers to the front door or something. That's very nice. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Well, everyone, thank you for joining us on the scariest short stuff of the year. The short stuff on Borley Rectory, which is now Stuff you should know, is the production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-09-26-sysk-foia-final.mp3 | How FOIA Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-foia-works | In the 60s, Congress worried the White House was operating too much in secret and passed the Freedom Of Information Act, opening the government to public questioning. It has been an ongoing struggle to pry those secrets loose ever since. | In the 60s, Congress worried the White House was operating too much in secret and passed the Freedom Of Information Act, opening the government to public questioning. It has been an ongoing struggle to pry those secrets loose ever since. | Tue, 26 Sep 2017 13:00:04 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=26, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=4, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=269, tm_isdst=0) | 48594090 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetuffworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. We've got guest producer Matt over here that makes this stuff. You should know. Sunshine edition. The storms are gone. Well, plus, they say sunshine is the greatest disinfectant. Oh, really? Yeah. You shine a light into dark corners and it reveals truth. Got you. Plus, people are less shady in the sunlight. So this is part episode two of our recording sessions of freshly being without power. Irma going through Atlanta dead cats. Right. And I'm going on vacation. Oh, good. Tomorrow. Good. So if anyone wants to meet me at the Isle of Palm, South Carolina, build a time machine. Right. Go back a few weeks and you'll find me drinking gin and tonics on the beach. Nice songs, child. Oh, really? Wow. You're vacationing? Vacationing, yeah. Wow. Not frustratingly. Running around trying to get sand out of sunscreen right off a small job. That's a losing proposition. Yeah, man, can't wait. Good. Well, enjoy yourself. We were originally going to Foley Beach, but it was damaged. Sure the house was, but this one was not. No. So they moved us. I've never been to Isle of Palm. Is it shaped like a palm? Like in Dubai? No, it's just one of Charleston's. I don't know what they call them. Low country border islands. Sure. Maybe that's what they call them now. Right next to Sullivan's Island and James Island and Folly Beach are all kind of right there. I got you. Great area. Yes. Charleston is amazing. Yeah. We're going to go in for dinner and stuff and try to throw a little money at their economy, but I think they had some really bad flooding. So everyone's all right there? I think like three or 6ft storm surge. They were on the outskirts of Irma. Yeah, it's true. They were not even in the path in the end. Not good stuff. No, not good. Well, I'm glad Charleston made it. And I'm glad you're going to Charleston, man. I can't wait. I'm going to eat so much seafood. Yeah. Alright. So, Chuck, as I was saying, sunshine is the greatest disinfectant. Yeah. Let's hope. There's actually something called Sunshine Week. Have you heard about that? No. It's a week that celebrates openness in government. It's as simple as that. It's the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Nice. It's their thing. And they're trying to shine a light on the idea of shining a light on government. Right. And that existed until this year. Okay. No, actually it's funny. Like the last guy gets a lot of credit and praise for being open, but in retrospect, supposedly it was very much a lot of smoke and mirrors. Oh, yeah. It was not a very open administration either. Well, you know what they say, politics is politics. Who says that? Is that an isle of Palm saying? Yeah, politics is politics. Have another crawfish yeah. Pass the frogmore stew. Is there a frog in that? No, that's just like a low country boil. I got you frogmore stew. Yeah, I love low country boy. I'm going to make that. I think you should my own self. I think you should bring some back here for me. Yeah, I guess it would keep. It depends. I want to be like, here's a week old frogmore stew. Right, Josh? I'd probably still eat it. I know you would. So the idea of government giving up its secrets, right. It's actually fairly new here in the States, for sure. There's a time not too long ago where if you wanted classified information or any information from the federal government, you have really no way to ask for it. And even if you could figure out who to ask for it from, they would say no. They would say no. And then you'd say, well, what next? Nothing next, man. Go back to sleep, citizen. That was your role, to just shut up and stop asking questions. Yeah. And thankfully, for those of us who believe that government should be way more transparent than it is, there was a guy named Representative John Moss from California. He was a congressman back in the he became concerned that not Congress, but the federal government, the executive branch, was getting a little too opaque. And specifically, there was a report that he asked for that concerned the firing of some civil servants, ostensibly because their loyalty to the administration had been questioned. And so they got fired, and he wanted to look into it. And the federal agency he requested the documents from said no. And he was a congressman. Yes, he was. So he said, I'll be back. Yeah. Arnold style. Right. And then this was 13 or so years after the American Society of Newspaper Editors published a study about secrecy in the government and basically said what you said, which is, citizens have no access to records, no recourse if they're denied records. That was in 1953. Kind of surprising to me. It was that early that they were kind of ringing the bell for this. Sure. But I think the Cold War, almost immediately the development of the bomb and the Cold War really drove this desire to keep everything secret. And the federal government, the executive branch, keeps everything secret by classifying everything, right? There's this kind of mentality that is classify everything. When in doubt, classify it because not only does it obscures what you're doing from, say, like, your enemy, it also obscures what you're doing from your citizenry. So you can't be questioned, you can't be criticized, you can't be exposed as incompetent. Right. If no one knows what you're doing, they can't see that if you're doing it poorly and that they could actually do it better or know somebody who could do it better or could elect somebody who could do it better. And the way that you do that is to just classify everything, keep it a secret. Yeah. I've always had the feeling that if the federal government in the United States had its druthers, they would operate in complete, isolated secrecy. Yeah, well, they're trying, like, 100%. Like, you wouldn't even have press conferences, right? Like, they would just shut it down and say, don't you guys worry about anything. We have it covered. Yeah, just go about your day. Go about your business. So Moss went to fellow Democratic President Lyndon Johnson and said, I think we should change the way we're doing things here. And Johnson said, I don't know about that. That's pretty good. Johnson, johnson. He's a very interesting, conflicted dude. Yeah. We should do a show on him at some point. I'd be happy to. Very ambitious domestic policies. Like, he wanted to be FDR. Like the Second Coming. Didn't know a lot about foreign policy. Oh, that's not good. Now. He's a very interesting dude anyway. He was a domestic guy, huh? I never realized that he didn't know about it was not his specialty. I got you. I think he wanted to do great things for this country in his heart. Right. But I don't know. It's interesting. I think ever since I saw the Cranston play in New York what's it called? All the way, I think. And they made it to me, I didn't see the movie version, but I saw the play. All the Way. That's what it's called, I think so. I think that's like a tawdry John Ritter film or something like that. Let's go all the way. Okay. Oh, man, I missed John River. Sure. He was the best. So anyway, Johnson said, I don't know about that. All the federal departments and agency said, I definitely don't know about that. Bad idea. But the bell had been wrong in 1966, the House and this is something that is kind of fun to look back on these days, how things are, how they are, how divisive they are. Right back in, the House voted 307 to zero to pass the Moss Freedom of Information Act, the FOIA. And Johnson signed it and didn't have a big press conference when he signed it, like they do a lot of big laws and bills. He signed it in secrecy. Yeah, he did. We'll sign it, but maybe people don't know about it. We don't have to go around shooting our mouths off about it. But he did say, no one should be able to pull the curtains of secrecy around decisions which can be revealed without injury to the public interest. I signed this measure with a deep sense of pride that the United States is an open society. But no one heard that. Right. The door is shut. Correct. So, yeah, he signed it in secrecy, which is a little weird. And also open the door for, like, that second part of the first sentence is decisions which can be revealed without entry to the public interest. There's a big caveat attached to that. Openness. Right? Exactly. Don't forget we have ways around this. Yeah. And you said that it was heartening to hear that Congress unanimously passed the FOIA Act, right? Yeah, a little bit. Right? It is. This is not the only time Congress has come together unanimously in defense of FOIA. In 2014, which we'll talk about later, they did 2014 with John Boehner at the helm of the House and Obama in the White House, and the Congress divided as much as it's ever been, the House came together unanimously for this FOIA Act or Amendments Act. There was also a time when Gerald Ford was president where Congress overrode detail of his as far as FOIA. So FOIA is this one thing because for those of you who don't know, it only pertains to documents in the control of the executive branch of the federal government. Just the Executive branch? Just the White House. So any secrets the President's administration is keeping, that's what it's pertaining to. Okay. So Congress very frequently comes together, and it's like, no, we want you to share this information with everybody, including us. And they look like the good guys, too, for coming to the aid for open and honest and transparent government. And just to clarify, Chuck, it's not just like the White House, right? There's tons of federal agencies that fall under the Executive branch, including, like, the FBI or the CDC. Basically, any agency, any federal agency is probably under the purview of the Executive branch. So therefore FOIA would apply to it as well. Correct. That's very nice to point that out, because you're confused even me off, Mike. Sorry about that. So I think this bears reading this quote. There's a journalist named John Weiner, or Weiner, who he tried for 14 years to get John Lennon's FBI files through FOIA requests, and he very succinctly wrote this. It kind of sums it up to me. The basic issue was that government officials everywhere like secrecy. By keeping the public from learning what they've done, they hope to avoid criticism, hinder the opposition, and maintain power over citizens and their elected representatives. Classified files and official secrets lie at the heart of the modern government bureaucracy. I have such a hard time with that word. That's a tough one. It's almost impossible to spell, too. I don't even try and permit the undemocratic use of power to go unrecognized and unchallenged by citizens. Right. And he was just trying to get John Lennon's files, all right? That's how riled up he got. You don't want to rile up a journalist, but that's who this pertains to. For the most part, I should say not entirely, but, yeah, for the most part is accurate. Journalists journalists are the ones who are supposed to be reporting on the goings on of the government, especially when it comes to exposing wrongdoing, corruption, waste, all this stuff. That's one of the main roles of the media. Right. Yeah. Journalists and more and more now activists. Right. Thankfully, citizen activists. Right. And one of the reasons why citizen activists have gotten in on this is because the journalists aren't doing it enough. But early on, the journalists were largely in support of Foya. The congress was like, sure, why not? It'll probably make the president, who we don't like, look bad. And now we have, as of the Freedom of Information Act. Right. Yeah. Which officially, people know what this is. This is the ability of a citizen of the world. Very important. There you don't have to just be an American citizen right. To request records of an executive branch, like you said, government agency. And along with that act originally 1966, said, these are available to the public with nine exemptions, which we'll go over later, that will protect the agency under certain circumstances. And if you were denied, there is also now a process in place to appeal that denial. Right. Very important. And so when LBJ signed it into law, it was basically like, yeah, I guess just go along with it, but if you don't feel like it, you don't have to. Right. That's kind of went for a while. Yeah. Until Watergate. The Watergate scandal really changed people's relationship with government big time. They changed government's relationship to government. Yeah. And one of the things that happened was there was an update to FOIA and a strengthening of FOIA so that there were, like, greater sanctions if you didn't follow through on supplying the requested information. It was harder to just say no, to deny it. Yeah. They had a specific time frame. Finally, like, you couldn't say, yeah, we'll get to it. Right. So Congress puts this FOIA amendments or updates on Gerald Ford's desk to sign, and he's like, no. Well, he looked around the room and said, what should I do? Right. And the two people that piped up were Donald Ronsfeld, his chief of staff, and Antonin Scalia, who was the chief legal counsel for the Justice Department. And they both said, don't sign it. Yeah. And apparently, at least this article says that Rumsfeld early on was a supporter of FOIA. Right. I think in the very easily manipulated version. Right. Yeah. But when it came time to get a teeth right, he said, no, don't. And so Ford argued that it was unconstitutional, and Congress said, you're wrong, and we're overriding your v. Two, that does not happen very yeah. You say to two that doesn't happen very often that a veto is overridden. Have you ever done one on Vitos? No, we totally should. I should, because I have no idea how often it happens, but I guarantee you it's not often. All right, so let's take a break. We're just getting heated up here on this one. And as you'll see in the coming segments, FOIA changes gets more teeth and less teeth over the years, depending on whose office and we'll be right back with Ronald Reagan. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office when you could be using Stamps.com? Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses, because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need right. From your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps. Com's, easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial, plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. All right? Ronnie Skipper. Remember? That's right. Ronnie's the Weirdo. So, like I promised, over the years, FOIA has had more teeth and less teeth, depending on who is running the show. Sure. Probably not. So, surprisingly, when Ronald Reagan got into office in 1982 or in 1982, he made it much tougher to get information, made it easier for agencies to withhold stuff. Bill Clinton comes along, relaxes things, right? It kind of goes like that in our country. Well, Reagan also, one of his things was he definitely helped spearhead that classify everything mentality under his administration. Yeah, he said print. He said manufacture as many classified rubber stamps as you can. Right. Every office needs about 100 of them. And I think especially during the Cold War, the Soviets served as a real boogeyman for keeping citizens in the dark. For sure. We don't want the Rooskies to find out. So, no, we don't trust you with this because you might hand it over to the Roost keys. That was what they said. And they said Roostkies too. They did. So, like I said, Clinton comes along, and there were a few big events in his administration. But hold on. Think about it. When Clinton comes along. No more USSR. Well, true. No more boogie man. Right? Good times, man. Let's party. Did you like my clinton? Yeah, it was good. It was not. I think together we did the perfect Bill Clinton. He, during his administration, had a big impact on FOIA. We're calling it FOIA, right? Yeah. Freedom of Information Act. It's a perfect acronym because it takes all words into account. FOIA. Yeah. And it's not fake. No. No one just, like, cooked up some weird word to throw in there to make it a word. Right. It's for you. So the release and archiving of Cold War, previously classified Cold War documents was a big one. And then in 1996, a really big sea change is when Clinton said, get with it and digitize all this stuff. Like, this is the future. We don't need everything on paper. Documents make it easier to file and store the stuff a and make it easier to distribute this stuff under FOIA. And also, they extended that timeline. I don't think we initially said it was ten days. Yeah. You had ten days to respond to a FOIA request as a FOIA request officer. Oh, yeah. Officer, right. And then that was extended to 20 days. Although it says in here that wasn't so much of a big deal. Just give him a little more time, basically. No, because an agency that's not frequently contacted for FOIA information and is not running a backlog is probably going to do it in about ten days anyway. Right. An agency that is running a backlog is still not going to get in touch with you within ten days or 20 days. So it really had no effect. But it is on the book still to this day. They have 20 days to respond to you before you can appeal their lack of response. So George W. Bush comes along, of course. And Titans restrictions again after September 11. That was the perfect time to tighten the belt on FOIA again. The Boogeyman is back. USA Patriot Act. So after September 11, the administration ordered thousands of documents and data removed from websites, agency websites, things like airport safety data, things like pipeline maps, environmental data. I got to tell you, I don't disagree with all of that. This is a double edged sword. This topic itself is to unpack this thing fully. It's hard to make an argument for full transparency or full secrecy. Sure. Yeah. I don't think I would argue for full transparency. I think just by definition, we would have to get so far away from being, like, the world's police and having, like, military everywhere and being interventionist and adventurous and just basically completely change the complexion of the modern United States to be able to be fully transparent. You can. And even then, it might be kind of foolish. Like, Norway can be fully transparent, but even still, can they? Maybe somebody be like, well, I want to practice being a terrorist, so I'm going to start on Norway. Because they publish all their pipeline information. Yeah. So maybe I'll just go see what happens when I blow that up. Or the great wooden shoe scandal of the was that Norway or the Netherlands? I don't think they wear wooden shoes in Norway. I just think they all wear wooden shoes all over the place. But they don't. We have listeners there, man. They're going to hear you. I know, but they know we're kidding, right? I don't know. The Australians thought we were serious about drinking Fosters down there. Really? Yeah. Didn't you see how many emails we got? They were, like, gently correcting us that no one actually really drinks Fosters in Australia. That's funny. Bush also what he made a move to do is limit access to records of former presidents, which was sort of a big move. And then in the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2002, I wanted to limit requests by foreign governments or international organizations. Right. So, again, okay, I don't really disagree with all of it. One of the other things that Bush did, too, was he expanded who could get cheap or free access to FOIA? Yeah. Journalists. I think as part of the Watergate expansion or maybe the Clinton expansion, journalists were offered expedited and cheap, if not free, FOIA request. Yeah. We should point out you have to pay for this stuff. No, the journalists get a break. They say that. And apparently there's not a standard fee. It's just that as part of the law, an agency can recover costs associated directly associated with the search. Right. So it could be $11 an hour. It could be $200 an hour, depending. Journalists get faster expedited service on paper at least, and then they get their fees waived or else pay a reduced fee. And then what Bush did with the changes to FOIA under his watch were to expand who qualifies as a journalist. It now included independent investigative journalists, bloggers, and then public interest groups, apparently. It's always been included in that, too. I just like, thinking of W saying the word blogger. I get the feeling that he didn't even know what that was, and not because of intelligence. He just always struck me as, like, Aloof, I know he got made fun of for intelligence, but I don't think it's because of intelligence. I think he's the dude, though, that would sit down on a computer and just kind of be like, how do I work this thing? Just sort of old school. Right. He didn't know what a Vlogger was. Maybe not. Come on. Maybe not. Or a Vlogger. Boy. I agree with you. You definitely didn't know what a Vlogger was. At any rate, it was the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act. It was a good thing. And of course, Harry Reid is who introduced the bill. See, that's what I'm saying. Congress is like, we don't like this president. We're going to make them look bad and force some new FOIA stuff on them. And then all it does is just shines a light on just how secretive the government is, and then Congress looks good by trying to pull back the curtains. That's right. Then Obama gets on his hold on, I'm sorry. But that's not to say that even if Congress is doing it cynically, that it's a bad thing. Right. It's actually a very good thing. Yes. It's just I don't think that Congress is riding to the rescue of the American people. I think that their motive is probably to make the president look bad. Yeah, I hear you. So then Obama mounts his horse and rides into the White House. How great would that have been if he literally did that like Ronald Reagan? You probably did. Yeah. In 2009, very first day in office, he said, here's a memo. We're going to be the most transparent government that was my Obama in American history. And everyone went, yes, that's awesome. And he went, you think people bought that? Yeah. I was like, oh, my gosh. They did. Yeah. He said that he wanted to adopt he wrote a memo, like you said, the first day in office, very first day. And he said that federal agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure. So lean toward releasing it rather than against it, which is a big difference. Yeah. And he actually had Eric Holder, who was running the DOJ for him, I guess that make him as Attorney General, right. Eric Holder was Attorney General. Would he? I think so. And he said, Figure out how to codify this. And he did. They came up with guidelines for the federal agencies to become more transparent. Yeah. And a lot of it this was in 2016? No, that was in 2009. Oh, yeah. By the time 2016 rolled around, the exact opposite was going on. Yeah. 2016 is when the FOIA Improvement Act was put through foisted onto Obama. Yeah. This was the one that supposedly just kind of reinstated a lot of what it was supposed to do to begin with that had been shirked over the years, from what I understand. Yeah. It was also an attempt to take that codified presumption of disclosure that the DOJ come up with and put it into law, make it part of the FOIA Act. And a FOIA request revealed lobbying by the Obama administration, intense lobbying by the Obama administration to prevent that codification that administration had come up with to prevent that from becoming part of FOIA law. Yeah. And at the same time, they're talking about how they're the most transparent administration ever, but they're also behind the scenes lobbying against it. And the thing that caught everyone's attention, or at least the people who filed these FOIA requests to get this information, is that in 2014, well, the House passed a bill that had this in it, $410 to nothing, unanimously passed. And then it was never brought up for a final vote. John Boehner never called for a final vote. It was just allowed to die. That's pretty suspicious. So when they finally got to the bottom of it. They saw that the DOJ and the Obama administration and then later on. The FTC. The Trade Commission. And the securities and Exchange Commission. We're all very much lobbying against the expansion because one of the things that it serves as an exemption to FOIA requests is anything that has to do with the financial system or the agencies that regulate them. Yeah. So the FTC and the SEC can do whatever they want and keep all their documents secret, and no one can do anything about it. Well, the 2016 FOIA act would have expanded that, but that got lobbied out. Sorry. It's so disheartening. It is quite disheartening. The Obama administration being the most transparent administration of all time, it's just such bullocks. It's just completely untrue. And yet it's a myth that was perpetuated by that administration that still stands today. They used the espionage act more than all the other presidents before them combined since the espionage act was created and I think the beginning of the 20th century to prosecute journalist sources, you just didn't go after journalists or their sources. The Obama administration was the first one to do that. So there's a lot wrong with the idea that was the most transparent ever. Should we take a break? I think maybe we should. All right, we will be back and still feel like we're heating up here. Got a lot to cover. Yeah. We'll be back with how you can file one of these things. Ratchet 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. All right, so as I said before, you can be a foreign national. You can be a us. Citizen. If you want to file a FOIA request, you can be a corporation, be a news outlet, probably. Most times are journalists, and we already kind of went over the fees. But what you do is, if you want to request documents, just fill this out in triplicate and get it back to us. To request documents, you appeal directly to that agency that holds the documents. Well, that's just for your own, so you don't waste time. Well, yeah. You want to find out who to send it to? Yes and no. I think you legally have to go to that agency and through the foyer office. Okay. I think you. Have to do both, if I'm not mistaken. Maybe not, but it's a good idea. Well, each agency has its own FOIA office, right? Okay. Well, yeah. That bears pointing out that's part of the FOIA Act and all the improvements over the years is there is somebody at every office that heads us up. Right. At least one person. And it's got to be on their website. There's got to be clear directions on how to do this. Right. And most of the federal agencies will have a very easy form that you can fill out on there for you. The easy form? Yeah. Exactly. What are you first question. What did we do to your family that you went over? Exactly. That you just fill out these different fields and you can submit a FOIA request like that. Yeah. Depending on what you're after, we'll determine how long this takes or if you get a response at all. Initially, they say it's first come, first serve. It depends on what you're looking for and who the agency is, quite honestly. If you're looking for a few pages of a document from the Forestry Service, you might get that thing turned around pretty quick. They will bring it to your house that day. If you were looking with a smile, then they'll ride the horse away. Everyone's riding horses. Be safe with fire. If you're looking for 600 pages from the CIA, good luck. It'll take a little while. You will undoubtedly end up in federal court, probably filing complaint. Yeah. Because in that case, FOIA requests very frequently turned into FOIA lawsuits. Yeah. It just happens. Yeah. Nothing personal. No, not at all. But that does suck when it does happen, because that gets a lot more expensive. Yeah. This one reporter, Charles Orstein, tried to appeal the Department of Defense for a story he was doing on drug companies paying doctors. Took three and a half years to get the final verdict, which was a denial. Yeah. So how about that? So here's the process. You file a FOIA request? You wait 20 days. Hopefully, within that time, they respond to you. If they don't respond to you, you can appeal based on their lack of response. Or if they respond to you and say no, you can appeal the denial after 20 days. Following that, you can then go take it to federal courts. And this gets a little funny. You can also file a FOIA request about your FOIA request. Yeah. If it was denied. If it was denied. And then that's when this one reporter is like that's where it gets really depressing when you see sort of the behind the curtain process of the stuff. Right. So we came across some tips from George Washington University's national Security Archive for filing for your request. Good tips, I think. Yeah. It's pretty straightforward, but it's good to know. One of the ones that stood out to me was, don't be an aggressive jerk to the FOIA officer. In a lot of cases, the FOIA officer might even see things your way, but they might be the only person at their agency who does. They might work at an agency who thinks that foyer is stupid and is a threat to national security, and they have to go and convince their colleagues who they have to work with to give them those files to give to you. And they're probably not the most popular person at their office, so ticking them off is not the best idea. So treat them with courtesy, with respect. Be direct. Don't include tons of supporting information and emails. You want to give them as much information as you can, but be succinct. Yeah. And you also don't want your request to be too broad, although I think there's a lot of foyer journalists who would disagree with this. But apparently the broader your request, the more difficult it makes it, the more likely it is to be denied and say, this is what I'm looking for specifically. Yeah. And the more likely it is to overlap with other agencies, which is just going to complicate things further. They say they don't include a lot of narratives. Even if you think your story is important, if you send a request that starts with, dear Sir, I'm an anarchist from Boise, Idaho, and I think, whatever when I was a boy. Not a good way to get started. Right. Leave out some of those details. Try and be succinct, try and be to the point. A lot of this is common sense stuff. Well, a lot of it. One of the common sense things that I would not have thought to do first is to look to see if this information is already out there. That is huge. And I would not have thought that either. There's a lot of declassified information that exists a lot of time on these agency websites. They have it a lot of times. I mean, it says in here, and this is very true, I've done it congress has just tons and tons of material about public policy online that you can find. So it might already be out there. You can also contact, like, if there's a public interest group or something like that that's focused on your topic, but they've already have access to it. I read an article about a woman in Oregon who the Intercept wrote an article on. I can't I think it's called The Poison Papers or something. This woman has been fighting chemical companies because of what they were doing in her backyard for decades and has like 100,000 pages of internal documents and memos and stuff from lawsuits that they're now scanning and digitizing and putting onto the web. But she would be a great person to go to for those specific art for those sources. I bet you at this point, unless it's something very specifically related to you personally or your family, someone has probably either asked about it and gotten it and it exists or asked and been denied. Yeah. And the other thing is, apparently, I think the 2016 amendments said that if a document has been requested three or more times yeah. They have to release it to the public, like it's just released after that. And then some agencies will maintain a FOIA reading room on the site, which will have all the documents that have been publicly released through for you. Yeah. I thought three was a pretty heartening number, actually. Yeah, I thought so, too. If it would have said 300, I would not have been surprised. Right. So the fact that it said three, I was like, all right, that's legit. It's a magic number. So there's a lot of loopholes to this, right? Oh, yeah. And I mean, also, you got to step back here and think about what you're doing. Like, you are asking someone in the government to do research for you that you could probably do better if only you had the access to the stuff that they had access to. And the whole reason you're having to ask them in the first place is because the government is unjustly keeping things in secret that it shouldn't be. It's a little orwellian to say the least, it is. Okay. But there's a lot of loopholes associated with this that will keep government agency from approving your request every time. Yeah. And the first thing they point out in our article, which is bears repeating, is, you are asking for something. You are not guaranteed anything. Right. This is a request that you're submitting things that you definitely cannot do or get physical objects. Like, you can't request evidence from the JFK shooting to be sent to your house. Send me the magic bullet. Private information about an individual, which gets a little hinky that's over the years, they've gone back and forth on, really at the basis of it. And we'll get to some of these landmark court rulings that decide these things, but whether or not the public interest outweighs privacy rights, which is a big thing. Yeah. And then information that's covered under the Nine exemptions. I think we kind of have to read through these, right? I think so. All right, go ahead. The first one is any information that's classified for national security purposes. Okay. Pretty straightforward. Then you've got records that are only about an agency's personnel rules and practices. I did not get that one, which makes it seem super shady to me. Yeah, probably. So, like, no break room rules. CIA break room rules right. Shall be posted. What are you doing in the break room? I hadn't even thought about that. Clean up your coffee. Information that's prohibited from being released because of another statute. That just seems like a very long way of saying kind of anything we'd think of. Right. Documents that protect trade secrets or contain information that could damage a company's business. You can't petition Coca Cola for their secret formula or anything that would show that the telecoms were working with the NSA for the Prism project or something like that. Right, and not Coca Cola, obviously, but petition the government for Coca Cola. Right. Number five is the most used one. Apparently it's so frequently used it's called the I'm withholding because I want to clause. Okay. It's basically any documents that contain personal opinions, recommendations or conclusions. It's just to say all documents. Right. And it's ostensibly meant to protect legal documents. So attorney client privilege. Right. And to promote a tone of frankness among interagency and intra agency communications. Basically, if you are emailing your colleague and you're worried about somebody reading it on the outside, you're not going to be as open and frank and it's going to freeze free speech within the agency. It's so broad, so vague and everything falls under it. That number five is the exemption most frequently used. Like all they really needed is number five. Basically personal privacy, things like Social Security numbers, phone numbers, addresses, stuff like that. Law enforcement documents that could interfere with law enforcement, deprived person of a fair trial, invasion of privacy. Again, reveal identities of confidential sources, law enforcement techniques or procedures for investigations or prosecutions or anything that endangers a person's life or safety. Right. This one is the one that drives me up the wall. Information related to agencies that are responsible for regulating financial institutions. See previous rant, right. Documents that protect information related to geological or geophysical data, including maps. Makes sense to me. That one does. So those are the nine. I don't know if those I mean, they were originally nine. Are those the original nine or those just been tweaked over the years? I believe those are the original nine and they're still in use. All right. So there is this really good point made by a journalist named Philip Eel, eile E-I-L. Yeah. And he says that if you are an editor who is being approached with the story about how another journalist is being stonewalled in their foyer request that you kind of have an obligation to tell other people about it because if you don't, he says, quote, you're not being neutral, you're helping the government keep taxpayers in the dark. Yeah. And so that combined with going up against the government and then a light being shined on it when the government doesn't cooperate and follow the letter of the law just means that you might as well not have for you that it's just basically a roll of the dice whether you're going to get it or not, rather than predictable under the terms of the law. Right. So don't file a FOIA request get denied and then just say, all right, right. Or if you go to another publication and you're at that publication, don't just be like, this is boring, no one cares about that. You need to write about it. People need to talk about it if Stonewalling is going on from for your requests. All right, so we promised a couple of landmark court rulings. This first one is good. I think usually when you're v. The CIA, we know which way that's going to work out, right? Probably not in Philippines. Favor? No. And that's what happened in this case. So this was the very famous everyone's heard the phrase, we can neither confirm nor deny the existence or non existence of X. This is where that came from. And the original case was 1968. There was a Soviet submarine sunk off the coast of Hawaii, and the CIA said, who should we partner with to build a ship to go look for this thing? Howard Hughes. Of course. We need to do an episode just on that on Howard Hughes. On the Glomar Explorer. Yeah, totally. And that ship was called the Global Explorer. And to salvage the submarine. So there was a Rolling Stone reporter filed a FOIA request, and the CIA very famously said, we cannot confirm. We refuse to confirm or deny any such document. And he went, what does that even mean? No one's ever even said that before. And the CIA went, hey, nice work. I think we slumcked everybody. It did, and it did work. So eventually, I went to federal appeals court, and they said, CIA wins. And now that is known as the glomar response that you hear over and over and over. Right. That's where it's original. Pretty neat. There's another one that was pretty big. It actually came into play pretty quickly after it was ruled. I guess. So, 2016, US. Court of Appeals said that if you have work related federal agency emails, a personal account, you can't get around a FOIA request. Yeah, it would do that. And that was used for a long time, including most famously by Hillary Clinton, who her whole email scandal came out of a FOIA request. That's right. There were a whole bunch of people who had filed FOIA requests dating as far back as 2012. I think the Citizens for Responsibility and ethics in Washington crew filed one of the first ones, and the State Department just kept losing them or said they weren't aware of any FOIA requests or whatever. And then a FOIA reporter, he's a self styled FOIA terrorist, I believe he dresses himself, I think. So Jason Leopold filed a FOIA request for Clinton's stuff as well, and then was in talks, I believe, with the State Department for getting that FOIA request fulfilled. And it led to the existence of Clinton's server in her home that she was keeping State Department secrets on her using for State Department official email. Yeah. He eventually had a sue, I think, even. Yeah, right. Almost out of the gate. But that's another point, too, is that, again, a lot of these things quickly become foil lawsuits, which, if you're a journalist with a big organization that's willing to spend money on FOIA lawsuits, that's great. But if you're just an independent journalist or a responsible citizens group or something like that, you might not have the money to go to court, and the government knows that. So a lot of FOIA requests just die upon denial because the person doesn't have the resources to take the government to court over it. Yeah. Jason. Leopold bears mentioning for sure because he's Mr. Foyer. Foyer. He has probably filed more FOIA lawsuits than anyone. In fact, it says so more than anyone, except for The New York Times over the years. In the 15 years he's been the entire New York Times. Yeah. And he worked for Vice for many years and now works for BuzzFeed and was inducted into the National Freedom of Information Hall of Fame, which I've never heard of, but that's adorable. And he's the one who when he sued for Clinton's emails, he's the one that got information on Guantanamo. He's the one that got information on NSA and Snowden's revelations. Yeah. He has a knack for thinking of what to ask for. Like, he asked for the drafts of the talking points for the NSA after this, noting revelations came through, which is to say, he has a great researcher's mind. He's about as good as they come as far as researchers go. Yes. We should put him on staff. Sure. I'm sure he'd take us up on it right away. We'd be like, we need to look into crayons. You got anything else? No. Okay. Well, if you want to know more about FOIA, you know what? Send a FOIA request. That's the best way to get acquainted. Figure it out. Go do it. Let us know how it turned out since I send FOIA request in there somewhere. It's time for listener mail. I think this is anonymous. I never heard back from this person. Okay, but it's a good one because we got a legit psychopath. Yeah, I think this one's probably anonymous. Yeah, sorry, I'm just looking to see no, did not hear back. Hello, guys. I love your show. I've always wanted a reason to write, but I'm endlessly learning and entertained by your show. I felt compelled to write as a high functioning psychopath. I found at a young age, after many lockups, fires, arrest trouble, et cetera, I know I didn't act or react like normies or normal people. I realized at 13 I had to learn to play nice with others. I would be locked up, became a student of human behavior, cry when others cry, show shock when others do. I'm a successful and good family man, father of two college age kids, one of which is a psychopath. And that was very odd conversation. Yes. Something is missing in my brain, though I don't count this as bad. I've been in so many emergency situations avalanches, swift water rescue, medical emergencies. I've heard people say the training takes over and it feels more like taking off the mask. Normis. Panic and run. I just hit the switch. I do agree, however, that people like this should be avoided if at all possible, especially if they haven't learned to play well with others. It's a little scary. Some of us on the spectrum are safe and, dare I say, necessary. Some of us can and learn. Learn to care and feel. I have learned through much trouble and strife that I can care through 20 years of AA and NA. So, very interesting revealing email. Yeah, it sounds like a pretty thrilling life, too. Yeah, and we heard from another psychopath, and I think they've come to terms with the fact that their brain is different and I would still like to function in the society, so I have learned to do so. Yeah, where they'll lock me up. Right. And we talked about the spectrum, and it's just fascinating to me. That was a good episode. Yeah, I like that one, despite our weird pronunciations. Well, thanks a lot, anonymous, for writing in. We appreciate you. And if you want to get in touch with us, anonymous or otherwise, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstepyshenknow. You can also hang out with Chuck on Facebook at charlesw chuckbryt. You can hang out with me on Twitter, too, by the way, at joshmclark. Send us an email, this stuffpodcast@howstoughfworks.com, and as always, hang out with us at our home on the web stuffyshoto.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseworks.com. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun's shining, the daylight's longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder. From exactly right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgara and Georgia 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 weekly early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | |
7fba5358-61a7-11ec-8dfc-e3d2475f45d2 | Short Stuff: Fortune Cookies | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-fortune-cookies | Everything you thought you knew about fortune cookies is wrong. Learn all the right stuff in this episode. | Everything you thought you knew about fortune cookies is wrong. Learn all the right stuff in this episode. | Wed, 12 Jan 2022 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=12, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=12, tm_isdst=0) | 14255377 | 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, and this is Short stuff about fortune cookies, which is jam packed with stuff you didn't know about fortune cookies. You mean the little cookies that taste terrible that come from China? Part of that's, right? Yeah. Which part? The taste terrible part. Yeah. I love a fortune cookie. I've never loved eating them, but I've always liked getting that fortune. I've had one or two fortune cookies where I was like, that was all right. I don't know what the deal was. They were freak fortune cookies, I guess, because that is definitely a rarity, for sure. But, yeah, it's fun. They should sandwich a fortune in the middle of an Oreo. Yeah, why not? Then I'd be down. So one of the things that I never realized, that I never realized I didn't realize until I started researching this, Chuck, is that the fortune is not actually baked into the fortune cookie. Did you know that? Well, sure. It would catch fire. I didn't ever think about that. I never did. And also, it would be like, groves from the batter. A fortune cookie is a little thin wafer cookie, and when you start to cook it, initially, it's batter still, so that would make the fortune paper pretty mushy. All right, smart guy, how do they put the fortunes and the fortune cookie vet? What do you mean by you never really thought about it? Was you literally never thought about it for 1 second? That's absolutely true. They bake it for a little while first, and then they stick it in there, right? Yeah, bake it and stick it. Bake and stick and then fold it. Bake, stick, and well, you got to fold first, right? No, you fold afterwards. That's the key. So you bake it as a flat wafer cookie, and then when you pull it out of the oven, it's still pliable it's really quick folded into that thing with the fortune inside. All right, well, we joked earlier. I joked about it coming from China, and you might think that they do, because you find them traditionally in Chinese restaurants at the end of a meal, but that is probably not so. But we do have a couple of reasons why people might think this, and one of them is the fact that this story about moon cakes from China, this food that's kind of associated with the mid autumn festival when they're celebrating fall harvest. It's a little pastry. It's got a little sweeter, savory filling. They're usually round because it's shaped like the moon, but they can be square, and they are baked to a golden brown. As far as the cantonese style go. And they stamp a little name when they're cooking this thing after they mold it. So it's got a little stamp on there, right, which tells you what's inside. And a lot of times there's stuff like lotus paste, which is sweet, sweet bean paste, which is good. Read date paste, which is originally where the word jujubee comes from. And then no matter whether it's salty or savory, from what I understand, the surprise in the middle is one or more salted cured chicken eggs yolks. Duck egg yolks. I'm sorry, have you ever had one of those? I don't think so. I think I'd probably know if I did. It does not get saltier than that. Part of your face will just fall right off after a couple of bites. It's crazy. Just dries up and falls. Well, then you will like duck eggs. You can get them at HMart. They'll have them in like, the dairy section. What's HMart? Oh, it's like the big Asian grocery store. Korean grocery store. I don't know about that. We have our local Japanese store nearby. No, this is like a supermarket. Okay? It's over on 285 and Peach Tree Industrial. Oh, of course it is. Yeah, go check it out. Actually, it's really good because not only do they have everything that's Asian in like a supermarket format, Chuck, so like all sorts of stuff you've never heard of to try, they also have the most outstanding food court you will ever encounter in your life. Oh, you know what? I may have been there then. It's really good. Are there like eight restaurants? Yeah. Yeah, I've been there. Okay. Because I'm constantly seeking the best egg roll in Atlanta. Because Atlanta doesn't do egg rolls, right? Yeah, I never really tried them. Yeah, they're the worst. I finally found a place though. Okay. Anyway, so as the story goes, back in the 13th and 14th century, when China was being occupied by Genghis Khan and the Mongols, legend has it that they didn't like this lotus nut paste. And so when they were worrying, the Chinese hid messages about what they were doing. The date of an uprising may be instructions or how to coordinate the battle. And they would stick them in these moon cakes, knowing that their message would get through to the Chinese. But because the Mongols didn't like the lotus nut base, they would just go and they'd throw it away. Yeah. Can't you see like, some Mongol horde being like, what is that, a moon cake? What's in there? They're like, cured salted duck egg yolk. What else? Lotus nut paste. Oh, God, get it away from me. Yeah. What else? Oh, just instructions about the invasion. Right, exactly. So that legend apparently is pretty widespread. And some people say that's probably where fortune cookies came from. Right? Yeah. And I think the other thing too, is that when children are born in China, that families send out little cake rolls with messages inside announcing the birth of the child. So there's these couple of things and the fact that, of course, that you get them in Chinese restaurants. Most people would just assume that they're from China. Yes, but then most people would be wrong because there's basically no one who's looked into the story or the origin of fortune cookies. That is like, yep, they're from China. That's just wrong. And we'll tell you where they are actually probably from right after this. Right, Chuck? What if you were a trendy apparel company facing an avalanche of demand to ensure more customers can buy more sherpa lined jackets? You call IBM to automate your it infrastructure with AI. Now your systems monitor themselves. What used to take hours takes minutes, and you have an ecommerce platform designed to handle sudden spikes in overall demand, as in actual overalls. Let's create It systems that roll up their own sleeves. IBM, let's create. Learn more@ibm.com It automation. You know you're a pet mom when you growl back during Playtime and you insist on feeding them the highest quality food you can find. Enter Halo holistic made with only whole meat, no meat meals, and probiotics. For digestive health, our first ingredient is always responsibly sourced protein raised with no antibiotics. And bonus, our fruits and veggies contain no GMOs. It's a lifestyle and a pet bomb thing. Find halolistic@chewyamazonandhalopets.com. Where are they from? Japan and America. That's right. Dating back to the 18 and Kyoto, Japan, they had what were called fortune crackers. Do you want to rattle off that Japanese name? Suki URA sembe. Man, you've really nailed it. Thank you. Can you actually speak Japanese now? No, I just know how to pronounce Japanese words when I see them. I didn't know if you were learning a little bit or not. No, it won't stick. I've never, like, sat down and actually really? Well, that's not true. I have tried a couple of times, but I've never gone to class or anything. But the stuff I have tried to pick up is just not stuck so far. How good is Yumi's Japanese? Oh, it's, like, pretty much flawless. Well, that's why you don't learn it, because when you go to Japan translator built in. I'm very lucky, too, because it's like a second nature impulse for her to just tell me what's going on. Sure. Then just continue on in this conversation. It's really helpful, but yeah, it's tough not to become dependent on that. She's like, I hate that big dopey I don't know what's going on face here. Yeah. What's that? What is that guy doing? Good stuff. I wish Emily spoke something good. What did she speak she's doing with her life? She studied French, but like every other kid, study a little bit of French. She doesn't really know any. It's like, me and my German, we're useless. I'm with you. Like me. And French too. But those fortune crackers in Japan from the are flavored generally with like, miso or sesame or something like that. Not the fortune cookie that we know. The other differentiator is that the fortunes were tucked into the bend of the fortune cookie. Pretty lazy people in Kyoto. As opposed to where? Inside the actual fortune? Yes. Okay. Yes. Which you don't I mean, that's not good. They never learned the bacon stick. No, I guess not. But they did seem to originate something like fortune cookies. The question is, how did that get to America? That's still unclear. So instead we say, okay, where did the actual fortune cookie as we know it came from? And that's actually disputed. But the earliest story is in there's a guy named Makota Hagueara, and he was the caretaker of the Japanese Tea Gardens in San Francisco. And there's a story I've not been actually, it's at Golden Gate Park. Right. It's great. I've got to check it out. But Hague, Artisan, he apparently was fired for being Japanese by the mayor of San Francisco at the time, who said, there's a Japanese person taking care of the Japanese Tea Gardens, gold Gate Park fire. That person. Not very San Francisco. No. And apparently Mr. Haagewara was very beloved, and the public came to his aid and made sure that he got rehired. Right. And it's a thank you. He made legit fortune cookies as we know them with little thank you notes inside and gave them out to people who supported him. And like you said, this was a lot of people say, well, there you go. Bang, bang, boom. That's when it started in the US. Yes. San Francisco is the home of the fortune cookie, and Los Angeles says, not so fast, everybody. Of course, not only were we the ones who invented the fortune cookie, it was actually a Cantonese immigrant from China who invented the fortune cookie. No, not I don't even believe your story says La. This happened in 1918. There was a guy named David Jung, founder of the Hong Kong Noodle Company, and he used to hand out little fortune cookies with little Bible scripture printed on them as kind of a pick me up for people who were unemployed wandering around Los Angeles that he'd encounter. That's right. That's one version of the story. The other is that he created them as little appetizers. When people are waiting, very sign filled in, waiting for their table at the Chinese restaurant, he would hand them out to people in line as a little aperture, I guess, to hold you over. So there's a mock court that was put together in 1983, the Court of Historical Reviews and Appeals. I believe they ruled on other stuff previously, but in 1983, they took up the issue of the fortune cookie. And being a San Francisco mock court, they ruled very clearly that San Francisco was the birthplace of the fortune cookie. That's right. La and San Francisco, they always have hated each other. They're always added over something, you know, San Diego is like, what about me? Poor San Diego. They're just down there surfing, bro. Yeah. Remember we did that weird show there? Church or something? Yeah. For a little while, I was convinced that it was the church from Prince of Darkness, the John Carpenter movie. But I went back and watched the movie again. I was like, this is in it. But it had the same vibe. Yes. I remember two things about that show. I remember it didn't really have a green room bathroom, so I was just in there peeing in the urinals next to everyone, and they're like, oh, hey, there's, Chuck. I was like, yeah, that's me. And I remember there was a guy on the front row fully filming the entire thing with a video camera, and he looked mad about it, generating evidence or something. It was weird. So strange. Maybe we'll come back one day. San Diego, if you get your act together. That's right. Classy. Oh, yeah. They were made for about 40 years with chopsticks, which that takes a lot of skill to fold and make these things with chopsticks. I would think it's a very Japanese way to make fortune cookies. And it actually was the Japanese bakers in San Francisco who dominated the business from the early 20th century up until World War II, when they were forced out of the business because they were also forced out of their homes after Pearl Harbor and the Japanese were uprooted and put into internment camps. And one of the outcomes of that was that they stopped making fortune cookies. And apparently this created a vacuum that the Chinese immigrants in the United States stepped into. Fill very nice. Those first fortune cookies in the US. Did have little proverbs and sometimes scripture, but they started to get a little more English and American eyes by the 1930s. And he started to get some of these confucius says this kind of things in there, and then poor Richard's Almanac kind of stuff went in there, and then the lottery numbers started creeping in. Never been a big fan of that. Now with the little emoji, smiley faces and jokes and stuff like that. Not a big fan of that stuff. No. Especially smiley faces. Unless there's some other message that makes a smiley face appropriate. I'm all right with that. Yeah, just give me a classic fortune. So one of the great ironies of all this, Chuck, is that in the mid ninety s, the Wonton Food Company, the world's largest maker of fortune cookies, looked around and said, what market have we not penetrated? Europe loves these things. America loves these things. What about China? China is going to love these, too. And it took off like a rocket, right? No, it did. Not at all. And they basically said they're too American for us. And even though they make 4 million of these things every day to the tune of about 3 billion cookies every year. They didn't take off there. They didn't like them. They didn't want them. Yeah, and I did that math. And apparently they have two factories, because you'd be making about 8 million a day to come up with 3 billion. But who knows? I wouldn't be surprised if that's how much they were making. I mean, those things are flowing like water here in the States. Fuzzy math. Yes, it is. So I want to give a shout out to What's Cooking, America, la. Times today history. And Jennifer eight Lee, who popped up and I think our Chinese food on Christmas episode, she read the Fortune Cookie Chronicles adventures in the World of Chinese food. She did a lot of scholarly research on fortune cookies recently, so hats off to her. It's nice. And hats off to you guys for listening to this episode of Short Stuff. Short stuff is a way. Now, stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more Podcasts My Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
c4ab36e2-5460-11e8-b38c-6b3b432f2756 | SYSK Selects: How Rabies Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-rabies-works | Rabies may have gotten a lot of attention in the U.S. in the 70s and 80s, but it's still an issue in developing countries. Learn all about this nasty virus in this classic episode. And stay away from raccoons and bats. | Rabies may have gotten a lot of attention in the U.S. in the 70s and 80s, but it's still an issue in developing countries. Learn all about this nasty virus in this classic episode. And stay away from raccoons and bats. | Sat, 26 Sep 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=26, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=270, tm_isdst=0) | 39521884 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody, chuck here for your Saturday select. If you ever wanted to know how rabies works, we talk about it in great detail from February nineTH, 2016. Give it a try. When aren't you not rabies, that is, but this podcast episode, how Ray Abyss Works. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's charles W. Chuck Bryant with Jerry and stuff. You should know. You're bombing at the mouth, Jerry. Don't let him bite you. All right. He bit Jerry. I'm going to have to put both of you down like Old Yeller. Let's do it. About time. I knew from day one when we started working together, that this is how it was concluded. Yeah, me shooting both of you because of rabies putting us down. Old Yeller. Wait. Speaking of Old Yeller, I'm sorry. Have you seen the kids in the hall take on Old Yeller? No, I don't think so. Yeah, paul makes the kid shoot the dog and his face is sprayed with blood from the gunshot wound. The worst children's book ever. I guess we just spoiled it. Everyone knows Old Yeller gets rabies and is shot. Yeah, so don't even bother emailing him. But there is a happy ending. Old Dealer has pups and they get a pup. So instead of, like, coming back as a ghost dog, that helps things turn out well for the family. It left a legacy in the Darkenzian View. Right. Still the worst children's book ever. Although it teaches valuable life lessons about death. Why do you have to do that by killing all Yeller? I don't know, but, I mean, it works all right. Rabies. I don't know. I thought we'd done this one. It seems like an obvious one for us. Yeah, it's definitely in our wheelhouse, for sure. I did not know this either. It is a virus on every continent in the world except Antarctica, which is a lot of viruses that hold that title that aren't on Antarctica. Sure, yeah. Inhospitable place. Yeah. And if a virus is on every continent, chances are it's a very old one, too. And rabies definitely is extremely old. People have been writing about rabies for a very long time. The Mesopotamians who know it's old, if you say that word sure. They used to have a law where if your dog was rabbit, you faced a stiff penalty, a fine of sorts. We have those laws today. Sure. In the United States. I mean, a lot of our laws stem from Mesopotamia and the Code of Hammurabi. Sure. If you watch somebody's house burned down and don't do anything, that person can kill you still today. Just like from the code of hammurabi. So if your neighbor's house is on fire, you have to put it out. You have to help put it out. Mesopotamia. So the word rabies in many languages means rage or go crazy in Latin. It is from a Sanskrit term, Robhas, to do violence, and then French la raj. La raj. It's the sexiest form of rabies. It comes from the French noun robert, meaning to go mad. So if you're not picking up on it, it's not a friendly virus. No, it's not the one that you get a dog. Well, actually, we'll talk about that. I'm going to save it. And for a long time, there was nothing we could do about rabies. People went to Liege, Belgium to pray to Saint Hubert. It's a round name, isn't it? Yeah, St. Hubert was the patron saint of huntsman. Okay. Not quality footwear. No, apparently. No, that was St Clark. Apparently. St. Hubbins. Actually, I've not heard of that. It's a spinal tap joke. You never get my spinal tap joke. No, I need to see it more than once. Apparently, they're for the people out there. That's fine. There's like 100 dudes. I'll sit here and be the straight man. I don't know what I'm talking about. Yeah. Derek St. Hubbins was the ancestors patron saint of quality football. Great joke. That is a good joke, man. I'm sorry I stepped all over it. That's all right. So in Lee, you would go and pray to St. Hubert for protection? Probably not the most effective way to treat rabies. No, I don't blame people for making a pilgrimage to leech. From what I understand about rabies, based on researching this, it's terrible. Yeah, it's horrific and fatal. And it wasn't until the late 19th century, 1885, when the late, great Louis Pasture man this dude. What didn't that guy do to save the world? Yeah, he's up in our line now. We have kind of an ongoing line of, like, great scientists, so we will include him on the list. And we need to start acknowledging the ladies, too, so Madame Curie sure. We've got our eye on you, miss. That's right. Anyway, so Louie Pasteur came up with a vaccine for rabies, and he was one of the early germ theory guys. He was a very prescient person. Yeah. His inoculation trials were based on the idea that if you introduced some, like, a low level of rabies to a living being, that living being would produce antibodies and you could introduce increasingly larger amounts over time, and eventually the person's antibodies would be robust enough so that if they ever faced rabies in the wild, they would be able to fight it off. And he was absolutely right. What a crazy thing to think, though it is when no one knows anything about germ theory, to think, like, why don't we put the disease in the person? Sure. Maybe that'll help cure it. Yeah. And I think that was around for a while, but I still think it was like some arcane knowledge that not everyone knew about. Pasture really? Capitalized. Pretty amazing. But he actually had been working on something using rabbits, test cases, and basically he proved it can work in humans by a boy who had been attacked by a dog, I think, and contracted rabies. And Louis Pasteur said, Here goes nothing, and stuck in with the shot. And the parents went, Here goes nothing. Right. He goes, no, nothing. And they said, well, you said this was going to work. I said no such thing. That's good, Louis. Pastor. Thank you. It's technically, that the Chuck Jones version of Napoleon. Everyone Bugs Bunnies to hang out with him. Yeah. That's how I learned to do a French accent. The great Chuck Jones. Sure. So, rabies, let's talk a little bit about what it does in your body. It's really pretty vicious. It is a viral disease, like we said at the top, and it attacks the central nervous system, the brain and the central nervous system. It is part of the Rabdo verde, a nice yeah. Family under the genus. You take the genus the Lysavirus. That was too easy. It was easy. It is shaped like a bullet, and when it comes in the body, it basically goes as fast as it can. Like a bullet to the spinal cord. Yeah. Through something called afferent nerves. With an A, they carry impulses toward the central nervous system, as opposed to efferent. With an E, they carry impulses away, but it uses both. So this virus travels along the neural pathways, through the central nervous system, and it goes immediately to the central nervous or the spinal cord, and then up to the brain. And in the brain, that's where it replicates. Vicious. Do you remember? Like HIV replicates inside t helper cells. Yes. Well, rabies is a virus that replicates inside your neurons, your brain cells, which is not a good place for a virus to start doing its replicating. Right? That's right. And right after it starts replicating in the brain, it makes a second stop, a very important stop to your salivary glands. And the reason it does that is because that is the number one mechanism of transmission for rabies. Yeah. That's when you see the foaming at the mouth, it's not just a symptom of rabies, but that's the main way that you're going to get it is by being bitten by something with all kinds of nasty rabid saliva. Right. And apparently, because this stuff is wrecking your brain by hijacking your brain cells and destroying them. There's two different versions of rabies, right? Yeah. encephalitic, which is also known as the furious form of rabies. That's the one you think of when you think of a crazy rabid dog that's hallucinating and running around in circles and chasing its tail and biting at the air. Old Yeller, basically. Although they toned it down a bit. They did. Because they didn't want to scare the kids before they shot or killed them. Yeah. And then there's a paralytic or dumb form, and that one is more like lapsing into a coma, basically. Right. I don't know. Surely there's no way to predict which way the things the virus is going to go in a human. Right. Because it's destroying brain cells. I would think it would just be totally accidental. Whether it went toward the encephalitic or the paralytic form, that's a good question. It would just depend on where it lodges first. Right, yeah. But both of the forms are in the acute stage. And here's what's so scary. Once it's in the acute stage, once it's hit your central nervous system, you're done, almost exclusively done. And we'll talk about that for millennia. The idea behind rabies, it's a fatal disease, 100% fatal. Except now they've started to find a few cases here or there, that's not the case. And they're starting to wonder, okay, is this something we could treat after people are traditionally goners? Well, that's a great tease. So let's take a break and we'll come back right after this with more on rape. Ease off your shoulders. Okay, so we mentioned the two forms. They are both in the acute stage, and apparently both stages can happen in a single case. It's not necessarily one or the other. Right. It makes sense. Yeah. Like if this region of your brain is wrecked and you're furious and raging, well, eventually it's going to get to the part of your brain where you can't move or breathe and you slip into a coma and die of respiratory distress. Right. But I also got the impression that wasn't necessarily like, that's the path. Like it could start in the dumb stage as well. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like it would just depend on where the virus, what part of your brain the virus goes to. It's got to something I didn't realize about rabies, Chuck, was that it's exclusive to mammals. I knew that. I didn't. But I also have wondered over the years, why isn't, like, a rabid squirrel would be your worst nightmare, I imagine. Yeah. Because they'll already come at you. Yeah, a rabid one would definitely come at you. One of the traits or symptoms of rabid mammal is that a wild one has no fear of humans. Yeah. They're aggressive. Right. In fact, there's a case I looked up, as I often do just in the news, and a little boy in New Jersey just this week was attacked by a raccoon. This raccoon leapt onto his back while he was walking down the street during the day. And we will get to the hallmarks, but that's very important. If you see a nocturnal animal cruising around during the day at great speeds, stay away. Oh, yeah. You're not supposed to see raccoons in the neighborhood during the day. Yeah, just go get your paws. BB gun. I don't know about that, but call animal control and they'll get their BB gun. Sure. But yeah, this little boy, this raccoon, jumped on his back and started biting his face and neck. Where did you learn to pronounce certain words? Raccoon raccoon. No, I say raccoon. That's just one of my jokes. Okay. People don't know, though. When I said Alex Baldwin I know people literally wrote in were like, what is wrong with you, Chuck? Like, it's Alec. How'd you miss 30 Rock? And Alec Baldwin said, I don't care. Yes. I don't know who this Chuck is. So anyway, Clint Eastwood. Yeah, you're right. The little boy, I think, is going to be okay, which is the good news. Good. Well, we'll get to the rarity of it. Plus, he was attacked in New Jersey, which is in the US. Which means he's going to be just fine. Right. But a long way of saying that squirrels and mice and other smaller animals typically don't get it, and it makes good sense is because if they are attacked by a rabid animal, they're small and probably won't survive. They could very well get rabies. Every sign says they can, but they'll probably poor little mouse will probably just die. Right. Because if a raccoon gets its hands on a mouse, it's all over and it bites it. That saliva is going to be transmitted to the wound. But you also need the host to be alive for the virus to replicate in that host. Exactly. If their neck is broken and they're dead, then it's not going to work. But yeah, absolutely. Wood chuck, you said? Yes. You can get a woodchuck with rabies. Woodchucks raccoons. Apparently in the United States, raccoons are the most common vector for the disease now. Yes. But for the most part, it's slightly larger, small mammals. Does that make sense? Yeah, wood chucks raccoons, medium sized mammals, medium size. On the smaller side, small to medium, a medium sized mammal. That means like, agusuric. Okay. And it takes a few months for the disease to run its course in an animal. But the scary thing is it can lie dormant in humans for years, right? Months or years. That's very scary. It's super scary, yeah. Because you guys don't realize it's like you think it's like frothing at the mouth or something. No, the rabies virus is one of the scariest viruses on the planet. It is. So, like I said, saliva is the mode of transmission for most rabies cases, and you can catch it very easily. Technically, if you had, like, an open wound and you like, rubbed your finger where the open wound was I guess I should have specified that earlier. Sure. On the saliva of a rabid. Raccoon, you could easily catch rabies. Right. But that's an uncommon thing to do. You could also, if you took the brain of that raccoon and rubbed it on your open wound of your finger, you could also catch it even more in common. But if you came across a raccoon's poop that was rabid and you took it and just rubbed it all over your hands to camouflage the scent of your hands, probably the most uncommon, you would not catch rapes. That's the good news. Yeah. It doesn't transfer in the feces or the blood or the p. Yeah, the urine. The p. Oh, man. It's been p fest at my house. You want a little quick side story? Sure. I changed the litter box before I went to Birmingham. And four days later, we realized that I didn't put litter in the litter box. I emptied it, put the lid back on, put it back in, rushed out of the door to drive to Birmingham. Right. And four days later, we were like, our cats are sick because they're peeing on everything in the house. Emily went over and she went, hey. Well, I won't say what she said. It wasn't, hey, honey? Yeah. Guess what? There's a lake of urine in the litter box and it's all your fault. Oh, man. So we had to throw a lot of things away in our home that previously were working just fine, man. And I got the Dummy of the Year award in our house. That's cool. You should instagram that trophy. Dummy of the Year. Yeah, it's a tattoo now on my lower back. Nice. Of Alfredi Newman. So, anyway, we've been in urine land. That is so gross. It is so gross. And cat pee, it's tough to mask, so we're really the Lakers of it, man. What a dummy. Anyway, just the moral of the story is litter is a very important part of the litter box. Yeah. And luckily, if your cats are rabid, you wouldn't have caught anything from that. No, but I'm sure I have. What's it called? What's? The cat disease. From changing letter. Oh, toxoplasmosis gondi. I'm sure I've had that for years. Sure. It's why you do most of the things you do. That's right. So it is a very adaptive disease. And here's another scary thing, although it's not that scary, because it's super, super rare. But in laboratories, it has been transmitted through the air aerosol transmission. And they have found one case where it actually happened in the wild, but it was a cave that had tens of millions of infected bats, like sneezing and coughing up their junk everywhere. And in that case, someone got rabbi, supposedly air three. Three people. People walked into the cave in Texas. But that's, again, not something you need to worry about. Yeah, but humans can spread it too. And remember, you can spread it through saliva, which means that if you are kissing, especially kissing with tongue, fridge style, a rabid person. And remember, it can take months, if not years, for the symptoms to set on. You could conceivably catch rabies from that. You can also catch it as an STD through sexual contact, they believe. Sure. This is the CDC theorizing at this point, there's no documented cases. Right. And then you could also conceivably catch it from, like, sharing a cigarette with somebody or drinking after somebody using the same glass. Again, in theory, any transmission of shared saliva. But here's the scariest one to me. It has happened before, where you get a transplant of an organ, typically a corneal transplant, and get rabies that way. Yeah. We accidentally gave you a cornea with rabies. Yeah. Sorry. And one of the problems, do you think well, how could that possibly happen? Apparently, rabies is very hard to detect, and the main places to detect it remember, it doesn't show up in your blood or anything like that. Yeah. No, you're on your feces in the saliva and in the rain. Well, yeah, in the saliva. It's not even super accurate, and it takes longer. So for the past 40 years in the United States, the way they test for rabies, if an animal has bit your child, is they capture it and they cut its head off and inspect the brain. Right. That's horrifying. It is. But unfortunately necessary, I guess. If a raccoon bites your kid off with the head, maybe an animal lover out there who's developing scientists will come up with a better, more accurate rabies test that will save the lives of thousands and millions of woodchucks around the world. But I wonder how many times they've been like, oh, thankfully, no rabies. Yeah, no, I'm sure. But sorry, your head is cut off. Yes. Imagine being the clinician who did that. Bum you out. Yeah, absolutely. Because it's like this thing's head was cut off because somebody thought it had rabies. Terrible. All right, so everybody knows through popular culture and things like Old Yeller, that the foaming of the mouth of a crazed looking dog is a pretty good sign to stay clear. Right. But there are many other ways, especially if they have the dumb form that you might not know. Yeah. And here are some of the symptoms. Partially or fully paralyzed, animal loss of appetite. And a lot of these can be confused for other things because my dearly deceased dog lucy probably ticked off about 90% of these, but she really liked PCP. Strange behaviors like snapping at the air or turning in circles. Lucy did that. Nocturnal animals who wander during the day. Like I said, if you see a raccoon walking around during the day, it's not a good sign. No. Drool. Excessively. Lucy drilled wild animals who showed no fear of humans. Signs of pica, like eating things that aren't food. Lucy did that all the time. Sporadic changes in mood or behavior. Lucy. Restless or aggressive. No. Obviously. Disoriented. Lucy. And then a change in voice, which I thought was strange. She was like, how's it going? And generally it varies by region. So, like, maybe here in the south, raccoons, or maybe in another place, it might be skunks largely. Right. With the animals that have it the most. Right. Yeah. But apparently in the United States, it's raccoons for sure. They have the most. But the mode of transmission in the United States comes through bats more frequently. Yeah. That's the big daddy these days. So if you get like, 100 bats and 100 raccoons, more raccoons are going to have rabies. But you're more likely to catch rabies from a bat than a raccoon. Yeah. And why is that? Well, there's a few reasons. Bats can get into places that raccoons can't. Sure. And bats also have very tiny teeth. And if you're sleeping in a room and you wake up and there's a bat in it, it's recommended that you kill that bat and take it in for rabies testing. Captured alive. So they can kill it. So then they can kill it for you. They can do your dirty work for you. But the reason why is because a BAT's teeth are so fine that you can have been bitten in the night and it wouldn't have woken you up. You won't know that you were bitten, but you may have contracted rabies in that case. Yeah. See our excellent episode on bats. Yeah. Which is sad to say, because bats are wonderful. Remember we just came back crazy over that one. Yeah. Very bat friendly podcast. Yeah. So don't kill a bat. As a matter of fact, just look the other way if you see a bat in your room, because something bad is going to happen to that bat. If your dog will take a break after this. But if your dog is potentially bitten by an animal, you think it might be rabid, they will be isolated for ten days. And if they make it through that ten days, then you're home free. If they don't, sadly, that means you have to go the old yellow route. Except these days it's much more humane. Well, I don't know about more humane, but they don't take it behind the barn and shoot it. Yeah, I mean, I would call that more humane, sure. But in rural Texas, they might be like, no, that's quick and easy and painless, just like the shot. What, the lethal injection? I'm sure that's what they call it, Texas. Okay. All right, let's take a break, then I'm going to get your stuff together. Get my stuff together and we'll come back with more rabies burning stuff with gosh. Chuck, you ever been to Bali? No. You haven't? No. Neither have I. Okay, well, Bali like Hawaii and some other places around the world. Actually, it was a rabies free zone, a place where no cases of rabies have been reported. They're usually isolated, which makes it hard to get rabies into. And they usually also have some really top notch governmental restrictions. Like, if you try to take a dog in or out of Hawaii, it takes a very long time and a lot of paperwork. And one of the reasons why is because they don't want rabies coming into their state. You take in Momo Hawaii. No, that's why she would be, but no, basically, she would get out of quarantine by the time we were leaving got you. But my in laws moved, and they took their dogs with them. It was a big deal. Yeah, I'm sure. But in bali specifically, they were rabies free until 2008, and some dogs contracted rabies somehow and bit some people, and some people died, and it was a big deal. I'm sure they were like, oh, great, there goes our rabies free designation. Sure, yeah. So they can get it back, though, right? Well, yeah. The government has been eradicating aggressively the rabies that was found on the island. And I'm not sure if they're doing this. I know they're doing a lot of euthanizing or they did in the affected areas, but in the United States, some wildlife services, they're leaving basically what amounts to, like, a high dose of oral rabies vaccine as tasty bait out just out in the woods to try to control rabies in the raccoon population. Apparently, it doesn't harm humans or dogs, too, the bait. And the reason that they're doing this is because they saw what a great job at eradicating rabies among dogs in the United States, because it used to be that rabies in the US. Was very frequently transmitted by dogs, and in a lot of the rest of the world, dogs are still a major mode of transmission. Right, sure. But in the US. Rabies vaccination push among pets has really lowered that. In the dog population especially. Yeah. And push meaning laws. Sure. I don't think it's in every state now, but I think most states now require by law that you're pretty sensible. If you have a pet, you should have a non rabid pet. Yeah. Like you would say, no, I don't want my dog getting that rabies say that probably so. This is the most recent stat we have. In 2006.1%, of all rabies cases in the United States were almost said feline or canine. 11,000 of a percent. Yeah. So that's virtually nil. And I believe in 2006, that same year, not one case of rabies death came from an American dog. Not one case of human rabies death. Right. Correct. Yeah. And then 24% of all US. Wildlife rabies cases are bats. Yeah. Which led to in 2006, two of the three rabies related deaths were from bat transmissions. Bat bites. Not good. Actually, I spoke wrong. It wasn't in 2006. It was only since 1995 there has not been one case of death from an American dog. Man. So that's great. They've really kind of eradicated that here. That's right. But elsewhere in the world, again, catching rabies from being bitten by a dog is still a real problem. As a matter of fact, the world health organization called rabies among Neglected Diseases, neglected, one of the most neglected among neglected diseases, there's still 30,000 to 70,000 people who die every year. It's around one every ten minutes from rabies in the developing world. Think about that. In the United States, three people died in 2006. That was a bad year, 70,000 people, as much as 70,000 people around the world are dying from rabies. And the countries that have these really high rabies mortality rates in humans are also the ones that usually have the least amount of money to pay for inoculations and also, even further, have even less money to inoculate their dogs. Right. So there's a huge push right now among scientists to be like rest of the world, you guys need to pay to eradicate rabies, at least in the dog population around the world. Yeah. Do something. And also, when you have that rural areas, they're not able to get to the clinics to receive those regular inoculations. Yeah. Because Pasture came up with the rabies vaccine. And basically his technique has been only slightly altered over the years. It's still a series of shots in the United States or the west. The ones that we have are five shots over the course of a period of time, and again, it's boosting your immunity slowly, and it's a very similar thing. What did the guy in the email say for the last listener mail? Instead of developing lower income countries, in lower income countries, they have a schedule as well. It's not all getting them at once. They have to boost your immunity. And it may not be something like driving down the street as a minute clinic to get this stuff done. You may have to travel quite a ways and again, miss some work. So it's a big problem. Yeah. You mentioned Pastor's. Brilliant idea. He used an attenuated form of rabies. It's weakened but still alive that he gathered from spinal cords of animals. Right. These days, they kind of do the same thing, but it is not alive form of the virus. It is a dead form of the virus. But like you said, the same idea is that we'll give you this slowly and before it reaches your spinal cord. Ideally, that's a big one. Ideally, if you want to live, then you built up the immunity hooray. If you have some extra dough in your pocket and want to help out some groups, there's a couple of groups that are working to eradicate rabies in low income countries like Rita. Rabies in the Americas and Rabies Free World are both working to eradicate rabies elsewhere. Yeah. And if you have been bitten by an animal that you are worried about, I would just immediately, if I got bitten by a squirrel or something, I would go to the doctor and just get it checked out. Obviously immediately. You don't walk that one off. But here's a little sting. Oh, well, let's see what happens. Like the man who castrated himself and then sat down to dinner in the 19th century. Remember we talked about him. He read his Bible and then ate dinner, and then Finn went to the doctor. Right. Here are some of the symptoms in humans. Humans? Human beings. Not human beings. I bury. It. Are you rabid? Stomach pain. It's a change in personality right there. Anxiety. I'm also biting at the air. Stomach pains, anxiety, restlessness, fever. Do you have any of this? Nope. Increased aggression, sore throat, excessive saliva, hallucinations, delirium. If that's happening, you really should go to the doctor. Yeah. Coma, sporadic pulse. At that point, you should have someone take you to the doctor. And then something called hydrophobia, which we should cover. That used to be a word for rabies. Like, you could say that person has rabies, or you could say, that person has hydrophobia, and it used to mean the same thing. And why? What's the deal with hydrophobia? It's an intense, unreasonable fear of water that develops from ravy symptoms, apparently. Yeah. Because I think drinking, you have a very violent, painful spasms and responses to trying to swallow water, and so you become fearful of water. That's crazy. Which is really sad because you're drooling and you're producing tons of saliva, but you also are just dying of thirst. Exactly. But if you do drink anything, the pain from your throat muscles contracting is so bad that you will just not drink. You would just rather not drink anything. And apparently you become fearful of even the concept of drinking, so you get scared of water. That's also because your brain is deteriorating at a rapid rate. Man. But yeah, this is not fun. It's not nice stuff. And again, for years and years and years and years, up until, like, the last few years, I think the common conventional wisdom was, if rabies got to your central nervous system, bye bye, we might as well old yellow you, because you're not going to survive and you're going to die. One of the worst deaths we could think of. Yeah. And it wasn't until 2004 when it was the lucky lady. Yeah. Gina Geiss. I thought you were going to say Gina Gershon. No, that's what happened to her. Gina Geisse. She was a girl, a teenager in Wisconsin who was bitten by a bat, I think. And some doctor said, you're a goner, but I'm not going to give up on you, Tina. No way, no how. Sleep now, baby. I'm going to put you in a coma. And he put her in a medically induced coma, and it was enough so that her body was able to fight off the rabies infection. Amazing. So she survived the rabies infection without being inoculated previously and apparently without the inoculation being given to her in a rapid enough time. Right. So she literally survived a rabies infection, and now they call that procedure the Milwaukee Protocol, and it saved five more people's lives. They call it that, yeah. And there was a study in Peru, in the Andes, a lot of Peruvian groups live near bats. Sure. They have to deal with bats. Apparently, some Peruvians have developed immunity to rabies. They documented, I think, about a dozen Peruvians who survived rabies without any inoculation. Wow. So they're saying, okay, this isn't a 100% fatal disease. We can work with that. But it's like really big gangbusters news. It's almost like a natural inoculation that's happening, though. The same idea. Right. They're getting exposed to it gradually. I don't know. I don't know if these people had been bitten before or if some sort of inoculation was passed down to them through heredity. Oh, yeah. I'm not sure. My grandpappy was strong against the rabies. Right. So I am. Right. That's how jeans work. All right. From 1950s to the roughly mid 1980s, the horror stories were true. You did get upwards of 20 to 23 shots in the belly in the abdomen to treat rabies with big needles. Right? Yeah. That was not an old wives tale. It was a very painful procedure. I tried to find out why it was done in the belly, and the only thing I could find is completely unsubstantiated. But makes sense. Apparently, after you start having these shots, somewhere between ten and 20, you start having really bad reactions and inflammation, but you need to give them in the same area. So the belly was the largest part of the body that you could still find a place to give the injection. Right. So I don't know if that's true or not. That makes sense. It definitely does. And we have to mention Ozzy Osbourne. What? Biting the head off a bat? Yeah. It wasn't a live bat. Well, there's different stories. He swears up and down it wasn't alive. No, he swears it was alive because he felt the head moving in his mouth. Oh. Other people have said that it wasn't alive. The fan that threw the bat on stage said it was dead. Ozzy. Right. He's like, it was lies. That's a good Aussie. Thank you. But that is not an old wife. He also bit the head off a pigeon at a party, but he thought the bat was a toy. Apparently did bite the BAT's head and did get those injections as a preventative measure, but he did not ever contract rabies. Smart. And who knows? It's also called a legend in some circles, but I think it really happened. Documented while I was researching this, I was like, wow, I am not inoculated against rabies. Maybe I should just go ahead and do that. It'd be kind of neat to be like, go ahead and bite me, raccoon. You crazy. Raccoon. I'm fine. And then you could continue your ongoing battle with your squirrels. Your porch deck squirrels? No, the squirrels one I had to take down. The bird feeder. You just gave up? No, the condo complex is like, you're not allowed to have those. They attract squirrels. I'm like, yeah, no doubt. They have track squirrels. I know. So I said, all right, it's fine. You got anything else? No. Rabies. If you want to know more about it, type that word into the search bar. HowStuffWorks.com Rabys, and it will bring up this awesome article. I know. I'm just teasing. You spell it correctly, not spelled that way. R-A-B-I-E-S. That's right. All right. Did you say the oh, and since I misspelled something, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this cringeworthy experience. Oh, God. Why did we ask? Hey, guys have been listening for a couple of years, writing for the first time to tell you a compelling story about the time my dad's eyeball fell out of his head. Perhaps I should say it was forced out of his head. It takes place before I was born, but the way he tells it, it will make you hesitant to go water skiing. See, my dad was a mob enforcer in Las Vegas. In particular, you wouldn't want to let your body or your face become parallel to the water surface when you're going around to bend in the river. So when that happens, you could experience what happened to my dad. His face skimmed to the water, and the force of that caused his eyeball to pop right out of his head. Oh, my God. It's stuff that urban legends are made of. So there my dad is, in excruciating pain, treading water with his eyeball in the palm of his hands. If you're ever so lucky as to have your eyeball outside of your head, hope that it's still attached like my dad's eyeball was. Can you imagine? He got river water in his eye socket. My God. He forced it back into his eye socket. And there was nothing else he could do at that crucial moment. As I understand that, he never went to see a doctor, and his eye has been turned at a 45 degree angle every time. His name is John Rambo. That is crazy. She said he was relieved six months later, while the white static he was seeing slowly started to return, and he had normal vision once again. That's outcome bias if I've ever seen it. Cringe, if you experience any squeamish feelings, I consider it a story well told. Yeah, well told story. Though that is from Lena or Lina in California. For California. Boy, I don't know. Her dad is made of some tough stuff. If he did not go to a doctor, he's like hero, not Ohio. Yeah, crazy. So somebody else rode in and got me about having to get shots, like up their nose. That one got me, too. So whoever rode in with that one, hats off. Well, at least this guy got a great nickname out of it. Old river water socket. Jimmy. Yeah, it's a mouthful. If you have a cringe worthy story, keep it to yourself. Send us something else in via tweet to syskpodcast or join us on Facebook. Comstyshno. Send us an email to stuff podcastohousepworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the Web. Stuffyshno. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio's how stuff works. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio App Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite show." | |
http://netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2008/1215463196711sysk-salt-water-fuel.mp3 | Could salt water fuel cars? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/could-salt-water-fuel-cars | Salt water fuel could be the next viable alternative to foreign oil. Learn about the ongoing research behind the concept of salt water fuel in this HowStuffWorks podcast. | Salt water fuel could be the next viable alternative to foreign oil. Learn about the ongoing research behind the concept of salt water fuel in this HowStuffWorks podcast. | Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:27:06 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2008, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=10, tm_hour=18, tm_min=27, tm_sec=6, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=162, tm_isdst=0) | 5426177 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetofworkscom. Brought to you by consumerGuide Automotive. We make carbine easier. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, a staff writer. Here@housetepworks.com with me, as always, is my trusty editor, Candice Gibson. How's it going, Candice? Fabulous, Josh. I got to say, I envy you a little bit there, Candice. I haven't been so fabulous lately. My wallet keeps shrinking and shrinking. Have you been to the gas pumps lately? Yeah, I know what you mean. Those numbers keep climbing. But it's not so expensive to fuel my car because I drive an itty bitty Civic. Well, I drive a big old honkin Volvo, and it uses gas like you would not believe. Think about this, though. I mean, what if you could put something else besides gas in your car to power it, like sand or air or something? Well, that would be nice. That really must be nice. What about saltwater? What are you talking about? That's crazy. No, it's not crazy. Really? Have you heard of this guy named John Kansas? Indeed I have. You have? Okay, so you have read the article. Yeah. He's setting you up. That's great. Thanks for that. You're awesome. All right, well, let's tell the people out in podcast land what we're talking about. This guy named John Kinsey is a retiree in Florida. He's a retired radio broadcast engineer, and he came up with this thing called a radio frequency generator. RFG is right. And basically what it does is it takes radio waves and condenses them into a beam. And it has actually three applications that they found so far. But one of them came about when Kansas was tinkering with trying to desalinate salt water, which could solve the global search crisis. Right? Yeah. Because not everyone has access to clean water, actually, to the tune of about 2 billion people, I understand. Yeah. So he was trying to desalinate water using his RFG, and he had the little box trained on a test tube of salt water, and he noticed that it sparked, which is fairly unusual for water. Yeah, water doesn't burn. On the contrary, water actually puts out fire. Exactly. So Kenzie has a little bit of this mad scientist bent to him. He's a very curious fellow. And he likes a paper towel and turns the RFG facing the test tube again, and he touches the paper towel to the water. And rather than the paper towel being put out by the water the paper towel, exactly. It caught the water on fire. On fire. It was it was burning at about 3000 deg. Unbelievable. It was a pretty serious flame, actually. Yeah. Well, how does this convert to fuel for our cars? Well, I'll tell you. Basically, what Kansas did inadvertently, was to separate water into its components. You know, two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule. Basic science. We're all there, and we've known for a while that you can use hydrogen as fuel. You can create an electric charge from it or you can burn it in a combustion. Now wait, hold on. Because hydrogen fuel is potentially dangerous, right? I mean, look at the Hindenburg that exploded. Actually, the Hindenburg has been kind of latched onto by people who aren't all about hydrogen. Eg, the big oil companies. That's kind of a fallacy. Actually, the Hindenburg explosion, it was a blimp held aloft by hydrogen. A static spark caught the hydrogen on fire and 37 people ended up dying. Yeah, the problem is 35 of those people died by jumping to their deaths. Most of the people, actually all of the people who were on board the passenger compartment, who stayed aboard, landed safely and unharmed. And that's because hydrogen is actually the most lightweight of all the elements. And so it floated upward. It's lighter than air. Exactly. And it burned upward, actually, too, away from the passenger compartment. That's not to mention that the Hindenburg's outer skin was coated in rocket fuel and a really highly flammable appetite that wasn't too conducive to that either. So the Hindenburg is probably not the best thing to point to, to say hydrogen fuel is dangerous. Right? It's not that dangerous. The problem with this type of hydrogen fuel, saltwater fuel, essentially, is that it has a negative net energy ratio. And so to create this type of salt water fuel, you're actually putting in more energy than what you're getting out. Exactly. And what's the point? I mean, speaking strictly from an energy standpoint, you might as well just use the gasoline that you get a gallon's worth of energy from rather than, say, using a gallon to get a half a gallon's worth of energy from. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. You can't get something from nothing. Indeed. And Kansas isn't the only person to run into this stumbling block. Hydrogen could be a really legitimate fuel. I mean, it packs a real punch and it's emissions are nothing but water vapor, essentially. Yeah. So it's probably the cleanest burning fuel. I mean, the only other thing that's cleaner is electricity. And if you follow electricity back to its origin, 50% of electricity is created by burning coal. So really hydrogen would be cleaner. But is there that negative net energy ratio? It keeps popping up. When are we going to figure this out? I don't know, but I've written a couple of articles on it so far. One is a good salt water fuel cars, and the other is, is hydrogen fuel dangerous? And they're both pretty interesting. You can read them both on how stuff works.com and I'll take no gas to get there. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseworks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcasts@houseworks.com brought to you by The Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you." | |
c30d8cb8-5460-11e8-b38c-83f881b46c2b | SYSK Selects: How the Panama Canal Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-the-panama-canal-works | It's on more than one list of the Seven Wonders of the World and for good reason - the Panama Canal is one of the great feats of engineering ever undertaken. First conceived of in the 1580s and finally completed in 1914, the canal has a fascinating history (including a stint where it was considered U.S. soil). Learn all about it on this episode. | It's on more than one list of the Seven Wonders of the World and for good reason - the Panama Canal is one of the great feats of engineering ever undertaken. First conceived of in the 1580s and finally completed in 1914, the canal has a fascinating history (including a stint where it was considered U.S. soil). Learn all about it on this episode. | Sat, 02 Mar 2019 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=2, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=61, tm_isdst=0) | 31922142 | audio/mpeg | "This July, don't miss an entire summer of surprises on Disney Plus with Disney's High School Musical, the Musical, the Series season three Zombies, three Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and the wonderful summer of Mickey Mouse. Plus new episodes of Marvel Studios, ms. Marvel and National Geographics. America the Beautiful. From the award winning producers of Planet Earth, Frozen Planet and the Disney Nature Films, america the Beautiful takes viewers on a tour of the most spectacular and visually arresting regions of our great nation. All these and more streaming this month on Disney Plus. Hey, everybody, if you want a great website, you want to do it yourself with no must, no fuss. Turn to Squarespace. They have everything to sell anything. They have the tools that you need to get your business off the ground, including ecommerce templates, inventory management, a simple checkout process, and secure payments. And if you're into analytics, hold on to your hats, because Squarespace has everything that you need. Just head to Squarespace.com SYSK and you can get a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code SYSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Hi, everyone. Hope you're having a good weekend. Chuck Bryant here, co host of the podcast you're listening to, and I am in charge of picking this week's Stuff You Should Know select episode. It is from April 2013. The day after April Fool's Day. But don't worry, this isn't how 3D printing works. When I famously fake quit and was replaced by Ben Bowen. No, this is the episode about the Panama Canal. So interesting. I love civic projects. I love huge, unwieldy projects that seem impossible to complete. And the Panama Canal was and is that so? I know you're going to love this one, everyone. How the Panama Canal works. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, is Charles W chuck Bryant. And that's Stephanie should know the podcast. The two of us together with a couple of mics and our voices. You know what I've been singing all day, of course, Panama, over and over, and I just whistled it, and Jerry was like, oh, no, I got that stuck in my head. Yeah, when we were growing up, my sister was singing it, and I realized that she was singing Turn and Run. I'm like, what? She's like that song? That Van Halen song. Don't be an idiot. She thought that's what they were saying. Yeah. That's so interesting because there's so many misinterpreted song lyrics, famously over the years, but I never have heard Panama as being one of them. Yeah, especially since the song is named Panama, parentheses, turn and run. Maybe they were talking about the people who are working on the early French effort to build a canal in Panama. Yeah. Boy, that didn't go over so well. We'll get to that. Okay. Spoiler. The French didn't build the Panama Canal. I thought we were going to get to it right now. All right, do you want to talk about which one is George Castano's favorite explorer? Was it Dagama or Balboa? Oh, man. It was one of the two, I think. Dagama, was it? Yes, I think so. Okay. That was a funny conversation, though, so, yeah. Balboa back in the day was wandering around in a region called Darien, and he summoned a peak there and was like, Holy cow. If I look this way, I see the Pacific Ocean. And if I look at that away, I see the Atlantic Ocean or the Caribbean. And the only thing between these two big bodies of water, it's this little itzmus of land. Yeah. I'm going to have a lot of trouble with that word. That's okay. Just say strip. Okay. So the strip of land here is the only thing in between, and we should figure out a way to use this as a thoroughfare. Yeah, because this is it. This connects the world. It does. Exactly. At the time, the Spanish were trying to trade with the Chinese, and we're doing a pretty good job of it in the Philippines. And the best way to get to that was to come across the Atlantic and go into the Pacific. That's right. It worked very, very well. And the idea of just having a place where you could go straight through rather than go all the way down South America and then back up, it was just mind boggling. Yes. It's like you said, it opened up the world. This guy got it immediately. The problem was it would take about 400 more years before anyone finally got around to completing it successfully. Oh, yeah. And forget the rest of the world. The United States. Just like, hey, I want to ship this by boat from New York to San Francisco. How can I do that? I can just kind of sneak around Florida. Right. No, blocked. Right. Well, then what do I have to do? You have to go 8000 miles, nautical miles around South America to get to California. Right. Or when you, me and I were in Nicaragua, we were in a town in the 19th century was a waste station for minor 40 niners going on to California, and they would sail onto Nicaragua, take a train, and then ship out from Nicaragua up to California. Except the handful that was like, I think I might just kick it here. Exactly. Yeah. I bet you there were some dudes that did. Oh, definitely. I'm sure. Yeah. But yeah, there was a continent in the way, and the idea that it was just this little narrow strip of land I know. That made a lot of people say, this is the place to be. In the 18th century, the Scottish showed up. They tried to establish an outpost, failed spectacularly. There's a great section in 1493 about it. Oh, really? Yeah, the Spanish were there, the French were there. They established pretty good outposts there. It was very clear that this little area, which was then part of Columbia is now present day Panama, was going to be a hop and spot because there was no thinner portion of the north or South American continents than this one. And everyone needed to figure out a way to get through. Yes. And it wasn't as easy as like, hey, let's just dredge all the sand and let the waters meet, because that's not too hard. It's like dense jungle and mountains and the continental divide. Yeah. My first thought was, like, how hard could it have been? I didn't realize how treacherous that area was. Yeah. And I think that Balboa and a lot of people who succeeded him thought the same thing. Like, how hard is it? Sure. But it is that continental divide, that's a tough thing to break through. That's why they call it a divide. Yeah. Well, that's where two tectonic plates come together and form a mountain range and you're cutting through not one, but two tectonic plates. Everybody wrap your head around that. Seriously, let's talk about it, because obviously we were successful eventually, but the first attempt was not. And the first attempt was by the French, who, in the 1820s, I believe, started to undertake what is known as a sea level canal, which is basically they were going to cut their way straight through the isthmus of Panama. That's right. And canals were all the rage at the time because of steam technology. So all of a sudden you didn't have to use the very cool and quaint topath and have a mule walk alongside of a river or canal. Have you ever been on a little boat? Oh, yeah. A lot of them now are like, jogging trails and stuff. Right. Which that's great. Make for good use. Sure, exactly. I don't see any mules on them these days. But it's great that people can use these topas now. It's like a nature trail. Yeah. So the steam technology gave the French the idea that, hey, man, we can build a sea level canal here because we can just dig right through it. We have steam. We don't need the mules for the top pads any longer. All we need is some good steam shovels. We're going to cut right through this continental divide, right through this jungle. And as a result of this ambition, 20,000 people died. Yeah. And they were able to get a little far, thanks to the railroad there in Panama. Believe it or not, it was the first railroad in the world to connect both sides of a continent. It wasn't very big, but it didn't need to be, which is kind of great. But that allowed the French to get in there. They were deciding between Nicaragua and Panama at the time and they said, like you said, we can do sea level. We don't need these locks. Yeah. If you look at a map of Nicaragua and look at Panama, the idea of going through Nicaragua of Panama is just nuts. Yeah. And we'll explain how the locks work, but it essentially just raises and lowers your ship. Right? For sure. In a little, like, base station of water that's flooded and then drained. Right. Actually, that's how a lock works. The French organized this thing called the company universal DuCanal inter oceanique. Very nice. Thank you. And led by a guy named Ferdinand de Lesseps, who had created a sea level canal through the Suez that connected the Mediterranean and the Red Seas. It was a big deal. Sure. So they brought him in, and he's like, sure, we'll do another sea level canal. I'm feeling good about this. He's like, I did the Suez canal with my eyes closed. Exactly. Like, I can do this with one arm tied behind my back. What he didn't realize is that digging through a bunch of sand is not like digging through two tectonic plates and a bunch of jungle and malaria. And like I said, 20,000 people died as a result of this. This guy was like, no, we can do it. We can do it. We're going to do a sea level canal. We can do it. And then finally, it was like, I don't think we can do this. It was too late. Yeah. A lot of people were dead from yellow fever and malaria, from accidents. It's privately financed. So a lot of people lost a lot of money, too. Exactly. And this company goes under. Well, he tried to salvage it, though. First. He tried to hire Gustavel of the Eiffel Tower fame right. And said, hey, I think we need those locks after all, and you're good at building big steel things, so can you help? And he was like, of course I can. And then it was too late, though, that the business was done. Right. And they had done a little bit well, they had done a lot. They made 11 miles of canal up to that point. Not bad. It's about a quarter of the way there. Right. But this was the when did they start chuck? The 1820s. Yeah. So, chuck, as we understand it, they started in the 1820s, and this thing went bussed by, I believe. Well, that's when Congress they were busted before that. But that's when the US Stepped in and said, hey, we'll buy your junk. Oh, I'm sorry. 1888, about 60 years. They had managed to dig 11 miles of canal, build a bunch of buildings. They had a lot of equipment and supplies there. Sure. And, yeah, the US. Said, we smell a really great opportunity, and Congress said, let's spend some cash. We're feeling good about things these days. Annexed Hawaii recently. Puerto Rico, Philippines. What else? Why not take over this very ambitious project? Why? It's the American century by now, and we can stick it to the French at the same time. Exactly. So they did this in with the one stipulation that said, you know what? You guys have to columbia controls Panama right now, and you guys have to work out a deal with them. And we tried, and that failed. So he said, you know what? We're just going to overthrow Columbia then and give the control to the Panamanians. Yeah, we supported this Panamanian independence movement and yeah, threw off the shackles of Colombia. And Colombia is like, what did you just do? Because we gained control of that. We followed that congressional mandate and gained control of this Panama Canal Zone. Basically, the swath that went through Panama was considered American soil, thanks to a treaty from, I believe, the Hay Bonal Variation where Panama signed over the Canal Zone. There was no Spanish translation of this treaty. So basically, the US. Went in over through Colombian control of Panama, supported Panamanian independence, and then robbed Panama of its canal in like, a year. Yeah. And Columbia is like, well, I guess we'll just start exporting cocaine and master. Exactly. We'll get you back one day. So in the end, they paid about $40 million in 19 four for the assets of this French company, which is a lot of money back then. Sure. And about $10 million, as this very cheeky article. By the way, did you notice cheeky? A little. She referred to it as alimony of sorts to Panama. $10 million to gain the rights to this Canal Zone. And basically, hey, we're going to run the show. We're going to finish your canal from the eleven mile mark to the ocean where it belongs. And like you said, I think there was a certain amount of snub to it. Right? Probably so. But they said, you know, what we got to do first, though, is we have to decide on if we can go sea level. Was it just the French were incompetent or is it really impossible to do sea level? Yeah, we need to do our own due diligence, basically. And they did that. And Theodore Roosevelt chose Chief Engineer John Frank Stevens. And he was like, it's all about the locks, dudes. If you want to canal here, you have to go over these mountains, not through them. Right. So here's the thing, and this is just brilliant, because there is another problem with this isthmus, and there's this thing called the Chagres River, and it is very temperamental. It was prone to flooding, all sorts of crazy stuff associated with this river. So not only did you have the Continental Divide and the jungle and the malaria to deal with, once you completed it, what were you going to do with this river? Sure. Stevens came up with this great idea that you go over the mountains and you go over the mountains, you kill two birds with 1 st by damming the river. Yeah. And you create a lake that will carry you over the mountains. Gatun Lake. Yeah. I'm sure that's not pronounced correctly. Think about that. That is one of the most brilliant feats of engineering I've ever heard of. The Panama Canal. Yeah. But that specific aspect of it oh, sure. Damning. The river to create a lake so you can go over the mountains. Yeah. That's just incredibly beautiful. The whole thing, too. And at the time, dude, in the early 19 hundreds, it's just like it's amazing that they can pull this off. Yeah. Because they're all wearing, like, knickers and stuff. Yeah. There's some awesome documentaries out there, by the way, you should watch. In fact, there's one cool. Just go to the YouTubes and put in time lapse Panama Canal. Oh, yeah. And it takes you the full route in, like, a minute and a half. Nice. Eight to 10 hours. And it's kind of neat. The boat goes in and sinks and then not sinks, but lowers and then raises. And then it tools along in the lake for a little while and then sinks and lowers and raises. Yeah. Because it's like an eight to ten hour transit, right. From deep water to deep water. Eight to 10 hours. Yes. Depending on your boat, I guess. Once you finally get clearance to go through that's. Right. So he's damned up the river, created cartoon lake ships going toward the Pacific, going to enter Lemon Bay in the Caribbean, go through a couple of locks upward and just it's like walking up steps, basically, except it's a big boat and it's done with water. And then they navigate through that lake for a little while and then go toward Panama City through another series of locks and down over the mountains, and boom, you are connected to the rest of the world. Right. So when they agreed on the lock method, they had one other thing to handle. That's why the Scottish maybe they were getting confused with locks, meaning lakes. Right. Maybe that's why it's there for go. There's a bunch of locks. They're like, Where are all the locks? They're like they're right there. They're like, no, but where are the locks? So there was one other big problem that had leveled the French effort, which was yellow fever, which you can be immune to if you're exposed to it in childhood. But if you're from New York, you're not. So you go down to Panama and you are stung by a mosquito and you die. The thing is, nobody knew that it was mosquitoes until a guy named Ronald Ross in 1897 studied mosquitoes in India and found malaria present in their stomachs and that it was transmittable through their saliva. Yeah. They didn't know what it was. There were all sorts of different theories. Yeah. They thought it was maybe from unclean living, whatever. When they found out that it was the mosquitoes that changed everything. So they instituted this really rigid antimo Sketo program. They cleaned up the country, basically. And basically eradicated came close to eradicating yellow fever in the area, which paved the way for this lock system to be built. Yeah. And you can thank Colonel William Gorgeous for heading up that sanitation squad. Yeah, it worked. And that was the key, because you can't have your workers dropping dead of yellow fever every day. Right. They have to drop dead of landslides. Yeah. Even though a lot of these workers were poor black people. I think 85% of the people that died were black, and a lot of people still died. But it wasn't like the 22,000 drop in dead from yellow fever. Right. But it's still a very dangerous project, mudslides all sorts of drownings, things like that. What if you were a gigantic snack food maker and you had to wrestle a massively complex supply chain to satisfy cravings from Tokyo to Toledo? So you partner with IBM Consulting to bring together data and workflows so that every driver and merchandiser can serve up jalapeno, sesame and chocolate cover goodness with realtime datadriven precision. Let's create supply chains that have an appetite for performance. IBM, let's create. Learn more at IBM. Comconsulting. It's 2022 and things look different. Like doctors visits, for example. Sometimes you don't have to go into a doctor's office to be treated for non emergency situations, like a sinus infection or allergy. And that's why teletoc gives you the chance to connect with board certified physicians right from your home via phone or video. That's right. Doctors are standing by 24/7, so you can schedule a visit according to your schedule. You can see for yourself why teladoc is ranked number one by JD power and telehealth satisfaction with direct to consumer providers. Tele doc is available through most major health plans and many employers. But even if you're not covered by insurance, everyone has access to use teladoc. That's right. If you want to check it out, download the app today or visit teladoc. comStuff to register or schedule a visit today. That's teladoc.com stuff. For JDPower 2021 award information, visit JDPower. comAWARDS. We've got the yellow fever licked. We settled on the lock system and John Frank Stevens is replaced by a guy named Lieutenant Colonel George Washington Gothel. And he was a lock expert, and he looked at the plan and he said, you know what? We're going to divide this up into three sections. That makes perfect sense. It does. You've got the Pacific section that's going to be working from Limon Bay, which, by the way, means lime in Spanish. Did you know that? I did not. So they're working from Limon Bay to the newly created Lake Gatun. Yeah. That was the Atlantic Division. Yeah. Okay, you're right. So the Atlantic division is synonymous with the Caribbean. Yes. And then so you've got the Atlantic Division working from Lemon to get toun you have the Central Division. This is the hardest part. They're working in Lake Gattoon to basically create a channel through this Continental Divide. You don't have to cut sea level, but you do need to make sure these ships aren't going to run aground in a mountain. Sure. And then you have the Pacific Division, which is working from the end of the Continental Divide path, which is Pedro Miguel Locks down to the Pacific. Right? That's right. And like we said, the railway, the Panamanian Railroad is there. And we had, like, awesome gear at the time, it was no longer men with chisels and sledgehammers and stuff. It was steam shovels, rock drills, dynamite. And they moved 96 million cubic yards of earth and rock right. Which is 73 million m\u00b3. That's right. And it was really hot, though, and it was a pretty bad scene. And they called that Hells Gorge, and it was dangerous. And that's where I think most of the lives were lost on the second pass. Yeah. And that was definitely the hardest work. But they made it through. And by 1914, a crane that was used in the construction of the Panama Canal was the first thing to ever make it through. All the way. Yeah. And they were like, sweet. Yeah. And eight months later, it was open for business, as far as I understand. Yeah, big business. Should we walk people through or, I guess swim people through? Yeah, I think we should. Okay. You approach from the Atlantic? You go through the Gatsune locks. It's going to lift your vessel up 85ft pretty awesome. And take you to Cotton and Lake. Very nice. There. You're going to wind through that channel for about 23 miles, then enter the Gallard cut about 8 miles through there, and you're going to reach the Pedro Miguel Locks. And then they're going to lower your ship about 30ft to the Miraflores Lake. You're going to pass through this it's about a mile long. And then the two step mirror floors, locks are going to return you finally back to sea level to seven mile passage from there to the Pacific. And all told, you've gone 50 miles in about eight to 10 hours. Yeah. And mind bogglingly. I saw that it takes 52 million gallons of fresh water to move a ship from one end to the other. Wow. 52 million. And they're getting all that from Lake Cotton. Yeah. I imagine it's just recycled back into the system, right. No. What happens to it? They lose most of it. It's either pumped back in, it either flows back into Lake Cathon or else it flows out into the ocean. Okay. Which is not necessarily good. They're worried that Lake Atun may become brackish. Oh, yeah. And Lake at O is now the freshwater supply of Panama. And they're using a lot of it up. Yeah. Well, it's always presented a bit of an environmental quagmire right. Especially with their plans to expand, which we'll get to. But right now, they have two way traffic. They're looking to make that a three lane highway, which would actually adding that third lane will double the amount of traffic, which is crazy. You would think it would increase it by a third. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe it's wider. Maybe it allows for two ships at a time, like eight in there at once. I don't know. I do know that if you are a large enough ship, they don't let you drive yourself because you got one drunk sea captain, and all of a sudden, your locks are out of commission. Right. So they use electric towing locomotives to tow those big bad boys. Right. And we should say, just briefly with the locks, if you want to move a ship upward, you flow into a lock. The lock closes behind you, and it fills up with water so that you can float over the lip of the next tire lock. The gate closes behind you with that one, and it fills in with water and so on and so forth. Yeah, it's remarkably basic. Yeah. And then the opposite takes place when you're stepping down, it's just basically going into a little square pool, raising or lowering the water level so you can go up or down. It's really neat. Yes. And if you've got a minute and a half to kill, you can take this voyage and high speed on the YouTube. So, like we said, the US. Used gunboat diplomacy and, I guess good old fashioned old timey two Swindling to gain control of the Panama Canal Zone, and it had complete control until 1979, when Jimmy Carter Malays forever. Right. Do you ever see that? Simpsons? They unveil a statue of Jimmy Carter, and it says Malays forever on the base. And one of the townspeople goes, history is great. It's monster. Oh, boy. Anyway, Carter negotiated with the leader of Panama at the time, general Omar Torris Herrera, and said, hey, how would you like this thing back? Give us 20 years. I think they said, hey, we'd like this back. I like to think of American magnanimous. Okay, sure. So we said, you know what? We've had it for this long, plus we're talking Carter. It's entirely possible he just started contacting people and said, what does the US. Have that we can sell or give back? It's a good point. He sold. One of the presidential yacht was sold by him. Oh, really? Yeah. Why? Because he thought it was frivolous. Yeah. That's awesome. And Panama Canal. He's like, how about this? Let's get rid of a significant portion of our economy. Anyway, he gives it back after 20 years, and on December 31, 1999, which is why I suspect they made it a 20 year deal. Yeah. I mean, they had to transition. You can't just hand the keys over and be like, all right, send your crew in. Right. But not only that, like, why not a 15 year deal or 18 year deal? A ten year deal. They went with 20 because it was going to end on December 31. New millennium. Yeah. Actually, that didn't start until 2001, though. Right? Yeah, but it's symbolic. Right. Okay. So the Panamanians take over and immediately start taking flak because of things aging, traffic is jammed up. Yeah. They've done a good job with it, though. It's just by nature of how things are these days, they're victims of circumstance. Yeah. 5% of the world's trade goes through the Panama Canal. We sold them a lemon of a canal. Right. The millionth ship went through in 2010. 144,000 ships go through a year, and it's a very narrow little strip. Yeah. You know what that means? Waiting in line. A lot of waiting in line. Plus, also, there's an upper limit to the size ship that can go through. It's called Panamax. Yeah. Is the ship size. I've never heard of them. What a great name for the biggest ship that Panamax. What could be bigger than that? Well, these ships that are called post Panamax. Exactly. A lot of shippers are like, you know what? I'm tired of waiting. It's actually going to be more economical for me to build a ship that can't go through the Panama Canal but can hold a lot more. And I'll just sail around the lower part of South America, and that's kind of increasingly happening. Plus, Nicaragua threatened to open their own canal. So Panama says, okay, wait, let's hold a referendum and see if we can expand this thing and modernize it and save the canal. And Panamanian said yes. Let's. So in 2006, they approved this third lane. It's expected to be opened by 2014. Is Nicaragua still planning a canal? I don't know. I don't know if that shot it down or not. Well, and there's also talk now of a Northwest Passage. Thanks to what some people might say is climate change and melting ice caps. There may be a way to get there by land. Henry Hudson is clapping in his grave, so we'll see if that happens. I don't know. I didn't get a chance to really look into that research. And, like, how real is that? Right. Even still, the Panamanians will probably make their 5.25 billion investment back eventually. Although it took the US. A good 40 years to make 400 million back. Yeah. I think the 1950 is when they finally broke even. That's crazy. Yeah. And you break even by charging a toll. I don't think we even mentioned that. Obviously, like, any way station or passage, you got to pay according to how much stuff you got. And I think the record is I looked it up. It's like 150,000 or something. Yeah, they do it by tonnage. The thing is, if you are carrying a lot of really expensive natural gas, you're going to pay a lesser toll than if you're carrying a bunch of less expensive or even equally expensive coal, which isn't fair. And if you're transporting a lot of raw steel, Why should you pay more? So they're trying to figure out a new toll system, especially for the newly expanded version of the canal, that takes into account the value of what's on board rather than just the weight. Right. So they should make a little more money that way. Yes. I don't know if this is still accurate, but the record that I have is $153,662. And the cheapest was when a dude swam across it and he weighed, like, \u00a3150 and said they charged him, what, like $36? Yeah. Back in 1928, Richard Halliburton and he swam the Panama Canal, and I guess it was some sort of publicity stunt. I'm sure people love doing stuff like that back then. Yeah. But if you look at this high speed route on YouTube, it's pretty neat. And there's a lot of times where you're like, oh, look out for that boat, and then it turns. Okay, but there's a lot of activity out there. Yeah. It's not a pleasure cruise. Well, no, and it's not one ship at a time. But they have, like you said, two way traffic, right? That's right. And they try to keep them going through as efficiently as possible. And I should say also the new locks that they have can serve about 60% of the water used, so they'll address a lot of environmental concerns, hopefully. I got a couple of little facts here, if you're interested. The entrance to the canal on the Atlantic side is 22 and a half miles west of the Pacific entrance, which is interesting. Okay. Because it has a unique S shape. And then the locks themselves are 7ft thick each. So if you're wondering how to keep out that much water to basically damn up the oceans, you need to do it with seven foot thick concrete. 92% of the workforce is Panamanian right now, which is pretty great. And that's about all I got. \u00a360 million of dynamite was used to construct this thing. There's some nice stats. Chuck yeah, it's not bad. Cool. You got anything else, then? Now, the rest of these are kind of boring. Panama Canal forever. If you want to learn more about the Panama Canal, you can read this very good article on howstep works.com. Type in Panama Canal or turn and run Canal and see what happens when you do the latter. Chuck hold on. Let's take a message break, huh? 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. It's 2022. When things look different, like doctors visits, for example, sometimes you don't have to go into a doctor's office to be treated for nonemergency situations like a sinus, infection or allergy. And that's why teladoc gives you the chance to connect with board certified physicians right from your home via phone or video. That's right. Doctors are standing by 24/7, so you can schedule a visit according to your schedule. You can see for yourself why teledoc is ranked number one by JD Power and Telehealth satisfaction with direct to consumer providers. Teladoc is available through most major health plans and many employers. But even if you're not covered by insurance, everyone has access to use teletoc. That's right. If you want to check it out, download the app today or visit teladoc. comStuff to register or schedule a visit today. That's teladoc.com stuff. For JDPower 2021 Award information, visit JDPower comAWARDS it is time for listener mail. Josh, I'm going to call this one listener mail about listener mail. Hey, guys. I'm currently on the seven train heading to Queens from Manhattan after a long day of working as an auditor at a CPA firm. As usual, I'm listening to your podcast. This time it was a death mask episode and you were concluding with some listener mail. In this instance, it was from Martha regarding peak oil. And I think Martha was talking about the auditing of oil reserves. And he says this to Martha. She was correct for the most part regarding the audit of oil reserves held by entities whose stocks may be publicly traded on the stock market. Just one thing I was so aggressive by that I felt I needed to type this from my phone as I'm on the train. Still, the SEC does not perform any audits of its own on these companies. It is firms like the one I work for that audit these companies, albeit under SEC guidelines, actually PCAOB Public Company Audit, Oversight Board Guidelines if you want to get technical. Yes, the SEC may perform a type of audit, but when they do, they are usually auditing an audit firm or an audit that has already been done by an audit firm as part of some kind of investigation. What, so they'll audit and audit like the SEC is an audit? I got you short of it. I actually been through one of these audits and it is no fun at all. For some reason, it seems everyone who works at the SEC is what you stereotype typically picture as an accountant with no humor. Plus, the word audit loses all meaning when you hear it. That's right. I digress, though, guys. If you pull up a ten k annual filing for any public company, you can see in the audit opinion the audit firm which performed the audit for that particular year. Hope that clears things up. Henry Gomez. And Henry, I'm not sure if that cleared it up, but if I was an accountant, I would probably say yes. It very much clear things up. Very nice. Thank you very much, henry, that was very nice of you to correct somebody who is correcting us. Yeah. And I'm sorry you got to take that stinky seven train, man. Is that a terrible train. Dude, that one's like it's the old red train that looks like it's about to fall off. It's like the midnight meat train. Yeah. Have you seen that? No, it's midnight meet that's a midnight meat train. It's got Vinny Jones and Bradley Cooper in it. It's actually based on a Clive Barker short story because that's an old joke between me and my friend PJ, who you've met, I believe. Yeah. At Cookouts. Famously. PJ is a great chef, home chef, but he would typically take so long, we referred to his meals as midnight meat. And then I made a joke about cold cooking a steak one time. It took like, 24 hours. Yeah, no, this is different, okay? This is not a slam on PJ. No. We love the midnight meat. If you have anything you want us to know, if you want to correct somebody who's corrected us or you just want to say hi, whatever, you can tweet to us at SYSK podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com. Stuff you should know, you can always find us on our website, right? That's right. Stuffyournow.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. 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. 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How Money Laundering Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-money-laundering-works | Money laundering -- the practice of disguising illegal funds -- can be domestic or international in nature. Join Josh and Chuck as they take a look at the history, practice and future of money laundering in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. | Money laundering -- the practice of disguising illegal funds -- can be domestic or international in nature. Join Josh and Chuck as they take a look at the history, practice and future of money laundering in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. | Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:30:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=14, tm_hour=14, tm_min=30, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=104, tm_isdst=0) | 25872245 | 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? 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And when you're ready to launch, use offer code SYSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Wake up, Chuck Bryant. What's up, buttercup? Chuck feeding. He's ready to get out of here. So we're going to watch these rainy days. You know, rainy days and Monday. They always get you down carrying carpenter. What a waste. It's sad. Yeah. This is not on Anorex yet. No, it's not, actually. It's on money laundering, which we can't or we can or can't say, I think is one way to put it. Whether or not Karen Karpenter ever engaged in that, god bless your soul. I believe that she did not. You never know, Chuck. I'll go on record. Chuck. You ever see Scarface? Are you kidding me? So you have seen it? Yeah, many times. Edward G. Robinson. James Cagney. Oh, no, I thought you were talking Pacino. I was. I just don't like it when you gloat. So you know that one scene when he's sitting there laundering the money with the guy who turns out to be the cop and for some reason the Palma made it so like it actually simulates the 8 hours that they're supposedly sitting there doing it. Right. It was actually a pretty good lesson in what not to do when you launder money. And I think that the moral to it was never launder money with an undercover police officer. Right. My favorite part of that movie is when he buries his face in the huge mountain of cocaine on his desk at the end. That is a good part. And thousands of bullets, hundreds of bullets could not even take him down at that point. But they did eventually. No. Yeah, they did. No. I couldn't remember if he died in an explosion because there are grenades in there. I know. It is a good movie. Anyone who hasn't seen that can sign up to be derided by Chuck and I on our blog, which we'll talk about later. But first, let's talk about money laundering. Chuck let's. So, for the most part, you would think for the most part, it's the realm of drug dealers. They use cash almost exclusively. They've got to wash it. It's dirty money. They can't account for it. Right. And the tax system, especially in the US. Is set up in such a way that that's supposed to be obvious. Right. Which is where money laundering comes in. To weigh around this declaration of, hey, I made a bunch of money by selling heroin, which you can't really do because they bite you for selling heroin. I'm surprised the government wouldn't just say, that's great, we'll take 30% of that. Yeah. I mean, really, honestly, would the IRS contact the DEA, or would the IRS just be like, you're an upstanding citizen. You're a drug dealer? Well, that's one of the big arguments for legalization of drugs, is you can just text the heck out of it and legitimize it and make a lot of money off of it. And again, remember when we were talking about how moonshine works during Prohibition? It kind of added this forbidden aspect to drinking. And so, of course, drinking increased. Right? Yeah. So it makes you wonder if drug use would drop. But that's neither here nor there. It isn't. But what I was saying was you would think it's mainly drug traffickers engaged in money laundering. It is. Because $1 million in cocaine estimated at 20 kilos \u00a344 or 20 kilos for our metric friends. Sure. Yeah. And a million dollars in cash weighs \u00a3256. So it's kind of tricky. Right. The thing is, though, it turns out it's not just drug dealers who are laundering this heavy cash, because the UN. Estimates this is a 2005 estimate, the latest I can find, that the global drug trade is valued at about $321,000,000,000 annually. That's a lot of dough. It is a lot of dough. But it's estimated that the value of all of the money that's laundered every year globally is somewhere between 500 billion and 1 trillion. Wow. So, clearly, the entirety of the drug trade three times over couldn't account for the high end estimate of all the money that's being laundered in the world every year. Terrorists. Terrorists, big money laundering, white collar guys. Sure. Basically anybody who's come across a substantial amount of money that you can't just walk around with in your pockets and you don't want to pay taxes on. Right. You launder the money. Right. So how do you do this? Also, I should probably say the vast majority of the cash is getting washed is the US. Dollar for two reasons. Number one, it's pretty much the de facto international currency. Right. We learned about that in our audiobook. Right. Which we'll get to that, I'm sorry, our spoken word album. And also because the US Is some of the strictest banking transparency laws in the world. Right. So if you have some dollars and you want to get it back into the US. You got to wash it first. Right. How do you do that? Let's talk about the three steps, Chuck. Sure. Number one is called placement. Three steps of money laundering. Placement basically means that the launderer inserts dirty money into a legitimate financial institution. So they'll put their money in a bank. Right. But it's dirty money. It is dirty money. This is the riskiest stage. This is like the water making that tense, hollow sound as it's filling up in the drum of the washing machine. Right. And it's risky because large amounts of cash are always a red flag these days. And in fact, in the US. I believe the limit is a $10,000 deposit. It's not just the US. That holds that standard, but definitely other folks are U. S. Sure. Yeah. The International Task Force, well, they're required to report anything 10,000 or I believe it's anything totaling 10,000 within, like, a five day period. Is that right? I think one day. Oh, one day period. Okay. You're right. But yeah. Still, the golden number if you're laundering money is to stay below ten grand in a day in deposits. So once you've got that done and your dirty money is in a bank, lots of it, you move on to step two, which is called layering, and that means you start to send this money out via transactions. We're talking bank to bank transfers, wiring money, investing in some high value items, like you could go buy and yacht or something like that. Right. And you're basically just trying to send the money out and spread it around to all different sorts of places. This is what I consider the rent cycle. The rent cycle, yes. Very nice. Yeah. It's being agitated, and it's the most complex part of laundering money as well, because you're taking one lump sum right. And then dividing it into as many things as you possibly can, which makes it hard to trace, which is really essentially the whole point to money laundering. Sure. You want to make it really hard to trace back to you. Right. So then we come Joshi, to integration, which is phase three. And this is when the money comes back into the mainstream economy looking like legitimate transactions. You divest from those legitimate businesses you invested in, you sell that yacht, or you transfer money from these kind of shady banks or banks in countries with shady systems, which I talk about in a minute, right. Into US. Banks again. And at that point, as Joe Pesci would say, the money is laundered. Yes. I called that's sad that you know that. I'm ashamed of you right now. Next thing you know, you're going to tell me you watch The Closer. No, I've never seen that show, but I'm a big Kira Cedric fan. All right, that's nice. I was at one point until The Closer. Okay, let's get offer. Okay, so since there's so many different countries out there that have banking, secrecy, protection, basically there's so many places where you can go buy a yacht and they don't have to by law, say, where'd you get this money? Right. And businesses don't have to say, hey, where did you get this money? If you're investing in them, it seems like it would be impossible to catch. It is hard to catch. Too it is. Well, Josh is certainly not from a lack of looking because there are a lot of places that try to find money launderers, like the Department of Justice, State Department, FBI, IRS, DEA, they've all got money laundering departments. Sure. Or money laundering. They're not laundering money, obviously. Right. No, they're looking for money laundering. Exactly. So, yeah, the IRS can find you. And I imagine if you're a money launderer, they can find you, too. Right. And there's also, since we're talking about those are United States based organizations, it gets global, too, because it usually involves global transactions. That's kind of the key to the whole thing. So there's something called the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering. The FATF, that was the other organization I was saying that has that $10,000 reporting requirements. Too well, that's fantastic. The UN gets involved, too. Our buddies at the UN. Yes. The World Monetary Fund. So that's who's looking out for International Monetary Fund. I'm sorry about that one. Right. So do you want to talk about some of these methods, Josh? Like the peso exchange? Yeah, that's pretty cool. Hit it. Okay, so that is the black market Columbian peso exchange system. And this is like the world standard, and actually it is centered in Columbia. What happens is like, say you are a drug trafficker and you have a bunch of dirty money. Chuck right. Say it. I am a drug trafficker and I have a load of dirty money. Well, I just happened friends to be a peso broker and I can clean that money for you. And you want to hear how I'm going to do it? Well, what do you mean by clean, Josh? I'm going to make it so that it's legitimate again. Okay? Okay. So what's going to happen is you're going to give me your dirty money, okay. I'm going to give it to a Colombian importer who's going to buy a bunch of American made goods. Okay. And we're going to buy them on the black market because we don't want to pay any taxes on any of this. Oh, no, right. So the importer goes and orders a bunch of stuff, gets it under the radar, imported to Columbia, sells it for pesos, takes the pesos, the colombian import is going to give me the pesos, take a little bit for himself. Any profit he can make off of it, well, he's going to pay me back the equivalent of the US dollars I gave him in Pesos. I'm going to skim a little off top, and bada boom, but a bing, my friend, you have just converted your dirty US dollars to clean Columbia and Pesos. Thanks. Go forth, do whatever you like. We got a deal. I'm thank you for that. It's basically that easy. It is. And actually, sadly, it is very easy. And it was flying under the radar, like we said, for many years. And apparently the Colombian government and the American government were trying to figure out what was going on with all these illegal US imports and came to figure out also oh, yeah. Well, Columbia also has a huge money laundering problem, and they're known for now we understand it. That's the old black market Columbia Peso Exchange two step shuffle. Very nice. And apparently that's just a one stop shopping deal. If you want to lend to your money, that's the place to go. Yeah, but there's also another one, and I know this one is your favorite because of the name, right? Smurfing. Yeah. Structuring Deposits is the formal name, but they call it Smurfing. And basically this entails when you break up large amounts of money into smaller, less suspicious amounts. So in the US, it's got to be below $10,000, because, like we said, that's when banks have to report you and the money is deposited. The smaller amounts are deposited into one or more banks by people called smurfs. That's what they call them. Yeah, for no apparent reason. So Smurf, that unless Payo, the creator of the smurf, was caught doing this, maybe that's where it was. Maybe that's where it originated. Right. Sounds like a smurfing good idea to me. Have you ever seen the Smurf carpet bomb ad? No, I think it was for UNICEF. It was a UNICEF ad, and they played it in Belgium, and basically it was an anti war public service announcement. And they used the smurfs, and the smurfs villages just carpet bombed, and they're all killed. And they show the aftermath and burning smurfs are walking around. It's really something. You should look it up. Jesus. So that's disturbing. On to overseas banks, which is always big. You always hear about offshore accounts and growing up, you hear this from watching chips and stuff like that in my era. And you hear about offshore accounts, and I always pictures, like, bank floating in the ocean. I know what you mean. That's not what's going on there. But they're basically countries that have really lacks or not lax, but they just have secrecy laws and allow anonymous banking to take place. Yeah, like, Bahrain is one that's not in the Caribbean. Bahamas, the Caymans. Caymans, Hong Kong. There's a place called Macau off the coast of china underground alternative banking, which kind of cracks me up. I don't know that I would invest in an alternative bank. This seems kind of like tribal in nature. Yeah, exactly. Like it's existed long before any banking regulations. Right. Very popular in Asia. I know. Then Pakistan, the Hawaii system in Pakistan and India and the FAI chen system in China. Yeah. So basically, it's a trust system. There's no paper trail. No paper? No. Which is key because you want a lot of money. You don't want paper. That's all point. It's very much like the offshore accounts. These are secret accounts. They won't reveal your identity. There's no paper trail that's public in any way, shape or form. These are really good places to use if you plan on laundering any money. Right. Not that we would encourage that, because it's illegal. You get busted, you go to jail. No. Although if you put together some of these seemingly random podcasts, we've done. You could make moonshine, sell it, launder money and that's that into a ponzi step. Exactly. Early on and then get out. So there you go. And here we are, not making our own advice. Right. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts and you can't afford to waste a single moment. 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And then Josh, there are shell companies. Of course. When you have, like, a fake company you'll set up that really doesn't sell or manufacture anything, what's the difference between a shell company and a front company? Is there a difference? There is a difference. You want to know? I was just trying to set you up. I don't know the difference. A shell company is set up. It doesn't really do anything. It only really exists on paper. Okay. Yeah, sure. And it's express purposes to launder money. A front company is a real company. Right. But it's meant to launder money, too. But it says you could actually go into the store and buy something but it's really the purpose is to launder money. And that actually leads us to one of the problems with money laundering. I mean, you ask, why would I care if people are laundering money aside from the obvious ones, like I hate drug dealers and I don't want them laundering the money, or I hate terrorists. Clearly, everybody hates terrorists. There's a lot of reasons. Yes, but for this reason, the last part with the front company, it affects local economies in that small businesses can't compete with the front company because they're not trying to turn a profit off their product, so they can sell it, like at or below cost if they want and drive other companies out of business. Well, it seems a little flashy to me if you're a front company. Sure. I would think you just kind of want to stay even keel the whole time, right? Yeah, but greed, brother, it's true. Same with the Ponzi. Greed takes a hold and then you're screwed. Same with the what? It's a Ponzi scheme. That's right. But on a much larger level. There are other bigger problems. Like, it can affect whole financial sector economy if enough money is laundered through. Well, one of the reasons why is a lot of these countries that these things are running through are small countries, and they don't have, like, the big, huge economy the United States does. So someone's laundering $75 million through a tiny little country, it's all false. That's going to affect the economy of that country. Yeah. Plus, no one pays taxes on it. So you and I end up making up well, not you, because apparently you don't pay taxes. I do now, pal. Okay. I just didn't in the mid early decade. Oh, sure, yeah. So, yeah, we end up making up for that, taxpayers do, by having to pay higher taxes. Right. But I think ultimately, the reason why the DOJ, the FBI, the IRS, and the DEA are all involved in trying to catch money launders because the government aren't making any money off of it. Exactly. You know what I mean? We're talking if it's a trillion dollars, what's, 30% of that 100 billion? I got to tell you, the US. Could use that 300 billion right now, much of a chunk of it. Right? Yeah, totally. And we'd go give it to some institution that's collapsing. Exactly. Good use. Yeah. That's robbing Peter PayPal. Oh, wait, that was from the Ponzi scheme one, wasn't it? Yeah, but that's still a nice term. Okay, thanks a lot. So, Chuck, you want to talk about a couple of famous money laundering busts? I would love to talk about Crazy Eddie. Okay, good, because I want to talk about Franklin Gerardo. Isn't that great when it works out like that? I knew it would craze Eddie. I remember this guy when I lived in New Jersey, seeing the Crazy Eddies TV commercial. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. He was one of those guys. That's exactly how you would think. Crazy Eddies. This is in the 1980s. Eddie antar crazy Eddie Electronics. He skimmed millions of dollars from his own company to hide it from the IRS. So he was doing this he had some co conspirators, and eventually he thought, you know what? I should send this money back into my own company, disguise his revenue. Right. Because he was going to launch an initial public offer. Yeah. So I'll inflate my soon to be stock, quote, and he did substantially right. By, like, $30 million or something. Yeah. But that's false money. So it was over inflated. And the end result for him was bad news. He laundered more than $8 million and was busted and flew to Israel. And they found him in they extradited him back to us to stand trial. And he went to the Husky for eight years. Yeah, which isn't that bad. I imagine he probably had a lot of money stashed away waiting for him. I was kind of surprised. Most of these prison sentences in here, like, six to eight years. I thought it would've been a little more than that. That's why I think the Bernard Madoff sentence is going to be so huge. It's going to get, like, 100 plus years. Yeah. So can I talk about my guy now? Yeah. Franklin Gerardo. Yeah. And you want to put an R toward the end of it, but it's not it's Gerardo. Gerardo. So he was actually an economist, and apparently economists are really good people to get to launder money for you because they know exactly what they're doing. You just need to get a crooked economist. Pretty much. And from what I understand, this guy was it there was a Colombian drug kingpin named Jose Santa Cruz Londono, and he had Gerardo basically placed the drug money into Colombian banks. Right. Which we've already seen. Columbia not that big on the banking regulation laws. Right, right. And then from there, you started making wire transfers and deposits to 100 different accounts that have been set up. Some in made up names, some in family members names in 68 banks in nine European countries. Right, right. And he was doing this really well for a while. I think he managed to launder $36 million, but he was smurfing, actually. Do you mean something else there or you mean smurfing? He was smurfing. As far as money laundering goes, I thought you were just using smurf like they did get it there. He was probably doing that, too, because he's laundering millions of dollars. All the smurf he wanted getting a smurf on. He just threw me off there, Chuck. Okay, but he was smurfing in that, like, none of his deposits top $10,000. Right. So imagine how active this guy was. Right. And he had a lot of money to deal with. He got busted basically in two ways. A red flag was raised when a bank in Monaco collapsed and an audit revealed that he had a bunch of accounts that didn't have his name on it, but could be traced back to him. Just fairly unusual. Sure. And then really, when he was actually arrested this is great his neighbor called the cops to file a noise complaint because Gerardo was running his money counting machine all night, right? The cops show up and this guy surrounded by millions of dollars in cash. I love those machines. You see them in the movies. Yeah. So cool, right? Yeah, they are pretty cool. I've never had enough money to put them. Mine would go yes, it would be over. Yeah. $15. You have $15. Lucky. I know. So, yeah, that's how Gerardo got busted. And he got seven and a half years and he's in Harvard, man. We should know. Yeah. So it's not all just untoward. That's why I purposely left off the Harvard educated economist. Look at Madoff. He's an intelligent guy. He's crooked as they come true. It's called white collar, dude. It surely is for a reason. So I guess do you want to just quickly go over Operation Juno? Yeah. Do you know what I'm talking about? Because, you know, it happened right here in Atlanta. This is the headquarters for it. I was a part of it. Were you really? No. Okay. But this was in Atlanta, and the DEA pulled this one off, and it was not a thing. Operation for Pregnant Teens at the movie Juno. Thanks for this is pre dat. This is when it ended, and basically it was a sting operation. They set up drug traffickers, gave them resources to turn their drug money from dollars into pesos, using the original peso scam. And they busted 40 people. $10 million they seized. What substantial is the amount of cocaine that they seized. Yeah, 36 cocaine. No, buddy, 3600 cocaine. That puts Scarface even to shame. It really does. You can't stick your face in that mountain and walk away from it. No. So that was Operation Junior. That was the DEA. That's about as successful as it comes, from what I understand. Yes. I always have mixed feelings about staying operations, though, to be honest. Sure. It's shifty, it's deceptive. It is. Nobody likes deception. Well, at the same time, though, that you're getting you've busted these people. So the end result is nice, but machiavellian justifies the means. Sure, yeah. In some cases. I think that's a definite motto for a lot of law enforcement. I just think it's interesting that a cop can go up and say, hey, man, you want to launder this money? We'll make it happen, and then we'll arrest you for it. I know. Clearly, the Colombians who were busted never saw a Scarface, right? Yeah. So that's a money laundering. If you want to try your hand at it, you know pretty much everything you need to know right now. Yes. But you should not do that. And we want to thank Jr. From Portland, Oregon. Jr. Who suggested this. Yeah, thanks, Jr. That was a good idea. Right out of the suggestion box. We wonder why. Jr. But whatever. He actually sent his email. I don't want to try this. I'm just curious. Jr. Yeah. If he follows up with counterfeiting, he'd like to hear that one. Or digging your way out of prison, right? Yeah. Well, if you want to know a little more, this is actually a great article by our colleague Julia Layton. Excellent writer. You can type in money laundering in the handychurchbar how stuff works.com. Don't go anywhere because we're about to blast your ears with our spoken word plug. Right. Josh and I Jerry. I'm sorry. Josh and me. Please don't write in and correct me again. Framer police. You've been getting that a lot, I know. Yeah. It's called the Stuff. You should know. Super Stuff guide to the Economy. And we get to go out and interview folks and go on location, and we really break down economics and the economy into the way that everyone can understand. It was a lot of fun to do. Yes, it was. We recommend it highly for 399 on itunes. Just type in Super Stuff in the itunes search bar. It should be the first thing that comes up. And what's most amazing to me is it doesn't suck. No, it's good. We're very proud of it, and we appreciate your support thus far. And if you guys could support us with this, we might get to record another one. Yeah, something more interesting than the economy, because Chuck blog me. Yes, blog. We also need to give a quick shout out to our blog. It's called Stuff You Should Know on the Website howstop works.com once a day, me in the morning, Chuck at night. You should visit twice to see you. And I do a podcast recap on Fridays. So that's where we can all sit around and chat about what we do here. Yeah. And you said you can find it on the right rail of the homepage? Yes, sir. Okay. And that means thank you for bearing with us. We tried to do a little shorter than usual because it's listener mail time. So this comes to us from Meg. And I'm just going to call this exceptional listener mail. Only one today. I don't know which one this is. Good epilepsy. Yes, it's a good one. So in our deja vu podcast, we talked a little bit about epilepsy and that it's tied to deja vu many times, as is smelling lavender before you have the seizure. Yes. So Meg writes in and she wanted to thank us for talking some about epilepsy, as she is an epileptic, she has temporal lobe epilepsy and she said she does suffer from deja vu on a fairly regular basis, but it doesn't necessarily mean wait for a seizure, which is what you said it is a seizure, basically. Oh, really? That's how she describes. It. Deja vu is a simple partial seizure. It can give way to a complex partial or generalized seizure, but it doesn't always have to. And she's pretty amazed by her own epilepsy. She called it. Amazing, wasn't it? Yeah. She said the brain does crazy things when it's working normally. Just imagine what it can do when it's not. Some of the simple partial seizures I've included smelling lavender, deja vu, tunnel vision, sparkly lights. And they sometimes, but not always, give way too complex partial seizures that can leave me drained for quite a while. Well, so there's obviously a downside. Not all cool flashing lights and lavender. Yeah. So we just want to thank Meg for writing in. And she said one day maybe we can do something on epilepsy. But I know eventually we're going to have a health podcast here, so we're probably not allowed to we should probably leave the Climb Burger, but thank you, Meg, for that. And good luck with your epilepsy. Thanks for sharing. Thanks for sharing, Meg. That's pretty cool. Exceptional listener mail. Indeed. If you have anything exceptional to say, or you just want to say hi, or you want to tell us that we say we interchange, I or me too much, actually. Not that last one. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstepworks.com. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. 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. 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How the MARS Turbine Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-mars-turbine-works | MARS stands for Magenn Air Rotor System, but a MARS turbine isn't your typical windmill. It's a blimp floating hundreds of feet in the air. Tune in as Josh and Chuck explain how this turbine works -- and whether it will become the future of wind power. | MARS stands for Magenn Air Rotor System, but a MARS turbine isn't your typical windmill. It's a blimp floating hundreds of feet in the air. Tune in as Josh and Chuck explain how this turbine works -- and whether it will become the future of wind power. | Thu, 19 Aug 2010 18:43:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=19, tm_hour=18, tm_min=43, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=231, tm_isdst=0) | 26690533 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Charles W. Chuck Bryant is picking his nose. No, but you know what? I had to be off color. I had all these jokes about me generating wind ready to go, and then the red light came on, and I just went blank. I think it's probably good. I think it's for the best. So can I just say, Josh, I'd love to generate wind. Yes, you can. Okay. That's my joke. It's a good one, chuck? Yeah. You want to talk about wind generation? Let's do it. Let's go a different direction first. Okay. You know bats have been taking a hit lately, right. As in flying bats? Yeah. I thought you meant, like, baseball bats. No. And taking a hit. I know. I wouldn't say something like that. Send text stuff, buddy. Bats have been taking a hit. There's this white fungus that basically has been wiping out entire bat colonies and coming close to wiping out entire species around the United States. Is the fungus on the bat? Yeah, it's on the BAT's nose. It's the muzzle, man. It's really horrible. And it's kind of a big deal if you study bats, you're alarmed right now. Right, sure. That's not the only thing. That's probably the biggest risk to the bat population in the United States. But there's another one that was mysterious for a little while, and it was bats dying near wind turbines. Really? Yeah. But the weird thing was you could walk up to a dead bat on the ground near a windmill, a wind turbine that's used for generating electricity. Yeah. And the bat would be totally uninjured. There's nothing wrong with it. It wasn't bleeding. It didn't have any signs of trauma. See, I thought the radar might have said, like, this is food, and it smacked into one of the propeller budgets. No, it did not. Actually, that's addressed in this article. Wind Turbines Kill Bats Without impact on the Discovery Channel. Right there in the title, isn't it? And it says that bats don't run into things. This expert who's quoted into it says that he's like, they're really good at with sonar, so they don't run into things that they didn't mean to. Right, right. Which is weird, because so that means when bats come down and hit you in the head, they meant to yes. Right. Jerks. What they found out, finally, that solved this mystery was that their lungs were exploding because of a pressure drop. Yeah. A pressure drop from the rotation of the blades. And they got close enough to the blades, their lungs would explode. Holy cow. It would take about a four kilopascal change. A Pascal is a measure of pressure. A kilopascal is a thousand measures of pressure. Right, nice. To kill a bat, it said in the article. And the wind turbines above the turbine, right above it, it generates five to ten kilowattscal drop. So these batteries are getting near, and then their lungs were exploding, and then they were hitting the ground. Their little tiny lungs would just pop. It's like the saddest thing I've ever heard. So what do you do, Chuck? I mean, like, wind energy. It's wonderful. It's generally a very green type of energy. I got some updated stats for you. You want to hear some stats? Let's talk about it. This is some wind energy stats. Josh last year, in 2009, we produced worldwide 159,213 electricity, thanks to wind. It's pretty good. It's enough to power Italy for a year, the whole country for the whole year. But that's a drop in the bucket for overall electricity production, right? Yeah. Very small percentage is produced by wind. They do predict by the end of this year that it will crack $200,000. And they have also said that since they started this whole wacky wind capturing stuff, that it doubles every three years capacity does. So we're heading in the right direction. It sounds like it. And wind is a great way to get energy because you put up the thing, the wind blows. I mean, it's as easy as it gets, right? It's very Dutch. Very Dutch. The problem is, Chuck, is I said it was a very green technology, but there's a lot of overlooked environmental impact. If we may jump around to tad. Sure. Right. These things are enormous. I've never seen one. I've seen pictures on the TV. They're big. Or on the internet. Right. And Rain Man, do they pass a wind tunnel? Yeah. If you could drive to Palm Springs from La. You go by that huge, famous wind turbine farm. Chuck, I'm glad to hear the h is back. Did I say huge? Yes, you did. Sorry, I met huge. No, you didn't. Huge. Okay. Yeah, but they're enormous. The turbines, apparently are about the size of a 747. They're huge, weigh thousands and thousands of pounds, and they're catching wind at about 200ft up. They're enormous. Just one single turbine. Right. There are a lot of bat and bird deaths. And to get these things in there, you have to basically construct new roads. In a lot of cases, you're promoting soil erosion and habitat fragmentation. So not quite as green as people would like to believe. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Josh it can have a big impact on the environment and setting it all up, and you kind of don't think about that when you're like, oh, I could get free wind energy, or not free. Obviously, it's pretty expensive, but it's a gift from nature, isn't it? There you go. Yeah. Very nice. So, what do you do, though, Chuck? Because everybody wants this more than, say, fossil fuels. Well, everybody outside of the oil industry wants this more than fossil fuels. And by oil, of course, I mean coal as well, and natural gas. But I mean, in the greener quarters of the globe, wind energy is a winner, right? Yeah. So how do you overcome these problems, these obstacles, to make wind energy truly green? I'm glad you asked, Josh. Potentially, my friend, we may see little tiny blimp like balloons hovering in the air at about one 0ft, harnessing wind much higher. And as I said, it's floating in the air. So it doesn't have some huge foundation that needs to be built and erode the ground. It's just tethered to the ground by a tether. A tether that serves as an electrical cable. Right? Yeah. So that's the Mars Turbine. Mars. It does not have anything to do with the planet, the red planet. It stands for the is it Magen? I did not know how to pronounce it. I didn't want to touch that one for the same reason. M-A-G-E-N-N is the name of the company. The Magen air rotor system. M-A-R-S. It's an acronym. Right. And basically the CEO of we're going to go with Magen. Okay. I'm down with that. Okay. He liken them to floating white sausages with paddleboat wheels. Right? That's what it says. It's like a floating white sausage. Yeah. Okay. It's just a little blimp with some turbines on it. It looks like a blimp with paddle wheels on it. Right? Yeah. I would call it a football before I call it white sausage. I don't know where this guy's head is, but he's hungry, I guess. So he's ready for some Brightwaters. Yeah. And you're ready for football season? Yes, I am. Which also includes brotworth. Yeah. So yours is all encompassingly. It is, Chuck, yes. So we've got a floating white football sausage with turbines. It's connected to a tether at each end. Right. And the wind hits it and it spins. The whole thing spins. It is like a pinwheel. The whole thing rotates as if a football were spiraling. Right. So the turbine is connected to the blimp. So the whole blimp is spinning. Turbine blimp and all right. And then at the end, there's electrical generators. So the tethers, like I said, actually are double as electrical cables. It's not just a rope. Right. And so the blimp is spinning. It's generating electricity. It's sending the electricity down the tethers to a transformer, which serves a power station, which is connected to the grid. Yeah. Or stores it in batteries. There's other things you can do with it. Sure. And it's really that simple. It runs on electromagnetic induction. Right. Which I looked this up a little bit. Let's hear it. Remember Michael Faraday? He was on our genius list. How could I forget? So Michael Faraday, in 1831, came up with this. He, I guess, was just sitting around his house drunk on Scotch, screwing with wire coils and magnets. And he discovered that you could generate an electrical current by passing a magnet through a series of wire coals. You're actually changing what should be a static electrical field. Yeah. Right. That was a very big discovery. It was. And he also found that the faster you pass the magnet through, the faster you move the magnet, the higher the current, or the higher the voltage, stronger the current. Right. So what the Mars turbine is doing is the faster it turns, the quicker it moves the magnets through their wire coils, the stronger the electrical current. Right. Yeah. Which is one reason why they float so high up, because the air speeds at 1000ft are significantly stronger than they are at 200ft, where the ground based wind turbine is located. Right. Yeah. Every time you double your elevation, there's a 12% increase in wind speed. And every doubling of wind speed, there's an eight fold increase in wind power. So a 200 foot turbine attached to the ground is just not nearly as effective as one that's floating 1000ft up in the air. Right. And the reason, obviously, is because there's no trees or buildings, there's no wind resistance. So it's just free flowing, buddy. Yeah. And it's pretty constant up there as well. It's kind of windy up high. Yeah. Which helps because inconsistent wind is one of the problems with wind generation, obviously. But not only that, the Mars turbine also, we should say here that we're getting no money whatsoever for this. We're just saying. But the Mars turbine is sensitive enough to be able to produce useable electrical voltage with wind speeds of as low as 7 miles an hour. But it can also withstand really strong winds that land based turbines are designed to shut down in. So I think a land based turbine is designed to shut down at about 45 miles an hour. Yeah, 45. And the Mars turbine can continue to produce electricity in 63 miles an hour winds, I think. Yeah. And anything above that, anything above 63 to 65. Just like blimps. Do they have controls on it, like overspeed controls and emergency deflate. So they can do two things. If it starts spinning way too fast, they can have a system that kicks in that reels it in automatically and lowers it. And the wind might not be as great as like 300ft, so they can keep running it. If it's really out of control, they'll just reel it in altogether. The system will or if there's some really big emergency, like the tether breaks and all of a sudden it's flying over your neighbor's farm, it will automatically deflate. Which is what blimps have, this emergency system. Right. And that's one of the things that we should probably mention, is it's designed it floats because it's filled with helium right. Or some lighter than air gas. But I believe they use helium. They use helium. And the blimp itself is made out of, as the writer Jennifer Horton put it, the same material used in bulletproof vest. I was wondering, is that kevlar? Is that chicken feathers or spider silk harvested from goats? I actually know the answer. What is it. I checked into this because it was slightly vague. The outer fabric is woven dacron, and that is what's used for boat sales. Okay. The actual fins that catch the wind to spin the football is vectran. And that is what is used in bulletproof vest these days, apparently, some of them. All right. And then the coating, it's also lined with something called Tedlar, and that's the same kind of plastic coating that you find on, like, house siding. So that's what protects it from UV damage, abrasion, stuff like that. And your new nickname is Chuck Tran. Chuck? Chuck Tran. No, Chucktran. And then the inner portion of it is have you ever seen those little mylar balloons? Yeah, it's a little funny. Aluminum looking balloons. Yeah. It's not aluminum, it's mylar. Right. And that's what this thing is lined with, because that holds in your helium really well, I found out. And just to keep it even greener, if you look closely inside the Mars turbine, you'll see little sentiments like get well soon, or you're one year. Cuter. Yeah. It's a boy. Right. That was one of my big questions, though, when I was reading this, was, wait a minute, what about the helium? Because I've had those mylar balloons, they don't hold it forever. No, they don't. But a few weeks later, it's sadly hovering. It like your kneecaps. I think helium being held in a mylar space is greatly increased in cold temperatures. It's cold at 1000ft. Okay. That helps. Much colder. And the pressure there's less air pressure at 1000ft as well. Right. So there's less pressure trying to force it out. Good point, I think. But I did find out how much leaks because it does leak. Well, yeah. I would think it would have to zero 5% per month. So if you buy one of these things and we should point out that theoretically these are going to be available to consumers like 2011, early 2011 is what they're looking at right now. Okay. And the price of the thing does not come with the helium. Just like when you buy a new car, they don't necessarily have it full of gas for you. You have to provide your own gas. And the 100 kilowatt version requires 200,000 cubic feet of helium, which is about 60 grand wow. To fill it up with helium. That's how they get you. Exactly. But if it leaks zero five a month, that means, they say on the website, like, every four to six months, just top her off with helium for five grand and you'll be fine. Right. But these things are built to last. The company, I think, estimates it said that they can float there, I guess, without being patched, is what they meant for maybe 15 years without any need for maintenance, because of all the tough stuff it's made of. Right. And Chuck, if you happen to wonder, this thing is spinning in the air right. On an axis how does the Magnus effect factor in? Does it factor in at all? The answer to that one, buddy, is yes. Are you talking about the Magnus von Magnus effect or just the Magnus effect? The Magnus effect. Okay. Because the Magnus von Magnus effect is when you are able to lift a beer keg made of concrete in your overalls and carry it 100ft well. Yeah. Everybody knows that much lesser known is the regular old Magnus effect. Right. You see it in every day. It's the spin on a curveball. Yeah. Basically, as a spherical roundish object travels through the air as it's spinning on an axis, it creates an actual area of high pressure beneath it that creates lift. That stabilizes it. Yeah. Right. Well, it stabilizes it if the thing is tethered. Right. So that, combined with the fact that it's filled with helium, which is lighter than air, allows this thing to stay pretty much vertical all the time. Yeah. They said on the website that both the helium and the Magnus effect will not allow it to lean more than 45 deg from vertical at any point. Wow. Even if it's like wind swirling in all different directions, it still stays pretty stable. I wonder if there's a money back guarantee on that. That's a lot of money, but they don't pay you back for the helium. That's where they go. Yes. And actually, Chuck, there's this thing called the Magnus airship that operates on the Magnus affect principle that was invented in the 70s that gave rise to the Mars turbine. Right. Yeah. Freddie Ferguson, who is the founder of this company, old Fred Ferguson, he invented the Magnus airship, patented it in the 1980s, and then that later became he was like, hey, I can actually use this thing to generate wind. I bet it's pretty awesome. It's very awesome. Every once in a while, you run across, like, a green idea that's like, wow, this could actually work really well. Yeah. The bad news is it's going to be really pricey at first. Like, all wind power, this price is already going down. Right. So the initial cost, when this article was written, the initial expected cost is about five to to $10 per watt. Right? Yes. And it's actually less now as of right now. Yeah. Looks at a it's $450 to $7. So it's already dropped and this was written upfront cost? Yeah. This is like, two years old. It's already gone down that much. Yeah. So take away the ten. It's not five to ten anymore, it's five or less. It's $4.70 a watt. That's way more than what you pay for electricity as it is now. Right. But you don't generally pay unless you're a Georgia Power customer, upfront costs to create electricity. You're paying for the electricity generated. Right. Right. This is you're paying for the turbine. Like, you buy this turbine and hey, here's your turbine, go create your own power. Right. So again, the price probably will come down dramatically. But once you've got the thing up and running, the operating cost is about fifteen cents per kilowatt hour. Is that right? Which is still more than what we pay now. Right. But it's half of what wind energy used to cost when it first really started to come along, say in the rainman era, it was thirty cents a kilowatt hour. So as wind power, as electricity generated by wind becomes more ubiquitous, that the price for it is going to drop across the board no matter how it's generated. Yeah, and it's for God's sake, it's a green technology. It's always a little expensive at first, but typically the people that outfit their houses with solar panels, they cost a little dough to do that. Typically, there are people that want to do a little favor to the environment and they realize over time they're going to make their money back. Probably. But not many people are going out and outfitting their house with $30,000 with the solar panels because they want to save a dime. Well, yeah, that's true. But it would be helpful if there were, I don't know, rebates for buying something like this, like government rebates or subsidies are there? I think they all expired. Oh, really? Yeah. We'll have to look into that. And I bet there's still some out there. I have another question I don't know if you know the answer to. Do these things show up on radar, airplanes? Yeah, they do. I'm glad you asked that. You really didn't know? I really didn't. Well, the Air Force and the government uses tethered balloons up to like thousands of feet up in the air, and so they're cleared with the FAA. And in order to get one of these things, you have to get a special permit from the FAA, and you have to have a blinking tether. It's a system that it blinks once per second. That's an extra $50,000. Blinking, blinking tether. So there's some other rules, too, that the FAA has already put forth here, too. You cannot have one within 5 miles of an airport at all, or within any flight path in North America. Do you know how many flight paths there are? I imagine there's quite a few that you have to avoid. There's at least 17 or 1817 or 18 flight paths. And you have to have the lighting system, like I said, and then you can't have it like you got to live out in the open. You're not going to be able to put one of these up in your neighborhood in suburban Atlanta. Well, originally the thing was designed to be used in very remote places that are off the grid. Like if you're on an Antarctic expedition exactly. Or an Arctic expedition, whichever one. It could also be used in a disaster situation. That's the one I love. That's pretty cool. It makes a lot of sense. So if you have the Mars turbine. And remember, that water manufacturing device sucks it out of the ambient air. You're set, you're done. Yeah. Build a bomb shelter and you're all set for life. Yeah. I should also point out before we leave, they do envision one day, probably five to ten years from now, Josh, where there is a four kilowatt backpack model that you could actually carry with you. Dude, take it camping out in Yosemite. And the TV, fly that sucker up. Yeah. Take your TV and your computer, and you can online gamble out there in the woods just like everyone else. Just like home. Pretty cool. Yeah. So that's the Mars turbine I saw on the site that they are taking orders for them. Yeah. And you can also, if you fit requirements, you can be a test location for these things. Awesome. There's a lot of requirements, and I imagine a lot of people that live on farms in North Dakota like, hey, I'll test it out of my house, right? Come out and set it up. I'll bet being photogenic is one of the requirements. And no bare mid roof shirts. Nothing see through. So, again, if you want to see some cool illustrations of the Mars Turbine, you can go to How Stuff Works.com type Mars and the search bar. And I bet it brings up a lot more than just this article. Yes, Chuck. Yes. That means it's time now for listener mail, correct? Yeah. I got a couple of short ones today going right into it. You want to plug? Nah. Okay. South by Southwest. Yes. We should say we're trying to go to south by Southwest next year in Austin, Texas, and we are trying to get on a panel, and apparently 30% of whether or not they determine we can go to a panel is decided by votes. Right. So you can go to httpanelpicker PanelPicker sxsw.com. Yes. And then you register and then you vote for the Stuff You Should Know panel under interactive panels, right? Yeah. When you go to click on our little thing to thumbs up and vote for us, it'll say, Wait, you're not signed up yet, and it'll walk you through how to sign up. They promise that you won't start getting email from south by Southwest. It's just to verify that you're a human. Yeah. Just explore the interactive panels, and on the interactive panel page, you can search for panels and under title, put Stuff You Should Know. And it should bring up ours and just ours, right? Yeah. And even if you're not in Texas, we would appreciate your help here to get us to Texas so we can go to south by Southwest and hang out with bands. That's what I'm looking forward to. That's awesome. Okay, Josh, these are two short ones, and it's funny that you said the word search bar, because David from SUNY Canton yeah, I saw this. Did you see this one? I'm sorry, david, this is a good one. Darn you. Josh is how he opens. I work at one of the state universities of New York. We are a week away from classes beginning, and my office has been besieged by calls from students and staff related to working on campus. This morning, I took two calls in a row, which I referred to callers to information on our website by saying you can type work study in the handy search bar. You're totally right. It is an awful phrase because remember, you had a big problem with it. I hate it. I hate handy search bar. After 200 plus times you've said that you hate it. I love it. I don't love it. I love it that you said that. Josh is an awful phrase, but it's awful because it's awful and campy. It's like Karma Chameleon. I hate that song, but if I hear it just once, it's in my head. I think Culture Club is one of the more underrated bands that came out of the 80s. They get lumped in with crappy bands from the they and Duran Duran were actually very talented musically. I would like to add Adam and the Ants on that list, too. Okay. They were awesome. And not at all camping, too. You know, he was in a mental institution for a while. He had a breakdown at a benefit concert. He started railing on Christians, and they took him away and said, you need some rest. Really? And he's like, no, I just don't want Christians. Yeah. He's like, I'm rested. Fine. Let's finish this email. He says, these things are like gray matter. Superglue. With great power comes great responsibility. Josh, you started this. You need to finish it. Come up with a better meme. Help us objosh. Kenobi, you're our only hope. That is David from sunny Canton, right? And David from sunny Canton, which I assume means State University of New York. You got it. Okay. I am taking your email quite seriously. I'm already beating you to the punch. I haven't come up with anything yet, but I will get handy so far out of everyone's head, including my own. Okay. Yeah. Okay. And I got another quick one. Josh, this one made me laugh. This is from Kurt in Minnesota. After listening to the tick episode, guys, I was reminded of one of my most disgusting memories. When I was little, my neighbor and I were sitting on the front porch playing with his dog. Out of nowhere, the neighbor kid gets really excited, has this look on his face, pulls a tick off the dog and eats it. You didn't see this one? No. The memory still haunts me today. After looking online about similar cases, I came across someone calling them dog berries, which makes it even more disturbing. I hope this hasn't ruined your day, Kurt from Minnesota. Kurt takes a lot more to ruin our day than that, doesn't it? I don't know. Dog berries. It's pretty gross. It's sad as our days are consistently ruined. Yeah, every day. So thank you for that. So kurt and then david right. Yes. Thanks for sharing. We appreciate that. I promise you I will come up with something to replace Handy search bar. I've just kind of gone to the sterile search bar now. Have you noticed Hinky search bar? No. Not Hinky either. Hinkie is in that same group, the same ballpark as Handy. We've been overusing it. We got to mix it up. We will. All right, Frank. Okay, Jimmy. So if you want to send Frank or Jimmy an email, you can do that. And don't forget, Chuck's new nickname is Chuck Tran. Just send us an email so we can end this podcast, wrap it up, and send it off to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Wanting more house stuff works, check out our blog on the Howstofworks.com homepage." | ||
Are zoos good or bad for animals? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/are-zoos-good-or-bad-for-animals | Zoos are popular because they allow visitors to see wild animals from all around the world, but how does living in captivity affect the animals? In this episode, Josh and Chuck discuss the pros and cons of zoos. | Zoos are popular because they allow visitors to see wild animals from all around the world, but how does living in captivity affect the animals? In this episode, Josh and Chuck discuss the pros and cons of zoos. | Thu, 08 Apr 2010 19:44:13 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=8, tm_hour=19, tm_min=44, tm_sec=13, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=98, tm_isdst=0) | 25690782 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, is Charles was w Chuck Bryant. That makes this stuff you should know. You know, went and saw Ronnie Millsapula this weekend. Shut up. Swear to God. Really? Yeah. He's still alive? Oh, yeah. He just released a new gospel album. Is he the blind guy? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Where did he play? I've got to know. Spindale, North Carolina. Okay. I can say honestly that I've been to Spindale, North Carolina. Did you go there to see him? Yeah, Yuumi is a big fan, actually. And he spent a half an hour talking about his life. That guy's had it rough, man. Yeah, you should check him out. He's interesting. He was a part of my childhood. For sure. You should have gone. He played some old hits, but he actually has podcast, in case you yeah, he's got a podcast. Really? Yes. It's pretty good, too. It's him, like, telling stories, talking and then playing a song, and he'll talk to somebody, like off camera or off mike or whatever. What did I forget? Or something like that. And then you'll hear something muffled and be like, oh, yeah, okay. He'll start playing. Is it called Millsapping? That's what I call it. I think it's called like the Ronnie Millsap Show or something. I'd call it Millsapping. Yes, millsapping with Ronnie. And we met him, too, actually. Of course. Eight people there you could probably meet. No, it was packed. We definitely skewed the median age tremendously. Oh, yeah. There was a lot of old folks there. Sure. They went to Dollywood right afterwards. We were definitely the only people from Atlanta there, for sure. Cool. Yeah. Chuck. I love that intro. Thanks. Chuck? Yes? Have you ever seen a chimpanzee masturbate? Yeah, I have. You have? Yeah, sure. You're not the first person I met who's seen that. You saw it at the zoo? Yeah. I mean, is there any other answer than yes, it was at a zoo? If I say it was at my friend Roger's house, authorities are going to show up at Rogers. So you have seen that? I've never seen it. I think I've seen on YouTube or something. See, I think that that is a normal behavior, as I understand it. They are primates, after all. As are we. But I think that you could make an argument that there's such a thing as doing it too much among chimpanzees. And if you did notice that your chimpanzee was abusing himself a little too much, you could make a case that that chimpanzee was experiencing zukosis. Wow. You just dropped the mic. Josh just left the room, literally. Thank you. Goodnight. He's gone. That's it. Yeah. Zucosis, man. That's when animals in captivity start doing strange things, like pacing like a bear will pace in a circle for hours on end. Right. Or a chimp might abuse himself, make the saints crack. Cheetah might bathe itself too much. Like self groom. How cats do. Yeah, like lick rash, like holes in their body and stuff. Yeah. There's even more stuff to a guy named Bill Travers who is an actor from the UK who appropriately enough, was in a movie called Born Free. He was an animal rights activist as well. And in 1992 he coined the term Zukosis and it described some pretty horrific behavior. Like you said, a lot of it is found in the wild as well. But it's just too repetitive. It's over and over and over again. It's constant. Like animals groom in the wild but they don't groom until they have sore spots on their skin. There's other stuff that they don't normally do in the wild. Like smear their feces on the windows of their enclosures. Self mutilation, like chewing their own tailor leg. There's a kind of bulimia that some primates exhibit in captivity where they vomit, eat their vomit and then vomit again just over and over. Maybe out of boredom, maybe out of frustration or anger. But the point is you see this among animals in captivity. You don't see this kind of behavior among animals in the wild. Right. Which indicates what some people would consider a problem with zoos. Let's get down to it. Discuss. Yeah. Our zoo is good or bad. And obviously we've read the same article, so you can make the case for both. Right? Yeah. I guess we should start with good since we've already indicated a hint of the bad. Just a hint? Just a hint. The good. Let's talk about some pros on the zoo side. Zoos have gotten a lot better in the last 4000 years and a whole lot better in the last 30 years from what I've seen. Sure. Like when I was a kid and went to the Atlanta Zoo it was the tile room with the gorilla in it and the monkey bars. Or not the monkey bars. The cage bars. Right. Monkey bars to play on. Right. On the playground. They didn't have monkey bars. But I mean, if the bars to the cage for a monkey enclosure they are technically monkey bars. I'm the low man on the totem pole. What am I talking about? Yeah, that's a good thing, remember? It is. But they've come a long way in the last 30 and 40 years in trying to create more miniature habitats that they normally would live in. The fences are gone now, replaced with like moats. So they can't get to you, obviously, because that would be bad. They have kind of kept in step with the progress of mental institutions. Yeah. Last 30, 40 years they've gotten a lot better. Same with zoos. Apparently they used to procure animals by going into the wild and taking them. Have you ever seen the Mystery Science Theater? 3000 short catching trouble. No. It is so unsettling. You should check it out. Okay. Yeah. So they used to go out procure animals like they just go out to the planes and get some giraffes and bring them home. Right. They don't do that much anymore. Although I do have some examples we'll get to later where they still actually do that. Okay. Yeah. Now they have cattle breeding programs. Yes. Or a lot of animals are born in a zoo. They never knew the wild. You would make the argument that that's a lot better than having memory of I used to live in a 5000 square mile range and now I live in 500 sqft area. True. And also Josh are trying to help restore endangered species with breeding programs and releasing them back into the wild. So that's some good. Right? That is good. The California Condor. Right. That's one that's usually held up as an example. Not too long ago, the California Condor was on the verge of extinction and the San Diego and Los Angeles who got together and said, let's bring this vulture back. Let's get this vulture back up and running. Okay. And flying. And they had a captive breeding program and they took the population, the global population of the California Condor, which was just relegated to California from less than two dozen birds to 170 now it's self sufficient. Even better. Chuck is the pear. David's Deer. Right. Yeah. Tell us that story. Well, this is a Chinese deer. What I like to say it is a deer from China and this deer, had it been bred in captivity or was extinct and then they reintroduced it to the wild once they bred them in captivity. How did that happen? They went extinct in the wild, but they happen to have a few in captivity. Okay. Yeah. And then they eventually released, I think four into the wild for the first time. Now they're self sufficient, self sustaining, what they say. Which means they get it on. Yeah, they're a good looking deer too. They don't have any problem. Okay. I just mean it's a majestic animal, good looking. Also, Zeus often serves as a better home to animals that are like part of traveling circuses. Sure. You remember our own aquarium here in Atlanta rescued, I guess, the whale shark, both of their whale sharks. One was in Mexico, I think, and like a tank it could barely turn around in. Yeah. And now it's got the biggest tank in the world and we swam in it. We did. It was cold. Big dudes. Yeah. And there's polar bears that have been rescued. Leo the snow leopard taken from Pakistan in 2007 was in great shape in 2007 and the Bronx Zoo said, give us a snow leopard, bring him over here. Yeah, that was my Bronx dude. Oh, I got it. Okay, what else, Josh? Oh, they're care. We know a lot more now we're about animals and what they need and the kind of habitat. So the caretaking of the animals has gotten way better over the years. Yeah. Again, at the Bronx Zoo, they just released, or they just opened their Ardvark exhibit, new and Improved. And apparently ardvarks were notoriously difficult to keep alive and happy because their termite diet is really hard to replicate. But they got it down to this insectivore chow and meat slurry diet, which sounds yummy. I wonder if it says New and Improved now, featuring live artworks like that. Corpses. It's much improved. No flies buzzing around them. Josh, a lot of zoos give back financially. The Bronx Zoo has channeled more than $3 million toward conservation projects in Africa. And sometimes they pair with groups like the Nature Conservancy to work not even just within their zoo, but in other states, I think. Who is it? Toledo Zoo is working to restore butterfly habitats in Ohio. Yeah. And I have to tell you, the Toledo Zoo, for the size town of Toledo, the Toledo Zoo and the Toledo Art Museum are world class, really great zoo. Yeah. It puts Atlanta Zoo to shame. And then you can go to Tony Pacos. Right? Tony Pacos? Pacos, yeah. Hot dog. Yeah, you can get the best hot dog on the planet from Tony Pakka. It's good. Feed it to the artworks. I feel like Clinger and Josh, research and scientific research is obviously a big part of what zoos do nowadays. Okay, so that was like the well, I got a stat for you. Oh, sorry. That's right. In 2002, zoos participated in 2230 research projects, conservation projects in more than 80 countries, which is pretty good. Yeah. And we shouldn't just poopoo that and go willingly buy it. No. And you have to make the case that, yes, zoos are helping in some way, shape, or form. Right. Like, imagine the deer, the pear, David's deer. That would not be around anymore. That species would be extinct if it weren't for conservation efforts among zoos. Right. Condor, perhaps. California condor might be gone. Maybe loss of a vulture, apparently. Those things are huge. I read an article once where this guy was standing on a cliff in California, and he heard this, and then all of a sudden, it just got really loud and boom, right up in front of them. This enormous condor just flew up. It had been hunting, I guess, in this canyon and came up along the cliff's face and just flew, like, 10ft in front of them. He said it was just huge and probably the most thrilling thing that's ever happened to him. Yeah, they're big. I saw a bunch of them in Napa Valley on my recent trip. Nice. Like, tons of them. They hang around the vineyards, because when you're planning a vineyard, you'll dig up, like, rodents and stuff. So the vultures follow along behind the tractor, literally, and go down there and eat up. Nice. Good for them. Yeah. All right, Chuck, let's talk about the bad. Yeah, we get the ugly and the good down. Yeah, let's talk about the bad. You mentioned that zoos are big on conservation, right. Some say they are. Well, in the US, if you are an animal exhibitor, meaning that you are showing animals for money, you have to be licensed by the USDA. Yes. There's about 2400 animal exhibitors in the US. Yes. And they range from the San Diego Zoo to the place in Arkansas where you drive through and like an ostrich sticks his head in your car right. And goes, call the police. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. About 200 of those 2400 are actually members of the American Zoological and Aquarium Association. That's it's. The up and up. Probably those are the up and up. Now, the Ava has far higher standards than the USDA for its members. It stricter safety requirements. They force conservation spending among their members. So when you're not a member of the ACA, those other 2200 animal exhibitors in the US are spending nothing on conservation. Right. And the other problem is the members of the ACA spend about 3% of their take at the gate on conservation every year. Right. Which is not that much. I mean, it goes kind of far, but not far enough. Right. And also, I think, 146 reintroduction programs took place in the 20th century. 16 were successful. Yes. Those are the stats you don't get. No, they just say, we did 145 programs, and most of those programs were undertaken by the US government. Right. So zoos are getting a lot of credit and taking a lot of credit, actually, in the public mind, in the public consciousness. They've very successfully carved out this place where, hey, we're here to save the animals. And the idea that they are a business that makes money off of people coming in and looking at the animals has kind of been washed away. Although it's still very present. The zoos are very much businesses. Right. You know those condors? Yeah. Only about two thirds of those were strong enough to live. Yeah. That's sad. So you don't see that stat on the front end? No, they got plowed under the front end of the tractor rather than flying in the back end. But they are I mean, part of me says these 145 programs, only 16 were successful. But they were trying, at least. So I will give them that. Well, yeah, but I mean, like, dead animals don't usually give you an E for effort. I think part of the other problem is, and I don't mean to hammer zoos like I do see both sides of this coin. This isn't me. Just like, yes, we talked about the good. Now let's really get to it again. There's that pair. David Deer it wouldn't have existed had it not been for zoos. But I think, by and large, if the reason zoos exist is because of encroachment on land, there's a mind toward conservation but there's not a mind toward preservation. And that's really where the mind should be. The mind and the money. Right, right. If you take an elephant and put it into a little enclosure, it's going to go nuts. Sure. Elephants are actually that's one of the big ones as far as people not trying to be a pun master there, but it's one of the big animals that people are trying to get out of zoos. Like, if you're not going to shut down a zoo, at least get the elephants out of there. Yeah. And there's actually a website, Josh, called Savewildelphants.com. Nice. And some zoos are starting to get rid of their elephant habitats. And they should, honestly. I mean, elephants are used to traveling about 50 miles a day in large herds. And in the in captivity, they're standing around an enclosure all day alone or with maybe a buddy or two. Right. So they're very highly social animals that travel great distances and no, they shouldn't be in captivity at all. Yeah. The Detroit Zoo actually got rid of their two elephants and closed down their exhibit. And the director of the zoo said, asian elephant should not live in small groups without many acres to Rome, and they clearly shouldn't have to suffer the winners of the north. That's the other thing. Think about is there this elephant in the Detroit winter. Are you kidding me? No. And even worse is a poor elephant called Maggie the Elephant, who in 2007, during a cold snap at her home at the Alaska Zoo, was kept for days on in this little inside enclosure because the zookeepers were like, she can't go outside, she'll freeze to death. Right. And they brought in a treadmill that was big enough for her and she wouldn't use it. Apparently the public finally just went crazy over it because it's a treadmill. Yeah. Who likes a treadmill? Nobody. I've got some more horror stories for you, Josh, if you want to hear. Yes. Tatiana Siberian tiger at the San Francisco Zoo in 2007 escaped the substandard enclosure that she was in and was shot to death after she killed a person by police. So that happened. The Dallas Zoo, a gorilla named Jabari tried to escape by jumping over the walls and moats and was fatally shot by police. Witness later reported that teenagers were taunting the animal with rocks prior to his escape. I remember that. Yeah. So these little kids throwing rocks at this gorilla, and then all of a sudden the gorilla escapes and the cops shoot it down. Yeah, I remember this wouldn't happen if the gorilla was in the wild. Yeah, I think did it get that kid, though? Didn't it get his hands on one of the kids? I don't know. That's not in here. And at the Virginia Zoo, boy, they're really doing a great job. They had ten prairie dogs die when their tunnel collapsed on them in their habitat. They had a rhinoceros drown in the moat that they use as a barrier. They had a zebra narrowly escaped death after jumping into the lion exhibit, which obviously she had passage. And another zebra lost her life when she bolted from a holding pin, struck a fence and broke her neck. So they're really doing a great job there in Virginia, too. Well, I think that kind of demonstrates the problem. If zebras are too stupid to not run into fences and break their necks, then there shouldn't be fences around them. I got another elephant stat, too. Let's hear it, man. They studied records of 45 elephants, and they found that the median life span of an African elephant in the zoo is 16.9 years. Do you know what it is on the open plane? 56 years. Yeah. That's not good. That's quite a drop. It is. Another argument that's made in favor of zoos often is that they educate the public. Studies have actually shown that people come out of zoos less informed than they were before. And with this kind of false sense of security that zoos have, it under control and they don't really need to do anything for conservation or preservation efforts. Right. So zoos could actually be counterproductive in that regard. Yeah. And on that note, they say that the signs in the zoos, what you get is a little information about their species and diet and where they're from. But if you notice, you never get any information on their normal behavior in the wild because you're not seeing it. So you're not really educating on how the animal really is. You're educating them on how they are in the small enclosure. And even then, it's just a sign. Like this zebra likes to eat this plant, this chimp loves to vomit, eat its vomit and vomit again and then smear its poop on the windows. Right. Not funny. And I did want to mention, too, how we said earlier that they don't go out in the wild and catch their animals anymore. Not quite true. Oh, yeah. In 2003, the San Diego Wild Animal Park and Lowry Park Zoo captured eleven African elephants. Elephants. Elephants. Sure. A species that is threatened. And they captured them from their natural habitat in Swaziland and I guess brought them back to the zoo. And then I've got one more really sad one that Jerry is going to not listen to. Okay. Part of the problem in zoos, Josh, is that we like our cute little baby animals. Yes. What happens to cute little baby animals? They grow up. They grow up. And many times they get shuffled around after they're not cute anymore. To different zoos, moving around is not good for an animal. There was a chimpanzee named Edith born in the Louis Zoo, and Edith was a big hit because she was a cute little baby. Edith grew up like all animals do, and wasn't as attractive, so they shuffled her to five different facilities over the course of the years, eventually landing at a roadside zoo in Texas. And after an undercover investigation, they found Edith in a filthy concrete pit, hairless, living on dog food. How sad is that? It's pretty sad. Jerry, did you hear that? She's not listening. But I don't want to throw the gauntlet down too much and say, think about this when you're going to a zoo, but think about this when you go to a zoo. Yes. If you see an animal pulling its own hair out, chewing its own tail off, or doing some other bizarre, saddening behavior, you should feel that, and you should tell somebody about it. You should contact somebody about it. It's it's everyone's own choice how they view a zoo. Obviously. Sure. But if it gets to you, then do something about it. There's plenty of organizations out there that somebody can join if they find that they are opposed to the concept of zoos. Absolutely. Peter also wanted to point out there are a few forward thinking zoos, progressive zoos that are trying their best to do right. Montessori Zoos. Yeah. The Baltimore Zoo. Good for you. Detroit Zoo. We love Detroit. Point Defiance Zoo. An aquarium. And the North Carolina Zoo are apparently doing a pretty decent job of giving back. What was the last one? North Carolina. Okay. So Atlanta is not in there, huh? No, Atlanta is not in there. Grant park. You been there lately? Years ago. Two years ago? Yes. Have you heard of the luxury zoo? No, but I bet it's in China. It's in Argentina. L-U-J-A-N. Maybe it's not lujan. They have an awful zoo where you can go and sit on the back of a lion or get in the cage with a tiger and pet the tiger or bottle feed a bobcat. And you can do this when you pay your $50. Wow. And it is a truly terrible thing, because you're not supposed to ride lions. No. People aren't supposed to interact with these predators like that. If the Darwin Awards have taught us anything, it's those there'll be an accident. You have to sign a thing when you go in there saying that if I get killed, then it's not your fault. Then it's just thinning the hurt. But I don't usually do this, but there is actually an online petition against this place at the petitionsite.com, and they need 10,000 signatures, and they're at 1100. So even if you like zoos, you don't like the Lujan zoo. No. It's not a good thing. And what about Chuck? We talked about zoos. What about aquariums? What about SeaWorld? Should a killer whale be kept in a little tank? Of course. It's going to eat its trainer at some point. Yeah, I've blogged about that. Yeah, it's a killer whale. Which camp are you in? I don't know. As far as zoos go, I don't know if I want to say. Every zoo should be shut down. But definitely a lot of these animals shouldn't be kept in captivity like elephants. What do you think? I'm not going to answer that. It's all in my head now. There's always something going on on the stuff you should know. Blog in there, Chuck. Sure, Josh. You can visit the stuff you should know. Blog anytime you like. It's open 24 7365. And if you want to learn more about animals in captivity, just type animalsincaptivity in the handy search bar@housestepworks.com. Which means, of course, it's time for listener mail. No, I'm getting what? No listener mail today. We have too many things to ask for. Okay, well, no listener mail, then. What do we have to ask for, Chuck? Well, go ahead and mention our T shirt contest that we haven't determined the rules for yet. Yes, we haven't determined the rules. But you can get an early start, right? Yeah. Okay, so we have a call to All Stuff You Should Know fans with an artistic bent. If you have any graphic design skills, we want to see them come up with The Stuff You Should Know t shirt, logo, and some great fortune will lie in your future if we pick you as winter. We don't know what yet, but believe me, you'll be better off than you were before. And by great fortune, we mean no money, none involved. Just fame, right? Triumph. Also, just one more time, we want to give a shout out to our sterling Kiva team, which hit the $100,000 loaned mark a couple of weeks ago. And we're heading on. 200. 250. Yeah, we haven't determined yet. No, but we're going. We're still going. I say our next goal is 110. Yeah, we're almost there. Okay, we might be there already. I think we're like 109. Yeah. If you want to join The Stuff You Should Know Kiva Team and get us to 110, you can go to kiva. Orgteamsstepychenko. And we'll eventually get back to listener mail again. So send us an email, type it, and then put in that little two line stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Want more housestuffworks? Check out our blogs on the Housetofworks.com homepage. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? 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. 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0295931c-3b0e-11eb-947e-93363cec3a45 | How Stamp Collecting Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-stamp-collecting-works | Over the last two centuries philatelists – stamp collectors – have learned just about everything there is to know about every stamp ever printed. You won’t by the end of this episode, but you might be interested enough to start yourself. | Over the last two centuries philatelists – stamp collectors – have learned just about everything there is to know about every stamp ever printed. You won’t by the end of this episode, but you might be interested enough to start yourself. | Thu, 22 Apr 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=22, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=112, tm_isdst=0) | 52656247 | 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 just left. So it's just me and Chuck being bad boys going went through our stamp collection. Oh, yeah, that's right. The purposefully silent Jerry, by the way. Yeah, it's her own choice. Yeah, she's a real live human being. Jerry's had plenty of chances. We've asked her. And she loves being in the background and not being on the show. Just want to make that clear. She's a wallflower. A lazy, semi useless wall flower that we love like a sister. That's right. And who keeps us in line and who may or may not even exist. That's right. Let's talk about stamps, baby. So I already said we're talking about stamp collecting. By the way. This is stuff you should know. I think that it's not an official episode until I say that. What do you think? That's our watermark. Okay. Yeah, nice reference, Chuck. We're going to talk about those later. Wow, you have been doing this for a while, haven't you? A couple of years. So we're talking stamp collecting. I don't collect stamps. I never have collected stamps. I've never been friends with somebody who collected stamps. Me neither. As far as I know, no relatives have collected stamps. You ever collect anything? I collected baseball cards. Okay, the huge but it turns out I would posit that stamp collecting is vastly more popular than baseball card collecting. As popular as baseball card collecting? Yes. I think if you're talking worldwide, probably so. Yeah, for sure. Because, I mean, over in some countries, they don't even care about baseball. No, they're like, I don't even know who Freddie Freeman is. I like the alliteration, but I don't know who he is. They should he's great. Sure. I remember when he was a rookie. Do you have a rookie card? No, I stopped collecting baseball cards when I aged out of the baseball card age. Yeah, sure. But yeah, it was long before Freddie Freeman. No, I don't have one of his cards. Do you? No, I don't collect baseball cards. I collected banks. I think I've talked about that before. No. I don't know why. It's weird. I think I just had more than one of them and then said, well, this is a start to something. And I collected technically they were piggy banks, but none of them were pig. Okay, I got you. So I think I had like, 30 or 40 banks at one point when I was a kid. Little banks. I suspected you were talking about banks. Banks like you'd walk around and slap your hand on like a fifth, third. And then I just collected this bank. No, something like that. So piggy banks that weren't pigs. Yeah, just banks. Little banks. Yeah. What was the coolest one you had? I got one from a Napa Auto Parts. That was a car battery bank. That was kind of cool I remember that stands out in my memory for some reason I can imagine, but cool. I don't know is the right word for it, but okay, that's the only one I can really remember. I had a Mickey Mouse bank, but who does? I had a spiderman piggy bank. The bust of 70s Spiderman. Wow. And I broke it open with a hammer and used all the money inside to buy candy and two lunches at school for a stretch. It was like I was walking around like I was the King of England in the cafeteria. I thought you'd be like my first pack of cigarettes. It was just a few short years before then, but yes, stamp collecting. I've never known anyone who's done it, but it is hugely popular and it seems like a really kind of lovely, pleasant thing because as is pointed out here in this article who was this? Was this ed? Yeah. Grabster. It's like collecting little pieces of art. Little tiny works of art. Exactly. But even more than that, stamps have a very deep, detailed, intricate, arcane history. And I mean stamps in general, but also every single individual stamp. And the stamp collecting community really loves to dig into that history and know all about all the different stuff about every single stamp. And so there's a lot of information to absorb while you're collecting, which I think is one of the big draws of collecting anything, is the background information to it, too. Definitely. You can enjoy a stamp just on its face. It's pretty, it's neat, it's really well done, usually, or at least the ones that are worth collecting. Sure, that too. But the idea and it has a history just from sometimes being old, but then also the idea that it has a backstory, too. It's just about as well rounded a hobby as you could find. Agreed. So another term for stamp collecting is called philitely. P-H-I-L-A-T-E-L-Y. It's not the easiest word to spell until you stop and think about it, but it's derived from the words philo, or love of, like, philosophy, love of knowledge. But this is love of Italia, and that is exemption from payment. So you would use a stamp to show that whatever you are sending or whatever is exempt from payment, you already paid. So really, filtly means love of stamps in a really round about way. I heard it pronounced falataly. Oh, really? We'll go with that one then. Okay. Because I've just been pronouncing that way in my head for a very long time. Falataly. There you have it. Who is that with you? Her name is Mispronunciation. Emma says Mispronunciation. That was good. Yeah. Mispronunciation. We're not going to assume anything, you know. Very good. One of the things that I've noticed in QAing episodes is how many jokes of your slide right past me while you're seeing them and I don't catch them until I'm queuing an episode later on. Hats off for all those jokes that I've missed. If you're going to get into falataly or be a falatalist, then you should know that it's not like a get rich quick thing you do. It sort of for the love of the hobby itself. And as you go along over the years, you may eventually acquire some stamps that may be worth some money, but it's not the kind of thing where just get into it with the intentions that you should have, which is you're not going to make a ton of money doing this kind of thing. Yeah. Get into it for the love of collecting stamps. That's the way to do it. Yeah. That's kind of eye opening and surprising, I think, to most of us on the outside of the falataly world looking in because we hear about these auctions where stamps go for millions of dollars. Sure. Every once in a while they'll pop up as like a MacGuffin in a movie or something like that. So the idea that almost all stamps or the wildly vast majority of stamps are really not worth much at all is kind of surprising, or it was to me at least. But also it just makes me love stamp collectors that much more. Yeah. And I think one thing I really love about stamp collecting. Which is sort of toward the end of this research. But I'll go ahead and say it now. Is that it seems like the stamp collecting purists only collect stamps that are actually used to mail things like get out of here with your special edition collector thing that is just printed up for some certain to give to a dignitary. Like they want stamps like mailing letter stamps. That's right. And as a matter of fact, there's kind of considered one of the big authorities on stamps, the Scott catalog. They apparently don't even recognize stamps that aren't released by governments for the purposes of mailing postage to the general public. If it's not released like that by those authorities, then it doesn't exist as far as that's concerned. Yeah. I mean, it seems like part of the fun is finding these things on an old letter, like a cool discovery. And I like the idea of it. I'm probably not going to get into it just because I don't have the time for this kind of thing, but I can certainly appreciate it. Then. There's one other aspect of it, too, that I kind of turned up from this. And I'm sure it's not entirely correct across the board, but it seems like a person stamp collection is a very personal thing. It says, like, I'm interested in this, so I went to the trouble of finding these things. And in that sense, it almost bears a resemblance to that super adorable coin collection that Owen had and throw Mama from the train. Remember when he pulled out his coin collection and instead of some rare coins. It's like a quarter that he got changed for when he was at Coney Island with his dad when he was twelve. It's kind of like that. It's a really endearing hobby, I think. Yeah, because it's not like you're like, all right, I'm going to get into stamp collecting. And what are the best stamps to collect? Right. The best stamps to collect are the ones that speak to you. So if you get into it for a little while and you're like, boy, the stamps from the roaring 20s really are pretty cool looking to me. Or stamps with dogs on them. Or you can collect many kinds of stamps, but a lot of people sort of get into stamp collecting and realize, I like these kinds of stamps, so that's what my collection is going to reflect. Exactly. That's exactly right. Very cool. So that's stamp collecting, everybody. Should we take a break? It's should be already sure, let's do it. Chuck let's throw caution to the wind. Like every average stamp collector does great 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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IBM, let's create learn more@ibm.com. Okay, we're back. And we should say Chuck, I think if this seems a little weird, if the tone seems a little weird today, this is one of our less than usual Thursday recording sessions. So it's always a little like more foot loose, you know what I mean? Sure. My feet are very loose. So we should probably give some terms here if you're interested in getting a stamp collector, if you just want to know a little more about it, there is a lot of arcane jargon and slang in the world of stamp collecting, and one of the reasons why it's been around for almost a couple of hundred years now. And over that time there's just kind of been successive generations who kind of added and refined and contributed to it, but they all have to know what they're talking about to one another. So they've kind of come up with a bunch of different terms to describe things. Yeah, like in true Stuff you should know fashion. This is a broad overview. There are entire podcasts dedicated to this kind of thing. Right. So we're going to go over some of those broad definitions. And the first one we have to talk about is the gum, which is that sticky stuff that killed George Castan's wife or fiance. Well, hers was from looking envelopes, right. Or was it stamps? I guess it was envelopes, wasn't it? But the same thing. It's still gum. Exactly. I forgot about that. Because he got the cheap stuff. Yeah, he cheaped out. So this is what's used to stick the stamp on if the stamp has never been used at all. It's like this pristine little thing. It's called full original gum, and then it's called new gum. If you have a stamp and you want to add a little gum to it to stick it into your collection. Which we'll get to as well. Yeah. So the sticky stuff equals gum. Right. Pretty simple. Let's get a little more complex. Chuck, what's a block? A block is a group of stamps that are still connected to their little friends, but it's got to be at least four. And they can't be four in a row either. For my research, it's two and two. It's got to be a square block. Yeah, I saw that. As long as there are four, it can be irregular shapes because sometimes blocks of stamps get added to or messed with or just changed over the decades or the centuries. So I've seen that more than that, but in a less regular shape is still considered a block. But what about four in a row and a strip? Does that count as a block? So I think as long as it's at least four, and that there is although I guarantee there's another arcane term for what you just said. Right. But as long as it's not all of the ones that were originally attached together, that would be a sheet. Okay. All right. Sure. Okay. All right. Now where are you? One other thing about stamps that you have to realize is you tend to think if you collect things, when you collect things that are not quite right, like a slightly off version of what it's supposed to be, that it would be much more expensive and collectible. And in some cases that's true. There is somebody in the stamp collecting world that is collecting stuff that nobody else is. There's always going to be somebody out there who wants something but in the stamp world, you want something as precise and pristine and centered and perfectly done as possible. That usually tends to be the higher valued stamp. The other kind that are just kind of off, the printing was slightly off center, that kind of thing. Those are called errors, freaks, and oddities. EFOS. In the stamp collecting world. Yeah, you're talking about there's an obi one, kenobi figure that the first thousand that they made, he was missing a left ear. Right. In that world, that would be the most valuable thing probably ever made exactly. In the history of the world. But yeah, like you're saying, with stamps generally, as far as value goes, they want them that are nice and tidy. Right. With those terms errors, freaks, and oddities, those are just kind of wildly overstating what they describe. Like we're talking about a stamp that's just the printing is slightly off center, where the perforations are just a little bit off or whatever, maybe kind of half go through there. That would be considered a freak. That's how precise stamp printing is meant to be. Some people do collect that, but for the most part yeah, you want as close to perfect to stamp as possible. That sounds like a record album title. Errors, freaks, and oddities. Yeah. Like the best of Guided by Voices or something. That's a good one. Or just offbrand Discovery network channels. New show. Yeah, totally. So there's cancellations too. That's another good term to learn if you're getting into stamp collecting. And everybody knows a canceled stamp. It's where they take an ink stamp, stamp over the postage stamp, and it's canceled. You can't reuse it. It's meant to say, this has been used, it's okay, let it through the mail, but don't try to reuse it again. And it's a canceled stamp. But you can still collect those stamps. In fact, most stamps I think that people collect have been used and found on these letters, which we'll talk about that are called covers. But sometimes that postmark is on the stamp itself and sometimes it is off to the side because it's not those people at the post office, they're just stamping those things. They have a lot of work to do. Right. So sometimes you'll just barely get a little bit of cancellation on the stamp. And the rest of the goodness, including the date and where it was mailed from, might be just on the envelope itself. Yeah. And there's a lot of information that can be contained in just a plain old cancellation stamp. Some people collect disaster stamps. So, like, if you had a letter that was postmarked or an envelope and a stamp that was postmarked on September 11, 2001 in New York, somebody's probably collecting canceled stamps and covers like that interesting. I never really thought about that. That makes perfect sense. Also, while we're talking about the people working at the post office, I feel we would be remiss if we did this whole episode without doing a shout out to our favorite postal worker, van Nostring, the great state of Washington. And I don't know where the ads fall, but if there's a stamps.com ad on this, total coincidence. That's right. Some people I saw collect machined stamps, metered postage, too. And like you said, there's probably a subset out there for kind of anything. There definitely is. Every rule you see, there's some rebel group out there breaking it in the flattery world. The cover is what I mentioned. Don't you dare call it an envelope. Yeah, you'd really reveal yourself to be an uneducated rube if you did that, which there's probably a word for that, too. Yeah, like in a beginnerful analyst. That's good. So the cover, like I said, is the envelope. Sometimes you will keep that whole envelope, at least for a little while. Sometimes they're easier to hang on to than a tiny stamp. Sometimes. So you might not want to cut it out right away. And you can keep up with those envelopes until you want to get that stamp off. Or like we said, if it's got some of the really valuable information that makes that stamp special is on the cover itself, you may want to keep the whole thing forever and just have it on the envelope. Right. And again, these are things that people pay attention to in the stamp world or collect. And then there's another thing that most of us who just use stamps as like normal human beings have noticed but don't really pay much attention to are the perforations that we use to separate stamps. Way back in the day, stamps came in sheets and you colonial person or second industrial age inhabitant, we're expected to pull out your scissors and cut the stamps into little individual singles. Then finally, an Irishman named Henry Archer from Dublin came up with a perforation tool, and all you're doing is making the paper at certain points thinner so that it's easily torn at those points. And so the first perforated stamp that came out was the 1850 British Penny Red, which is pretty quickly after stamps were first invented, postal stamps. And with that, Henry Archer created this whole subcategory of stamp, I guess categorization. A subcategory of categorization. That is categorical. But stamp collecting people, I like it the way I say it. More fallatilists. No, I should probably say falatalists now that I say it out loud. So Folattalists really pay attention to perforations. That's like a really important part of stamp collecting. Yeah, because it can be a clue as to where it actually came from because these people know how they have perforated things with different machines and different parts of the world in different areas. So it can be a very big clue as to the age of the stamp and where it came from. If they don't have those perforations, they're called imperforate. And then I talked about the little strips of stamps, the coils, those obviously, you're just going to have the perforations on the sides and not the top or the top, just not both. Oh, interesting. I've never really I guess it depends on which way the art is oriented. Right, exactly. Yeah. And then you've got the sheets or the pane. And if it's on the outer edges of that sheet or pane, it probably won't have those perforations either. And it is a big deal. You'd be surprised. Yeah. And those outer margins even have their own word, Chuck, selvage, which also applies to the hem of your shirt or something. That's sewn in a certain way to keep it from unraveling. That's called selvage, too, but in the stamp collecting, it's basically the margins, the sheets, and sometimes they have registration marks or dates or the number of the print run printed in there. Some people collect that, of course, as well. Selvage stamps. I love learning new words, selvage. I learned one yesterday. Parapet. You know what that is? No. I mean, I've seen it before. I just cannot bring to mind what it means. It's like the little and I learned this because I was going to tell you this anyway. I had our buddy Wyatt Sinek on movie crush yesterday. Oh, cool. What do you talk about? Blazing Saddles. And there's a scene where and I've seen Blazing Saddles probably three dozen times. It's up there with Spinal Tap. As far as comedies that I've seen, and I know it basically by heart. And there's a scene where Mel Brooks's, Governor Lopetomane, comes into the room and he said, Sorry, gentlemen, I was just out walking the parapet, and I never bothered to look up what that meant until yesterday. And if you're on top of a building, it's the little half wall that goes around the top of the building to keep you from falling off or to make falling off more interesting. Yes. Right. Really bangs up the shins on your way down. So I never knew that before walking the parapet. Yeah. Okay. So he was saying that he was basically walking on the edge of a high wall, I guess. A low wall. Yeah, low wall, high up with his salvage. I got you. Oh, boy. So let's say, Chuck, that you said I care about perforations. I want to know more about these registration marks on salvage. How do I get into this fatalie as a hobby, Chuck, what would you recommend people do to start? Get a bank loan? Grand? No, one of the cool things about stamp collecting is it's a very low barrier to entry. You need to get these little special tongs, these little baby tweezers with rounded tips, and your skin oils can mar stamp. If you want to try and handle them with these little tweezers so you don't ruin them, that's a good little tool to have. You're going to want to get an album or a binder and they make them, especially don't get one for, like, photographs. They make them specially for stamps. Right. And sometimes they have little pockets that you can slip them in that are adorable. And sometimes they have hinges, which are little strips of paper with a little bit of gum on them to put the stamps on. You might want a magnifying glass or a jeweler's loop, but you don't need a microscope or anything. I think about a ten x is probably the most kind of magnification you'll need. Yes. Eventually, too, you're going to find that you have perforation fever and you're going to get yourself a Perth gauge. Oh, boy. Which is basically a specialized transparent ruler that you line up the lines to the perforation marks. And the gauge of a perforation is how many perforation holes there are. Per 2 CM. So cool. And this is important because some stamps are exactly the same as other stamps. The only difference is they were perforated with slightly different machines or something like that. The stamp collecting community knows when a perforating machine's pin breaks. They know about that machine and it's pinned so they can tell you where that thing was printed and when and what run it was out of how many, just because there's what's called the blind preparation, where the hole wasn't punched through or it should have been in the one position on this one stamp. I love how intensely known stamps are by the Philadelphia community. It's really cool. I think that's one thing I like about it is how myopic it can get and how specific it can get. It's time well spent. And I bet it's very calming. Yes, just researching it is calming. I fell asleep a few times. Stuff like that really comes through when you're researching something and you find you're relaxed. The thing you're doing would be even more relaxing, I think. Like making flies. Or painting, like duck decoys. Yeah, I love that. Or painting stamps, like in Fargo march's husband. I love it. Just the two cent. Norm was great. I love yeah, he was great. So you might want a internet connection. You will probably want to get a stamp catalog, and we'll talk about the sort of the big books that are out there in a bit. But all of this stuff is basically online now. But you also might like having a book. If you're into stamps, I bet you dollars to donuts you might rather hold a book in your hand every time you say that. You said that on Tuesday, too, in one of the episodes. Yes, every time you say that, I think of this one, Simpsons, where Homer goes deal and puts his dollar down. It's weird because I don't really say that expression much, but I've said it twice in a week. Yeah, you definitely did, because I thought about it the other day, too. Also did what we do in the shadows guy in like two episodes in a row. Yeah. And another point, too. It's so funny because I think it's a mild transgression when we kind of cop one another's words. You use Drool. I can't remember what episode, but you said Drool and then I used it recently, too, after that. And as I was saying it, I was like stuck word. Yeah, I just use it. Is it okay if I use that word? It's fine. I'll lend you Drool. Thank you, buddy. I appreciate that. You might want watermark detector fluid. Actually, that's a pretty good album name, too. Sure. Sometimes stamps will have an anti counterfeiting measure put in place with a watermark. And sometimes you can hold up stamp to the light and see the watermark. And sometimes you will need to dive a bit deeper and put that watermark detector fluid on there. And it's not that much money, but it's not necessarily the first thing you need in your kit as a beginning. Gum liquor. Right. You're going to basically just be looking at that's a neat picture. I like that picture. That's a cool stamp. And then eventually you'll be like, what's on the back? What's the secret hidden message that I'm missing on this? That's right. I also saw there are machines that you can get for about $250 that are basically like those, you know, those old timey projector things that they use in class, like an overhead projector. Yes. But this is one that projects into some sort of magnifier that you lean over and look into. There's like a light bulb. And you don't have to use any fluid. It doesn't have any impact on your stamp whatsoever. It just shows you the watermark. It's pretty neat. All right, I'm in that's for the well heeled flatalysts, though. I'm out. So there's another thing you need that's really important. It's a basic part of stamp collecting that is stamps. That's right. And if you're just getting started, one thing you can do is go online and you can buy just a lot or a collection of stamps, sort of a grab bag that you have no idea what's in there. And that can be a really fun way to get started because as I mentioned earlier, that's where you might poke through and get inspired and say, you know what, it turns out I really like this particular kind of stamp or two, and I think that might be what my focus should be. And that's a good way to find that out. Yeah. I mean, getting a grab bag of anything is a good way to really find out who you really are. Yeah, sure. And that is something you can do. You can order it online. If you live in a big enough city, there's probably a stamp collecting store you can also, like I read this pamphlet by, I think, the American Falataly Association or Society APS. I believe they wrote the pamphlet. Yeah. Philadelphia. Damn, that word. Okay, Philadelphia. I think I got it right. Yeah. Okay. The American Philadelphia APS had a pamphlet and they basically said if you're a little kid and you don't have any money because your parents don't give you an allowance or anything, you could still get in stamp collect. And they give all these ideas of how to get free stamps dealing mail. Go to offices and be like, hey, you got any mail? You guys get a lot of mail? You got any envelopes you don't want anymore? Or find a pen pal in another country because they'll have stamps that are a dime a dozen of them, but to you, it's a foreign stamp and you can just start sending each other letters with cool stamps or even stamps inside the envelope. Who knows? There's a lot of ways to get into stamp collecting basically for free or for the cost, maybe, of a stamp, which is, again, one of the reasons why stamp collecting is just so accessible. It costs next to nothing to get into, to get started with. And even when you really get into it, it's not an expensive hobby. No, if you get a bunch of stamps or you get a bunch of covers with stamps and you're just beginning your journey, you're going to get them all, lay them out in a room, look at them, decide what you like. And you don't want to just remove all you can do whatever you want. But I would advise that you decide what you want to separate from the cover, because there is a process involved that we're going to go over now, and it's not the hardest thing in the world, but you don't want to do that to 20 or 30 stamps that you're like, I actually don't like these after all. It's a waste of time. Yeah, it's like that next level of preservation. And once you pick those out, what you do is you get a bowl with warm tap water, stinger in until you lose control of your bladder. Then you start the stamp sorting process. That's right, you go peep peep just a little bit, and then you float that stamp. If you have cut it away from the cover. If you decided to do that, leave yourself a few centimeters around the stamp. Don't get too close. Yeah, but you make a good point. You want to go through everything first and be like, are there any cool cancellations on here? Is this envelope just need you don't necessarily want to separate all stamps from envelopes or any bad perfs. Exactly. You want to make that decision first. And then once you decide that you want just the stamp, then you start cutting out and leave a little envelope around it, right. So you float that little bad boy in some warm tap water stamp up, right? Yeah, you got to float it stamp up. And you can do a few at a time, but I wouldn't get too crazy if you're just a little gum liquor and I would wade into those warm waters. And if it's from a Christmas envelope or something, if it's like a red envelope beware. Yes, beware, because that can very much discolor your stamp. Hopefully, it's just like a good old fashioned white envelope. Wait about ten or 15 minutes, and that stamp will start to that gum will just sort of dissolve away, and that stamp will kind of separate and then float off on its own. Get those tongs, those little tweezers out. You don't want to just grab it with your grimy old human fingers and just kind of pat it dry and you've got yourself a stamp. Yes. You want to be really careful, though, because a wet stamp is unsurprisingly very fragile. Yeah, a lot of people put their wet stamps on paper towels. You want to make sure you've gotten all the gum off first, though. And then they put those paper towels in a heavy book and then let it dry like that. What we just described is faladaletic. State of the art, basically. That's right. So you want to take another break and then come back and talk a little stamp history, famous stamps, that kind of stuff. Yeah, I love this part. Let's do that. 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Just fast 5G speeds for downloading and reduce lag, plus 24/7 network protection with automatic fraud call blocking with at and T Active Armor. So join at and T and discover the power of 5G through our 5G compatible devices. At and T download of apps required. Five G may not be available in your area. For coverage details, see att. Comfivegforyou. Visit www. Dot att. Comcallprotect for details. All right, so you mentioned stamp history. They've been collecting stamps since the first stamp, which is kind of cool. I don't know why someone said, I want to hang on to this, but someone did. And after May 1, 1018 40, Great Britain issued the Penny Black, the very first postage stamp. It was supposed to roll out on May 6 as far as being used, but they sent them out a little bit early to post offices, so they were ready to go on May 6. And some post offices said, let's just go ahead and kind of get the ball rolling because I have a feeling we're going to be behind really quickly. And so some of those little Penny blacks are dated earlier than May 6, and those will be worth a little bit more money. But they were a bunch of Penny Black, so it's not like the Honus Wagner baseball card. Right. It's not like the Penny Black is the most valuable stamp ever made. It's a little counterintuitive, but rarity for any collection is what makes it valuable. And they're just not as rare as you might think. Right, but that's a good example of that cancellation that people will collect. Yeah, because you want a canceled Penny Black that predates that May 6, 1840 date, because it's just unusual and rare. Totally. I think May 1. So May 1 was the date where they started issuing them, even though that was five days early. So that would be what's called the first day cover. It's an envelope with a stamp that's canceled on the first day of issue. And sometimes there's even a special stamp that they'll use, say first day issue. People collect covers like that, too. They even have, like, ceremonies for these kinds of things, especially. I swear to God, if they're releasing a commemorative stamp in particular, there's definitive stamps, which are your everyday American flag forever stamp that they basically release in unlimited quantities. Then there's commemorative stamps. They usually have a more limited run. They're available for a limited time. They often commemorate a person, an event, something like that. And when they release those stamps, they'll have like a ceremony at a specific post office in a specific city with dignitaries and famous people there. Sometimes they'll print programs and everything. And if you're a stamp collector, you want to be at that first day ceremony or at the very least. You're collecting those kind of covers, too, if that's the kind of thing you're into. Yeah, I think it's kind of awesome that when you go to the post office still, and you go and ask for a book of stamps, if you have no interest at all in stamp collecting, they will present you, usually with a few things ago. What kind of stamps you want? Anecdotally I can say that most people choose something rather than saying, I don't care, I just want something to mail something. Stop it. Asking me questions. I've been plenty of post offices, and most people go, oh, those dogs look nice, I'll take those. Yes. Dogs playing poker even better. It's cute. I love it. I pick out my stamps. I don't spend a lot of time on it, but if they present me with a few, I'll kind of give them a quick once over and say, well, I'd like to mail that represents me a little bit, and that's kind of what it is. Give me those Mr. Roger stamps. Are there some? I'm sure there is, yeah. I'll bring you one. I'll mail you something with one on it. How about you have some? Yeah, I do. Okay, send me something. For sure. I will. You mentioned the first day cover, though. People will collect first day covers of just very regular, commonly issued stamps just because it's a first day cover. Because you never know, that thing might be worth something one day. Right, but that's what I'm saying. That's what they have those ceremonies for, too, sometimes. Yeah. And then if you have something that's designed or a design that's printed on a stamp, it's called a cachet, yet another arcane jargon term. And people spend a lot of time by the way, I looked up into the cachet world, and there are stamp collectors that very much get into making their own cachet and special made caches, and it's a whole other subset as well. Yeah, it's basically, you know, if you've ever seen an envelope with a stamp of an angel blowing a trumpet around Christmas time or something like that, that's cachet. Well, I mean, the cache is an additional, like, ink stamp put on the envelope. That's what I'm saying. Okay. Like a stamp. Yeah, I know that we need another term. I think that's what confused. Rubber ink stamp. A rubber ink stamp of an angel blowing a horn around Christmas time. I got you. So America got into the stamp releasing act less than a decade after Great Britain did. Great Britain, by the way, being the first nation on the planet to issue postage stamps, didn't bother to put the nation of origin. If you look at every other stamp ever issued by a government authority, it has the nation on it somewhere. There's some signifier that this came from America or Zimbabwe or something like that. Great Britain still to this day doesn't because they were the first. And so they still don't put Great Britain or UK or anything on their stamps. That's right. It's pretty cool. Yeah. So America got into it in 1847, july 1 no less. There was a five C, benjamin Franklin, a ten cent George Washington, and what else did we need? Yeah. And this is not it can get confusing when you think of the Stamp Act and Stamping Tea and things like that. Those were different kinds of stamps. We used to stamp tax bills and permits and any kind of government sort of thing exchange might be stamped that is a revenue stamp. And it's sort of just a different world. Like if you collect postage stamps, you might also collect revenue stamps, but you keep them separate. You don't put them together. You don't tell your friends who collect postage stamps that you're collecting revenue or fiscal stamps, that you're pretty secret. Postage stamps are kind of where the bread and butter is for stamp collecting, I think. So like we said before, that kind of like one of the recognized authorities on stamp collecting and stamps in general is the Scott catalog, which has been produced from a company in Ohio since 1868. And they basically just started tracking stamp after stamp. So the lower the number associated with the stamp that the Scott catalog is given that stamp, the earlier the stamp was released. And so over time it's grown into, I think, a twelve volume collection catalog. The Scott catalog has. But it's so widely known and widely used that a lot of stamps are described and talked about by their Scott catalog number rather than whatever common name they have. Right. And there are prefixes and suffixes. If there are different special issued stamps or some of those errors you're talking about, or some rad purse, the inverted genie, which we'll talk about in a minute, like that's known as C three A in the stamp world because it denotes air mail stamps. Yeah. Which is great and little counter intuitive a little bit. It would be an A in my world. You would think so. But I think A is for awesome. The most awesome stamps is what the A is reserved for. There's also the Michelle catalog from Germany, and that is around to fill in the gaps that the Scott Guide does not cover because the Scott Guide is American and they're like, we don't want Cuban stamps in our book. Can you believe it? Yeah. It's weird. If they were nations that are embargoed or whatever, sometimes they will not be. I think North Korean stamps do are not in the Scott catalog. So the Michele catalog comes around because they're German and they're like, sure, we'll cover it, it's fine. Sure. So it turns out that there's actually been a pretty decent amount of famous people who collect stamps. Just because there are so many people who collect stamps. Some of them are bound to be famous, right? John Lennon. Yeah, I read about his stamp collecting. He seems to have inherited his cousin Stanley's stamp collection. Basically changed the name on the cover of the album to his name and then added a few more steps. He doesn't seem to have been a passionate Philadelphia by any stretch from what then Patrick Dempsey I saw referenced here. There McDreamy. Yeah. And then Queen Elizabeth II apparently, is a stamp collector. And then Sally Ride was a very famous faith list as well and ended up on a stamp herself. Yes. Sadly. This is something that I think is super cool. The fact that Sally Wright was fine. She didn't die in an accident, she died later in life. That was Krista McAuliffe. That's who I was thinking of. Did you ever see that Challenger documentary yet? I still haven't. It's a myth, man. It is. Just astounding you can't believe it. I can't believe the interviews that they got and what they got the people to finally admit to. It's crazy. Amazing. Amelia Earhart, I think this is super cool. She actually funded some of her aviation expeditions, including some of those transatlantic flights with stamps. She would get covers and she would sometimes they're CASADE and she would get stamps and she would fly to places and get them postmarked and it would be obviously super valuable. She might even sign it sometimes and sell them. And this would be like, boy, this is a cover and a stamp from Amelia Earhart's flight across the ocean stamped here and in England or something. Or stamped in England. Or canceled, I guess, in England. Right. And when she went down in that plane along with poor Fred Newman poor Fred. There were 5000 covers that she had presold to fund that flight that were stamped and postmarked for her stops around the world. Very cool fact that brought to mind the mail on the Titanic. Remember we were making fun of people dropping off their mail. Apparently there was a lot of mail on the Titanic and I didn't think about it. But it wasn't just people dropping off their mail passengers on the Titanic mailing postcards. RMS stands for Royal Mail Ship. So the RMS Titanic was a mail carrier too. So it was carrying British and Irish and European mail over to America as well. And from what I could tell, none of it survived. There was a surviving letter that was not mailed. It was written on Titanic letterhead but it was kept in somebody's belongings. But I guess all of the mail workers on the Titanic died basically trying to save the mail, but they were unable to. And it's still down there, but they think it's possible some of it still preserved and they might bring it up someday. President Roosevelt was a very dedicated stamp collector FDR pre presidency and then through his presidency, which was many years and this is interesting in that the President has the ear of the Postmaster General. I know it seems unfair. Well, I mean, I think it's kind of cool, though. Like he got into it and he wasn't just like, yeah, just print a bunch of stamps, it's fine. Like every other president in the 1930s, he got together with General James A. Farley of the Postmaster General and said, I want to help design these things and let's brainstorm colors and themes and designs. What if he was terrible at it and Farley would see him coming, just like, oh, here comes another bad idea from FDR. All of their figures have like gigantic hands and stuff. But he was the president so far. He had to release those stupid stamps. That's pretty funny. But it's kind of cool, though. He did sketch out ideas, apparently, and in his collection he had some full sheets and he had some die proofs and stuff like that. So he did have an advantage, for sure. Yeah. Apparently they used to release a lot of pictures of him collecting stamps as part of calm reassurance to the nation that there was like a steady hand, literally and figuratively leading the country, which is kind of cool. Can we talk about the Inverted Jenny, the coolest stamp of all time? Yeah, there's a bunch of famous stamps. We should say the Inverted Jenny is not the most valuable stamp that goes to the British Guiana. Magenta right, yeah. Which isn't that great looking, but it's just rare, I guess. I think there's only one of it in existence, the British Guiana, $0.01. Magenta. But that far. In a way, the Inverted Jenny is the most famous stamp of all time. Has to be. Yeah. So in 1918, the US commissioned to stamp to commemorate the first air mail service going on. And so they decided on a two color stamp with a plane on it, a Curtis JN four. And when you do something with two colors, you print the first thing. In this case, it was the red frame around the plane. And then the second thing that they would print would be the blue plane itself. And there was an error at one point and there were a few panes where it was flipped upside down and it was either the sheet or the printing plate was upside down. And so the ginny was inverted and you've got this upside down plane and all of a sudden stamp collectors get wind of this and they're like, oh my gosh, there was a mistake. We need to get our hands on some of these. Yeah, this guy named William Roby showed up at the printing press and said, do you have any that are messed up, that are upside down? And they had found that they had printed some accidentally and all but one sheet was destroyed. So 100 Inverted Jennies were produced, which makes it not one of the rare stamps around. Remember that British Keanu once at Magenta? There's only one. There's only one. Benjamin Franklin. Zegrill. There's 100 of these things, but people just love them. They go bonkers for them. And as a matter of fact, one of the reasons why the Inverted Jenny has become such a sought after part of the stamp collecting world is because it's just been in the spotlight so much. Like there's been some really high profile thefts of Inverted Jenny's over the years. There was one block of four called the McCoy Block that was stolen in 1955. And every couple of decades, one of them is recovered and there's a big to do about it. There was another theft from the New York Public Library, 1977, that was finally recovered years later. It's just something about that stamp makes it the most famous of all time. That's right. And in this one case, there was a dealer, or there was this man who purchased the sheet, sold it to a dealer, dealer sells it to this wealthy businessman. And the dealer had penciled in numbers on the back of these stamps individually so you could identify the stamps, which, of course, was not in mint condition, but they were at least identifiable. And I think the story goes that one of these was stolen and it turned up in the 80s with the perforations cut off and the number on the back was changed to a nine, which wasn't a stamp that had ever been circulated. So they knew that it was the stolen stamp. Right. But they thought that it could have been this nine that had never been circulated, that had made its way into circulation. But it wasn't until 2002 when a woman lockett, the wife of Colonel Edward Green, the guy who bought that original block of 100, that businessman, she died in her locket, made its way into auction and somebody opened it up and found that the Inverted Jenny in the number nine position was actually in the locket. So the other one was found to be a fraud that way, which is just you can't write this stuff, you know? I think you meant Colonel Mustard. It's Mr. Green. I know. I thought the same thing. Professor Plum. Pretty cool story, though, I think the last one in 2019, sold for 135 million. Yeah, there was a block of them, I think. Not the most valuable, but pretty pricey. Plus, also, it made its way into one of the better movies that came out of the 80s, brewster's Millions, remember? Oh, sure. Was that in there? Yeah, he burned up like, a bunch of money by mailing a postcard using the Inverted Jenny is mail. That's a fun fact. Yeah, pretty cool. I love it. And that ties in with Blazing Saddles because Richard Pryor almost played Sheriff Bart. Oh, nice. What is the name of the actor who did instead? Cleveland Little, who was great, but Richard Pryor was a writer on the movie. Okay. You got anything else about Richard Pryor or philadelphia? No, neither do I, but there is a ton out there. Like, I read an article about the serial number that's written on the side of the plane on the inverted Jenny and how fatalists got to the bottom of why that serial number was used. There is a lot of information out there, and there's a lot of stamps to collect. So go forth and try out a new hobby and see what you think. And since I said go forth, that means, of course, it's time for listener mail. I can't call this heartfelt thanks. Hey, guys. As we mark the one year anniversary of the COVID Lockdown, I'm compelled to write and thank you for what you've done, what you do, and hopefully, what you will continue to do. Yours was my first podcast subscription from several years back, and as a stay at home mom that has that list has grown substantially across several genres, and I'm plugged in constantly when I clean, cook, exercise, et cetera. When Lockdown was first initiated here in California, I try to keep as normal a schedule as possible. Despite all three of my children relegated to home for distance learning, none of my at least dozen podcasts seemed appropriate to absorb, except for yours. The funny ones seemed too trivial, the crime one is too gruesome, the history one is too dry, and none could keep my attention again, except for yours. Your show is such a perfect balance between knowledge, light heartedness sincerity, and understanding, and the true friendship radiates from your voices. And it's incredibly soothing. I revisited your past episodes for ten months before I was able to keep listening to anything else. I'm sure I'm not alone when I say I don't know how I would have gotten through this past year without you two filtering out all the negative vibes in my head. You two are the bestest friends I've never met. Keep on keeping on. And that is Zenita Johnson of San Jose, California. Man, that was a bang up email, Zenita. Thank you very much for that. It is. And believe it or not, we need to hear that stuff, too, so we really appreciate it. Yeah, I mean, I'll never get tired of hearing that, but we talk about a pat on the back, hearing that we help people get through the pandemic. Is that's about as high praise as you can get these days? Means a lot. Yeah. Thanks a lot, Zenita, and we're glad that we could help you out. And everybody who we helped out and everybody who was slightly annoyed or made laugh or did anything or last year or 13 years, thank you for listening. How about that? Thank you. If you want to get in touch with this, like Zeneda is it Zenitha or Zenita? Zenita. She even was kind enough to put a little pronunciation guide. Very nice. If you want to get in touch with this, like Zanida did, then you can send us an email to oh, wait, don't forget to lick a stamp and slap it on the bottom with that stamp and then send it off to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that we mean your dog. Halo Elevate is natural science based nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leaving and brands. Find Halo Elevate at petco pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores." | |
How Cave Dwellers Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-cave-dwellers-work | You know the cavemen, a race of human cousins who lived exclusively in caves? They didn't exist. Sure prehistoric hominids used caves sometimes but they lived in other places too. Luckily the time they spent in caves has given us a glance at their culture | You know the cavemen, a race of human cousins who lived exclusively in caves? They didn't exist. Sure prehistoric hominids used caves sometimes but they lived in other places too. Luckily the time they spent in caves has given us a glance at their culture | Thu, 13 Feb 2014 14:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=13, tm_hour=14, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=44, tm_isdst=0) | 36330758 | 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. So it's stuff you should know. Oh, wow. Energetic condition. A little bit. Yeah. It's cold. I'm energized by the cold. Energized and, like, just a little so you're not energized is what we're saying. I'm a little energized. Okay. I feel like I I'm am fine. Why do you say that? Because you sound like you're sleepwalking. Oh, really? Yeah. I thought I was just speaking fast. Oh, no, I thought that's why you're I was being sarcastic. I'm sorry. To everybody who's sitting through this right now. You sound down in the dumps. You all right? Yeah, no, I'm fine. Okay. It's the cold. It's a little dreary outside. Today's the day it finally started to get to me. So you're ready for spring? Yes, emily's ready for spring. I'm like, It's January, and she said no, but it's Georgia, so we could have spring in a few weeks. It's true. We kind of had it yesterday. Yeah. You mean. I have been making these little bird feeders with cookie cutters and shapes and all that stuff. I've been trying to get the physics of it down, to hang them so that the birds can land on them. So I incorporate twigs in these things so they can spend a little time there. Yeah. And there's this little sob of a squirrel that has my porch all figured out and keeps getting these whole bird feeder cakes. And I realized I'm spending a lot of time trying to thwart this squirrel, figure out the physics of a bird feed, and I'm like, yeah, I'm ready for spring. Apparently. Yes. We have one of those cake holders for birds, but it's really a squirrel feeder. Yeah. And they eat it in, like, a day. Yeah. This squirrel can eat several cakes, and it makes a mess. All right. Cave dwelling. I can't remember I've asked you before, but I don't know if you've seen it since I asked you, because you hadn't. Cave of Forgotten Dreams by Verna Harzall. No, I still haven't seen it. Well, I watched, like, 20 minutes of it this morning just to get the gist. You got the gist in 20 minutes? Well, I can't wait to watch the whole thing, though. It's pretty much that. Yeah, but I want to watch it. Oh, yeah, you should. It's neat. The whole thing is neat from beginning to end, but it's, I think, maybe a two hour long documentary on a cave. Yeah. In the cave art. It's phenomenal. Yeah, I know. The one in well, they're both in France, right? Yeah. The one that gets the most press is the lasco, which is great. But this one to me, the art is better. Well, lasco and WordPress, because it was discovered in 1940. This one that Warner Herzog did a documentary that was discovered in 1994. Yeah. And it's twice old, like 32,000 year old art. It's amazing. Yeah, it is. And it's all spectacularly preserved. One of the benefits of discovering Lasko in 1940 was that when Chevy cave, the one that was discovered in 94, it's even older. Was discovered. We had already figured out a lot of stuff along the way and how to preserve it. Right. So we could go in there and sort of TCB. Yeah. You need to cut down on the carbon dioxide that people are breathing out. You need to let Vernon Herzog in there. Yes. You need to cut down on flashes, flash photography, because apparently, flashes really do degrade. There's something called photo degradation of especially old pigments, and it's basically like releasing the sunlight over the course of a few milliseconds. That makes sense. That's one flash. But if you add up all the tourists over the years, all of a sudden you're basically bringing the sunlight artificially into this cave, and it's degrading the pigment. So there's all sorts of stuff we learned from Lascow cave. It's not being applied to Chauvin Cave, but yes, it is older. It is more awesome. The very evidence of old cave paintings and all the artifacts and bones that are found in caves would suggest that there, in some distant past of prehistory, was a race of hominids that were cave dwelling hominids. They were a race of cave dwellers. Yeah. That must be correct. Right. Ringo Star. Yeah. I saw the movie Caveman, or was that documentary was it a movie? Yeah. You're thinking of quest for fire. Yeah. Well, those are all great movies. Clan of the Cave bear. But well, I was setting you up, and you didn't well, no. Okay, thanks. Is the answer. They now believe that people through different periods of ancient history have dwelled in caves at times, but probably didn't, like, set up permanent residence in caves. Yeah. And the big pivotal evidence of this is that the people who would have supposedly lived in caves at that time were all nomadic huntergatherers. Sure. They wouldn't have been stationary in any kind of dwelling. Yeah. They got to go out and find the meat. Right. So there was no such thing as a species of hominid that you could say our cavemen. Right. Those were the cavemen. All the other ones just lived. However, most of the people who were alive in what we're talking about, the Paleolithic era, which went back from about 2 million years ago all the way up to about 10,000 years ago, that's the Paleolithic era. Yeah. They lived in all sorts of different kinds of shelters, caves being one of them. Sure. Yeah. One reason to go into a cave is obviously and we covered this is, I think, our third cave suite. Yeah. Biospherelogy, which is awesome. Spelunking. Yeah. And then this one cave fells who thought that we would do a three part series on caves ever. Well, and this covers cave art such that this will probably be it, don't you think? Is there anything else? I can't think of anything. No, not really. Nick Cave. Maybe we can find him. So some reasons to go into a cave to begin with, obviously, is to protect yourself from the weather. I think it's probably the leading yeah, it's raining. Let's go inside that room. Yeah. It's not raining in the cave. Yeah. To protect yourself from animals. Because if you go back and listen to our biospherelogy, only certain animals are in caves. Very few and not a lot of, like, big, nasty man eaters. Although back then, they would have run into cave bears claiming the cave bear I don't know if sabertooth tigers were cave drawers, but I've seen a lot of Flintstone episodes, and from what I understand, they did go into caves. Of course, you would run into the Proteus salamander, which you would not want to run into. Remember the three foot Long island salamander? Do I remember white nightmares, like, once a week? Yeah. I don't think it'd do anything to you, but man alive. Yeah. I wouldn't want to see that thing. Like you wake up looking face to face with that eyeless monster. Yeah. But protection from animals, protection from weather, but protection from other people wasn't really a big reason, because this is good to know. They kind of got along and helped each other in general. Yeah. There's something called Paleolithic warlessness. Yeah. The concept of war, organized war, is apparently only maybe twelve to 16,000, 18,000, maybe years old. I think probably once people started getting comfy is when they started wanting to fight each other. Back then, they were just trying to survive. Yeah. Well, there's a whole idea that agriculture and sedentary existence is what led to warfare. I want what that guy's got. Exactly. Yeah. Basically. And it led to surpluses. So people fared over surpluses. That makes sense. You're starving over here and they've got all this grain over here. So you go kill all those people and take their grain. We should do a history of war. That would be good. That would be good. But obviously there were scraps in the Paleolithic. I mean, it wasn't all like wine and roses. Yeah. You try getting along with Ron Livingston now. It's not his name when everybody gets along with Ron Livingston. He's from office space, right? Yeah. The other guy. Ron Prolman. Yeah. That's a pretty good mess up. There were scraps every now and then, like, obviously over territory or food or fire. But it wasn't like, hey, let's go to war with this tribe. We don't like them or we want what they've got. Because the consensus among anthropologists, apparently, is that war is relatively recent. It's not that ancient. It's certainly not as ancient as a lot of the caveat we run into. 32,000 years. Yes. So you've got shelter from the elements. Sure. Protection from animals. My steady temperature, that's a big one. Yeah. Because the cave typically is about in the 50s degree. Yeah. So if you are in a cave and you're living there and it's summertime, you are sitting pretty. Oh, yeah. If it's wintertime, depending on where you are. So you're in northern Europe, you're still sitting pretty. Sure. All you have to do is build a little bit of a fire and hope you don't smoke yourself out. True. And you're in some climate controlled luxury, especially for the Stone Age. Yeah. One reason that everyone didn't live in caves, and this is something I learned when I went on my Caving experience, which is detailed in the Speedunking episode, is that even though there's tons of caves, not a ton of caves are like, great to live in. Like a lot of them you might walk right past because it's just a hole in the ground. You have no idea. There's an underground cavern. A lot of them are inaccessible. A lot of them have are active. So that means they have water, which isn't super hospitable. No, it'll flood. Yeah. You don't want to be in there when it floods. Yeah. Generally they're not like these huge cavernous, like, oh, it's a big underground home. Well, plus, also there's a lot of gravel slopes where if you stand on them, you can fall and die. You learn that pretty quick. Yeah. There's a cave dwelling, lots of different exits and entrances and shafts and things like that. They can be misleading and confuse you in dark get you lost to your death, apparently. Just a couple of dozen feet. I don't remember. There's the light zone. The twilight zone in the dark zone. Yes. And I don't remember where the twilight zone ends in the dark zone begins, but once that dark zone begins, there's no light. Yeah. And like you said, you can't just start a bunch of fires because you can die from smoking yourself out. Yeah. You can hit your head on stalag tight. That's true. Yeah. So it's not the most common thing to find, like a great cave for ten or twelve people to live in, but when they found them and they needed them, they would dwell on them. Right. And again, that's one reason. There are several reasons why people didn't just live in caves all the time, but another reason is because they knew of other ways to live. They could stretch animal hides over structures. They built earth and dwellings where they would build like a lean to or something and then pack earth over it, which is another way to control the climate or temperature in that little dwelling. And again, they were nomadic. They were following herds of bison and mammoths. It's a big, beautiful world, too, let's not forget. Yeah. Why would you want to go live in a cave your entire life when you've got the run of the place of planet Earth and all it has to offer? If there was a hominid that could be considered cave dwellers, though it would probably be the Neanderthals, as we understand right now. It wasn't too terribly long ago that we discovered a new species of human ancestors. Well, at least they were contemporary with modern humans, the Denisovans. Who is that? They're a type of hominid that lived in 30 to 500 years ago at the latest, I think, maybe. Okay. And there's a cave in Croatia, I believe, where they discovered a molar, and they thought, well, no, they discovered a finger bone, and they thought it was Neanderthal or human. Okay. And they ran the DNA test on it, and they're like, this is neither. Why? What is this? So they named it it's Denisova Cave or Dennis Cave, one of the two. And they named this new species of hominid, the Denisovans. And then they looked at the human genome and they're like, oh, we apparently in our bread with them because we have a little bit of Denisovan in all of us. Really? For most of us, yeah. People who stayed in Africa and didn't disperse, like Neanderthals or other modern humans, too, apparently didn't have the opportunity to mix with Denisovans or Neanderthals. So typically, people of European descent, native American descent right. They will have Neanderthal and Denisovan in them. But this cave in Croatia has evidence that these Neanderthals humans and Denisovans possibly shared these caves at the same time. Isn't that crazy? They did about yeah. They didn't necessarily sit around a campfire with one another. That's what I picture. But they may have been using the cave within the same year or something like that, depending on the season. See, I pictured them making s'mores and saying, how do you get your back so straight? But I mean, think about it. If they were breeding, then maybe it wasn't those caves. Jerry either laughed at that or she's choking on some food or both, perhaps. So, yeah, the Neanderthal was all over Europe and during a glacial period, so obviously they got harsh climates. So they might want to poke into a cave every now and then and warm up. Right. And there are a couple of strategies that archeologists believe were used back then the circulating mobility and radiating mobility. I kind of like this idea had several temporary camps kind of scattered all over the region, and it's kind of like just having different homes, and you would just go from place to place and live in your little home and hunt and gather. It's the same thing the ultra wealthy do today. Exactly. Or radiating mobility is when you had one main camp and you would just go out as far as you could to hunt and gather from that camp. Right. So you had other shelters along the way. I don't know. I thought the radiating mobility was just the one camp. And you came and went to that camp every day. That was the difference. I see. Is that right? It's possible. I think that's right. And apparently some of these camps were, in fact cave at times. Right. So they were using caves for sure. They were doing something else, too. They were creating art in these case. Boy, were they. Which has people baffled as to exactly what was going on. What's the deal? What the heck is all this for? But before we get into that, you want to take a message break? Yeah. All right. Caveart. Yeah. And if you have in your mind caveart is, like, super primitive, like, is that a buffalo or is that a giraffe? You should go just Google the caveart in those two caves, especially Chauvin. Yeah. One of the things that Herzog talks about that they figured out, if I remember correctly, is that the torchlight, the flickering torchlight, produces movement of these animals. Interesting. And they think they're that they're wondering whether that was intentional or not. And they think it probably was intentional, where they make a little movie pronounced. Yeah. Interestingly. But it's like legit art and legit talented painters. Yeah. When you look at this stuff, it's pretty amazing. They hadn't discovered perspective yet, so it's all flat two dimensional. But first of all, they're creating these things in utter dark by torch light. Yeah. Using earthen pigments, like ochre for yellows and oranges charcoal, charcoal for black. What was the red one? I think for red, they used iron oxide. Okay. And they use charcoal and manganese for black. They're using very primitive brushes in the dictionary sense of the word. Yes. Or they're early airbrush artists, essentially, because they're blowing this pigment through a tube or just out of their mouth onto the walls. Yes. And then they're also using their hands and their fingers. But you're right. And there are some especially when you take all this into consideration, it makes some of the art that was made just staggering. Yeah. Apparently, they would use to some of the texture of the cave itself. Like if there was an indentation not an indentation, but what's the opposite of an indentation? Bump. Yeah. If there was a bump that looked like a rhino horn, they would incorporate that as the rhino horn. And all of a sudden, you had I mean, it's not quite 3D, but it's definitely more than flat. Yeah. Right. They're like it's not perspective, but it's going to have to do. They now have evidence in some of these 30,000 year old caves of scaffolding that they would use. Oh, I hadn't seen that. Yeah, it's pretty cool. And Principles of Stenciling. Early Principles of Stenciling. And apparently when Picasso visited Lascal, he said to his guide, they've invented everything, and he was just, like, blown away, basically. Like, I'm just copying these early hominids. Right. It's pretty amazing. It's about right, too. And actually, I don't know. Picasso is all right, but some of these cavewelling, they haven't beat, maybe. Yeah. They didn't look funny. They didn't have one eye, they didn't wear berets. So most of the subjects of cave paintings that have been discovered so far, and there could be tons and tons of undiscovered caves like the one at Chauvay, wasn't discovered until 1996 because at some point in the past, a rock fall happened and closed the cave off to view and happened to be discovered by some hikers. Man, can you imagine being the person that discovered that? Yeah, it would have been pretty cool. Amazing. So most of the cave art that has been discovered so far depicts herd animals. Yes, by a lot of animals. By and large, they're herd animals, they're bison, they're buffalo, they're mammoths, things like that. There's very few images of vegetation, very few images of humans. The images of humans there are tend to be things like fertility idols. Like female fertility idols. Yeah. And there's a theory out there that those were painted by adolescent boys. Oh, really? Yeah, it's like basically early Club magazine or something like that. And that may or may not be correct, especially when they found that in France and Spain a lot, possibly the majority of cave art was done by females they recently discovered. Oh, really? You know, the hand ones. Handprints. They figured out recently that most of those are female hands because they give away of the 6th finger. That only female. There's an article that I can recommend that actually is what inspired Bernard Herzog to make his documentary called First Impressions. It was in the New Yorker in 2008 by Judith Thurman, and it's super awesome. And she basically says there's a couple of camps when it comes to cave art experts, those who can't resist advancing a theory about the art, and then those who say there never will be enough evidence to support one. So you're all just sort of making up these theories. Yeah, I think that's healthy. That second camp is much healthier because it is all theories. But I like the theories though. Yeah. And I don't think we should just be like, we'll never understand these, so let's not even try. Yeah, I think we should just remember that when we are trying to understand them, they're all just guesses and not even really educated guesses at that. Yeah, I think my theory of why there are animals mostly is because it was super important to their survival and maybe it was some communication to leave for another person later or to each other, maybe. Yeah, there's lots of buffalo in this area, so get to hunting or don't hunt these guys because I just killed a bunch of them by forcing them off a cliff. It was awesome, by the way, to see. But there's not that many left and we need them to keep reading or I'm an eight year old neanderthal and I was a naked lady. Yeah, here's a naked buffalo for your pleasure. There's also lots of theories that these things were supernatural somehow, like they were trying to invoke the animal spirit for a successful hunt or gain some sort of power by creating an image of the animal. And it could have also just been like, this is what I see in my everyday life, and I have this desire to create art. So that's the subject I'm going to make is this animal that I am thinking about a lot because I have to hunt it for sustenance. Yeah. That makes a conversion between this innate desire and the everyday life. Right. And that's bison on cave walls. Well, some of them are pretty detailed, and some are life size. It's like they really took a lot of time. It wasn't something they just dashed off in a matter of hours. And they're using these torches, too. It's not like a modern electric torch known as a flashlight, also. But they're like stone torches with, like, a little divot in the top, some animal fat put in there, and then they light the animal fat, which I'm sure in and of itself is quite a task. Sure. So, yeah, there was a lot of effort put into this, a lot of detail. Gathering the pigments, I'm sure, wasn't an easy feat, especially if you're doing, like, a LifeSave bison. How long did it take to gather all that ochre? Sure. It's not a quick thing. And it's not just paintings. They found jewelry and other, like, engraved bone and ivory, and they think they probably engraved wood, too, but that obviously wouldn't survive that long. Right. But they suggest early religious belief and that they think they might have buried people with some of these things. Yeah. So it's amazing stuff. And unfortunately, when there's no written history, there's a lot of speculation. But I don't know, it's fascinating to me. Well, yeah, their history has been largely lost. It just happens to be preserved in the caves. But since they weren't just a strictly cave dwelling society, we're only seeing a portion of their culture right. Because the rest of it was in animal skin shelters and earth and lean tubes that have been totally lost because they are exposed to the elements or caves that were flooded out and washed away, too. Well, that's why there's only, like well, there's more than that, but the two big daddies there's only two. No, there's another one. There's one called Altamira. Really? In Spain? Yes. Steely Dan had a song about it. The Caves of Altima. And is it loaded with art? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, there's plenty more than that. It's just Lescoe is the most famous one, and then Chauvele is the most recent, most famous one because the herzog but there are others. All right. What about Troglodytes? We should mention that that's a great word to call somebody. Yeah. It always reminds me of Trilobite. You remember the little weird kind of insect, armor plated, fossilized insect. No. I'll show you a trilobite. Okay. It was one of the earliest footed animals. Scary looking, really, but that's what I always get, the two confused. Chocolate. I mean, cave dweller. Yeah. Literally someone who lives in a hole or cave. Yeah. Named after there are apparently some West African tribes that the Greeks came in contact with, and they lived in cliff caves, and they were called truggled it or truggled it. Well, it's a nice insult that you can throw around these days and sounds sort of intelligent. Instead of calling someone like a D bag, you say, he's a troglodyte. I got Jerry, too. Man, you guys are on the same wave place today. I guess so. I guess we can fast forward down to the present day. Yes. Well, modern let's not quite go into present day. I think we need to give a shout out to the Anasazi and the Pueblos word. Cliff dwelling peoples from the 12th century ish of the southwestern United States who basically showed up and started carving into cliff faces, carving out caves and lived there, or they built their own caves. Yeah, you should see some of these. Look up, like, just look up cliff dwellers us, and you'll see some really neat they had, like, whole cities wow. Like, carved out into these cliff faces that you could only reach by ladders. That sounds really dangerous. It was, but it was also very well defended and certified. Yeah, because people just be like, I'm not going up there to fight those guys. Yeah. I'm not climbing that ladder. It's crazy. Can we talk about Mount Hebron? Are we there yet? Yeah. Okay. That's in the West Bank in the Middle East, and a lot of clan of Palestinians live in this network of caves that have been around for about 100 years that their forefathers built. But of course, because it's in the West Bank, there's some disagreement over who should be there. Of course, it's been claimed by Israeli settlers as well, and the army has threatened to remove the people. I don't know what the current state is. I looked it up. I couldn't find it. The last I saw was that they basically designated a militarized zone. Really? Which meant that the Palestinians living there needed to leave. But are they still in there? I don't know, but the most recent thing I could find was from 2005. Really? So I don't know. All right, well, southern Spain, is that what you're talking about? Near Toronto. Baltimore is in southern Spain, but it's definitely in Spain. But there are, like, natural cliff or cave dwellings that were carved out into even further cave dwellings in Spain. Got you. And have basically been continuously inhabited at one time or another. Now there's a large homeless population there, apparently. Right. I mean, Spain's got, like, 25% unemployment. I'm sure that really the cave dwelling populations increase proportionately. Well, Cappadocia in Turkey has an elaborate cave system, and it's not a very friendly place. There's not a lot of vegetation that's been described as lunar. Have you seen pictures of this? Yeah. Amazing. It's really amazing. Just the natural landscape itself is amazing. And then if you look closely, you're like, oh, those pock marks are caves like homes. Yeah. And these were manmade. These are carved out for people to live in, which is I guess we didn't even say I guess that's the other type of cave. You can either find one or you can make one. Yeah. And by making one, I think any time you kind of enhance or extend a natural cave too, that would count. I would guess that would be man made, too. Yeah, probably so. But in Cappadocia, in Turkey Anchorites, which were early Christians who were hermits, they inhabited these caves and made the first dwellings. And then when the Christians were persecuted, they were joined by a lot more people, and they actually built underground churches that became an underground city. Have you seen these pictures? They're amazing. Just the masonry and the artwork that they made of just hewn from the rock that's still intact today. And apparently it was abandoned and then forgotten for a while and then rediscovered. But that was pretty neat to find. Well, I got another documentary for you like no place on earth. Have you seen that one? No. There was a guy in 1993, a cave that was exploring this cave in the Ukraine, and he found, like, shoes and medicine bottles and things. Wow. And he was like, Wait a minute. This isn't paleolithic at all. This looks like it was from the 1940s. And it was. And it turns out there was 38 members of different Jewish families hid in this cave during the Holocaust for 511 days. Wow. They lived underground for over a year and a half, and some of these people are still alive, and they found them. Do they still live in the caves? No. Okay. No. They lived there for a year and a half. I got you. But they had never told their story. They just kept it a secret. Wow. Because they were like no one would believe it. Plus, also, in case they ever needed to go back to the caves well, they did go back. They took them back to the caves. No, I'm saying if they ever had to go back to the cave, like, you want to keep the cave secret. They weren't the first time, but it's pretty powerful. And they take some of these survivors back to this cave where they haven't been since the Holocaust. Wow. And they all survive, too. Really great documentary. That's cool. Yeah, very cool. Like no place else. Like no place on earth. Okay. I like no place else. There's also, apparently a trend in parts of Europe to buy old man made cave homes, just a thing, and dress them up. I saw this and I was like, really? I didn't double check. But I could see this. Yeah. I mean, this is grabster. So he's good on his facts. Yeah. Outfitting them with electricity, installing modern plumbing, getting the ventilation system going and just turning it into a vacation home. Yeah. Putting on tile floor. And there's always the cave home. Weirdos TV, like bizarre houses. Right. If you're a green person. Yeah. You could do a lot worse than build yourself a cave home because the environmental impact is so much lower, it requires much fewer building materials. If you can deal with very low natural light and not go crazy, then a cave might be suited for you. If you can deal with the damp and moisture, cave might be suited for you. Yeah. And I shouldn't have said weirdos. It's okay to eat their own, but anytime I see those shows of, like, extreme bizarre homes, just shoot the TV. This guy made a house out of, like Bob Gule was on it. Yeah, pretty much. I've never been in, like there was a cave house near us growing up, actually. Really? Yeah. It was when they built into the side of Earth. Where? In Stone Mountain. Is it still there? I assume so. Is it built into? Stone Mountain. No. Okay. And it was like, kind of the people go by there and look at it and stuff. And even as a kid, I thought it was kind of dumb. Did you ever know Jack McBrayer when you were younger? Kenneth from 30 Rock? He's from Stone Mountain Conyers. Oh, really? Yeah, in the show, he's from Stone Mountain. Oh, really? Yeah. One of the other writers for 30 Rock, though I can't remember his name, is, I think, what to read in. Is that right? Cool. But no, I didn't know. Jack McBrayer. I wish. You got anything else? Oh, yeah. The last thing. One of the other benefits of a cave home, it's very difficult to break into, which is sad, because that is not the reason why they were initially used in paleo. Luther Garrett. But it's a quality point now. That's true. How far we've seen where was it that guy that built a house underground? No, I've seen those before. I've seen, like, missile silos converted into homes and things like that. This one was for sale recently. I can't remember who sent it to me, but he basically built it's not like a weird silo house. It's like a home he just built underground. Like, when you go down there, he's got paintings of the outside world on all the walls. It was this rich guy who built it, I think, as, like, a shelter in case something bad happened. And so there's pictures of, like, rolling fields. And when you're underground, obviously you can tell it's a painting, but it doesn't feel like some cave. It's like just a regular house built underground. Well, there's a theory that we're going to end up living underground because eventually Arable cropland will become so valuable that we'll basically be forced to inhabit the opposite of skyscrapers. They'll be going down instead of up because we'll need the land on top for crops. Didn't we do one on why don't humans live underground? Oh, yeah. I guess that could be part four, then. I guess so. It's not really a cave. Yeah, that's true. This is the cave suite. All right. So let's see. You don't have anything else? I got nothing else here. If you want to learn more about cave dwellers, you can type cave dwellers into the search BARHOW stuffworks.com. And I said search bars means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this we keep making the same mistake with acceleration. Oh, yeah. And I'm tired of it. If we ever say this again, I'm going to put us both in time out. You'd think Jerry would be paying attention, but I don't know why we keep making this mistake. But in the solar sales episode we talked about, in fact, I think it was you this time said something about the acceleration will kill you, or the speed will kill you, or something going that fast. Yeah, I'm sure it was me. We got a lot of emails, and this was one of the nicer ones. Heads up, guys. On a few things, including on the solar sales, there's been some misunderstanding between speed and acceleration. Common belief is that traveling at high speed is taxing on the body. Not true. It is the acceleration and not the speed which is dangerous. Take as an example, traveling in a car, changing your velocity from zero to 100 km/hour in a very short time results in a large acceleration. This is where you get that feeling of being crushed into your seat. But once you keep that constant speed, that feeling goes away. Same thing for a plane. Notice when you accelerate on the Tarmac, it's pretty intense, but once you're up in the air, you'd barely feel a thing. Yeah, you think we'd know this all sorts of research on the rocket sled test and acceleration, and it's just misspeaking in the moment. We know this. If I may interrupt for a second, I ran across this designer's Euthanasia roller coaster. What? It was basically this guy design is all conceptual, obviously. It's slightly tongue in cheek, but it was designed to kill you. Like the roller coaster was designed to kill you to go out with the thrill. Yeah. And he describes at what point you will die and from what. Basically, it's like you are going upside down so fast, the acceleration is so great that it basically keeps your heart from pumping. Wow. And just to make sure you're dead, he added like six of those loops. Right. But it starts with this huge hill. I can't remember what it's called. I think if you look up Euthanasia roller coaster, this guy's design will come up. It's pretty interesting, but it would be from acceleration, not speed. Yeah. Well, that's a lot of work to put into a killing machine. I would just draw a length of rope and a sturdy beam. Right. You wouldn't be a successful designer. Probably. So then he puts it in the context of the solar sail and says only very small accelerations are involved. So human traveling in such a ship would experience minimal forces. So hopefully clears it up a little bit. It doesn't. Rocking it, guys. Thanks a lot. That is from Niraj. From Australia. Mauritius. Niraj. Thank you. You appreciate that. We will never make that mistake again. I disagree. I'm sure we will. Speed will kill you. Where's? Northern Ireland. Great Britain, UK. England. We've been getting that one wrong forever too. Yeah. There's always so much information. The human brain can hold everybody and we're trying to fill it with things like cave dwelling bags and stuff like that. Who is the bass player for Poison? I can't get rid of that. You know that. Yeah. Bobby Dahl. So there's CC. Who's the guitarist? Bobby Dahl is the guy. He sounds like a 1977 Oriole or something. The drummer was you remember him, right? No. Ricky Rocket. Oh, wow. Yeah, I do. I didn't even like poison. That's what's so funny. Poison is good. Yeah, I wasn't a fan. They were good. Let's see if you want to know more about Poison. I already did that part, didn't I? Sure. If you want to get in touch with us. How about that? Yes. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuff podcast@discovery.com and you can check out our very fun and entertaining home on the web stuffyoushadnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstepworks.com. Pay 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. comST up now." | ||
How TV Ratings Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-tv-ratings-work | Ever wonder why some great shows go off the air after a season or less? Blame it on the Nielsen company, which has for more than 60 years been the almost exclusive decider of what goes and what stays on TV. | Ever wonder why some great shows go off the air after a season or less? Blame it on the Nielsen company, which has for more than 60 years been the almost exclusive decider of what goes and what stays on TV. | Thu, 04 Sep 2014 16:43:57 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=4, tm_hour=16, tm_min=43, tm_sec=57, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=247, tm_isdst=0) | 40799650 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's Charles W, Tucker's Bryant and there's Jerry W. Jerry are rolling? Actually, Jerry's been canceled. Okay. Due to low ratings. You know what's funny is Jerry has been portrayed on television in a TV show that was canceled due to poor rating. Poor rating. That was our show. That was our show. We had a television show once. It was called stuff you should know. It was a slightly fictionalized version of our life, our work life. We made a sitcom. Yes, we did. It's pretty cool, and a lot of people loved it. And a lot of people are like, what in the world did you do it that way for? So that a lot. It's like, basically ten and ten. Oh, yeah. You're referring to the 20 people who've seen that show. Yeah, actually, we'll get to that all, but we know a little bit about how TV ratings work because of that. And in some ways, I believe we're a victim of the antiquated system that is the Nielsen TV ratings. Okay? Now, dude, it's antiquated. That's why it's changing. I do not disagree with the antiquated part. What I do disagree with is that had it been up to date, I think it would have had zero impact on our success. I don't know, man. I will say this to the people out there. What the network did was they looked only at one number, which is the amount of people that sat down in front of their television set on a Saturday Night Live at 10:00 P.m. To watch our show. Right. They did not count things that we'll talk about, like online streaming or DVR or anything like that, which is what makes it antiquated, because it's changing, man. People aren't watching TV like they used to, but they're basing a lot of these decisions on a system that was designed in the 1950s. So let's go back, man, it goes back even further than that. Back in 1923. The AC. Nielsen Company started. At the time, people who were broadcasting radio wanted to know what people were listening to. So there are a lot of companies that would telephone up family at random and say, bella, what are you listening to right now on the old Victorola the Amazing Adventure Hour? And he'd say, hey, thanks a lot, Bub. Yeah, talk to you later. And they'd hang up, and there's a nickel for your troubles. They wish, because we're talking depression at this time. Well, not 1923. Later on, they wish they had a nickel. Here's a chicken for your pot. Nice. Yeah, that's a Hoover reference, man. You don't get those too often. I try to bust them out. So the Nielsen Company said, that's all fine and good. That's great that you guys are figuring out what people are listening to, but we have something even better, because we are a technological powerhouse. And what they did was they randomly picked some families around America and said, say, can we put this cool recording device in your home near your radio, and it will record what you're listening to at any given time? And then we'll send technicians out to pick it up from time to time to get the information off of it and then bring it back so we can keep recording it. And family said, sure. And the Nielsen Company's domination of broadcast ratings was sealed after that point. Every competitor they had was just peanuts compared to the Nielsen Company. So much so that when you hear TV ratings, it's synonymous with nielsen ratings, very much like kleenex and facial tissue are one in the same thing, thanks to Nielsen's technological powerhouse. The irony of it, though, is that once they started installing those boxes in the they moved on to television sets. The innovation, they innovated somewhat, but fundamentally, principally, it remained the same until a year or two ago. Yeah. And we'll get into all the hardware of the hardware side of how it works. But what they did in 1954 was send actual little diaries that you would fill out and pencil and send back. And they still do that today in 2014, even though in 2006, they said they were going to stop. They still send those little diaries. And you get a little diary in the mail with five one dollars bills really? In the envelope. No way. For your troubles. That's funny. It's like the modern nickel. Yeah, exactly. And they rely on lazy, dishonest people to fill out this card and mail it back and then go spend that $5 on a grande latte. Yeah, it would have gotten a lot more than 1954. Oh, man, you could have bought a car. But that is the diary version. And the networks and advertisers have never liked the diary version. They still don't. No, but it's what's called sweepsweek, which is hard to say. That's right. We'll get to sweeps in a second. But what they mainly like to rely on are two different electronic hardware methods, the set meters, as in TV set and people meters. And right now, by 2015, they plan to have more than 6200 TV set meters. And this is just for the US. And Canada, by the way, because everyone else's TV is weird. Yeah. Simon, do you ever watch TV in different countries when you're traveling and stuff? Yes, and it is so much fun. It is fun, but after a while, you're like, I really miss American TV. Yeah, but I mean, if you're traveling abroad, you shouldn't be watching a whole lot of these acts, like late night in the hotel. But it's one of the great pluses, is you're just like, I don't feel like watching this. They'll go out and see the sites instead. Yeah. I think I was in Belgium watching TV with my buddy Brett years and years ago, and it was translated in English and subtitles. And one of the characters said something, and I guess I don't know if it was Flemish, and the other guy just looked and said, IK OOH. And it said Me too. So we still say that today when we're responding. Me too, to each other. We'll go, Ick. Nice. All those years later. So anyway, I said there was 6200 by 2015 and 31 markets, TV markets. And then there are about 35,000, I believe, now, people meters in those homes. I'm sorry, in about 20,000 homes. And those people meters are more specific because you can have three people meters in one house. We want to see what little Susie is watching. We want to see what her brother Randy's watching. And they won't see what her dad watches after everyone's gone to bed. Yeah. So each one of them will have their own little people meter that they'll turn on. And I always thought that these things were connected to your television, like your cable box, and it just kind of read the information, but they're actually listening devices. Isn't that weird? Totally blew my mind. So basically back to the podcast then. The way that Nielsen figures out what TV show you're talking to is because they have a device that's connected to the Internet that is eavesdropping on your TV. And they just, in 2006, finally got to the point where they perfected this technology. And they have codes that broadcasters, the networks, and the local affiliates have to put in to their audio stream. The audio video stream? Yeah. Not just the audio stream. Is it just audio? Yeah, but they're trying to come up with a video version. So basically there's a sound. There's a frequency that you can't hear. I don't even think your dog can hear it, but it comes through your TV and your Neil Sandbox can hear it. And it's basically an audio fingerprint for a show. And when the Neilsonbox hears that audio, it can be like, oh, well, they're watching Good Times right now. That's funny. I was just thinking that. No way. Good Times? Yeah. And then I was like, no, it should say Thief Company instead. It depends. And then you said good times. Although if you watch Good Times long enough, there's an episode of Three's Company coming on eventually on that channel. I think Good Times may be my favorite all time theme song. It's a good one. Oh, man, it's so good, it's ridiculous. Did I tell you, Henry? Mancini did. What's happening? Theme song? Yes. What episode was that in just a few ago? Oh, it's number stations because the sound, that the shortwave thing. So that's how Nielsen has been figuring out what people are watching, which is mind blowing if it seems a little small as far as the sample pool goes, which it is. It is. But what they do is they extrapolate that number just like pollsters do, and they say, well, these are average markets. These are average families. So if these eventually 6200 TV sets are watching this, we can pull that out and do some sort of they probably do it on a chalkboard in a room. There's this one guy who has the piece of chalk, and he extrapolates that out and says, well, this is what America is watching. Which always has bugged me. Yeah. Especially when you have a TV show that gets canceled. It is. Because it all comes down to just how representative is your sample? You said there's 6500 TV sets. They're 6200 by 2015 set meters. Right now, in 2014, May of 2014, there are 116.3 million TV sets in the US. Exactly. So this is a very small sample size. But if the guy with the chalk, Burt, can come up with a very good representative portion of the US. Like, there's this many divorced Hispanic families. There's this many gay Asian households. There's, like, this many Mitt Romney voters, and, like, they take all these guys and put them together, and it's a clear cross section of America. That's America, baby. You should be able to extrapolate pretty well from that. That's true. It just all depends on how good their statisticians are. That's right. And they do audits over the years and quality checks, of course, and compare ratings from different samples. So it's not like they just said, yeah, that's how we're doing it. Although they sort of do that, but they do quality checks. Of course. Yeah. One of the problems is there's been so few challenges from outside competition that Nielsen can do whatever it wants, and it's so powerful that it literally has the entire television industry at its feet. It decides what rating a TV show gets. And ultimately, the whole point to all of this stuff, to TV ratings in general, is so that networks and their local affiliates can set advertising rates for advertisers. There's $78 billion at stake that's the advertising spent in a year on television. And it all comes down to what? Rating nielsen, with their representative sample and their audio eavesdropping boxes and their $5 bills and a paper diary, decide that your TV show got that's right. That's the dirty little secret, is that they don't care how many people are watching that TV show. They care about how many people are watching the commercials. Yeah. That's really what they're looking at. And more specifically, what demographic, which is why I don't think we mentioned why the people meters are so valuable. Right. Because they want to get that specific demo so they can show advertisers 18 to 49 year olds. They spend a ton of money, and they're watching Community, but no one else is. So we'll cancel Community, which is kind of crazy, as we'll see in a little while. Yeah, but just quickly, let me go over I think most people know this, but if you've got a half hour TV show and you're going to have 22 minutes of TV show, then you're going to have eight minutes of commercial. Six of those are national ads sold by the network and then your local affiliate. That's where you're going to get your awesome commercials. Hey, Wolf, man. Two minutes worth or Crazy Eddie. I remember it was big up in the Northeast. And then so this is 2006. I couldn't find one recently. But back in 2006, if you're buying a commercial slot from a local affiliate, you're going to pay about one hundred dollars to two thousand dollars, depending on this is during the daytime. This isn't like 03:00 a.m. Depending on what show. So like back when Oprah was on, you could get a 32nd spot for $90. You could local affiliate. Yeah. You could also pay up to $2,000 for it and then apparently you're going to double that for a national ad for a 32nd spot during the day. Wow. Which isn't outlandish. Well, that's how Crazy Eddie right. Or the Wolfman. They don't have a ton of money. No, although I don't know, Wolfman wore a lot of jewelry. Yeah, that's true. For those of you who don't know who the Wolf Man is, we understand because you probably didn't live in Atlanta in yeah, I bet it was Southeast. I bet it was on like WTVS and stuff. All you have to do is go type in Wolfman Donna gallery furniture into the YouTubes and it will show you some classic gallery friends for ads. Or just type in, hey, ask for the Wolfman. No, ask for Donna. I don't remember that part. What? You don't remember Donna, his daughter with the hair, the whole premise of the ad, she was the Wolf Man, wanted you to come see him. And she'd say, hey, ask for the wolf, man. She'd go? No. Ask for Donna. She'd always get us go. All right, so let's take a break here and then we'll talk about you mentioned sweeps week. Yeah, I did. And we'll talk about that right after that. Yes, we will. All right, sweeps. Everyone's heard it. It is a bit yes, everyone hears about this is sweeps. We'll tell you what it is. This is the fact of the podcast to me. What sweepsweek? Yeah. Where it came from and why it exists. Well, in 1954 is when they started sending out those TV diaries and they made a geographic sweep starting in the Northeast, across the country from east to west, and they collected the little booklets. And those were our first reportings of TV ratings. So before they had the eavesdropping boxes that they were using. But it was basically like these aren't think maybe up to 20,000 households at one point in the major markets. The great thing about the paper diaries is they could go into local markets, smaller markets, and find out not just what the people in New York or La. Or Chicago are watching. Sure. But what the people in Santa Fe were watching, too. Or Fort Lauderdale. Yes. Those are saying, how does it play in Santa Fe? Is it sheboygan or something? Probably Sheboygan or Walla. Walla. I can't remember. It may have been a movie thing, too, but there's an industry saying, how does it play in the city? It's got a rhyme because that's what matters. Of course. New York and La. And the major markets are going to consume. They want to know what your average household wants to see. Right. And this is in 1954. This is the first time that anyone had ever taken a really comprehensive snapshot of what America was watching in a given week. And so they said, hey, this works really well. We're going to start doing this every year. We're going to have what's now called a sweet sweet, and it's going to be on this week. And so the TV executives said, well, wait a minute, wait a minute. Sweet sweet. This is what we're going to start setting our advertising rates against, and it's going to be this week. And I'm going to do the craziest stuff I can think of to get ratings as big and wide as I possibly can grab on that week. And that is where sweepsweek came from. And we've seen some pretty interesting things as a result of sweepsweek. Yeah, there's a great tradition of stunt casting during sweepsweek. Justin Bieber will show up on CSI. I didn't see that one, did you? No, I don't watch that show. And if I did, I would have punched my TV if you showed up on it. If you're going to shoot Jr. You're going to do it during sweeps week. Oh, yeah. The late night talk shows are going to load up their biggest Alist guests during sleeps week. Er did a live show. Yes. I actually watched that one, and I wasn't an Er fan. I just wanted to see if they could pull it off. Yeah, right. It was pretty cool. Ellen used to have a sitcom based on her life, and she came out on that show during Sweet Sweet. Yes, that's right. And very famously, there was a not one, not two, but Thrice Park Happy Days, where Fonzie jumps the shark on water skis. Was that sweeps that happened during Sweet week. Wow, that's a sweet failure. Well, I don't know if people watched it. Yeah, I don't guess you can call it a failure because that's probably psychic. It's part of the lexicon now. Do you remember in the rest of development where Henry Winkler jumps over a shark? Yeah, classic. These days, sweeps week is actually 16 weeks because they have I don't know about narrowed it down. They broadened it out to four week periods in November, February, May and July, and they still tried out special things for suites. But it definitely doesn't have the teeth that it used to because of the way that people consume media these days, which we're going to start getting into. So it doesn't have the teeth that it used to. And as a result, a lot of networks have kind of stopped, like you said, doing the stunt casting and that kind of stuff, but it's still basically holding broadcast TV hostage because that is still what advertisers want to see. What are your ratings during sweeps week? And that's what they set their ad rates against. Yeah. So the fact that there are these four month long sweeps weeks means that the broadcasters have to follow the normal fall to summer broadcast model with reruns in between. Yeah. And this is for NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, like the major broadcast networks, non cable networks. Right. Which is a completely dying beast. Yeah. Because they rely 100% exclusively on advertising. And cable has been eating their lunch because advertising has been going down. It looks like it's already peaked. It's still $78 million. Billion. Billion. But cable takes a huge, substantial portion of that in advertising. But then, even when advertising rates go down, cable still survives because cable makes money off of subscriber fees and transmission fees, too. Yeah, exactly. Which is why cable has a big leg up. And also, they don't have a traditional television season. They can release stuff all year long. Right. You can binge watch it. Yes. Which is happening. That's the new model. So, like we said, for many years, Nielsen was just kind of as this one Wired article, the Nielsen Family is Dead put it. It was in a torper. And the first thing that really the first thing that really roused Nielsen was DVRs. Because when DVRs came along, the advertising industry was like, oh, God, people can fast forward through ads now. Yes. Like they've always dreamed of doing. Exactly. Now they can. And it was the basically the television apocalypse. And that didn't pan out because advertisers figured out that, yes, people can fast forward through ads, but there are ways to still get your message across at 16 times speed. You can do things called popbusters, where you use the actors or the look or the set of the TV show that you're advertising within to make them think like the show just came back on and you caught them, because it's really an ad. I know there's all sorts of stuff you can do. So it hasn't been an advertising apocalypse. And as a result, because DVRs are clearly here to stay, and have been since the early 2000s, nielsen has had to kind of finally be like, okay, we need to innovate a little bit and figure out how to include DVR, because not everybody is sitting down at 08:00 on a Monday night and watching Murder, She Wrote. Nobody is, man. I watched a couple of episodes the other night. I love that show. I've never seen one episode. What? I know, man. It is good. It's good. Another thing, too, just to backtrack, I've noticed lately on demand watching, which a lot of cable companies I'm a comcast person because I'm forced to be. Yes. Really? A lot of the on demand shows now, within the first couple of weeks that they're available, you can't fast forward through oh yeah, I can hit the fast forward button and a little null sign comes up and says, sorry, you're going to have to sit through this. So I guess the fact that the DVR is connected to the Internet because it's getting show information, the actual show is being recorded on your physical hard drive. I'm sure there's cloud DVR recorders or whatever, but for the most part, there's a hard drive that's recording shows onto your DVR. And then the other capability is that it's connected to the Internet, which is where it gets show information and all that stuff to present to you. Exactly. But the Internet, as you may have figured out by now, is a two way street. Not only can information be downloaded to your home, it can be uploaded, and that includes your preferences, what shows you watch, how often you watch them, when you watch them. And so all of a sudden, the DVR companies are like, hey, Nielsen is giving you guys like 08:00 P.m. On NBC ratings. We've got all of these other ratings that they're not taking into account that you can get from us. Not only that, but they can actually tell when you're pausing your TV because the infamous Nip slip. I hate even saying those words. Yes, really? And the 2004 Super Bowl with Janet Jackson. TiVo the popular DVR company. Although the people still use TiVo. They probably do. I don't know. It's like every local cable company has their own DVR now. It seems like it. But they were able to say that was the most replayed clip in the history of TiVo up until that point, was people pausing and rewinding that stupid, stupid stunt. Right. But like you were saying, they've now decided, at least some networks have decided they're going to start counting what's called the DVR. I'm so bitter. The DVR plus system, which is live plus same day. Yeah, that's the Nielsen method. Live plus three days or live plus three, and then live plus seven, which is obviously live plus ten days if you just watch it later that night. Plus three is three days within three days, and then seven is within that week. And I'm seeing like, conflicting information out there. It seems like either they now have basically just live plus three, which is like their main measurement. Well, what matters is what the advertisers say is what we care about. Like, you can have live plus 20, but if the advertisers are like, we don't care about live plus 20, that doesn't do anything for us. Exactly. It's true. But it sounds like you're right. At one point they tried to say that live plus same day is basically the same thing Neilson did. Right. And the advertiser, they wanted to lump it together with Live and the advertiser like, no, it's really not the same. No. Because of the fast forwarding thing. Yeah. So let's at least separate these numbers out so we can look at it all individually. Yeah. The thing is, the people who are watching TV, I e. You and I, we don't care what the advertisers think. And they basically just need to keep up with our viewing habits, which are changing radically. The broadcast networks have lost 17% of the most coveted demographic, 18 to 49 year olds between 2012 and 2013. 17% just gone. Part of that is because the networks put out terrible stuff. Although so do the cable networks these days, too. Yeah, sure. But another part of it is because broadcast is stuck in this sweeps week certain time on a certain day format that it's been in forever since the they're being basically held hostage by Nielsen's ratings. So there's been a real push to advance technologically and to start taking into account these other myriad ways that people consume television and getting a clear picture of what an audience is doing. And the fact that it's now computer based and we have ways of tracking computers, really, broadcasters are as excited as ever, and we just have to figure out how to do it. And we'll talk about how they're trying to figure out how to do it right after this. Chuck? Yeah. We love squarespacecom, don't we? Yeah. Because if you're in need of a website and you're just a regular schmo and not like a programmer, there's really no easier, better way to do it. That's right. Because Squarespace uses drag and drop, intuitive building of websites. Yeah. You don't have to know how to use code. No. And if you get confused, even though it's intuitive, they have great 24/7 customer support, email support, live chat. I think I said twenty four seven. You know what that means? Yes. It means all the time. All the time. Plus, Square space is very design centric. They produce beautiful, clean designs and your content becomes the focus of your website, which is what you're after. Yeah. And if you want to sell stuff, all the plans have commerce options, which is really cool. You can host an entire store or accept donations for your personal blog. Plus, your website looks good on every device from your laptop or tablet or mobile phone. And get this, you can find all this out for yourself firsthand. Risk free. That's right. Making Squarespace an all in one solution. All you have to do is go to www.squarespace.com stuff. That's our promo code. You're going to get a 14 day trial. No credit card is going to be necessary here. And if you like the product, it costs as low as $8 a month, including a free domain name if you sign up for a year. That's right. So everybody go use the offer code Tuffs and get 10% off of your first purchase. That's squarespace. Comstuffercodestuff. Well, one thing before we get to the Internet that we haven't mentioned yet is you might hear in TV parlance, the word share as opposed to rating. And what that is, is a share is how many people are watching a certain TV show that are actually watching TV. A rating is just how many people are watching it. But the share is how many people what share of people are watching a show that are watching something other people. Like if your TV is off, it doesn't count. No. Your share number is always going to be higher. Yeah, it is. But the rating is the number of people watching it compared to the entire population of America. Right, exactly. Or Canada. Yeah, I keep forgetting about Canada. They steal our shows. So now we're on to the newest development, DVRs kind of through wrenching the plans, but they're trying to take those into account. And they've been pretty successful, it seems like, with that. Yeah. Once they settle on what they all agree is a valid thing. Measurement. Yeah, valid measurement. But now, of course, people are consuming TV online more than ever on their laptops, on their tablets, on their mobile devices. Can I throw out some figures for you real quick, Chuck? Please. Consider this. 116,000,000 television sets in the United States. Yeah. There's 113,000,000 tablets. What? Yeah. 166,000,000 smartphones and 243,000,000 Internet connected computers. Double the amount of televisions in the US. And people are watching stuff whenever they want, however they want on this. And as it stands right now, nielsen is still trying to figure out how the heck they can most effectively track these people. Yeah, well, this is the first year, this fall TV season will be the very first year that they're going to supposedly have a across the board measurement system with TV ratings that will include viewership on everything, including your mobile device. And it's for some innovation, too, because Nielsen can't just say, oh, well, we'll add like an eavesdropper onto your tablet or your smartphone because it'll drain your battery. Yeah. What it'll probably be is a third party app or piece of software. And it makes sense. It seems like it would be easier than ever to track watching habits in the near future. Okay. It is. If you're Google, if you're Nielsen and you've been basically caught off guard by this since you maybe started thinking about this in 2011, then you're in deep trouble, old man Nielsen. There's a very effective way of tracking computer use, Chuck, and it's called cookies. And cookies have been around forever, and they've gotten to the point now where they can plant cookies on your tablet, your smartphone, your computer, all these things you use. And after a while, just from paying attention to the data, the algorithm will basically say, I think these three cookies over here are the same. Person, and they'll put them together, and all of a sudden, what was once three users is now one. And the picture is that much clearer of who binge watched season two of True Blood this week. Right. So there's cookies out there, and they've been around for a while, and they're very easy to get and very easy to use. And this is what Nielsen is up against. Yeah. And you may be saying to yourself, well, who cares how people are watching it if it's online or on TV? But what matters is advertisers. If you've noticed, if you watch shows online, like with Hulu or something, they're different commercials. You're not seeing the same stuff. And they still can't even decide now what to count because they don't want to. If Brad Pitt does a Pepsi commercial, he probably has it in his contract. Well, this can only run on air, on network, on air TV in Thailand only don't show me on Hulu. I don't want my commercial running online. If I show up in South Korea, you owe me $10 million. That's right. So they have a lot of control on how their images are seen. Or maybe there's an awesome commercial that licensed the who's won't get Fooled again. It's only licensed for television. They can't show that same commercial online. Right. So you're going to have to show what some advertisers or networks might consider a substandard ad. They don't even want to count that as a view. Yeah, and the same applies to TV shows, too. There might be actors, writers that are just for on air and not for video distribution or just like with the ads. So it seems to me like it's not just Neilson he's up against this. The networks are still trying to figure out things like TV everywhere. They want you to be able to watch TV everywhere you are at all times, because then they can serve you ads everywhere at all times, and they can charge for those kind of things, but they can't say how to track this yet one. And then not everything is cleared for all forms of media, too. The other problem with online viewing is they don't have that all important demographic detail. Okay. Again, though or they could, though, if they start using cookies, then they've got it right there. Sure. This is what advertisers are salivating over, like hyper targeted ads. So, like, imagine if you and I are watching the same, like, classic episode of Saturday Night Live. Yeah. And I'm watching on my computer. You're watching on your computer. We're sitting right next to each other. We press play at the same time. The ad break gets to the same spot at the same time, and then boom, two different ads come up. Yeah, I get mobile team because I'm in my forty s. And you get a Ferrari ad because you're five or six years young. Exactly. That's exactly what would happen, too. So this is what advertisers want. Like that level is targeted, but the Nielsen Company is still dominating. If they can catch up, the Nielsen Company will be around for another 5000 years. But again, they're up against cookie tracking right now. And if somebody can come along and be like, hey man, we've got all of your second screen data you could ever want, then again, Nielsen is in big trouble. Well, there are companies trying to do that. There's one called.com Score that says they can offer a single metric that shows who's watching television across every single platform you can think of. Time shifted on demand, streaming live, whatever.com scores, they can do it. NBC has signed up with them and they haven't dropped Nielsen. They're spending more money to try and get better tracking. There's another company, they did that in the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Right? Was that the trial? Yeah. I think that's when they rolled it out, supposedly it was super successful. Yeah, that's what they said. And then there's another one called Rentrack, that their origins were just a video cassette distributor, but they realized that that was going nowhere. What, in 2014? Even worse, they were beta. Yes. They diversified into TV ratings and they use cable set top boxes and right now have deals with 70 networks and 300 TV stations and basically the competition. David Poltrack, he's a chief research officer for CVS Corporation, said that the competition on the research front is the most intense it's ever been. It's a pretty exciting time. Yeah. And Nielsen actually the FTC antitrust settlement, where I think the way I understand it is that Nielsen was using, they acquired a company called Arbitran, which is a specialist in radio and out of home measurement. And I think there was an antitrust suit saying like, you can't be the only people using this. So they've now licensed that out. We're forced, I think, to license it out to.com Score, who is now using that portable people meter. Not purple people eater. No, man, but that's off to you for generation. I think I'm understanding that correctly. But the long and the short of it is, unless they get this right, they think they are missing out on as much as 15% of TV viewing is going unaccounted for at this point. So if you like you're a network or something like that, that's ad revenue. Right? That's an ad rate hike that you aren't getting if you're an advertiser that's like a whole ghost group that you may or may not be getting your product in front of, but like you can't say either way. Yeah. Having ten or 15% of the advertising or viewing audience unaccounted for is not acceptable to me. Not in modern America, buddy. This is what I think is going to happen. I think they're going to get their jazz together and be able to track who watches the show down to 100%. Yeah. And the people who make the shows will sell a package to an advertiser. And the advertiser spot runs in that show no matter where it's consumed. So it's like a 360 deal, basically. Like this show is going to be broadcast live or broadcast on the nets. It's going to be up on our player. You're going to be able to watch it on tablet. But in all these, it's going to be when you buy an ad spot, it goes with the show no matter where the show goes. Right. I could see that. And then there's another happy aspect of tracking, viewing down to this granular detail. Your shows are more likely to be saved. Our show, again, I say, would not have been helped by any of this. But the whole reason Community was online are still on air was because the NBC was smart enough to be like, oh, well, wait a minute. Yeah, its ratings are abysmal, traditionally speaking. But on Twitter, it actually trends. It's like a worldwide trend that's valuable. And they figured out that this is something you have to take into account. Nielsen has as well. They launched a partnership with Twitter, who in turn bought like basically a TV trend tracking service. Yes. So now Nielsen is going to start taking Twitter trending into account, into its ratings. Yeah, I think Nielsen has to deal with Facebook too, right? I believe so, yeah. To try and see again what's trending, I guess. Yeah. And so now it's not just going to be how many people are watching, how many people are talking about it, how many people dress up like that character on that night, that kind of thing. So really neat inventive shows that don't get a huge national audience. Sure will maybe have a longer life. We might as well have Freaks and Geeks. Yes, that would be nice. Although that was a perfect run encapsulated in one season. Yeah, it's pretty great. And everyone on that show would only be huge movie stars. Almost not everyone, but a lot of them did. Most of them. Man, you know, if we would have had time. Who we should have talked to about this was Luke Ryan. Oh, yeah, our buddy Luke. He's movies though, right? Well, now he knows all about this stuff. He does TV as well. But he's just talking to him is like he's always one step ahead. He's very forward thinking, smart guy. Yes. I bet he would verify your theory on where we're headed. Maybe tweak it. Well, Luke, if you're out there listening, let us know. You better be listening. And also, I'm eternally grateful to Luke Ryan for my Billy Zabka signed hot tub time machine poster. That's right. That's how we first met him, right? Yeah, that's pretty cool. If you want to know more about Luke Ryan or TV ratings, you can type either of those two into the search bar@houseofworks.com. And since I said Luke Ryan, not luke Bryan. Yeah, that's different. I don't even know who Luke Bryan is. He's a huge, big time country star. That's why I don't know who he is. You know, he sold out, like, two shows at Madison Square Gardens, and apparently he's the only one to ever do that. He's huge. People sell out multiple shows at Madison Square Garden all the time. Sells out like six, eight in a row. He's one of them. Okay, maybe he broke the time record or something. He's a good guy, too, though. If his name isn't Willie Nelson, then I don't know him well. Anyway, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this train conductor. I love that job. We had one that wrote in. Awesome. Hey, guys. Been wanting to write in for a while now. Been waiting until I could think of something interesting to relate to you. I found your podcast a while back in February. I was looking for something to listen to while I commute to work. Working at a Penn station for the Long Island Railroad as a train conductor means my hours tend to have me driving home anywhere from midnight to 03:00. A.m. Prior to finding your show, all I listened to were audio books or the radio. But I got bored with all that after a while and I noticed my eyelids were getting heavier and heavier, which is about 70 miles door to door on the trip. Yeah, it's no good. Enter stuff. You should know from the first time I listened to you guys have been wide awake, amused, and attentive the whole drive. That's why I want to thank you guys for keeping me alive. Because if not for your show, I'm sure I would have fallen asleep and driven off the road. Ever since childhood, I've always been fascinated about history and learning how things work, and was evident by me dismantling my toys and attempting to put them back together. Although it's funny, in the end, I always had extra parts. So, again, thank you for accompanying me on my drive home every night. It's been nice having three friends in the car. Although one of you is extremely silent. That's Jerry. And by the way, Jerry didn't get canceled. We were just joking. Yeah, she's on the air. And that is from Angel Cartagena in Bethel, Connecticut. Or on Hill. I wondered about that. He says psychic or mail? I know you both try so hard to pronounce things. My last name is Cartagena, like the city in Romancing the Stone. But he didn't say if it was an Hell or angel. If his last name is Cartagena, it's anhell I would think, but we'll see. We will see. Let us know on Hill. That's what I'm going with. All right. If you want to let us know how to pronounce your name, we're always happy to hear from buddies out there who listen in listening land. You can tweet to us at Syskpodcast. You can post the pronunciation of your name on Facebook. Comstenknow, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstepfworks.com. And as always, hang out with us at our home on the web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetopworks.com. Hey everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app day." | ||
How Water Slides Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-water-slides-work | Water slides have been around in one form or another since the Romans. But back then they didn't know what they had on their hands. With the birth of the waterpark in the 1970s, these rides have only gotten more extreme, leading up to the birth of today's | Water slides have been around in one form or another since the Romans. But back then they didn't know what they had on their hands. With the birth of the waterpark in the 1970s, these rides have only gotten more extreme, leading up to the birth of today's | Tue, 28 Apr 2015 18:06:23 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=28, tm_hour=18, tm_min=6, tm_sec=23, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=118, tm_isdst=0) | 33803357 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. There's, Jerry. Slowing us down. And this is stuff you should know. It's the podcast. That's right. The water slide edition. Yeah, man. You like water slides? Who doesn't? Nobody, pretty much. Water slides are fun, man. I used to go to Whitewater here in Atlanta growing up. I haven't been in years and years. To a water park? Yeah. I would like to go, though. Oh, you're going to go again? Yeah. I don't know. To Whitewater, because I don't know if it's any good. I mean, it was great when I was a kid, but now that I'm an adult, I'm a little more discerning with my needs. I see. Reading about some of these water parks, I'm like, they're really doing it right. Yeah. Like the one in Kansas City. Yeah. What's it called? Well, I think it's a German name, isn't it? Yeah, schlitterbond. And you know why it's German? Why? Because German invented the water sign. Okay. I was looking this up. I was looking all over for the first water slide. I think I found it. I want to hear. All right. And it was fairly recent, too, I thought. Water slides probably the 1400 is what I would have guessed. No, I was way off. Well, this one article I found says that the very first time people did this was people aqueduct workers in Rome and Egypt to get from one point to another quicker would just slide down the aqueduct. Very smart. So they think that's where the idea may have come from. Well, there's a lot of natural water slides around the world, too, that people take advantage of. So I would imagine it started out like, even maybe before then. Yeah. Where someone finally said, though, hey, this is neato. I can make money off of it, and let's build one just for this purpose. And what I found was 1923 with Herbert Selna, who was actually an American. I thought he was German. Where? Well, this was in Minnesota. He invented the water to bogging slide, and they got to use it two days out of the year. And I think it was a sled type deal. And then I saw one in England in the 1930s or so where it was the same deal. It was like a little flat bottom boat that in England they still had on their full they weren't even like, invading gear. They're like in their full suits and monocles and frogs sitting in this boat. Okay, so it's basically a little flat bottom boat that would go down a slide and then skitter across the water. Like the log ride or something like that. Yeah, that's a water slide. It's way more dangerous, I would guess, because it's the 1920. Yeah, exactly. So I thought the providence was even more recent than that. I thought it was the 1970s. Well, that's where the water park was born. Okay. I ran across mentions of water slides, original water slides in the United States from the earliest I found I didn't find the Minnesota one. You didn't find the Minnesota one? I didn't. Well, did you read that story, the History of Water Park? Yeah, man. You came up with this great article from Grantland, which is a publication that has some really good long form articles in general. Awesome. But this one in particular was really cool. What is it called? Do you remember the Wet stuff? We have a plane on the right stuff. Sure. Yeah. Like, the original astronauts exist of water parks. Yeah. Well, in this case, George Millet was sort of the inventor and main thief that built the water park by stealing a bunch. And they don't know there were water slides because he would travel all over the country and there'd be like, oh, there's this concrete water slide. Yes. But that was all it was at the time. It was like this hill with, like, three curvy concrete slides cut into the side of it. Yeah. And you heard Chuck, right? He just said concrete. The original man made water slides were made of concrete. Yes, I've been on those. Did it not like, tear your skin up? No. Really? Yeah. It's like a concrete swimming pool. Yes. Which I mean, like, if you ever come in contact with the bottom of it yeah, it hurts. Well, no, there's a lot of water, first of all. Right. And then these are the ones you needed a little mat to sit on. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. I was going to say, like, you just stand up in the bottom of your swimming trunk to be totally shredded. So Malay had the original idea when he went to a wave pool in Alabama and said, this is awesome. He would see a water slide and say, that is awesome. You would see, like, a little kids water thing, say, that is awesome. Let's bring it all together. Let's bring it all together. And he did. He was the guy who made Wet and Wild. Yeah. Well, he was originally the creator of SeaWorld and then left SeaWorld in 1974. He's forced out. Yes. I get the feeling that he was not an easy guy to work with. No. Supposedly, in this Grantland article, supposedly he had red hair and his face would get just as red when he'd start yelling. Yeah, which was a lot. So he said, let's bring this all together. Let's go inland to where people don't have access to beaches and things, which makes sense. Make human made beaches. Yeah. With these wave pools. And he was rebuffed by investors at first because they were like, no one's going to pay to swim. Right, you big dummy. Yeah. That's a really stupid idea. Yeah. That was, like, the initial response that he got. I can kind of understand that. No, one had ever tried it before. Sure. Swimming and bathing was one of those things that you just went to the beach and it was free. So the idea of bringing the beach to people was kind of lost on the early investors. Not all of them. He managed to raise, like, $3 million. Yeah. Or there'd be, like, community pools and things, but not like a theme park, just without roller coasters and rides. Right. People thought he was nuts, so he built it anyway in Orlando. He called it Wet and Wild because he said, apparently in a meeting, the names got to be Wet and Wild. And they're like, how about that? We're ready to go home. Pretty much. You've been yelling at us all day. The centerpiece of Wet and Wild was the wave pool. Yeah. Well, it's a wave pool. It's a pool that creates waves, which was a huge deal. And that's what he saw in Decatur, Alabama, in 1974. Right. That's the thing that kicked it all off. Exactly. And like you said, it was the centerpiece. So when you came into Wet and Wild in Orlando on International Drive, that was the first thing you saw. Yeah. And it was meant to kind of bowl you over a little bit, like, oh, my gosh, it's a human made beach. I'm trying to discontinue my use of man made, by the way. Oh, really? Yeah, sure. It's really easy to say, too, because humanmade you grow up saying that, but yeah, human made. It's harder to say, it's harder to remember. So I'm training myself. Yeah. Good job. Thanks. I'm going to start that, too, now. But you're going to say human made, right? Maybe you and Terry Gross the idea was pretty great, but it didn't take off at first. He lost about 400 grand in his first year because people were used to roller coaster parks, and they were used to go at those things. He was trying to talk parents into kicking back on the lounge chair by the wave pool while the kids partied and the parents were like the ones who went again. Yeah. The parents who went there were like, this is kind of awesome, actually. Yeah. But getting them there at first was a lot harder than he anticipated. Yeah. He figured out, though, that there was kind of a dual attractiveness to a water park, depending on your age. Yeah. So, like, if you're a teenager, you wanted something fast and scary and fun and girls and bathing suits. Sure. But you wanted thrills and spills and chills. Right. If you're a parent, by the time you're at this place, it's probably very hot. You've probably already been to Disney World or whatever, and you are tired, worn out, but your kid still has tons of energy, so they're running around. You don't feel like running around. You feel like sitting, in a waypool. You feel like sitting on a lounge chair, or you feel like and this is an idea he ripped off from, I think, Sri Lanka or something like that. Which one? The Lazy River. The Lazy River. Yeah. That was a stroke of genius. It seems like that apparently sealed the fate of wet and Wild was introducing this lazy river, where you don't even have to propel yourself. You just get in this river and you're gently pushed along by the current, long and along, and you can just chill out and not think about anything in the nice cool water on a hot day in Orlando. Yeah. And apparently when he had stolen that idea, the humans building this thing was like, well, yeah, we can build a river. Like you get in one and get out the other. And he's like, no, this thing is fully enclosed. You never have to get out if you don't want to. Right. He's like, do I have to explain the concept of infinity to you? So they build it shaped like the infinity sign got fired. Because in the middle, they all just bump together. They gluten at it. Traffic jam. So I mentioned him stealing. Everyone was stealing. Because after this water park started opening up, it was the 70s, everybody was stealing. Yeah. All over the country. And they stole their names. Like, every water park in the world has the same, like 20 words over and over to describe their rides. And they all just nicked from each other. Right. Like flooms and raging and wild and splash and storm and typhoon. Or in his case, the kamikaze. Well, yeah, that was the first really big in the States, at least. I think he stole it from somewhere overseas. I think he stole from Japan, actually. It was Japan. That's right. Yeah. Which is appropriate and highly inappropriate to have named it the kamikaze event. Absolutely. But it was the first really tall water slide in the United States. And the way that it was allowed to be made really tall is because it used fiberglass, which revolutionized water park, because, again, they would use skin shredding concrete that had some real serious structural limitations. Like you had to build it into a hill. She had to build a hill. And then you had to build the water slide into the hill with fiberglass. It was like just build straight up into the air and you're fine. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah. And the Kamikaze was the first one. Plus they built it and situated it in a water park in a way where you could see that thing from miles away. Yeah. And it was basically like a beacon. Like, come check this out. Your twelve year old crazy person. Yes. They call it a skyline feature. It's the same reason that the biggest roller coasters are going to be situated near the highway. Most times it's basically self made advertising and marketing. Right. So they also found that they could make a lot of money doing other things, like selling concessions. And at first, they would put the concessions all near the lockers because you're not going to carry on money. But then they said in this article, that became the mother of invention. And they were like they invented the water wallet, and they sold a lot of bathing suits because women would come in their bikinis and get their bikini tops thrown off, some of these rides. So they sold a lot of one piece bathing suits once people got there, and it was kind of genius. They were making money hand over fist at a certain point. Yes. And this is one of the reasons why I think the 70s are possibly the greatest decade of all time. The water park was established in the 70s. Wet and wild. Yeah. So these days, there are some really innovative slides going on, and we'll talk about those later. Sure. First, let's take a break and then we'll get back to how water slides actually work. So, Chuck, I promise physics, and we're going to deliver on physics. Yeah, buddy. If you have listened to our roller coaster episode, you'll probably get a lot of this, but the basic premise between a roller coaster and a person on a water slide is virtually the same thing. Like when you're on a water slide, when you're at the top, you're just sitting there, you like a slinky. Have a lot of potential energy. That's right. And then once you shove off, that potential energy is translated into kinetic energy and gravity starts to pull you downward. That's right. And when you're traveling on a relatively straight slope, the force of gravity pushing down on your body is counteracted by the force of the slide pushing up and you're going kind of slow. Sure. But if you take that slide and move it more from the horizontal to the vertical, it's still pushing you forward. But it's not counteracting gravity any longer. It's just basically allowing you to drop very quickly from a high place to a lower place. Yeah. And aided the whole time, I guess, combating friction. You are aided by the water. Of course. That's going to help the friction not take hold. And you won't scrape your little bottom on the concrete water slide any longer because they're sending tons and tons of water constantly down these water slides. Yes. The higher the drop and the steeper the grade, the less friction is allowed to generate, because the less the slide is counteracting directly the force of gravity. So you can get going pretty quick. Yeah. And I remember on some of these tall slides that would have like, a big drop and then a little small hill. Like, I remember leaving my butt leaving the slide, the concrete slide. Yeah. This is when they were fiber classification, like zero friction, because I'm airborne slightly. Right. And they had missteps along the way, like sending kids off into the world, launching them from these water slides, especially with the serpentine slide, which all of a sudden, you have angles introduced to the physics and curves and inertia. And so they realize, we got to build these walls up pretty high on some of these curves because you're working against your own inertia. It's taking in one direction, and then, boom, you're taking a hard left turn. Your body still wants to go that direction. Right, exactly. But that's why you'll fly out. The flight says, no, you're going this way now. So it adds a whole other sensation to it, not just the downward fall, but a change in velocity, too. Yeah. So they raised these sidewalls, and then eventually some of them were so extreme that they just said that you have to be in a tube altogether. Right. Completely enclosed. Yes. Which is also a feature. Like, they have some that have, like, it'll be dark, and they'll have lights inside the tube, and they've got seat them up over the years. Right. They clean up real nice. Well, that's pretty much the physics of water slides. There's not a whole lot else to know about it. Well, the water break, that's another feature. Okay. So you made mention of, like, people being thrown all over the place. There's a story in that grantland article where George Malay was showing, I guess, an investor or something like that, this new slide, and had one of his teenage employees go down the slide and at the bottom of the slide, the collecting pool. Well, before the collecting pool is supposed to be a dip, which is filled with water, and that serves as the water break. Then you've got the collecting pool, the place where you spill out into, and that's supposed to slow you down even further. Apparently, the design of this slide was such that this little teenage kid wasn't really slowed down with the water break and skipped across the collecting pool onto the concrete in front of the investor, who's, like, I don't think that's supposed to happen. Right. You may want to check your numbers. Melee. Yeah. I think there may have been a sled, maybe not a sled slide. Well, with a sled slide, you would guess that there's even less friction. Yeah. So you need to have a longer water break going on. But the cool thing about the water break is that was invented by somebody who's actually one of the foremost waterslide designers working today. Guy named Jeff Henry. Yes. Jeff Henry's family owned, like, a campground in the think in Texas, and one of the things they had going for this campground, because those are usually pretty boring places, was a slide. A regular slide. Yes. From the second floor, I think, of one of the cabins down. Yeah. Not a water slide at this point, until Jeff added the water break feature, and that became, like, a standard feature for all water slides. It started out on a regular slide. Yeah. And he's the guy that basically saw what Malay was doing and said he wasn't too impressed with Malay. He said, I see what you're doing, but I can do this a lot better. And I think his parks today are some of the coolest ones, right? Well, yeah, he's working. He co owns the one in Kansas City. Oh, the one with the German name? Yeah. I don't know why the name won't stick in my head. Schlitterbond. Schlitterbond? You don't know why that doesn't stick? I mean, it's so memorable. Sure. Schlitter Bond. That's the one that has the tallest one in the world now, right? Yes. So the tallest one in the world is called Verucht, which is German for crazy or insane. And how high is it? 168ft and seven inches tall. The second place one is called Kilimanjaro. It's in Brazil. It's 164ft. The third one is also in Brazil. It's called Insano. It's at 135ft. That's really tall, man. Oh, yeah. Do they have little elevators for those? Do you know? I think you have to climb up, which makes the whole thing even scarier. Really? Yeah. That's, to me, the worst part about the water park, and it even puts it this way in this article, the potential energy is you climbing steps. Right. That's how you develop that potential energy. And the higher up you go, the higher you climb, the more potential energy you have, which means the more is released and transferred to kinetic, which is scary. But you're right, it does build up, like, as you go. I imagine you're like, man, I've climbed a lot of steps here. I can see really far. Yeah. One of the cool things about that Grantland article, too, by the way, Chuck is at the top. Rather than a photo, they have, like, a GIF that's a POV video of going down varieties. It's pretty neat. Yeah, it's cool. And I believe that is also one that uses is that a water coaster? So that is the latest and greatest feature going, is someone at some point said it was probably what's his name? Jeff. Jeff Henry. Did he invent the watercoaster? I believe so. He said, this is neat, but it'd be really neat if you go up and down, and you didn't just go down and stop and maybe a little hill here and there. But he invented, I guess, the water was it called the water cannon? Water blaster. The water blaster, which is exactly what you think. It's a lot of water when you start to go up that hill to shoot you up that hill. Right. The chains that cling you up on a roller coaster, it serves the exact same purpose. Exactly. So with the addition of these water blasters that move you along, it's just completely opened up the field of water slides. It's just no longer using gravity to push you down. So, Chuck, with a water slide, this article makes a pretty good analogy that when you build a water slide, basically, it's the same process as putting together, like, a matchbox track. Yeah. The fiberglass pieces are designed for the most part. There's companies that design water slides for water parks. Rare is the water park that designs its own slides, but Jeff Henry and his co owner of Schlitterbond in Kansas City what is the guy's name? Do they design these together? Yes. John Sculley is the co owner's name. So they'll dream it up and then work with another company who will actually put it together or build it and then put it together. Yeah, they do their own designs, but for the most part, if you own a water park or something, you'll contract out the whole thing. Design, building, implementation, all that stuff. It'll be a fun job. But this is one of the things that makes these two some of the foremost designers is because they're not only owners of water parks, they're designing it themselves. They're testing it out themselves. They're really putting a lot of thought into the water features that they're coming up with. That's been his life since the it's his passion. All right, so like you said, they are dozens and dozens of fiberglass pieces that just fit together, like you said, like a little car track. You got a raise lip on one end and a little sunken step and just slide them together and bolt them together. Boom. And what you want is to have a very smooth single slide feel to that on your bottom half. Yes. You don't want your butt, like, bumping against every time there's a new section. No. And then you have some steel that holds the thing up. And there you go. You've got the world's tallest water slide. One of the things, though, besides physical harm that you have to combat as a water park owner is also pee. Yeah, sure. Have you ever seen that South Park or the water park? The concentration of pee is so much that it flips over and there's a chain reaction, and everything turns to pee, and, like, they're trapped in this water park and can't get out because everything is pee. Oh, wow. It's so gross. Do they have measures in place for pee now, or is it just massive amounts of filtration and chemicals? Right, just like in a pool. Exactly. Right. But one of the ways that you combat this is to keep water circulating all the time. You don't want it to stagnate. And bonus of having water circulating all the time is you don't have to just use water once to go down the slide and then flush it down the drain. Sure. A water slide is basically a closed circuit. And actually, most water parks or at least several of the features in a water park, are closed systems themselves. So, like, the water will circulate through several different parts of the park in a closed system. Right. All right. Well, we'll talk a little bit more about these pump houses and how that all works right after this break. Yeah. All right. Josh, you mentioned pumps. This water doesn't move itself. Gravity helps on the way down. Yeah, I guess it does. You need to get it up right to the top of the slide exactly. In order for this all to work correctly. And to do that, you just use some pumps. You put a pump at a smart location, say a collection sump. Yes. And in most cases, this is the pool that's at the bottom of the water slide that you fall into. Right. And that water is collected and sucked out and run through a filter, which is pretty simple. It sounds like it's. Filters for water parks, I'm sure, get more technologically advanced than this. But at their basis, the water is run through a layer of sand and a layer of gravel, and the edges of the sand and the gravel pick out fine particulate matter, hopefully proteins from urine. Yeah. And the clean water, the cleaner water, is run through the other end and up to the water slide and then down again. Yeah. And most of these slides, especially the ones where you have to work water all the way up to the top, have one way valves or check valves. And that means at the end of the night, when they turn everything off and clock out and go to the local beer and pizza joint, they'll hang out because that's what all water park employees do. Right. Sure. It's like summer camp. Yeah. The water stays at the top. It stays in that pipe. It doesn't flow backward because then you would have to work to get it all pumped back up to the top again every morning. Time is money. Yeah. So it's a one way system, and it just stays ready to go when they turn it on. At the beginning of the day, they take their advil and wipe the crust from their eyes. Oh, too much pizza. They turn on that pump switch, and the water is just right there at the top rate to be squirted back out. Back washing is a very important feature. If you've ever worked at a pool or owned a pool, you know how to back wash. And that is another sanitation method, which you will reverse the flow of water through the filter and back wash it, and it moves back through it, cleans all the crud that the filter caught out. Yeah. And then pumps it out into the sewer system. Exactly. Very important part. It doesn't pump it back out into the collection pool because that would be so gross. That's right. And they're always pumping new water in there, too, because you're losing a lot of water throughout the day as well. Yeah. People's bathing suits carry that water away. Sure. Evaporation. Sure. All that stuff. And as much pee as they're adding, they still need to add water, which is good. Did you read the bit on Action Park? Yeah, man, so this is pretty cool. I read and watched that documentary about a year ago, and it was amazing. I can't say enough about the Mashable. Did they actually do the documentary? I think they just hosted it. Okay. It was a park in New Jersey, the deadliest amusement park in the history of the world, apparently. Yeah, it was called action park. And it was from the 70s till, I think, 1996. Yeah. And it had such a horrible track record of causing injuries and just being insanely flagrant with safety. Yeah, pretty much. That had the name Traction Park. And there's a legend that this Mashable article or was it the New York Post, which now I'm questioning the veracity of this legend, but the Action Park bought ambulances for the local township. Oh, really? Because they used them so much. Well, it's pretty cool. If you watch the documentary, it details the features of the park, which seemed like you were teetering on the edge of injury at all times. Yeah. But when you entered, they interviewed a lot of people that were now adults that went there as teenagers, and they were like, action park was the best thing ever. Well, and the reason why it wasn't just because they didn't care about your safety. They had really cool rides, too. Like, they had a water slide that made a complete loop. Water slides don't do that normally. Yeah, it was a tube. And if you look at this thing, they have video of someone going through it. It seems like the way Action Park was laid out, it wasn't like it was a sort of piecemeal. Like, this thing looks like it was just built in a parking lot, and it was a complete enclosed tube, and you would just go down to one loop and get spit out the other end. And it didn't always work great, though, the problem. Yeah. It didn't always spit you out the other end. You might get stuck, broken or whatever in the loop. Yeah. It seems pretty great, though. Like, everyone across the board had fond memories. And I know in the 70s, we all, like, pat ourselves on the back for having survived. Yeah. We didn't have bicycle helmets and we were all dangerous and our parents didn't care. But that sort of was the heyday. Like when kids were just left to their own devices and apparently everyone that worked there, it was just like a really fun time, right? Like, the lifeguards are partying. The kids were partying. It was just a good old time at Action park. But they're bringing it back now, right? They are. After this documentary went viral and it's like a web documentary. I don't think it's feature links or anything like that, but once it went viral, the former owners were like, oh, okay, well, I guess they're still the man. For Action Park. So they bought back the old Action Park and it's a family business, right? Yeah. And they basically said the recent owners who they sold it to back in the 90s made everything way too safe. They've set about making the rides more dangerous, which is nuts. Yeah. They're probably walking that fine line, especially these days. Yeah. Between litigation and kids feeling like they're in peril. Yeah. Makes it more exciting. I came across another article that basically said if you are worried about roller coasters, you should be way more worried about water parks. Yes. The death rate is much higher, isn't it? Yeah. And the injury rate, the incident rate, for sure. So it was a study in New Jersey, which is where Action Park is, but the study is between 2007 and 2012. So this is why Action Park isn't even operating. So it's not adding to these statistics. But one fifth of all amusement park accidents in New Jersey between those years were water park attractions, whereas only 39 incidents were due to roller coasters. So like 120 out of like 500 something were things like drownings in a collection pool or just injuries on a water slide, that kind of stuff. So if you're afraid of roller coasters, you should be way more afraid of water slide. Yeah. The one thing that I read in that article that made sense to me was they said that with a roller coaster you're generally looking at some sort of a malfunction, mechanical malfunction that causes injury. But water is unpredictable. It's not on a track. And sometimes it does whatever the heck it pleases, that does whatever it wants. And maybe someone's size and weight will contribute to it in such a fashion where you're taking a tumble and breaking a leg or something. Yeah. Good times. Yeah. I can't wait to go again. I got one last step for you. What you got? There are 1200 water parks in North America. How many in the rest of the world? 720. Wow. Really? Yeah. Crazy. So North American tradition. It is. I used to love the Lazy River. What I would do is my friends and I would play Hideandgo Sikh in the Lazy River, which was fun. You basically get like five or six dudes because we didn't play with girls. We were scared of them and one of them would kind of hang back and the others would get in. And then you'd wait like 30 seconds or whatever, and then you jump in the Lazy River and they'd have a little head start. And we would spend hours due playing hide and go seeking this thing because you would just creep along behind some big fat guy on a raft. You would just sort of hide behind him and see your friend swim by. And you can swim with the current and go super fast. So there are all sorts of techniques of hiding and evading and capture. It was pretty fun. That is pretty cool, man. Yeah. I think we would spend, like, half our day doing that because we realized standing in line for a water slide is for the birds. Yes, we'll make our own fun. Yeah. Look at girls, but not talk to them because they're scary. You got anything else? No. And this is when I was in my 30s. By the way, if you want to know more about water slides, go visit our podcast page. It's got tons of stuff, including this podcast, so the circle of life will be complete. You can also type water slides into the search bar@howstepworks.com. And since I said that, it's time for listener. Ma'am. I'm going to call this from our buddy Murph, tyler Murphy. All you had to say was Murph. Yeah, he's our friend that's a teacher and sends us stuff sometimes. Yeah, I'm part time puttputt golf courseworker, and he wrote in about slinkies. He said he teach history and science. And in science class, I do use a Slinky to demonstrate concepts in physics that they may find hard to understand. What I do is I hold up a Slinky for the class to see it is uncompressed or slinked. And I asked the students what they think will happen if I drop it. The response is always, it will fall, Mr. Murphy. Up or down, those kids. Then I drop it and it naturally falls. And they look at me like I'm unfit to teach. Then I use their cell phones or my cell phone and record the drop in slow motion to demonstrate the fact that information of an object state takes time to permeate. This is what you're talking about, remember? Yeah. And what this means for the slinky to know that when it's dropped, it takes time to move as a wave through the slinky until the status quo of the Slinky's ends are matched. Status quo? Is that science? Maybe political science. Basically, one end of the slinky moves and falls while the other end remains motionless, floating until the information reaches the motionless end and says, you can fall now, which is what we talked about at the end there. I like how he put it. Yeah. So you do this in class and kids are amazed and delighted, I'm sure. Yeah. Finally, I see the slow motion camera phone. That is from Tyler Murphy. Thanks, Murphy. Yeah, thanks for all the support, man. Yeah. As always, if you want to show your support for me and Chuck, you can tweet it to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffyoushennow, you can send us an email of support to stuffpodcastostuffworks.com. And as always, you can support us at our home, on the Web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun's shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing pool Site tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music. My favorite murder from exactly right media. My favorite murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgueref and Georgia 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. 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43592896-53a3-11e8-bdec-77f6c14270a3 | The Soul Train Episode | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-soul-train-episode | Today, Chuck and Josh dive into the funky, cool world of the classic TV show, Sooooooooul Train. | Today, Chuck and Josh dive into the funky, cool world of the classic TV show, Sooooooooul Train. | Tue, 21 Apr 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=21, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=112, tm_isdst=0) | 44646056 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there. And this is stuff you should do. Not bad. Let's hear yours. I know you can do it. The Soul Train. It's so much higher than that. That was good, though. But you dropped it down into your range and you made it your own, I think is what I'm trying to say. And I like it, which is old white guy version. So you're not old, you're just middle aged now. Okay, sure. Well, let me ask you this, Chuck. Were you aware of Soul Train while it was on? Oh, yeah. Okay, then you're super old. I love Soul Train. Sure. So I was a solid gold man myself. But I can get on some Soul Train for sure. Especially, like, vintage stuff these days. Yeah, I mean, I watched Solid Gold, to be sure, an American Bandstand but I was just a rabid consumer of popular culture and television and music growing up. So before MTV came along and completely changed my life because that's all I watched was shows like Soul Train were where I could because often I couldn't stay up to watch late night talk shows where you see performances. This is where I got to see live music before I could start go seeing live music, right? Oh, yeah. That was a huge draw of it, for sure. Like the idea of just being able to tune in on Saturday at 11:00 a.m. Depending on where you are and seeing somebody like Marvin Gay or Stevie Wonder perform. Absolutely. That was a big deal. Especially like you're saying if you're too young and fell asleep too early to go to a proper show. That's right. But even more than that, and that was a huge mark that Soul Train left, was just presenting that. But that had been done before there was American Bandstand. There are all sorts of, like, kind of dance party TV shows. So it didn't exactly pioneer in that sense. But what it did pioneer in is that the people that was presenting African Americans, teenagers who were hip and their own people and part of black culture and presenting it in a way that was an apologetic that wasn't critical that didn't portray it in some sort of negative light or in a way that was trying to get white people to understand it. Just presenting it as it was and celebrating it. That's where Soul Train really broke through. And it's very difficult to overstate how revolutionary and groundbreaking Soul Train was especially for how simple the show format was, basically. Yeah. I mean, like you said, Bandstand had been around since 1952 and this kind of was known as the Black American Bandstand. And it followed that format. It was a live music performance. A host interviewing and talking to these people, these musicians afterward, briefly and then beyond that, just awesome music, spinning on the turntable, and amazing dancing, amazing outfits, amazing hairstyles, and just a celebration of black culture. It was really, really cool. And the point is made in this article that they put together for us, but it was definitely by black people and for black people, but it was an introduction to black culture, to white kids like me, little eight year old Chuck in Stone Mountain, Georgia, sitting around watching the Soul Train dance line. Yeah, I can imagine it was mind blowing. Chuck, I think it wasn't like you were necessarily sheltered when you were growing up. Whether you were or not, it kind of doesn't matter. It was that there was no place for you to be exposed to this prior to Soul Train. That if you saw a black guy on TV. It was. Say. On the news. And he was being arrested for something. Or he was involved in a protest. And the protest was kind of presented in a particularly negative. Agitated light. Or he was a sidekick on TV or a servant or in some kind of goofy comedy or something like that. insultry didn't do that. There was no subscribing to all the preconceived notions that there had been before. It was just its own thing. It was like, hey, by the way, we have our own culture over here. You guys have ignored all this time. We're going to put it on TV and show it off. And if you like, it awesome if you don't get lost. Yeah. And Dave, I thought it was kind of astute that he said it was kind of like a lifestyle brand before that was such a thing because these people were influencers. What you saw on Soul Train, you wanted to dance like that. You wanted to wear those clothes. If someone debuted a sweet move, then you saw on Saturday morning, you would practice that move in your living room and then debut it at your club that night. And there were like some pretty sweet moves that were debuted on Soul Train. The sweetest. We did an entire episode on the moonwalk, if you remember correctly, and that was originally called the backslide that was created on Soul Train. The robot, the rerun dance man, there's so much sweet robotic going on. Yes. And that's where it came from. Apparently, no one did the robot. And these were like, basically club kids who now had a place to do their club stuff on TV and then go out to the clubs later that night and do some more and come up with more stuff, and they come bring it to Soul Train again. And then kids would watch that. Kids, college kids, adults would watch this and be like, this is the coolest thing that's on TV right now, and I want to do those dance moves, too. Yeah, let's read a couple of these quotes that kind of encapsulate how important of a show. This was one is from philosopher, activist, and Harvard professor Cornell West. He said, I never missed it. Saturday morning as a graduate student at Princeton, I would see it wherever I was. It made available to the world. One of the great traditions in American history, which is a history of soul music. Soul music at its best taught America, especially young Americans, about color, how to be free, and how to love in a deeper and better way. And this from Common, the actor and rapper. Watching my babysitter get the opportunity to go on Soul Train was like a dream come true for her because Soul Train was the biggest thing then for the black community. It gave ordinary, everyday people an opportunity to express themselves. It showed us that we too, have a place on TV. Yeah. And I can't imagine what commons, babysitter, how excited she must have been to get to be on Soul Train. That must have been the biggest thing possible. Like they said, it was the hippiest trip on television. And that was not much of an exaggeration, especially at the time, especially when you compared it to, like, American Bandsan at the time, which when Soltrain came along, you said Bandsan had been on since 1952, almost two decades by the time Soul Train comes along. And there was a TV critic in 1073 who wrote, I believe for the New York Times that comparing Soul Train to the old American Bandstand is like comparing champagne to Seltzer Burns. That had to hurt Dick Clark. Oh, he did fine. Well, as far as I could tell, everything I've ever heard about him, he was literate, so he very well could have read that. And if not, somebody may have read it to him and it hurt his feelings. There's no way it didn't. So we can't talk about Soul Train without talking about Don Cornelius. No, don Cornelius was the host and creator of Soul Train and owner and owner, which is huge. Like, this guy owned his own TV show, which was not a very common thing to happen. Still is not a common thing. They usually put them in league with Desi Arnes, who owned I Love Lucy and Mike Douglas, who owned The Mike Douglas Show. Even like the creators of a show, you didn't own the show that you created. You have some sort of deal with somebody to help produce it or a network has exclusive rights to it or somebody else at least owns some other piece of it. This was 100% Don Cornelius's jam. And there's a legend that kind of goes along with that, that James Brown came on very early on in 1972 or three, and he was like, so who's backing you on this, man? Who's backing thank you. I can't do a very good James Brown. And Don cornelius says it's just me. James. And apparently James Brown thought that he didn't fully understand the question so he kind of asked it again. Didn't think to rephrase it in different words, just ask the same question. Don Cornelius answers in the same way. He says, it's just me, James, like he got what he's saying, and he was telling him, this is mine. 100% mine. Nobody else owns it. It's totally my show. And I don't think anybody else could have done it like Don Cornelius did. He was perfect for soul train. And I think the reason why is because it came from him. Like it was his creation and his baby. Should we take a break? I'm a little worked up, so yeah, maybe so. All right, you're going to work on your rerun dance. We're going to take a little break, and we'll go back and talk about young Don Cornelius right after this. Want to learn about a terraceord and call it a redact tool? Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office when you could be using stamps.com? Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses because stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and ups shipping services you need right from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. All right, so young Don was born in Chicago on the south side in the neighborhood of bronzeville known as the black metropolis. He was the son of a postal worker and was a marine. He joined the marines after high school, fought in south Korea after that, comes home to Chicago, sells cars for a little while, sells insurance for a little while, and then says, I want to be a cop. I want to be a popo. Yes. And he was a popo also in there somewhere. He married, I believe it's, high school sweetheart and has two kids. So by the time he's a cop, he's married with two kids at home, two sons, and one day there's a story, an urban legend that, as far as I know, is true. Let me spell it. Well, then it's not an urban legend. It's just a store. It could be a true urban legend. Okay, we're going to come up with an entirely different category right now, John. Right. So Don Cornelius, officer Cornelius pulls the guy over, and that guy happened to be the news director Roy Wood for a local Am radio station, WVON. And as Roy Wood is getting this ticket written up by Officer Cornelius, like, hey, man, your voice is astounding because if you've never heard Don Cornelius voice, press pause right now and go on to YouTube. Just listen to some Soul Train intros from him. He was an amazingly hip cat with one of the best voices of all time, rival Barry White. He also pulled over the guy and said, license and registration, baby. Yeah, so that helped. Yeah. Do it as Sammy Davis Jr. Pulling a little bit. Hi, babe, give me your license and registration. That was so good. Anyway, the guy is like, you have a really great voice. Have you ever considered going into radio? And Don Cornelius says, I haven't until now, but I'm going to give it some thought. And not only does he give it some thought, it's not clear whether he actually gave Roy Wood the ticket or not, but he actually quits being a cop, goes and takes a three month broadcasting course with a wife and two sons at home. So this is a pretty big risk on his part and tries out for a part as a radio announcer at WV O N and gets hired after a three month course because his voice was that great and because his persona was that hip, too. So yes, don cornelius the voice of gold the golden tonsils Is that what they call the Velvet Fog? That was meltoreme. Okay, I always get those two confused. And Noel on movie crush. His nickname is Smokey Velvet. Oh, that's nice. I'm not sure where that came from. Maybe I made it up. Smoky Gullet. Smokey Velvet. Oh, Smokey Velvet. Smokey Gullet. That's really gross. So he becomes a DJ at the radio station, like you said, and then is hired as a reporter, a news reporter on TV for WCIU TV. He covered sports, he covered civil rights stuff. He had a show for the news program called A Blacks View of the News, which is something you can only get away with in the 1960s, I think early 70s, but yeah, you're right. It would have been the 60s. Sorry. Yeah. And he interviewed Jesse Jackson. He interviewed Martin Luther King. Still DJing at night. And he hosted a series of house parties and club appearances all over Chicago. And he would take the train to get to these places. So he called these parties the Soul Train. That's where the name came from. Yeah. So he's like a TV broadcaster by day, radio DJ and sockhot DJ. By night, comes up with the Soul Train idea. And again, so this is like in his first year after taking a three month broadcasting course, after pulling over a radio executive who told him he had a good voice. And he's like, you know what? I'm happy doing news and civil rights reporting. And I'm part of this group called The Good Guys, these black DJs out of Chicago that were kind of known as the Arbiters of cool. But he said that he had later said that he had this burning desire to see black people depicted on television in a positive light. And he decided that the best way to do that was to kind of take these parties. These sockhops and these kind of cool Chicago house parties that he was DJing. And just put them on TV. That would basically be enough. That if people just saw how cool these parties were and how fun they were and how much like. What a celebration of. Like. Black culture they were just in and of themselves that that could be a TV show by itself. And that was the original Soul Train. That's right. And very key. He went to his TV station, W CIU, and said, I want to shoot a pilot for this thing, baby. And then they said, sure, but we're not going to front the money. And he said, I'll pay for it. Little did he know what a fortuitous move that was because I think had they funded it, they would have had a real claim to it legally. But he put up $400 of his own money, shot a pilot, it didn't look that great. It was in black and white, but it was a big hit immediately. And he said, not because it was wonderful, but because it was theirs. It belonged to the black people. Yeah. A year later, he moved to La and said, I'm going to do the show for real here. This is where it became nationally syndicated, which, I don't know when we talked about TV syndication, but that's basically when it's not owned and run on a major network, but you sell it to each local TV station in whatever city. Yeah, I don't know what we would have talked about that on either, but I think we should do an entire episode on TV syndication. I'll bet it was world changing. Sure. So when he moved it to Los Angeles in 1971, that black and white Soul Train, it used to be on every weekday. They continued that. So it was two things. It was a full color, nationally syndicated television show out of La. But it was also a black and white local weekday television show out of Chicago at the same time for like a good five years. They were both running at the same time. And so Don Cornelius was at the helm of both. So on Fridays, he would fly out to La, shoot four episodes, two on Saturday, two on Sunday, and then fly back in time to be there for the afternoon. Black and White Monday episode of the Chicago local Soul Train. Amazing. Working hard. He was working hard. So it was a very popular show right out of the gate. But advertising was always kind of a struggle because mainstream brands didn't quite know what to make of it. This is kind of the first show of its kind. But they did open the door for Johnson products, another blackowned Chicago business from husband and wife team George and Joanne Johnson that they started in 54. And these commercials are so great too. They sold beauty and hair care products to African American. So Afro Sheen and Ultra Sheen were the two big ones and the two big commercials you see. And they became as much as part of the fabric of the show almost as the sole train line or the performers or anything else, really. Yeah. I think in large part because they were like our stamps.com, like one of the earliest and longest running sponsors. Right. So when they came on, what they were promoting with Afro Sheen and Ultra Sheen was radical in that it's saying, like, just let your hair grow naturally. These are hair products for African Americans to use when they're growing their hair naturally. Not following, like, white beauty standards. Right. So it was like a perfect sponsor for Soul Train, which is a celebration of black culture for itself. The Johnson family of products were promoting black culture in natural state too. So it was like just perfect to go hand in hand. I think they kind of worked with each other but also were important independent of one another. But when you put them together, it was like greater than some of its parts, even. Yeah. And it was a big deal culturally. Not only was it a big hit, but people like Jesse Jackson said, don Cornelius is right up there with any civil rights leader of our generation. He gave people a chance to feel good about themselves. That's pretty great. And like I said, I was a little white kid watching it. There's this lady, Madeleine Week, who is a fashion editor at GQ. She was a little white girl in Virginia and she said, I watched Soul Train religiously every week. Loved it from beginning to end. Even the Afro Sheen and Ultra Sheen ads were heaven. Had the funkiest, most stylish sexiest dancers. Everybody looked like they were having the best time. All the girls look gorgeous. Who wouldn't want to look like that? I was just a little kid living in the countryside in Virginia, and I live for it. That's something else. It's pretty great. Well, you want to take a break and then get back into what it was like to watch Soul Train and be on it? You know, I was a guest. Yes. I can't wait. We're going to debut that clip live. All right, let's do it. Want to learn about a terrorist? Ordinary? Word up, Jerry. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office, then you could be using Stamps.com. Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses, because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need right from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com. Click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. Okay, Chuck. So we're back. There was one little thing that I wanted to include about WCIU, the original Chicago home of Soul Train. Apparently, it was like a ragtag UHF station, an independent station. And have you ever seen that movie UHF with weird Al? Nope. It's so good. But it actually is not too far off from WCIU. They would play Lithuanian and Polish language talk shows, amos and Andy, bull fights from Mexico. They just had this weird assemblage of TV shows. Awful programming. But then their inhouse programming was made by this ragtag kind of group of inexperienced people. And I read in the Chicago Reader this kind of oral history of the local version of Soul Train. The head cameraman at WCIU had Travis Mist and couldn't use the viewfinder in the camera. It was like that kind of ragtag group that just kind of got it done somehow. I just love that little tidbit. That's pretty cool. All right, so if you watch Soul Train, the first thing that you would see when the show starts is that classic animated intro of that freight train rolling into the city. So cool, so iconic. Then you see Don Cornelius, always dressed to the nines, the coolest cat maybe to ever be on television. Make Billy Deep weep with jealousy because he was a DJ previously. He just had that DJ lingo down. Yeah, they put in one of the things. It's going to be a stone gas, honey. All that 70s sort of shaft like talk was just who Don Cornelius was. Let me try my hand at it. You ready? Okay. It's going to be a stone gas, honey. Okay, that sounded like a CV trucker from the seventies somehow. Interesting. It's going to be a stone gas, honey. I don't know what my problem is. Hey, not bad. Don't lie to me, Chuck. Josh Cornelius, you've had to do your musical guests like we said, just like American Bandstand. I think sometimes they lip synced and sometimes they really sang early on. They lip synced across the board. Yeah. It kind of depends on who the artist is, too. Patty Labelle barry White. Aretha Franklin stevie Wonder james Brown. Al Green like just a murderer's. Row of rhythm and blues and soul performers. I think Gladys Knight and the Pips was on the first syndicated episode. Yeah, that was a huge favor that he called in. And Gladys totally delivered by being on that first nationally syndicated episode because it drew a lot of attention. And apparently from that point on, he was always very deferential saying, if it weren't for Gladys, none of this would be here right now. That's nice. Yeah, it was pretty cool. Ever have you ever eaten a Gladys Knight's House of chicken and Waffles? What do you think? I'm thinking you probably have multiple times, but we've never discussed it. Yeah. I mean, when I lived in La. I was a regular at Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles, but yeah, Gladys Knight does it right as well. Yes, she does. Have you ever had the Smothered chicken there? I don't think so. Is it like gravy or something? Yes, and it is even better than the chicken and waffles. Really? Yes. I can't not get the chicken and waffles, though. Get both. Okay. Just get both. There's no reason to hold back at Gladys night's. House of chicken and waffle. Yeah. Eat a little bit of both and take the rest of them. Sure. Or eat it all. Yeah. So Soul Train, of course, the musical performances were great and classic and iconic, but it's the dancing that is what it's really known for. They scouted out some of these dancers. They would go to the clubs and they did this on American Bandstand and other shows, too, that had dancers. They would go find the fliest dancers in the clubs, invite them to be on the show, and everyone else had to audition. Like, thousands of people would line up and audition with their dance moves to be a soul trained dancer. Yeah. And again, like Commons Babysitter was saying that was a big deal to be picked. And some were recruited, like you're saying, from the clubs. And those particular dancers were usually so good that they would rise to, like, national prominence. Like, the camera just couldn't avoid them. They also were no slouches at learning how to play to the camera, too, when the camera was on them or anywhere near them. But one of the ways that everybody shined, too, whether you got a lot of camera time or not, was in the Soul Train line, which became a really regular feature of each episode where everybody just kind of be clapping and standing on two sides and then a couple would come down. Usually a couple, sometimes it was solo, would come down and do some crazy dance moves and really get a chance to show off and kind of capture the attention of the viewing audience. Yeah. If you've never gone on YouTube and looked at Soul Train line videos, first of all, I'm surprised that you exist as a human. And secondly, just do it and then look up at the clock 2 hours later because you will be able to do nothing but watch those video clips. Amazing. And what's cool about it, too, is you can put it to any kind of super cool music and it sounds really great and looks really great. What, you like, mute it and put on different music? No, but other people have, like, put their own tracks or other people's tracks. Really? Video of Soul Train and it works really well. Interesting. Yeah. I like the real music. Sure. Real music isn't bad either. Yeah, the Jungle Boogie one is really good in particular. That is a good one. So they filmed four episodes in a weekend. Apparently the dancers worked pretty hard and Cornelius was pretty demanding of them. You couldn't chew gum, you couldn't curse. His mantra was be on time, be tactful, be creative, be funky, and be yourself. Yeah, they were unpaid, too. Typically, I guess you would be paid if you were dancing to a performer. But if you were part of the segments where it was just them playing music and people were dancing, you were unpaid. I think they'd feed you because, again, you're doing two episodes over two days, so four total, like you were saying. And I mean, you're dancing like the whole time. And I'm guessing that these things probably took longer than an hour. They didn't just do an hour, and that was it with no retakes or edits or anything like that. So I'm not sure how long it actually took to film an actual episode. But you were basically dancing the entire time. Two episodes, back to back, twice over a weekend. I bet it was fun too, though. I'm sure it was fun too. I also get the impression that it was a little competitive. Oh, sure. Although there's a guy who frequently gets overshadowed by Don Cornelius, but is known as his right hand man. His name was Clinton Gent and he was one of the kind of cocreators of soul trainer. He was there from the beginning in Chicago and he had a real eye for finding those dancers in the clubs. He was one of the ones who would go scout dancers, but not only finding people who had like, really crazy good moves and getting them to come onto Soul Train, but of putting all sorts of different dancers who would normally be pretty competitive with one another, finding groups that would kind of gel together like a family. So that when you go back and watch Soul Train episodes, or when you were watching it when they were coming on the first time, you weren't sitting there seeing dancers, like, kind of sniping one another back, biting or pushing each other out of the way. It. Did kind of have this really family vibe every episode, and apparently that was the work of that Clinton Ghent guy who just really knew how to put people together. Yeah, that GQ editor really nailed it. It looked like a party you wanted to be at. Everyone was having a good time. Yeah, for sure. So some of these dancers went on to be famous. We're kind of discovered there Jody Watley, the singer. She started out as a teenager on Soul Train, and Don Cornelius was like, you're super talented. I'm a businessman. I'm going to pair you with this other guy, Jeffrey Daniel, and you guys should record music together. And that little group went on to be Shallamar, of course, in 1977, they got together, and then after Shalomar, Jody Watley went on to become Jody Watley. That's right. You mentioned rerun from What's Happening, nick Cannon, Carmen Electra, which I didn't know that she started out there. That kind of surprised me. I didn't either. Her real name is Terry Lee Patrick. Did you know that? I don't know if I did or not. I know it wasn't Carmen Electra. Yeah, it's not that. Although she looks way more like a Carmen Electra than a Terry Lee Patrick. Yes. Agreed. Doesn't look at all Irish or Southern. Rosy Perez was maybe one of the biggest names to come out of Soul Train. This was in the 80s because you think about the salad days of Soul Train, then you'd probably think of the 70s. But the 80s were pretty big, and it went all the way to 2006. But in the 80s is when the hip hop influence came on and Rosie Perez brought that Brooklyn, New York City hip hop flavor. And if you go back and watch some of her stuff on Soul Train, it's like the dancing is cool. It's much different than that sort of 70s groove. It was that sort of New York City hip hop style. Yeah, she does it like the beginning of what is it? Do the right thing. Yeah, that's her dancing at the beginning of it, right? Yeah. That was like straight up Soul Train. That's what she did on Soul Train, which is very much not like what they were doing in La. Too. So she kind of rose to prominence as a Soul Train dancer very quickly. And Don Cornelius apparently was like, hey, I want to lock you into a contract. And Rosie Perez being smart. Streetwise Rosie Perez said, that's great. I'll show it to my lawyer. And apparently Don Cornelius didn't like this. And as the story goes, he grabbed Rosie Perez, which is not what you do when somebody says that they want their lawyer to look at a contract you want them to lock into or for any reason, really. And to get them off of her, she threw a piece of the fried chicken she was eating at the time right at his head, and hit him in the face. That's how the story goes. That's how Rosie Perez tells it, for sure. Yeah. And we should mention, too, that is not cool at all. And while we're praising Don Cornelius for his talents as a host, he did later in life when he was a bit older, was he arrested or I think he was charged with domestic violence against his Russian Ukrainian wife. Yes. He was at least charged I don't know if he was convicted, but he got into an endowment because of that at least accusation that he had abused her and then also apparently intimidated a witness into changing their story. He was charged with that as well. From what I understand, though, this all took place over a single night and possibly within a very short period of time. Over a single night. Not at all trying to justify or excuse it, but I don't know the story behind it at all. But I think it's worth pointing out, like, Don Cornelius was not just a straight up, like, nothing, but a smooth, cool cat. He was a complex human being who had faults as well, too yeah. And all of us and all that. I mean, grabbing Rosie Perez is bad enough alone. Sure. You know what you get? You get the old chicken wing to the forehead. Yeah, you do. You would think, like, even before she was a star, you'd know, just hanging out with her a little bit. Not to mess with Rosie Perez. No. I would never mess with Rosie Perez. He didn't know that his signature sign off was on Don Cornelius. And as always in parting, we wish you love, peace, and soul. Yeah. There were a couple of other people who kind of rose to prominence, to Cheryl Song. She was the first Asian dancer on Soul Train, and she said she had to really kind of prove herself that she wasn't just like the token non African American dancer, that she was actually a really good dancer. And she did. And then Jermaine Stewart, who you might recognize as the singer of We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off. That's pretty cute because he came back home and performed it on Soul Train in when Don Cornelius was introducing him, he was saying, he made good, and we're all very proud of him. And like, you mentioned the Irish Carmen Electra, who I guess stood out because she was river dancing on Soul Train. And everyone was like, what is that? What is that? But then everybody wanted to do it because it was Carmen Electra doing it. So Soul Train was so popular, and Dick Clark, I guess, didn't feel like he had enough money as a TV mogul and an icon on American Bandstand. So he went, hey, I'm going to start my own Soul Train and try and bury Don Cornelius, and I'm going to call it Soul Unlimited. I'm going to put it on ABC. And it was. You can see clips of it on YouTube. It didn't last long, but it was a literal ripoff of Soul Train. And you might say Soul Train was a rip off of American Bandstand. Fair enough. But for him to go after the African American market like that, I don't think it was very cool. No, it isn't very cool. I could see Dick Clark being a little blind to the larger implications of it. And I don't know if he was involved in it's canceling or not, but some black leaders did get it canceled. They started a campaign to say, like, no, just leave this one alone. I don't know how easily Dick Clarke went along with it or not. I like to think he was like, oh, okay, I see the error of my ways now, and dropped it. But, yeah, only a few episodes came out. Either way, Soul Train was left to stand on its own. Yeah. And I think rightfully so, too. There were other performers later on. They would have white performers. David Bowie very famously was on there. Oh, man, did you watch that? He did. It's awful. Did a pretty bad lip sync job, which Cornelius gave him, kind of teased him about. And then Elton John, who always had a pretty big following in the African American community. I didn't know that. Did you? Yeah, he wrote about it in his autobiography that I read last year. That's cool. I think it started when Aretha Franklin covered burned down the mission, if I'm not mistaken. Okay. Is that the one she recorded? I think that's the way it went down. I've never heard of that song before. What is wrong with you? You've never heard. Burn down the mission. I don't think so. I'm not the biggest Elton John fan. I mean, I'm fine with him, but I really don't like a lot of his 70s stuff. Like, a lot. I really don't like it. Wow. But I like his 80s stuff. Like the whole I'm still standing thing. Okay, good. It was burned down the mission before that. Yeah, that was in my follow up question is, what problem did he have with The Mission? He didn't write it. Okay. Bernie Taupin wrote all his lyrics. Oh, I see. Now I am a Bernie Topping fan. You're a national treasure. Thank you. So Elton John was on a couple of times, and it's pretty sweet. If you look at the one, I'm not sure if it was the Philadelphia Freedom one. I hate that song. Or the other one. It's such a good song. But he takes questions and you can tell he's kind of shy and a little nervous, and he takes some questions from the people, from the dancers and stuff, which was kind of cool. But it's just very sweet to see how nervous he was. Yeah, because he's known for being a humble spirit. Is he? No. Have you ever seen that documentary they made or he self made or no, his partner made. His partner was the only one he would let follow him around with the camera. Which is pretty understandable, but it came out in the last decade or less. Yeah, the tantrums and tiaras, I think. Yes. It was great, man. I loved it. Yeah, he's good. I like that Rocketman movie a lot, too. I have not seen that. I saw it over someone else's shoulders on a plane. You wouldn't like it? No, it didn't look like anything I would like. No. If you don't like Elton John, you wouldn't like the movie about Elton John? No. And again, Sir Elton, I have no problem with you personally. It's just that period through seventy s, the seventy S, like Crocodile Rock, the one about Philadelphia Freedom, all those bad 70s albums, madman across the Water and Captain Fantastic and Good by Ellib Road. Those are all terrible. Exactly. I feel understood, Chuck. Thank you. So the 80s come along and 1983, Don Cornelius has brain surgery, takes a little time off, he comes back, soul Train has changed their look a little bit to try and fit with kind of what's going on at the time with Whitney Houston and people like that. And then hip hop and rap come along and apparently Don Cornelius is not a big fan. Yeah. I think I can't remember I read a really great article in Days about it. Or there's another pretty good one that was a review of the recent TV biopic about him and Soul Train on the Guardian and it basically explained it like that Don Cornelius was like a mid century integration minded black businessman and that he and his ilk in generation they had been working toward like getting a piece of the pie that didn't necessarily wasn't the white pie. It was the pie that white people controlled. And if you made your way to get a piece of this, you could be black and still enjoy the good life. And that hip hop reminded him of everything that he and his generation had kind of tried to work beyond and past and to integrate and that to him it was a step backward. So he wasn't vibing on it at all. My own personal take is that he was a smooth customer and he appreciated smoothness and hip hop, especially 80s hip hop was the opposite of smooth. And so he was not vibing on it at all. And he even referred to himself as an old guy sometimes when he was interviewing some of the hip hop artists who came on Soul Train in the 80s. Yes, I watched one of the Public Enemy clips and it was weird afterward. He basically ignores Chuck D and talks only to Flavor. Flavor and then finally turns to Chuck and now Chuck D. He said, you must feel so blessed to have someone as talented as Flavour as your partner. What? Really? It was really weird. And Chuck D was like, yeah, he's quite a character, as you can see. Yes. I don't know. It really came off as like don Cornelius doesn't understand this. I'm not disinflaved. But Chuck D, he was the leader of that band. Yeah. He was the brains behind the outfit, for sure. And he fills in the kind of hardness of Chuck D. Yeah. If you think Public Enemy, it's definitely Flavor Flav and Chuck D. But it's Chuck D. Yeah. You know what I mean? And then Flavor. Flavor. Yeah. It was definitely a strange interview because I thought, finally he's going to talk to Chuck T. And he's like, you must feel so good about having this guy as your partner. Which one was that after? Because they were on at least twice on the regular show by my account, and then once on the Soul Train Awards, at least. Yes, I remember. So it's not like he wasn't smart enough to know that they were big and should be on anyway, whether he liked them or not. But they can't trust it in 1991. And they did Rebel Without a Pause in 1987. And I could not find the interview segment. I just saw the performance. They were both, like, really great. Well, it was very sweet. And actually, it would have had to have been the because afterward, Flavor Flave asks for a moment of silence for the passing of Miles Davis and Red Fox, and they take a moment of silence. That's awesome. It's cool. So just in case we haven't gotten this across enough yet, soul Train again, it never got away from its black roots. Like, it never sold out or anything like that. That makes perfect sense that they would include that part. They wouldn't just edit that out in the episode that they published. Totally. That was just part of it. Even as late as the early 90s? Yeah, in the early 90s is when Don Cornelius finally had to step down. May 10, 1993, was his final episode. He passed it onto the younger generation. It went all the way to 2006 and became the longest running syndicated show in TV history. Yeah, 35 seasons. Amazing. And that younger generation that he handed the reins over to, some of the temporary hosts included jamie Foxx got his start, tyra Banks and Shamar Moore from Criminal Minds. He was a longtime stand in host. Really? Yeah, he's big time. I don't know who that is. I don't watch Criminal Minds either. But you've seen enough ads for Criminal Minds that you would recognize, I'm sure. Very sadly, Don Cornelius took his own life. He was suffering from Alzheimer's and apparently was having a lot of seizures and just in a pretty bad way physically. And his son said that was the reason why he took his own life. Yeah, well, plus he'd also sold the rights, I think, to Soul Train, too. And it seems like things kind of started to go downhill from around then, I think, in 2008. Yeah. But, yeah, apparently it was a really big surprise to everybody who knew him that he died by suicide. That was not the perceived outcome for him, I think. Yeah. But his legacy lives on, like you said, the 35 seasons, the longest running syndicated television show of all time. In and of itself, it's an incredible achievement, but also to be like a cornerstone of introducing black culture as black culture to the larger culture as a whole. And white culture. Yeah. I mean, that's about as big an accomplishment as you can make it's. Like Jesse Jackson said, he was as important as any civil rights leader. So that's don cornelius and soul train. That's how it went. If you want to know more about that, you don't need to know anything else. Just start go watching clips of Soul Train and you will be a happier person than you were before you started. Yeah. Get ready for some sick robot action. It's so great. And rerun, too. Can't forget about rerun. Fred Berry. No. Sweet. Well, since we talked about Fred Berry, that means everybody. Obviously, it's time for listener mail. This is about Iron Maiden. Hey, guys. Listen to your short stuff on. Loved it. More so for Josh's. Thoughts on Iron maiden. Hardest working band in the business. Seen them twice. I've been a maiden fan for about 15 years, and I got to say Josh was right on the money when he said power slave was the album to listen to if you've never really given them a chance. So, Chuck, wipe out that old beanbag, roll up a fatty, crack open a cold one, and crank up some maiden. You'll be glad you did. Also, just want to say thank you both for the awesome work you do. I'm spewing, which must be Australian for angry. He said I'm spewing because I couldn't get to your show when you came to Perth. I think so, yeah. You missed a good show. I was thinking about how cool that town was the other day. Yeah, perth is cool. Your discussion and delivery of interesting, exciting topics week after week, transmute information and understanding into very enjoyable entertainment into my ear holes. Bringing much joy not just to my commute, but to my work life. Lots of love from Mandurah, western Australia. And that is from Thai. I like this person. Yes. First of all, Ty says that I'm right, which I love. Yeah. Likes Iron Maiden. Loves Iron Maiden, you could say, and is upset that they missed our show. We'll be back. Sure we will be. Hey, you know, we're like number one in Australia as far as podcast go right now. I heard that, man. They're practically begging for us to come back. We'll come back and we'll definitely go to Perth again. So don't worry, Ty. We'll be there. Just keep your ear holes out. That's right. If you want to be cool like Ty and get in touch with us, you can do that. You can send us an email to stuff. Podcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio's how stuff works. For more podcasts My Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio App, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. 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 tops 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." | |
41c6bef8-53a3-11e8-bdec-db181cc72ecf | How Barcodes Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-barcodes-work | Barcodes are everywhere. Those little lines and numbers that make up one of the most recognizable barcodes, the UPC, was designed to make going to the grocery a lot less miserable. It ended up becoming the central symbol of the global economy. | Barcodes are everywhere. Those little lines and numbers that make up one of the most recognizable barcodes, the UPC, was designed to make going to the grocery a lot less miserable. It ended up becoming the central symbol of the global economy. | Tue, 04 Jun 2019 15:08:15 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=4, tm_hour=15, tm_min=8, tm_sec=15, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=155, tm_isdst=0) | 52096173 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody, it's your old pal Josh. Sorry to cut in, but just for a second, I wanted to let you know that I'm doing my solo live show, the End of the World or How I Learn to Start Worrying and Love Humanity in my Minneapolis and in DC. On June 19, I'll be in Minneapolis at the Parkway Theater. And you can get tickets by going to the Parkwaytheatre.com. The next night, June 20, I'll be in Washington, DC. Our nation's capital. To bring the good word to our nation's capital. I'll be there at the Miracle Theater. And you can get tickets to that one at the Miracle theater.com. Thanks a lot for coming to see me. I'll see you this June. 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 Wu. Brian and there's Jerry over there. And this is stuff you should know. Bar code. Give me some bar code. I love them. Bar code. You like bar codes too? Sure. I'm feigning geeking out because I think barcodes are cool, but I'm not like a barcode nerd. No, but it is interesting. That how much we take them for granted and how they're everywhere. Yeah. And after you listen to this or we research this, you'll probably start noticing them and being like, what secrets lie within you? Exactly. Little black things and spaces in between. Well, hopefully, if they listen to this, they won't have any questions like that. They'll know all the barcode secrets. Well, sure. I hope. Yeah, we'll find out. We'll see. So like you said, barcodes are absolutely everywhere. And it is one of those things where you're like, there's one oh, my gosh. There's one over there. Like, if you work at a company, turn your computer over, guarantee there's a barcode underneath. There's bar codes all over the place. Right. There's one on your forehead. There is. Got a tattooed this morning just for this episode. Wasn't that in a movie? I feel like of, like, future World, where we all have barcodes. Was it in the government to put them on our necks? Maybe it was the Apple ad. It was the apple ad. Was it? Probably. I know exactly what you're talking about. I can see a guy with the shaved head in a suit with a barcode on the back of his neck. All right, well, I think there's people yelling at their radio right now. Right. So they're everywhere. They're on your computer. They're on guys neck. They're on the computer or on the radio. Yeah. And they're actually not that old of an invention. Let me rephrase that, Chuck. They are exactly as old as you would imagine them to be. Right. Which is, if you thought about it, this is one of those things where if you ask someone they probably don't know, if you gave a little bit of thought, you might think of the other half of what makes a barcode or able to be used, which is the laser. Wow. That was the big reveal. Well, they can't have preceded the laser. No, it kind of did, actually, though. Well, yeah, sure. The idea. But it took them in concert to actually do anything worthwhile. Right. Exactly. Like you and me. Basically, we're both just a couple of lumps and put it together, and we're one big lump. We took off, like the UPC code protocol. Let's set the scene, shall we? All right. Are we way back in it here? Sure. All right, Jerry. Thank you, Jerry. Jerry launched us. So when you think about barcodes, you think grocery store, typically, right? I think anything but sure. I think grocery store. I think anywhere you can buy something okay. That's much more dead on. But mine makes sense, too, because it was in the grocery store that the whole issue of Barcodes, the whole reason we have barcodes to begin with really began because it used to be a genuine bonafide mess, going to the grocery store. Yeah. And this was back when people weren't even in a hurry. Yeah. I imagine now, like, my mom was a cashier at Kroger in the 1960s. Oh, wow. So she has remarked about how fast she was typing in those numbers and how people like going through her line, because she was just right. She was typing in those numbers is the key here. Yeah, but no matter. Well, we haven't done the John Henry test. Maybe Diane was so fast, it's possible that she could beat the laser, especially these days, because sometimes it seems like they can take longer when they scan it and scan it and scan it and then type in the tiny number. Right. But your mom may have been an anomaly for the most part. If you went and checked out in a line at a grocery store, you had to wait way longer than you do these days, because it wasn't Chuck's mom who was checking you out. It was some other person who had to lift up the can, find the price label on it, type in the price, type in the tax, and then pick up the next thing and do the same thing in heaven forbid that sticker fell off. Yes. Or you got to call Earl over. Right. Got to go to aisle seven, price check on I'll seven, Earl, and see what the alpo costs. So you've got that problem. Right. Yes. If it goes on sale, that's another thing, too, that you have to go through and relabel all those camps. Right. So that's where you got the price. It was labeled by some guy with a gun. Remember that movie? Oh, God. With John Denver and George Burns Do I remember it? Whenever I hear of a dude, like, pricing something in a supermarket with a price gun sounded so great. That's what I think of. I think the first scene where he meets God. Yeah. He was a supermarket manager, right? Yeah, he was. So that's how the price got on there. That was one problem that you had, hand labeling prices and then hand typing it in. But there's also the key of inventory. Sure. The only way to tell how much stuff you had in a store at any given time was to go through and count everything in the store and in the back room, and then you would know what you needed to order. So supermarkets were frequently out of stuff. The lines were very long. It was a nightmare. Unless your mom was the cashier. Which is one reason why barcodes were first invented and adopted into grocery stores, because it became so clear so early on that they could solve this enormous problem in one fell swoop if they could only get a system in place that perfected it. Yeah. So in the 30s, there was a guy, he wrote a thesis paper at Harvard named Wallace Flint where he invented an automated grocery system with punch cards and flow racks and such. Right. Didn't really take off, but it was an interesting precursor. I think any time you have punch cards involved, it's not going to take off. Right. Unless that's how we vote in this country. Right. And you see how that works out. So flash forward to Philadelphia in the 1940s. There was a grocery store manager who was like, Josh. He was pretty upset and riled up about time and how long it's all taking and running out of stuff. And he went to Drexel I guess it's Drexel University now. Was it Drexel it back then, or was it two different things? It could be an offshoot. Maybe they're copycats. All right, we're in Drexel, too. I looked at their mascot, by the way. The what they're? The Dragons. And specifically, their mascot that dresses up for basketball games is Mario the Magnificent. So a little odd for a dragon. Yeah, he's named after apparently they're, like, oldest basketball fan or something. Okay, that makes sense. Sure. Who happens to be a dragon. At any rate. Go, dragons. So like I said, can you help me, drexel. I need help because I'm a grocery store manager. It's taking forever. The dean said, no, not really. But there was a student there, a grad student named Bob Silver who stuck that in his pocket, as they say, walked away and went to his friend who was a grad of Drexel named Joe Woodland, because I guess he knew Joe was the man for ideas like this. Sure. And Woodland said, yeah, I think we could come up with something. He said we're in Philadelphia. Let's go down to Miami Beach and think about this. Yeah. Because years from now, that's where the I smell will be dreamed up. It was Miami Beach, too. That's why it seemed familiar, wasn't it? Yeah, it seemed familiar to me, and I was like, Wait a minute. Oh, that's right. So the I smell and the UPC symbol were both dreamed up on Miami Beach. And two live crew. Well, sure. So, yeah, apparently, he goes to the beach, starts dreaming of, like, Morse code. Basically, what he's trying to figure out is what can we use to represent the price and the stock number? That's really what they were trying to boil it down to. Yeah, because if you have that in one little component, then that can be scanned. You want to say barcode, but it didn't. Yeah, exactly. It could be scanned. It could be typed in however you need to do it. Sure. But it could bring up a lot more information and you could do it a lot faster because it could tell you things like, there's only two left. You better order. Right. That kind of thing. Right. So like you said, he figured out Morse code. He was kind of inspired on Miami Beach to use Morse code. But then something really weird happened. He typed some lines and some dots typed with his fingers. Okay. In the sand. Right. In the sand. Right. Type in the sand. And then he just pulled his fingers downward in the sand and turned them into lines. I figured he was drunk or something. Maybe. So he was slurring his sand line. Right. And that was the beginning of the first UPC symbol. And it was way different than what you would think because what they ended up coming up with was not just lines like we see today, but circles. Concentric circles. Like a bullseye. Yeah. It looks like a record. Like an LP. Yeah, basically. Yeah. Well put. So that was it. If this was the movie and after all, they made a movie about windshield wipers with great canier. So why hasn't this been made? I don't know. That would be the moment where he draws those lines in the sand and, like, a halo glows around them. Two Live Crew stars playing in the background. How great would that be? That's where it was born in 1949. Those two dudes, Woodland and Silver, they came up with a machine because that was kind of the problem. It's like, great, we figured out this barcode thing, but it's useless unless you had a reader. And their reader was huge and expensive and heavy and dangerous. It sounds like it was, like, the size of a desk. And back then, desks were really big. That's like, the size of a bus today. They also used an oscilloscope as the reader. Right. Which, I for life, can't figure out how they did that because that detects, like, electrical pulses. But the upshot of it was that oscilloscope with a 500 watt bulb that got super dangerously hot when they put it together with those two kids. These were grad students at the time where they just recently graduated. They put together the first machine that could read printed material. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Right? So it just so happened that the printed material was a printed bullseye UPC code. There was a big problem. They were missing something very important, and that was a microcomputer, something that could read this code and make sense of it. They hadn't quite come up with that. So they said, you know what? Let's just forget about this. We'll put it in Dad's garage like a trampoline, sell it to RCA. Well, yeah, they sold the patent. Right, right. And then we're going to head off to go work for IBM. And that's where the big scene with the glowing and two live crew would have ended. Maybe in a montage or something. Right. So I spoiled it, I guess, with a laser. But in 1960 was when the first laser was debuted. And this was really key to read this thing, because the reason they used a 500 watt light bulb wasn't because they were just like, man, this is so cool and hot and dangerous. You needed a tremendous amount of light to read these tiny I mean, super detailed. It's not detailed with lettering that we're used to seeing. But they had to read the detail. Right. Because it also has to be kind of small, too. Yes. It can't be the size of the can. Right, exactly. Or something bigger than the size of the can. It has to be fairly small, and it is fairly detailed. So you need a really bright light to read it. Well, luckily, eventually, the Hughes Corporation came up with the laser, and that was very quickly implemented with the barcode system. Not in grocery stores at first, but on the railroad, it turns out. Yeah, this guy figures pretty prominently. His name is David Collins and he had a company called Computer Identics Corporation. And what he came up was the first 1969, the first barcode reader that actually worked without 500 watt light bulbs by using that laser to keep track of freight cars. Because the railroad companies would swap freight cars with one another all the time, but you'd end up some guy would always keep your freight car and be like, I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, so he sold two of those in 1969, MIT Grad. And that kind of changed the game because all of a sudden, it was being implemented not in grocery stores, like you said, but grocery store people, workers, managers, owners, industry leaders. I think they took notice. They did. Especially a guy named Alan Haulerman, who basically led the charge to get this stuff into supermarkets. And there was a pilot program that was at a Kroger, like the one your mom worked at about the time where she would have worked for Kroger. But this was up in Cincinnati, which I think is where Kroger was founded. Yeah, she was in Tennessee, I think. And RCA had been looking for new projects to work on, and they found this old patent that RCA bought from Woodland and Silver. Yeah. What about this old thing? What is it, a bullseye? Like? No, check it out. So they put laser to bullseye and ran this pilot program in Cincinnati at Kroger. It went okay for a new thing? It did all right. But we mentioned how they had to be able to read these intricate little barcodes. Printing wasn't great, so any smudges or smears or anything would just throw the whole system off. Right. But it was enough of a proof of concept that these grocery store industry leaders, led by Alan Halderman, said, we've got to get this out in the grocery stores. We got to mention the name of their group. You ready for it? Yeah. Okay. They formed the US. Supermarket ad hoc committee on a uniform grocery product code. What is that spell? US? Ah, it spells a barcode. I read somewhere that this guy, when he was lobbying supermarket managers and leaders, I guess, to buy into this, he would take them to go see Deep Throat. I read that it was the fashion of the day to go out for a steak dinner, and then everybody went and watched Deep Throat in the movie theater as part of a business meeting. Do you get the steak dinner before or after that movie? Before, apparently. Tough call. Oh, dear. Well, let's take a break and ruminate on that question, and we'll be right back. Hi, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office? Then you could be using Stamps.com. Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses. Because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need right from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps. Com's, easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial, plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page, and enter code stuff. So the US. Supermarket Ad Hoc Committee on a Uniform Grocery Product Code hanging out at the ad hoc committee in the porno theater. Sure, we can call in the ad hoc committee from now on. All right. I just wanted to get it in one more time. And they decided that, yes, the RCA patent with the bullseye was pretty good, but I hadn't worked that good. Is it possible? Or something better? And this is pretty forward thinking at the time, if you think about it, to say, like, yes, this works. This company has a patent on it. Forget about that. Could we do better? And they actually launched, like a national, basically, competition to come up with something better. Yeah. And this was sort of in the face of manufacturers who weren't too crazy about this idea to begin with, because it would be on them, obviously, like Campbell Soup to start putting these codes on their soup cans. And no one really wanted to do it because they had their own systems in place. It would cost them money and time. And they were just like, hey, it ain't broke on our end. What's funny is this article, I think this part came from the Smithsonian article, where they're saying, like, cardboard manufacturers thought it would spoil their product. They're like it's so beautiful. This box of apple cinnamon oatmeal cannot be spoiled with a UPC code. Yeah, that's weird. But that was part of the pushback, apparently, was they thought it would mess up the product. Right. But they gave in, I guess. I'm sure they were talked into the fact that they could move more product with this. In the end, they were taken to see Deep Throat and they just caved like a house of cards. They're like, man, that steak was good. And so was the cinema. So seven people, like you said, submitted seven companies. And if you go and look at these seven submissions, it's interesting that some of them one was like the LP bullseye. There was another circular one, but it looked like Webb dings. No, it looked like if a kid draws the sunshine, it was like all the lines were going out from the center. Right. There were a few different variations. It sort of looked like the modern bar code in theory. But then it's so funny when you look at the seven side by side, you immediately go to that little rectangular one. Yeah, just because we're used to it. But I don't know if at first, if people just looked at it like the bullseye one was pretty. It is. The sunshine one was nice. I think I've seen the sunshine one and, like, cartons of milk or orange juice, like on the bottom of paper cartons. I've seen that before. I know what you're talking about. Yeah. So I guess somebody adopted it. There was a little half circle one, too, that looks sort of like a rainbow sticker. It's very cute. It is cute. But the kicker here is the IBM sort of at the 13th hour, I guess, heard about this. We're like, hey, yeah, we'll throw in a bid. They're like, oh, well, what have you developed? And they're like, well, we haven't developed anything because we just heard about this. Right. But Joe Tech Grapevine, Joe Woodland, the guy who invented this other one, works for us. Sure. Ironically, Joe Woodland didn't have anything to do with their design. Though George Laurer story is all over the place. It really is interesting how many different directions it took, how many times they saw Deep Throat over and over again as this process is going on. Just stop saying those words. Just say Cinema. Okay. But there was a guy there named George Lara at IBM, and the advantage he had, or at least as he saw it, and I agree, is that he hadn't seen all these bull's eyes and sunshine and rainbows, and he kind of started from scratch and built that beautiful little rectangle. That was his premise, that he was like, I'm unadulterated with any conceptions. IBM didn't have any preexisting machinery that this thing needed to fit into nothing. He got to start from scratch. And actually, his idea panned out because his was selected. The ad hoc committee I'll Spare Everybody met in New York, and they actually tapped some scientists from MIT because they said, who are the smartest scientists around? MIT scientists? Sure. How many was it? Seven or eleven design? Seven. Okay, here are the seven designs. MIT scientists. You guys tell us which one you think is right. But then this Alan Haberman, he said, hold on. Before you guys tell us, can you give me a confidence interval of how confident you are that you have picked the right one? And all of them were at, like, 90% I'm 90% confident. And it was Laura's Rectangle. That one. That's right. Interestingly. They had demonstrated the rectangular one with a beanbag ashtray and the a softball picture. Yeah. Which is picture. Is there anything better than the beanbag ashtray? Those are great. Yeah, we got those in college. Like I searched them out. Oh, really? Just because they were always plaid and looked like they were from the never smoked, did you? Well, I mean, I smoked a little in college, but we had ashtrays around. You still wanted to provide for your guests, I see. This is in college. Sure. Yeah. Ashtrays. Right. Maybe a little snack caddy to go with the cocktails. But we had a few of those beanbag ass trays, and they were pretty great. And mostly because you could put them on a dashboard of a car and they would stay there right. Or on your belly while you're pooping. Sure, sure. They'd stay wherever you want them to. So, like you said, lar one. They had a big party, I'm sure, with rectangular or Durham, all arranged in perfect lines, eating out of beanbag ashtrays. Oh, God. And then on June 26, 1974, they debuted it in a real store in Troy, Ohio. March Supermarket. Yes. I've not heard of it. I thought you might have been like oh, yeah, the old days of the marshes in Toledo. No, we had IGA food town. Kroger. That's it. Yes. That's all I can remember. And food with A-Z-I don't know why that counts. That's the first thing I could think of. So the whole checkout counter I see is translated into days, but 44 grand is what that thing would have cost today. Yeah. And just the scanner itself was more than 17 grand of that in today's dollars. Yeah. And today you can get a scanner for about $120. So this is a pretty nice set up for Marsh's store in Troy, Ohio. It's just one register, too. Right? It was out of however many the rest of them were having the type. Could you be more like Sharon Buchanan, who's over here on the laser checker? Yeah, that was the real name, by the way. It sounds like you just totally improv to that. No, it came out of my memory. No, but we should give her her due. Yes. She was the first cashier to scan an item with a UPC code. And the first item that was scanned was a ten pack of Juicy Fruit gum. Yeah, I bet the guy what was his name? Richard Dawson. No, that was family feud. Clyde Dawson, his brother. Right. He was ahead of R and D for Marsh, and he played the first shopper. And I wonder if he was like, let's see, because his fruit stripes is nothing but striped lines. I wonder if he was trying to throw them off. I don't know. Like, scan this. Supposedly he chose gum because a lot of people were like, well, what about gum? You're never going to be able to get one of these things on gum. But then he chose a ten pack of gum. Right. So he was kind of hedging his bets. Whatever. The smallest one. Smallest barcodes are the smallest. I saw they have bees have barcodes on them. Somehow I haven't figured out how. I didn't see how. I just know that bees have barcodes. You mean B is the insect? Yes. With a Z. What do you mean? To track them or something? Yeah. What? Yeah. So that's got to be pretty small. But the smallest product I saw with the barcode is the Tootsie Roll pop sticks have the barcode on them. Really? Did you do research or you were just eating a tutorial pop? I was like, well, I'll be darn. Wow. How many licks did it take to get to the center? I've never made it. I always crunch, like the owl says. So I guess we should talk about how these things work, because it's interesting. It's super wonky, but I think I don't know, it's good for people to understand this to a certain degree, whatever degree you're comfortable with learning. Well, okay. Are you ready? Yeah. Well, first there's two kinds. We should differentiate between the barcodes and QR codes. Yeah. A barcode is technically a linear 1D code. Yeah. Just a dumb code. Just lines, basically. Yeah. The 2D codes, like the QR quick response codes, like the ones you see on Happening products and items these days. Marketing materials, maybe business card. It's actually becoming even more of a thing from what I understand, just because there's so much stuff you can encode in it. Right. How many characters? Like 800 and something? Yeah, you can encode 7000 digits or 4000 characters of text. Okay. And so you can encode some pretty sophisticated stuff in there. So people encode web addresses or pictures or whatever. I've seen them on tours. Like you can do a QR code and bring up like a bunch of texts about the painting or whatever. Yes, I've seen that as well. I think that it's kind of becoming less popular as a marketing tool. Okay. But simultaneously it's becoming more popular in just about every other practical use. Yeah. Barcodes, on the other hand, the code can hold up to 85 characters. So these 2D are like exponentially more potent storehouses of information. Yeah, but I like the simplicity of the barcode. I do too. It's pretty cool. It does exactly what you need and nothing else. Yes. And so when we're talking about a barcode, most people think of a universal product code, which is a 1D linear barcode. It's a type of it's not the only kind. There's a bunch of 1D linear barcodes. But the most readily recognizable one, especially in the US. And Canada is called the UPC. Right. So let's say you're a company and you have a product that you want to debut. And what you would do is since 1977, you would ring up a company out of Brussels called GSI. GS One. Oh, is that a one? No, don't call GSI. No, you're not going to get your stuff on the shelves. Grime Scene Investigation. Oh God, man, you're just flying with the yeah. All right. Not all of them are good. I didn't say they were. Okay. I was like, save your applause, I'll save it. So the GS One, what you do is you pay an annual fee as a manufacturer and then you say, hey, I have this new thing, I want to apply for permission to enter the UPC system. That's the Marshall Brain way of putting it. Yeah, basically like, hey, I want to be registered in the official system. They write back and they say, all right, here a new manufacturer. You have a six digit identification number. I imagine if you were like the CocaCola company you're already set up with this. Well, they had to eventually start somewhere. Well, right, but now when Coke develops a new product or whatever, they just give them the new the item numbers. Item numbers, exactly. So the first six numbers. So if you look at a UPC bar code, there are a bunch of bars, and that's for the computer to read. And then there's a twelve numbers that's for humans to read and actually punch in if the machine has problems with it. Right, okay. So it's actually the same information, but in. Two different languages, technically. So you could technically probably teach yourself that language if you just looked at these lines. You totally could. You could. It's interesting. It would be probably the most useless thing you've ever done in your life, especially if you're not in the UPC code industry. And there is an industry. Oh, sure. But you could do that. And we're going to teach you how, right? In a minute. But at every big company, there is a UPC coordinator, and I imagine full departments that handle this stuff. It depends. Also, if you're a small company, you can contract out with a company that basically does that for you. Yeah, that makes sense. Like, if you want to sell on Amazon, but you're not like a big company, you have to have a UPC symbol. But it could make no sense money wise for you to go to GS One and get a UPC symbol rather than just getting it from a reseller. Yeah. So if you're a huge corporation, though, it's in house. You have a coordinator and a team, and anytime you have a product or launch a new product, you're going to have to assign that new product a number. And it's got to be very specific to that product. You can't just say, well, you know, Coke is Coke. So two liter, twelve pack single, twelve ounce or 16 ounce, they're all the same. Right. Which means that the first six numbers of a UPC code for Coke is going to be the same on any bottle or can or whatever you pick up of Coke. Because that essentially says the Coca Cola Company in whatever language, right. To the entire world. Yeah. Anywhere in the world where they use bar codes. If it gets scanned, it's going to come up as a Coke product. That's right. Those last five numbers, it's up to Coke and that UPC coordinator that's employed by Coke to come up with new numbers for each. Not just Coke and Diet Coke and New Coke and Cherry Coke and orange. Vanilla Coke. Which have you had? It's weirdly good. You have to come up with not just a different number for each of those. You have to come up with a different number for each of those in each size and each way that those sizes are put together. Yeah, every skew, as they call it in the business. Right. So a different one for 112 ounce can of Coke or a six pack of Cokes or case of Cokes and so on and so forth. And I was on that GS One site, and the way that they put it is much simpler if you have one T shirt that you sell. Right. It's a vitamin. Vitamin S-Y-S-K-T shirt. Okay. Which you can get even better. It's a great T shirt if you ask me. You like that one, right? I love it. Yes. I think it's the colors on it that really get me. Sure. But you have one T shirt. A vitamin S-Y-S-T shirt. But that thing comes in four different sizes. Small, medium, large, extra large. And it comes in four different colors. You need 64 different. Is that right? Four x 416 x four is 64. You need 64 different UPC codes for that one product. That one T shirt. And UPC code is one of those dumb things like saying ATM machine. What do you mean? Well, your machine machine, right, yeah, universal product code. Thank you for calling me out on that. I actually went through this article and got the instances of UPC code. Like I defy you to find oh, really? Code in the article. Got rid of them all. Everyone says it. So I wasn't being pedantic, but I was doing it for the people who are already thinking that. There were people out there thinking that. So the last digit is called a check digit. And this is basically a bit of a failsafe to make sure that the scanner got everything right. Yeah, it's really convoluted how it does that. Yeah. I mean, there's a calculation every time you scan something or every time something scan for you, rather do you check out yourself at the grocery store? Do you like that deal? I don't because I very strongly see or clearly see that they're replacing human cashiers. And I think human cashiers like to do human cashier work, so I go to the human cashier whenever I can. I love the self checkout. Do you really? Yeah, because I like bagging my stuff very specifically. So that's why I do it, like cold with cold or chunky items or stuff that contain fat. I mean, I could go over my whole system. I'd like you to pour everyone to tears. Come on. But a lot of cold with cold size like sizes where it goes in my house as I'm unpacking. That makes sense. And more than anything, just efficiently packed so it all fits. I have a bit of a tetrisy brain when it comes to packing things and so I get a little not a little, I get really uncomfortable when I see someone else doing it and it's all wrong. Oh, really? Even when it's not your groceries? Like if you look over and say, no, yes. I can't even look at that, I just look away. So that's my cross to bear though. Yeah, you're doing a great job. But anyway, when they scan something, that calculation is performed every time something is scanned to make sure that check digit calculates out that this is the correct price for this thing. However, to me, fact of the podcast, the barcode does not contain a price. No. Isn't that remarkable? Yeah. Remember we said the thing that the reason bar codes were invented was so that they can encapsulate information about that item? Right. One of the pieces of information that encapsulates is price. But it also encapsulates how many are in stock, whether it's on sale, what tax you put onto it, who manufactures it, what size, the item description, all of this stuff. And it's all encoded in that bar. But no one thing is encoded into that. It's just that when you enter that number, either by scanning it into the computer or by punching those numbers in, that information goes to the point of sale computer in the store, and it returns all that information to the checkout. Yeah, that's kind of I don't know the fact of the podcast for me, because when you scan it, the price pops up. And I just automatically thought, well, sure that's encoded in those bars. Yeah. There is no way for you to look at a UPC symbol and discern the price, even if you can read the bars, because the price the one of the reasons it's invented. So you can alter the price without having to go through and hand label everything. Remember, that was one of the reasons why. Pretty cool. Yeah. The problem is that means that there is such a thing as scanner scamming, which some state senator felt pretty good about him or herself for coming up with that phrase. But there are some untoward retailers or merchants who will mess with the price of something and hope you don't notice and charge you more, even if it's by a few cents. We all saw office space that adds up. Yes. And since we're there, you mentioned the Michigan law. I did look that up because they do have a law. I didn't yet. Well, the result of the Michigan law against scanner fraud is the seller pays, and this is to avoid a lawsuit. You could technically bring a lawsuit against the company, but they can take care of it right here in Brainerd if they want to. So the seller pays the buyer the amount equal to the difference between the displayed price and the charge price, plus an amount equal to ten times that difference. So you think that's a whopping? Well, I mean, let's say you're charged 999 for something that's $899. So you get that dollar, you get a million dollars, you get that dollar plus ten times the difference with a maximum of $5. Because I thought, oh, man, you could really clean up if they really mislabeled like a TV. Yeah, but it's not up to $5. Yeah, that's where they cut it off. But to me, that's a measuring stick for a good grocery store without flinching when they confirmed that there has been a discrepancy between the scanned price and the price that they have on the shelves listed, that they just give you the item. Oh, do they? Publix does. Okay. That's why I'm a public shopper. Right. That in the sheet cake. It's really good. They also have this line of special limited edition ice cream right now. And I want to declare everyone, if there's a public near you. Get to the public, find their special edition toasted s'more ice cream. Oh, yeah. And enjoy arguably the greatest ice cream ever. Good. Doesn't even begin to describe it. I've had a lot of s'more ice cream you're going to love this is better than other s'more ice cream. Yeah. Okay. You're going to love it, man. Public need to sponsor us. We throw them so much love. They really should. All right, well, let's take another break, and we're going to come back after this and talk a little bit more about how these things are read. Hi, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office when you could be using stamps.com? Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses. Because stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and ups shipping services you need right. From your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. All right? Another fact of the podcast for me is that the laser technically is scanning the white space between the black bars, both the black bars and the spaces. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Is that like me thinking about it, like looking at a picture. Is it an old lady or a young lady? Kind of. Yeah. But to the scanner and the sensor more directly, the sensor in the scanner that's getting the bounce back. Right. The black lines on a UPC code don't reflect back into the scanner. The white lines are the absence of the black lines, too. But both of those things, the fact that the light didn't white without the black. Exactly. It's a very zen invention. The fact that some bounce back and some didn't mean something to the computer that's attached to the scanner. And this is where the whole thing kind of gets translated into numbers, which then are put together to become the UPC number that is associated with the information associated with the item. Right. So if you look at these bars, if you study, next time you pick up a can of soup, turn it over and look at it. The very thinnest bar that you're going to see is one unit wide. You can call it that. Sure. And then every other bar that you see is either one unit wide, two, three or four units wide. And that's the maximum width is going to be four units. Right. And so not just the bars are one, two, three or four units wide. The spaces are also one, two, three or four units wide. Right. Sure. So there is when you put a combination of spaces and bars together in the right way, you will end up, as far as the computer is concerned, with a zero or a one or a two. For example, to come up with a zero, you have a three unit wide bar, a two unit wide space. Yeah. A one unit wide bar and then a one unit wide space. That's a zero. When you see that what I just said, go back, listen to it over and over again until you get it back to the computer is a zero. Yeah. Okay. I wonder if you would have messed that up, if there would have been anyone that would be like, actually, Josh, because a little something like that. Right. Yeah. That would be remarkable. Maybe so. I'm sure there are barcode wonks out there. There has to be. I mean, there's just the fact that there's this major industry associated with creating and selling and leasing barcodes. Surely people can just look at it and know what they're saying. I'm sure there are people like Ham Radio. Hams a better end to this. It seems really complex and difficult to us, but if you step back, it's really simple, and yet being exposed to it day in and day out, you couldn't help but memorize it, I would think. Are we on to the QR codes? Well, there's one more thing. If you look at a bar code, there are two lines, and then the numbers start. There are another two lines in the middle, and then there are two more lines at the end. Sure. Yeah. And they are larger than the rest of the barcode. Yeah. Those are actually separators. Those are separators guidelines, whatever you want to call them. And in the middle, those middle two lines actually cut the barcode in half. And when that happens, so that the barcode can be scanned in any direction, the rules turn into the mirror image. So where a zero would have been like a three unit wide space followed by a two unit wide bar, it would be a three unit wide bar followed by a two unit wide space, and so on. It's the same number. It's just the mirror image of it. Right. And that tells the scanner, hey, just go ahead and show off. Show everybody that you can read backwards and forwards. Yeah. We didn't even mention in the beginning there were specific specs when everyone was developing those seven test whatever submissions. Right. And one of them was, you got to be able to do these things forward and backwards, guys. Yeah. In your sleep on beanbag ashtray. It doesn't matter. Yeah. There was also a size requirement, of course, and other things like that, but forwards and backwards had to be in there, right. I guess, for I don't know, convenience. Yeah, I think so. I think that the Cincinnati pilot program, bullseye One, was touchy enough that they're like, it can't be like that. It's got to be, like, really tough and accurate. You can just drop this thing accidentally and it'll ring it up. Right. Got you. Which happens sometimes. Yeah, it does. When you're bagging, when you're doing it yourself. That's the only problem, is when you have a problem, because then you got to call the person over. That's the worst. And that person they're managing eight different registers move, and then the people in line behind you are like, I should have gone to the cashier line. This guy, he's no cashier. I know he's no Diane. Have you noticed also that retailers, company stores are why do you put that in scare quotes? Hurting people more towards self service by having fewer and fewer human run checkout lanes open at a time. Yeah, I haven't noticed that. It's bugging me. Yeah, it bugs me. So when you go to a store, do you have a friendly conversation with your cashier? No. Usually, no. You don't even interact, then you just like them having their job and being quiet about it? I guess so. Okay. No. Of course I do. I chat with people. I'm a friendly guy. By the way, we should shout out what's his name? Brian. I was in a major big box, flatpack furniture store over the weekend. Which one? And a guy approaches me with a Josh sent me shirt. It's awesome. And I took a picture. He was very nice. I think his name was Brian, but he's like, I don't want to bug you. I was like, Dude, you're wearing a don't be dumb shirt. You got to come up to me and say something. That was very cool. And I asked if he minded if I took a picture of him, and I texted it to you. I know, I got it. I was like, Chuck's texting me on a weekend. This must be good. He's quitting the show. Can't take it anymore. Won't be there Tuesday. Period. Tell Jerry yes. It's kind of cool to see them out in the wild. There's a great picture. Anyway, back to QR codes. These are way more complex. If you look at a QR code or a code, which, by the way, came around in 1987, which is hard to believe. I mean, it seems like at least a 2000s thing. Yeah, easily. But this, like we said, can store a ton more information vertically, horizontally. They use dots. Hexagons rectangles. They use bullseyes, which is kind of ironic. When I look at a QR code, I don't see any of those shapes. You see like the one bigger shape mostly. Yeah. Right. I mean, I just see a bunch of blocks. Oh, yeah. That's the most universal one. Just like the UPC is the most universal 1D linear. Right. That QR code is a type of 2D code. Okay. But there are ones that have tons of different, like, patterns and stuff to it. Got you. You just got to stare at them, man. Yeah. And then you're like, oh, it's a donkey. Right. What were those called? The Magic Eye poster. Yes. I used to enjoy this. I always got it eventually, I think. We didn't do a show on these, did we? I don't think so. We've talked about it before. It sounds like a short stuff to me. It does. Let's do it. Okay, so QR codes work basically because everyone has a camera in their pocket now, because you have to have a very complex reader on hand. And that is a camera. Basically, yeah. If you run a product with a QR code through a supermarket scanner, forget about 1D scanner, it will say, like, does not compute. Smoke will come out of it, it'll spin around, it won't be good. You need an image recognition software to scan a 2D code. But the camera on your phone does a really fine job, which is why you're starting to see them everywhere, like in museums and tours and things like that. Yeah, I use one just the other day on a home security camera. They have a little QR code on the bottom, right. And to get it going, you just point your camera at it and it locks it in. I know exactly the one you're talking about. Pretty cool. Yeah. So, Chuck, I think we've been kind of dancing around what's ultimately the biggest question of this whole podcast, and really the reason we created it is the UPC code. The mark of the beast, the devil's mark. How did you know about this? Because I have never heard this. Do you heard this or did you just come across it? I knew paranoid people in the 90s, so I was familiar with this. So refer to our Satanic panic episode as background. But apparently when these things started coming out, there were people or maybe this is all urban legend. No, I saw a reference that Pat Robertson, somebody tried to link to a video, pat Robertson on the 700 Club talking about this and I couldn't find the video. But it's possible. What you're saying, from what I saw, it started out as a real thing. All right, well, it all goes to the Book of Revelation in the New Testament, where, as everyone knows, if you've read the Bible, revelation is when the Bible gets really good. And it's when it talks about the apocalypse and the beast and raining fire down from the heavens and stuff. And it says this he causes all, both great and small, rich and poor, free and slave to receive and he is the beast. Right? Sure. Yeah. Satan to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads. Didn't say back in the neck that no. 1 may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast or the number of his name. Somehow this got locked into the fact that QR code sorry, barcodes were now on products. Right, but that was the mark to sell. Yeah. That was the thing that got everybody all, you need this to buy or sell. This is the mark of the beast. So that's how it started. Right. And then it evolved pretty quickly after that into just a straight up urban legend and rumor that those guidelines. The two in the beginning. The two in the middle. And the two in the end. Actually were encoded sixes. Which meant that every barcode in the world or every UPC symbol in the world. Had six six six embedded in it. Which clearly made it the mark of the beast. Right. And poor George Laurer, who invented this, is like, no, I swear I did not create the mark of the beast. And apparently he got a registered letter once from Satan himself saying, how does it feel to have done my bidding, sucker? I have six six on the license plate of my pickup truck. Do you? Yes. By chance, which I kind of thought was great. Sure, yeah. You stole my Jesus fish, didn't you? There was one other thing that kind of helped the urban legend, too, Chuck. What's that? The IBM scanners that were first put into use were models three six six. What? There was one thing I wanted to mention. We talked a little bit about how barcodes, we basically couldn't exist without them. Right. There's, 5 billion bar codes are scanned every day. That GS. One site tracks it and basically says about 5 billion today. Well, all over the world, 5 billion UPC codes or bar codes of all kinds are scanned every day. Wow. And then the last thing is, there is a company called Quiring Monuments that builds headstones that have QR codes engraved in them. I've heard about those. So that you can scan it as you're in a cemetery and it'll bring up, like, information and pictures of the deceased and talk about their life. Yeah, that's kind of cool. Instead of you're not limited by the size of your gravestone. No. With just your name and a couple of sentences about your life, you could have, like a one inch by one inch gravestone. That's all you need. That'd be kind of cool. It's the wave of the future. Yeah. Well, if you want to know more about bar codes, you can go to a store and start studying them. Go do that now. Oh, wait, but first, listen to this listener mail. I've been meaning to read this for a few weeks. We got an email from a woman named Maggie who works for a great organization. I'll just read it. Hey guys, listen to your select episode recently about Circumcision. Thank you for creating awareness about female genital mutilation around the world. I work with an organization in Kenya that rescues young girls from early forced marriage and female genital mutilation. Some of our girls have been rescued from this as early as age eight. We just recently rescued our 100th girl and have raised up every single one of them to graduate high school, which is a rare thing in this part of Kenya. It's amazing. Yeah, it's very cool. Many have moved on to go on to college. Tribe girls in Kenya are raised to feel worthless and inferior to men and boys. The only value is the dowry they can provide their father when he sells them for marriage. All of our girls have learned their worth and value, which empowers them to spread their message to other girls around them. They are wonderful girls and so happy now. The two times I visited the last few years have been amazing, eye opening experiences. It's good to see how quickly the girls blossom with some security, love and protection. They are remarkable women. One girl I sponsored is ten now, but was eight when we rescued her. And to think she was going to be sold off as someone's wife at eight years old. My goodness. I'd love for you to plug our website so your listeners can get involved if they want to support. It is Saerni.org Saruni.org. There's a gift tab at the top of the page, as well as lots of information on what we do. We specifically need funds to build more dorms and bathhouses for the girls. We are maxed out on beds. Cannot take any more at the moment, so that is our next big goal. I'm really glad you read this one, ma'am. Amazing. That's for Maggie, and again, it is Saruni.org. Thanks a lot, Maggie. Not just for writing in, but for the work you're doing. That's really amazing stuff. If you want to get in touch with us like Maggie did and let us know about some amazing things you're doing, we love to hear that stuff. So you can go on to our website@stuffyoustheno.com and check out our social links there. Or you can send us a good old fashioned email to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts, my Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite 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 podcast. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today." | |
Bridges: Nature Abhors Them | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/bridges-nature-abhors-them | From prehistoric logs across streams to the 102-mile Kunshan Grand Bridge, nature works ceaselessly to take down spans. Learn about the fascinating ins and outs of bridge design and building and the mind-boggling challenges structural engineers face. | From prehistoric logs across streams to the 102-mile Kunshan Grand Bridge, nature works ceaselessly to take down spans. Learn about the fascinating ins and outs of bridge design and building and the mind-boggling challenges structural engineers face. | Thu, 11 Jun 2015 13:46:26 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=11, tm_hour=13, tm_min=46, tm_sec=26, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=162, tm_isdst=0) | 54480222 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopforkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant with Jerry Rowland. With me, Josh Clarke. This is stuff you should Know, featuring Trick. Josh Clarke. About to say you never introduced yourself and then you did it twice. Three times. Oh, yeah. You always introduce yourself, but you never say your last name. I think that's what struck me. No, I say I'm Josh Clark. Do you? Yeah, every time. I should listen to these sometimes. Yeah. That explains the glazed overlook in your eyes whenever we start bridges. Yeah. Is that your intro? Yes. I like them. Maybe we can add, like, a Scat drummer on top of that. We have that kind of when we're doing listener mail, there's a little bit of oh, yeah. Well, that's not scattering. I would say that's more of a shuffle sketch. Like boot up. Yeah, like that. Yeah. You should get Hodgman to Scat for you sometime. He's a good guy. A lot of doo's going on when he's scatting. Any jazz hands? No, it's not exactly Manhattan transfer level. He's intermediate. Yeah. So, again, bridges. Yeah. I bet we're going to hear from some folks because there are bridge enthusiasts, which I think is kind of neat. Yes. Well, I mean, they're like modern marvels of engineering. And actually, there's some ancient marvels of engineering, too. As far as through that, basically, I was talking to our pal Adam, the architect. The bridge builder. No. Yeah. He's a building builder or a building designer. I don't know if he actually knows how to build the buildings. He just knows how to tell other people how to build. I bet Adam can't swing a hammer. He was saying that basically the structural engineers who design bridges are just straight up geniuses. Oh, I'm sure. Like, it requires basically a genius to factor in all this stuff. Yeah. Anyone can design a building. Four walls and a bunch of floors. Right. Put a roof on it. Bridge, though, it's different. That's right. There aren't walls. Really? There can be bridges of Madison County. They had walls. Oh, yeah. They have walls. I was going to mention the bridges of Madison County. Yeah, I love those. That'd be a beam bridge, I guess. Yeah. With a truss. Right. A top trust. What's the top trust called? A through trust. Yeah, through trust. And then below that, if it were below, it would be a deck trust. But I don't know if that counts as a trust. It's more just like a house on top of the bridge. I bet there's structural support there. Yes. Mainly just to keep the rain off of you when you cross the bridge. Like just an extra little thank you for crossing the bridge. I thought it was just to draw in lackey tourists who wanted to have their picture made. Another famous bridge, the one that the headless horsemen couldn't cross in the legend of Sleepy Hollow. Oh, yeah. Wasn't that a bridge? Sure. Trolls. Lavender bridges. Drawbridges are pretty cool. Have you ever seen Maximum Overdrive at the beginning of that movie? It's been many years. I saw it again very recently, like, this year, and it's maybe better than it was before. It holds up as a crappy movie still. Yes. The whole soundtrack is AC DC, by the way, which you should love. Whole soundtrack. I do love that. And I do remember that. And didn't Stephen King direct that? Which he doesn't do much, right? No, maybe it's only one. It's definitely his first. Interesting. But there's a great drawbridge scene in there. Did someone jump it? Jump the span as it raised? No, I think their car fell in. Or their truck fell in. Okay. Because usually the drawbridge scene is like, I can make it. No, this one was you're all doomed. Got you. And let me also recommend Budapest for bridges. You mean I went to Budapest a couple years ago? Yeah, I went there, like, 20 years ago. Okay. Yeah. You know, the bridges are amazing. I think, like, five. Yeah. Because they connect the two sides. Yeah. Buddha and Peshd. Right. And each one is totally different. Like, it's just a completely different design, and they're just all gorgeous. Yeah. Let's just start with a bunch of bridge recommendations. I'm going to recommend the city of Pittsburgh. Oh, yeah. Win a baseball game there. And it's just gorgeous. Those beautiful bridges that you can see from the baseball stadium and the river. That was when we were shooting a Toyota commercial train, right? Yeah. I stayed in the hotel and just ate. Soggy pine? No, chicken SAG. Right? Just like a quarter. But you could see the baseball stadium out your hotel window. Yeah. And I saw some bridges, too. Yeah, you walk across the bridge to get there. Right. At least we did. What else? Any other bridges? Brooklyn Bridge. Sure. Golden Gate Bridge. These are, like the famous ones. They're barely even worth mentioning. Yeah, but the Brooklyn Bridge is for your money, which is free. It's a pretty great thing to do, to walk across it. It's just beautiful. I have never done that. Yes, you should do it. Even the geico lizard did it, and I haven't. That guy's, like, Australian or something. Well, maybe we should just animate you and have you walk across it. One more thing. If you want to know more about the Brooklyn Bridge I don't remember which one we talked about it in, but there is a really cool documentary about the Brooklyn Bridge and it's building by Ken Burns. Oh, wow. I believe it's on Netflix. I'll have to check that out then. Yeah. Because I like Ken Burns and Brooklyn Bridges. All right, are you ready? Yeah, man. So bridges have been around for a very long time. This article is by Robert Lam and another dude named Michael Morris. Together, I believe they were locked away in the closet for like, a couple of months while they worked this out together. Well, one of the first ones talking about ancient bridges that they mentioned in here, the Archaedico Bridge in ancient Greece. Did you see that thing? No. It's really neat. I mean, it still stands. It's a 3000 year old bridge. And it's just kind of cool to think about ancient civilizations. In ancient times, people said, Well, I want to get over there. Right. And I'm here. Let's build something. To do that, I need something to walk on or drive my car over. It's that simple. I saw the world's oldest bridge that's still in use is in Turkey over the Melas River, I believe. Yeah. From 850 BCE. Do you know what that one is, how it's constructed? It is a single stone slab arch. Okay. No, it is a stone slab single arch. Yeah, that makes sense. Very basic. Yeah. But the arch, it's super old, but it's still in use today. Oh, yeah. Because whoever figured it out came upon this very elegant solution to a lot of problems that a bridge poses. Because as you were saying, when you come upon, like, a river or creek or something, you say, I'm on this side and I need to be on the other side, so I need something to walk across. Yeah, okay. That's a basic solution. But the further and further you get, the more and more problems. Like as bridge billers say, no span, no problems. Yeah, I guess what we should have said is, I want to walk across and live. I want to walk all the way across. Right. I don't want to fall down. No. I don't want to get halfway across and have it snap. Right. So over the years, as people have come upon problems where you are going to build a bridge that will snapping and kill you, they have come up with solutions to prevent that from happening. That's pretty much the pursuit of bridge building. Yeah, it's coming up with ways to prevent a bridge from collapsing. Yes. And a lot of trial and error over the years and a lot of real significant disasters. In fact, there's a Time magazine slideshow called worst Bridge Collapses in the Past 100 years. And it's got all these photos of collapsed bridges and little descriptions and the number of fatalities and everything. But it's really interesting. All these different bridges have collapsed and failed for all these different reasons. Well, and after each one it's very sad, of course, but after each one, someone goes, oh, well, we should do this for the next one. Right. We should not forget that bolt next time. Well, that could be human error. True. That's happened. Yeah, I'm sure. All right, so should we start off with the bats? B-A-T-S beams, arches, trusses and suspensions are the main components, structural components of a bridge. It's very simple. Boom. That's it. That's all you need to know to construct your own bridge. And with these four things, you can make almost any kind of bridge. We're going to cover mainly beam bridges, arch bridges, truss bridges, suspension bridges, and then the super cool looking cable stayed bridge. It is super cool. Probably my favorite looking bridge in the world that I came across in researching this is a cable stayed bridge, the one that's in the article. Oh, yeah. They look like sales. Gorgeous. The big triangle is rising up. It's lovely, but they look a little more modern to me. They don't have that classic architecture like the Brooklyn Bridge does, or like the Tower Bridge in London. Yeah, I think that's why I like it. Yeah, you like the modern look. Yeah. You're a modern guy. I'm super mod. All right. They point out in the article, which is very key, what you talked about, the span of the bridge is the distance between the supports, and that's where it all goes down, basically. Yes. That's got to be strong there. Those are something that every single bridge has, is a spam and at least one support, most likely to the reason that there are different types of bridges is because different bridge designs that Bats designs. What is it? Beams, arches, trusses, and suspension. They provide stability for varying span lengths. Yeah. So like a beam, if you have like a 50 foot span, just put a very long log over the span and there you go, there's your bridge. But as you get further and further along, you have more and more problems supporting that span. So you need different types of solutions, and the different length of the span calls usually for a specific type of bridge design. Yeah. And generally there's a lot of overlap, of course, but beam bridges tend to be the shortest, followed by arch bridges and then suspension bridges. Right. And I think the cable stayed bridge is kind of a suspension bridge, so that counts. It's like a kind of a variation that can be very long as well. Yeah. Not quite as long as suspension bridges, though. From what I understand, the suspension bridge affords the longest span. Okay. You got a big long span. It's suspension time. Yes. And they're also super expensive suspension bridges because all the bridge builders know that you got a long span that you're trying to cross. You probably got some deep pockets, and they're going to milk you for it. Oh, yeah. Every penny. Yeah. Like, you need a suspension bridge, I'm your guy. Yeah. All right, so let's talk about there are a lot of different forces that can act on a bridge to make it not as stable. We'll cover a few of the other ones later. But the main two here early on are tension and compression. And the very easy way to think about these two things is tension is like if you and I are pulling a rope like you're on one end and I'm on the other. We're going to pull that sucker tight and I'm going to fall over. Due to your massive strength. I'm pretty huge. But there will be some tension in that rope. Yeah. Tension between us after you fall down. Yeah. And I start laughing. There would be tension. Sure. But tension is the lengthening of something. Yes. Compression is the shortening of something. Yes. Like a spring collapse. Right. So it's easy to visualize when you're talking. Like. Springs and ropes and that kind of thing. But if you're talking about just a single deck of a bridge. Which you think of as one piece. It starts to get tough to visualize it until you realize that you have to look at a bridge deck. Like the roadway on the bridge. As really having a top and a bottom yes. And forces well, the compression acts in the downward motion on the top, and the tension acts from the underneath coming up on the bottom. Right. So the bottom of the bridge underneath it of the deck is going to be spread out under the force of tension where on top, where it's being pushed down, compressed, that's compression. Yeah. And they kind of, in a weird way, work together. Even though they're sort of opposite things, they're definitely related. Yeah. Right. And what will happen is, if you aren't a very good bridge builder, buckling will occur when it's compressed on the top and snapping can occur on the bottom when tension is at work. That's right. All sounds very confusing, but I got to do is put your hand out and look at it. Right. If you take and push down on your hand or up on your hand right. You know what I'm saying? Sure. Like that. Yeah, like that. The whole thing becomes very evident when you look at a beam bridge, the most basic form of a bridge, like if you dropped a log over a river. Right. And this article uses the example of taking a pair of milk crates and putting a two by four across them. Right. Let's do that. If you put like, a bowling ball on a bowling ball stand so it doesn't roll around yeah. That'd be awkward. Right. In the middle of your two x four, which makes up your beam bridge deck. Right. You're going to see that it bows, and what you're seeing is that on the top, it's being compressed, on the bottom, it's being tensed. Right. Yeah. And what you've just done is add a load to that bridge. And there are two kinds of loads to start out with. There's a dead load, which is the weight of the bridge and all of its materials combined, and then there's a live load, which is, say, like, the cars and the people and the trains and everything that add the extra weight while they're moving across it and everything. And as you add this extra load. First of all, the bridge is already dealing with its dead load. Got to hold that up. That's job number one for a bridge. Yeah. Like if you had a 300 foot, two x four and two milk crates, it's going to SAG in the middle just naturally. Right. And it might even break. And there have been bridges that have been built where the guy forgot to carry the one or whatever, and they couldn't stand up under their own weight, and they collapse from their own weight. They collapsed from the dead load. So job number one of the bridge is to support its own weight. Job number 1.1 is to support all of the live load, the traffic that goes across it as well. That's right. And the two ways that you're going to do this to counteract tension and compression are dissipation and transference force, or transferring the force. So with dissipation, you spread out that force equally. You spread out over a wide area. And with transferring, you move the area of weakness to an area of strength. Right. Which is pretty simple. Yeah. They're kind of tough to distinguish sometimes. Yeah. You know what I mean? But for example, the best example of dissipation is the arch, which we'll talk about how that works in a second. But suspension bridges are best at transferring the tension and compression forces. That's right. So if you're talking about a beam bridge, that most basic kind, the other thing they're going to do to make it stronger, of course, is use back in the old days, you use wood, then later iron and then steel, maybe some concrete mixed in. But the size of the beam is going to be really important. Like the height of the beam is important because the top is going to experience stress. The bottom is going to experience stress in the middle. Not as much. So a good eye beam, a good tall eye beam is what you want. Yeah. And I didn't realize that. That's why I beams are made like ibeams. I didn't really it makes sense. The center of the deck or the beam or whatever, any kind of beam is going to experience the least amount of compression or tension. It's really the top or the bottom. So you don't have to put quite as much material into the center of the beam as you do the top and the bottom to prevent buckling and snapping. That's right. So with the beam bridge, you're going to add what's called a truss to make it stronger. We'll talk about trusses more, but it's basically a triangulated strength. And you'll see a truss if you've ever seen like a train bridge, like you see a truss on top or in areas where they get a lot of snow, roof supports will frequently be trusses. Yeah. And that's the three truss on top, we already said. And if it's underneath, then it is the deck truss, right? And you can have both. But usually, like with the railroads, you'll see, like, that top truss not the same as a trestle. It's different. Right. It's like a roller coaster. So after this break, why don't we talk more about trust bridges? Nice. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office when you could be using Stamps.com? Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses, because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need, right. From your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial, plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. So, Chuck, no joke. Trusts are one of my favorite things now. It's pretty neat. After doing some research into them, I'm like, I love trusses. You're a trust guy. Yeah. And it's because they're so elegant and simple. They're elegantly, simple, basically. So I saw this really great explanation where it was on make magazine and I think it was called, like, Ask Make. How Do Trusses work? Pretty straightforward. And it basically had really a great graphic of using Popsicle sticks. Right. Okay, let's say you make a square out of Popsicle sticks and you join the Popsicle sticks together at the corners where the ends all meet. Yeah. Little Elmer's Pace maybe. Makes sense. Seems pretty supportive. Right? But when you press down on any one of those joints, which is where the load is going to be centered or distributed, most remember the end, the square shift to the side, and all of a sudden you have a rhombus. Well, rhombus is inherently less structurally sound than square, which is why you very rarely see rhombuses in architecture. Right. With a triangle, when you press down on any one of the joints, it distributes that compression or tension directly through the center of the beam so the triangle stays totally rigid. And when you add the more triangles you add, the more support you have. So they're like, basically as far as the shape goes. The super conductor of transferring or distributing compression or tension. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. And that's why when you see that train trest alone that has that truss on top it's got all those beautiful diagonal pieces of metal. Right. And it's not just for looks, even though it is cool looking. No. One of the other great things about a truss is that it's like just three steel beams or three, whatever, aluminum beams. They're just three pieces of metal usually fixed together. And that's the other key that I left out. They have to be connected at the end, equally distributed from each end. Right. So let's say you drill a hole to rivet one side of the trust to another, or one end of the truss to another end, the other end has to be equally far away. Right. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah. Okay. They wouldn't just be like, oh, I just drilled that other one wherever. So anyway, the place where the tress sides join together has to be on the ends. Yes, but one of the things that it allows for is for wind to blow through it easily. Oh, sure. That's a huge point about tresses. They're not solid in that they don't put up a lot of resistance to when they allow it to flow through, which is really kind of what you want, we'll see when you're building bridges. Yeah. I think even the covered bridges is more of a lattice type thing on the sides, right? Yes. It's not solid, is it? That'd be dumb. A covered bridge. Yeah, they're solid. I thought the walls were usually like a lattice so wind could pass through now. And they had a roof and like a lattice side. Is that right? Maybe there's all kinds. Yeah, I think those are just to keep the rain off. Yes, that's what you said earlier. You keep shooting down the serious structure thing. But anyway, trust is rock, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. Yes. There's your T shirt trusses rock. So are we at Arches, do we say that they frequently use trusses to support beam bridges? Yeah. Okay. Arches. Now, when we say a bridge is an arch bridge, the deck is not some big hill that you drive over. The deck is flat the arches underneath, right? Yeah. And you can have a single arch if your span isn't long, or you can have a big one with like six or eight arches. Although I think there are short arch bridges that actually do go up and down. Sure. There's natural arch bridges, like rock formations like that, and that's why they're still standing. There's a bridge that forms like a perfect circle. So when you see it reflected in the water, it just looks like a circle. Oh, neato. Isn't that neat? Yeah. Arch bridges are pretty cool, too. There are no trusses, but they're beautiful in their own way. Yes, that's true. So the arch is obviously semicircular, and like you said, if it meets the water and reflects nicely, fully circular, and the entire form is going to divert weight onto what are called abutments and this is what takes on the pressure. If it's just a single arch, those abutments are probably going to be part of the earth, right on one side or the other. Yeah. And the whole point of an abutment is when you press down on an arch, or when gravity pushes down on it or it's compressed, that force goes downward and it makes the sides of the arch go out. Yeah. Those abutments press inward so that the force of compression just goes straight down through the arch, circle the semicircle and into the earth or into the ground or whatever. Yeah. And what I thought was interesting, it's really all about fighting that compression. There isn't a lot of tension that comes into play with an arch bridge. I think the tension grows more and more possible when the degree of the arch grows. Okay, so that could come into play. It can, but for the most part, when you're building an arch, you have to worry about compression more than tension. Got you. Yeah. So there's a stylistically and artistically, design wise, there are all kinds of arches. Baroque arches. Renaissance arches. Roman arches. The Romans built arch bridges that are still standing today. Have you been to Rome? Yeah. Man, it's just like you're walking along and all of a sudden you look to your left and there's like a 2000 year old aqueduct, 1500 year old arch just sitting there. Yeah. I remember the first time I went to Europe, coming back and being sort of like bummed out because we were walking along and there's Burger King. This house is 200 years old, she could have Rome. I know. My house is like 80 years old and it seems super old. Nothing? Not by Roman standards, no, but little drafty in those thousand year old apartments. Yeah, but it's so neat though, because I mean, there's so much old surviving stuff that not all of it is even meant to be preserved. Some of it's just like just there. It's not like a part of a park or an historic exhibit, it's just part of the city. Yeah. I've heard other tourists complaining about how dirty Rome is and I'm always just like, come on, you're focusing on the wrong part. It's been around for a long time. Oh yeah, that too. Yeah. And also, don't be stupid and just look around you like they're complaining in front of a 2000 year old fountain. I didn't notice it was particularly dirty. I mean, it wasn't any more dirty than like New York or anything, any other big city. I agree. The thing with the arch though, very stable once you get it built, but the building process is tricky because until you connect those two ends, that's what gives it its strength. So until that happens, it's a little dicey. Yeah. I have some scaffolding one time. Yeah. And they used to build wood scaffolds and supports to hold the thing and then you just would build it in. Now they use suspension tables. I think the biggest arch bridge on the planet is West Virginia's New River Gorge Bridge. Man, that thing is unbelievable. It really is. And what's cool is when you look at it, it uses the cliff walls or the walls of the gorge as the abutments. Beautiful stuff, super strong. And that's where we're going to talk about that in our base jumping. I know. That's the fact that ties these two podcasts together, that's where they have bridge day. Talk about elegantly, simple. So suspension bridges, for my money, are where it's at. I think they deserve their own episode. Oh, yeah, pretty much. They're that complex. This is just the briefest overview of bridges in general. But especially with suspension bridges, it feels like there's just so much going on with those things. Yeah, I agree. I mean, Tim Burns did like an eight hour long documentary on the Brooklyn Bridge alone. Yeah, that's true. He's a deep diver. Really is. We're over of you guys. Yeah, with a giant helmet to go over his giant haircut. He does have pretty big hair, doesn't he? Do all right. So suspension bridges. We mentioned, of course, golden Gate Bridge and the Brooklyn Bridge. This is when you have your deck, your roadway is suspended by cables between can be a number of them, but at least two tall towers that are supporting all of this weight and compression is pushing down, traveling up through those cables and transferring all that compression through all those lovely cables. Right. So, I mean, another way to look at it is exactly what it sounds like. The bridge is suspended from cables. Right? Yeah. But if you really start looking into what it's doing, it's not just holding these things up. What's going on is there's a transfer of that natural compression of the deck up through the lines, up through the cables, up to the towers, which, like you said, send them down to the earth. Right. So the towers that hold the bridge up are at the same time distributing or dissipating the forces of compression that are trying to pull the bridge down into the water below it. Yes. And the tension you also have to deal with as well. And apparently you deal with that using another part of the structure of suspension bridges, which are called anchorages. Yeah. Now that's just what the towers connected to at the base right now. No, the anchorage is like the abutment, essentially. Yes. They're like left and right. They're like a suspension bridge is abutments, where as you get closer to the middle of the bridge, that's where the towers are. But on the very end, like, say, where the roadway hits the bridge, you're going to have a massive piece of rock or massive piece of concrete. And those are the anchorages. And you have horizontal cables that distribute the compression from the bottom of the bridge to. The anchorages and those transfer those into the earth. Yeah. And you might also, depending on the size of your suspension bridge, have to have that below deck truss as well to help stiffen the deck. And if you have a 4000 foot bridge, you're going to have all kinds of trusses and decks and cables. I think I finally figured out what it is about bridges that I love is that the structural design that it needs to be strong also happens to be beautiful. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like the way the cables are arranged, it's not like they're like, oh, this looks great. Well, it has to be like this. Right. But it also happens to be very striking, like Grace Jones, you know what I mean? Yeah. So suspension bridges are your favorite, huh? I like them because they have so much going on. I like trusses because they're so elegantly, simple, and they're just tough as nails. There's a bridge for everyone. I think it really is. The cable stayed bridge. And we should say that suspension bridges, when you think of a suspension bridge, you probably think of the Golden Gate bridge or something like that, right? Yeah, just a classic suspension bridge. Two towers, two anchorages, lots of suspension cables, suspension bridge. And you think, well, then they're probably pretty new. Wrong. Suspension bridges have been found in various forms for hundreds of years at least. And apparently the Inca were masters at building rope suspension bridges out of woven grass. Crazy, man. Yeah. 1500, they discovered the Spanish conquistadors stumbled upon. These were like, what in the world is going on here? Because the smart Europeans didn't figure this out for another, like, few hundred years after that. That's right. The Inca still have one of these bridges intact. It spans 90ft, and they remake it every year as part of a three day festival. Oh, really? Nice. Which is why it's still intact, because woven grass brokerage doesn't last all that long, necessarily. Even though when it's fresh and new, it's strong. Yeah. As an expiration date, is that what you're saying? But apparently, as we'll learn, all bridges have an expiration date. All right, well, we'll take a break then with that tease and talk about the cable stay bridge and then how you might die on a bridge one day. Hey, everyone, when you're running a small business, every second counts and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office, then? You could be using Stampscom. Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses. Because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need, right. From your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary. And you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. All right, so we're onto your favorite, my friend, the super sleek, modern looking cable state bridge, which is actually actually has been around since World War II. Yeah. But the idea, which is so modern, the idea came from a dude named Faust Vanshic. Yeah, man. And he was a contemporary of Kepler and Brahe, and he basically came up with the first design for a cable stayed bridge back in the 16th century. So what's the nuts and bolts of this thing? So basically it is rather than two towers, like a suspension bridge uses, a cable stay bridge, uses one tower. Well, not always. There's plenty of them to have more than one. Okay. But for a particular span of bridge, there's one tower supporting that one span. Right. So it's basically you can't use it for as long of a span as a suspension bridge. Right. But if you have a slightly shorter span and you don't want to spend quite as much money and you don't want as many wires up there and everything, you can go with the cable stay bridge. So you have one usually one tower holding up all the cables, and the cables can either all connect to one point, which is called a radial pattern. Right. So it's like all these different cables are connecting on the bridge deck at different points, but they're all connecting at about a single point on the tower. Again, architecturally lovely. Very neat looking. Yeah. And then another way that you can do it is in a parallel pattern. So they're connected at different points on the deck and they connected different points on the tower. And that's the case with the Erasmus Bridge, which I think is the most beautiful bridge in the world in Holland. Oh, wow. That didn't surprise me. I mean, look at that thing. Look at that. POW. Oh, yeah. That's something else. Yeah. I wish you guys could see this. Well, they can look it up. It doesn't look like very Dutch, though. No, it looks very like the New Holland, I guess. Yeah. New Amsterdam. I'm just picturing, like, Holland, I think, of wooden windmills. Oh, and like tulips and stuff like that. Yeah, sure. Yeah. This is modern Holland. It looks like something that would be in, like, Sydney, Australia. Well, they have great bridge, too. They do. Maybe that's where I'm thinking are you done with those? Well, I was going to say another design for cable stay bridge looks a lot like a sailboat with the tower standing straight up and then on each side, cables going down at a diagonal from it to make it look like a sailboat sale in Ma. And again for structural integrity more than anything. Right. Living bridges. Sure. Well, I guess we should say cable stayed bridges. They can't be as long as suspension bridges, but they can be pretty long, like up to close to 3000ft. But that's what I'm saying. Like if you have a shorter span and you don't want to use as many materials and hence spend as much money, cable State Bridge is a great alternative. Yeah. I wonder what the considerations are. Like money, I would guess. Money, first and foremost, money what you probably is best for the land. But I also bet that architecture comes into play, like how it looks in the cityscape, don't you think? Yeah. Usually a city will have some sort of will accept several designs, competing designs, and then probably like in Atlanta's case with the 17th Street Bridge, goes with the cheapest one and then half of it falls down on the traffic later. Like a couple of years later. Did that happen? Yeah. When? Like two years ago. Really? Yeah, man, it was a big deal. Luckily it happened at like four in the morning or five in the morning, but when you're walking on the bridge, the side stuff, one whole side fell over onto 75 below onto the connector right below. Yeah, I kind of remember that. Yeah. But it's an ugly bridge to begin with. Really? Dude, if you're listening, the guy who designed it, I'm sorry, I don't mean to insult your work, but do better. The city could have done better, I think. Yeah. But I think what it came down to, I'm sure, was all of these are beautiful, but we're just going to spend the money on this one, right? Or whoever got the biggest kickback, or wherever that came from, not to be cynical. Living bridges. Yeah, we're talking about that. If you go to northern India, to the here we go. The Meghalaya region. I think that was good. All right, close enough. They have something pretty remarkable, and they are called living bridges. And what they did was it's so rainy there that all of their natural bridges were having a hard time staying intact because of all the moisture. Yeah. For monsoon season. Yeah. And you can't have a natural bridge with that much water. So they said, why don't we take these tree roots and grow them out of the ground and span a river over the course of years and years and years, and then basically plant it on the other side into the ground? And this is now a natural tree root bridge. Right. It's like giant living bonsai. Like they were training roots to go a certain way, and they would take a felled tree and split it in half and use that as the guide. It's like the structure. So they were building an arch, but they weren't making an arch. Like sort of a temporary bridge. Exactly. And they let the roots grow along that, and they would plan these things out, or they do plan these things out over the course of, like, a decade. Yeah. And I get the impression it's the whole town's responsibility, at least some people in the town's responsibility to make sure that if you see your route starting to go down in the wrong place, you just pluck it up and put it back on that fell log that's guiding it across the way. Yeah, it's pretty neat. It requires patience, obviously, but it also, I imagine, just once a day, someone walks down and is like, yeah, looking good, and then just walks away again. Pets. The bridge says keep growing. I'll walk across you in ten years, buddy. And apparently those things can last up to 50 years, or the largest one that they have up to 100ft, which is 30 meters for our friends in India. Crazy. And it can bear the weight of 50 people and last up to 500 years. Not 50. That's what I said. Oh, I thought you said 50. I said 50 people. Well, it's crazy. You got to Google these things. Yeah, they're very pretty. It looks very dark, crystalline. Oh, yeah, totally. You know what I mean? But they're not unsettling at all. No, like the Dark Crystal. Right. Which, by the way, if you're ever in Atlanta, sometimes people say, hey, I'm coming to Atlanta. What should I do? Go to the center for Paupertry Arts. Agreed. And just look at their free exhibit, which includes a full size sketchy. It's terrifying. Yeah, we've talked about this before. They have Emma Otter. That's right. For me, that was pretty magnificent. It meant a lot for Emma Otter to meet you, too. They're doing actually, I saw it was just at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens. Oh, yeah, I saw you post something about that. Yeah, they have an admin exhibit right now, which is pretty neat, but it was pretty cool. I was not there in time for the Jim Henson when they're putting that in place, I think for later. It's coming. It's coming. That's good. You didn't miss it yet. Well, yeah, I'll just go back. We went to the Yoko Ono exhibit at MoMA. Awesome. She's something else, dude. She's got a pretty cool mind. Yeah, she had this one display, and it was titled Three Spoons, and it was just four spoons in a row. It wasn't three. I love that stuff. Yeah. So I recommend that as well. I'm not a fan of her music, though. I actually got turned on her music in the Listening Room there. It's crazy. It is weird stuff, but I kind of like it. I mean, she's definitely one of the most, like, original thinkers out there, and she's been at it for a while. A lot of the stuff went back to the 60s, like the early talk about weathering criticism and still just being like, Screw you. Yeah, I'm Yoko Ono. I don't care what you say. Well, she was exonerated, too. Recently, member Paul McCartney came out and said, like, it was not Yoko owner that broke up the Beatles and stopped saying that. It just took him, like, 50 years to come out and say it. Yeah. She's like, Would it kill you? Right. He told me privately many times, but press release tweeted. All right, so we talked about compression and tension being the two main forces. There are quite a few other forces, dozens even, that can act on a bridge in a negative way. And the scariest one, for my money, is torsion. If you've ever seen the video, it's a very famous video of the bridge. What is it? The Tacoma the Tacoma narrows bridge to combine heroes bridge. When it looks like a wet noodle twisting in the wind. Yeah, it was 1940. It's nuts. And they have, like, footage of this whole thing just undergoing this destruction that kept just going on and on and on. Finally, the bridge comes down. Yes. The craziest part is, when you're watching it, you just think, oh, man, look at that thing. It's nuts. And thank God there's no one on it. And then you see, like, a dude walking on it in a car. Yes. A guy ran. There's one car in there, and there's a dog trapped in the car. And some guy ran and got the dog. Oh, he did? Yes. Pretty great heroic stuff. Sure. Then later on, I don't know if it was the same guy and another guy or just two completely new guys, they're just walking along it. This is after a whole section is falling into the river, but the section they're walking on is still swaying away from the bridge. Step back from the bridge, man. So that's torsion at work. Yeah. And that's a big problem that designers of suspension bridges face, because you have a deck that's being held off by cables. Right. It's not, like, fixed to anything below it, necessarily. Yeah, it's being suspended. So just like on, like, a rope bridge or something like that, it sways very easily. Right. Yeah. Those towers are strong, but it's not directly connected to those towers. Right. So if you have a swaying bridge in between them right. And the thing is swaying back and forth, but if one side starts to sway over the other side, and all of a sudden you have an opposing circular force, and that's torsion, and that can basically rip the bridge into which is sheer. Yeah. Well, that's the other awful thing that can happen. It can just snap. Well, not snap, I guess, but just breaking to two parts. Yeah. Well, I mean, snapping is the result of compression. Shearing would be what it's called technically. Yeah, exactly. Where the same span of bridge has two opposing forces acting on it at once in opposite directions. And it goes it makes a terrible sound. If you want to combat torsion many ways to do this, you're probably going to have a deck trust going on to help out. Trust saves the day. Deck trust saves the day. You're going to do wind tunnel tests if it's a modern bridge beforehand. Well, you're going to make a model yeah. And do tests and see, like, how does wind affect this bridge and what do we need to do? But the thing is, with the Taco Maneros bridge in particular, they did tests, they had that thing rated withstanding winds of up to 120 miles an hour. But the winds that day that brought it down were only 40 miles an hour. And for a long time they were like, what happened? And somebody said, you know what it was? It was mechanical resonance. Yeah. The deck truss was not sufficient for the span that was part of it, and the way that the wind hit it and the angle caused the final thing, like you just mentioned, resonance, which is sort of a vibration, basically, that gets out of hand. So resonance to me, I think, deserves its own podcast, too. Awesome. Everything, especially anything that we build from an airplane to a bridge to a watch, it has a certain frequency where it will really pick up force, really absorb force, it will run through it. Right. So let's say that your bridge has a residence that's like, at a frequency of ten. That's probably a totally ridiculous number that I just said, but let's say it's ten. Right. And then let's say that wind comes at it at 40 miles an hour at just the right angle, and it makes it sway at a frequency of nine. Well, that bridge is going to be going to sit there and sway. Not a big problem. If that wind hits it at just the right angle at just the right speed, and it starts swaying at eleven, it's still not quite a problem. But if it gets it just right and it starts swaying at ten, all of a sudden those sways are going to become more and more pronounced because all that energy is flowing through at its maximum potential, at its freest flow, because it's hitting the bridge at its natural resonance. Right. Yeah. And that's what caused the Tacomaeros Bridge to come down, because once that thing starts going, there's no coming back from it happening. It gets worse and worse. Exactly. And that's because it hit it at just the right frequency. Yeah. They liken it in the article, which I think is pretty down to earth of a snowball rolling downhill. Exactly. It just keeps getting worse and worse and you can't stop it. But isn't that bizarre that a bridge has a natural resonance? A natural frequency? I don't think so. I would assume that would vibrate. Yeah. It did not occur to me at all. And I was talking to Adam about this, too, and I was like so I saw that building designers, bridge designers, they will fine tune like a structure so that it resonates at a frequency that it's probably never going to encounter from an earthquake or from winds or whatever. I'm like, how do you do that? And apparently it comes down to the building materials. You use the shapes you use to form the structure, the way you join those shapes together. And you can basically say, I'm giving this building a frequency of 1.5. Right. Whereas I know all of the wind in the area and the ground movement from an earthquake is going to make it vibrate at a frequency of seven. So it'll be fine. Yeah. And one way, like you said, they can do that, is by not having one shortening the sections of the deck, let's say. And that way the vibration, when you have these overlapping plates and smaller sections, it's going to create enough friction to disrupt that frequency. Right. It'll change the frequency that the bridge is moving at. But, I mean, and not just bridges, too. You have to take into account, like, airplanes, right? Sure. You can't use engines on airplanes that create vibrations at a frequency that's at the natural resonance of the airplane body. The airplane body is going to come apart just from turning the engines on. Yes. Could you imagine seeing the airplane wing starting to flap, like, harder and harder? Right. But apparently the more common thing when you have a disaster, catastrophe from a mechanical residence problem, it's like one bolt. It's like, I can't take it anymore, and stops. And then that leads to a cascade of failures that ultimately has the bridge coming down. Yeah. Interesting. I think that's fascinating. I had no idea that you had to worry about frequencies and vibrations. That's why all the bridges you've built have collapsed. They collapse pretty easy. Well, if you've ever heard the old they go down like a French boxer, it was a Glass Joe reference. Remember him from Mike Tyson's punch out. He was French. Glass Joe. Got you glass jaw. And he went down just like a sack of potatoes. So easy, man. Well, which was it? A sack of potatoes or a French boxer? He was both. He went down like a sack of French potatoes. Yes. French fries. Right. My bridges go down like a French boxer. But Glass Joe, the French boxer went down like a sack of potatoes. Got you. Ergo my bridges go down like a sack of potatoes. If you've ever heard the old wives tale that like an army marching across a bridge in step can cause enough vibration to take down that bridge, it's true. That could happen. Wartime is at the right frequency, right? Yeah. In wartime, they will break step in other words, their rhythm isn't all the same to avoid that scenario. And there was a bridge disaster. I saw in that Time magazine slide show where that happened. There were a pair of skywalk bridges inside the Hyatt Regency Kansas City Hotel in the lobby. They were just, like, raised bridges going through the lobby. And they collapsed in 1981 and killed, like, a bunch of people because 30 something people. Marching, dancing. They were dancing on the skywalk. And you think, like, up to today or yesterday, when I started researching this, right? I just thought that's weight or pressure or something. Like if everybody's dancing, it never occurred to me that the rhythm had something to do. Oh, really? See. I'd always heard that. Well, you are far more advanced than I am in structural engineering, my friend. Not that. It's just always heard that even a bunch of kittens walking across could cause that. And the reason they said kittens, of course, is that it has nothing to do with weight. Right. Because kittens knowing nothing. And consequently, I think Lionel Ritchie had to change the name of the song because of the accident. I think originally it was hello. Oh, what a feeling when you're dancing on the skywalk. And he had to change it, the ceiling. And everyone was like, that's weird on the ceiling. But it rhymes. He's like, yeah, but nobody ever died from dancing on the ceiling. I guess the final thing we should mention is the weather, obviously, will play a big impact. We already talked about wind, but over the years, the materials they use and the design has gone in to take account things like wind and what. Sun damage. I don't know. I think the freeze thaw cycle is huge. Yeah. Salt. Sure. Salt exposure. If it's going over like a salty body of water. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. There's a lot of things that are trying to bring a bridge down. Nature abhors a bridge basically as much as a vacuum. I've got one. What you got? There's probably around 630,000 bridges in the US. Alone because there were 617,935 in the 2002 census. And they were adding them at about 1000 a year. Maybe 900 a year. Wow. That's just the US. The world's longest bridge, completed in 2010. The Danyang Kunshan Bridge. I think I've seen pictures of that. It serves as a railway bridge for the Beijing and Shanghai railway. It's 102 miles long. Bridge that's nutty over water. I'm a big fan of cities with multiple water bridges. Well, that's why you liked Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh, Portland, Budapest. Yeah, I'm a big fan. Atlanta doesn't we have bridges, but it's not like you have to go to the Chattahoochee River lakes. Nobody goes to the chattahoochee. You know what? Sure. I got one more thing. I want to shout out to PBS's Build It Big website, which is, like, beyond 90s as far as websites go. But it was extremely helpful in understanding the forces that work on bridges. Different types of bridges, different specific bridges. Great website. And thanks to Adam, I guess you got some information from him. Yeah, thanks, Adam. Was he in talking to you about it, or was he on the other end going, oh, my God, shut up, I'm watching Tim and Eric. He was into talking about it. I figured he would be. Yeah, and I actually have to shout out to Yummy too, because I told her we were building bridges. We were talking about bridges. She sent me a bunch of stuff on popsicle bridges. Apparently there's an indiegogo for the world's strongest or Canada's Strongest Popsicle Bridge. Wow. Yeah. They're trying to build that. Yes. And they have like, six green already for out of popsicle sticks. Good for them. So that's everybody getting shouted out to all over the place in this one, huh? Yeah. That's nice stuff. Bam. If you want to know more about bridges, you can type that word into the search bar@housetofworks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listing or mail. I'm going to call this. I got a couple of street gang responses we'll read over the next couple of shows. Okay, here's one. I had to write in about your street gangs episode as it was interesting pertains to my job. Short version is that I work for a hospital based program, and we see every gunshot wound victim and stab wound victim who comes through, which is about 4500 a year, and about 10% of those are gang involved. You guys have mentioned how you found the number of gangs to be hard to believe, but I think you may be thinking with street gangs as one entity that has strict borders and lots of people. In my experience, larger gangs will sometimes incorporate smaller gangs, and sometimes larger gangs will split off into many smaller groups. People go in and out of gangs and are sometimes affiliated with more than one. Currently, we have about at least 70 in our city alone, and a substantial amount of those have less than 20 members, like many gangs. Got you. Not super gangs. Not super gangs. According to this paper on street gangs in Boston, 18% of the gangs in the city have less than ten members, and 34% have 10% to 19 members. So while the numbers you gave seem shockingly high, they also seem to be in step with the current climate. And that is from Ariana. In what city did she say? I don't see that. I don't think she said I don't know if it was Boston or if she just referenced Boston. Well, thanks a lot, Ariana. We appreciate that email. And yeah, keep them coming. We want to know more about gangs. I just had the impression the whole time that one way or another we were officially or unofficially misinformed, maybe. And also let us know who's the coolest famous person you've ever met. You can tweet to us at siskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffychnow. You can put it in an email to stuff podcast@howstephos.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit householdworks.com. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out. The sun is shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music my Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen O'gareth 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." | ||
Berenice | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/berenice | It's Halloween again, and this year Chuck and Josh are ringing in the holiday with a special reading of the short story "Berenice," by Edgar Allan Poe. Tune in to catch Stuff You Should Know's Poe-rific Halloween episode. | It's Halloween again, and this year Chuck and Josh are ringing in the holiday with a special reading of the short story "Berenice," by Edgar Allan Poe. Tune in to catch Stuff You Should Know's Poe-rific Halloween episode. | Thu, 27 Oct 2011 17:20:10 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=27, tm_hour=17, tm_min=20, tm_sec=10, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=300, tm_isdst=0) | 43683064 | audio/mpeg | "What if you were a trendy apparel company facing an avalancho demand to ensure more customers can buy more sherpaline jackets? You call IBM to automate your it infrastructure with AI. Now, your systems monitor themselves. What used to take hours takes minutes, and you have an ecommerce platform designed to handle sudden spikes in overall demand, as in actual overalls. Let's create It systems that rule of their own slaves. IBM. Let's create. Learn more@ibm.com It automation. Summer school is out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's Criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Erkart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Shuckers bryant that makes this stuff you should know. I wonder what that sounds like. The people who listen to it at double speed. You sound like your normal voice. Right, yeah, that was my impression of somebody I'm going to go with Vincent Price. No. Okay. Edgar Oliver. It was a great Edgar, Oliver. Terrible Vincent Price. Who's Edgar Oliver? Edgar Oliver. He's a storyteller on the moth. Oh, really? Yeah, and he sounds exactly like that. You got to check his stuff out. He's awesome. Is he a horror? No. Anything wrong with him? Well, yeah, I mean, he talks like that, but other than that, he's an awesome dude. So that was my Edgar oliver. It's pretty good. You go back and listen now, you'll be like, wow. So I was doing an ego Oliver Chuck, because in T minus, like, four days yeah, it's going to be Halloween, one of our favorite days. And mind blowingly enough. If you're listening to this on Halloween, it's today. Wow. Yeah, that works. And last year we did something unusual. So this year we're doing it again, which makes it the usual, but it was popular. People liked it. We read a great short story last year. Yeah. People actually called for it again and said, oh, you're going to do it this year. I think some people might not have liked it, but just skip it then. Yeah. We were like, does that mean we don't have to study? Okay, let's do that. Yeah. There's one in the can that's guaranteed going to be at least okay. Yes. So this year, Mr. Charles W. Chuck Bryant selected the story, and it is by someone you may or may not have heard of. He's a somewhat well known writer. His name is Edgar Allen Poe, and he died in Baltimore, I believe, in the 1840s. Sure. Here's one of the great first great American writers of the 19th century. Drug addicts. Big time drug addict. And I think that comes through a lot in this. Yeah, but we've selected a short story. Chuck selected a short story. Actually, I gave you a selection. You made the final choice. Yeah, but you let me just, like, which one of these would you like? And then you basically put this one in my hand. No, actually, I was leaning toward the crazy dwarf that kills the king. What are we reading this one for? Because this one's creepy. Okay. All right. I agreed. Well, do you want to tell them the name of this one? It's called Berenice. And give you a slight set up just so you know what's going on. Okay. There's a woman called Berenice and a man, and they are cousins, and they're married, and things go a little weird in the story. It's weirder than cousins being married? Yeah. I don't want to give anything away, but it's old English. It's not old English, but it's older than that. It's all American. Yeah. So before we lose any more listeners, let's get to it. You want to queue the spooky music? Yeah. But we should also point out that at the end of this episode, we have a very special guest. Let's not say who. If you listen on Tuesday, you know. But if you aren't into the reading, just go ahead and skip forward to the special guest, and you'll get some delight there. Right. And if you do that, we apologize in advance. Yeah. Either way. All right, so now let's queue the spooky music. Okay. That's the tone. Let's dim the lights. Okay. And we now present to you edgar Allan Poes. Berenice And Josh is a little bit quote at the beginning in Latin and in English. I'll read the English. My companion said to me if I would visit the grave of my friend, I might somewhat alleviate my worries. Reasonable advice. Here we go. Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow. Its hues are as various as the hues of that arch, as distinct too, yet as intimately blended overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow. How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness? From the covenant of peace, a simile of sorrow. But as in ethics, evil is a consequence of good. So, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of today, or the agonies, which have their origin in the ecstasies. Which might have been nice. It sounded like improper English, but that's how we wrote it. And it's not just today, it's today, with a hyphen in between. My baptismal name is Ujius. That of my family I will not mention yet there are no towers in the land more time honored than my gloomy, gray hereditary halls. Our line has been called a race of visionaries and in many striking particulars in the character of the family mansion. In the frescoes of the chief saloon and the tapestries of the dormitories. In the chiseling of some buttress in the armory. But more especially. In the gallery of antique paintings in the fashion of the library chamber. And lastly. In the very peculiar nature of the library's contents. There is more than sufficient evidence to warrant the belief the recollections of my earliest years are connected with that chamber and with its volumes of which, latter I will say no more. Here died my mother, here and I was born. But it is mere idleness to say that I had not lived before that the soul has no previous existence. You deny it? Let us not argue the matter. Convince myself? I seek not to convince. There is, however, a remembrance of aerial forms of spiritual and meaning eyes of sounds, musical yet sad. A remembrance which will not be excluded. A memory like a shadow, vague, variable, indefinite, unsteady. And like a shadow, too, in the impossibility of my getting rid of it while the sunlight of my reason shall exist in that chamber. I was born. Thus awaking from the long night of what seemed, but was not nonentity at once into the very regions of fairyland, into a palace of imagination, into the wild dominions of monastic thought and erudition. It is not singular that I gazed around me with a startled and ardent eye that I loitered away my boyhood and books and dissipated my youth in reverie. But it is singular that as the years rolled away and the noon of manhood found me still in the mansion of my father's. It is wonderful what stagnation there fell upon the springs of my life. Wonderful how total and inversion took place in the character of my communist thought. The realities of the world affected me as visions and as visions only while the wild ideas of the land of dreams became intern not the material of my everyday existence, but in very deed, that existence utterly and solely in itself. He's getting a little caught up in his own obsessive thoughts. Right? He's a bookworm, okay, he's bookish. So the real world doesn't even matter to him at this point. Somebody thinks of the real world. Onward. Baroness and I were cousins, and we grew up together in my paternal halls. Yet differently we grew. I ill of health and buried in gloom. She agile, graceful and overflowing with energy. Hers the ramble on the hillside mine, the studies of the cloister. I living within my own heart an addicted body and soul to the most intense and painful meditation. She roaming carelessly through life with no thought of the shadows in her path or the silent flight of the raven winged hours. Berenice I call upon her name berenice. From the gray ruins of memory a thousand tumultuous recollections are startled at the sound. Ah, vividly is her image. Before me now is in the early days of her light heartedness and joy. Oh, gorgeous yet fantastic beauty. Oh, silk amid the shrubberies of Arnheim. Oh, NIAD among its fountains. And then all is mystery and terror a tale which should not be told. Disease, a fatal disease fell like the simoon upon her frame. And even while I gazed upon her the spirit of change swept over her pervading her mind, her habits and her character and in a manner the most subtle and terrible disturbing even the identity of her person. Alas, the destroyer came and went. And the victim where was she? I knew her not, or knew her no longer as Berenice. When I first read him saying, Berenice, berenice. I thought of Kramer going, Pam, pam. You remember that one? All right. Berenice isn't doing so high all of a sudden. No, it happened like that. Among the numerous train of maladies super induced by that fatal and primary one which affected a revolution of so horrible akind in the moral and physical being of my cousin may be mentioned as the most distressing and obstinate in its nature a species of epilepsy not infrequently terminating in trance itself trance very nearly resembling positive dissolution and from which her manner of recovery was in most instances startlingly abrupt. In the meantime. My own disease for I have been told that I should call it by no other appellation my own disease then grew rapidly upon me and assumed finally a monomaniac character of a novel in extraordinary form hourly and momently gaining vigor and at length obtaining over me the most incomprehensible. Ascendancy this monomania. If I must so term it consisted in a morbid irritability of those properties of the mind in metaphysical science termed the attentive. It is more than probable that I am not understood. But I fear indeed that it is in no matter possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader an adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in my case, the powers of meditation, not to speak technically busied and buried themselves in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of the universe. So now he's becoming obsessive about just things, anything transfixed on things but he can't even get across how obsessed he becomes. Monomania, all right. DeMuse for long unwearied hours with my attention riveted to some frivolous device on the margin or in the topography of a book to become absorbed for the better part of a summer's day in a quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry or upon the door to lose myself for an entire night and watching the steady flame of a lamp or the embers of a fire to dream away whole days over the perfume of a flower to repeat monotonously some common word until the sound by dint of frequent repetition ceased to convey any idea whatever to the mind. Everyone does that. Yeah. It's called Vuja day. Awesome. To lose all sense of motion or physical existence by means of absolute bodily quiescence. Long and obstinately persevered in such were a few of the most common and least pernicious vagaries induced by a condition of the mental faculties not indeed altogether unparalleled but certainly bidding defiance to anything like analysis or explanation. You did get that was a tough one. Thanks. He sounds like an opium head. He's like, and by the way, I'm high the kite right now. I'm staring at a lamp for two days. Yet let me not be misapprehended this do earnest and morbid attention thus excited by objects in their own nature frivolous must not be confounded in character with that ruminating propensity common to all mankind and more especially, indulged in by persons of ardent imagination. It was not, even, as might be at first supposed an extreme condition or exaggeration of such propensity but primarily an essentially distinct and different. In the one instance, the dreamer enthusiasts being interested by an object usually not frivolous imperceptibly loses sight of this object in a wilderness of deductions and suggestions issuing therefrom until at the conclusion of a daydream often replete with luxury he finds the income endum or first cause of his musings entirely vanished and forgotten. In my case, the primary object was invariably frivolous although assuming through the medium of my distempered vision a refracted and unreal importance few deductions, if any, were made and those few pertinaciously returning in upon the original object as a center the meditations were never pleasurable. And at the termination of the reverie the first cause, so far from being out of sight had attained that supernaturally exaggerated interest which was the prevailing feature of the disease. In a word, the powers of mind, more particularly exercise were with me. As I had said before, the attentive and are with the daydreamer, the speculative. Any thoughts? No, he's just going on to say it was really serious stuff. They'd like to really describe things back then. Yeah, okay. My books at this epoch if they did not actually serve to irritate the disorder partook it will be perceived largely in their imaginative and inconsequential nature of the characteristic qualities of the disorder itself. I will remember, among others, the priestess of the noble Italian colius Sekundus curio the amplitudina Beati Regna de Saint Austin's great work, The City of God and Terroria decarney criste in which the paradoxical sentence Mortas s dee philis credible Esquia enemies resurrect exit sertom Esquia impossibili estimate for many weeks of laborious and fruitless investigation. He's getting hung up on these phrases from the books. Yeah, like I am the Latin. Thus it will appear that shaken from its balance only by trivial things my reason bore resemblance to that ocean crag spoken of by Ptolemy Hephistian which, steadily resisting the attacks of human violence and the fiercer fury of the waters and the kinds trembled only the touch of the flower called asphodel. And although to a careless thinker it might appear a matter beyond doubt that the alteration produced by her unhappy malady and the moral condition of Berenice would afford me many objects for the exercise of that intense and abnormal meditation whose nature I've been at some trouble in explaining, yet such was not in any degree the case. In the lucid intervals of my infirmity, her calamity indeed gave me pain, and taking deeply to the heart that total wreck of her fair and gentle life, I did not fall to ponder frequently and bitterly upon the wonderworking means by which so strange revolution had been so suddenly brought to pass. But these reflections partook not of the idiosyncrasy of my disease and where such as would have occurred under similar circumstances to the ordinary mass of mankind, true to its own character, my disorder reveled in less important but more startling changes wrought in the physical frame of Berenice and the singular and most appalling distortion of her personal identity during the brightest days of her unparalleled beauty. Most surely I had never loved her, and the strange anomaly of my existence feelings with me had never been of the heart, and my passions always were of the mind. Through the gray of the early morning. Among the trellis shadows of the forest at noonday. And in the silence of my library at night. She had flitted by my eyes. And I had seen her not as a living and breathing berenice. But as the baroness of a dream. Not as a being of the earthy. But as the abstraction of such a being. Not as a thing to admire. But to analyze. Not as an object of love. But as the theme of the most obtruse. Although desultory. Speculation. And now I shuddered in her presence and grew pale at her approach, yet bitterly lamenting her fallen and desolate condition, I called to mind that she had loved me long, and in an evil moment I spoke to her of marriage. I'm getting oddly. Madonna esque here with my English. Does she speak strangely? She married Guy Ritchie. All of a sudden she started talking like Madonna. Oh, yeah, that's right. Not like she was from Queens or you're not supposed to do that. You got to remember who you are, I agreed, and at length the period of our nuptials was approaching, when, upon an afternoon in the winter of the year, one of those unseasonably warm, calm and misty days which are the nurse of the beautiful halcyon, I sat and sat, as I thought, alone in the inner apartment of my library. But uplifting my eyes I saw the baroness stood before me. Was it my own excited imagination or the misty influence of the atmosphere? Or the uncertain twilight of the chamber? Or the gray draperies which fell around her figure that caused in it so vacillating and indistinct and outline. Or was it all the opium? An absent? He likes to have a lot of different ideas to choose from. Here? I could not tell. She spoke no word. I not for worlds, could I have uttered a syllable? An icy chill ran through my frame, a sense of insufferable anxiety oppressed me, a consuming curiosity pervaded my soul. And sinking back upon the chair, I remained for some time breathless and motionless, with my eyes riveted upon her person. Alas. Its emaciation was excessive and not one vestige of the former being lurked in any single line of the contour. My burning glances at link fell upon the face. The forehead was high and very pale and singularly placid and the once jetty hair fell partially over it and overshadowed the hollow temples with innumerable ringlets now of a vivid yellow and jarring discordantly in their fantastic character with the reigning melancholy of the countenance. The eyes were lifeless and lustreless and seemingly pupilous and I shrank involuntarily from their glassy stare to the contemplation of the thin and shrunken lips. They parted, and in a smile of peculiar meaning the teeth of the change berenice is closed themselves slowly to my view. Would to God that I had never beheld them, or that having done so, I had died. Bernice is in bad shape here. So is the guy. The shutting of the door disturbed me, and looking up, I found that my cousin had departed from the chamber but from the disordered chamber of my brain. Had not, alas, departed, and would not be driven away. The white and ghastly spectrum of the teeth not a speck on their surface, not a shade on their enamel, not an indenture in their edges but what that period of her smile had sufficed to bran in upon my memory I saw them now even more unequivocally than I beheld them then. The teeth. The teeth. They were here and there and everywhere, invisibly and palpably before me, long, narrow and excessively white, with the pale lips writhing about them as in the very moment of their first terrible development. Then came the full fury of my monomania as I struggled in vain against a strange and irresistible influence in the multiplied objects of the external world. I had no thoughts but for the teeth. For these I longed with a frenzy. Desire. All other matters and all different interests became absorbed in their single contemplation. They alone were present to the mental eye, and they and their soul individuality became the essence of my mental life. I held them in every light, I turned them into every attitude. I surveyed their characteristics, I dwelt upon their peculiarities, I pondered upon their confirmation, I mused upon the alteration and their nature. I shuddered as I assigned to them and imagination a sensitive, insentient power and even when unassisted by the lips, a capability of moral expression. Boy, he's losing it. Of mad sales. Sale has been well l said, koetu sepa enchant descentia. And to berenice, I more seriously believed, desired. And I believe that translates to something like the ideas. The ideas, all of his ideas were of the teeth, something like that. And he just had to say it in French, didn't he? Well, this isn't that good, so I'm going to write it in French. I went to a French speaker in the office, and they're like, dude, this is really, like, hard to translate, so if anyone knows that, please send it. Do you want to read it again? That part the line. Sure. Quitu sepa. Ethan descentament, I hear, was the idiotic thought that destroyed me easy days. Therefore, it was that I coveted them so madly I felt that their possession could alone ever restore me to peace and giving me back to reason. So, Chuck, what's going on here? Like, there's teeth. Now he's got teeth and he's focused on the teeth. Well, now the teeth are in her mouth. She is disintegrating physically, except for her teeth, which remain perfect. Okay, so now he is hyper focused and obsessed with her teeth because they're so perfect. I would be hyper focused. I'm running out of the room at this point too. Okay. And the evening closed in upon me thus. And then the darkness came. Anne carried and went, and the day again dawned. And the mists of a second night were now gathering around. And still I sat motionless in that solitary room, and still I sat buried in meditation. And still the fantasma of the teeth maintained its terrible ascendancy, as with the most vivid, hideous distinctness. It floated amid the changing lights and shadows of the chamber. At length, there broke in upon my dreams a cry of horror and dismay. And thereon too, after a pause, succeeded the sound of troubled voices intermingled with many low moanings of sorrow or pain. I arose from my seat and throwing open one of the doors of the library, saw standing out in the antechamber a servant maiden volunteers, who told me that Berenice was no more. She had been seized with epilepsy in the early morning. And now, at the closing of the night, the grave was ready for its tenant, and all the preparations for the burial were completed. The Bernas is dead. Yes. Okay. I found myself sitting in the library, and again sitting there alone. It seemed that I had newly awakened from a confused and exciting dream. I knew that it was now midnight, and I was well aware that since the setting of the sun, berenice had been interred. But of that dreary period which intervened, I had no positive, at least no definite comprehension. Yet its memory was replete with horror. Horror more horrible from being vague and terror more terrible from ambiguity. It was a fearful page in the record, my existence written all over with dim and hideous and unintelligible recollections. I strive to decipher them, but in vain, while ever and anon, like the spirit of a departed sound. The shrill and piercing shriek of a female voice seemed to be ringing in my ears. I had done a deed. What was it? I asked myself the question aloud, and the whispering echoes of the chamber answered me. What was it? All right. So he's awoken from a fever dream, and he's like something I've done something here while I slept. That ain't good. What was it? On the table beside me burned a lamp, and near it lay a little box. That can't be good. It was of no remarkable character, and I had seen it frequently before, where it was the property of the family physician. But how it came there upon my table and why did I shudder in regarding it? These things were in no manner to be accounted for. And my eyes at length dropped to the open pages of a book and to the sentence underscored therein. The words were the singular but simple ones of the poet Eban Zayat. My companion said to me if I would visit the grave of my friend, I might somewhat alleviate my worries. Why then, as I peruse them, did the hairs of my head erect themselves on end and the blood of my body become congealed within my veins? There came a light tap at the library door, and as pale as the tennis of the tomb, a menial entered upon tiptoe. His looks were wild with terror, and he spoke to me in a voice tremulous, husky and very low. What said he? Some broken sentences I had heard. He told of a wild cry disturbing the silence of the night, of the gathering together, of the household, of a search in the direction of the sound. And then his tones grew thrillingly distinct as he whispered me of a violated grave, of a disfigured body, enshrouded, yet still breathing, still palpitating, still alive. He pointed to garments. They were muddy and clotted with gore. I spoke not, and he took me gently by the hand. It was indented with the impressive human nails. He directed my attention to some object against the wall. I looked at it for some minutes. It was a spade. With a shriek, I bounded to the table and grasped the box that lay upon it, but I could not force it open. And in my tremor it slipped from my hands and fell heavily and burst into pieces. And from it, with a rattling sound, there rolled out some instruments of dental surgery intermingled with 32 small, white and ivory looking substances that were scattered to and fro about the floor. Wow. I just got a little chill, actually, and I knew the ending. He liked his teeth. Did he dig her up, or was she still alive? I don't know. I was thrown off by the fact that those shrieking woman yeah, she's still palpitating, as it were. Still alive. I think he hallucinated. The whole thing and that she did not die and was buried. I think he went into her chamber and removed her teeth while she was alive. Or maybe he, while he was in his little opium dream, buried her alive, then decided, oh, yeah, the teeth went back, got them out of her mouth while she's still alive, and took him back to the library. I think he needs to lay off the dope is what it comes down to. Yeah. So, happy Halloween. I hope everybody is appropriately nervous now, right? Yeah. And if you have ideas on royalty free readings that we can do next year yeah, we'll bring this up again, like in August or something like that. Agreed. So stick around. We are not going anywhere just yet. We have a special you can almost call us a two parter. The second part is a special guest. Right? We're not going to do listener mail or anything. We're going to do this. That's right. Happy Halloween, everybody. Are you looking for an escape or a relaxing getaway? Or a reprieve from the hustle and bustle of it all? Well, we know just the place. Maybe you want to solve a murder in your building? Or you're just all about that paper boy. Perhaps you want to watch Hollywood's biggest monitor. Or you crave the thrill of a classic American story about horror. Or is your stomach grumbling for a milkshake flaming flamers chip? Would you love to quench your thirst with a delicious Tranquillum house smoothie? Did you see blood analysis as an investment opportunity? Would you wear one of Dave's wooden shirts? Do you smash glasses whilst yelling who's? Ah. Well, then there's a place that has everything you love, from Atlanta to the Kardashians to only birders in the building and everything in between. Hulu is your entertainment. Getaway hulu. Check into your obsessions. Hulu subscription. Required terms apply. Visit Hulucom for plan details. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office? Then you could be using Stamps.com. Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses. Because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need right from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary. And you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com. Click the. Microphone at the top of the homepage and enter code stuff. So since this is a Halloween episode, and since, as you may remember, from Tuesday, john Hodgman has been hanging around the office this week, I saw I'm sleeping in a cubicle earlier. I know, it's weird. I got locked out of my safe room. So, Hodgman, how are you doing? I don't get, like, the chimes. Well, I haven't finished the introduction yet. We're not doing listener mail this week because it's special. It was this is a Halloween episode, and because Hodgman's here. So instead, we're going to do stuff with John Hodgman. That's right. And the reason John's here is because he decided to surprise us and he had a ticket to the show. We decided to honor that ticket. Look, I feel bad. I feel a little bad about last week because I came and interrupted Sarah's letter on those letters. It was this week. Whatever. We took care of Sarah. You know what? I don't pay attention to time anymore. I'm a deranged millionaire, okay? I like Sarah. I like the letters she writes. I like all the letters. But I'm a listener too. That's why I'm here. And what am I going to have my say? Do you know what I mean? No one ever comes in to do their listener mail in person like you bought a ticket to do, so. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I have access. It's time for me to have my say. Here's my listener mail. All right. Nice work, guys. Thank you. Thank you. That's nice listener. Big round poe. Yeah, that was Chucks. Well, that was PO. You say it was porific. It was poor. If I say it was poor, no, I like a drown psycho. You know, guys, I wrote this new book of complete world knowledge called that Is All that's Coming Out. And this is the third book of complete world knowledge. And in my previous books of complete world knowledge, I talked about everything. Right? I talked about how to tie all kinds of knots. No, I never did. For some reason, I think I did. That was so close. I almost said, like yeah, I talked about Hobos. I talked about molemen. I talked about the President of the United States. I talked about the mottos and nicknames of all 51 American states. I talked about history. I talked about the future. But there was one topic that I never took on before, and that was sports. Yeah, because I am not a sports fan. See, I find that surprising. Really? Yeah. Well, you and I co hosted a trivia event at Max funcon. We did our own little fun trivia. Elijah right. I did some sports questions that you were not privy to to humiliate me. You did some science fiction nerd, moody questions, because I'm not into that. You did jock questions to humiliate me, and I did nerd questions to humiliate. And it went great. It went great. We're both humiliated. That's right. And that is usually the sign of a good night. Yes, it is. But here's the thing for this third book, because we are reaching the end of human civilization december 21, 2012 at 11:11 a.m.. Exactly. And it's time for me to engage in, well, like the dying person, I reach out to that which I previously spurned in life, like religion and sports. So I decided to learn a lot about sports and to write about sports in this new book. And one of the things I learned, which I didn't know until now you guys probably know this is the Baltimore Ravens is named after the Edgar Allan Poe poem Raven. Right? I didn't know that. You didn't know that? I didn't know that. I knew that. And now that makes more sense. I didn't realize why they had Edgar Allen Poe as their mascot. They have some dude dressed up in, like, 19th century no, he's got one of those big heads on, like a big Edgar Allen Poe head. I was like, Why is that? And then I finally got it aggrown. Poe apparently got runously drunk in Baltimore, as he did in every East Coast city for a period of time. They all, for some reason, claim him as their son. Well, like Philadelphia, New York, Brooklyn, Baltimore, Providence. Providence. But only Baltimore had the nerve to name their team after a famous quasi literary kind of dumb dumb poem that the French really like. And they have this mascot, which is great. Now I understand why they have that mascot. This dude dressed up as Edgar Allen Poe with a giant Edgar Allen Poe head on top of him that's filled with brandy. Now it makes sense. And John Kusak, to bring in full circle, is playing Poe in a movie. I know. Which is a little weird. He's only the latest who wanted to play a ground Poe? Of course. Sylvester Stallone was developing a ground poe. Really? Biopic. Four years. Four years. You didn't know that Foreigner was going to do the theme song. They wrote I have the Tiger for that movie. That was Survivor. Oh, sorry. Foreigner feels like the first Poe. I apologize. Exactly. Survivor, right? They wrote I have the tiger for the egg round Poe movie, but when it didn't get made, they used it for Rocky Three instead. Got you sports and more sports. Punching is a sport, right? Pugilism. That is a thinking man's sport. Oh, no, I agree. That's the sweet science. Yeah, that's the intricate logical art of hurting someone in your face. Exactly. Wow. Hold on. You're leaving at a big element, trying to not get hurt in your own face. Right? That's practically you're doing two things at once. Yeah, that's ballet. Do you know what I mean? That's an intricate dance. That's like ultimate fighting. Two half naked guys down the ground trying to knee each other in the neck. It's acrobatic. I see you at a boxing match, though. Hodgman. I was in a boxing match. I've seen that. Yes. I was in a fake boxing match. Was that choreographed, that stage? That looked a lot like the directors, like, you just go at each other. We'll see what happens. This was in an episode of Boards to Death, right. You boxed Jason Schwartz. I did, yeah. And I realized then that it is an extremely physically taxing thing to do. I do not mean to run down boxers in the lease, because, first of all, they will kill me. Second of all, what they do, they are extremely accomplished athletes. I have no problem with athletes, you understand? Sure. I think they're incredibly skilled people whom I wish only not to hurt me. Do you know what I mean? But they are artists in their own way, and I don't even dislike sports, per se. There are some sports that I occasionally will watch. I dig a curling match from time to time. Okay. Any sport with a broom, I like. It is the presupposition in our culture that everyone must like sports. And if you do not know what the sports teams are or what they do on the field, something is wrong with you, then you are abnormal in some way. And I think that's a little bit that presumes too much. Well, John, that's the world we live in. But it's changing now. Baltimore got the Ravens in 1996 or seven or something like that. Yes, sir. Okay. So they named their team after a poem. Right. Everyone's like, no big deal. Not a big deal. Who cares? Right. This year we got some baseball. What's? The baseball player who named his bat Orchest. I didn't know that happened. It's in the news. Oh, yeah. Someone will write about it and send it in. Okay. It was this April. It was revealed the very popular Bases ball player named his bat Orchest after one of the Elven forged swords in the Hobbit. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Right? And then guess what? If you notice this, you know Nick Mangold, the center for the New York Jets. Yeah. Have you noticed, like, he's not wearing a helmet anymore? I have not noticed that. It's surprising to me. He came out in one of the games earlier this year. He was wearing a leather top hat with, like, goggles on it. Did you notice that? I did not notice that. On the field. On the field. Wow. Yeah. Why? I don't know, but it's weird. And then another time, he came out and he was wearing a pith helmet with a jeweler's lens on it. And he came out on the field on a pennyfathered bicycle. What is going on? It was a steam powered penny farthing bicycle. Wow. Was it of his own design and manufacturer? Yeah. And then he went on a sports program, a radio program much like this. This is radio, right? Yeah, sure. And he was saying, I'm really glad we won that game. And they said, well, what do you think? To what do you attribute your win? And he said, I just took the lesson of Admiral Akbar to heart and realized that they were setting a trap. Is that weird? That is very weird. What do you think is going on there? I think this is it, guys. I think this is happening. Is this the beginning? The beginning of the nerd jock convergence. See it all around us. Wow. I think Nick Mangle may be the one. It's the person who's going to join these two worlds together. Yeah. He's doing steampunk cosplay he's quoting Admiral Akbar. He's riding a penny farthing. A penny farthing motorcycle. Not just a steam powered penny farthing motorcycle of his own design. And I recently my Zeppelin hubris is in ruins. The Hz hubris. The HC hubris. Odd Zeppelin hubris. But I just got an offer on it. Did you know that? Is that weird? I mean, it's still crashed. I think parts of it is still burning in Central Park, right? This happened since Tuesday? Yeah. Wow. Maybe this person heard the podcast. I don't know what it is, but the offer came in. It's a good offer, too. From Mangold Steampunk Industries. It's got to be the same onefootball. Oh, yeah. I think it might be him. Are you selling it to him as is? Well, I'm not putting that thing back together. It's on fire and burn my hands. Yes. I hope it works. Where is it? Over Jeeps Meadow or I don't know, most of the top half of Central Park. I mean, it was big. Most of the top half? Yeah. I haven't been up there in a while. Good. It crashed and burned probably two years ago. Oh, yeah. It's still burning. Wow. I should do something. Well, John, let me ask you, that seems like one of the great divisions in life, in the world that's been going on forever. Is this division between Jackson it's a good thing if things come together, is it not? I don't know. I think, like all major sea changes, it's unnerving. Oh, yeah. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. I think those of us I'm scared of things too. I think those of us on the nerd side have been defining ourselves by our marginalization for so long that it may be hard for us to accept a world where the TV show community did a whole Dungeons and Dragons episode. Superhero movies are the only movies that people make now. Do you know what I mean? All of the things I think at least ten people in the United States know who Doctor Who is now. Do you know what I mean? Comic Con is big, big business. And I think that all of these things that we used to hold as badges and used to comfort ourselves in our marginalization and culture are now being absorbed into the monoculture as a whole. And there is no greater expression of the monoculture than jock culture, which is the great leveling, crosscultural, unifying thing that men and a lot of women talk about. Unless they're a nerd like me. Right. So when that's gone, I think that will bother nerds very much. Yeah, I could see that. But I don't think the jocks get hood at all. No, jocks tend to get their way as far as society goes if they want something. If Mango wants to make steampunk mainstream, hey, I like your steampunk culture. Give me that. Nerd. Right? They take what they want now. Hey, your Steampunk Iron Man armor that you made yourself, that's mine. Now drop it off in my locker. Throw a Jet's jersey on top of it. Yeah, I'm going to put the jets jersey on top of it. It's going to be steampunk iron, man jets. That's not what big. Mango does not talk like that at all. He's a very sweet guy. I met him. That's why I hope he buys my nick. Mangold's Twitter avatar is an illustration of him as an ewok. Really? Yeah. So you may say that what I'm putting in my book is crazy. But look around you, everybody. It's coming true. Well, John, thank you for coming by with your baffling predictions. You don't have to thank me. It's very easy. I just walk down the hallway from my safe room. Are you going to stay here? Because the weekend's approaching, I need someone to kick down the door of my safe room because I fell asleep in that cubicle because I went out and I accidentally armed to the system. Okay, so if you have an intern or someone who can go in there, they will be gassed. Oh, no, Jerry. Yeah, they've got a foot of lead. Okay, yeah, but there are booby traps. There will be gas, there will be darts, there will be snakes. She's fine. There will be a giant rolling boulder. Good. If we get that, then I can get back in there and then I'll be back again. Jerry deals with us on a day to day basis. She can handle any boulders or poisoned darts. You're right. Yeah. Here's to you, Jerry. We'll send Jerry in. Yeah. Are you looking for an escape or a relaxing getaway or a reprieve from the hustle and bustle of it all? Well, we know just the place. Maybe you want to solve a murder in your building where you're just all about that paper boy. Perhaps you want to watch Hollywood's biggest monitor. Or you crave the thrill of a classic American story about horror. Or is your stomach grumbling for a MILKSTAKE flaming flamer's chip? Would you love to quench your thirst with a delicious Tranquillum house smoothie? Did you see blood analysis? As an investment opportunity, would you wear one of Dave's wooden shirts? Do you smash glasses whilst yelling Hoosa? Well, then there's a place that has everything you love from Atlanta to the Kardashians to only burners in the building and everything in between. Hulu is your entertainment. Getaway Hulu check into your obsessions. Hulu subscription required terms apply. Visit hulu.com for plan details. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office? And you could be using Stamps.com. Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses. Because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need right from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary. And you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com. Click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. So John's book is that is all. And it is coming out November 1. And you can preorder it right now using the Internet. Using the internet. And I hope that you will at a variety of Internet sites. You really just plugged the heck out of that. Well, I want to go to sell a book or two. I'm just happy to be here as a listener. As a deranged millionaire, I'm happy to come in here and take over your listener. And as a resident as a resident of how stuff works closet. Well, to those of you who made it all the way through this podcast and you're with us right now, I want to say on behalf of myself, Chuck, and Mr. John Hodgman, happy Halloween. Be safe. Please don't get hit by a car. Dress your children in skeleton costumes and send them out into the street. 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 crime podcast. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today." | ||
8dc4b88e-ba8a-11e8-a624-bf3a378d7c04 | Short Stuff: Whisky or Bourbon? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-whisky-or-bourbon | What's the difference between whisky and bourbon? We'll tell you if you care to listen. | What's the difference between whisky and bourbon? We'll tell you if you care to listen. | Wed, 11 Dec 2019 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=11, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=345, tm_isdst=0) | 12991054 | audio/mpeg | "Hello, and welcome to the short stuff. This is Josh. There's Chuck, there's Jerry. Let's get going with this edition of short stuff about the difference between whiskey and bourbon. Let's just talk. Yeah. For someone who loves this stuff, I really didn't know a lot about it, and I'm glad I do know. Yeah, there was a really big fact that we're going to get to that. Just knocked my socks clean off, man. Yeah, I guess just watch my feet and your feet. I'll smell something. Are your socks off? Hey, my feet do not smell. They take great pride in that. All right, so we'll go ahead and tell you what whiskey is. Whiskey is a distilled spirit that you make from grain that is not distilled, higher than 190 proof, and it is exposed to oak, as in sits in an oak container. That's whiskey. That's whiskey. If it's higher than 190, then you're not making whiskey. You're making what you would call a neutral spirit. Like vodka. Yeah, that's whiskey. So around the world, if you have Japanese whiskey yum. If you have Irish whiskey great. Yum. Scotch whiskey. Delicious. Why not all of those whiskies follow the same general guidelines or meet the same general criteria? And I don't believe there are too many laws or anything restricting types of whiskey. I'm sure there are in Scotland, but we're talking about America in this episode. And when you get to America, from what we've seen, we have, like, the most strict, extensive laws detailing what can be considered a type of whiskey of anywhere in the world. Yeah, it's very much regulated by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. Right. Not the ATF. No. Those firearms still mix with whiskey very well. Even though I said ATF three times, I think that was season. Oh, I know. You called out something that nobody heard. It's like you just reached out from a different dimension. I saw a funny tweet the other day that's been going around that says the closest you will come to knowing what it's like to be a ghost is something like yelling at podcasters who are trying to think of something that, you know, that's amazing, that's great. I have that same experience as a listener. That's wonderful. So, yes. Not the ATF. The ATB. If you want to be labeled whiskey in America, you got to be aged in new charred oak containers or barrels, and you have to have a certain percentage of grain. Like, if you're making rye, it has to be 51% rye. And then so to be whiskey anywhere in the world, it has to be aged in oak. But for specifically an American straight whiskey, like American straight rye whiskey, it has to be aged in a charred oak, either barrel or container of some sort. But it has to be charred inside first for at least two years. Yes. And it all has to come from the same state. It has to be distilled in the same state. Right. So I mean, that's it. That's the law as far as an American straight whiskey goes. And there's plenty of whiskies that follow that tradition or those laws, I guess. And it gets even stricter, though. Like if you add a couple more caveats to it, a couple more restrictions, a few more criteria, you suddenly have bourbon. Bourbon pops out of the mix. That's right. So if you want to be bourbon, you have to be 51% corn, and it has to be aged in new charred oak barrels or containers. Right. But also when you distill it yeah, that was right. I just referred to another edit we took out. It can't be distilled at anything higher than 160 proof. That's right, because remember, we said 190 for whiskey, bourbon is down to 160. Right. And that's just the distillation. When they start to age it, they have to drop it down even further, I believe, to something like 140. And then they just do that with watering it down. Literally watering it down, right. Yeah. They literally water it down to, I think, 140, and then they put it in chard oak barrels for, I believe, four years for bourbon. That's right. So the very popular saying all bourbon is whiskey, but not all whiskey is bourbon is very much true. And that's why that's the case. So bourbon is 51% corn at least, doesn't go higher than 160 proof, and is aged in charred oak barrels below 125 proof. Yes. And so now watch my socks, Chuck. Okay, you might be saying, hey, guys, you left out probably the most important part. It has to be made in bourbon county, Kentucky, or at least Kentucky a friend. You'd be wrong on both parts because bourbon can be made anywhere in the states. Did you think it had to be Kentucky? Yes. Oh, I didn't know that. Well, that explains why I didn't know how your stock would be knocked off. Right. It was more of a curl than actually knocking off. All right. Yeah, that's what I thought for a very long time. But now you can make it anywhere. And in fact, in 1964, congress declared bourbon as, quote, america's native spirit. So congress like, e bourbon. All right, well, we like take a break, and we're going to go do that right now and talk about Tennessee whiskey. And I think you know what we're talking about right after this. All right, chuck, you said they think we know what we're talking about. We think we know wheaties. We think they know what we're talking about. Yes. If you're talking Tennessee whiskey, there are plenty of Tennessee whiskey. But we'll just go ahead and say the words jack and Daniel. I was going to say. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Tennessee whiskey. You think jack, Daniel. I mean, it says Tennessee right on the label, but it turns out that jack Daniels tennessee whiskey, which is a straight American whiskey. You'd think that it's the only kind. It's not. That's actually Jack Daniels follows a specific process, a set of criteria very similar to the same set of criterion that bourbon goes through. In fact, Jack Daniels Tennessee American strait whiskey follows the same process that bourbon making does, and in fact qualifies as a bourbon, but then they add an extra step and that's what makes it a Tennessee whiskey. That's right. We should point out that they go all the way down to 140 proof, just as a company rule, and they always age in new chard oak barrels, which it goes in at 125 proof or below. But then that extra step you're talking about is what they like to tout is the special ingredient, that special magic is charcoal mellowing. Yeah. And it's actually another name for it is the Lincoln county process, after Lincoln County, Tennessee, which is where Jack Daniel's distillery used to be. But basically, they take huge stacks of maplewood logs and set them on fire. And then some guy stands there with a hose and keeps it from, like, raging too much, and they turn that wood into charcoal. Then they take that charcoal, they pack it tightly into vats, and then they pour the distilled unaged whiskey into those vats, and that charcoal kind of filters out some of the impurities. Yeah. And so you're thinking, well, it goes in clear and it comes out brown because of that charcoal. Wrong. Yes, totally wrong. And in fact, it's a little bit like you're used to these brown liquors if you've ever had like a clear rye or something. It's a little bit of a mind tease. Yeah, that's not what you're going to say, but yeah, you know what I mean. Agreed. It needs to be brown. And the reason it is brown, I believe of course, I have a terrible reputation on short stuff for just saying stuff offhand. That's totally wrong. But I believe it becomes brown from the charred oak aging process. I think that's right. Right. I'm pretty sure that's more case. Okay. Me and that whole key west thing about the necrophile who kept his wife around. But it wasn't his wife, it was some woman that he oh, really? He stalked as a creeper. Oh, I didn't know that. Oh, yeah, we've been getting a lot of emails, so sorry, everybody. We'll have to read a listener mail about it or something. All right. Well, they basically like in this whole process, if you've ever used a water filter, they have charcoal in there, and it's sort of a similar concept. The whiskey comes out the same color as it goes in at this point, which is clear. And this is what makes Jack Daniel different than the rest. They're the ones who use that Lincoln county process. Right. So that's a different type of whiskey. That's Tennessee whiskey. There's bourbon. And technically, Jack Daniels qualifies as a bourbon and bourbon stripped of a couple of steps would be an American straight whiskey. And there you have it, that's whiskeys. There's one other fact, though, that I had no idea about, but I thought it was a nice little touch to add it to this article. I think you got this article from House of Works, right? Yeah. Are you talking about the east? Oh, no. There's two facts, everybody. Well, I mean, if you wonder why different whiskies you think, well, maybe they should all taste the same. The ingredients are different depending on where you get the initial ingredients that might taste different. And during the fermentation process, depending on what kind of yeast to use, that's really going to affect the favor like that. What is going on with us today? I don't know. It's silly short stuff Thursday, but at Jack Daniel, they use a yeast that they've been using the whole time. So they have this mother culture that they say dates back to prohibition and they've been using the same mother culture. They go out in their lab every day and they're like, that's why you get that special taste. Mother culture, it's a great band name. Oh, it is the easiest. Makes a big difference. But certainly even if you use the same exact yeast, if you stick that yeast on rye or corn mash, it's going to produce a totally different flavor anyway. So all these different steps and different ingredients produce these different flavored whiskeys. The other fact that I was surprised, but also heartened to see is that apparently women tend to appreciate higher proof whiskeys and bourbons than men do. And supposedly there's a woman named Carrie Richardson, who is president of the Bourbon Women's association in Louisville, Kentucky, who believes that it's because women apparently have a larger oil factory center than men. And so they're picking up more on all the stuff that's going on in these whiskey bottles than men do. And so the higher the proof, the more stuff that's going on in there, and women tend to appreciate that more. Pretty neat. It is pretty neat. And I did a rare phone look up during recording. Then of course, there's a band called Mother Culture. At least one good for them. So they've listened to us in the past. Look at a bunch of long hairs. That's exactly right. There's no way it was anything but a long hair band. So one other question, Chuck. Do you like the firewater whiskey or do you like smoother whiskey or both? As in higher proof? Yeah, but the kind that's like you can really feel it go all the way down your chest or the smooth sipping whisky? I like both. I like the Firewater because I drink it a little slower. I had a big night out on Tuesday. Emily and I went to see a band and I got into the whiskey a little bit. It was bullet and it was just going down so smooth. Sure, that's the danger. You drink it too fast and I found myself a little hammered on a Tuesday night. Yeah, but you're not going to drink, like, high proof whiskey that's meant to just be nipped at, like, a show. No, you're right. Were you drinking it? Just on the rock? Sure. Nice. Well, I'm glad you have. Is there another way? At a show? Yeah. Like, with coke or something. Yeah. Not Coke already sweet. Maybe bitters and just club soda. Sure. I mean, I guess I could have done that, but I didn't get the impression they had that kind of stuff at this venue. I got you. All right, well, that's it. That's it? That's it for sure. It's stuff. As we said, that's it. Stuff you should know is the production of Iheartradios how Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
a614efd2-5462-11e8-b449-4b60354ecef2 | Skyscrapers: 'Scuse me while I kiss the sky | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/skyscrapers-scuse-me-while-i-kiss-the-sky | Skyscrapers are much more than tall buildings. They're world wonders as far as we're concerned. From design to construction, these babies are beautifully simplistic in all the best ways. Listen in today! | Skyscrapers are much more than tall buildings. They're world wonders as far as we're concerned. From design to construction, these babies are beautifully simplistic in all the best ways. Listen in today! | Thu, 14 Jun 2018 14:19:24 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=14, tm_hour=14, tm_min=19, tm_sec=24, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=165, tm_isdst=0) | 50116326 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everyone. We're coming to Salt Lake City, Utah and Phoenix, Arizona this fall. Yeah. October 23, we're going to be at Salt Lake City's. Grand Theater. And then the next night, October 24 will be in Phoenix. And we added a second show to our Melbourne Burns show, right? That's right. A second, earlier show in Melbourne. So you can get all the information for all of these shows@sysclive.com. Welcome to stuff you should know from howstoughfworkscom? Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles Wicho. Brian. I almost forgot what I say. First smooth the sandpaper. And then there's Jerry right there. So this is the old stuff you should know. The triad. Yeah, but not that kind. What kind? My sexual. I don't think they call those triads. Sure, that's normally like a triad is like three Mafia families getting together or something like that and having sex. Right? No, I think a triad very much can apply to a three person couple. Romantic couple. I'm sure we will hear about that. Yeah, I think that's where I learned it. Oh, I got you. Speaking of sex, we should also give a bit of a Mia culpa. We use the word prostitute in a couple of recent episodes, I think. Collar bombs and drug court. And that is not the OK word these days. The words you use is sex worker. And I knew that, and I feel bad for saying it. I do, too. So sorry to all the sex workers. And we've had sex workers right in before with stories and saying, you should do a podcast on this because it's not always what you think. Right. And we will someday. Correct. First, we're going to do skyscrapers. Yeah. And I got to say, man, I prefaced the tsunami episode with core Stuff You Should Know type stuff. I think this one falls in there. And I kept maybe it's the little kid in me with, like, erector sets and Lego and stuff like that. But I kept thinking, man, skyscrapers are so incredibly simplistic. It's so beautiful. And I think beauty and simplicity is something that really gets me. You love Occam's Razor. Yeah, you love it. But the skyscrapers, when I was just reading about how these things are constructed and all, I'm just like it's like a little kid designed it. Yeah. I actually looked around and like, am I missing a section or two on this article? But they're pretty straightforward, actually. Yeah. They're all just giant penises in the sky. No doubt, man. Some of them don't even try to hide it. They've got, like, ridges and stuff and a man's name at the top. Yeah, it's crazy. In researching this, I was like, oh, okay, I get it. Skyscrapers are the jerks of the buildings community. Yeah. Well, except maybe not, because they're super efficient at holding people. Sure. Okay. So that's well put me and I'm glad you said that, because there's a bit of a dichotomy going on here. You got the good, you got the bad, you got to put them both together, and there you have skyscrapers. All right, so this article on how sephora starts out very appropriately in talking about the quest for height. And this has been going on since ancient times, whether it's a church, cathedral or a Tower of Babel, which I looked into that a little bit, so I was trying to see how metaphoric that was. Was that nimrod? Didn't he build that nimrod? I think so. I don't remember, but go ahead. Sorry. Well, forget the Tower of Babel, just ancient buildings, like from the pyramids to the cathedrals, everyone has always wanted to build things tall because it's a striking thing, and it probably has a lot to do with the ego of the man who wanted his name either on it or behind it. Yeah. Especially if you're part of a civilization that believes in God and you tend to think that God is in the sky. Sure. It's a bit saying, like, hey, look at how close I am here. This building is in my name. Look at me, look upon me and my building. It's a giant phallus. Yeah. To the point where there are literal competitions and like, I'm going to add one extra story or build a little antenna 5ft higher just to have that claim. There's something very similar in the roller coaster world, which I think we talked about, but at least it's a roller coaster, you know what I'm saying? It's not just a building. This is like, I'm going to build a taller roller coaster than you, and the people who ride me are going to be 7% more scared than your riders. That's doing something, if you ask me. There's a definite benefit to building up. And early on, yes, it was just basically to glorify a king or a god or something like that. Right. But over time, as people started settling together in city centers and wanting to be close to the city center, there was a good reason to start building upward, is that space outward was either at a premium or people didn't want it. They wanted to be in one specific spot. So the only option you have aside from outward is either upward or downward. We haven't gotten a subterranean billings yet, I hope that God would never do. So we started building upward, and that's where skyscrapers first came up, came from. And they came about, I think, in the late 18 hundreds, the 1880s, and I believe the first one was the home life building in Chicago. How tall was that? Ten whopping stories. Yeah, that was a skyscraper back then. And I tried to find the first person who said that, but I couldn't. I found something on it. Oh, well, I heard Chicago is where it originated. The term, yeah, yeah. As far as buildings go. But it's been in use for a long time before that to describe anything tall. Sure. Including people. What, so like a very tall woman, you could be like, that gal's a real skyscraper, ain't you? For real. Fresh and sloppy on the face. That's right. That's exactly how that would go down. Wow. But, yeah, you could use it for, like, a tall sail on a boat. Oh, I've heard that. Yeah. Tall horse. Anything tall would be called a skyscraper. So it was just inevitable. People are going to start referring to tall buildings as skyscrapers. All right, well, there you have it. Bam. So what you're doing with the skyscraper is literally fighting gravity. And we mentioned pyramids. When you think about, like, a cheerleader pyramid, how they reference it in the article, the higher you go, you need more support underneath. And so with the pyramid, you just go wider. And in theory, you could build something as tall as you want, as long as you kept going wider and wider with its foundation to support it. But like you said, you can't do that because people live near one another, and these are in city centers, so they had to come up with some. With the 1800 skyscrapers that were brick and mortar, you could only go so high right before it just wasn't possible anymore. They'd just be simply too much weight on that foundation. So it took advancement and a very specific advancement called iron and steel in order to build these things taller. Right. One of the other problems with brick and mortar is that not just supporting the weight, you could add more brick and more mortar. But either you're going to start spreading further and further out and create a bigger and bigger footprint for your building and start running up against your neighbors, or you're using up more and more of the space in the lower floors, so you have maybe like a little chamber corridor that you can make it through, and then that's it for your lower floors. So it doesn't make any sense. But with the advent of iron and steel, you suddenly had relatively lighter, stronger, and thinner, basically building materials to work with. So you could go way taller and use up way less of a footprint on the ground. Yeah. And it started with iron, so you could get these super long, sturdy, solid beams. And then, of course, steel was even lighter and stronger than iron. Actually came from iron or comes from iron. Yeah, it's like super pure iron. Yeah. And that's the deal. I looked up that bessemer process a little bit, and then my eyes glazed over a bit. They mentioned the best summer process, but it was really something called the open heart process from 1865 that really brought steel into mass production. Is that just literally removing impurities from iron? Is that how you get steel? From what I understand, it's super pure iron. Steel has been around for since, I think, the 13th century BCE. So thousands of years we've been using steel, but for the most part, it's just been like some artisan blacksmith who works with one small piece at a time. And the steel that they were making was not very good. It was pretty brittle, and it was stronger than your average rock or something like that. But you couldn't make a building out of it. Right. Then once they figured out that bessemer process and then the open hearth process, where they purified iron and could make large amounts of it at once, now you suddenly have the kind of climate that skyscrapers can be built in. Yeah. You know, the old saying was you can't make a building from a long sword. No, you can't. Or is it a broad sword? Either one. It depends on what country you're in. Okay. All right, so let's talk about my favorite part of this whole thing, which is the skeleton and the superstructure. It's just so beautifully simplistic. Again, the steel skeleton is the support structure of a skyscraper. And these are literally just vertical columns made up of metal beams that are riveted together end to end. Right. And a big giant box. And then at every floor, first floor, second floor, third floor. Well, keep going. You're going to have, obviously, horizontal girders, and those are just I was going to say strapped. That wouldn't be very safe. Those are just riveted. A good ratchet strap will do it. Right, strap with, like, a bit of leather. That's it. That's what holds them together. Those are riveted to the columns. And that's it on top. Right. So, yeah, you've got vertical columns going up. You have girders going horizontally, and then you'll have, like, diagonal ports that stabilize the girders. Right. You came along a little later. Right. But all of these things put together forms like what it's called, the skeleton, the structure of the building, and it holds up everything because everything is connected to those vertical columns. Right. Which is pretty great, but it creates an issue in that all the weight is getting transferred straight down through those vertical columns. Yeah, that's what it does. So all the horizontal weight, like from the floors, from the desks you put in there, from the drywall, from everything, it all gets transferred to those vertical columns. Which means that you better have some number one sturdy vertical columns. But you can't just build this thing on the sidewalk. No, you've got to mount them pretty well to the Earth. And the way you do that is there's a sub layer of clay that you want to dig down to, depending on how heavy your building is. If it's really heavy, you want to dig down to the bedrock, which is the actual crust of the Earth. The rest is just debris and detritus. Yeah. This substructure, I think, is the kind of the coolest thing. I agree. So you remember we were talking about how if you build with brick and mortar, the taller you build, the thicker the walls have to be to where you have basically no room left in the lower levels. Yeah, they figured out how to take that and put it underground and then build a superstructure on top of it. And that's what they did. Yeah. So each little vertical column and to make it simple, let's just think of four corners of a building, though the structure is much more complicated than that, with huge buildings, obviously, but each one of those vertical columns sits on a spread footing, which is basically and if you look at the picture on the website article, or just Google it, it's really, again, beautifully simplistic. It sits on a big, square cast iron plate and then that sits on what's called grillage, which are just stacks of horizontal steel beams. And they're just lined up. And then it's almost like a jinga tower. You'll line them up going one way and then the next layer will be lined up going the other way. And they've done a little math to figure out how many they need. And that grillage sits on concrete, this big concrete pad that's on that clay or the bedrock. And then all of that stuff is buried in concrete just for good measure. Just for good measure. And then they coat that in butterscotch. I know that sounds good and good. Like you said, you've just got this pyramid, essentially underground, supporting each column. The toughest pyramid anyone has ever made in the history of humanity. Is one of these spread footings tougher than the one from bringing on the movie? Yes, tougher than that one. It's a good movie, by the way. That's what I've heard. But that's just under one vertical column. And again, if you have just a simple four column structure, you've got four of those taking the weight and distributing the force of gravity pressing down on every square centimeter of this building. It's going down to the spread footing and just being distributed back into the earth, saying, There you go, fellas. Go on your merry way and leave this building. B that's right. I will take your load and spread it thin. And before we take a break, we should mention that all of this means this skeletal structure means that your outer walls, which are the curtain walls, they can be wide open. And so that's why you see floor to ceiling glass and a lot to most of these. Yeah, you don't need it to support anything. No, just itself. That's the only thing it has to support. That was like a huge revolution in construction, the idea that you could build with this new material. Well, not new, but newly refined material, newly available material that could support huge, tall building and that you could just put an outside wall onto. Well, then now you can do whatever you want with these things. It really kind of opened things up, and there was a huge change in construction design and skyscrapers pretty quickly after they were introduced. You want to take a break before we talk about that? Yeah, because the functionality of this, which comes next, is probably my second favorite thing. Oh, boy. All right, Chuck. So we're talking functionality, which, as you said, is your second favorite thing about skyscrapers, right? Yeah, because you think of an architect thinking, man, let's just build this tall thing. But there's a function of the building beyond let's make it look cool or impressive, which is people live and work and run business out of these things. Hey, by the way, I'm sorry, man. This is so it doesn't even qualify as a tangent. It's so off base. But you just said architect. One of our architect friends, Adam and his wife Serena welcomed their second son recently. Oh, great. So congratulations, you guys. And I also, while I'm at it, I want to give a shout out to my friends Laurel and Braden for their second son as well. So everybody's having second sons these days, and congratulations to all of you guys. That's great, Adam. I'm actually building my house up. I'm putting on a second story and sent some plans to Adam that didn't quite look right. Hey, man, you told me in New York to hit you up for a little free consult. Nice. And he said, here's what's wrong. And he went and just sent me back a little advice sketch. Oh, that was very cool. And I was like, he kind of solved it. He's like, it was fine. They just had it upside down. Oh, it's fixed. It's going to be weird looking. Yeah, that was nice of him. Did you send him, like, a muffin basket or something? I didn't, but maybe I'll send them, like, some baby booties now. Oh, there you go. Baby booties. All right. So these things have to be functional because people work in them. Big business runs out of these things. Important things happen. Sure. And much like when we were designing our second floor, it's not as easy as just, boom, there's a second story. When we were working with our local architect, he was like, well, you got to get up there. And that's when it first hit me of the problem. What did he mean by that? You have to be able to access the second story. Sure. Got you. So that's when it really hit home, the problem of stairs. And he was like, no one ever thinks about it. And he said that's usually the biggest issue when designing, like, a second floor build on an existing home is that you got to fit stairs somewhere. In the case of skyscrapers, those stairs become elevators. Right. Which you don't think about it at all. No, you would not have skyscrapers if you didn't have elevators. And it just so happens that they coincided at about the same time yeah. I think in New York, a department store, 1857, was the first passenger elevator, and it was an Otis Brand elevator. That's great. Was it really? Yes, I think built by Elijah Otis himself. I love that. I'm pretty sure it's a him. I'd feel really terrible if that was, like, the inventor of the elevator was a woman and I didn't know it. You know? I agree. For shame. I guess the h makes it a hymn. If it was Eliza Otis, then it'd be a woman, but Elijah Otis is the man's version of that. Probably so. Okay, but we'll check on that, and if we're wrong, then we will have re recorded that, and you will never know. Yeah, but this elevator, it points down this article is very plainly it's a balancing act. Like, you can't have a lobby full of people standing in line for 15 minutes because you don't have enough elevators, but then elevator shafts take up a lot of room in the building. So you've got to do the math and figure out the perfect little balance between how many people can we have in this office tower and how many elevators do we need to get them there in due time. Right. First of all, we talked about elevators in our elevators episode. Great episode, if you'll remember correctly. But when you add elevators, you're taking up valuable real estate. Right. Like, that's just a place where you can't put an office because you've got an elevator shaft going there. So if you want to make your money back on that real estate, you got to add more floors. But if you have more floors, you have more people. If you have more people, you need more elevators. Well, they're an architect to do right. You just go home for the day. Elijah Otis, by the way, either a magnificently bearded woman or an actual man. Okay, good. Okay. Wow. What is that an immediate update? Yeah, and look at the hair, too. It's basically got my hair cut, except it's a little wavier on the sides. Yeah, nice. So we couldn't have skyscrapers without elevators, apparently. I think five or six floors is about the max you would want to not have an elevator in. And this is all before the American with Disabilities Act. Right. So just from just logistically speaking, you couldn't go more than five or six floors, so we've got elevators. There's also another innovation that had to happen, and that was with, like, fire sprinklers. Sure. Which those came surprisingly late for a lot of commercial buildings. Like, there were a lot of hotel fires up until the early 1980s that killed a lot of people before they finally mandated that you need sprinklers in these things because it's ridiculously dangerous to not have fire sprinklers. But with the advent of fire sprinklers, it made buildings a lot safer, and that was one thing that you want to have in a high rise or skyscraper because it takes a while to get downstairs during a fire. So you just want the fire to be put out so you can get back to work. Yes. And then the final little piece of that puzzle of design is it should be a place people want to be in, an office they want to work in within reason. So the comfort of the occupants is a big deal. When they designed the Empire State Building they wanted to make sure that no one would ever be more than 30ft away from a window. It's just a nice thing to do. It is. Because sunlight, everyone knows, reaches 32ft. So there you go. Did you look up this commerce bunk in Germany? No, I didn't. I did not. Really? Lovely. They have all these indoor gardens, and it's just gorgeous. It's like a place that you look at and you think they're not silk plants, they're real trees and things. Oh, yeah. It's just beautiful. I love that. I just love that about buildings that have indoor, straight up, like, gardens. Yeah. There's one I can't remember where it is, somewhere in Dunwoody that has, like, waterfalls and stuff like that and trees going in there. I always appreciated Embassy Suites because they usually I don't think they do anymore, but they used to have whole gardens and stuff in the lobby and everything. There's just something about a garden inside a house or a building that says, like, we own you. Nature. Wonderfully, oppressive thing. Maybe that's what I appreciate about it. What's the one in Atlanta with the great interior atrium? I don't know. Oh, the Marriott Marquis. Yeah. The one with the elevators. Yeah, the Marquee. Yeah. I can't remember it's. A pretty famous architect and designer who I think passed away within the last year or so. Oh, really? Yeah. And that's one of the great. And there are a lot of good plants in there too. But that's one of the great sort of retro interior atriums that I've seen. Yeah, it's got that great mod feel to it. It's a good building. I wonder who did it. I can't remember. I remember, though, being in when I was, I believe, a senior in high school. That was where the party was on New Year's Eve and they somehow rented rooms to a bunch of 17 year olds throughout the building. Yeah, that's dangerous. And it was dangerous for real. I remember hugging the only covered part was the very, like you had to kind of hug the wall and you had a lip that you could walk under. I remember walking under there and seeing televisions and potted plants, like, smashing on the floor from idiot children blowing them off the balconies. That is so dangerous. I know. Oh, my God. They changed. That was, like, the last year. They had a big policy shift after that. That's like the Lord of the Flies. It was my friends and I mean, I didn't drink in high school, but all my friends were. But we were all like, man, we're getting out of here. This is bad news. Yeah. So we were good kids. Good for you, buddy. By the way, it was John C. Portman Jr. Who was the architect. Right. Nice work. All right, Chuck. Now we come to, like, be my favorite, if not second favorite part, which is what wind does to a skyscraper. Take it away. So windows, some crazy stuff to a skyscraper. Yeah. The end. It blows on it. Yes, actually, it does crazy stuff. When wind encounters a skyscraper, a skyscraper will sway. Okay. That's actually okay. They have designed skyscrapers, taking into account really heavy gusts of wind, and the building is almost certainly not going to fall down. There's actually this really great New Yorker story from the 90s about it's called the 59 Story Crisis. And it's about the City Corp. Center, which in 1978 opened. And after it opened, basically the architecture, the engineer realized he didn't carry a one or something like that, and that the whole building was in danger of collapsing. Fully occupied now, and that there were hurricanes headed toward New York that had just the kind of wind that could knock this building down. So they did like this emergency retro support structure addition. They carved out the interior walls and just started working on it and they managed to save the building. Is that what the damper is for? So the damper is different. This was like they added basically extra rivets. He went cheap on the rivets or something like that. Well, I did think it was funny. In the article, it said one thing you could do is just simply tighten up the rivets and things. Right. I'm like, when do you go, yeah, I feel like it's tight enough. Well, I think more than perfectly tight. Right. I think they're saying if you add more rivets in more places, it'll make the building stronger and it won't strain underneath the wind. The problem is what you've just done is create, like a very solid pole. And just with any kind of pole, when it sways, the end of it like a fishing pole is the part that Bobbles the most. Right. Same thing with the skyscraper. So the upper floors are really subject to sway from the wind again, except for this 1978 City Corp. Thing. They usually account for this stuff and then some, but the problem is humans get really freaked out and not just like psychologically, on a primal level, get really freaked out when we're high up and we start moving and it's not under our control. Sure. So, like, the building might be sound, but if word gets out from people that it sways, people will think it's not sound. And so you'll never sell the upper floors. You'll never rent out the upper floors. And maybe the whole building will be stayed away from because people will think it's going to collapse at any moment. So because of this rumor mill, engineers actually designed for the most sensitive people who I think can sense something like 15 milligees. So a g is like a force of acceleration, which is actually what you're sensing when you're swaying somewhere, like in the top of a building. Yeah. This is 15,000 of one G. When you're on a roller coaster, you're experiencing, like three, four, five GS. This is 15,000 of one G. And that's what they designed for, because beyond that, they found people will start complaining and then word might get out to the buildings unsound. Bring Morrie in here. He's a real wimp. Yeah, exactly. What do you think, Maury? Right. Okay. Tighten it up, everybody. But tightening it up only goes so far. Right. The taller you get, tightening doesn't help, so you got to add other stuff. They come up with some pretty ingenious stuff for that. Yeah, like in the sort of I guess what I would call it, the middle period, like Empire State Building period, they started just around that elevator shaft in the middle, just trusting that up with more beams, diagonal beams. And then more recently, they've just built these huge concrete cores right in the center of the building. But that's not the coolest part, is it? No, the damper is the coolest part. Or the mass tuned damper, I think. Yeah, the tuned mass damper. I'm sorry. And I think we talked about this. It must have been in the 911 memorial. Yeah, I think so. But this is one of those things that, again, it seems like, whoa, they're getting really complex because they're using computers and things now. But at its root, a tuned mass damper system is also super rudimentary, don't you think? Yeah, it really is. If the building swaying one way, they'll put, like, a huge concrete disk on top of some oil or something so it can slide, and they'll move that the opposite way. So it's like, you know how, like, if you're walking a tightrope or on like a train track or something like that, and you start to sway one way, like you're going to fall off, you shift your body's weight the other way, and you manage to stay upright. This is the same thing, but with the building going one way, the concrete disk goes the other way, and the building sway is kept within an acceptable limit. Yeah. I mean, it's amazing that someone just said, what if we swung a big weight up there to counteract the sway, and it gets a little with hydraulics, and the computer is actually what's monitoring the wind and operating this thing. So that's where it gets a little complicated. But at its root, it's just like, again, like a kid said, well, why don't you just do this? Right. So there's some that use, like, the huge concrete weight. Some will use enormous vats of water to. Slosh back and forth against the sway. There's the stuff called magnetoheological fluid, which changes from a solid. It's normally in a solid state, and then when you pass a magnetic field over it, it just instantly turns to fluid. So they have some dampers in some buildings. I don't know if it's actually in use or not or if it's still proposed, but on each floor toward the center of the building, you'll have a damper made of this stuff in, like, a VAT. And then when, say, an earthquake is detected or some sort of seismic activity is detected, it will trip a magnet that runs a magnetic field over these things, and all of a sudden, they turn into liquid and they start sloshing the opposite way and keep the building from swaying too far. Too. All right, well, that's not rudimentary. No, it's not. That's magic. That's voodoo. It is, pretty much. Should we take a break? I think so, man right. Well, we'll talk a little bit about design right after this. Okay, chuck so we're on the design now, by the way. Yeah. And the earliest ones were basically like, look at the size of this building I built. Everyone said, well, it's ugly as sin. Right. And the architect and engineer and the builder and the owner would say, doesn't matter, it's taller than any of your buildings. And everyone would say, that's true. But as Billies got taller and taller, and, like, a new one went up every few months, every year in some of the cities around the world, like New York, London, those two, it became a lot more important what the billing looked like. Yeah. So, I mean, in the into the 40s, with one of my favorite movements, the Ardeco movement. Love it. You get my favorite building, which is the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building, which is still just gorgeous to look at. So when we're in New Zealand, if you have time, there's a town there called Napier, and it got leveled by an earthquake in 1930, and they said, well, we're going to rebuild the town. What's, like, the current trend in architecture? Oh, it's Art Deco. So it's an art deco town. The whole town is. It's gorgeous, man. It's all in, like, pastels and everything. It's just a beautiful town from the 1930s that they just rebuilt. All Art Deco. Wow. For sure. Yeah. So that rang true for a while, but then eventually, like, architecture goes in trends, and we had a bad trend in the 1960s. And Atlanta certainly has its share of international style buildings is what it's called, which I don't know why, but for some reason, they sort of just reverted back to these monoliths. And a lot of them were torn down in Atlanta, but some of them are still here, and they're the ugliest buildings in the city. I like some of them. Not necessarily the ones in Atlanta, but, like, the Sears Tower the Willis Tower is an international style. Yeah. Interesting. At least because it's staggered. Right. That's still technically international style. UN headquarters in New York. International style. Yeah. Some of them can have a retro style now. Right. I think that's what I appreciate about some of them, but yeah, you're right. Some of them are also just like that is just foggly. Yeah. And the Sears are Willis Tower. We still call the Sears Tower, let's be honest. Yeah. Okay. That one is unique in that it is tubes, right? Yeah. And they're staggered in height, so they kind of played with this new thing. I don't know if it was for the skeleton or what, but they built like steel tubes and then fill them with concrete so that provided the structure. But they staggered them. So it created this cool look to the building that it's known for. Yeah. I did the architectural river tour in Chicago when I was there last summer, and the lady we had was great. She told us the story. I just couldn't remember it quite right. Yeah, it is the Sears Tower. I feel bad for Mr. Willis, but it's just the Sears Tower. And then you've got now kind of like whatever you want to do. That's what we want. Some are great, some are not so great. But I think that's always been the way with skyscrapers. Some are great and some are not so great. But either way, you've got a big old skyscraper in your city now, whether you like how it looks or not. Yeah. They're getting kind of funky in a place like New York, where it's, like, even is it One World Trade Center now? The Freedom Tower. Oh, right. But I believe they call it One WTC still as well? No. Is it? I don't know. Well, let's just call it the Freedom Tower. We'll call it One World Trade Center. You're right. That one fits in even though it has a newish look, but it fits into the landscape because there's a lot of tall buildings in New York. When you see, like, sometimes in the Middle East, although Dubai has got a lot of tall ones now, or Malaysia, they will be so much taller than the surrounding buildings that it's just sort of odd looking to me. Well, plus, also you hope that the architect is going to design the thing to fit the surroundings rather than really stand out. But regardless, I mean, these are not public buildings. These are privately owned buildings almost across the board. And you, the city dweller who lives there and has to look at this thing every day, are totally at the mercy of the person designing it. Whatever gets put up, gets put up, and you had no say whatsoever, which can be good in a lot of cases. It can also be bad. But it seems like more often than not, the stuff that they're putting up these days is pretty interesting to look at. Like, there's Zahid, who I think won the Pritzker Prize a couple of years ago. I think she died recently. She put up this building. I don't know if it's done yet or not, but it's called 1000 Museum Tower in Miami, and it is gorgeous. It's super Miami. Like, the exterior skeleton actually twists and curves and snakes around the outside of the curtain wall, even in some points. But it fits. Like, it fits Miami. Like, you just look at this building, I can't imagine that building anywhere else in the world or more at home anywhere else in the world than Miami. Yeah, so it's good. It's interesting. It's cool to look at, but it also fits the surroundings. Yeah, for sure. And that one, I just looked at it. It's pretty cool looking. Some of them are looking very futuristic now to me. That looks very futuristic. Yes. Yes. Which is fine. I like the throwback style, but don't mind the little future every now and then. All right. The question of how high can you go is very hotly debated. Some designers and architects say if you had enough money, you could go a mile high. Other people say, no, you probably couldn't. It's not very feasible, at least not now. Yeah, but in the future. And they say this is an efficient way to build is up and environmentally friendly. Is to go up, right? It depends. Did you read that one article about glass? Yeah. So that's pretty hotly debated right now in the architectural community. Yeah. I don't know if they're trying to start it up or if it is actually already a thing of debate, but there are some architects, some pretty prominent ones too, who said we should stop building glass towers. Right. They're kind of cold, they're unfeeling. They just don't create a sense of community. Plus, they're super wasteful. Like, they're really expensive and consume a lot of energy to heat and cool because there's a lot of loss of heat and a lot of heat creeping in depending on the time of the year. And they're just kind of wasteful, actually. And that coupled with the idea that there's now this trend moving toward tearing down taller and taller buildings and replacing them with even taller new skyscrapers, especially when there's really nothing wrong with that skyscraper in the first place. But say, like in Chicago, if the Willis family had known that their tower was still going to be known as the Sears Tower, no matter what, they may have torn that thing down and build something else in its place. Right? Yeah. And that seems to be the trend. It's like, oh, that'll always be known as this building. I want to tear it down and put up my own building. That is super duper wasteful. And those are two big criticisms as far as skyscrapers are going right now in the world, from what I can understand. Yeah, that one article you sent said that 270 park in New York will be the first building taller than 200 meters to be demolished, and that the average lifespan. There's a study from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat that found the average lifespan of the 100 tallest demolished buildings is 41 years. That is not long enough for the amount of expense that goes into them, the amount of materials and energy. I think the same article says these things should be built for 100 to 200 years. I mean, what is it, a football stadium? Basically, yeah. They don't even have 41 years. Are you kidding me? No, they really don't. Like, 1415 years now. Yeah, think about it, man. So, like, with the Brace Stadium, the Ted was, like, built in 96 for the Olympics, and it was abandoned two years ago. So it made it 20 years. 20 years. And it's being used now. Georgia State took it over, but it was a perfectly good baseball stadium. 15 minutes for my house, and then with the Falcons stadium there was nothing wrong with that one, was there? The Georgia Dome? Yeah. No, but I got to say, man, that new Mercedes Ben Stadium is it nice, man, it's awesome. I haven't been in it yet. It's very cool. It feels like you're at an outdoor game even with the roof closed. Oh, cool. The way they built it is just you should check it out at some point. I mean, it is beautiful. I get that. It's not lost on me. I'm not just such a grump or a critic that I'm just like, no, it doesn't matter. I get that. There's also a lot of civic pride, especially that goes into a building like that, but it's also super wasteful. Tear something down while it's still totally fine rather than renovating it. And of course, all the controversy, especially for sports stadiums around tax dollars paying for them, even though it's usually a hotel tax, so they can say, like, it's not on you. It's on the people that come to Atlanta. Yeah, I don't know if they did that in Cobb County. I think it was a straight up, like, citizens tax. I think. So for the baseball one. You also sent a cool article, though, about wood skyscrapers and how this is a new trend and apparently ahead of schedule. Brock Commons, a student, I guess it's a dormitory at University of British Columbia, is now the tallest, as of now, the tallest wooden structure at 18 stories. Yeah. And you think, like, well, wood, that's not good. We don't want to start using wood for skyscrapers. It is good, apparently. It is good that it can be sustainably sourced and that it can actually use, in some cases, 30% less energy than creating a skyscraper using concrete and steel. And that's not including, like, transport costs or transport emissions as well. That's strictly in production. And the stuff they're making or using now is called cross laminated timber, which supposedly is the strongest deal. The big drawback to it is like twice the price right now. Yeah. It's like what you get with press board. It's sheets of wood glued together and compressed together. And when you look at this Brock Commons, it just looks like an ordinary building. And there's another building going up somewhere in Japan. I couldn't find where. It's called the W 350 building, which I guess stands for wood, and it's 350 meters tall, which is like a 35 storey skyscraper made of wood, and I think 10% steel, but the rest is wood. That's going to be really something and I imagine a pretty big proving ground for this new material. Yeah. And you mentioned that it can be sustainable, because the first thing I thought of, of course, is, like, now we're going to tear down the forest to build buildings, but they say that less than 1% of the world's forests are harvested each year. It sounds like a hornet's nest to me. It does. But they did this in Canada and they said it was a super green project and like, the way forward. And I trust the Canadians on that stuff. Me too, man. So we just would be the worst human beings alive if we didn't talk about the tallest buildings in the world and the competition for it. Yeah. And also, real quick, you mentioned the Glass didn't have that one building in London that melted a car. Yeah, the walkietalkie building. That was one of the problems with glasses. Do you remember when we were in Buckhead, the Sovereign building next door? Yes. Did you ever walk past it through the beam of light? Yeah, it's blinding. It was really hot, too. You could imagine, like, under certain circumstances, it could burn you. Well, there's a building in London that they had to shade even further because it melted a car that was parked in that beam of light. It melted a car, yeah. All right, so the tallest, I think they said there's something like 20 buildings under construction that will eclipse the Burge Khalifa. Right. Well, I think that's currently number one undisputed. But the Jedah Tower J-E-D-D-A-H in Saudi Arabia will be 3280ft high. And that'll be done in just a couple of years. Yeah, it's 1000 meters, I think, on the nose, if I'm not mistaken. And this is one of those that sticks out like a sore thumb, too. It definitely does. And then there's also one that might be the tallest for a brief time, because I think it's going to be completed before the Jetta Tower, but it's in Dubai and it's called the Tower, and it'll be 928 meters or 3045ft. I know they say it's good to go up, but I don't know. That stuff makes me nervous. There's a picture of the Jedi Tower to where a substantial portion of it, maybe the top third is above the cloud lot. I saw that picture and it's like, yeah, it wouldn't necessarily be like that every day, but theoretically, if that's even possible, I can't imagine how much those upper floor penthouses are going to go for. It's just nuts, man. But they're building them. I think the tower in Dubai is expected to cost a billion dollars. That seems kind of inexpensive to me for a 1000 meters building. Well, I know one person who wouldn't live at the top of that thing and he's sitting across from me. Yeah, I just like to see pictures of it and get woozy down here at sea level. I don't even have a height thing and it makes me nervous. Yeah, I'm with you. So I guess it's about it. Oh, one more thing. There's a lot of debate over what constitutes the world's tallest building and the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat that you mentioned before. They said that there's actually no real definition of a skyscraper, but there are some types, subcategories, I guess, where there are definitions. There's a super tall, which is 300 meters or more, megatol, which is 600 meters or more. And helatoll and then a tall building is up to 300 meters, but there's no starting basis for it. Well, but there you go. Skyscraper can be anything tall, just like in the old days. I love it. If you want to know more about skyscrapers, just start looking around. They're everywhere. And you can also read about them on how stuff works by typing skyscraper in the search bar and said that's. Time to listen to mail. I'm going to call this very smart lady. Email this Camillasizer Occam's razor and what's very nice about it too. Yeah. Did you read this one? She said, I thought I'd give a small clarificationCorrection, might give you some insight on the alleged subjectivity of it. You explained the principle was when confronted with competing explanations, one should select the simplest one. She said this very common misconception. It should be the most parsimonious. How about that word explanation is more likely to be true. She said, It seems nitpicky, but it eliminates a lot of the subjectivity you complained about in the episode. The most parsimonious means the most economic in the sense that it makes the least amount of assumptions. That makes total sense because each additional assumption you are making is an additional chance of being wrong. For example, the ghost in the photo makes the assumption that ghosts exist, something that has not been proven. Whereas the naturalistic explanation doesn't need to assume the existence of any light phenomena you use to explain that picture because those all have been proven to exist. Make your head around that. So I feel like we did talk about that a little bit, but we weren't very explicit. And I think we kind of walked past the idea that that's the basis of the whole thing. Yeah, she said, as you explained very well, it doesn't disprove because hypothesis, it just makes it less likely to be true. Most of science is not about proving things anyway. It's about inferring the most likely explanations to phenomena. I hope that helps keep up the great work that is Camilla size. And that is a good email. Yeah. Thanks a lot, Camilla. Well put. Appreciate that. And a few people wrote in kind of saying something similar, but she definitely put it best. If you want to set it straight, you can hang out with us on Twitter. I'm at Josh Clark, Chucks at Moviecrushpod and we're both at Xyskpodcast on Twitter. Chucks on Facebook.com Moviecrushpod. I actually spend a lot of time on the Moviecrush Facebook page. Okay, so if you want to hang out with Chuck on Facebook, go to Facebook.com moviecrush. He's also on Facebook.com. Charlesobychokbrian and S-Y-S-K or no. Stuff you should know. You're all over Facebook, aren't you? If you want to send us all, including jerry and email, you can send it to stuffpodcast@howstoughfworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffysheno.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseworks.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. 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Hypnosis: You're Getting Sleepy | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/hypnosis-youre-getting-sleepy | The modern conception of hypnosis came into vogue in the late 18th century, and it's been the subject of much debate ever since. Does hypnosis really work? How? Josh and Chuck discuss the history, practices and feasibility of hypnotism in this episode. | The modern conception of hypnosis came into vogue in the late 18th century, and it's been the subject of much debate ever since. Does hypnosis really work? How? Josh and Chuck discuss the history, practices and feasibility of hypnotism in this episode. | Thu, 23 Sep 2010 19:47:16 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=23, tm_hour=19, tm_min=47, tm_sec=16, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=266, tm_isdst=0) | 29912319 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Sitting across the meat is one Charles W. Bryant. You might know and love him more as Chuckers or Chuck. Chuck Tran. Chuck Tran. Whatever. Call me anything. Just call me. You can call me anything, just don't call me. Late to dinner. Yeah. That's not a good one. That's a redneck one, isn't it? No, it's classic. I've always heard it from redneck. Oh, redneck is classic. That was international. Italian, Serbian getting more and more refined, buddy. Chuck, do you see the stopwatch I have? I do. I want you to stare at a Chuck. I am. You're getting very drowsy, Chuck. I am? You're laying in a field surrounded by little rabbits. I love rabbits. Yes, the rabbits love you, too. Chuck. Chuck. Yes. Keep your eyes open for me. Yes. Chuck, I want you to bark like a dog when I snap my fingers. Ready? Very good, Chuck. That was excellent. Now, Chuck, I'm going to bring us out of this horribly uncomfortable segment. When I snap my fingers, I'm going to count to three. And when I snap my fingers, you're not going to remember any of this. Just me and the people listening to this? Well no. Okay. Okay. 1230h hey, Chuck. I'm not sure what happened, but I feel lame. You should feel lame. Yeah. Every reason I feel lame. So do I, Chuck. I'm embarrassed. I suddenly realize I just bestowed upon you like a really great gift that you can't remember what just happened. That was like the worst intro we ever did. It is. Just thank you, lucky stars. Chuck. That is a great intro, Josh, because we are talking about hypnosis. Well, yeah, it would have been a little weird for Australian frogs, right? That'd be weird. The cane toad. So I'll go ahead and kickstart this, my friend, by saying that hypnosis has been around for a couple of hundred years, and because it has to do with the brain in the mind, we still don't know a ton about how it actually works. I'd like to kickstart this one by saying that hypnosis is complete. I don't agree, because I have been hypnotized. And we will get to that later. Really? Yeah. Have you really? Yeah, sort of. We'll talk about it. Okay. I'll walk you through my experience later. That would be great. You've been hypnotized twice. Now you realize you don't remember it, but I don't know what you're talking about. I know you don't, but you've been hypnotized twice. So technically speaking, buddy, a trancelike state is what hypnosis is. And it's characterized by relaxation, heightened imagination and extreme suggestibility. And they compare it to daydreaming. You're actually hyperattenive. You're not asleep, you're hyperattentive. And they liken it sometimes when you get lost, like in a movie, and nothing exists outside the movie and you are moting with the movie, and you kind of believe what's going on is real. Not only was it compared to in this article by poor Tom Harris to watching a movie, it was also compared to driving, reading, and mowing Milan. Was it that it didn't see that? No. This is awesome illustration. It shows you all the things that you can kind of self hypnotize with, and one of them is apparently riding a lawn tractor. Well, Milton Erickson is an expert in the 20th century with hypnotism. He says that this happens on a daily basis to everybody. Yeah. And I know what he's talking about. I've definitely driven unimpaired sure before and been like, how did I get here? Oh, I've done that, too, man. And you realize you're so focused on a thought or a problem or just something you're trying to work out that your body's just taken over, and you can do it in a stick shift, too. It's not just with automatic. Yeah. You know what usually triggers my realization that that's happened is I realized some awful song has been playing that I would never listen to. Like 1 second of Bad of the Bone is on, and it's like the Bad to the Bone, buddy. You mean George Thurgood and the Tbirds. No, the Tbirds were different. George thurgood Delaware was destroyed. You didn't like thoroughgood? He used to go to Hollywood wide, by the way. We were on the same workout schedule for a little while. That's awesome. He like his old bones on the treadmill. He looks like he's about to die. Yeah, I'm sure he was. I hated bad to the bone, and I maintained that. Okay, so if you are listening to Bad to the Bone and you realize that it's like the end of the song, it's been on the whole time, that's clear evidence that you've self hypnotized. Exactly. And there's also a school of thought that all hypnosis is self hypnosis. We'll get to those explanations later. Right. That definitely makes a little bit of sense to Me or Mesmerized even. Do you want to talk about Mr. Mesmer? Yeah. The name actually comes from a guy named Franz MESMA, and he was an Austrian physician in the 17 hundreds, and he was one of the early proponents of hypnotism. He thought it was a mystical force, though, and it was early on, it was known as Mesmerism. Right. And then that just eventually became like Mesmerizing. Right. And Mesmerizol bit was that it was animal magnetism flowing from the hypnotist like sleep. Right. That guy, the old corny coming out of his fingers and his eyes into the subject. And the hypnosis was the hypnotist exerting his will on the hypnotized person. Right. And that was largely abandoned in the 19th century, I think. Was it? Yeah. A Scottish surgeon named James Braid coined the term hypnosis. Right. And it came to be seen as a state that the person went into guided by a hypnotist. Right. Got you. Well, that's definitely what happens when you're under hypnosis. It's always you talk about the suggestibility. You think that that's reality. So the example they gave in the article, which I thought was appropriate for us, is if they say, like, your tongue is swollen, you believe that? And so you might start talking like you do with a thick tongue. That's nice. Or if they say you're drinking like a cold soda, you might feel the bubbles or the cooling effect on your throat, even. Right. And Chuck, I think it's not that you think it's real. It's that you are in much the same way. It was like into watching a movie or a TV show. Do you ever watch a TV show and it cuts the commercial and all of a sudden you realize you're really anxious, like you're in trouble for something and you don't understand why. And you realize it's because you've attached to what's going on in the show so much that you're kind of empathizing with the characters. Yeah, I think it's like that. Like the idea that a dramatic play going on inside a little box can evoke emotions in you. Sure. That's what hypnosis is. You don't think it's reality because you're not thinking, yeah, well, we'll get into the brain of it then. I guess this is probably a good time to do it. Right. The subconscious mind. Well, yeah. This is really where I started to zone out. Really? I was like, how did I lose the last hour? The school of thought, for the most part, is that hypnotism is a way to get into your subconscious mind. You say hypnotism. Hypnotism. Okay. Hypnotism taps into your subconscious. And if your conscious thoughts are the things that you have to consciously think of in a day, your subconscious is still like, hard at work doing all the things like, you don't think I'm going to get in my car and pick up my key to insert it in. Your subconscious knows how to do all that. Right. Harris used the example of losing your keys. Right? Right. You're sitting there in your conscious mind, I guess, in this respect, and I have to put this clean around. I don't think conscious and subconscious concepts will be around for much longer, but I don't think so. But from the viewpoint of psychology, your conscious mind is what realizes that you are missing your car keys and all the ramifications of not being able to find your car keys. Like you're going to be late to work and there's going to be a problem, and where did you leave that last? And all that and your subconscious mind are all of the different mechanisms, or it's governing all the different mechanisms, bringing them together so that you can have these thoughts, worries and access memories, most importantly, so that you can remember the last place you put them. So what seems to like a sudden flash of insight. Like, there's the car keys. That was a series of machinations by the subconscious mind that brought you to your conscious mind to that point. Wow. Well, that's very pertinent here, because psychiatrists think that the deep relaxation and the relaxed state relaxed? Did I just say that? I kind of like that the relaxed state that you get into it is allows the psychiatrist or the hypnotist to tap into that subconscious because of the state that you're in. Tap that subconscious. Tap it. There may be a little bit to that, too. Right. There could be. But we should probably say, Chuck, before we get into that, what? The subconscious mind is responsible for some of the big things and that this is what you've got the sensation bodily sensations, memories, taste, emotions. Right. And with memories, especially if you're getting in there and you're going directly to the source where these things are stored, retrieved and experienced right. Then you have a lot of responsibility, if this is actually real, to not manipulate the person in this state. Yeah, absolutely. Because apparently you're dealing directly with the subconscious. So with talking about repressed memories specifically, it's easy to create false memories inadvertently. So you definitely have to be really careful. But, yes, you are right. That there is some evidence there's some scientific evidence that there's something going on here when people are in a hypnotic state. Right? Well, yeah. The conscious mind is the inhibitive component of your body. So it's the one that's, like, putting on the brakes for things. And the subconscious is the more impulsive and imaginative one. So it makes sense that you see those stupid hypnosis shows live on stage yeah. Where adults are, like, barking like dogs and walking around like chickens and stuff. They're still there. I was in Vegas a couple of weeks back, and they have billboards. People love that stuff, though. I'm just not one of them. But that does sort of make sense that if they're tapping into the subconscious and leaving the conscious mind out of it, then that's why they're uninhibited and feel free to do all those stupid things. Right. So there is something to that in theory, just by looking at it. Right. And I guess people have slapped people into EEG machines, giving them electroencephalography scans yeah. To see what's actually going on in the brain. Right. And there is something like there's no change bodily, aside from and Tom Harris did a good job making this point. People are relaxed. Right, sure. But that's actually from the suggested relaxation. It's not from the state of hypnosis itself. So, like, your heart rate might slow down and stuff, but it's not because you're hypnotized. It's just because you're chill. Exactly. Okay. But with the brain scans, I can't remember what we were talking about. Sleepwalking, I think we're talking about brainwaves. Right? Yeah, we were. And the low frequency waves associated with deep sleep tend to show up more when you're in a hypnotized state. Okay. And the higher frequency waves associated with being fully awake and alert slow down something. They don't disappear. One doesn't take over, and the other one goes away when you're actually in deep sleep. But they're skewed differently than a normal person would have while they're overweight. And so Tom also points out, too, that's not like, proof of anything, but it is a nod to like, well, this is actually going on. The same with they studied the cerebral cortex and hypnotic subject showed reduced activity in the left hemisphere and increased in the right. And the left hemisphere is where the logical control center is, and the right is where the imagination and creativity is. So that kind of supports the idea as well. Right, but again, not like hard proof, Chuck. That's my problem with this. There's no hard proof whatsoever. Right. As far as against psychology, psychiatry goes, and this is in widespread use or Vegas shows. Right. How do you hypnotize somebody? Well, there's some different ways you can do it. There's the old school way where you, like, wave the watch in front of someone that you seen in the movie. Yes. That's called field gaze induction or eye fixation. Fixed gaze. Fixed gaze. What does say field gaze? That makes no sense. I hypnotized you to say that. What was that? Nothing. So the idea there is that they're just getting you to focus on something and tune everything out, and then they lull you to sleep with their tone. And that's sort of the old school way. And they don't do it much anymore because apparently it doesn't work that well. Yes, because people are too smart. And what's the other one? There's another one called Rapid, which I like this one. It's like, Chuck, sleep. Chuck. Chuck, you're hypnotized. Chuck, listen to my voice, you're sleepy. Chuck, focus on me. Chuck. Right. Chuck. What? Yeah, well, and that's what they do in the Vegas shows, and they kind of prey on the fact that you're up on stage, you're out of your element, and you're nervous, and supposedly that will make you more susceptible to that kind of suggestion. Right. Well, there's another one called Progressive Relaxation and Imagery where someone might suggest that you're laying in a field. That's the one that was used on me. We're surrounded by bunnies. Right. Where was this? Okay, I'll go ahead and just tell the story. I went to a hypnotherapist about four times before. I didn't go back. And this guy was in his house over there off Monroe in this dude's apartment, and he was sort of creepy, and the whole situation was a little unnerving. But I did want, like they say, one of the things that you have to believe that you can be hypnotized in order to be hypnotized. Like, you can't go in there as a skeptic, probably, and, like, cross your arms and say, wave your watch, but I believe that you could do this because my friend went through the cigarette hypnosis, and it really worked for him. So he had me look at this huge painting that was on his wall and just, like, focus on that. And he had this new age in your music playing softly, and the lights were dim. It was a little creepy, and he lulled me with his voice and all that. And I went three times. And I guess I was looking for a hypnosis experience where I didn't remember what happened, and I was, like, out of it. But from reading this, it's not like you're out of it. You're just in such a relaxation, relaxed state that you can go there or something. And the only success that I will say is for one of the sessions. It's sort of like meditation, right? Have you ever meditated? Yeah, I've tried. I've got too much going on up here. Well, you probably wouldn't be very good with hypnosis. Plus, I can't get into the lotus position to save my life. No, you don't have to. It's sort of like meditation, though, in that this one time, I really was lulled into this, like, super relaxed state. We talked about some stuff, and then afterward I came out of it, and he was like, all right, how do you feel? I was like, I feel really relaxed and good. He said, how much time do you think that took? I was like, I don't know, about 15 minutes. He went, look at your watch. It was an hour and 20 minutes, dude. Well, he went, Sleep. Write a check right now. He just went to your wallet while we were talking. So it sort of worked, man. Did you feel better? Well, yeah, I didn't go back. I think I went back one more time and then went, It's not for me. You went back for that fourth pity visit? Yeah, exactly. But I felt bad for the guy, and then I just quit, like, returning calls, basically. He's like, Please come over, but I won't charge you. I haven't seen another person in so far. I know he kind of gave me that feeling. I hope he doesn't listen to the show, but it freaked me out, man. Like, the passage of time definitely weirded me out to where I was like, I lost an hour somehow. So I'm not saying I believe in it, but it was pretty real. Well, I guess we probably yeah, debunk it. Well, the problem is you totally nailed not just why hypnosis isn't necessarily real, but why psychology isn't necessarily real. Chuck, have you heard of the dodo bird effect? No. Dodo bird effect. There was a psychologist in I think the can't remember his name, but he figured out, and it's been proven time and time again that no matter what psychological orientation you're using, whether it's fraudian, psychoanalysis, or behavioral cognitive, behavioralism, whatever, as long as the patient believes that he or she can be healed, believes in the therapist's abilities, and the therapist believes in that orientation. There's going to be success. Mind is powerful. It is powerful, but the mind of the patient is powerful. Right. What is described by the dodo bird effect, and it's based on some part of, I think, through the Looking Glass or whatever. The dodo bird decrees everyone's a winner. Right. It's the placebo effect. Yeah, that's what hypnosis is. It's the placebo effect. But more specifically, it's a socially or culturally bound placebo effect. Like voodoo. Remember when we talked about voodoo, when we talked about zombies? I don't think we touched on it in voodoo, but with zombies, it's like if you live in a culture that believes in zombie ism and steps are taken to make you think that you have been afflicted and made into a zombie, you're going to act like a zombie, most likely. That's what hypnosis does, in my opinion. Well, I sort of agree with that. But he also makes a point, too, when I was reading this, I'm glad he made the point in the end, because the whole time I was thinking, like, yes, but if the end result is the same as hypnosis, isn't that the same? Like, it's kind of splitting hairs and he makes that point. What's the difference if the placebo cures your ills? Well, the difference is if you can tap into the placebo effect, that's optimal because you're letting the body take over and take care of itself. Right. The problem is when you write a check to somebody for something that you could have done yourself, or there's an entire field of study, like psychology, that entire other fields of study, like economics or let's just go with economics, are based on the findings of and those findings aren't right. It's all placebo effect. Then you've got a real problem. Yeah, I guess it's a solid point. It is. So I think if we identify the placebo effect, you have to identify it. But the problem is if people know that it is a placebo effect and it kind of ruins its effectiveness, usually. Well, because you got to believe in it going in. Yeah, for sure. One of the ways they use it is habit control treatment. And that's when I was talking about my buddy Johnny Pindel, who quit smoking. Why is that funny? What's your buddy's name? John Pendel. John Pendel. I like Johnny Pindel. Pindel. Yeah. He sounds like he should be wearing, like, a jean jacket. He might be deaf leopard and black marker on the he might be and he might be he met Johnny he was the guy in New York, the tall guy in the back of the van with us. Oh, yeah. I like that guy. I can totally see him in a jean jacket with def leopard on the back. He went through the cigarette program, and a lot of times it's like, overeating or smoking. And basically what they'll do is hypnotize you and reprogram your subconscious to like you're going to feel nauseous every time you smoke a cigarette. Right. And with varying degrees of success. It's worked on some people, yeah. Including John. I think he smokes now. But that was years ago again, though, I mean, did it really work? It worked for a little while. Didn't it work because he believed it? It's not just that, though. I mean, a lot of cancer patients apparently undergo hypnosis to get through chemotherapy or to try and heal. Right. Period. And a lot of people swear by that. Same with childbirth. Right. Then there's some where you're getting in some areas where it's like, no. If this is a placebo effect phenomenon right. We shouldn't be using this at all. Like forensic. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Because we talked about implanting false memories. There's a likelihood of that. Yeah. What they'll do in forensic is they'll get someone who has a suppressed memory of an awful crime and they'll hypnotize them to bring out these details of the crime scene. But it's really controversial when it's used at all. There's also wasn't there another one, Chuck? Well, just regular psychotherapy, if you have, like, phobias or fears, subconscious fears, which is much like the habit control hypnotic treatment, except it's usually more guided toward things like phobias rather than quitting smoking. Right. But it uses a lot of the same tricks rather than you'll be nauseous the next time you get afraid of flying. Right. It would, I guess, kind of instilling you self confidence or something like that. You don't need to be afraid of this plane wreck. It'll be over eventually. This is going to be an email generator, I think. Yeah. I think we'll get both sides of the coin on this. A lot of people are going to say, no, dude, I was hypnotized and it was real. Or I went and saw that Vegas show and you don't know anything. It was hysterical. Right. Or I think it's bunk and I'm a skeptic, but I think skeptics you're kind of wired that way. You're either skeptic or you're more inclined to believe things. I changed. I've done a complete 180. I was thinking the other day how surprised I am at what a skeptic I've become. I believe, love everything without thinking. I used to think Genghis Khan killed, like, 1.8 million people in an hour. I thought it because it was awesome. It was an awesome thing to think. And now, today, it was actually today I was reading this hypnosis article and I was like, this is bunk. I can barely make it through this article. Really? Yeah. And I realize how much I've changed in that respect. I think you get older and get a little more cynical and less prone to buy into stuff. Do you want to hear any more? There's like a whole slew of culture bound mental illnesses, really, that are like if you live in a culture that accepts this as fact, there's one that I just want to tell you one, but if you're ever interested, you should go check out culturebound mental illnesses. There's lots of sites that have lists and descriptions of them, but there's one called Koro, and it afflicts Malaysians, possibly Indians. There are large populations that believe in this that under certain circumstances, like after you've had sex with the prostitute or engaged in masturbation, if you feel, like, particularly guilty about this, you may suffer from corro. Is the belief that your genitalia, male and female, are shrinking into your body. Really? It can also happen from eating unclean food or whatever. So the idea is that if people really believe this, then it will happen, or they just believe it's happening. And so that's what matters. They believe it's happening. That's what matters. This is why it's classified as a mental illness, because it doesn't actually happen, but they'll take steps to prevent it from happening, like putting hooks into their breasts to pull them back out, tearing off their son's penises to keep it from spreading. Holy cow. Yes, but that's culturally bound. If you did that in the US. Everybody be like, you're absolutely not. Right. You do it there. It's like, oh, you have coro. Yeah. I think that's what hypnosis is. It gives you, in the United States, cart blanc to act in ways that you would be embarrassed by normally because you're hypnotized. So the rest of us aren't judging you. Interesting. I don't think that makes you skeptic. Thanks. Thanks, man. I started to hate that little rotten part in me skeptic. So if you want to learn more about hypnosis or find out the fate of Chuck based on the fix gaze induction that he underwent, my super cute. Yeah. That time you can type in Hypnosis. Hypnosis in the search bar at houseStep Worksh.com. It's the plain old vanillasearch bar@housestepworks.com. And I understand. Well, let's just do the listener mail thing. Or do we have a pug fest thing? No, listen or mail. This is a special announcement time. It's best in October. In mid October in Atlanta, Georgia, we're going to have a couple of things going on. One is an officially sanctioned trivia night at the Five Seasons Brewery. West Side. And look it up on the Internet. Is it on Marietta or how? Well, it's on Marietta, I believe. Okay, but look it up. It's easy to find sort of near Georgia Tech. It's right by where Hallmill and Marietta come together, I think, at that point. Yeah. So they have a cool scene there on the roof, and it's going to be awesome. We're going to have our all star trivia. We have got some celebrity guests booked. We have Mr. John Hodgman of The Daily Show. Yes. Author and actor John Hodgman. Yes. Who I am sure I would say 140% of our audience is a huge fan of yeah, don't call him the PC guy. No, I've actually had to stop myself the last two guys time, actually. He's very cool about that. He's very thankful for that job. It's not like he's like, don't call me that. Yeah, I don't ever want to discuss that again. Right. That's our hot joint impression. We have the guy who used to play Bo Duke in the classic 70s TV show the Duke of Hazard, mr. Joe Randazzo. He's going to be joining us now. He is the editor in chief of the Onions. He quit the Duke of Hazard. Got to get work somewhere. America's finest new source. Joe is coming down from New York with John. I wonder if they were going to ride down on the same plane. That'd be so cute. And Dave Willis, local legend from Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network. Dave was a co creator of Aqua team hunger Force and Squid Billy and the awesome squid Billy. Have you seen squid? Billy? I have, yeah. So great. And we landed Dave, and we're like super psyched that he's going to be here for this. So what we're saying is you can come to Five Seasons Brewery in Atlanta no matter where you are on October 13, which is a Wednesday. It's a work night, but just take the next day off. Trivia will be worth it to play us, Hodgman, Randazzo, Willis, and possibly a couple of others in Trivia for free. Just come. You buy your own drinks or whatever. And apparently have you seen the menu at this place? Oh, it's good. Awesome. That's where I had the cow cheek. Cheeks are the tastiest part of any animal, but I didn't care for it. Really? It makes me sad. I didn't like it. We'll get you some sweet threats sometimes, but you can come and hang out with these guys and they're all very approachable. Yeah. And we'll just play us in Trivia. See what you got. Bring your books, your John Hodgman books. He's got a couple of books out that I'm sure he'd be happy to sign. Probably. We'll find out one way or the other. Again, if you have an email about our Trivia event that way. Yes, we have the other event to the non sanctioned event, though. Oh, yeah, go ahead. The night before Trivia, tuesday, October 12, our buddies, the Henry Clay people are in town. Yeah, it's drunken uni, right? By chance, they are in town doing a headlighting show this time, which is awesome, at the Drunken Unicorn on Ponts de Leon Avenue. And I imagine it will be sort of a late show. It's one of those kind of clubs. But you're going to be there, right? Oh, yeah. Josh and Yummy will be there and Emily and I will be there. And Jerry, we're going to make you come even if you don't want to. And I think hopefully Joe is going to be in. Town and go with this. Yeah, we'll see the day before. And we asked John if he would be there, too, so we'll see. And, yeah, if you're not familiar with the Henry Clay people, they had a song on Gossip Girls. You know that? Oh, really? Yeah, for them. I can't remember what it's called, but it's big time. Like a little coin. Yeah, I'm sure. Probably not. I'm sure their label is just like, yeah, here's some tires for your road trip. So that is a non sanctioned, non official event, but we want to encourage people to come out to that show, hang out with us, hang out with the band. Give Jordan, the keyboard player, some grief for having Lyme disease. Yeah, he picked it up and checked out. Yeah, it would be a good time. We want to pack it out for those guys. It won't be hard. Junkie unicorn holds, like, 50 people. Yes, you're right. So, again, Chuck said that was a non sanctioned event. I guess marketing was all over him for that one. Now you just COA. COA, buddy. Thanks, man. If you want to send us an email about our Atlanta event, you got any questions, anything like that, you can post it on Facebook. Facebook. Comstep. You should knowow. You could ask me on Twitter. Ask us. We tweet at syskpodcast. And you can also email us at stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. Want more housestathefworks? Check out our blog on thehousedofworks.com homepage. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you?" | ||
874f80a4-3b0e-11eb-9699-3f3e433180ce | Kidney Stones: No! Please, NO! | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/kidney-stones-no-please-no | Kidney stones are widely considered the most painful affliction a person can endure, even worse than labor. And in rare cases they can even kill. Learn all about how these things you really, really don’t want form and pass in this faint-inducing episode. | Kidney stones are widely considered the most painful affliction a person can endure, even worse than labor. And in rare cases they can even kill. Learn all about how these things you really, really don’t want form and pass in this faint-inducing episode. | Thu, 16 Dec 2021 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=16, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=350, tm_isdst=0) | 45667138 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody. We are super excited to return to the sketchfest stage and do a live show again. We missed it so, so much last year, and we can't wait to get back to San Francisco. Yeah, it's our first live live show in two years, Chuck, and we're going to be there at the Sydney Goldstein Theater in beautiful San Francisco, California, at 730 on Friday, January 21. It's a straight up stuff you should know. Live show. And it's going to be off the chain. That's right. You should show up to see if we've forgotten how to do this, to see us skate around on stage nervously sure. Doubting ourselves, and eventually bringing the funnies. Yeah, hopefully. Where do they go? They go to SF, as in San Francisco. Sfscatchbest.com. Click on the schedule and tickets link. There are tons and tons and tons of great shows. It's the best comedy festival in the country, in my opinion, over the whole month of January. So go check us out and go check out everybody else as well. Yes. It's also a full vaccination show, so you've got to show proof of vaccination and wear some masks. Don't be naughty. Don't be naughty. Be nice. So we'll see you guys on Friday, January 21, in San Francisco, California. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there. And this is stuff you should know. I should say stuff you should know. Good one. Thank you. That was off the cuff. Chuckers, you ever had a kidney stone? No, but you know what? No, I haven't. I have not. How about you? I haven't. I think I'll probably get one one day. Just notice on the cards for you. Yeah. I mean, I don't have, like, a bad kidney issues, but when you get to be my age, certain organs start saying, hi, pay attention to me a little bit. Oh, yeah. And the kidney is one of those. But for sure I'm not dying or anything. No, I know that. It's more just like if you got a hanky kidney, you could conceivably get a kidney stone, for sure. That is certainly true. So I, my friend, wish that you never, ever get a kidney stone. I wish the same for Jerry. I wish the same for every person you know and like and love and same for me. That's right. But wishes and dreams do not bear any weight here, my friend, because I think you got about a 10% chance, if you're a living human, of having a kidney stone. And besides being super painful, they can kill you. About 160 people a year die from kidney stones or complications that arise. Yes. What a way to go, man. From kidney stones. You're probably not going to die from your kidneys failing because that would require both kidneys being blocked simultaneously so badly that they just shut down on you. That's probably not going to happen. But there's a lot of procedures that you would probably go through to treat a terrible kidney stone that could kill you. An infection could kill you. There's all sorts of ways it could bring about your death and it would not be very pleasant. I agree with you. Yeah. There's different kinds. We're kind of going to go through them here, but they're generally classified in a couple of ways where they are and what kind they are, like how they were formed. There are all kinds of fancy schmancy doctor names for kidney stones renal, Calculi, Euro lithiasis. But they're going to call them kidney stones if it's a doctor that has an interest in being your friend. Right. So where they are is really important because they need to know where they are so they can help you figure out how to deal with these in the most particular way. And there's only like a certain number of places that a kidney stone is going to be. And Chuck, I looked high and low and could not find a definitive answer. I saw some places that seem to say all kidney stones or all stones start in the kidneys, but I also saw like, little snippets here there that made it seem like there's other places stones can form. It's a shoulder blade. Right. But regardless, that's my point. Regardless of where they form, they're going to form only in your urinary tract, which includes your kidneys, your ureters, which are the tubes that take your p from your kidneys down to your bladder, the bladder itself, and then the urethra, narrow or otherwise, which is where the p comes out. Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and say the ureters, they should have built those a little wider. Agreed. That stopped a lot of heartache. Yeah. Because one of the big problems that you're going to have if you get a kidney stones, your readers are like 2 mm in diameter and they're not very flexible. So when you're passing a hardened stone, a crystallized stone of mineral through that that's larger than 2 mm, it is going to cause some problems. Yeah. I'm sure that they didn't seem like they needed to be bigger at the time when man and woman was created. Right. Because all that's going through there is pee. But the lack of foresight on those stones is a big problem. Yeah. Tisk Yahweh that's right. So you've got stones in the kidney. Nephrolets lith means stone. You've got your reader oliths, which are in your readers, and again, that's a really terrible place for them to be. And then you got sister lists, which are in the bladder and I guess by proxy, the urethra too. Right, that's right. The ones in the upper track, those are going to be a little more problematic, generally a little more severe. If you're going to get complications and long term problems, they're generally going to be because of those upper urinary tract stones. But they're all I mean, none of them the only ones that aren't a big deal are the ones that are so tiny that you just and that's why I said that, you know, of like people probably thought I was joking, but you can urinate out kidney stones and not even know you ever had one if they're small enough. Yeah, just pee yourself right now. There's a chance you just peed out a little tiny stone of some sort, but for the whole baby, right. When you do know that you have a kidney stone, though, you really know it. And we'll talk about the process of passing a kidney stone later. But the other way to define a kidney stone, and usually they're going to be defined by location, and then also in this other way by composition, because kidney stones can be made up of a lot of different things. But the upshot of them, Chuck, is that if you have too much of something in your P or too little p or imbalanced P, PH wise, things can solidify that should be liquid. They can precipitate out a solution. And when that happens, it can start basically a snowball effect, where more and more of that stuff is attracted, and that's where your stones formed. Yeah, I mean, it's just mineral things that can't be dissolved, basically. And they like to have company. They like to get together with their other nondisolt friends and party together and hang out together. And pretty soon, if you get a big enough party, you're going to be in some kind of pain. Yeah, you're going to have a pain party for you. But I guess we should talk a little bit. This is sort of about as wonky as we're going to get in this next section, which is the makeup of the stones. And most of them are made up about 60% to 80% of our calcium oxalate. And this is basically too much calcium or oxalate in your urinary system. And there are a number of things that can cause this, but they're generally all metabolic problems. Although I think there is a little genetics involved with the calcium oxalate as well. Yeah, that seems to be my take on it, too, that genetics have a large role in whether you're predisposed to having kidney stones or not. Diet and lifestyle can definitely affect it, but it's like if you have hyperparathyroidism and you're absorbing calcium, too much calcium from your bones, that probably doesn't have much to do with your diet. And that's one way that you can have too much calcium. Your renal system might not absorb enough calcium into waste, and so there's more of it hanging around there than there should be. There's a few ways that it can happen, but the upshot of it, either you have too much calcium or too much oxalate, and they combine together to form what'd you say like 60% to 80% of kidney stones. Yes, that's 60 to 80. And I think the actually, I don't have a percentage for strewvite stones. These are also called infection stones, and if you get a lot of UTIs, you might be more prone to stubby stones. Sometimes there's just some kinds of bacteria, and if you match that up with the right metabolic condition that's going wrong, they'll get together and cause strewbite stones. Yeah. The structure stones seem to rely a lot on whether your urine is out of balance, phy specifically, that it's highly alkaline, so it's above seven as far as PH goes. And that, combined with certain kinds of bacterial infections, can create that. It looks like staghorn seems to be the most common type, which you do not want a tiny mineral that fits the bill of staghorn flowing through your urine. Yeah, not good at all. Then you have about 10% or less are formed by uric acid. And this is sort of if you have problems with uric acid or gout, you're probably going to have kidney suns at some point. The gout diet, it's sort of the same triggers. They're high in what's called purines, shellfish, organ, meats, any kind of meat, really. Beer, for sure. Those are all on the list of things that you don't want if you're trying to keep your uric acid in check. Yeah. Because the uric acid is a metabolite of pure and it crystallizes very easily. It can precipitate easily out of the pea if there's too much of it. So, yeah, that can be a bad jam, for sure. There's also cysteine stones. Cysteine is an amino acid. It's used throughout the body for a number of different ways, but unfortunately, it's the least soluble amino acid, so that means that it can precipitate out of p fairly easily, too. Luckily, those are kind of rare. You actually have probably a congenital disorder that causes cysteine stones, but unfortunately, that means you have a congenital disorder that causes stones, which means it's probably a chronic condition. Right. And I think that's the same for the rare xanthine stones. Right, yeah. And xanthene is another pure. It's found in caffeine, tea and colas. And it occurred to me, chocolate, I was researching this. Is that what purina is trying to get across with their brand name? That their food is chock full of purines? Maybe. I always kind of thought it was probably just to play on the word pure. It never occurred to me like that. I wonder, maybe they're like, why can't it be both Josh and Chuck? And then there's, of course, the infinity stones, which are a real problem for about half the population. Yeah. And one other thing also. That one almost suck. I'm glad I stopped and took a double take. Was that written down? I can't see your notes. That was no notes. Wow. That was good then, man. I think you just won the World Cup. For 2021 in the off the cuff stuff you should know joke. Okay. Battle. I'll take it. One other thing about uric acid stones is that that is kind of the opposite of strubite stones where your pee is too acidic. Like it'll burn right through metal if you pee on a car. Right. Should we take a break? Yeah, we should take a break. I need to regroup after that huge win by you. Just a minute. All right? We'll be right back. And I'll say what I'm going to say after this. I didn't think you watched those Marvel movies. I didn't know if you get that joke. Well, I mean, I'm conscious. Like, I can form thoughts and observe outside stimuli. So that means, yes, I'm familiar and aware with the Marvel Cinematic Universe and what goes on in it. See, I would think if you didn't see the movies, you have no idea what an Infinity Stone is. No. Well, let me see. I guess I saw the one that you're specifically referring to where half of everybody just dissolves. I saw that one should say spoiler alert. Oh, yeah. If you don't know that by now, come on. Those are the biggest movies in the world. Thank you for defending me like that. No apologies necessary. No accountability here, but you'll have to watch the second one to find out what happens after that. How about that? Well, they come back. I haven't seen that one, but I'm just presuming there's no way to really watch part one. That part two. Yeah, that's pretty funny. Yeah. I did not see the second one yet. I guess if you didn't like it much, you'd be like, why am I going to spend another 2 hours and 40 minutes? But the thing is, I did like it. I mean, I was entertained and amused. I guess I just knew that at the very least, everybody who was anybody was going to come back. Somehow I didn't know how, but I guess I didn't really care how. I want to strap you in a chair like Clockwork Orange Clockwork or Style make you watch the Beatles documentary. No. All right, so back to regular kidney stones, right? Yes. So we kind of talked about how they form, but it's worth just kind of saying one more time, it's basically you've got stuff in your minerals that don't dissolve very easily, or there's too many of them or there's not enough pea, and they just go and they crystallize. And that's how it starts. And that kicks off this process where usually they form initially in your kidney, but they can form anywhere. But they'll hang on to a little node in your kidney and start to nucleate there kind of like a snowflake. It helps us with this one. And he's like, it's like a snowflake, basically growing from, like, a little dust motor when it's cold enough. Yeah, and like you said, they don't always have to form that way. Sometimes they can just form free floating in your urine, just moving about the party. But they do better for sure when they're attached initially to something, when one little tiny particle hangs onto something. Like, I know Ed mentioned the renal papa, those little projections in the kidneys papa, papilla. That's a good place for them to get together. They may grow there for a little while. They may detach and then float away, but they also might attract friends at these attachment points, and that's when the problem starts. They're eventually going to detach, but they just like to congregate in the cool area of the party. Yeah. And see, what you just said made me think, like, you could probably form a stone anywhere in your urinary tract, that whole system, as long as there's a place for it to kind of clamp onto. Or it's bad enough that they're just forming right in the middle of your urine, so it doesn't necessarily have to just be your kidneys. Yeah. And they look like I think Ed had the perfect description here. It looks like a little granola, chunk granula. Yeah. Some of them look a little more mean and menacing than others. Some are even, like, smooth where you're like, Jeez, I enjoy passing these. They make a very satisfying plot sound when they come out of the urethra. But again, there's, like, staghorns. There's the widowmaker. There's the Judas priest. They have terrible names, but they really kind of drive home how bad these things hurt. Is it really the Judas Priest? No. Okay. You never know. Doctors have a sense of humor with two of them. Wouldn't that be great, though? So I would think it would be just like it looks like the double horn fist. I was thinking it was going to look like that metal eagle. Oh, that, too. The screaming eagle. Living after midnight. The metal fist sounds worse, though, for sure. Well, this is the case with kidney stones, anything. And that's why those staghorns are so bad. If it's the spikier, you don't have to be a doctor to tell someone that the spikier something is, the more painful it's going to be. Right. They're describing your kidney stone to you, and you're like, I didn't realize your doctor, they say, oh, I'm not a doctor, I just stayed at a holiday. And expressed by yeah. Anybody could tell you that the pain that you're going to feel like when you get diagnosed with a kidney stone, you're probably going to go into the doctor after feeling sort of lower groin pain for a while, maybe in your lower back or side of your abdomen, and you might be going, man, it's like, I didn't pull my back. What's going on? And you may live with it for a little while, just thinking it might be a pulled muscle or anything like that, or a strained groin, even. And then at some point, hopefully, someone in your life is going to say, you may want to go like, that may be a kidney stone. Get that checked out. Yeah, you may want to get that checked out. One of the reasons I didn't understand this, but it makes total sense. One of the reasons why it feels so much worse than just your ureter or your kidney saying is that there's a bunch of really important nerves that pass right through the kidney, right through that notch that gives the kidney its characteristic shape. You get the celiac plexus plexus screwed up right out of the gate. The inner mesenteric plexus. Nice. The lumbar splunk. I like the splancnick. Or the splanknick. Yeah, I like it, too. I like the celiac plexus, though. It's got a pleasant, pleasant look to it. Like cellar door. Yeah, you love seller door. It wasn't just me. That's a Tolkien reference. I think he said it was the I know, but you mentioned a lot of in the show, is what I mean. I just think it's such a great idea that somebody was like, I definitively say this is the most beautiful word in the English language, and it just happened to be Tolkien. So there's an extra little twist at the end there. And it was used in Donny Darko, so it's a pretty great little thing. I have my favorite word, though. It's not s door. It's moist. Pus. No, it's the Beatles, and it's used in the Peter Jackson documentary, the Beatles. Is it really that good? That's amazing. I'll say this, you would hate it, but if you're a casual Beatles fan, it's probably not even for you, right. Or even if you're like. No, I like the beetles. It's probably not even for you because it's 8 hours of just sitting in there, fly on the wall style. So you really got to be into like did you see that look that George just gave Paul when he said that one thing? It's that kind of level of wonkiness. Yeah. I would not like that at all. I have a music documentary that you mean I watched the other day that's really good. It's on Sparks. Oh, yeah, sure. I've seen that. You saw it? I had never heard of Sparks. I didn't know really sparks existed. I've been disappointed in myself ever since that. I didn't realize they were a thing. But that is a great documentary. One of the things I like about them is not just their music, but just like how naturally and genuinely positive they are without trying to be positive, and also actually being kind of fiendish in their sense of humor. But they're still overall, like, very positive. It's pretty cool. Pretty. And I'll even go ahead and recommend, even though I haven't seen it, it's on the list this week. I just got to get through the Beatles thing is, the Todd Haynes Velvet Underground documentary, I hear is just like, ridiculously good, which I can't wait for because Todd Haines is the best. I'm going to check that out. So that was Documentary Corner. I got my movie crush fixed. We need to take our berets off and drop our cigarette holders and get back to it. I think we were talking about those three nerves, and they can cause nausea and vomiting because those three nerves run right through what's called the renal Hillum. And that's that little if you look at a kidney or even a kidney bean or kidney shaped swimming pool, you can imagine what it might look like. There's a little notch inside that curve, and all three of those nerves run right in there. So if your kidney is inflamed or spasming or something, it's going to be tweaking those things like piano strings. Yeah. And spasming is right. You just said the magic word because your kidney is well aware that it has something it shouldn't have in it, and it actually has a way to take care of that, and that is by spasming it out, trying to push it out. The kidney does that, and so do your ureters, and your urine actually clamp down around it and try to squeeze it out through spasms. So kidney pain is typically associated with basically the worst pain you could ever experience. I think people have given birth before who did it without any kind of drugs. Say no. A kidney stone is actually worse than that. And what's great is everybody can share in the fun of a kidney stone. Did you see what Ed's friend called it? Yeah, Ed has a friend who had kidney stones and said it was like giving birth to a knife. Right. That kind of says it all. It really does. The worst of it, from what I've seen. I found a Urology website, and it basically says, the two worst by far is when it's in the kidney and then when it's in your reader. And apparently when it's in the kidney, it's even worse. That's the worst of all. But the upshot of it is, in addition to feeling nauseated for your back and your abdomen to hurt, you're actually going to be experiencing pain in your kidney and in your reader as they're pushing this thing out. And it comes in waves of pain called renal colic, and they will give you narcotics to take care of it. It's that bad? Yeah. The best feel good drugs available are coming your way. Yeah. And they'll probably just barely make a dent. I don't know that that's true, but I'm really trying to drive home how painful kidney stones are. I wish one of us would have had it from experience. I'm actually glad we aren't speaking from experience. I wish that person was you. No, I'm glad we haven't had it. But hopefully over the next until we retire, I'll keep everyone up to date on whether or not to get kidney stones. Okay. All right. I think that's fair. Squatted land and kidney stones. Those are my two lifelong updates. What about your teeth? Don't forget your teeth. Well, everyone knows I got to get that tooth down again, man. I just had a deep cleaning on two of my teeth, and it was not pleasant, but my periodontist was great. Like, very nice and gentle and apologetic, and I think I'm better off as a result. I'm a better. Was that the routing and scaling thing? I believe so. The gum treatment? Sort of, yeah. And there wasn't like an incision she didn't cut. They want me to do that again. Yeah. It's not fun at all, but now that I'm done, it's done. I was about to say, as if it was any better, we should get back to kidney stone. But to get these things treated, there are quite a few options. Thankfully, it depends on where it is. Depends on how big it is. If it's one of those your eaters stones, they're probably going to say, pass it. It might even take a few weeks. But drink tons of water and see if you can pee that thing out. Yeah. Once it gets out of the kidney. Yeah. And I think if it's 5 mm or smaller, you got about a 90% chance of passing that thing through urine, and it goes down to 50% between 5. If you can eat and you can drink and you don't have a fever, they're probably going to send you home with some pain pills and some FlowMax to relax your urethral sphincter so you can pee easier. And you're going to pee all the time. And as it moves down into, like, your bladder, it's going to increase the pressure there because of the inflammation in your bladder. So you're going to have to feel like you have to pee all the time, even though you don't necessarily. But they're going to send you home and be like, Best wishes, best of luck, keep us posted. Let us know if you spike a fever, something like that. Right. You're also going to get all kinds of tests, blood test, urine test, things like that, just to see, like, you may have more than 1 st, the identification of the stone. There could be a larger problem if we're talking about these metabolic imbalances, like if you may have chronic kidney stones or at least another one in the future, they want to kind of get you on the right track. So you're going to do a lot of tests as well. Yeah. And one of Yummy's friends used to get them a lot, and I think I didn't have a chance to ask him, but I think he might have outgrown them, I hope, God willing. But I'm pretty sure he had to pee into, like, a mesh cup to catch the stone. And I realize now not because he was a weirdo, it was because they wanted to analyze the stone, because again, you can tell a lot about what is driving you to produce kidney stones if you can just look at it, because you can see what it's made of. Well, you can see what it's made of, and that'll tell you a lot. I think I'd want to keep mine. Well, that's the other thing, too. You got a pretty nice trophy. You could get a grill made with it. That's what I need on my fake front teeth. Couple of kidney stones, couple of staghorns just sticking out, slicing into the back of your top lip. If they are larger, you're going to need some more, what Ed called direct intervention. And that's pretty much says it all. They're going to look at you with X rays. They might use an ultrasound. They're going to find out exactly where that puppy is. They're going to see if it's moving along or if it's kind of stuck in place, and then they're going to go to work. It's a little more expensive. But I would say just by reading this, if it's an option and if you can afford it, I would go to the lathot. Such a hard word to say, lathatripsy method. Sure. Yeah. Because it's non invasive. It's all ultrasound. Like, they use ultrasound, maybe X rays to find it, and then they use ultrasound to break it up. And Chucked produced a sentence that seems innocuous until you realize that if you read it like a monster truck ad announcer it's really boss. Which one is it? Focus. Ultrasound shock waves are directed at the stone. Question answer the surrounding tissue. Oh, yeah, that's true. You should be a doctor. That'd be fun. Oh, dude, everything would be called the Judas Priest whatever, right? Be like, this is a Judas Priest, baby. Yeah, it's a Judas Priest fracture. We can fix that, no problem. If it's larger even than that, like too large. And I guess this is a Judas Priest album. Too large for LitHop tripc. Or if they can't find it, maybe if it's like, exactly where it is. Or maybe you don't have it available to you because of money or wherever you live. You can go to a uteroscopy and that is a little bit more invasive. But not surgery yet. That's when they're going to send a scope up through the urethra probably not a lot of fun, into the bladder, into the ureter. And then they capture it and calls it like a little basket and they pull it out. And then sometimes it is even bigger. They can use a laser to break it up and then pull it out. Right. But that's the key, ureteroscopy, is that they actually can remove the stones, whereas I think with Lithocripacy man, that's a hard word. It is. That they actually go in there and break it up. And the complication could be is it's kind of like that stupid Russian satellite missile test that they just did? Remember where. They created way more space junk than there used to be. You're doing the same thing with Lithotripsy, where you're breaking up these stones. And so one of the complications can be, like, now you got a bunch of kidney stones, and, yeah, they're smaller, but not all of them are so small that you won't notice them or that they won't necessarily cause an infection or something like that. Right. Or in the case of the Guinness record holder. Oh, my God. The man in India in 2004, this thing was, and I looked up different kinds of sports balls, and the closest I could find was it was about the size of a shot put. What? Oh, my goodness. Five inches in diameter. I mean, it is. I never thought about it. I even made that with my hands. I know. And I'm thinking, it's got to be circumference. It's got to be no, it's diameter, because I went and looked, too. So for those people who've never seen a shopping don't know what five inches is, that's like, 13 CM in diameter. Yeah, it's bigger than a softball. If you don't know what a softball is, it's about a regular grapefruitish size. Yeah, I would say so. Yeah. So, obviously, that was a surgical removal, which is sort of the last line of defense, is to get that surgery. And it's called this one's mine percutaneous Nephro Lithotomy. Nicely done. And that they make a little notch, a little incision in the lower back, and they scope it out, too, so it's not some huge, huge thing, but there's a thin, scope ended kidney. Break it up again, remove the pieces. And we should mention, too, that some of these I think the uteroscopy is when they uteroute. No, there's an extra vowel in there. It's not just me. uteroscopy. Yeah. uteroscopy. Oh, my God. Adding an extra vowel every time eventually pays off. Ureteroscopy. That is the one that you still need, the anesthetic. And you might eventually need a stent, which, again, goes back to my thing that the ureter should be bigger. Yeah. If they're putting in stents, that means that's the size that it should have been to begin with. Absolutely. Then anything could just pass through even a five inch diameter kidney stone from India. Should we take a break? I think we should take our second break and come back and talk about what I think everybody wants to know is, how do you make this never, ever happen to you? Okay, Chuck, so it's actually pretty simple. Unless you have some sort of congenital disorder that is producing chronic kidney stones in you, which is extremely sad, and I feel very badly for you, there's some really easy ways you can keep from probably ever getting a kidney stone in your entire life. Yeah. I know you think drinking water is a scam, but me? Yeah, I remember you went on a tirade years ago about how that whole drinking eight glasses of water a day is passed. No. So that is drinking eight glasses of water. The number was made up. I think drinking water is good, but the number of glasses is just totally made up. Well, this is two liters per day. Yeah. So that's a number. It is, but there was a study that backed it up. Okay. There's a study that said if you drink a couple of liters of water a day, it resulted in 149 fewer stones per 1000 people. Right. And it just makes sense to keep water flowing through your kidneys and flowing through your system and keeping everything nice and saturated that it would help prevent the build up of those little particles, those minerals. Right. Because you've got enough pea that those things, even the toughest solubles, are going to stay in solution rather than precipitate out. But also one thing that's easily overlooked is when you drink a lot of water, water is pretty much across the board a neutral substance. So it actually helps maintain the PH balance in your body. And as we've seen, there's at least two different kinds of kidney stones you can get depending on whether your urine is too acidic or too alkaline. And drinking a lot more water can make your urine closer to neutral, which is a big deal too. Plus it just mechanically helps flush away stuff before they get a chance to really aggregate. Yeah, you can cut down on animal proteins, you can cut down on your salt, you can cut down on your oxalate. You won't find oxalate in a lot of stuff, but there's a lot of oxalate and spinach. Yeah, and apparently chocolate and rhubarb. But spinach, you know, how much spinach are you really eating? I didn't see how much it would take to really start to get into the danger zone with kidney stones, but I mean, I like spinach, but I don't know much about it. It's more one of those things. It's like, man, you just can't win. No matter how good you're trying to be, how healthy you're trying to be, it's going to get you. Yahweh is going to get you one way or another. That's what the shirt says. The calcium. You might think, well, if it's a calcium build up, then have less calcium. But that's a bit of a thing too, because oxalate is there. And if you're low on calcium, then it's going to increase excretion of oxalate. So just keep your calcium intake normal. Yeah, just don't overdo anything, but also just don't do anything. Just why they're drinking water all day long and you might be okay. That's right. That's all called primary prevention. Things you can do on the front end. If you have chronic kidney problems and kidney stones, then secondary prevention, that's when that's going to come into play. And that basically means you're going to be on medication and you're going to be checking your PH and your urine and stuff like that a lot, yeah. And usually if you have eight kidney stones, your first one ever, they're probably not going to do a whole lot of investigative work. But if you start to show symptoms that you have chronic kidney stones, then they're going to want to figure out what it is in your body, what it is in your diet, your lifestyle, your metabolism, whether it's a congenital disorder. They're going to really kind of try to get to the bottom of it so that they can adjust you either by meds or by lifestyle adjustments to make it less likely that you're going to produce any more stones. All right, should we talk about it now? Is it time? Sure. How we pass these things? No, you don't want to. What are we talking about? How we pass the stones. How we pass them? I thought you said, Are we passed it? I was like, we're still in the thick of it, as far as I could tell. So when the stones are forming, you're not going to feel much pain. You're not going to even know what's going on. I don't care how in tune you are with your body. You're not going to feel those little minerals getting together and having a party down there. Now, when it detaches from the wall of the kidney or wherever it's meeting up, that is when you're going to start to feel the pain. You mentioned fever and chills. That could certainly happen. And those spasms, I did mention that it might feel like a pulled muscle, and the spasms are pretty chronic, like one to four spasms an hour of them trying to shake that thing loose. And I have a feeling that's about all the kidney can manage because it's probably doing about all I can wasted. And then once this kidney stones have moved on from there, that's kind of the worst part. Yeah, well, that's comparatively speaking, from what I can tell, it's the worst part. It still gets pretty bad. And by the way, big shout out to Urology of Greater Atlanta for spelling this out for us, but they say that once you hit stage two, it's reached your ureters and yes, you'll probably be like, wow, that kidney pain was pretty bad. This is not that bad compared to it, but if the average person just went into ureter paint pain, they would probably beg for you to lay on them with a pillow on their face. Yeah, that's an eight or nine when they ask you that awesome question. Yes. And they're like, well, I don't understand the number you just said. Can you make the face on this chart? I always just say nine. That's my default. I thought you had a high pain threshold. I do have a high threshold for pain. I just like to shock the doctors. Shock the doctor, that's right. Like I said before, the ureter is not flexible. It's a very narrow opening, and it itself has that kind of mechanism where it clamps onto the stone and tries to pulsate the muscles above it so that it pushes it down and it occurs in spasms and waves as well. Finally, when this thing pops out into your bladder, that's when you might just not feel any more pain, depending on the size of the stone. And if you don't have trouble passing urine, you're probably going to be able to pass this thing, provided that it's smaller than the opening in your urethra without any further problems. The problem is, if you do have problems passing p, that bladder can develop into a bladder or that stone can develop into a bladder stone where it just sits there. It doesn't get passed out of there very easily, and it can get worse there. And then you can have a whole other advent of pain. Yeah. Is that when it's stuck in the urethra or just no, it can stay in your bladder. It can also get stuck in your urethra, too, because your bladder, from what I can tell, is definitely the biggest part of your whole urinary tract. Yes, it's stuck in your urethra. You're close friends, you're almost there, and you have to do what sports teams talk about, which is trust the process. And that means every five or ten minutes you got to go in there and give it another give it the old college try, and it'll come out. Apparently, Urology of Greater Atlanta says that you need to push and you need to push hard to get it to shoot out and keep pushing until the stone shoots out into the bowl of your toilet. Or I guess if you go to a different neurologist into your little plastic mesh thing that you're getting into that you could wear as a hat later on, I can't imagine the relief one might feel when that thing finally pops into that toilet bowl. I can't either. There's surely tears involved. Yes. I mean, tears of joy. All kinds of tears. Tears of triumph. I would have a ceremony. I would go to a party. Yes. What would you do to the stone then, if you wouldn't get it made into a grill? I just put it in a little formaldehyde jar and wear it around my neck on a chain. Okay. I like that one too. I mean, the grill is a little gaudy. I think a necklace is more appropriate. Okay. Do you want to talk about history? Yeah, this is always fun. Obviously, there's been kidney stones since the beginning of time. That's why I always love talking about old timey medicine, is because the confusion they all must have felt with everything that happened to them, including something like this. Well, yeah, I mean, think about it. If you're pre scientific, you would feel like you were being punished for going through this if you had no idea what was going on and there were surely countless untold numbers of human beings who experienced kidney stones before we had any idea what they were. But the fact that you were standing there trying to pee this thing out, whether this was 150,000 years ago or 1000 years ago, some people would pass them and there would be some curious types around who would say, let me see that thing. What is that? Where did that come from? And it started to get us to investigate and think about it, how to deal with these things. It's amazing. I think they found a mummy that clearly had kidney stones dated to, what, 4800 BCE? Yeah, not bad. And then there's good old Alice Cornelius Celsus, who wrote a very great detailed encyclopedia of surgical techniques of the time, which was around 50 Ce. And this is like legit. He really goes into pretty good detail about surgical removal incisions in the perennium and locating the stone with his fingers and holding it there with a tool and cutting it out and removing it. So it's one of the first I say it worked. I think there was about a 24% mortality rate, but I would say one of the first semi successful surgical procedures that people did right. It was called lithotomy. Ed makes a really good point that I think it's easy to overlook that if this guy was writing this nearly 2000 years ago, and he was writing like, this is how you do this, and it seems like a pretty straightforward procedure, think about how much trial and error and terrible surgeries were performed to figure out how to perform surgery to remove kidney stones. He wasn't like, first try. Nailed it. Yeah, nailed it, right? And apparently up until the 19th century, the mortality rate for lithotomy was still around 25%. A quarter of people just died from that procedure. Which makes sense, because in case you didn't notice, the perennium is the area between your groin and your anus. And that's what they were cutting into to get to your bladder to remove the stone. Which is weird, because by that time, you would think you'd already gone through the worst of it. So it must have been bladder stone specifically that the surgery was for paging doctor Taint. So that means in Chuck that you already went through the worst of the pain, stage one. And stage two, it finally made it in the bladder, and now they're cutting in your perennium to get it out of there. So just wanted to make sure that if you haven't fainted from queasiness in this episode, we gave it one more chance. Okay. Yes, I can uncross my legs now. You got anything else? Nothing else. I don't have anything else either. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. This is a follow up. We got a lot of good feedback on the dentistry episode a Theory on the worms. My name is Tony and I'm a dental nurse from London, UK. First of all, I have to let you know what a big fan I am. In the podcast, I've learned countless things. It always manages to perk me up on even the most mundane days. Decided to write down on the listener mail because you were talking about the Babylonians describing a toothache as toothworms and wonder where the phrase came from. It's a complete guess. We'll likely never know for sure. But I do have a theory. When a tooth is broken or extensively decayed, the nerve can sometimes become exposed. And not only is it extremely painful for the person whose tooth it is, but the nerve looks like a little pink string or a worm. If you type into Google tooth nerve or expose tooth nerve, you'll find some images of what I mean, it's just a theory, but I hope it helps. Kind disregards from Tony in the UK. And I bet Tony is totally right. Yeah, man, that actually is a great guess. Like, I subscribe to Tony's hypothesis because that's what those yokels did back then. They just said, it looks like this. Let's call it that. But dude, imagine your tooth being so broken that the nerve is just sitting there dangling out. I can't imagine how bad that would hurt. Josh. For one of my three teeth, I bit into a chicken wing and my tooth broke in half. Oh, man. And your nerve was exposed. My nerve wasn't exposed. It actually didn't hurt at all. I paid for the rest of the football game, even nice it was at a Falcons game. Yeah. But I knew immediately, this is the second one, I was like, man, I can't tell you what the words I said, but here we go. And I just kept my mouth shut the rest of the game and didn't even tell my friends. Like, you literally kept your mouth shut to hold the tooth in place or something? Not hold it in place, but yeah, I would talk, but I would generally keep my mouth closed. Yeah. I can't not share this. I had a root canal like this past spring, and the dentist or the endodontist did such a good job getting the nerve out of that particular it came out in one piece and I was like, Can I see? And they held it in front of me and it really did look like a tiny little white worm. So I really think Tony might be onto something there. I think you're right. Tony. Tony with an I. Well, thanks a lot, Tony with an I. In jolly old England, I believe. Jolly old England. And if you want to get in touch with us, like Tony with and I did, 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 heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
02e293e2-3b0e-11eb-947e-7fd46bbfda84 | The Mystery of Damascus Steel | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-mystery-of-damascus-steel | Damascus steel and the recipe behind it remained a mystery for many years. But it turns out the key was a bygone ingredient. Listen in to this medieval mystery to learn all about it. | Damascus steel and the recipe behind it remained a mystery for many years. But it turns out the key was a bygone ingredient. Listen in to this medieval mystery to learn all about it. | Tue, 22 Jun 2021 12:06:19 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=22, tm_hour=12, tm_min=6, tm_sec=19, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=173, tm_isdst=0) | 35546673 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's the beautiful and illustrious Charles W Chuck Bryant right there. The equally awesome Jerry Drum. Roland, right here to my right. About to chow down on some stuff for lunch. You were just cussing her out before we hit record. What are you talking about? And this is stuff you should know. That's right. The Disordered edition. Yeah. This is a bit of a mess about Damascus Steel, which is my favorite American Gladiator. Oh, that's a good one, Chuck. Pretty good. Yeah, that was great. That's all I could think about. Was it off the cuff? Okay, it's off the cuff. And then I thought about it five minutes before we came in here. That counts. That's good. It wasn't a real character, right? This is a joke. No, but it sounds like it. Oh, it does. Okay. I wanted to make sure we're on the same page. I also wanted to take your joke and mash it into pieces. Sure. Good job. Thank you. So we're talking today about Domascus Steel, which I was perfectly aware of before this, but I didn't know at all by any stretch. And what it turns out that apparently a lot of people who write about domestic steel don't know is that there was a metallurgical mystery that developed over time that was only solved in the 90s yes, exactly. Thank you. That other people have tried and maybe somewhat contributed to. And now finally, thanks to the efforts of these metallurgists who really got involved and tried to figure this out, this industry has been solved. But it's possible that have they really not taken up this gauntlet and tried to figure out what was Damascus Steel? We might never have known. Because even if you rewind all the way back, 2000 years ago, when Damascus Steel was started in production, they had no idea what Damascus Steel was either. No. It was kind of an accidental find. If you look up Damascus Steel on a picture viewer on the Internet, you will probably say, oh, it's like those cool swords or knives or guns that have that cool, like wavy, watery etching on them. Like Game of Thrones. Even talks about Damascus steel. Right. Or if you're an interior designer and you're like, I've never seen a sort it's like the damask material that sometimes people use for window treatments. That pattern is the same. Yeah. And that's spelled D-A-M-A-S-K? Yes, but it is based on that. Yes, exactly. And it is gorgeous stuff. Like if you see if you're a knife collector or whatever and you collect like a new knife that says Damascus Steel or a gun that has a cool pattern, that is what we're going to refer to as, quote unquote, Damascus Steel. Right. It is not the original, it's not the OG Damascus Steel. It is something that people have learned to do these days to look like Damascus steel. And that itself, the technique they use, from what I saw, was actually based on a pretty ancient technique as well. But it's still not Damascus steel. No. And the reason why anybody would care about Damascus steel is not just the way it looked. Right. Which I think that if Damascus steel didn't have that very characteristic watery look to the steel, I don't think people would have taken up that quest to recreate it. Yeah. I think that's really part of its allure that drew the metal. Or just in at least. Well, yeah, we should go ahead and say the allure is a few fold. Well, I was about to super cool looking. Yeah. Can't deny it. I won't. But if it's super cool and like your sword breaks on some guy's suit of armor, he's not going to be like, that was a pretty cool story, I feel bad for you. Let's just call it even. No, you're dead meat. So it is super, super strong and super cool looking and very flexible for a metal. It's got all these cool properties kind of all wrapped up into one and it's like this super steel. Super steel. That's exactly what it was. And it was produced in the ancient world. We here in the modern world don't like to think of people in the ancient world having better steel than we have. Well, they didn't really. I mean, supposedly modern steel is better than even OG. Damascus steel, I think supposedly is the operative word. Yeah. But there was a period in time from at least I think the first mention in the west that we are aware of comes from the third or fourth century BCE where the Greeks, I think Alexander the Great is basically like, this stuff is awesome. Yeah. And so it was well known by that time, more than 2000 years ago, for being the steel you wanted to use if you were creating a weapon. Yeah. And let's go back in time a bit. If you're a sword maker a couple of thousand years ago, you've got your work cut out for you because you don't really know what you're doing yet. You don't know what kind of metal that you're getting. And if you get some iron, iron is going to have other properties in there, but you just kind of have what you have. Right. And the R amp D process, if you imagine how long it takes to forge a sword, then you go out there and swing it and it breaks you're like, all right, let me try again. Maybe let me try a different type of ore or a different type of iron. And swords are long and they're thin and it's just the very nature of making a broad sword is really difficult to make. It super strong and sharp and all the things that are not so heavy that you can't even carry it. Right. They were brilliant in one sense that they were figuring this stuff out on the fly, but they were also just sort of victims of whatever materials they had available. Right. So that's what makes Damascus steel so interesting to me is that it was a fluke of nature. Right. And it happened to be mined as we'll see, it was a fluke of nature. It happened to be mined in this one area in South India. And it just so happens that this particular iron ore that was being mined in that area made some of the finest steel the world's ever seen. Yeah. So they called it woots W-O-O-T-Z. Steel. And like you said, it was mine near Hyderabad, India into these 2.3 to 2.5 kilogram cakes or ingots about the size of a hockey puck, I saw. Yeah. So they would ship these things out and they were mining and they didn't know, like, hey, we've got this secret super metal that no one is going to believe what we're sending them. Right. They were just mining stuff and they sent a lot of this to Damascus in Syria and they made them into swords. And most people think that's probably where the name comes from, even though some people do say the root word damas in Arabic is watered. Oh, I didn't know that. So that could have been like one of the things. But my money is on the fact that they sent them to Damascus and that makes sense. Yeah. I mean, I guess it depends on how old the city of Damascus is, but I get the impression it's pretty old. It's not young, but watery steel makes a lot of sense too, for that particular type of steel. Maybe it was both. Either way, it was well known outside of the Middle East and West Asia and India as the go to steal. But at the time, like you were saying, they don't seem to have understood that what they had on their hands was just this incredibly high grade, just perfect steel for making weapons. I get the impression that the metal smith tended to take all the credit for it. Where in retrospect, you or I could have taken a lump of Woot steel and just hammered it with our elbows and it would have turned into like a world class sword. Yeah. Or at least something you could punch somebody with. Right. But the metal smiths over the years kind of circled the wagons and pretended like they had some great secret or technique and maybe even thought that they did. But really, as we'll see, the secret ingredients were all in the steel that was being mined from India. Yes, but also in the technique, which we'll get to as well. Right, but I think that was happenstance more than understood. I think so. Okay. Well, you know what they should have done to see if they had the good stuff, they should have dabbed their pinky at it, touched it to their tongue, rub their gums with it. Yeah. That's how you know you got the gun. That's true. All right, so where were we? We were in the Crusaders. Right. The Crusaders get a hold of these things, right. And they kind of did what they wanted to do. Yeah. We should do an episode on the Crusades. No. Okay, fair enough. I feel like we've talked about this before. Deja vu. So this is the beginning of the 11th century. They got these swords off the battlefield, and there's a lot of lore that surrounds this Damascus steel. Like, you could cut a silk scarf that was falling through the air. What about feather? Could you cut a feather? Cut that feather right in half. What about a hair? You could split that hair right into my friend long ways. Oh, I thought you just meant no, I'm talking Bugs Bunny style. Yeah, you could split that hair. Okay. But all this was lore. It was really good stuff nonetheless. But there are a lot of sort of ancient stories about the properties, like the magical properties of this theme. Right. I saw one thing, though. I don't think it has anything to do with magic, but I saw it from Metallurgy website. Somebody took a bunch of notes off, I guess some lecture, and I'm not entirely certain what the lecture was, but it was pretty intense. But they said that this would cost about the equivalent of a car today. One of these swords, one of these weapons. So they were highly prized. So you can imagine the Crusaders coming back to Europe and saying, hey, Smithy, make me something like this. Right. From what I understand what this came up with, because they were hamstrung by the iron that they had to work with, they came up with a different technique for creating a type of Damascus steel that isn't true Damascus steel, but became so widespread and basically all Europe had to offer, that it became what's known as a type of Damascus steel. Pattern welded Damascus steel. Right. And that is still strong, and it has that nice looking watery etching. Or whatever. Right. But it kept them from getting their heads cut off, probably. It was good enough. Yeah, I would say. But it's off market Damascus steel. It's the nights of the round Table of Damascus steel, you know what I mean? Sure. Because it wasn't that woots. You got to have that woot. Right. They didn't know that at the time. So because they were able to form that watery pattern from taking two different kinds of steel, that's what pattern welded Damascus steel is made from, use at least two different kinds, apparently, ultimately for the color contrast, because that creates that watery pattern, the two kinds of steel hammered into one another that creates the pattern in that type, which makes it not really true Damascus steel. If you have true Damascus steel. That pattern goes all the way through that Damascus steel blade. Oh, really? Yes, you can wear it down and wear it down until you make it through the other side, and that water patterns all the way through. See, that is pretty cool. Like, it's a part of the ore itself at that point. Absolutely. That is what differentiates true Damascus steel from anything else. That's right. And, boy, I can't wait to talk about that stuff at the end, how they figured this out. I know. I feel like we've been paying this out. Penalizingly. All right, well, we'll take a break here and we'll talk about some of the efforts over the years to try and figure out what the steel was right after this. Okay, Chuck, this is going so well, by the way, should we tell people that we've had some technical difficulties? Might as well. They're probably like, what is wrong with these? Yes. We're kind of giggly and we're not drunk, but Jerry didn't bring champagne today. The rare technical difficulties have caused us to have to redo some stuff. We're just not used to that. We're not usually everything runs like a Swiss watch around here. It's like a Swiss army knife with the core screw out going right up our butt. That's more what it's like. We got to say, though, it's not Jerry's fault. No. Okay. We would never blame Jerry for something like that. Somebody. It's like the Three Little Pigs. Somebody's been sleeping in our bed. You know, that's what I blame. Somebody got in our studio and touch some stuff. Yes. Well, they're going to be very surprised by the padlock that they encounter next time. Exactly. And you're like, and there's only one key, and I swallowed it and have to get it out with the Swiss army corkscrew. All right, so from the beginning, they started to try and recreate this stuff, and like I said, that was during the 11th century, and then it seems like it just continued on throughout the ages of people trying to recreate this. Yes. But at the same time, they were still able to keep making Damascus steel from India, the quote unquote Damascus steel up until depending on no, the real stuff. Yeah. Because they had this ingot. Yes. And I think India was still producing it up until, depending on who you ask, either the 18th century or the 19th century. Right, good point. And then all of a sudden, Damascus steel just stops and all you have is the pattern well, that you cannot find true Damascus steel anymore. And it was quite perplexing to a lot of people. It was. And they were making guns, gun barrels with the stuff. That's how long it continued. Yeah. And I think that's supposedly what supplanted Damascus steel in a lot of people's mind, because some people said they didn't even realize that there was a mystery to Damascus steel. They just thought it had been supplanted by advancing steel making, so you didn't need Damascus steel anymore. And another explanation I saw was that Damascus steel is actually terrible for rifling in the gun barrel because that watery pattern would actually hold on to the powder residue, and your gun would be likely to backfire. But it was actually very useful in that you could make a gun barrel, which is long and narrow right from this Damascus steel, because that's the special kind of steel that stays strong even when you're elongating it. Right. And let's be honest, the people wielding those guns were like, this is pretty boss. It is. But that's cool. I also think if I'm on the battlefield, I want the guy who only cares about the function of his gun, not the guy who's admiring what his gun looks like. You know what I mean? Like, when you're walking through the old gun market, you want the guy that's like, she's ugly, but she shoots straight. That's right, yes. The guy from Jaws. Is that Quint? Yeah. So this one guy, there was a Russian meddler just named P anasov, and he thought that he had it all figured out. He called it boulot. And he even said, in no uncertain terms, our warriors will soon be armed with boulette blades. Our agricultural laborers will till the soil with boulette plow shares. Boulette will supersede all steel. And it didn't work. He wasn't able to recreate it. No. And he actually was part of this initial wave of scientists. I think his metallurgy was really developing because we said before, the ancients had it was all just intuition and technique, and they knew what they were doing, but they also couldn't be like, oh, it's because of this that's happening on a microscopic level. Right. Of course, they didn't have microscopes and no chemistry. You can thank Anton Van Leeuwenhoek for that. That's right. But as metallurgy started to develop, as science itself started to develop as a field, that was a subdiscipline that really kind of came around. And one of the things they tried to figure out was, what was the deal with Damascus steel? It was one of the first things they really applied their mind to. And Michael Faraday, actually, who is the guy who crosses over from this episode to the other one today? He was the son of a blacksmith, very famous scientist, the father of electricity. He tried his hand at figuring out what Damascus steel was and what everybody kind of had a suspicion was that the steel had more carbon than your average steel, but there had to be some secret ingredient. And so it kind of became trendy in the first half of the 19th century among metallurgists scientists in general to figure out what that secret third ingredient was. Yeah. And there were a lot of attempts. I think Faraday thought it might have been silica and aluminum or aluminum to him in the 1820s, jean Robert Brent at the Paris Mint did a six week study in the trial, and I think he did, like, 300 experiments. He was trying to reproduce this woots unsuccessfully. I think he tried platinum, gold, silver, copper, tin, zinc, lead, bismuth, manganese. It was close. There uranium, arsenic, and boron. And then that Russian even tried diamond. Yes. Let me throw some diamond in there and see what that does. Why not? At this point, I think somebody melted down a kitchen sink, and the whole time they were still hearing about this lore. I think by this point, they knew if it came out like these stories that came out of the Middle Ages certainly were not true. But there were stories about cooling it in dragon's blood. Oh, yeah. I love these about quenching it in dragon's blood. Like when you cool it down or red medicine or green medicine is what they called it. There was also one I saw where you're supposed to quench it in the urine of a goat that's been fed nothing but ferns for three days. Is that real? It's real. I mean, it's not real, obviously, but no, but I can't tell if you're making that up. No, I wish I were. That clever. That was pretty good. That sounded like a you joke. Thanks. Oh, a you joke. No. Okay. That's cheap. Right? Let me see. It had to have been heated until it glowed like the rising sun in the desert and then cooled to royal purple and plunged into the body of a muscular slave to transfer the strength of that person into the sword. So obviously, in the 1800s, they know all of this is hogwash. Right. But over the thousands of years that domestic steel had been produced, these are the lower that kind of developed around it. Right. Yeah. They wanted to keep this stuff a secret. That's one of the reasons. Aside from running out of that original woots. Right. Another factor was the fact that they didn't spread this around. If you knew something like this, you wanted to keep it in the family, I think. Well, that's what a lot of people thought. The whole world is just confused about Damascus deal and will be and was until this episode comes out where we finally explained the deal. But there were different camps running around. Like we said, some people were aware that Damascus steel just wasn't around anymore and that something had happened. Other people just thought it was supplanted by increasingly better technology. Right. So what other people thought, and the most interesting idea to me was that the smith who created these incredible blades, like you said, kept it in the family, and then just some generation failed to tell the next generation the secret was lost forever. Right. And that is really, like, up the Damascus steel alley that is shrouded in mystery and secrecy and magic and dragon's blood and furnitin goats that pee all over the place. It's really interesting. But no one knew exactly what was going on. They just knew that nobody was making true cast domestic steel anymore. That's right. Should we take another break? All right, this third egg, you guys just get ready to knock your socks off right after this. All right. So everyone's trying to make this stuff. Everyone's trying to recreate it. The answer is it's kind of right under their nose, but it's not because it's not under their nose because this stuff had been gone for a long time. It dried up. That woots dried the w up. It was gone. And then I think it was when was this? In the 1960s, that a guy named CS. Smith and he was a metal or just the chief metal, or just for the Manhattan Project, he wrote a paper about Damascus steel, and again, this is the 19th, 16th and said this stuff was lost to history, and a bunch of people tried over the years to recreate it. He kind of, like, laid down the gauntlet like, this is a metallurgical mystery guy. Yeah. And it seemed like it sort of kicked off a renewed interest here in the mid 20th century. It definitely did. Yeah. It became kind of like the I don't want to say Holy Grail because it's just so cliche, but it is pretty accurate among Metallur just to figure out the Ramasquesteel and to recreate it too. I think that's fair. So there were many attempts, like we said, there had been previously many attempts back in the 19th century, but I think in the pair of Stanford researchers really kind of thought they had cracked this. And as I was saying at the outside of this episode, they weren't entirely wrong. They just didn't complete the thought they thought they had, but they didn't. They figured out one very important part, and they actually did it by accident. They were looking up ways to make metal that is much more shapeable but still equally strong, because you had said these early Smiths where they knew some metals were strong, some metals were hard, some metals would break easily, but you could fold them into shapes or whatever. These guys were looking for a kind of metal that was extremely strong but also shapeable, and they came up with this super plastic metal, and somebody said, I think this is kind of similar to Damascus steel. Yeah. Their names were doctor Jeffrey Wadsworth and Dr. Oleg Sherby. The Sherbet. That's a good movie name. Doctor Oleg Sherbee. In trying to find the super plastic metal, they found something that I think someone at one of their presentations, a swordsman, stood up in the movie version from the crowd yeah. And said, hey, this is very much like Damascus steel, which is very rich in carbon. And they went, what carbon? Or did they already know it was carbon? Surely this was not the Reveal. Right. They knew that this high carbon content was making their steel super plastic. And I think the swordsman Zoro will call him, right? Sure. I think that Damascus steel also was high in carbon, and I think maybe the super plastic thing is what you guys have stumbled on here is the secret to Damascus steel. Yeah. So let's go write a paper based on this. Rando, stranger's thoughts. Yeah, because his name is Zoro. He carved a z in my chest. When we say a lot of carbon, between one and two, about 1.5%, which doesn't sound like much, but regular steel has a fraction of 1% of carbon, so it's a lot for a sword. Yeah. I think anything over zero 78% rounded up is considered ultra high carbon steel. So really not much like you said. But as you add this carbon, it does start to give the metal different properties. And in particular with Damascus steel, it turns out that Woots alloy was a hyper eutectoid ferrocarbon alloy, which means that I saw that word, it had so much carbon in it that it changes the eutectic point. The eutectic point is the temperature, where all the different materials that make up the alloys just separate. They're different materials. They're melted apart. They're no longer together. This has so much carbon in it that the melting point is actually after the eutectic point. So this stuff can kind of fall apart either after the melting point or before the melting point. I can't remember. But it has to do with that. Right. And we'll get to the other secret property, but there was also technique involved in that to create this Damascus steel to forge a sword. Compared to other ores, you were hammering at a relatively lower temperature than you would normally. That was the other thing that the Sherbes and Wadsworth were saying, was, it has to do with this, but on, again, a microscopic metallurgical level. What they came upon was we think that the true secret. Well, who's they got to shout them out. Sherbes. Well, no, I'm still on them. Okay. I'm still on them. So Sherbet and Wadsworth said, we think that it has to do with these carbides that are forming. Right. And so carbide, it's like iron and carbon mixed together. And in particular, what this forms is called cement height, and the cementytes are forming as spheres. And as you hammer and heat Woots, these iron carbide spheres align themselves just so with the shards of iron to create this really strong but also really resilient type of steel. Yes. And this is something that you're looking at under a microscope. Right. And that is one of the problems, and one of the reasons that it was so hard to figure this out over the years is that in order to do that, you have to take one of these blades and cut it into sections and put it under a microscope. And these were like rare collectibles. Yeah. People weren't coming off of them very easily. Not much. I mean, there were a few museums, donated some pieces. And then there was this guy, Henri Moser, who was a collector. I think he had 2000 damask blades. And he donated two daggers and four swords in the 1920s. That was nice of him to a guy named and so that helped, obviously. But even hard to get a hold of this stuff, to cut it up and put it under a microscope. And that's problem one. But then, even when you put it under a microscope, you're like, okay, what am I looking? Understand what I'm seeing? How do I recreate that exactly? And even more to the point, how did these ancient Smiths 2000 years ago create this luck? Yes. So they figured out that the iron carbides are definitely a big part of it. And Wadsworth and the Sherbets took a victory lap, right? Yeah, something like that. But then CS. Smith. The metallurgist from the Manhattan Project. So I get the impression he's kind of like this metallurgy god. He's like, I don't think that's it, everybody. I don't think this is the true explanation. And so it remained unanswered for another decade or so. Right. And he checked in with the other metallurgy god on his right, Mr. Bruce Dickinson, and he said, make it so. That's right. So then these other dudes came along, john D. Verhoven from the University of Iowa and then a Smithy from Florida named Al Pendra. And they spent, I think, like, four or five years again running all these trials, trying to figure out what this last little secret sauce was. Yeah. Because this is what he was up against. If I just may interject real quick. He was saying, was it one of the components making up the slag? Was it something being extracted from the crucible walls? The little pot you melted in? Was it the type of iron used to make it? Was it the time or temperature used to heat the molten metal? Was it the cooling rate? He had all these questions. He did not know what it was. He just knew that Wadsworth and the sheriffs had not answered it yet. Right. Every time you say wadsworth. And I want to think of The Muppet Show guys. Was that there? No, I don't think it was wadsworth. But it was something like that. Right, man. It was not Bergdorf and Goodman. It was Macy's and Gimbal. Yes. We'll figure it out. Oh, goodness. Somebody screaming at their I think it was Walmart and Wolver. That's it. That was them. We don't look stuff up on the show. It's just a long standing role, generally. Right? Yes. Because it's rude. It is. Because we're actually sitting in front of each other. We're talking. We're having a conversation with Peter Steak. So, I mean, I feel like you should announce it since you're the one who kind of no, really, you got this. I. Just wanted to interject that one thing about all the confounding factors that it could have possibly been and that this guy is applying science to this. All right. So what they found out was what happens on that level was something that's called a micro segregation, which is a chemical separation of alloy elements on very small scales of low levels of carbide forming elements. And they had a list of five things vanadium. Our newest best friend, Molly B, was on the list. It's so funny how that's come up, like, three or four times. I know. I never even knew it existed until, like, a month ago. Chromium, manganese and neobium. And what they found out was the winner overall, ladies and gentlemen, was vanadium. Yes. The chemical element V with a little bit of manganese. They said that had something to do with it. Yes. But mainly vanadium, I think as low as 40 parts per million is actually effective. And that was so close to Vibranium, I was like I got really excited. I was like, oh, man. Is it Vibranium? Of course. That's not real. What's that from? Really? Yeah. You're not into the Marvel in the MCU, are you? No. Okay. What's it from? Vibranium is the fictional alloy in Wakanda. Oh, okay. They make their weapons out of that. Yeah. That's what Captain America's shield is made from. Vibranium. Okay, got you. Did he get that from Wakanda? He got the vibranium from Wakanda. Oh, that's neat. Yeah, they share. I like it. I've noticed here, there in the Marvel Universe, sometimes it almost seems like there's, like, crossovers between characters. That's a great example of it. Yeah. It's almost like they had it all plotted out. I see. Well, it's funny. Another Marvel shout. There's this company in Sweden making this new Damascus steel, and they give it all these sort of Viking names. One is called Thor, one is called Loki, one is called Ferneating. Goat pee. Right. But they're trying to increase sales by naming it something super cool. Yeah. And they make fake Damascus steel. It's like stainless steel with the pattern blown onto it. Yeah. Basically using powder, they figured out, finally, true Damascus steel, which is just absolutely wonderful. Yeah. And it's vibranium. It's that little bit of now I can't remember it's vanadium. Right, yeah. Vanadium. Those are carbide forming elements. Right. So it is the carbide. You do have to start off with ultra high carbon steel, and apparently the ancient Indian smith created the alloy by putting a little bit of charcoal in there, maybe a little bit of wood in with the iron, so it would absorb a lot of carbon from it. It just so happened that the iron ore that they were starting off with had some vanadium in it. And that is ultimately what created that amazing watermark pattern, but also gave it its strength and survivability in battle. Yeah. And I'm hoping someone out there makes Damascus steel daggers and sends us one. Oh, that'd be neat. I want a Damascus steel dagger. Somebody I can't remember who it was. Remember they sent us knives? I still have my fillet knife. The chefs knives. Yeah. Those are gorgeous. Amazing. Whoever. Thank you again. I cannot remember your name as years ago, but many years ago. You got anything else? I got nothing else, and I'm still seeing that we recorded this episode successfully. That's all that eventually. Yes, it is. Well, if you want to know more about Damascus steel, go to your local gas station. They probably have something that looks like it. It's probably not real. Probably not. But you can look at it and say, oh, that's what they're talking about. I got it. And since I said I got it, it's time for listener mail. All right, I'm going to call this. This is the most recent email in my inbox. Hey, guys, I'm writing to tell you about numerical palindromes. You dismiss them as being quite unexceptional, and while I agree that alphabetic palindromes are much more complicated and difficult, I have to tell you, I'm obsessed with palindromes on the odometer of my car. Okay, I can see how that could be fun, looking up recognizing a palindrome on your old odometer. Yeah, I guess so. Sure. I actually shared two cars with my husband, and when I got in and saw that the odometer read 33934, I actually gasped. Today I was able to resolve my stress in that car, as you see. Is that a palladrain, though? 33934. Okay. Does it involve some traction? Because if so, that's not a drum. I think this person just missed the palindrome because they share a car with her husband. Oh, got you. That makes sense. Today I was able to resolve my stress in that car, as you can see. Once again, I particularly enjoy one with eights and zeros or sixes in opposition to nines, 26092 or 85158. Yeah, there's something satisfying about seeing those numbers. I think it's nice and round. Plus nine is unlucky in Japan. Oh, it is? Yeah. Nine and four. If you can imagine rotating it around on its central number, there is always another cooler balance number on the horizon, even if it isn't a perfect palindrome. I hope I have elevated numerical palindromes a little bit for you. A little bit chow for now. That is from Robin Van Gessel in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. North America. Beautiful town, planet Earth. Thanks a lot, Robin. Appreciate that. Really appreciate the chow as well. That was very nice. Good send off. Super 80s throwback. And if you want to get in touch with us, like Robin did, you can send us an email too. Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." |
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