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How Karate Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-karate-works | Karate, meaning "open" and "hand", was developed in Okinawa before being exported to Japan and then the rest of the world. It is one of the most widely practiced martial arts and one of the most difficult to master. Learn about it in this episode. | Karate, meaning "open" and "hand", was developed in Okinawa before being exported to Japan and then the rest of the world. It is one of the most widely practiced martial arts and one of the most difficult to master. Learn about it in this episode. | Tue, 07 Oct 2014 15:22:21 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=7, tm_hour=15, tm_min=22, tm_sec=21, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=280, tm_isdst=0) | 41410210 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should Know from Housetopworkscom. And welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry. This is stuff you should know. Edition. That's pretty good. I looked up a bunch of these pronunciations for once because we get the random email still. It's like, this is really lazy that you guys don't pronounce things right. Yeah. I had a guy the other day on Facebook said that he's brand new to the show, and it's a big turn off for him. And I just said, you are in for a long, frustrating experience, my friend, because it's kind of a hallmark of the show that we botch pronunciations. Don't try we botch pronunciations. That's good stuff, Chuck. Thanks. Do you know any karate? No, I never took any of that stuff. Did you? I took taekwondo for a minute. Yeah. And then I was like, yeah. I'm surprised I didn't do it after the Karate Kid movie, because I was the age where I should have run right out to the nearest dojo and signed up. But I think I remember even back then thinking, I don't ever want to get hit in the face if I can help it, which is the same reason I've never been in a fist fight. I don't think they hit you in the face. I think, as a matter of fact, if you do go to a dojo or a karate school and they hit you in the face, you should tell somebody because I don't think they're supposed to do that. Well, yeah, you're right. I just didn't want to be hit at all. And once you see Karate Kid, all bets are off because you never know if there's a Cobra Kai next door. They don't play by the rules. No, they really don't. They don't have sleeves to their key. No. Well, they're just bad kids. They sweep legs. They injured legs, all like, I bleedingly blonde. Yeah, they're bad guys. Did you watch that recently? I watched some of it today. I did. I watched a little bit of it last week. It was on. And I have to say that there's no bigger disappointment in life. Well, of course there are, but there are more disappointing things in your cable TV watching life than when you're scrolling through and you see, oh, Karate Kid, and you turn it on and you see Will Smith's son. Whoa, it's such a letdown. I can't imagine that it was at all enjoyable. No, I didn't watch any of it. I've been burned a lot lately with that. And so the other day it keeps kidding you. Yeah, the other day I saw Karate Kid, and I was like, I'm not even going to try this. And I did, and I saw Ralph Machio, and my heart just burst. That's the real Karate Kid. They should put on the cable list karate Kid reality version for the other one. I still say to that moment where Pat Marita has been training him with all the unknowingly training him with all the tasks he performs. Yeah. Like wax on, wax off, sand floor, paint fence, paint house. Jump on Pierre. When he finally has it, the big climax of that part, when he's like, that's it. I'm out of here. And he tells him to show me all this stuff, and then he just starts in on him and he blocks all the stuff. I'm getting chill bumps just thinking about it all these years later. You really are. Yeah. Wow. It's powerful. They do that. Zoom in, and he just goes and he starts wailing on him, and he blocks it. All that's kettle. And then they bow. And that just should have been the end of the movie. Oh, no. I watched the end of the movie today, and I was like, this is still good. Like, the whole montage with the best around you're. The best around, yeah. And then, of course, crane kick at the end where he sends Billy Zabka sprawling. Great stuff. Yeah. And if you want to feel super old, last year, Ralph Macchio turned the same age that Pat Merida was when they shot Karate Kid. What? Yeah. Oh, wow. Rob Macho was old when they made that movie. He was playing 16, but he was, like, 25. Oh, really? Yeah, he's much older. Wonderful actor. Then he had me full. He's great. I worked with Pat Merida once on a music video. He was awesome. Which one? I can't remember, actually. It might have been Alien Ant Farm. They were banned. Okay. They weren't very good, but they had a video with Pat Merida in it. And Pat Merida drank white wine all day long. Yeah. In his trailer, he had, like, a couple of bottles of Chardonnay on Ice. That's awesome. That's my only story. Was he in The Karate Kid Three with Hillary Swank? I didn't watch any of the sequels, actually. Second one was pretty good. It had Peter Satiris song in it. Yeah, I didn't see that one. Good one. He goes to Okinawa. That one there's, like, the hurricane and the bad guy who turns out to be a good guy in the end. And he probably has a Japanese girlfriend in that one, right? He falls in love over there. Yeah. Not Elizabeth Shu. No. I don't even know if she made an appearance in the second one, but anyway, Chuck, you realize we've just dedicated at least eight minutes to talking about Karate Kid. Well, I mean, you can't not every other line in this article made me think of the Karate Kid movie. It's funny you point out this article, because reading this article made me laugh for a different reason. Every time I saw martial arts expert or karate master, I thought of like, Napoleon Dynamite. I couldn't get past that. So if you want a real treat, read this article and just think. Read it in the voice of Napoleon Dynamite. It works really well and just a bit of COA real quick with a lot of things like chess and things that people are really into. This is a very broad introduction to karate. We should even call it karate for non practitioners. Karate for people who pronounce it karate. Right. Because this is going to be a nice overview and a nice introduction, but please do not think we are karate experts or masters, because we are not. Let's begin. Yes. So, Chuck, it turns out, and you're pronouncing it correctly, karate, it's actually two words in, I guess, Okinawan, because that's where it was originally invented, Okinawa. And basically the whole premise of, forgive me, everyone who's a pierce, but karate, that's how I was brought up to say it. Yeah, we'll say it like that. Yes. The whole purpose of it is to basically manipulate basic physics to your advantage, so no matter how big or small you are, you could conceivably win a fight or thwart an attack. That's right. And like I said, the whole thing began in Okinawa, and most martial arts came out of India, Japan or China. Yeah. And karate is, from what I could see, the second most widely practiced martial art after taekwondo. Interesting. I saw it in a couple of places, but it wasn't necessarily verified. And then that's really saying something, because over the years, over the last few millennia, since people started practicing martial arts, there have been thousands of variations on the theme. Sure. But karate is definitely its own thing, and it arose out of these periods of strife where the peasantry often had their weapons forcibly removed from them by the ruling classes so they couldn't rebel. And so the Okinawan said, you know what? Fine. We're going to teach ourselves to use our bodies as weapons. And thus began the groundwork for karate. That's right. And there's a father and son who are credited as the sort of the fathers of modern karate. The father was Funakoshi Gichin, and he wrote the original 20 guiding principles of Codate. And his son, they developed the shotokan style. And the son? His name G-I-G-O. What is that? GI Joe. Gijo. Where do you see that? Well, that was his full name is Fu Nakoshi yoshi Taka. But I think he went by Fukushi. It would probably be GI Joe, because which I verified with my wife, by the way. Okay. And she knows, right. Much more than me. So that's the father and son. The son started doing codate because he had tuberculosis. And as we'll get into this, very much about breathing. And so he did to help with that. That's smart. Which it did. But he did die of tuberculosis at 39. But they were the modern founders, and dad was a little more aggressive than son. He was full contact, and the sun came around and said, you know what? I believe in a more peaceful application of this. And this karate Dough, or the Karate Way is more of an approach to life than just, like, a combat style. Right. He took it from being kind of a long head, like his old man. Right. Just beating people up kind of thing. Sure. You don't really have to actually hurt anybody. You don't even necessarily have to land a blow on another person to be a karate master. And that's what he came up with. Like you said. The Karate dough. And this is all fairly recent. I mean, we're talking like, the early 20th century. Yeah. And the dad, Funakoshi Jichin, he took it from Okinawa to Japan, but his son, Funakoshi Yoshitaka what did you say his nickname was? Gijo. Sure. He kind of introduced it to the world, made it a lot more like two guys like you are like, I don't want to get kicked in the face. Yeah. He said, no one's going to kick you in the face. Let me teach you the Karate Way. And he did. But a way to really know you're not getting kicked in the face is to never take karate. Just watch from the sidelines. Yeah. To be a student. And the students are called akara teka, or karateka from the American South. Right. And like you said, that's actually two words in Japanese. It means kara is open, and pay means hand. So it means open hand in reference to your body as your weapon, is the weapon, and then openness. It's all about being open to the world around you and very observant for many reasons, but one reason is so you can be aware of when the street thugs are coming after you. Right? Yeah. You're open to your surroundings, and I didn't realize that they signified two separate things. I thought it was open hand, like a slap fighting or something like that. I knew there wasn't a lot of slapping in karate, but I thought open hand meant that you had no weapon in your hand. But that makes sense. That's just what the hand meant. The west part was, I'm aware of everything right now, and I'm open to changing possibilities and options, which is a huge fundamental part of karate. Yeah. Your spirit is open as well. Yeah. This article gets kind of esoteric at the end. Yes, it does. But I think that's part of it for a lot of people. So we'll cover that. So if you are a non Cobra Kai member of a karate school, you're going to wear what's called a gee in white. It's the loose fitting pants and the robe that's pulled together by a belt. It's not a black mussel shirt. No. That's disappointing. With a cobra in the back. That's right. And you are ranked by your dawn, D-A-N. And these are the rankings in ascending order from 9th to 6th Q. That's your skill level. Right. You're going to be a novice you're going to be a little white belt, your belt is going to match your gee, and you're going to feel silly as a little white mess of a six year old. That's probably when you're going to do cottage these days, right? The fifth queue is you're going to get that yellow belt. You can feel a little bit better about yourself because you have color now. Then you're going to get your orange belt at the fourth level. Yeah. You're going to get your green belt at the third, your blue belt at the second, the brown belt at the first, and then from first to 8th down, you're going to get that old black belt, which I always thought was the top level. Apparently there's a red one after that. Did not know that. 9th and 10th don. And it even says, in quotes, rarely awarded. Yeah, but now that you mention it, the bad guy from Karate Kid, I believe, wore a red belt. Oh, man. What's his name? I don't remember. He's from the 80 packman headroom. Yes. I was going to say Mr. Lawrence, but that was the Kid, because he's the one that said, you have a problem, Mr. Lawrence. Oh, yeah. With sweeping the leg. Just Sensei. Yes, everybody knows him as Sensei, but I think he had a red belt. But boy, he got his come up and it's in the parking lot. He sure did. Spoiler alert. Yeah, but the Q, actually, the Kyu, the different levels, that's not just used in karate. They use it in flower ranging ichibana. Ichibana and tea ceremonies and basically any Japanese pursuit where there are masters and there are novices ponzii, maybe I didn't see that, but I wouldn't be all that surprised. Fly catching with chopsticks, maybe. So you go through queues. Interesting. That's pretty cool. They really take that stuff seriously, it seems like. I don't know, I just appreciate the culture of, like, if something's worth pursuing, it's worth pursuing with all you got. Right? Exactly. They don't do things halfway like we do here in the United States. Like, I'd stop at the green belt, right? You'd be like, I'm up to green. I'm doing good. No, they definitely do pursue things all the way. And there was another point that I went and clarified with your queue, with going from a white belt to a yellow belt to an orange belt. It doesn't necessarily mean like, you are like a karate master or even like a tea ceremony master. What it means is you are capable of performing certain acts that are expected to be performed by somebody of that level. Okay. Because I wanted that, because I'll see on Facebook, like, a friend's eight year old son has a black belt, and I'm like, really? Yeah. I mean, that means that they can do, like, X kicks or something. It doesn't necessarily have to do with talent. Although I'm sure a lot of people dispute that. Sure. I think it's more like your technical proficiency is described by your belt. Okay. I think all right. Oh, man. We're going to get murdered for that one. Yes. I can already hear the keys, the hands on the keyboard. So we're going to talk about physics and probably a lot more about The Karate Kid right after this. So, physics buddy, if you're moving and doing anything in this office, it's going to be described in terms of physics, because that's what we do here. And when it comes to karate or any fight, really, you've got potential energy going on. And just because you're a big, strong dude doesn't mean you're going to necessarily win a fight against someone smaller and weaker, because there are different ways of applying that energy. And Carate exploits all that it does or not exploits, but I guess well, it teaches you to exploit it. Yeah. Because if you've got your energy and you got somebody else's energy, if you can figure out a way to put them together, then you have just doubled or done whatever to your energy by adding theirs to yours. That's right. You created an advantage for yourself, and that's kind of the key to being a little guy like Ralph Machio and still winning the tournament. It's like a broken leg, even. That's right. So the first stuff you want to focus on is learning to concentrate your energy. Yes. I think manipulating your opponent's energy, which we're talking about next, that seems to be, like, possibly a more advanced step. Right. First, you start out on yourself, and there's a couple of ways to do this. By concentrating your energy, we mean you're concentrating the force that you're delivering with a punch or a kick to a very small surface area of your body. Like, if you come up and you shove me and you're like you got something to say and your hand displayed, you're going to push me backwards, but you're not going to break my rib. Right. Because the force of your shove is distributed across your palm, your fingers, your fingertips, all the jewelry you wear, all of that is going to be spread across my chest. Yeah. If you took that same amount of force and put all of your fingers and your thumb together and delivered, it all formed basically a point with your fingers and thumb, then all of a sudden, you are going to break my ribs. You probably would punch right through my chest and out of my back. I would rip out your heart and like a street fighter, right? Yeah. You can do that on your own body. If you take your five fingers and just kind of pound them on your chest and then with the same amount of energy, put them all together, it's going to feel much different. Yeah. Very simple concept. You're diminishing the surface area of the point of impact and thereby increasing the amount of damage you can do to an opponent. Yeah. And in case of punches and kicks, you're probably reducing that to a bony area of your hand or your foot. And a lot of training goes into strengthening those areas of your body. And that's your technique. Because if I just went and flailed at someone and punched them, I would probably break my hand because I don't know how to do it. But it's all about technique in karate. So you're going to have those parts of your body ready to absorb that impact on your end as well. Yeah. And apparently up until not too terribly long ago, catatecas, which are karate students, again, in their training, once they said, yeah, I think I'm going to get serious about this, they would break their middle fingers or their own hands to enlarge their knuckle. Yeah. Crazy. As it healed back, the knuckle would just be larger. And so that little point of impact is strengthened and made just a little larger so that they could really focus it in there and hurt people. Wow. Yeah. And they don't do that anymore. Right. That's out of practice, out of fashion, probably. You never know. Did you see the article I sent you? The science of Bruce Lee's one inch punch. Yeah. That is a pretty good example of concentrating your energy over a small surface area. Yeah. There's a video that goes along with it, too, that it's pretty cool to watch. He was famous for being able to hold his hand one inch away from a board and then send that fist through the board without reaching back and rearing back. And he does it so quick and there's so much power. It's just like it really comes through. Even this old grainy black and white video, like, you have to rewind it ten times just to be like, man, did that just happen? Yeah. That quickly? Yeah. And the bride famously used it to punch her way out of a coffin when she was buried alive and killed Bill. Yeah. I'm calling total BS on that now, though. She punched her way out. Yeah. Because if you watch and then I guess it's a good time to talk about this, karate is all about putting as much impact with your whole body behind that punch or kick. So when you see someone kicking karate, they're not just kicking at you like Danielson did at first. They're usually standing sideways and winging their whole body around to get the whole energy of their whole body into that kick or punch. Right. And that's what Bruce Lee does. You see him, he lunges forward super fast with his body and just puts all that energy into his little one inch punch. But, uma, Thurman's in a coffin, like she can't move at all. So I just called total BS on that. So with Bruce Lee's punch. And that's the only thing that movie that wasn't realistic. Right. Everything else is totally dead on be somebody, baby. Yeah. When Bruce Lee does that one inch punch and you say he lunges forward a little bit yeah. What you're seeing right there from that lunge to the point where he's broken through the board is actually a sequence they figured out. It's a sequence of muscle movements to where he starts out generating energy or force through the big muscles in his legs and then moves them up through his hips and then twists his torso and then basically shoots it out of his arm. It's crazy. So basically, he's generating a tremendous amount of force and power in his legs and directing it up through his body and out his arm, and then shooting his hand an inch out. And all of that force that's been generated by his muscles is focused right onto his little knuckles and it goes right through a board. It's pretty awesome. Someone should animate that. The energy of that, who knows? From his little toes all the way up, it seems like every part of his body is going into that tiny little area. Yeah, it's pretty impressive. And in this article that was on Popular Science, they figured out that, yes, the muscles definitely count. Like, somebody who didn't have these muscles wouldn't be able to do this. But even more important was the white matter, the material that connects neurons, that transfers energy, or not energy information between your brain cells. Because the timing that was required to fully focus this force in this perfect sequence over this very short period of time took a lot of white matter. And Bruce Lee must have had that stuff in aces. Yeah, he was awesome. Man, those movies are still so great. The other thing Bruce Lee is doing there is following through, which is huge in Cottage. What's it called with the breaking of the boards? It has its own name. It is called temesiwari. Yes. And that's when you see people breaking bricks and boards and things like that. It's a demonstration of force. But what Bruce Lee is doing there is he's following through. He's not looking at that board. He is imagining punching through to Utah, like, at some point well beyond that board. Because humans have an instinct. If you're going to punch a wall, even if you're super angry, you're going to hesitate. You may not even realize it right before you punch your fist into that brick wall out of anger. You may not even know it. You're going to be hesitating because you have that hesitation instinct. Yes. It's called self preservation. Yeah. And Katy basically trains you to get past that and through breathing in and out. Remember Karate Kid? Again, it's all about the breathing, breathing out. When you're releasing that punch and following through, you are not punching that board. You are punching 2ft beyond that board. Yeah. The board just happens to be in the way. And the board is sorry it got in the way. That's right. So that's offense, basically, you're learning to focus your energy into punches and kicks, learning how to lower the surface area of the point of contact and just basically becoming an explosive force of the universe. Nice. That's the first part. The second part is defense, learning to take your opponent's energy and use it against them. And this is a very important part of karate as well. Yeah. And it also has to do with physics, because we're talking about momentum, which is obviously a product of massive velocity, but also of direction. So let's say you are a brick wall and your opponent's fist is a car. If they drive straight into you, it's going to hurt. Let's say you're a guide rail on a highway and the car is driving down the highway and side swipes you. It's going to hurt a lot less, way less. And that's the whole basic premise of cottage defense, is to try and angle yourself to deflect as much of that blow as possible at a different angle and not take it straight on. You want to deflect the momentum of the force of their punch or kiss, and apparently you use your arms. I've seen people use their legs to deflect blows, but this article makes it sound like you just use your arms and karate. Danielson uses legs. Yeah. It makes sense that you use your legs. Yeah, because which one was the training thing? Was the legs? I don't know. Was it the crane kick training? No, because he had already had something. Let's see. He wax on, he waxed off. Right. He washed the car. That was the cars. He painted up and down. And he left windmill on the refrigerator box. He sanded the floor. No, I don't think he used kicks. He defended the kicks with his hands. That's what I'm thinking. Okay, so then that's the premise of karate. When you defend yourself against blows, whether it's a kick or a punch, in defense, you're using your arms the whole time. And like we said, you're deflecting it. So you're forcing the momentum of this punch off of yourself at an angle. There's another thing you can do with momentum is when you do deflect it, if somebody's going to punch you in the chest and they put everything into it, like they started this punch in their little toes, and now it's coming at you in their big broken middle finger knuckle. They're old school, and you managed to sidestep slightly and deflect the blow downward. They still have that momentum, the product of their mass times their velocity, which is speed and direction, and that direction is forward toward you. You and your chest are not there any longer. Yeah. So this frequently results in your opponent losing his or her balance. And all of a sudden, what's opened up is, in karate circles, known as an opportunity for you to beat them badly. That's right. You can throw them even though they point out that that is more noted in judo and akito throwing isn't central in katate. But I'm sure someone will throw someone if they need to. Sure. Like use their own momentum and pull them past and then get the old solar plexus blow. Yeah. You can punch them. If you don't throw them, they're just open up. You can pin them on the ground and then punch them. Yeah. What you don't want to do is anything illegal. No, you don't do anything illegal. And your stance while you're doing this, the reason you're able to deflect these punches and kicks so well is because you're not standing there like a dumb frat boy in a bar. Come on, man. Yeah, bring it. You're standing to the side saying, come on, man, bring it. And you're going to have a smaller surface area for someone to punch. And you've got that one leg in front and the one leg behind. You've got your center of gravity low and you're ready for all comers at that point right. To deflect all those blows. And again, all that is about being open and paying attention to your surroundings. Yeah. You're watching your opponent and you're just looking for a chance to throw their momentum or deflect a punch or kick or what have you. That's right. Yeah. And we'll talk about some of the ways because if a couple of karate experts displayed their full power skill, there will be two dead karate experts, or at least one. So over the years, because karate dough isn't about like killing other people. No. It's about showing your skills. They've developed some ways to do that and we'll talk about those right after this. So, Josh, you mentioned two dead karate masters. If they went full bore at one another, there would be bloodshed on the mat. And that's not what you're after. If you're a student of karate, you want to display your skill in a way that shows that you're very skilled, but not necessarily inflicting violence. Right. Because it's not about violence. It's about a lot of things for a lot of people, but never is. It just about learning violence. Like learning how to beat someone up really good. Yes. And like you said, it's a lot of different things as different people. Like some people go there for exercise. Sure. Building self confidence or tuberculosis to help your health and your breathing. Apparently it doesn't work for tuberculosis, but I'll bet he had tons of confidence. Yeah, sure. Sometimes just learning some selfdefense, maybe feeling good about walking through a dark alley at night alone. Because the point is not beating up your opponent, but knowing or making it apparent to other people that they don't want to mess with you in the first place. Because if they did, then it's trouble for them and you do that or you advance to different queues through different types of demonstrations, basically. Yeah. Well, first of. All. It's not to say that you can't do some serious damage, it's just not the main purpose. The famous, the one punch kill is a thing in karate. Is it really? Yeah. And some people say it's impossible and some people say it is possible and others say it's not even a real thing. It's just like a statement of attitude. One fist, certain death. And it's just sort of the mindset you should have. Like with this fist I could kill you, but I'm not going to. But I'm not going to because I'm a nice guy. Right. And I'm in a shopping center between a locksmith and a tax preparation center in the valley in California. But I could kill them both if I wanted to. They even said shopping centers in this article, which I thought was funny because it seems like they are always in a shopping center. I don't see very many like freestanding. No dojos. Alright, so you mentioned that there's different ways to measure your skill and to flaunt your skill. One a combat simulation called kata. And that is where you're basically fighting ghost attackers that don't exist. Yeah, like anytime you see somebody going ha and they're just doing it by themselves, that's kata. And the whole thing is like a prescribed rigmarole of moves. That's kata. That's something you would have to perform to move on to another belt. That's right. The next thing, if you actually want to get a live person involved and not just look like some crazy person fighting nobody, you could practice sparring or kumate. And there are four levels of that. The first is footwork only, the second is shadowboxing. The third is blocking contact only. And the fourth is light contact. And the idea is it's a very controlled supervised sparring session where you're not laying blows, raining blows upon one another. You're pulling your punches, you're stopping them. Or there's very light contact. You're probably wearing headgear like some sort of protective gear. Yeah. And this is typical of what a karate tournament will have in it. It's mostly kumatay or point sparring. And if again you've ever seen Karate Kid, you'll notice that those matches are over pretty quick. I mean, this seemed pretty accurate for karate. The Karate Kid movie did once I read this. Right? And vice versa. Yes, but with points barring, usually you'll have a one to three minute bout or fight and whoever has the most points at the end wins. Or if you score a certain number of points, typically three within a fight, you want that's. Right. And the points are called ipons. Ippons. And apparently I didn't realize this the points are awarded not just on the strikes that you're getting, but also the attitude in which you do it in your technique. So they're sort of judging you on an aesthetic level as well. On a spiritual level. I mean, it makes sense. Like if your opponent walks into the back of your hand. You shouldn't get a point for that. That's true. And then, Chuck, there's the tameshi wari, which we mentioned already, which is board breaking, block breaking, which is the real deal. It's not magic or illusion. Like this person is breaking through a board. Yeah, I remember being a kid and people saying, like, you know, those boards are weakened. It's not true. They just know what they're doing. They know how to exploit the weakest parts of those boards. Maybe, but as the article puts it, they turn the appendages into natural chisels and they find out where the board might be weakest, and they punch right through it. Right through it. Or the ones that get me with the karate chop through the bricks, man. I don't see how they do that stuff. Physics. It's crazy. And then you mentioned schools. Man. Yes, they are mostly in shopping centers, but that doesn't mean they're not good. Yeah, well, your mom is getting her taxes done next door while you're in there learning things. And if you want to look for a school, if you're in a big city, you're going to have your choice of a lot of different kinds catering to a wide range of students. If you're a little kid or you're an adult and you want to send your little kid to one, there are lots of options. But send your kid to one that caters to kids, don't take them to Cobra Kai. No. Or else they're going to turn out like Johnny. I actually found an article. I can't remember what it was called, but it was about how to tell if your martial arts group is toxic. Oh, really? Yeah, because the author is there an opium den in the back. It's probably one dead giveaway. But the author was saying, especially if you're new to martial arts, you may think, like, oh, the Sensei is supposed to be an abusive jerk, right, who yells and screams all the time and hits the students and stuff. Like no, it's supposed to be a normal, respectful, calm environment. It's not supposed to just be like, run by a megalomaniac or something like that. So if you have your kid in that kind of school, they want to get them out and get them into a different school. Yes, and wisely as well. They suggest that it all be very open to the parents and there not be any private rooms for your children that are off limits. That's just good advice. No matter what kind of school you're going to, if you're a lady, you might want to find a dojo that maybe has a lady instructor or maybe they're just respectful toward women in general. Again, I think if you don't want your kids to go there because of some megalomaniac, you probably wouldn't want to go there as a lady either. Yeah. Or if there's like a jerk lady megalomaniac. Yeah. I'm sure they're out there, right? There's got to be. I'm sure that guy had a wife and Karate Kid megalomania transcends gender. It sure does. And then Chuck We said that people go to take karate to gain self confidence and to understand their body a little more. But a lot of people find along the way, even if they're not going for this, they find that what's called the center of their key, their spiritual center, basically. And in karate practice well, karate is linked to Zen Buddhism, and one of the points of Zen Buddhism is that you can attain spiritual fulfillment and enlightenment through everyday practices, including karate. Sure. And that once you start to practice karate, once you start breathing, once you start paying attention to your surroundings at all times, when you just find yourself in tune and in focus, you're going to find your key, also known as qi, your spiritual energy. Is that the same thing? I believe so. Okay. And where it sits in your body, and you'll be able to learn to raise or lower it your energy to attack and defend. Right. Yeah. And like you said, if you're just going up to a certain few levels, you may not hear much about that, but it definitely comes into play at the higher levels. Right. And how fast you work up those ranks and get those belts is sort of up to you. Like anything else. If you go three or four days a week and you're super dedicated, you might zoom up four belts in the first few months. And I think from that point, things start to slow down a little bit. If you don't put much into it, it might take you a little longer. But from what I've read, people that get into it, like, really get into it. Yeah. And this article says for the average person, getting to black belt would take about three years. Yes. If you are super athletic and talented and went like, five days a week, it might take you 18 months. Right. But it's still going to be difficult and take you a little while. And it's a life pursuit for a lot of people. Yeah. And again, this article points out getting to the highest belt is not necessarily the pursuit of karate. Right. Like the point of karate, the pursuit of it is to find your center and to feel self confident and get whatever you want out of it. Yeah. Just understand the mechanics of it. If you want to go to karate school to learn how to throw Japanese throwing stars and kill someone with nunchucks, you're probably out of luck. You may can take like a nunchuck class or something, but it's not a typical thing to use weapons in the classes. I actually saw that as one of the points of a school to avoid. Really? If they say they can teach you ninja, sue or make you a ninja, stay away. I remember taking ninja training when I was a kid. Yeah, you had. There is a funny nun chuck video on the Internet. Just look up Redneck Nun Chuck, and there's this guy in the living room, and I guess his mother is shooting him and he's demonstrating, and he hits himself in the face and breaks his glasses, and his reaction is priceless. Afterward, he just gets really mad really fast, and he starts to stomp off, and you just hear the mom go, like, don't pitch a fish. It's really funny. Even though I typically try to avoid anything that says fail. Yes, because those videos are just so dumb. It's like the worst of the Internet. I just hate that word. But Redneck Nunchuck fail was pretty good. You got anything else? I have nothing else, sir. Did this make you want to try this in any way? It made me wish I stuck to taekwondo a little more. Just minor regret. That's about it. Yeah, no, I probably won't pursue karate. Yeah, me neither. Hopefully there will be somebody out there who is inspired to give it a try because it is pretty awesome. Agreed. If you want to know more about karate, you can type that word K-A-R-A-T-E in the search bar@howstuffworks.com. It'll bring up this article. Since it's a search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this something about police interrogation. Hey, guys, I want to write in and let you know how much I enjoy the podcast. Spoiler alert a bunch. Hopefully I can also add something. I'm currently studying to be a paralegal, and we spend a lot of time learning about trial proceedings and what evidence is admissible in court. During the episode of police interrogation, you mentioned the rates of convictions that were based solely on confessions. Courts in my state of Pennsylvania have to follow something called the Nantiglo rule. N-A-N-T-Y-G-L-O. Just ladies of restaurant too. This rule states that motions for summary judgment cannot be based solely on depositions or more specifically, the confessions they're in. So basically, if a party has confessed, their confession alone isn't enough to convict them. The record, like other motives or affidavits filed with the court, would need to contain other evidence in order for the motion to be granted. If anyone confessed after being interrogated, they might not be completely doomed. If they're in Pennsylvania, motions for summary judgment is a pretrial motion, so this rule wouldn't affect the case that had already made it to a trial with the jury. And I don't remember, this is only a rule in civil cases or if it applies to criminals as well. I haven't heard of other states having a similar rule. Every few years, there will be editorials about how Nancy Glow is outdated. I know the name is outdated and it needs to go, but as of this email, there hasn't been a case to overturn, so it's still binding anyway. Really enjoy it. Hope this is informative. Stuff You Should Know is the perfect thing to listen to while I'm knitting. And I always look forward to a new episode that is from Haley. Thanks, Hailey. We appreciate that. In Pennsylvania. Have you seen the glow? The gorgeous leaves of wrestling documentary? No. It's pretty good. Is China in it? I don't think she was in Glow, was she? I don't know. That's the only female restaurant I could think of. No, this is way before her time. Anyway, it's a good documentary. Strongly recommended. They'll check it out. If you want to recommend a documentary or talk about an Arcane law to Chuck and I, we can be reached at syskpodcast, on Twitter, on Facebook@facebook.com, stuffychannel. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast athouseafworks.com. And as always, check out our home on the web stuffyoushaneo.com. For more on this and sal of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com." | ||
8a8fa900-4a58-11e8-a49f-0bf57f40e570 | SYSK Selects: That Dang-old Goat Fell Over | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-that-dang-old-goat-fell-over | Due to a condition known as Thomsen's disease, the muscles of fainting goats tense up whenever the animal is startled. In this episode, Josh and Chuck break down the science behind this bizarre condition. | Due to a condition known as Thomsen's disease, the muscles of fainting goats tense up whenever the animal is startled. In this episode, Josh and Chuck break down the science behind this bizarre condition. | Sat, 08 Dec 2018 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=8, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=342, tm_isdst=0) | 28160093 | audio/mpeg | "Hey there, everyone, its me, Josh. And for this week's, Syscase selects I've chosen our episode on fainting goats from 2011. It's about the funniest, saddest breed of goats around, plus sad kittens too, but it's also really cute in a weird way. At any rate, this one, I will advise you to listen to a company by your laptop or phone ready to go on YouTube because there's going to be a lot of stuff for you to check out. Enjoy it. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. Me. And that's right, that's me. Now fall over. Yes. Not yet, Chuck. We're getting there. Okay. How are you doing? Are you feeling a little sick after Los Angeles? Yes, Josh. Heavy workload and stress usually means Chuck crashes and gets sick afterwards. Yeah, I came very close. That's what happened. As I was telling you, I am a walking ad for emergency. It works really well. It's good stuff, Chuck. I hope you feel better soon. Thank you. In the meantime, let's talk about the Satanic symbol that is the goat. Yeah. The inverted star is supposed to be a goat head, is that right? Yes, that is actually the Bafomat. The Bafomit. It's French illustration. No. 19th century French magician Eliafus Levi drew the Baffamax of Mendes. Right, okay. And Mendes is like the key term here. This is where the idea that the goat was Satanic came from. Okay. So back in the day, back when the Greeks were running around Egypt, let's say the fourth century BC, okay? One of them, Herodotus, wrote of the Mendes people who lived along the Nile and venerated and essentially worshiped goats, specifically male goats, as symbols of fertility. And the Greeks, doing what they did eventually ripped this idea off and labeled their god Pan, the king of the satyrs, the half god, half man god. That's right. Who like to woo the ladies and basically press his male goat sexuality onto them. Right. We have the idea that a male goat, aka Ram, in a lot of cases, I'm pretty sure it became the symbol for powerful male sexuality. Right? Sure, why not? As the Christian church came about and sexuality kind of diverged from reality, that concept became more and more taboo, increasingly taboo, until finally you get to the point where we arrive at the Knights Templar who supposedly venerated Baffemett. Do you guys pop up a lot with us? They do. That image of Baffamette, not the 19th century one, but the image of a goat head, which they supposedly idolized, was used against them to persecute them as Satanists and kill them. And from that point forward, the Go went from pagan god of male fertility or sexuality to Satanic from that moment on, to the point now where you can look at a goat and you get a touch of evil from it, don't you? No, I was just about to counter and say, that's funny because goats are the sweetest, most adorable little creatures on the planet. It depends. First of all, it depends on their age. It depends on their size. It depends on how readily you can see those Satanic eyes of theirs. I disagree. It's Satan walking the earth. Chuck. Let's just come out and say it, okay? Everyone knows I had pet goats, so you're not going to get me to say anything like that. Plus, if you're anything, you're lacking for the goat lobby. I am, yeah. What about fainting goats, though? I have to agree. These are not Satanic. They fall into the cute camp, right? Yeah, it's pretty cute and sad and funny. It's all wrapped up into one. In fact, I have never experienced such a range of emotions is when I watched Fainting Goats and Fainting Kittens. Yeah, Fainting Kittens in particular got my goat. I just showed Lizzie. It's awesome. She laughed. I know, she was hilarious, Chuck. It's so sad looking, though. I know, but then they kind of look around and look like a stupid kitten and like, a few times and they're fine. I urge anyone who hasn't seen, first of all, Fainting Goats to go on to Youtube.com. That's Y Ou Tube.com. It's kind of like a video repository of sorts. You can share videos. Yeah, it's amazing. You type in Fainting Goats and then watch the one with the greatest number of hits and you will see what we're talking about. I think it has 10,800,000 hits right now. Watch that one. You'll see what we're talking about the rest of the time. You can also, if you want to treat yourself, typing Fainting Goat Kittens Hyphen original Video and you'll see what makes me laugh and makes Chuck cry. If you want to really treat yourself, type in Where's Bee? Oh, that one's adorable. That little lamb. Yeah. Is that a lamb or a goat? It's a lamb. But a lamb is a female goat, right? Or it's a baby goat. Isn't a goat a male lamb? A baby goat is a kid. A lamb is a lamb. Yeah. A lamb is a baby sheep. Yeah. Okay, we're all set. No need for emails, everybody. Myotonic Goats. Okay, so, yeah, there's other names for these things. Now that hopefully you've gone and watched this, you're up to speed and, you know, we're about to be talking about, because we are going to explain this weird phenomenon that is Feigning Goats, aka, as you just said, myatonic Goats. What else, Chuck? What are some other awesome names for these things? The Tennessee Stiff Legs. Just a good name for a band. As is Myatonic Goats. Tennessee wooden legs nervous goats and fall down goats I imagine Fall Down Goats was pretty early in the game. Yes. That's what Bam Bam from Flintstone called them. Exactly. They go by several different names, Josh, but they are not feeding at all, actually. No. We should say, if you are too lazy to go look up this YouTube video and you don't know what we're talking about. Basically, these goats, the videos of goats who are being chased by, like, a farmer or something with an umbrella, and all of a sudden they'll just stiffen up and fall over, and it looks like they fainted dead away or possibly died and instantly gone into rigor mortise. It looks like they've been shot and killed by a sniper. Exactly. And then after a second, they just kind of get up and run away some more. They're called feigning goats, but it's not at all what's going on instead, Chuck, it's like an altered startle response, right? Yeah. It's a congenital condition. Means they get it since their little baby kid goats, they're born with it. Right. It's called myotonia. Congenital. And there's another couple of names, the Becker type disease or Thompson's disease. And basically we will get into the specifics, but what happens is they tense up, like the fight or flight. Like if an explosion went off right behind you right now, you'd tense up and then go maybe what happens here is they tense up and they don't undence. They stay stiff long enough to fall over on their side as if they were dead. Yes. Appropriately, Robert Lamb, who wrote this article, points out, it's like that when you tense up from a fight or startle or danger flight or fight or flight, it's been a while. Clearly that tension that's relieved almost immediately. Basically, your brain getting your body zapped into preparedness. Get ready to run. Stop thinking about Tootsie Roll, pops. Jerk. It's time for you to kick some bottom. Yeah. Or in the goats case, quit thinking about that big patch of grass. There's a wolf behind you. Run and get out of here. Exactly. But instead of running the tense up, they fall over because their muscles take about ten or 20 seconds to relax, right? Yes. So you talked about myotonic. They're myotonic goats. Myotonia exists in more than just goats, in humans as well. Kittens, we said. Yeah. Saddest video. Ever so awesome. And myotonia is basically this disorder of the central nervous system, a congenital one, like you said, Chuck, that's characterized by stiff muscles, that they're rigid and they take time to relax. Right? Yeah. I think voluntary muscles, we should say, not like your cardiac muscle or your involuntary muscle. Sure. The stat I found was that it affects about one in 100,000 people, and in northern Scandinavia, one in 10,000. Who knew? Well, I guess they have a bottleneck up there some sort. I don't know, because not that many people want to move up to Scandinavia. I didn't see any kind of explanation for why there would be more abundant there, but that's how many it affects in people. If you have it, there's some medication. It's not that big of a deal. Stay exercise, stay loose. Right. Don't walk around big piles of glass, I would say, or beds of nails. You don't want to fall on anything like that. Maybe you shouldn't be driving a car. But I don't think humans actually stiffen and fall over like the goats. I think it's more of a temporary stiffening. Or, again, as Robert lamb put it, a full body Charlie horse, but without the pain. Yes. They say they don't feel pain. I don't know about that. We'll get into that in a second. All right. But there's a similar condition to call myoclonus, and it's actually the basis of probably my favorite physiological trait of humans. What's that? The myoconic jerk. And you're falling asleep, and then all of a sudden is that what's awake? Yeah, that happens to me. And if you'll notice most of the time you're dozing, and you're dreaming of maybe falling down the stairs or something like that. So apparently your brain is either confused that you are in fact falling, or it doesn't understand why your muscles are relaxing in some weird way and it's jolting you awake. Okay. Or it thinks you are dying, and it's railing against dying, trying to get your heart going again. What are the two explanations of her either way? Thank you. Body. Yes. And mind. But another name for it is the hypnotic jerk. The hypnotic jerk. It's just great. Do you like it when it happens to you or you just think it's neat? It's just funny. Yeah, it's a weird feeling. It's sort of like when you almost fall back in a chair and you catch yourself. There's nothing more like thrilling to the body than that. Oh, my gosh, I'm going to die here in 1 second. Exactly. So it's thrilling because your muscles tense up. You have to wonder if you're just sitting there for ten or 20 seconds. Does your brain your brain apparently, would know that there's no longer any danger. But you can't move, right? Which I imagine would kind of be kind of stressful. 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. We know that the brain knows that there's no longer any danger because the actual disorder is on the cellular level in the muscles. Right? Yeah. There's a gene, Josh, called the CLCN one, the Chloride Channel One gene, of course, and it's involved in the production of proteins, which are proteins are good for muscle relaxing and contracting and stuff like that. Yeah. And chloride ions, specifically, right? Yeah. What's the deal? Too much chloride? Yeah. Remember, check the point of being alive as a functioning body is homeostasis. Right? Right. So you want an equal amount or a relatively comparable amount of positively charged sodium ions, which tell your muscles to contract. Right. And negatively charged chloride ions, which say, go ahead and relax muscles. Right. Oh, there's not enough chloride in this case. Yes. So there's an abundance of sodium and not enough chloride, which means that when the cells are innervated, the muscle cells are innovated with an electrical impulse from the brain, like tense up. It takes them longer to relax because they're out of whack, because this gene is not expressing those chloride ions like it should be cool. So it's not the brain any longer thinking that we're afraid or that there's a danger. It's the muscles. It's all in the muscles. That's right. And it is hereditary. It can be dominant or recessive, meaning either one of your parents can have the gene or both. Not too picky there. And the difference is with the goats is they're actually bred to encourage this. Right. And here you mentioned something a second ago that kind of smacked of the ethics of it. Right. I don't remember what it was kind of like, well, just people laughing. Every time I see those videos, I think the goats, they're roaming around their pen, and then I get the feeling they see people coming. They're like, oh, God, here we go again. Some jerk is going to shoot a gun in the air or something, and we're all going to fall over and they're going to laugh at us. Very funny. Right? Exactly. So here we go again. Here we go again. And every time they see a human, without fail, I'm sure a human does that, too, and the humans laugh and think it's the funniest thing they've ever seen. The goats are just like yeah. And actually, there's two reasons that feinting goats are bred these days. One is for novelty, because they do that, and another is for meat, basically. Yeah, that made me sad. I thought it would just be strictly novelty and having them as a pet. No, initially, I mean, that's what most livestock goats are used for, is meat. And frankly, they're delicious, but I wouldn't know. They're so delicious. Goat is awesome. But if you think of them as Satanic, you can eat them all day long. It's like you're eradicating evil by eating the goat. You know what I'm saying? Sure. Give me one of those evil, Satanic goat tacos. I want to do my part. Can I give you, like, a tad of history? Yeah. Do you want to talk about the history of it? Sure. Okay. I know we're hopping around here that's a goat on fire, like b. But the reason that Tennessee Stiff Legs, or fall down goats, as some people call them, are called Tennessee Stiff Legs or Tennessee Wooden Legs is because they were brought down from Nova Scotia, allegedly by a farmhand named John Tinsley. Yeah, that's what they think. Yeah. From what I saw, that was the, likeliest, explanation. Yeah. To Marshall County, Tennessee, in the late eighteen hundred s. Eighteen eighty s. And he started breeding them, which is called unnatural selection. We'll get to that in a second. But the goats were originally not bred for novelty. Right. It took 100 years for them to really start to be bred for novelty. They are bred because, Chuck, as you pointed out, their muscles don't atrophy. Right. They do the opposite. Right. Well, yeah. I mean, if you think there's muscle waste going on, think again, because it actually makes the animal much leaner for slaughter. Right. It's hard for me to even say that. Right. So because of all the tensing and untensing that they do more than the average animal, they're kind of bulk. They're ripped, they're bulk. So they have a lot they're lean meat, but there's a lot of meat to muscle as well. So they're prized for their meat. And apparently their propensity toward tensing up painting prevents them from climbing fences, which is a big problem when you're keeping goats as livestock. They like to just hop right over a fence you erect for them. Mine didn't. No. My goats loved being pet goats, I'm sure. Were they Hop goats? Well, no, we had a big pin, and they were actually in there with the dogs. We had two dogs and two goats. And the goats, I think, took their cues from the dogs because they were very playful. And I used to play games with my goat, Nestor, all the time. Whatever happened? Nester? Well, Billy died, which is very sad. It's a good name, of course. And then Nestor, we eventually were like, we need to move Nestor out to a farm. So this lady took him, and Nestor rode it back to the truck with me with his head on my lap the whole way. What did the lady do to Nest, or do you think? I think she kept Nestor as a goat. And that's the story I'm speaking to. Nestor was a pet until he died of old age. That is a beautiful story, Chuck. Yeah. Okay. So good. So your goats fared very well. I'm glad to hear that. I remember the goats of my birthday party. One of them was a house goat, remember? Oh, yeah. House goat. Wow. So there was an actual reason that feigning goats were bred initially and it wasn't for kicks. The Tennessee farmers of the 1880s actually were a little more soulful than the ones today. Yeah. And it wasn't funny back then. Nothing was happening. Right, yeah, exactly. Don't laugh at that. I can't say it. I just had, like, 80 great jokes right into my hands. So are you talking about the protection of the herd? Not yet. Okay. So the goats become an established breed of their own by the 1950s. Right. And about that time, they start to leave tennessee, I think for Texas was the next place that they really spread out. But it wasn't until the 1980s that the goats were really diverged into not necessarily two different breeds, because they haven't separated yet. But there's one line that's generally bred for meat. Right. Like the original version. Got you. The other line is bred as a novelty. They tend to be smaller and just faint. Like that. Cuter. Faint longer. Yeah. Because if you just kind of leave it alone. Myotonia is worse as a younger worse early in life. Yes. They get kind of used to it, sometimes more. They adapt to it. They're not as scared later in life. So, yeah. Younger goat is more prone to fall over. Exactly. But I think if you compare an adult fainting goat bread in that line to be a novelty to a goat that was bred for its meat of the same age, the novelty goat is going to probably fall over at the drop of a hat. Right. Because Farmer thinks that's funny. Well, the other reason that Robert says they can't find much evidence of this anymore, but I guess back in the day, and it sort of makes sense, they would add some of these fainting goats to their herd of regular goats in case there were predators around. Pack of wolves come up, scares the little pebbly duty out of these goats, and then the stiff goats fall over and get eaten while the other ones take off and run. So essentially, it's almost like they're not bait, but a much easier kill. Keep the wolves occupied so the rest of them can escape. You know what they are? What? A sacrificial lamb. Yeah, you're right. That's exactly what they are. But there's no evidence that that's really the reason that they're breeding them now. No. And there's apparently not much evidence that or how much that was used. I think it could have just been a good idea. Right. Yeah. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office when you could be using stamps.com? Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses, because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need, right. From your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary. And you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS rates and 86% off Ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No longterm commitments or contracts, just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. So, Chuck, the idea of make no mistake, myatonia is a deficiency. It's a disorder, it's not a desirable trait. So the idea of taking, because it's an undesirable trait, under natural selection, it shouldn't exist. Right. Right. Because if you take a feeding goat out in nature, like you said, along with a herd of sheep or other goats or whatever no. They'll be the first eating and then they won't have a chance to reproduce eventually, and that trade will die out. But then being bred for that, for an undesirable trait and then protected by humans, whether by a fence or like a hillbilly with a shotgun or whatever, that's called unnatural selection. Right? Yeah. Nothing natural about it. No. Or artificial selection is another way to put it. Yeah. And anytime something like that happens, there's going to be some people, probably at an organization called PETA that might stand up and say, I don't know if this is such a cool thing for humans to do. And PETA, as expected, isn't the biggest fan of raising feigning goats. Humane Society isn't so worried about it. They say there's a lot more breeding issues in the world that we should be more concerned about. And neither one of them have an official stance? No. The woman from Peter that Robert interviewed in this article sounded like she hadn't heard of feigning goats until he called her. Oh, really? Yeah. That's the impression I got. Yeah. The quote is a little vague, isn't it? Yeah, she just like the standard Peter quote, just plug in the animal. But who knows? There is no official stance, though, so maybe Robert alerted her to this whole phenomenon. Yeah, but they have an official stance now and it stopped breeding fainting goats. It's a little late for that, though. It's recognized and prized as a separate American breed of goat. There's about 3000 to 5000 of them running around and then falling over. Right. And they don't look like they're going anywhere. The livestock conservancy, I think is what it's called, suggest that this breed of goat be very much protected and taken care of and conserved is, I guess, the best word to use. Did I tell you about emily and the little baby goat. At the winery? No, at the winery in Athens. No, we went to right before this La trip. We went to Santa Barbara wine country, and we went in this one winery, and as we were going in, there was a guy with a dog outside, and of course, we attacked this dog and repetting it. He said, yeah, they wouldn't let in because they got a baby goat in there. So Emily here says, of course, and it's just like inside saying, Where's the goat? Where's the goat? This lady has probably about a six week old kid in her arms, wrapped in a blanket that has some sort of physical ailment, not feigning a goat syndrome. It was part human. Part human? It had human hands? No, but she had this little baby kid, and Emily goes over and starts drooling, and the lady says, do you want to hold it? In less than a second, the goat swap had been made, and for the next 20 minutes, this goat is literally like, nuzzling Emily in the neck. And I took about 20 pictures of the range of emotions on Emily's face. Yeah. Was there any crying at all? There wasn't crying. It was a type of ecstasy that you rarely see in an adult human female. That is very cool. Yeah. Very cute. Like, long story short, we own that goat now. Yes. No, not true. My aunt used to have a pigmy goat in California along the Russian River. Did they not get big? I guess. No. I would say a pygmy feigning goat would be about the cutest combination. Yeah. Especially one that has to shine your shoes with, like, big doe eyes or something. Those kittens. Oh, man, I can't watch that. Yeah, it just doesn't look right. It's awesome. I think, because they don't look like they're hurt. They don't look injured. They just look surprised every time, and then fine. Well, kids look surprised with everything. They have that constant look at. Surprise. Yeah. Anything else? No. We've touched on the satanic nature of goat meat. Goats, fainting goats, fainting kittens. Unnatural selection. Tennessee, Texas, the 19th century. And that's about it, right, Emily's? Unnatural love of animals. Yeah, myoconic jerks. Yeah, everything's right on. And now when you see these videos and you show your buddies, you can now tell people something, you should know exactly what's going on. Say they're not fainting at all, actually. Yeah. Stupid. So if you want to learn more about fainting goats, remember, go to YouTube. Youtube.com. And type in Feintinggoats and then Feintinggoatkittens, which doesn't really make sense. It could just be Feinting kittens, but still. Yeah. And you'll see some hilarity. You can also learn more about feigning goats in a very well written and well researched article by Robert Lam of Stuff to Blow Your Mind How Fainting Goats Work. Type that into the handy search bar, Howstep Works.com, and that will bring that up. And that means I just brought up listener mail. That's right, Josh. I'm going to call this a real CSI. Dude. This is from Ed in Chico, California. Hey, josh and Chuck. Jerry. I'm a crime scene investigator for a municipal police department in rural Northern California. Being a CSI is just one of my collateral assignments. I'm also an evidence technician, and I have a couple of other titles, depending on who has given me orders that day. Nearly every agency in my area has trained cops or civilians to be a CSI when needed, not as a standalone assignment. So that kind of answers one of the questions we had. I showed interest in being a CSI when I started my evidence assignment four years ago and was sent to basic CSI school, then later advanced CSI Crime Scene Reconstruction School. He skipped right over intermediate. Yeah, I guess so. Skipped it. And finally, blood spatter analysis. We also do monthly in house training on topics like photography, trajectories, DNA collection, buried body excavation, et cetera. Our CSIS are jacks of all trades since our agencies are too small to be able to afford specialized positions. Your show is very well researched and had all the highlights of blood spatter and forensic photography. And as a sidebar, while we do have two big, expensive $2,000 SLR cameras, we really only use them for the most specialized photos, like nighttime crime scenes. 99% of the time they use a point and shoot from Walmart. Really? Yeah. I could see that, though. I mean, that technology has gotten good enough to that. I'm sure. I know, but it would just seem weird if you saw Dexter, like, walk up with a little point and shoot. Yeah. And plus, I think if you were the family of, like, a murder victim and you saw some guy walk off the point, too, you'd be like, are you even supposed to be here? Yeah. How about a real camera? How about a little respect? You mentioned blood voids at a crime scene. We call them blood shadows. I like that one, too. That's pretty cool. I enjoy being a CSI, but like Josh said ages ago, television ain't nothing like reality. I can't stand watching those shows to drive me crazy, but they're not based in reality. Writing in reality, DNA evidence takes one to two months, and latent prints can take four or five months, not four to six minutes. Yeah, and the other thing is, everybody is just a jack of all trades. Like, oh, I got these prints off of this scene, and I'm going to go analyze them and I'm going to go, like, shake down the bad guys, right? Spend more money on an ensemble, will you? Thank you. Ed from Chico. That was it? Yeah, that was it. Sorry to end your letter with a rant from me, Ed. Thank you very much for your illuminating letter. We appreciate it. We want to hear from you. First of. All. You can go check us out on Facebook, facebook. Comstuffyshtnow. You can follow us on Twitter suskpodcast and you can join our Kiva team. Kiva.org teamstepychenko. You can also always email us. And specifically, if you have ever tampered with natural selection through artificial selection, we want to hear about it. Send us an email about this. Right, Chuck? That's right. That's stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Want more housetofworks? Check out our blog on the Housetofworks.com homepage. Hey everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and 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 are pet moms too. We make natural, high quality pet food that's rooted in science. It's the world's best food for the world's best kids. Learn more@halopeet.com." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2016-08-25-sysk-customs-final.mp3 | This Custom of Customs | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/this-custom-of-customs | Customs may be a pain when you're traveling, but it's a necessary instrument the government uses to regulate trade. And it has a very fascinating history. Your passport please? | Customs may be a pain when you're traveling, but it's a necessary instrument the government uses to regulate trade. And it has a very fascinating history. Your passport please? | Thu, 25 Aug 2016 07:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=25, tm_hour=7, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=238, tm_isdst=0) | 56880139 | 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 then most of all, there's Jerry over there. There. Jerome jester, first of all, yeah. And this is stuff you should know. That's right. Jerry's all dirty from shoveling coal from the steam technology. She is. And if you don't mind, I would like to point out something very exciting. No, I do mind. Let's keep going. This is the very first episode out of 870 plus episodes where Josh is wearing short pants. Why would you say that? I do mind. I take it back. Because I've seen you wear shorts, like, twice in my life. Well, hold on, hold on. Get a load of this. Well, aside from every morning when we tumble out of our bunk beds, of course, when you're wearing your cut off tuxedo pants, those are boxers. But yeah, you never wear shorts as a rule, so I was astounded that you wore them into the office. Well, I like astounding you. I like to just mix things up once every eight years. I look forward to what's going to happen in Year 16, 2032. That's some quick math, Chuck. Hey. I used to play darts. Oh. You know, there's a dartboard here, but no backboard. Yeah, it's just like freewheeling. Who cares about the drywall kind of situation here? Pretty much crazy. 16 is a big number in darts, so you get used to adding and subtracting it. Yeah. What's the Bullseye worth? A million? Well, I mean, it depends. There's historically two games that you'll play in darts, either cricket or 1301 or 501. I've never heard that second one. Well, that's really the main game. Like, if you watch professional darts when they show it once a year on ESPN, which is great fun, by the way. Sure. They're playing one, which is where you start with 301 or 501, and you work your way down to zero. Oh, so you're getting rid of points. Yeah. So you're throwing just for as high numbers as you can, the triple ring. And, like, a ton 80 is the most you can hit. It's three triple 20s, which is amazing. What's the bullseye worth then? The Bullseye and one is worth 50 on the red and 25 on the green. Okay. And then you have to why? We should do a show on this. Yeah, I guess we are right now. And then you have to go out on let's say you have 32 left. You have to go out on a double, so you have to double 16 to go out. Man, that sounds tough. And everybody does this drunk. Yes. That's really impressive. Right? I didn't know you played darts so much. Yes, I played in Athens in the league and then Atlanta in the league. And Justin, he's like, chairman or something, of the dart league, of course. At least he makes everybody call him that. Right. Call me Chairman. We should do one of darts. Man, I used to love playing. I just don't do it much anymore. Okay, let's do it. So shorts, darts and Systems and how we podcast. Yeah. And on Wednesdays we wear pink. Today is Tuesday, though, so I'm wearing shorts. I'm wondering how many things I got wrong just in that little five minute. Anytime we explain something, we get something wrong. Have you noticed? Sure. And our job is to explain things, which is sad. I know. So, Chuckers, you know how when you go through the airport yes. And you come back into the country from out of the country? When we were in the UK, did you notice it took longer than usual to get through the airport to your stuff and out? Yes. Although Emily and I got pretty lucky. It was a pretty speedy experience. Oh, was it? Yeah. That's great. But it can vary wildly. Yeah. And the thing that can vary wildly is called Customs passing through customs. And actually, it used to be Customs and Immigration, which, depending on the port you're flying into, whether it be a seaport, an airport, space port, interdimensional port, teleport heliport. Yes. Scuba port. Sure. Submarine port. Yeah. Thin airport. I guess that's the same as an airport. Those might have been two different agencies, customs and Immigration. Not so. In 2003, as of 2003, in the United States, they were mixed together and put under Department of Homeland Security. And now they're called Customs and Border Protection. That's right. And they're one agency now. Yes. But the point is, when you come through there, if you encountered back in the day, the Customs Agency, they would have said, hey, you're a person. We don't care about you. We don't care where you've been, we don't care where you're going, we don't care where you were born. But we want to know what's on you, what you buy while you are out of the country? Did you buy something? Tell us. They might grab your shirt and shake you a little bit. If they're tough guys and you start crying, for sure, they'd see to it. And then if you say, Well, I got this $1000 watch, they say, you owe the United States government some money, buddy. That's right. It is a way to regulate importing and exporting. Yeah. And when trade. Right, trade, exactly. And trade is obviously a very old concept. Right? Yeah. Any time one group had a surplus that another group wanted, I got lots of potatoes. Well, I got lots of wheat. Right. Let's trade. Let's trade. Right. Well, at some point, people said, wait, this is going way too smoothly. We need to interject a federal entity to extract some sort of tribute from this trade. Sure. That's what a duty is. That's what a tariff is. It's a government coming in and saying, we want a piece of that action. And depending on how you look at it. It can go one way. Like, you can say, well, the federal government is actually promoting domestic business. Which is true in a way. Right? Yeah. It's a good way to discourage doing business overseas by imposing heavier and heavier tariffs. Yeah. Because if somebody's manufacturing potatoes overseas cheaper than they're manufactured here, the American people are going to say, well, we want these Irish potatoes. They're way cheaper. It's better, too. Sure. And the US government will say, well, we want you guys buying domestic potatoes because it helps our economy. Yes. Have you ever been to Idaho? Right. Everybody loves Idaho. Why don't you want to help out the Idahoans? And so they'll place a tariff or duty or just basically an extra tax on potatoes that are sourced from outside of the country coming in so that they cost about the same, so that any red blooded American will say, well, it's about the same to buy Idaho potato as it is to buy an Irish potato. I'm going to buy the Idaho potato. And the federal government goes, yeah. They say. Look at it. It's stamped with a pesticide that says, Made me let's say, yeah, they stamp it with a pesticide. I was thinking how that would work. Should we talk a little bit about the history of this? Yeah. Because this is actually this technique of the US federal government, certainly not just the US that does this, but there are customs agencies. It's just about any developed country around the world, and I would say developing as well. Yeah. This custom of customs oh, thank you. It's about as old as the United States itself. Yeah. And like everything in the United States, it starts with Alexander Hamilton. It's true. That guy is so hot right now. He's so hot. I just bought some Alexander Hamilton futurist the other day, so I'm sitting pretty. You just broke my brain. So what happened was Hamilton said, here's the deal, dudes. We don't have taxation yet because we were fleeing that kind of junk. Right. But we're in trouble because we need some sort of revenue going to support our growing government. Not only that, and our growing nation's infrastructure. Plus we have a lot of debts from the Revolutionary War. Loads of debts. Apparently, the early Congress used to decamp from one city to another because they were being chased by war veterans who were owed money. Oh, sure. They had nowhere to go. They had no Washington, DC. Yet. No, but it was Congress, and they were on the run from Revolutionary War vets who wanted their money. So while Hamilton did not himself start the US Custom Service where did you find this? The National US. Customs Museum Foundation. Yeah, straight from the horse's mouth. Sure. They counted him as the intellectual father of customs, which I think is a great way to put it, because he said, look, we can't have a federal government unless the federal government can support itself. And the only way the federal government can support itself is if it imposes levies on things that it really has nothing to do with. Yeah. So president George Washington, the number one guy, said, hamilton, you're onto something here. I like the cut of your jib, Hamilton, but it's a little weird with domestic taxation right now. Yeah, we can't do that. Yeah. People aren't keen on that just yet, but we'll screw people far worse in the future. Don't you worry. Yeah. Just wait. But right now, people aren't hip to the idea. Yeah. We tried to tax corn and the whiskey rebellion happened. So why don't we do this? Why don't we impose tariffs on imports and raise money that way? And let's create the first congress. Let's get together and create the US. Custom service four months after we ratify the constitution. Yeah. Pretty quick. Really quick. And it quickly grew to be for many years, in fact, for most of the history of the United States, the single largest government agency in terms of size and revenue yeah. For the first 122 years of its existence, it was the number one revenue generator. And then the IRS came along and they said they said, you can take it if you can collect revenue. Yeah. Just watch this. Yeah. And they did. In 2015, the customs agency collected, I think, $35 billion. Crazy. Yeah. The IRS collected $33 trillion. Oh my God. I know. My stomach turns. Yeah. Wow. That really threw me. I didn't expect that's. Enough to make you a libertarian, isn't it? All right, so I mentioned Washington, DC. When earlier we don't even have money from tariffs. Built Washington, DC. Money from tariffs. Built the transatlantic transcontinental railroad. Right. Built all those lighthouses that we talked about, the Louisiana purchase, the purchase of Alaska Stewart's folly. 1.5 million sq mi of land purchased using tariffs via the customs office. Right. If it hadn't been for the customs agency, the United States would have only been able to expand its territory through broken treaties, which we were fine doing. Sure. But apparently they wanted to legitimize it somewhat. Yeah. So we said, well, we'll just pay for some of it. Yeah. Pay Napoleon penny's on the dollar. Give us that area. Okay. Like we said, they were the first and only federal law enforcement agency, and for a long time they handled kind of everything. Oh, yeah. They were doing way many more things than they should be doing. So out of the customer service was born things like immigration, like you said. Sure. Coast guard, border patrol, the VA. Public health service and the DEA. All were formerly all that stuff was under the purview of the customer service and the census bureau and the standards and measures agency, all those cats. Because apparently it used to be congress would say, oh, we need this. We need to start doing this. Just have customs do it. And customs would do it. For decades and then finally be like, dude, we have to calve this off as its own agency. Yeah. Eventually, they got smart. Yeah. And now that's what makes what happened in 2003 so curious. Customs itself got folded in with other agencies and then put under the banner of another, larger agency, the exact opposite of what has historically been the case. Yeah. I didn't think of it that way. Yeah. So the Customs Agency and Services is a long tradition in its early years of what was called the spoil system, and that's basically cronyism political loyalties and hooking your buddies up and your donors up, but like, fat cat jobs, not in any kind of underhanded or shady or back room deal. Way overtly. Yes. Like, you raised a lot of political funds for my campaign, so here's a cherry position in the federal government's bureaucracy. Yeah. Via the Custom Service. Yeah. And there have been some famous men over the years. Yes. Some of our best writers, actually. Yeah. Weirdly. Nathaniel Hawthorne, he was not too distant. He was an ancestor of the Pilgrims, a descendant. Right. They were his ancestors. Right. Backwards. And he's the great grandson of the judge who sat at the Salem Witch Trials. So he got a fat position with the Boston Custom House as the weigher engager. Yeah. Which apparently is pretty important because you'd be like, let me gauge that steel to see how much money you owe. Right. Yeah. And it allowed him to make money enough. Sure. Because they were on the side. Don't you think it's a more less expensive gauge than what you just got? And he would say, Lay it on me, string bean. Yes. And he'd say, I'm going to knock off at noon today and go write some more stuff. Yeah. The museum website makes this case, like, not just for Hawthorne, but later on for Melville, too, that both of them were able to pursue their writing careers because of the stability that the working at Customs gave them. They credit the Customs Agency for bringing Herman Melville out of an alcoholic depression following his failed attempt at a career in writing. Yeah. And this is a side note, but I didn't even realize that Melville was not popular until after his death. Yeah. Moby Dick didn't blow up till, what, like 24 years later? Something like that. Yeah. Everybody's like, this book stinks. I still haven't read it. Avia. No. Have you ever read Bartleby the Scribner, though? I made it through that. No, it's one of his better short stories. It's just weird. No, I don't think I read an email bill. That's a good one. I've got Billy Budd and I've read maybe a third of it. It's just so tough to read that guy's writing. Yeah. I think probably even back then, it was tough. But to be failed century and a quarter, century and a half removed from that type of thought and that type of language in writing, it's even harder. Stents. Yeah. For a while there, I was kind of on the mind of, like, can I die without having read Moby Dick? And I kind of struggle with that. And then I was like, I could be, like, just about everybody. No, I could totally I'm fine. Yeah. So you're not going to do it? No, I'd rather see a movie I haven't seen. It only takes a couple of hours of my waning years that I have in front of me 30 movies. Casa Blanca have still never seen that. And I need to see that before I should not die without seeing it. Yeah. And you should see train spotting. Sure, why not? The two classics, right? I guess we need to talk about Prohibition a little bit, too, with Customs and their history, because we had a great episode on Prohibition. Sure. What they call it? The Noble Experiment. Yeah, I never called it that. The dumb experiment. But this article points out that never in the history of Customs has it been more dangerous to work for Customs than during Prohibition. Like straight up gangster stuff who are much more well funded than Customs was, and they would wack you for getting in their way. It was also, like, a high time for bribery, too. Customs agents were bribed like mad. Oh, I'm sure. And actually, I don't know if it was a General Accounting Office or somebody did an investigation of Customs and said, we haven't found any systematic bribery going on. Right. Or systemic bribery, but just the very presence of drugs in the United States, like, in the massive quantities it's in, indicates that somebody's getting bribed somewhere. It's just impossible not to. We should do a show on rum runners, too. Sure. Because just this little piece tickled my fancy. They had much better boats and much faster boats than customs did, so they would bring this mother ship. They called it park. It a few miles offshore where it was legal to be there international water loaded with rom. Right. And then the speed boats would for the time, speed boats would just make runs out to this boat as fast as they could. And the customs people were like, we need speedy boats, too. Right. Well, that's where speedboats came from. It's Prohibition. Yeah. And I think we already talked about the NASCAR thing with the fast cars came from Prohibition. So a lot of speed came out of Prohibition? Yes. And not the druggie kind? No, that came out of the Nazis in World War II. Oh, really? That's the rumor. I don't know. Well, let's take a break and then we'll come back and talk bit more about what Customs means today. Chuck yes. So we're back. We're talking Customs, and when you talk Customs, you're talking again about the line of defense between unfettered trade across borders and not just among major companies like importers and exporters and manufacturers and consumers and all that, but also on an individual level, which is why it takes so long to come into the states or another country because you have to go through customs. Right. Their aim is to regulate trade no matter how large or how small. Yeah, and I kind of was surprised that they generated the kind of revenue they did because I was only thinking about schmoes like US. But big businesses, I was a dummy. I wasn't even thinking that they play obviously the biggest part in revenue because they pay those big tariffs on millions and billions of dollars worth of goods that they import. And it's tough to regulate that kind of stuff. You can't inspect every shipping container that comes in, although it's very random. There is something called the Safe Ports Act that was passed in 2006 and it called for 100% of containers that inner US ports of any type to be scanned either with X rays or Cat scans or something like that, but to be non invasively, scanned 100%. And it was supposed to be up to 100% by 2012. Didn't happen. They gave it a two year extension. Didn't happen. Gave it another two year extension. It should be now, right? Yeah. Still hasn't happened. Yeah, but they're ramping up though. Here's the thing. There's a big debate like the National Retail Federation I think is the big mouthpiece for manufacturers in this argument. They're saying, dude, you can't do it. Like if you do this, it will cease trade, it will wreck trade in the United States. And other people are saying like, well, you guys need to figure that out because we've got to have our port safe. We need to know everything that's coming in. Why would it wreck trade? Because it will just hold delays. The delays. I remember when this first got proposed and they were trying to implement it. I think it was like an MPR piece about the port at Long Beach and there was just like all this fruit just sitting there rotting offshore because there was a line, I remember that, to get the stuff inspected. Yeah, I guess that makes sense. And so they're saying still they're pushing for this 100% mandate and the people involved in importing and exporting and manufacturing and stuff are saying like, you can't do it, you just can't do it yet. There's got to be other ways. And some of the other ways they're talking about are like having E seals where like a container is verified to have X amount of weight or whatever and then it's on the sealed digitally. And then when it enters a port it goes through like an RFID scanner and the ECL is verified intact somehow. Right. And then you know, you have a pretty great idea that the container has not been messed with since it's point of view. It's an awesome idea. It is. But at the same time you have to rely on the people at the point of origin not to be like, yeah, sure, there's the same amount of cocaine that we put in there at the port where we sent it from. So, yeah, it weighs the same, but it's still cocaine that you don't want in the country. Right. You know what I mean? Sure. Depending on who you are. Well, then maybe the country of export, their regulations need to be stiffer, I guess. Sure. Yeah. There's an international proposal called the Safety of Life at Sea, I think, where it's mandating 100% of all containers worldwide need to be weighed and verified before setting sail. Interesting. So I guess if you put those together, you could have a pretty legitimate international trade network. We should do one on shipping containers sometime because apparently that changed the world. Well, this sounds like it could be a big part of our platform for our run for the presidency in 2020. So are we in favor of the 100% mandate, or do we think it's insane? Well, I'll say we figured that out. Okay. But either way, that's going to be a big deal. I like your RFID thing. Okay. It's not mine per se. No, sure it is. I just said what somebody else came up. As far as I'm concerned, it's yours. Thanks. So, all right. We were talking about business, of course, just then, but before, you teased with the single individual, which is what most of us, unless you're an importer or exporter, have had more experience with. Sure. So what happens is you come into the United States or any country yeah, but we're US. Citizens, so we'll come back home from abroad. Sure. Which we just did after our wonderful trip to Ireland and the United Kingdom. That's true. And they count on you just as though they can't inspect every shipping container. They can't investigate each of our individual shipping containers, which is our body and our suitcases. So they count on you to honestly declare say, I declare that I bought I'm not going to pay a lot for this monthly that I bought in France. I bought my daughter a little backpack. I think it's ugly, but she likes it. And I bought my mother a tea towel at Q Gardens. I just think it's gross. And that's it. That's all we bought. It was all 45 American dollars. And I'm going to write this down, a piece of paper and hand it to you and take my word for it. Yes. And we should talk about this. Chuck I found a great explainer from Mental Floss that really breaks down the procedure and the expectations of when you, the individual traveler entering the United States, are expected to say to customs, right? Yeah. So $45, surely you can just be like, who cares about a tea towel and a backpack that my daughter is using? That's just luggage now. So, anyway, you would think obviously, you don't have to say anything about this, right. $45? Well, if you're a dummy, yes. Supposedly. Not only are you supposed to declare this and write down the value of what you think it is or what you think the value is. Or the actual value based on the receipt. If. Chuck. You take your daughter's backpack now that you've bought it and already brought it into the country. If you take it back out and. Like. One of the straps comes off and you get it fixed abroad. You have to write down that you got your daughter's backpack fixed abroad and how much that cost you. Yeah. Or if, like, boy, I've been loading up on pastries in Paris. I need to have my pants let out an inch. Yeah. Supposedly, you have to cover that and claim your new, larger pants. Anything you buy, inherit, or have repaired abroad or altered, you have to declare. Right. You don't necessarily have to pay a duty on it, though. And that's where the exemptions come in. Yeah. And it varies from country to country in the United States. What is it, $800? It depends on where you are. $800 is typical, but it can go up to $1,600 if you're in an insular possession like Guam, American Samoa, or the US. Virgin Islands. Right. You can buy one $600 worth of stuff and bring it in duty free. Or if you're married, you can declare as a family. And each individual gets that allotment correct. Right. So if you have something that's like $1,200 and Emily is bringing in something that's like $400, you can combine the two and both jointly declare them for $1,600, you can combine your exemptions. But let me say that on vacation, you've never bought anything for $1,000 except food and wine, and that's the cumulative amount. Right. Maybe an exotic lizard, but that's a whole other bag. Yeah. But there was a good rate going on those, right. Bush meat. Like, it's almost cheaper to buy it than not buy it abroad. Buy one here, get ripped off. I remember I might have said this one before. My friend Andrew, one time, his old grandmother was talking about how it's cheaper to go on a cruise than to just stay in New York. So she cruised all the time, is that right? She was like, yeah, it's cheaper to go on the cruise. I don't know if that's true, but for her it was. Yeah, or at least she said it was. I thought it was very quaint and funny. At least, you mean. I went on a cruise and there was a legendary woman on there who had been on we went in, like, May. There's a woman who'd been on since, like, December. Wow. She just kept, like, signing up for the next cruise, stayed on the boat the whole time. It was just having the time of her life. Crazy. We never saw her, though. I think they just use that to be like, don't you want to sign up for the next one? And then when you say no, they don't speak to you for the rest of the cruise. That'd be great, actually. Don't bother me. Yeah. Give me alone. Where else? There are different growth programs in certain countries like the Caribbean and sub Saharan Africa, where you can bring back more duty free items. So I guess just trying to encourage more trade with those places. Right. Which makes sense. Yeah. So you have an exemption up to $800, and after that, after the $800, you have to start paying duty on stuff. Right. Duty. And obviously, if you go over by $100, you're going to get hit hard. No, not the case. Okay. I thought you were being serious. No, duty is still not that much. It's nothing. So I think the first $1,000 after your exemption, so you would have to spend one $800 on stuff that you're bringing back in. Right. It's still just 3%. Yeah. So if you're trying to, like so what is that? $30 on $1,000 worth of stuff? Yeah. If you bought a couple of things for a couple of you're trying to sneak it in there to avoid duty, you're just being foolish, you're dummy. Yeah. It's like a few dollars right. On that level. And the mental false article actually makes it the point that you won't even necessarily be charged that extra additional duty, because that requires paperwork that the customs officer has to fill out to collect five or $10 from you. They're probably just going to be like, just keep it go. Right. It's not a whole lot. Yeah. You don't have any bags of cocaine and pellets in your stomach, do you? No. Come on, look at me. And they go, all right, we'll go through. What's funny is you're allowed one liter of booze, right? 200 cigarettes. Yep. And 100 cigars. Yes. Which is a lot of cigars. Yeah, that's what I thought. Unless you're an infant or a baby. Right. You can have the $800 exemption as a baby, but it doesn't apply to tobacco or alcohol. Right. But so you're just allowed one liter per person through customs, duty free. And what's funny is everybody stops right there. Oh, well, I can't have more than one leader. Right. You can buy more than one leader. And if it's, like, $25, you're going to spend 75 extra cents on the duty. Right. It doesn't matter. Yeah. And I want to go on record as saying I hate duty free shops. Why? Because they are awful. And especially in an international airport, you're forced to walk through this giant cosmetics assault of cosmetics in perfumey sense. And, you know, me and my smells like I started sneezing walking through there. I was looking up, I was like, how much of a deal is this? And it really depends on what you're getting. Well, with alcohol and tobacco especially, it's usually a much better deal. Well, it. Depends on where you are and what you're buying. Like, I looked up this one site that compared a lot of airports and booze, and, like, this one booze, I don't even know. It was something some Italian booze cristal in, like, Germany. It was 50% cheaper. Oh, really? So very good deal, right. But then I looked up Jack Daniels, and they listed 14 airports around the world, and it was no more than, like, $3 cheaper at any of them. Or \u20ac3. I think it's more like the thrill of buying some booze at an airport. That's what I think it is. It's just a big scam. You go duty free, everybody. Well, what's funny is if you buy $1,000 with a booze, you will get that first leader exempted, but then after that, you have to pay a duty on it even if you bought it at the duty free airport. Right. Because duty free, when it's a duty free store, like, they're saying, we don't have to pay duty on it. We're going to pass the savings on to you. But if you're past your exemption when you go into your home country, you have to pay duty because the duty free refers to the owners of the store. Yeah. They should be called duty free for me, right. And maybe for you, depending on where you're at with your exemption. Yeah, which is a clunky thing to call an area airport. Instead, they just call it things remembered. Well, I didn't know this because I haven't been on a transatlantic flight in so many years, but they saw that junk on the plane. Oh, yeah. They were walking up and down the aisle talking watches. That doesn't bother me as much as the credit card pushing the credit cards. So they have, like, a seven minute announcement about how they have this great credit card deal and get it now, and don't you want this? And then they send the people up the aisle like, Credit card, credit card. Who wants a credit card? I just want to fly in peace. Yeah, that's what I want to do is just fly on Delta and listen to stuff you should know and watch your Internet roundup. Hey, shout out to Virgin Atlantic. So I had a good experience flying with them. They're a partner of Delta. I wouldn't expect anything less. Yeah, it was very nice. They don't nickel and dime you, and I said that on the website now. They're pretty awesome. Or on Facebook the other day, and someone from the UK said, what does nickel and dime you mean shilling and tuppents? Yeah, I guess. Pence and farthings, maybe. No, I said, I guess it's a strictly American term for, like, just charging you little bits for every little thing. Like the pillows. This much the movie? Is this much the earphones. Oh, yeah, for sure. All the movies were free. They give you headphones, which I already had my own, and give you an eye mask and a toothbrush and it's all just very nice and civil like it used to be. They put you in a sleeper hold until you fall asleep if you ask them to. Yes. This lovely English gentleman put me in a sleeper. It was hilarious. He said night to night. You sleep now, mate. All right. Have we covered duty in its fullness? No, but we should probably take a break. All right. More duty after this. All right, Chuck, we're back. We're talking about duty. I hate duty. Do you? No, I just hate that I already went off on duty free. It feels like just that gross consumerism, like Black Friday. Yeah, duty free. Let me buy booze and perfume. I know what you mean. The thing is a smart traveler tip for you here, if you ever have a layover at an airport yes. Make your way, and especially if it's early morning or you had an overnight flight or whatever, make your way to the duty free section. Go to that cosmetic section and look for stuff like toner or under eyeball or something like that. And brother, it is refreshing. Really? Yeah. They've got all the samples there and it's like just stuff that will make you feel human again. I like this. It's a little brief, just enough to get you where you're going. All right, back to duty. Well, here's a few things I thought mental plot is always so great about. I want to point out, Chuck, every single time one of us said duty, jerry's like Snickered over there. She has? Yeah, because she thinks it's spelled D-O-O-D-Y. Mental floss is always so great about adding fun little lists to their articles. Yeah. Listicle. Yeah. Well, this isn't quite a listicle, but they gave a few examples of some weird regulations and they have one on absenth. Oh, yeah. You can bring absenth back, but it has to be that cannot have the ingredient. How do you pronounce that? It's sujone. Yes, sure. Thou June. Suhonne. I don't know what the country of origin is. I didn't even know that was in there. I thought wormwood was the active ingredient. Well, it may not be the active ingredient. I don't know. And then customer says the term absence cannot be the brand name and it cannot stand alone on the label, the actual word absence. And this one's hysterical. The artwork cannot project images of hallucinogenic, psychotropic or mind altering effects. Right. Like it can't have on the bottle. Like a guy going, whoa. It can't be WOWY. Zowie. Brand absent. Yeah. Which of course, that would be psychedelic. Sure, everybody knows wowisowy means oh, I thought you were going to say Wavy Gravy. That's what I was thinking. That would work, too. What else? As of 2000, the year 2000, you can't bring in anything made of dog or cat fur. Awesome. Yeah. I can't believe that this is a law that had to be passed. Well, in other countries, they do different things with dogs and cats. So if you have a dog skin cap, you better prepare to have that thing confiscated at the border. Yeah. And spanked by me. You just hang out at Customs. Bring him over here. This one is interesting. Haitian animal hide drums from animal skin. You can't take it back because of anthrax and remember our own stuff. You should know, TV show had a subplot in an episode about a disease from a drum brought back by Fake Jerry. That's right. Played by Lucy Waynewright. Yes. She brought back a drum that had was it anthrax with necrotizing fasciitis? Is that what that one was? Yeah, it had some disease on the drum head. But apparently and we wrote this episode, so I guess we got it from the fact that it's a real thing. I just don't remember. I don't either. I don't even recall our TV show. I don't either. I drank to forget. So, Chuck yes. We haven't really talked about the big thing that Customs is known for. Not just regulating trade and shipping containers and all that, but thwarting smugglers. Right. Yes. Because you talk a little bit about rum runners and that kind of thing still goes on. There's be boat chases. Yeah. They search you in an airport. Sure. Yeah. That's the thing about Customs, is they do not have to have a warrant to search you. They don't even have to have probable cause. They can take everything out. Yeah. I don't like what your hair looks like. I think you look like a drug smuggler. Yeah. And come into this room and take your clothes off and there's like a story, I guess, of Customs agents, like, just looking at somebody and being like, that guy's drug mule. And the person turns out to be a major drug mule. Yeah. And they tried I read this article in Los Angeles Times. I can't remember what it was called, but it was about how the Customs agency is trying to quantify that or turn it into, like, a seminar. Right. Like, take these decades of experience and intuition and figure out how to sniff somebody off the cave. And apparently they turned to behavioral science. Really? Like, there's courses that they teach customs and Border Patrol or Border Protection, how to suss out lying or deception, how to racially profile, probably. Yeah. But I think in this particular, it's a different course. Right. This one is they say, well, if somebody has a hat or newspaper, something like that, they might put it between you and them, because they're putting up a barrier because they're deceiving micro expressions. Right. Micro expressions, body language, speech patterns. I guess if you have a very pat, streamlined answer of where you were abroad right. That's going to raise the flag. Interesting. Yeah. If you're too smooth, that's way more unusual than somebody being like, well, also, I went to Canada. And I wasn't going to go to Canada, but one of my friends said, let's go to Canada. So we went. But we were just going to hang out in New York. That's how I'm here. Yeah, that's a step over here. No, that's gone through. Oh, it is. You're such an obvious idiot. You couldn't possibly be trusted with a bunch. I thought there was a middle ground, if you're like. I just went to Montreal. Why do you ask? Right. Then they would say they say, Take those off. You clearly have a suitcase full of fabric eggs. What do you have in those shorts? But you were talking about drugs, which is the big thing. Again, I think you said that the DEA finds its origins in customs, right? That's right. And everyone works in concert today. The Custom Service will work with the DEA and the Coast Guard and Immigration and Naturalization because they all want to keep the drugs out. So the Custom Service will have a plane, one of those radar planes that flies very high above looking at boats, and then they'll see a boat that looks shady and they'll call down to the Coast Guard or maybe their own office, who calls the Coast Guard if you go out and let's see what's going on in that boat. Yeah, the description of this is hilarious. They basically just chase them in a boat until the guys decide to stop. What else are you going to do? And then they board the boat and say, put up your hand. And they do. If they have a plane, they will get a couple of things going on them. A jet plane to track from way behind, and then a Black Hawk helicopter to follow right behind the plane. Then they don't see them. Yeah, behind and beneath. And apparently you can't see. And I was thinking about them like, yeah. There's no side view mirrors on a plane. It's just hysterical to think about a drug plane just flying along like, this is great. There's a blackhawk helicopter right below them. Right. Just like, all right, suckers, just go ahead and land. And then we'll introduce ourselves. Right. That's what they do. Yeah. And some people just say, I'll take my chances walking through an airport with cocaine tape to my body. These are the people that make for the best crazy stuff smuggled through customs or crazy ways to smuggle drugs. But I wonder how many you hear about it on the news when someone gets caught. People get away with it a lot, I bet, right. Because that's what they're doing. They're playing the odds that you're just not going to get sniffed out. No, right, exactly. And I think it's probably exceedingly difficult these days to make it through, especially if you don't actually have it physically deposited inside your body. Right. Because of not just the drug dogs, but they have devices that can smell air, essentially. It's a sniffing device. Yes. And it figures out what molecules are floating around the air, and if it's like, oh, well, this is cocaine. There's probably cocaine in that person's suitcase, or whatever. Yeah, an electro vacuum is what that's called. Right. Amazing. Difficult to get around that. Difficult to get around a dog. Plus, also, you're also being scrutinized by the customs agent himself or herself. So I would imagine it's very tough to get it through unless you've ingested it. And some people have. There's a dude who got caught in, I think, Miami or Fort Lauderdale in 2015. He swallowed 100 and I think 48 pellets of coke. \u00a33 he had in his stomach. That's so dangerous. And another woman got busted with \u00a33 in her breasts. I remember that one. Breast implants. Crazy. So you'll still get busted, but I think you make a good point. I really wonder what the estimate is for how many people who actually do make it through unmolested. Yeah. Here was our deal coming back in this time, it was way easier and quicker than I thought. We filled out the little customs card on the plane. They didn't even ask for that. Yeah. We walked up and they asked her a couple of questions like, what did you bring in? We said a few gifts. How much was it worth? $80. Right. And they said, all right, welcome back. And I said, is that it? Walk through to the luggage. And I thought there would be a more heavily scrutinized process after that or something. And there wasn't. There were a couple of beagles, very cute, drug sniffing beagles, and they were walking around, and that was it. And then we got our stuff and left. Well, your bags had already, I'm sure, been x rayed and crazy, like, exposed to some other stuff. Yeah. And it's not just like at the airport. At ports like the border between Mexico and the United States. They have, like, truck size x rays. They make semi drive through. It's crazy. They X ray them, and that's part of that 100% initiative. They want to be able to do that to 100% of everything, all containers coming in the United States, like I said. Or they have x ray rooms, like in Total Recall where you just walk everyone through this room and they look for weird bulges right. Or hollow, empty spots that shouldn't be there. You still haven't seen Spinal Tap, have you? I have. Oh, you did? Yeah. But I don't remember a lot of it. When the bass player, Derek Smalls, played by Harry Shearer, he's going through and he has metal on them, and they have the metal wand, and it's going off every time they pass over his crotch, his groin area, and he's like, I know what's going on. I know what's going on. Finally, he takes a cucumber wrapped in tin foil, stuff down his pants. Why would it be wrapped in tinfoil? Well, that's just part of the greatness of that joke, I think that is a good joke. Yeah, it was very funny. What else? One of the things that got me, which is pretty smart, so they might take a dog on a plane, like, after it's deborted yeah. And have the dog sniff around, because they may miss it as you're walking past. But if you've been sitting on a plane for 8 hours, that drug smell is going to get into the seat. Farting cocaine smells exactly into that seat. And if that dog sniffs that, they'll say, well, who is in 13 B? And they'll say, oh, well, Josh Clark was you're in the duty free shop thinking like, I just got away with it. I'm putting some moisturizer on my face, thinking about all the money I'm going to have to buy moisturizer with. Next thing I know, there's a beagle sitting down next to me looking up, and I go, you know what you do, though? You just spray some rose water in the beagle's face and make a cap out of its fur. Oh, why did you have to go there? Another thing that they're looking for is cash money. Oh, yeah. Laundering money and getting it out of the country is a big deal. Yeah. The custom sees something like $53 million in bulk currency cash, I think what is it, ten grand that you have to declare coming back into the US. Anything over that and you can take as much in and out as you want, but you have to declare it because they want to keep track of that kind of stuff. Because I don't know if we said, in addition to goods being imported and exported, a country, especially like a centralized federal government, wants to know where its arms are going. Sure. They want to keep it in control of that and where it's money's going, because you can destabilize a country with both of those things. And so they try to keep a pretty good eye on where it's going and where it's coming from. Not just that it could destabilize the government, but they want a piece of it. They want to tax that stuff. One of the easiest ways to launder money is just smuggle it from one country to another, smuggle it out of the US. To a country that's not really paying nearly as much attention. Bam. You got some legitimate funds. Yes. And we did an episode of money laundering, correct? Yes, we did. And we did one on police dogs. Yeah. Our stink is all over this thing. It is. And then finally, one of the things that is a big deal, if you've ever traveled in and out of California, let's say, is one example they actually have a produce stop. Yeah. Where you're stopped in your car and they say, do you have any produce on you? Any vegetables, any plants? Just a cucumber with tinfoil wrapped around it. These are actually legal goods, but they are prohibited in certain areas because of infestations of various pests. And notably in California in the 1980s, a couple of things happened. The 1980s was a bad decade for the med fly in California early on in the early 80s, it was a bad infestation. And then Governor Jerry Brown had a series of missteps on whether or not to spray the state with this gross stuff that would kill the flies but also have bad effects on the environment. And he was an environmentalist, and I can't remember. I think he eventually did spray, but waited too long and costed a lot of money. But he also angered the environmentalist Jill B. Off, who was like, idiot. It may have been a no one situation, and I'm sure some Californians will have a better memory of this than me, but supposedly in the late 80s, there was one piece of bad fruit that caused a big med fly outbreak. And then I looked up in 1989, there was an intentional, supposedly eco terrorist attack where a group called the Breeders unleashed midfives in response in retaliation against all the spraying. Wow. Which doesn't make any sense because that would only mean they'd have to spray more. No, it's not very sensitive. They didn't really think it through, but I think that they eventually said, I don't think this is real. I think this was a hoax letter. But we also can't explain the concentration of some of these outbreaks, and it perhaps may have been intentional. Who knows? Wow. Yeah. Eco terrorism. Yeah. That's pretty surprising. But the idea that the first one, though, was just completely accidental. It was one bad piece of fruit that one traveler brought. I couldn't find, like, mango zero that started it. And I looked around a bunch, but I couldn't find verification on that. It's interesting, though. Yeah, hawaii is really big on that too. Oh, I bet. Yeah. And then I don't know if you remember, but last year, I think in May of 2015, johnny Depp caused a huge stink. He and Amber heard opening his mouth. He and Amber Heard were like they were in Australia for, I think, a premiere of one of those Pirates of the Caribbean thing. And they just brought their dogs with them on a private sending them through quarantine. It was a huge stink, and rightfully so. Like, just the arrogance. And Amber Heard is Amber Heard. I think both of them are just like, we don't have to deal. We'll just bring the dogs. Who cares? Who cares about the stupid quarantine law? Continents just an island. Yeah, I remember that. It's what do they call that? Privilege? Yes. Rules of entitlement. Yeah, entitlement. Yeah. We just shame them. Well, good. Johnny Depp doesn't listen to this. I think you're right. Finally. I already said finally. Cultural artifacts are regulated, although fine art supposedly is not subject to tariffs. Is that right? Right. No, they're big into cultural artifacts because so much of it is looted. I should say illegitimately. Looted. All those things are looted. But Ice. Apparently, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement is big in cultural artifacts. Repatriation. Right. And there's a difference between Ice and Customs and Border Patrol or Border Protection. Yes. Apparently Customs and Border Protection staffs the borders. They protect the borders. And then Ice, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement carries out law enforcement that has to do with Customs and Immigration within the United States. Got you. So once you make it through, once you make it past Customs and Border Protection, you still have to deal with Ice coming and finding, like kicking down your door. Right. And being like, give us back that Mesopotamian tablet. They say. Who are you? And they say we're ice. Yeah, it's played by the Rock, I imagine. The guy from the Shield, the ball dude. Yeah. I never saw that. I heard it was good, though. Great show. Yeah, it was definitely overshadowed by The Wire because they both came out at about the same time and The Wire was so great. It's not a fair comparison. They're just two different shows. But it was nuts, man. Like there were several episodes that were like episode four, the first season of True Detective just insane from beginning to end, you know? Yes. I think I realized after our talk when I said I didn't watch was it NYPD Blue and Order? Yeah, Law and Order. I have an aversion to coop shows. Oh, yeah, I think so. Like I watched The Wire and I watched Hill Street Blues in the never watched that. I love that show. Which is funny because it wasn't like a kid show for twelve year old kids. I know. And I don't think I've watched a whole lot of like I watched Dexter some, but that wasn't exactly this is more of a serial killer show than a cop show. Yeah, and it got really bad forensics show, man. Off the rails is yeah, but yeah, I don't watch a lot of cop shows. I did watch True Detective season One. That kind of counts. I went off the rails too. What, for season two? For season one, like the last couple of episodes. Yeah, it was kind of a letdown. Yeah, whatever. Who cares? Or it went on the rails. How about that? Yeah, who cares? It's TV. It's not important. And we can say that because we had a TV show. Yeah. It really didn't change our lives in any way. You got anything else? No. So that's customs. If you want to know more about it, there is plenty more to know. You can type that word in the search bar. Howstop works.com? And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to say this is something to open all of our eyes. Hey, guys. As a Canadian, I was happy to spend one long walk recently listening to the mysterious feet washing up on the shores of BC, British Columbia. You said that they have a shockingly large number of missing persons cases, and while that's true, you guys expressed surprise and threw out a few humor suggestions on why. But there's one concrete factor that really contributes to the high rate of missing individuals. It doesn't get a lot of airtime internationally, but only recently became newsworthy within Canada. Even disappearance and murder of Native and Indigenous women who live in the province. Have you heard of this? Yeah, a couple of people emailed them right after that came out. Yeah, very sad. She said, no one likes to talk about it. It seems one our last prime minister even straight up said an interview that missing and murdered Native women were not a priority for the government. As far as I can see the why, it's pretty clear it's happening, and it's allowed to happen because of sexism and more importantly, racism. You two are really great at making sure you challenge sexism whenever you can, and I commend you for that. I thought it was a missed opportunity, though, to discuss racism and open it up to a similar discourse, and I emailed it back, and I was like, Well, I didn't know about this. We totally would have. Thank you so much for continuing to do the show. When people ask why I love it so much, I simply tell them that your camaraderie and ease makes me feel like I know you both. It's always fun to listen to things explained by your friends, and that is Emily Owens. Emily in Kuala Lampoor, but of Montreal. Of Montreal, Canada. By the way, there's a follow up on this, an article from Media Smarts called Media Portrayals. Well, this is the URL, at least. Just Google media. Smarts and missing and murdered aboriginal women. And then she said, there's also a great documentary called highway of Tears, but heads up will make you feel crappy for days. Let's just do one on that. Yeah, we should. She didn't say crappy either. She said Craddy. Yeah, she said Krudy. Yeah, that's it. Okay, well, thanks a lot, Emily. We appreciate that. And keep an ear out for an episode on that sometime down the road. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can hang out with me, too, on Twitter at Josh Clark. You can hang out with us on Facebook. Comstuffynow. Yeah, and I got my own little personal public figure page now. Charles W. Chuck Bryant. It's a lot of fun. Nice. Like the original stuff. You should know fans are hanging out there. Oh, yeah, that's the place to be. It is. You can send us an email to stuff, podcastofeffworks.com, and, as always, throwing us at our home on the web stuffyoushetnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and 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." | |
8a208d2c-4a58-11e8-a49f-bb6005190d8c | SYSK Selects: How Cremation Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-cremation-works | Josh and Chuckers take a detailed look at cremation's history, practices and controversies in this episode. | Josh and Chuckers take a detailed look at cremation's history, practices and controversies in this episode. | Sat, 12 May 2018 11:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=12, tm_hour=11, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=132, tm_isdst=0) | 41598308 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody, it's me, Josh. And for this week's, SYSK selects I've chosen how Cremation works. It came out back in August of 2010, and at the time, death was a very hot topic. So please forgive us if we see seem a little irreverent, a little overenthusiastic when we're talking about this, but it's a really interesting episode and I still stand by it today. Hope you enjoy. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetofworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuckers Bryant. With a full beard, actually. Yeah. Do you know what that would smell like if it caught fire? It would smell like mayonnaise. It smells worse than mayonnaise every day. Jerry's in there like she doesn't like the smell of burning hair. Huh. Or mayonnaise. Burning mayonnaise would be particularly bad if you had hair on top of it. Yeah. Burning hairy mayonnaise is the worst thing you can burn. So, Chuck, hopefully that will never happen while you're alive. It could possibly happen after you're deceased if you're cremated, like a fellow named Ralph White who you know about. I have never heard of the guy. You have two chuck, do you remember that horrid webcast we used to have? Yes. There's a guy. He was the president past president, of the Adventurers Club. And not to be confused with the one from South Park. This guy was a real life adventure. And I think he was like a cameraman for a skydiving show called Rip Cord. National Geographic. He was there when they discovered the Titanic. Yeah. But he's with Jim Cameron. Yeah. He was second director, I think, on Titanic. Yeah. Jim Cameron was also in that club, the little club in La. That's right. Yeah. I'll bet Ralph White got Jim Cameron in. Yeah, probably. And are we calling him Jim now? I didn't realize we were on that friendly basis. Jim or Jimmy. Well, anyway, Ralph White had a pretty cool post not post mortem. He had a very cool posthumous story. And that was he was cremated. And his friends were so dedicated and loyal to him that whenever they go on to travel now, they take about a teaspoon or a 10th of a teaspoon some very small amount of Ralph White's cremated remains and scatter them wherever they go. Pretty cool. Yeah. I think he's in the Whaling Wall in Jerusalem. He's in Lake Bacal. He went on a space flight. And Ralph White's posthumous adventures kind of illustrate all the wonderful things you can do with a cremated body. Yes. Which is one of the reasons why people choose to be cremated. It's highly portable, right? Absolutely. And it's nothing new. Chuck, cremation has been going on for a very long time, hasn't it? Yeah. We could rattle off every country and when they started, but we really could because of this fine, fine article written by a freelancer. Right. Michelle Kim. I've never heard of this person before, but kim is a really great article, but it has been around since prehistoric times. China has been doing it since 8000 BC. More than 10,000 years ago. More than 10,000 years ago. One part of the history I did find interesting, though, and fitting since we did our Freemason cast was the Freemasons during the French Revolution, kind of pushed for cremation because it was the whole not anti religion, but just sort of mixing it up with religion. No, they were anti Catholic church. Well, yeah. Very much against the church. And they were saying if you have yourself cremated, it's kind of like sticking your thumb up to the church. Right. Well, because Catholics said you can't get cremated for a long time. Yeah. Well, it kind of contradicts the whole resurrection thing. The body's kind of got to be intact. Like the one thing we can't do burn. We can rise from the dead. But if you're burned yes. Sorry. And you don't want to come back and find that you're nothing but ashes because you're going to be ticked off. Right, right. The actual cremator, the cremation chamber, which I like to call the cremator, even though that's not right. It sounds like a Krebstar product from the adventures of pete and Pete. It does. It was invented in the late $1,000 by Professor Brunetti, and it started in Ernest in the United States. In Pennsylvania in 1876. Yeah. When Pennsylvania is a non licensed state still, which I thought was interesting. Is it really? Well, there's a little bit of a scandal that we'll talk about later that apparently the crematory business. You either have fine, upstanding people or, like some of the Earth running these places. Right. Yeah. Let's talk about how this works. All right. Yeah. Well, I got a step for you real quick, though. As far as its popularity, in 1958, 3.6% of bodies were cremated, and just a few years ago, that number is at 34%, and they expect it to be half by 2025. Right. Well, there's a lot of reasons why. Right. I mean, we're running out of land. Sure. There's a lot of people who think that burials aren't so green, which is true. Yeah. Because they use, like, really nice woods and metals, and you have to pour cement lining and the bodies and balls. So it's going to eventually leak out, all of those things. Right. But we'll talk later about whether or not cremation is green. And a spoiler is it's not. Sort of is, but it's not. Well, it's not green, but it's definitely not green. It's not brown either. It's not black. It's somewhere in between. So checkers. You ready to talk? Yeah, just the actual process is pretty gruesome. Initially, they store the body in a cool room just to keep it nice and fresh. For the cremation, it's usually examined by a coroner, and they have to sign off and say, this is good to go, because you can't exhume the body later on if you need to. Exactly. So no accidental death that hasn't been fully vetted. Like I imagine they wouldn't cremate like someone that had any kind of relation to a crime or anything like that, or at least not for a long time. And then what happens is they remove some things from your body if you have the following pacemaker breast implants I know, silicone breast implants, prosthesis or cancer seeds, the little radioactive seeds that they inject into a tumor and then shoot with like a laser or radio frequency generator. Yeah. None of this stuff is good for cremation, so they remove that from your body. But there's some things that can't be removed, or they could remove it, but they tend not to. Fillings? Mercury fillings? Yeah. Jewelry and glasses. Like some people want, like you would be buried with your glasses on. They want you cremated with your glasses on. Right. But in some countries I didn't look this up, so I don't know what countries. There are laws against anybody who's cremating a body from touching anything on the body. Right. You got to do it how you get it. Right. That's what they say on the shirt. So you can buy it in the gift shop. And then they put the body, once it's been removed, these things into a flammable box, like a pine or cardboard box or one made of hairy mayonnaise. Yeah. They slide it into the incinerator is already preheated, by the way yes. To at least 1100 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 593 degrees Celsius, I think, off the top of my head. Yeah. And that's hot, Chuck. It's got to be hot. But that's not like you don't just put the body in and then it just burns. It just catches fire. Right? No, they actually shoot a column of flame at the torso. Like a jet engine. Yeah. Basically. So once the body is in what's it called? The retort. It's called a retort. They slide it in there on the old metal rollers and families sometimes you can watch this process through the window if you want. Yeah. And if you're Hindu, and if it's a Hindu cremation, you can actually push go, right? Yeah. I guess to start the column with flame. Right. You just like yeah. Tina. Aunt Tina, the Hindu. So the door is sealed up, obviously, like you said, they aim at your torso and then this is what happens. This is the gruesome part, as you would expect when you have a jet flame shot at your torso. It ignites the container initially, obviously, your body starts to dry out. All that water that's in your body leaves pretty quick. Yeah. I would imagine your soft tissue tightens up, it burns up and it vaporizes your skin discolors and blisters and splits just great. Like a bratwurst on a grill. Yeah, exactly. The muscle charge, it flexes and your limbs actually can extend. Like your limbs are moving. I looked all over the place to find discussions about this stuff, about, like, a body sitting up. It's the closest thing I saw. Was there's a body set up? I think it was a wiki answer. So it has zero credibility. But if your muscles are contracting or tightening or doing anything, like yeah. Your arms can go up and crazy. I mean, imagine the people in 8000 BC in China. Wait, they're not dead. They're, like, waving. Yeah. At a goldfish. I tried to flush one time and I put him in and he started swimming again. And then I'd put him back in the tank and he just floated with just like the water motion. I have no look like, well, no, I didn't flush it. When I put him in the toilet, he started moving every single time. It was weird. That is weird. I'm pretty convinced he was dead, though. Or he was by the time I froze him in a block of ice. You'll find out when you get to heaven. That's right. So your muscles have charred and tightened and your limbs are flailing about, and your bones, obviously, are the last thing to go, and they are calcified and then kind of just flake off and crumble into little bone bits. Yeah. And chuck the bones that are or the stuff that is left are the charred bones that are really it doesn't take a whole lot, I think, to pulverize them, but it does take an extra step and they actually do hold their shape. So you go from a body in a box to, like, a charred skeleton is what it ultimately comes down to. And you either rake or sweep the remaining, like, bone material into something called a cremulator. And that's a grinder that grinds up everything and pulverizes it into this fine grainy well, actually coarse grainy powder. Yeah. They described it as, like ash is sort of a weird word because it's not like charred ash from your fire. It's more like gravel, they said, like little tiny bits of gravel. Right. Because it's pulverized bone. Right. Yeah. And it usually takes about two to 3 hours, depending on the kind of crematory, I guess, whatever machine you put it in. Yeah. There's different kinds. Right. And how big your bones are too. That has something to do with it, too. But also I found that it depends on the level of well, there's something called the Entertain Four. You should go on to Matthewscrimatorium.com. They have specs, and it's just weird because these guys are, like, selling their crematorium. Right. And here's all the specs for them. This thing is like state of the art Entertain Four is and it burns body in no more than 75 minutes. Really? That's pretty good. That must have been the modern ones that they say are all, like, automated now. Well, they also sell them ones that burn the body in 4 hours. Really? So it's like low end to high end. Okay. You know what I mean? Pay for what you get. Yeah. And at the end of this whole process, you're going to end up with about three to \u00a39 of ash. And actually that's where it depends on your bones. They say it doesn't matter, like, how fat you are, because I think that burns away pretty easily. Yeah, I would think so. It's like your bone structure. Yeah. Bone is tough to burn. I guess so. Only 45% of high school students feel they are prepared for college or careers. Stride career prep is helping change that. Stride Career Prep lets students take charge of their education and their future. By combining real world skills training and traditional academics, students can earn college credit while in high school or get the training needed to land a job right after graduation. Stride Career Prep prepares your team for in demand careers in business, tech, health, science, criminal justice and more. Students can take courses developed by industry professionals, prepare for certifications, get handson, experience network, and most importantly, gain the confidence they need to succeed. Stride Career Prep is backed by over 20 plus years of experience in online learning and education. Take charge at K twelve. Compodcast. That's K Twelve compodcast. And start taking charge of your future today. So, Chuck, these things we said that they are preheated to about 10010 degrees, right? But they get up to about 20. So you can't just build this thing. You can't build an inner tech or whatever you're building out of regular brick or cement or something like that. I think it exploded the first time you tried to do this. Yeah, for sure. So these specialized composite brick material, and actually over time, the interior will be eaten away by the heat and the expansion and contraction will actually lose surface. So apparently what's recommended is after the bricks lose about half of their width, they have to be replaced. Yeah. And it sounds kind of crude, but the way it's described in the article and the way I've heard it described is it's sort of like a pizza oven. They're made of similar things, right. Cook a pizza body. Cook a body. So these things go for $250,000, something like that. And they use natural gas or propane or propane accessories or diesel, I've seen, but they used to burn coal. And I imagine that was a real pain, incinerated body back in the think they were still using coal. Got to keep stoking the fire, right? Another thing I thought was cool was and I started thinking too, when you burn a fire, obviously you see ashes kind of floating all over the place. And I thought, well, surely they've got to account for that when you're burning a body, and they do. They ignite a second flame in a side chamber and that burns off dust that's trying to escape the retort. And some of them even shoot water at the top to make sure none of the dust escapes out of the top of the plume. I guess it's called wet scrubbing. Wet scrubbing, yes. What else do we do? That was the fluoride thing, right? Yeah. Describing the inside of the and carbon sequestration. Yeah. My brain is getting too full these days. I'm too we need to stop doing the show. I know. And after it's all done, you can actually get cremated remains. And I found that they say that you shouldn't call them cremains. That's what the C-A-N-A says. Why? They just say it's sort of a crude thing that non industry people say, let's just shorten it. And they're like, they think it's disrespectful. Got you. So we won't say the word cremains, but you can have your cremated remains mailed to you via USPS if you want. But that's it in the United States. Yeah, you can't do it via FedEx or Ups, or you can't if they know what's in the box. Right. And I couldn't find out why. There's no explanation on Ups or FedEx's site. They just say, we won't ship that. Right. They also won't ship a disinterred body. Well, thank goodness for that, I guess. But the only suggestion I could find why they wouldn't do this, you can't insure cremated remains. Yeah, that's probably it. Which I imagine they ensure everything somehow. And they don't want to get hit with a lawsuit. Right. Because people get mad when you lose there. Yeah, probably. So the other cool thing about the USPS. Though, is that they make sure to point out that it's got to be a sift proof box. You don't want, like, ashes leaking out the side, and you have to have somebody's got to sign for it. Right. So usually if you don't get an earn or whatever, when you get your cremated remains, the crematorium will have them in, like, basically a plastic bag inside, maybe a plastic lined box designed to hold this kind of thing. Right. Yeah. And there may be just, like, very small remnants of other people with your remains. Like, they do the best job they can. They burn one body at a time. Like if you're on the up and up, as a good cremator should be. But inevitably, when you're talking about ash and you're sweeping it out, there might be a little bit of joe mixed in with Harry, if you know what I mean. Well, I know what you mean. So, Chuck, also, I guess the industry standard is just, like, you don't want to switch babies in a hospital at the other end of life, you don't want to switch cremated remains of dead people. Right. Good policy. So apparently they'll stick a tag in your mouth, like a metal disk, or they'll put it somewhere on your person so that when you're melted down, this thing is still there so you can be identified. Right. You've got paperwork that goes with you from the moment you come to the crematorium to the moment you leave. That's supposed to be with you every step of the way. And there's basically all this is supposed to avoid a mix up, right? It's supposed to. It doesn't always, especially when the crematorium operator or owner isn't on the up and up, as you said. And there's been plenty of examples of that, haven't there been? Yeah. I was a little alarmed to find out how little regulation goes on in some states. Yeah. Only until the Tristate crematorium, I think 2002 did Georgia close its loopholes, and now all crematoriums have to be licensed by the state. Yeah. In Georgia, I actually got a different number here. She said 23 of the 50 states license, I've actually got only eight do not license is what I found. That's if you look, all of these examples in this article are in the 2000. So I wonder if that caused, like a expansion or crematorium regulation reform. I would say so, because what happened in Georgia will tell you in a SEC, but if you see this on the news and you're in Pennsylvania, they don't want that kind of news hitting their state, so I would imagine it probably spurred some action. It hit Pennsylvania. Bud. Yes, it did. Let's talk about the Georgia guy first. Yeah. Ray brent Marsh pleaded guilty and apologized. He owned a crematorium in Noble, Georgia. And that is Chuck Nora. I know where that is, so don't ask. I think it's probably in the Northwest because it's where Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama come together, which is why we call it Tristate Crematorium. He was serving all three states. Sure. And in all three states, the bodies of the beloved deceased were basically half buried out in the backyard because the cremator broke down and they just never got it fixed. Yeah. The incinerator broke. Yeah. And so I think 336 bodies in total were found. And I found that originally they could only charge him with accepting money and fraud for services not rendered. Yeah. There is no there is no law on the books. They hit him with some other stuff, though. What else did they get? I think it must have come out after this article. He was actually charged with almost 800 counts of theft and abuse of a corpse. So they actually charged him with stealing these corpses. You don't want to go to prison with an abuse of a corpse. Wrap on your head. They'll find out about that. Yeah. And he was sentenced to 8000 years in prison and plea bargained. That down to twelve years somehow. Did you say 8000 years? Yeah. That was almost a spit take. Yeah. You were drinking your drink and you almost spit it out, so yeah, 8000 down to twelve, which is a pretty good deal for him. There was a $36 million settlement from 58 funeral homes that sent bodies to the sky. So they sued the funeral homes, and then they brought a suit, an $80 million civil suit settlement against this guy in his father's estate. And they probably don't have that kind of dough, so they're probably going to do what happens when that happens, which is to go after the insurance company. Oh, yeah, the Georgia Farm Bureau. The guy didn't even get around to having the incinerator fixed. He doesn't have 80 million. He's got 300 bodies in his backyard. Yeah. So he's in jail right now, as far as I know. Yeah, almost for 8000 years. That's a long sentence. You said Pennsylvania didn't want that to happen. Probably did. It did. In 2005. What happened there? There was a guy who ran a crematorium, and he had a deal with the local women's hospital to cremate the remains of preterm babies, basically aborted fetuses. This guy's job was to incinerate them. That's probably not a fun contract to sign. No. Even if that's the way you make your money, you can't feel great about closing that deal, right? Yeah. You don't go out for a big fat steak after that. Exactly. The authorities, I guess, were tipped off, and they went into his garage and found in boxes the remains of 300 fetuses. Actually, 19 of them were post term. Really? So they were born children that he was supposed to cremate and they didn't. But they could only get them on 19 counts because they're unborn. So they weren't technically human beings under the eyes of the law. So he didn't get anything for those. But for the 19, he got in some trouble. I don't know. But he had them in boxes in his garage, too, which is apparently the Mo of the shady crematorium operator. Yeah. I hope they threw the book at him. Oh, yeah, I'm sure they did. That makes me angry. Can't you tell how angry I am? In Lake Elsino, California, Josh, in 2003, a Dodgy owner was selling body parts for medical research. Like heads to people. Yeah. Which means that he was cutting these heads off. Oh, yeah. And he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. And does it just say prison? And then in Mississippi, there was a really nice guy named Mark Seep who was mixing human remains together, giving out wrong ashes, dumping them into trash bins. And he was found guilty and put in jail, too. Yeah. Did you say that Ray Brent Marsh was giving people wood ash and cement? I didn't mention that, but yeah, that's what he did. Yeah. Because it's not like he was just like, oh, I got nothing. They burned up entirely. He was like, here's some cement, and earn. Thanks for the money. Yes, I understand a guy's incinerator burning and maybe not having the money to fix it, but I bet you anything he may have made enough money to get it fixed after that and was like, hey, I'm kind of onto something here. Right. We don't actually have to do this. Pure profit. Yeah, exactly. So, Chuck, before we get into things that you can do with the remains of a loved one, right? Yes. Can we talk about whether or not it's green? I got a couple of stats here that I think are important. Yeah. So a lot of people are like a natural burial or regular burial right. Is not very green. And it's expensive, too, between like, seven and ten grand. But then they also say, I don't want to go entirely green, which is bio cremation, which is alkaline hydrosis. We talked about that before. And what you can do with the dead body. Remember, it turns you into oil that's poured down the drain. That's pretty awesome. It is. So this has to be something in between, though, right? For the conscientious person who maybe kind of believes in an afterlife and wants to do more with those bodies, how do you kind of believe in afterlife? It's a vague knowledge. I wonder where you end up kind of believe it's like a tick sucking, really, like hot dog pack. So in 2009, Reuters is doing this article on bio cremation. They were talking about how green is regular cremation, and it's not green at all. Like, you think about it, you're using tons of natural gas. Sure. Not tons, it's hyperbolic. But you're using a lot of natural gas or diesel or whatever. You're using a lot of electricity. There's a mission. So apparently a standard commission releases about \u00a3880 of CO2, just one body, and that's the big enemy. And it uses enough energy to basically power a 500 miles road trip. Really? So not one and the same? Like, these are two separate things. Right. So it uses the energy to get you cross country, 500 miles, and it's depending on the size of your country, and it releases \u00a3880 of CO2 into the air. I wonder what that compares to, footprint wise, to standard burial. Is that still better? I don't know. And I think it's just entirely different ways where I think maybe a natural or regular traditional burial, it's more polluting, like directly polluting into the ground. It's using up resources where a cremation has less of an impact over time. But immediately it's a lot of input. It requires a lot of input. Got you. That's my concept of it. Right. I wouldn't mind being burned, but I like that. Which country was it where they burn you on top of the wood by the banks of the river? That's India. Yeah. I like that. That's how I would want to go. Well, buddy, if you live in India and you're Hindu, that's exactly how you have to go. That was a perfect segue of religion. I guess. So you said Hindus, they mandate cremation. Yeah, they're the only religion that does. Yeah. And it's called I'm going to go ahead and give it a whirl here. Anton sankar which is left. Right. Nice. Do you want to hit the other one? Antd? Yeah. Antsd, I think, which is last sacrifice. Yeah. And those are one of the 16 life rituals. I guess it would be the last one, actually. I'd probably be corrected. There may be one after that with the whole rebirth and all that. Maybe, but I guess the smoke gets the body to the next life. I bet it's one of the last four. I'll bet it is. I'll wager on that. Like you said, they're Hindu, so they say you dispose of this body and it assures you and helps you be reborn into the next life when you're premature. And while Hinduism is the only religion that mandates you, half that's how your body is disposed of. Right. Sikhism and Jainism are both kind of strongly endorsed, although they don't require it. Right, right. And you were saying that they cremate people in India along the banks of the river. Most of their cremations, from what I understand, are open air cremations. See, I like that idea. There's a city called Varanasi, which apparently is the holy city to be cremated in. And you are cremated out in the open along the banks of the Ganges. Yeah, that's nice. But they do have an electric crematorium, but since there's a billion people who live in India and all want electricity, this place suffers. Power outages, man, that's sad. If you are a Christian, Jewish or you're Muslim, right? Josh they generally frown upon it or outright prohibit it, depending on which religion it is. Yeah. Islam prohibits it. Yeah. They want you buried that day, the same day you die, preferably. Right. So in Judaism, Chuck, I don't think it's actually restricted. I think you can if you want to, but among Orthodox and Conservative Jews, the memory of the Holocaust is still understandably smart to the point where they're like, why would you want to be cremated? There's legacy is still around. So there's a lot of Jews who don't want to be cremated even though their religion doesn't prohibit it. Right. Understandably. Protestants actually, is where you're going to be. Fine. Some more open minds to cremation. They don't have any literature that says you should do this, but they're definitely more understanding about it than other religions. Right. And we talked about the Catholic Church having a problem with it because of its association with subversiveness toward the church. But in the Catholic Church said, hey, we've never really prohibited it. Right. You can get cremated if you want. Apparently they gave it a boost. The Hula burger people really catered to the Catholics in the found. Canada says that of Catholics are cremated now, so that's quite a boost, I would say. Right. The Mormons also, they're not big on cremation, although they don't prohibit it. And in countries where it's traditional, they're like, yeah, please go ahead. But the Orthodox Eastern Orthodox church says nay nay. Nay nay. Good. Point. Thanks. Only 45% of high school students feel they are prepared for college or careers. Stride career prep is helping change that. Stride Career Prep lets students take charge of their education and their future. By combining real world skills training and traditional academics, students can earn college credit while in high school or get the training needed to land a job right after graduation. Stride Career Prep prepares your team for indemand careers in business, tech, health, science, criminal justice and more. Students can take courses developed by industry professionals, prepare for certifications, get hands on experience, network, and most importantly, gain the confidence they need to succeed. Stride Career Prep is backed by over 20 plus years of experience in online learning and education. Take charge at K twelve. Compodcast. That's K Twelve. Compodcast. And start taking charge of your future today. Where are we now with some can we talk about, finally what you can do with your remains? I think it's high time, don't you? Not what you can do with your remains, because you clearly can't do anything. But that's not what you can do with your remains, right, but what your friends and family can do with your remains. And sometimes they like to keep you in an urn, and they have these little cemetery like buildings called a columbarium, and they just hold ashes, from what I understand. Like your earn. Yeah. Take a vault. So some people choose that that cost them dough, obviously. Go ahead and tell us about your hero. I know you want to mention that. Who, Hunter T? Yes. He was mixed with fireworks and shot out of a cannon. 153 foot cannon, also called the Memorial Tower. And apparently it was an organization called Heavens Above Fireworks that did this. And anybody can do it. And Johnny Depp paid for the whole party, right? Yeah. And from what I saw, if it was this British company, he would have paid about the equivalent of $3,000 for a large fireworks display. That's what they charge. As soon as you mentioned money. Actually, I did. See, the average cremation cost is about $600. Yeah. And the average funeral, I saw five grand in this article. It's ten grand decided, let's say somewhere between five and $10,000. But back to things you can do. We would be remiss if we didn't mention to our nerd friends that Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek fame, everyone knows this, he was shot into space. So was Timothy Leary. Yeah, that's right. By the same company. Celeste and they're still in business, as far as I know. I bet they are. And then you got Life Gem, which we've talked about, I think, again on the webcast. You can take your cremated remains and have them compressed into a synthetic diamond. You can have your remains mixed into paint, and I guess that's not so much you can have, but you can probably just do that. It depends. There's actually a guy who does something called ash portraits really paint. He does it just with the person's ashes, but he'll also mix it in with oil or whatever. Interesting. But he does portraits of the deceased. I want to be remembered as dogs playing poker. That'd be pretty awesome. That'd be really cool. What else can you do? You can become part of the coral reef. I know there are companies that do that. There's a company called Eternal Reefs. I think it's the big one. It's a pretty obvious name, don't you? Well, they actually make different size reefs, and what they do is they mix your remains with cement, and so the big one, it can accommodate up to four family members. So if your family went down in a plane and you just feel like shelling out for one coral reef right. They've got you covered. It's like seven grand, really, and it's pretty big size, and it's cool looking. I mean, it looks like an artificial reef, and then you take it out and dump it overboard. Fish live amongst your family members, who I really hope loved scuba diving. Exactly. Do you remember Keith Richards a couple of years ago? He's still alive? Well, no, his dad passed away, and he said that he snorted his father with cocaine. And then apparently he said this in an interview. Then that came out and he was like, no, I was just kidding around. Of course it didn't snort my father. I think he snorted his father. Yeah, I think he did, too. There's a teen episode where these people snort the remains of this girl. Yeah, I remember that one. It was a good one. I do have some stats for you, though, what people seem to like to do. 38% to keep the ashes at their home. 37%, bury the ashes. 21%, do the scatter. Very popular. I thought it would be more popular than that, though. The most popular one is water scattering, and number two is scattering somewhere on family property. Not really. 3% are put in the columbarium, and you might notice, Josh, that adds up to 99%. Yeah, there's 1% that go unclaimed. So sad. It is sad. And apparently the people who own Crematoriums find it sad, too, because even though after a set period of time, in states that regulate this kind of stuff, which did we say the Federal Trade Commission regulates mortuaries, there's no federal oversight for any Crematorium comes out of the state. But in states where there are regulations, they still say, you can throw this out after a set period of time. But most Crematoriums, the up and up ones, will hang on to these things for decades. Because, again, it's a small box. Sure, but, I mean, they don't want to just throw it away. It's a person, and it's only 1%. So I don't imagine they're, like, overflowing with unclaimed remains. I would hope not. But since you did mention the scattering, we should talk about some of the laws about scattering because you can't just scatter anywhere. No. The National Park Service has no official stance on scattering remains. They leave it up to each individual park. Yes, but most of the parks say unless there's like, a grave area, like a designated grave area, you can't scatter ashes here. Well, it also said they kind of turned a blind eye. Oh, really? They know it goes on. And I'm sure some ashes in Yosemite Park are like, how are you going to tell the difference between that and, like, fire ash or dirt or whatever? But state parks, they say, actually, the National Forest Service doesn't regulate anything on their land. So that's where you would probably want to go, like, avoid the national park and just stay in the national forest or go to your state park that was a beloved state park. Because they're a little more lax than the national parks. Right. If you want to do water scattering or ocean scattering, the EPA says you got to be 3 miles away from the coastline. Right. Very prudish. California is like, that's way too much. They still have a restriction, but it's 500ft, right? Yeah. Pretty close. And people don't always follow regulations. Right? Yeah. So you want to tell about the Cubs fan? Yeah, this is kind of a nice story. Steve Goodman died of leukemia in 1984. Die hard Cubbys fan, sadly did not get to see the Cubs Winter World Series as likely neither will you and I. And four years later, his buddy snuck in before opening day and threw the ashes into the wind out over the field. Nice. Pretty cool. That is pretty cool. Did you ever hear of Graham Parsons story? Yes. His body was stolen, right? Yeah. His friends, he said that he wanted to be cremated and scattered on Cap Rock in Joshua Tree National Park. Right. And his parents found out he was dead and had his body shipped back for a private funeral. Really? And his friends found out that they weren't going to be invited, so they stole them and took them out to Joshua Tree and opened the casket to some gasoline on them and set them on fire. Five gallons of gas. Right. And it didn't work because we've said what it takes. So he was half cremated by the time the cops showed up. He's sort of melty and just like Georgia, back then, there was nothing about there were no penalties for stealing a corp, so they got them for theft of a casket, I think. Did you see that movie Johnny Knoxville played the guy that his buddy no, it's not very good. Okay. I did stay in the hotel, though, actually. I meant to mention that. In the Route 66. Yeah. The Joshua Tree in Cool. Not in his room, though. And before we move on from scattering, Josh, we have to mention, because we like to mention our movies the excellent, excellent scene from The Big Lebowski, the scattering scene at the end of The Big Lebowski when all of them just blew back all over them. It was Steve assuming that died, right? I think so. And he threw them out in the wind, blew back in their face over the ocean. So it was good. Very good. Chuck, if I am dead and I'm being cremated and I'm part of 75% of the population, what country am I in? Sweden? Switzerland. Switzerland. If I've been cremated and I am part of just a meager 3% of the population, what country am I in? Ghana. That's right. And in between are actually higher than that. Hong Kong is 83%. Places like the Czech Republic in Singapore and the UK are sort of mid to high 70s. China and Netherlands are about half. And Italy, as far as European countries I'm sorry. Ireland was 6%, italy was 7%. I bet that's something to do with the Catholic thing. I would think so, for sure. The US. Is about 30%, right? Yeah. Thanks to a large Protestant population. Right. And Hindu. And there's also pet cremation. Yeah. If you want to get into a burgeoning industry that went from pretty much nothing to it's a $3 billion industry is the latest at get into pet cremation. And the people at Matthew's Crematorium Supply, they make pet cremators, too. Oh, they do? Humans and pets and animals, too. Apparently there are different types. So I got one you could fit a horse into and one are made for, like, dogs or something. Right. I would be more likely to go into one of those because they say that some of the pet only crematoriums are a little dodgy. Yeah. They're totally unregulated. Yeah. So they're just, like, burning your pets together, and you don't know that the ashes you get. And if you're serious enough about your pet to get your pet cremated, then you probably want your pet's ashes. Right. So you can handle cremation at home. Just dig a shallow hole in your backyard to serve as a fire break and do your neighbors a favor and shave your pet first before you set it on fire. We buried my animals growing up, my pets. Did you? Yeah. I think at my old house we probably had, like, four or five pets buried out in the woods, but we lived on, like, two acres in the woods. It wasn't, like, in a neighborhood. You didn't set any on fire? No. Well, that's it for cremation. Thanks for joining us for that one. Right, Chuck? Yeah, I think we've covered pretty much everything in there, but if you want, it's a good, good article, high caliber how stuff Works article, not like the rest of these sneakers. Just type in cremation in the search bar. The jazzysearchbar@howsteporks.com jazzy. I'm just trying new stuff. We've been getting lots of suggestions. By the way, I like the ubiquitous search bar. It's pretty good. It's not everywhere, though. I mean, I guess it is everywhere, but it's yeah, you're right. So I guess it's time for listener mail. Yeah, buddy. I got a couple today, a couple of short ones. First one is from the Sonicast, and this is a little old, but I promise this guy would read it. This is from Mark in Easton, MD. I know you guys won't read this on a podcast. Those are usually the ones I read. But I just thought I'd write to tell you what happened to me this morning. In my frantic rush to get my daughter Ellie to a summer camp on time, I had to run out of the house without having breakfast. That caused me to have to stop at a fast food joint, get one of those gross, greasy breakfast sandwiches. You would think it's bad enough, but it gets worse. As I drive from the driveway, I push Play on the iPad and start listening to the show and Saunas, where I started hearing about butt funk. Chuck sweating out gallons of fluid and having to visualize a naked viggo mortensen fighting in a sauna made my otherwise gross sandwich and greasy potato things one for the books, by the way. The podcast that I queued up next was all about taste buds, so now I know how I was able to taste my sandwich in the first place. Thanks a lot, guys. That's from Mark. If you do happen to read this on the air, it would make Ellie and Lydia's day. And those are his daughters. Hey, Ellie and Lydia. So, Mark, that is for you, my friend. And then this one I didn't even think about, but it's kind of fitting. Do you remember when I told you about the little girl in Kent, Washington who named her beta fish, Chucker's Jr. I saw this one. Chucker's Junior is no more. Yeah. Monday night. I put Chucker's Jr. Inside his small bowl so I could clean his bowl in the morning. Yesterday morning, I went to make my breakfast in front of his bowl, as usual. But to make my breakfast, I thought she meant to make his, which would be pretty cute. I felt something sticky on my foot, and I looked down into my horror. I saw Chucker's Junior stuck to my foot, all dried out, and it was horrible. Apparently, betas have been known to jump out of their bowls. And I guess Chucker's Junior jumped pretty far because his bowl was a good foot away from the edge of the counter, yet he still ended up on the floor. My theory is that he probably flopped around or something onto the floor. Can't you just let the little girl think her beta fish is special? Yeah, you're right. Checkers Jr. Is special. Katie. Also, I found out that the bowl that he was in had only a centimeter from the ten centimeter. Where's she from? Liberia? Yeah, she's from Kent, Washington. She said you're usually supposed to leave about an inch between the top of the thing. I guess to make it harder to jump out the same thing, right? 1 CM equals one inch, I think so below, she ends with this. At least Chucker's Jr. Died a healthy fish. That's from Katie, aged 13 in Kent, Washington. Well, thanks for your optimism, Katie. Yeah, Kent. Sorry about your breakfast sandwich. Although I'm hungry now. It wasn't Kent. It was Mark. She was from Kent. Oh, yeah. That's all right, though. Mark. Sorry about your breakfast sandwich, Kent. I have no idea who you are. If you have a really cool cremation story, we want to hear about it. So wrap it up in an email and send it to stuffpodcast@housetuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. Want more housestuffworks? Check out our blogs on the housethefworks.com. Homepage. 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." | |
a6ae709e-5462-11e8-b449-7bad131a75e8 | SYSK’s 2018 Super Spooktacular | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-s-2018-super-spooktacular | It’s Halloween again and Chuck and Josh want to creep you out. Listen to two great classic horror stories, dripping with Jeri’s creeptastic audio stylings. Guaranteed to put you in the holiday spirit.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | It’s Halloween again and Chuck and Josh want to creep you out. Listen to two great classic horror stories, dripping with Jeri’s creeptastic audio stylings. Guaranteed to put you in the holiday spirit.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Tue, 30 Oct 2018 14:42:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=30, tm_hour=14, tm_min=42, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=303, tm_isdst=0) | 49285976 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the Spooky Halloween Podcast. Yeah. Very nice. I'm Joshua Lantern Clark. There's bride of Chucky Bryant. And there's Jerry Ain't. Rolling. Jerry said she has no time for us this year so we have to make all our own sound effects with our own mouths. That sounds good. That's cool. We can do that. Why is this? That was terrifying, wouldn't it? Yeah. All the spit, I think, is what made it so terrifying. So, Chuck, this is our annual Halloween episode. I don't know if anyone told you this yet. Or spectacular. Yes, that's right. And for those of you who've just found the podcast recently and this is your first time every Christmas and Halloween, we present an ad free episode for your enjoyment. This has nothing to do with explaining anything. It's just some spooky stories that we like to read. And then Jerry adds a little sound design. But apparently this year it's up to us. That's right. So do you want to do it? Let's do it. Okay. So I say that we start with my pick, the Algebra blackwood story. Ancient Lights. Great. Dim the lights, everybody. Whatever you do to get into the Spooky mood I don't know how you play it in your houses, but dim the lights you do. Maybe get a cat. Let it stare at you for a little while. It's pretty creepy. That's the sweetest thing ever. A cat staring at you? Sure. Maybe take your witch's broom out of the closet. Oh, yeah. That'll set a mood. Put up your cobwebs. Don't clean those out. Put them up. Yeah. What are you doing? Cleaning them out. You need spiders to keep pesky bugs away. That's right. And then you keep lizards to eat the spiders. That's right. See, you did learn something today. I did. Okay, you ready? Yes. Allow me to start, please. Okay. Jerry, if you please. Thank you, Jerry. Jerry's already asleep. This is Ancient Lights by Elgin and Blackwood. From Southwater, where he left the train, the road led due west that he knew for the rest he trusted to luck, being one of those born walkers who dislikes asking the way. He had that instinct, and as a rule, it served him well. A mile or so due west along the Sandy road till you come to a style on the right, then across the fields you'll see the red house straight before you. He glanced at the postcards instructions once again, and once again he tried to decipher the scratched out sentence without success. It had been so elaborately inked over that no word was legible. Inked out sentences in a letter were always enticing. He wondered what it was that had to be so very carefully obliterated. The afternoon was boisterous, with a tearing, shouting wind that blew from the sea across the Sussex wheeled I have no idea what a wheel is. No idea. Massive clouds with rounded, piled up edges cannon across gaping spaces of blue sky. Far away, the line of downs swept the horizon like an arriving wave. Chengdumbury ring, which I looked up, it's an old hill fort from, like, 2500 years ago. And a Celtic temple. Okay. Bear that in mind. Okay, so this old hill fort, he's saying road the crest of the horizon like a wave. Okay. A scudding ship holed down before the wind. He took his hat off and walked rapidly, breathing great draughts of air with delight and exhilaration. This guy really liked walking. Yeah, man. He's the opposite of me. This would be Chucking a Segway this whole time, right? Yeah. The road was deserted. No horsemen, bicycles or motors. Not even a tradesman's cart. No single walker. But anyhow, he would never have asked the way, keeping a sharp eye for the style. And by the way, Chuck, style is like a little thing that humans can use to get over. Like a cattle fence, but like cattle can't get through. So maybe steps on either side of a fence in style. Okay. Stupid cows I know can't walk up steps. Keeping a sharp eye for the style, he pounded along while the wind tossed the cloak against his face and made waves across the blue puddles in the yellow road. The trees showed their underleaves of white, the bracken and the high new grass bent all one way. Great life was in the day, high spirits and dancing everywhere. And for a Croydon surveyors clerk just out of an office, this was like a holiday at the sea. It was a day for high adventure and his heart rose up to meet the mood of nature. His umbrella with the silver ring ought to have been a sword and his brown shoes should have been top boots with spurs on the heels where hid the enchanted castle and the princess with the hair of sunny gold, his horse. The style suddenly came into view and nipped adventure in the bud everyday clothes took him prisoner again. He was a surveyor's clerk, middle aged, earning \u00a33 a week, coming from Croydon to see about a client's proposed alterations in a wood. Something to ensure a better view. From the dining room window, across the fields, perhaps a mile away, he saw the red house gleaming in the sunshine and resting on the style. A moment to get his breath. He noticed a cops of oak and hornbeam on the right, he told himself, so that must be the wood he wants to cut down to improve the view. I'll have a look at it. There were boards up, of course, but there was an inviting little path as well. I'm not a trespasser, he said. It's part of my business. This is he scrambled awkwardly over the gate and entered the cops. A little round would bring him to the field again. My turn. Take it away, Chuckers. All right. Here we go. Should we catch people up? What's this guy doing? He's walking a lot. He's walking. He's walking. And he's going to meet a client who wants to cut down some woods, and he thinks he's just now found the woods. All right. Great. But the moment he passed among the trees, the wind ceased shouting and a stillness dropped upon the world. So dense was the growth that the sunshine only came through in isolated patches. The air was close. He mopped his forehead and put his green felt hat on, but a low branch knocked it off again at once, and as he stooped, an elastic twig swung back and stung his face. There were flowers along sorry. There were flowers along both edges of the little path, glades open on either side. Ferns curved about in damper corners, and the smell of earth and foliage was rich and sweet. It was cooler here. What an enchanting little wood, he thought, turning down a small green glade where the sunshine flickered like silver wings, how it danced and fluttered and moved about. He put a dark blue flower in his buttonhole. Whatever floats your boat, pal. Again his hat, caught by an oak branch as he rose, was knocked from his head, falling across his eyes. This guy's a mess. Yeah. And this time he did not put it on again. Swinging his umbrella, he walked on with uncovered head, whistling rather loudly as he went. But the thickness of the trees hardly encouraged whistling, and something of his gaiety and high spirits seemed to leave him. He suddenly found himself treading circumspectly and with caution. The stillness in the wood was so peculiar. There was a rustle among the ferns and leaves, and something shot across the path ten yards ahead, stopped abruptly an instant with head cocked sideways to stare, then dived again beneath the underbrush with the speed of a shadow. He started like a frightened child, laughing the next second that a mere pheasant could have made him jump. In the distance he heard wheels upon the road and wondered why the sound was pleasant. Good old Butcher's Cot, he said to himself. His accent changed. I guess I like it. He's from Boston now. I'm not sure where he's from. The Bronx. Sure. Good old Butcher's caught, he said to himself, then realized that he was going in the wrong direction and had somehow got turned round, for the road should be behind him, not in front. And he hurriedly took another narrow glade that lost itself in greenness to the right. That's my direction, of course, he said. Oh, he showed Conner. Think so? All right. The trees has mixed me up a bit, it seems. Then found himself abruptly by the gate he had first climbed over. He merely made a circle. Surprise became almost discomfiture. Then it's a new one for me. Sure. And a man dressed like a gamekeeper in brownie green leaned against the gate, hitting his legs with a switch. I'm making for Mr. Lumley's farm, explained the walker. This is his wood, I believe. Then stop dead. Because it was no man at all, but merely an effect of light and shade and foliage. He stepped back to reconstruct the singular illusion. But the wind shook the branches roughly here on the edge of the wood and the foliage refused to reconstruct the figure. The leaves all rustled strangely, just then, the sun went behind a cloud making the whole wood look otherwise. Yet how the mind could be thus doubly deceived was indeed remarkable for it almost seemed to him the man had answered, spoken? Or was this the shuffling noise the branches made and had pointed with this switch to the notice board upon the nearest tree? The words rang on in his head, but of course, he had imagined them. No, it's not his wood, it's ours. That's good stuff. And some village wit, moreover, had changed the lettering on the weather beaten board for it read quite plainly trespassers will be persecuted teenagers. No skateboarding, either. And while the astonished clerk read the words and chuckled, he said to himself thinking what a tale he'd have to tell his wife and children later. The blooming wood has tried to chuck me out, but I'll go in again. Why? It's only a matter of square acre at most. I'm bound to reach the fields on the other side if I keep straight on. This guy is really all over the place in me. I feel like he's kind of settled into a real weird accent, but I like it. He remembered his position in the office. He had a certain dignity to maintain onto sir. So he's freaking out a little bit. The woods are playing tricks on him, it seems like. Yeah. The LSD is kicking in for sure. He's like, I shouldn't have plucked that weird mushroom from that cow poop. Yeah, okay. The cloud passed from below the sun and light splashed suddenly in all manner of unlikely places. The man went straight on. He felt a touch of puzzling confusion somewhere this way. The cops head of shifting from sunshine into shadow doubtless troubled sight a little to his relief. At last, a new glade opened through the trees and disclosed the fields with a glimpse of the red house in the distance at the far end. But a little wicked gate that stood across the path had to first be climbed. And as he scrambled heavily over it for it would not open he got the astonishing feeling that it slid off sideways beneath his weight toward the wood like the moving staircase at Harrods and Earls Court. And I think he's talking about escalators. I think so. It began to glide off with him. It was quite horrible, and he made a violent effort to get down before it carried him into the trees. But his feet became entangled with the bars and umbrella so that he fell heavily upon the farther side. Arms spread across the grass and nettles boots clutched between the first and second bars. Suddenly, Benny Hill came around the corner. Maybe Jerry will add Yankee sacks to that part. Oh, that'd be great. It sure would. He lay there a moment like a man crucified upside down, and while he struggled to get disentangled, feet, bars and umbrella formed a regular net. He saw the little man in brownie green go past him with extreme rapidity through the wood. The man was laughing. He passed across the glade, some 50 yards away, and he was not alone this time. A companion like himself went with him. The clerk, now upon his feet again watched them disappear into the gloom of green beyond. You want to take this quote? They're tramps not gamekeepers, he said to himself, half mortified, half angry, apparently half deranged. But his heart was thumping dreadfully, and he dared not utter all his thought. He examined the wicket gate, convinced it was a trick gate somehow, then went hurriedly on again, disturbed beyond belief to see that the glade no longer opened into the fields but curved away to the right. What in the world had happened to him? His sight was so utterly at fault. Again the sun flamed out abruptly and lit the floor of woods with pools of silver, and at the same moment a violent gust of wind passed, shouting overhead, drops fell clattering everywhere upon the leaves, making a sharp pattering as of many footsteps. The whole coat shuddered and went moving shut. Rain, by George, thought the clerk, and feeling for his umbrella, discovered he had lost it. He turned back to the gate and found it lying on the farther side. To his amazement, he saw the fields at the far end of the glade, the red house, too, a shine in the sunset. He laughed then, for, of course in his struggles with the gate he had somehow got turned around, had fallen back instead of forwards, climbing over. This time quite easily, he retraced his steps. The silver band, he saw, had been torn off of the umbrella. No doubt his foot, a nail or something, had caught in it and ripped it off. The clerk began to run. He felt extraordinarily dismayed. But while he ran, the entire wood ran with him round him to and fro, trees shifting like living things, leaves folding and unfolding, trunks darting backwards and forwards and branches disclosing enormous empty spaces and closing up again before he could look into them. There were footsteps everywhere, and laughing, crying voices and crowds of figures gathering just behind his back till the glade, he knew, was thick with moving life. The wind in his ears, of course, produced the voices in the laughter while the sun and clouds, plunging the coats alternately in shadow and bright, dazzling light, created the figures. But he did not like it. And when, as fast as ever, his sturdy legs could take him, he was frightened. Now. This was no story for his wife and children. He ran like the wind, but his feet made no sound upon the soft, mossy turf. Oh, boy. Yeah, it's getting real. It's getting surreal. Then, to his horror, he saw that the glade grew. Narrow nettles and weeds stood thick across it. It dwindled down into a tiny path, and 20 yards ahead, it stopped finally and melted off among the trees. What the trick? Gate had failed to achieve. This twisting glade, accomplished easily, carried him in bodily among the dense and crowding trees. You want to take us home? Yeah, let's do it. Skin freaky Chuck there was only one thing to do turn sharply and dash back again. Run headlong into the life that followed at his back. Followed so closely, too, that now it almost touched him, pushing him in, and with reckless courage. That was what he did. It seemed a fearful thing to do. He turned with a sort of violent spring. Head down and shoulders forward, hands stretched before his face, he made the plunge. Like a hunted creature, he charged full tilt the other way, leaving the wind now in his face. Good Lord. The glade behind him had closed up as well. There was no longer any path at all. Turning round and round like an animal at bay, he searched for an opening, a way of escape. Searched frantically, breathlessly, terrified now in his bones. But foliage surrounded him, branches blocked away. The trees stood close and still, unshaken by a breath of wind, and the sun dipped that moment behind a great black cloud. The entire wood turned dark and silent. It watched him. This is not good. No. When the woods are watching you, that's bad news. It's worse than a cat. That's like that Jodie Foster movie from The Watcher in the woods. Was that Jodie Foster? Yeah. So scary. Yes, I remember that one. And Betty Davis, I think, too. That's right. We should have just played that instead of doing this. I feel like we just broke all the tension we built over the last ten minutes. Okay, here we go, everyone. The woods are watching. Perhaps it was this final touch of sudden blackness that made him act so foolishly, as though he had really lost his head. At any rate, without pausing to think, he dashed headlong in among the trees again. There was a sensation of being stiflingly, surrounded and entangled, and that he must break out at all cost, out and away into the open of the blessed fields and air. He did this ill considered thing and apparently charged straight into an oak that deliberately moved into his path to stop him. He saw it shift across a good full yard. And being a measuring man, accustomed to theodolite and chain, he ought to know. Do you know what that is? No, do you? The chain. I think he's a surveyor. It's got to have something to do with that. But who knows? What Theodolite is. I think it's a measuring compound. Sure, he fell, saw stars, felt a thousand tiny fingers tugging and pulling at his hands and neck and ankles. The stinging nettles, no doubt were responsible for this. He thought of it later. At the moment it felt diabolically calculated. But another remarkable illusion was not so easily explained for all. In a moment, it seemed, the entire wood went sliding past him with a thick, deep rustling of leaves and laughter, myriad footsteps and tiny little active, energetic shapes. Two men in browny green gave him a mighty hoist, and he opened his eyes to find himself lying in the meadow beside the style where first his incredible adventure had begun. The wood stood in its usual place and stared down upon him in the sunlight. There was the red house in the distance. As before. Above him grinned the weather beaten notice board. Trespassers will be prosecuted. Disheveled in mind and body and a good deal shaken in his official soul, the clerk walked slowly across the fields. But on the way, he glanced once more at the postcard of instructions and saw with dull amazement that the inked out sentence was quite legible. After all, beneath the scratches made across it, there is a shortcut through the wood. The wood I want to cut down if you care to take it. Only care was so badly written, it looked more like another word. The C was uncommonly like D. That's the cops. That spoils my view of the downs, you see, his client explained to him later, pointing across the fields, referring to the ordinance map beside him, I want it cut down in a path made so and so. It's precise. His finger indicated direction on the map. The Fairy Wood, it's still called, and it's far older than this house. Come now, if you're ready, Mr. Thomas, we might go out and have a look at it. Oh, boy. So basically the end. Oh, yeah. There you go. So basically the upshot of this one, Chuck, is that this guy is very lucky that the possessed wood spit him out and didn't keep him in there forever, like that island did to Amelia Earhart. That's right. Ambrose Beers, man. Bring in the civil engineering horror that was Elginon Blackwood. What I say? Ambrose Beers. That's a common mistake. Really? I like Algenon Blackwood. Yeah, he's great. He did The Empty House, which we read once a few years back. So there you go. How scared is everybody? Raise your hand if you're scared me. That's not bad. Not bad. Two out of three people isn't bad. Alright, so we're going to move on to Edgar Allen Poe because it's in the public domain, dude. It's true. It is true. It's in the public domain. I'm going to get started in my searching earlier next year. Yeah, or we could just start saving up and just like, buy the rights to read one. Yeah. I mean, their stories is about getting in touch with the authors that are still living. Sure. It's like I found a good Joyce Carol Oatswin. And she's alive. All she writes is the best horror ever. For my money, I would say that she's probably my favorite author in general, but I would say she's probably the greatest horror writer of all time too. Well, I'm going to get in touch with her. We're going to buddy up over the next year. Oh, good. Well, loop me into that. Yeah, for sure. We're going to bring the Oats next year. Okay. Yeah, I tweeted to her once I asked her and she just ignored it. Oh, really? Yeah. That was before. You're a big shot. No, this is like last year. Which I guess is that's the whole truth. So yes, you're right. All right, here we go with a story by Edgar Allen Poe, noted drunk and drug addict, died in the street. Really? Oh, yeah. Baltimore. Right in front of Powers Station. Live. Wow. Yeah. Is there a marker? Yes. It's actually not right in front of it. It's like a street or so over and I don't remember if it's his house or if it is the place where he died. I think it is the spot where he died. It's like a street or two over in Baltimore. Yeah. It's worth visiting for sure. Alright, so this is a post short story called Hop Frog. Silly name. Ghoulish content. Yes. You ready? You want to start? You go ahead. No, I finished that once you start this one. Okay. I don't have mine parsed up either. We'll just wing it. Okay. Just go kaka or wink or something, I don't know. All right, you ready? I never knew anyone so keenly alive to a joke as the King was. He seemed to live only for joking. To tell a good story of the joke kind and to tell it well was the surest road to his favor. Thus it happened that his seven ministers were all noted for their accomplishments as jokers. They all took after the King too, in being large corpulent oily men as well as inimitable jokers. Whether people grow fat by joking, or whether there is something in fat itself which predisposes to joke, I've never been quite able to determine, but certainly it is that a lien. Joker is a rare ovis in terrace, said the heroin addict about the refinement, or as he called them, the ghost of Wit. The King troubled himself very little. He had a special admiration for breadth in a jest and would often put up with length for the sake of it over niceties wearied him. He would have preferred man, this is going to make zero sense to anybody, but here we go. He would have preferred Rabelais Gargantua to the Zadig of Voltaire, of course. And upon the whole, practical jokes suited his tastes far better than verbal ones. Getting a bit of a picture of this king. Yeah, he's a pull my finger guy. Oh, man, that's a good one. At the date of my narrative, professing, jesters had not altogether gone out of fashion at court. Several of the great Continental powers still retain their fools, who were motley with caps and bells, and who were expected to be always ready with sharp witicisms at a moment's notice. In consideration of the crumbs that fell from the royal table, our King, as a matter of course, retained his fool. The fact is, he required something in the way of folly, if only to counterbalance the heavy wisdom of the seven wise men who were his ministers, not to mention himself, his fool, or professional. Jester was not only a fool, however, his value was trebled in the eyes of the King by the fact of his also being a dwarf and a cripple. And it's about here. I want to just apologize on behalf of Edgar Allan Poe for some of the descriptive terms that he uses throughout the short story, but please bear with him and us. Yes. What he meant to say was he was also a little person who was handy capable. That's right. Nicely put. Yes. Again, sorry. Dwarfs were as common at court in those days as fools, and many monarchs would have found it difficult to get through their days. Days are rather long at court than elsewhere, without both a jester to laugh with and a dwarf to laugh at. But as I have already observed, your Jesters in 99 cases out of 100 are fat, round and unwieldy. So that it was no small source of self gratulation with our King that in HopFrog this was the fool's name, he possessed a triplicate treasure in one person. All right, me. Let's do it. All right. I believe the name HopFrog was not given to the Darth by his sponsors of baptism. That's probably a good guess. I think that's a weird way to put parents. But it was conferred upon him by general consent of the several ministers on account of his inability to walk as other men do. In fact, HopFrog could only get along by a sort of interjectional gate, something between a leap and a wriggle, a movement that afforded man that word illimitable. I think he nailed it. Illuminative amusement and, of course, consolation to the King. For notwithstanding the protuberance of his stomach and a constitutional swelling of the head, the King, by his whole court, was accounted a capital figure. Edward Poe was super judgy. Oh, yeah. He had so great looking. Oh, no, that's true. No, he wasn't. But he wasn't oily, I don't think. Okay. But although Hop frog. Through the distortion of his legs. Could move only with great pain and difficulty along a road or floor. The prodigious muscular power which nature seemed to have bestowed upon his arms by way of compensation for deficiency in the lower limbs. Enabled him to perform many feats of wonderful dexterity where trees or ropes were in question or anything else to climb at such exercises. He certainly much more resembled a squirrel or a small monkey than a frog. All right, all right. So this guy, his legs don't work as well but he's got super strong upper body. Is that right? That's what I'm getting. Okay. And he's a great climber as a result. That's right. Here we go. I am not able to say with precision from what country HopFrog originally came. It was from some barbarous region, however, that no person ever heard of a vast distance from the court of our king, HopFrog and a young girl, very little less dwarfish than himself although of exquisite proportions and a marvelous dancer had been forcibly carried off from their respective homes in adjoining provinces and sent as presents to the king by one of his ever victorious generals. Boy, this is terrible. It's pretty dark, but again, we're talking PO here. Yeah, that's right. And just wait. Just wait for it. Everyone just wait. Under these circumstances, it is not to be wondered that a close intimacy arose between the two little captives. Indeed, they soon became sworn friends. HopFrog, who although he made a great deal of sport was by no means popular had it not in his power to render Tropetta many services. Is that the lady trapezta? Yeah, that's the lady. Okay. But she on account of her grace and exquisite beauty although a dwarf, don't forget, just completely unnecessary. Her grace and exquisite was universally admired and petted. So she possessed much influence and never failed to use it whenever she could for the benefit of Hop frog. So she's still a good friend. I like that. Oh, yeah. And he to her even though he didn't really have any power. That's right. Which is surprising because a lot of Jesters were very powerful in the court. Yeah, that's true. Didn't we do one on jesters? I think so. Okay. All right. On some grand state occasion, I forget what the king determined to have a masquerade. And whenever a masquerade or anything of that kind occurred at our court then the talents both of HopFrog and Trapeta were sure to be called into play. HopFrog, in a special, was so inventive in the way of getting up pageants suggesting novel characters arranging costumes for mass balls that nothing could be done, it seems, without his assistance. So Hot Bra can throw a great party. He can't. And apparently so can Trapeze too. All right, let me I'll do this one more. Oh, I see. The night appointed for the fete had arrived. A gorgeous hall had been fitted up under Tropetta's eye with every kind of device which could possibly give eclat to a masquerade. The whole court was in a fever of expectation for costumes and characters might well be supposed that everybody had come to a decision on such points. Many had made up their minds. As to what roles they should assume a week or even a month in advance. And in fact, there was not a particle of indecision anywhere except in the case of the King and his seven minsters. Why they hesitated, I could never tell. Unless they did it by way of a joke. More probably, they found it difficult, on account of being so fat, to make up their minds. At all events, time flew, and as a last resort, they sent for Trappeda and Hop Frog. Oh, boy. All right. So the deal is they're throwing this big ball. Everyone's dressed up, everyone put a lot into it except for the King's seven minsters and his seven minsters. Right. So they sent for Trpeda and Hop Frog to say what should we do, guys? We need some help here. Yeah. So can I start again? Yes. Okay. When the two little friends obeyed the summons of the King, they found him sitting at his wine with the seven members of his Cabinet council. But the monarch appeared to be in very ill humor. He knew that HopFrog was not fond of wine, for it excited the poor cripple almost to madness, and madness is no comfortable feeling. But the King loved his practical jokes and took pleasure in forcing Hop Frog to drink and, as the King called it, to be. Mary, I just made air quotes. Everybody. Come here, Hop Frog, said he as the jester and his friend entered the room. Swallow this bumper to the health of your ABS and friends here, Hot Frog sighed. And then let us have the benefit of your invention. We want characters. Characters, man. Something novel. Out of the way. We are wearied with this everlasting sameness. Come, drink. The wine will brighten your wits. How is that for a king? I mean, I'm no Chuck Bryant. That was great. That's okay. Hot Frog endeavored as usual to get up a jest and reply to these advances from the King. But the effort was too much. It happened to be the poor dwarf's birthday, and the command to drink to his absent friends forced tears to his eyes. Many large bitter drops fell into the goblet as he took it humbly from the hand of the tyrant. Ahaha. Roared the latter as the dwarf reluctantly drained the beaker. See what a glass of good wine can do while your eyes are shining already. Poor fellow. His large eyes gleamed rather than shone, for the effect of whine on his excitable brain was not more powerful than instantaneous. He placed the goblet nervously on the table and looked around upon the company with a half insane stare. They all seemed highly amused at the success of the King's joke. You want me to keep going? Keep going. And now to business, said the prime minister. A very fat man. Yes, said the king. Come, lend us your assistance. Characters, my fine fellow. We stand in need of characters, all of us. Ha ha. And as this was seriously meant for a joke, his laugh was chorused by the seven. Nice hot frog also laughed, although feebly and somewhat vacantly. I think he did that calm, said the king impatiently. I have nothing to suggest. I am endeavouring to think of something novel, replied the dwarf abstractedly, for he was quite bewildered by the wine. I know what that's about. Yeah, all right. Go. King Endeavoring. Cried the tyrant fiercely. What do you mean by that? I perceive your sulky. And one more wine. Here, drink this. And he poured out another gobletful and offered it to the cripple, who merely gazed at it, gasping for breath. Drink, I say, shouted the monster, or by the fiends. The dwarf hesitated. The king grew purple with rage. The courtier smirked tropeta pale as the corpse advanced to the monarch's seat and falling on her knees before him, implored him to spare her friend. The tyrant regarded her for some moments in evident wonder at her audacity. He seemed quite at a loss what to do or say. How most becomingly to express his indignation. At last, without uttering a syllable, he pushed her violently from him and through the contents of the brimming goblet in her face. The poor girl got up best she could, and, not even daring to sigh, resumed her position at the foot of the table. Man, I know it's hard out there for a court minster. There was a dead silence for about a half minute, during which the falling of a leaf or of a feather might have been heard. It was interrupted by a low but harsh protracted grading sound which seemed to come out at once from every corner of the room. What are you making that noise for, King? I'm doing Michael Scott. Doing his weird voice. I just realized that's. Great. Demanded the king, turning furiously to the dwarf. The latter seemed to have recovered in great measure from his intoxication. That was quick and looking fixedly, but quietly into the tyrant's face, merely ejaculated. How could it have been me? The sound appeared to come from without, observed one of the courtiers. I fancy it was the parrot at the window wetting his bill upon his cage wires. True, replied the monarch, as if much relieved by the suggestion, but on the honor of a night I could have sworn that it was the gridding of this vagabonds teeth hereupon. The dwarf laughed. The king was too confirmed a joker to object to anyone's laughing, and displayed a set of large, powerful and very repulsive teeth. Moreover, he avowed his perfect willingness to swallow as much wine as desired. The monarch was pacified, and having drained another bumper with no very perceptible ill effect, HopFrog entered at once and was spirit into the plans for the masquerade. Take it away. Okay. Well, this is a HopFrog quote. You've been nailing it. I cannot tell what the association of Idea observed. He very tranquilly and as if he had never tasted wine in his life. But just after Your Majesty had struck the girl and thrown the wine in her face just after Your Majesty had done this and while the parrot was making that odd noise out the window, that came into my mind a capital diversion, one of my own country frolics often enacted among us at our masquerades. But here it will be new altogether. Unfortunately, however, it requires a company of eight persons and war. Here we are. Cried the king, laughing at his acute discovery of the coincidence. Eight to a fraction. I and my seven ministers. Come. What is the diversion? We call it the eight chained orangutangs. And it really is excellent sport of well enacted bork. We will enact it, remarked the king, drawing himself up and lowering his eyelids. The beauty of the game lies in the fright it occasions among the women capital, roared in chorus the monarch in his ministry. I will equip you as a rangtangs, proceeded the dwarf. Leave all that to me. The resemblance shall be so striking that the company of masqueradors will take you for real beasts. And of course they will be as much terrified as astonished Borg. Oh, this is exquisite. Exclaimed the king. Hop Frog, I will make a man of you. I don't know what's going on with the king, but this is just how excited he is. He's speaking through me right now. Very oily. It's very interesting to see everyone. Josh's eyes roll back in his head every time he does it the change for the purpose of increasing the confusion by their jangling. You are supposed to have escaped en masse from your keepers. Boys, really setting this up. Your Majesty cannot conceive the effect produced out of mass parade by eight chang Duranga tangs. Imagine to be real ones by most of the company and rushing in with savage cries among the crowd of delicately and gorgeously habited men and women. The contrast is inhibitable, it must be said. The king and the council arose hurriedly, as it was growing late to put in execution the scheme of HopFrog. All right, my turn. Your turn. His mode of equipping the party as orangutans was very simple, but effective enough for his purposes. The animals in question had at the epoch of my story very rarely been seen in any part of the civilized world. And as the imitations made by the dwarf were sufficiently beastlike and more than sufficiently hideous, their truthfulness to nature was thus thought to be secured. The king and his ministers were first encased in tight fitting stocking net shirts and drawers like what are those called? Onesies. Sure. They were then saturated with tar. This is where it gets kind of painful, really, at this stage of the process. Someone of the party suggested feathers, but the suggestion was at once overruled by the dwarf nope. Who soon convinced the eight by ocular demonstration that the hair of such a brood as the orangutan was much more efficiently represented by flax. A thick coating of the latter was accordingly plastered upon the coating of tar. A long chain was now procured. First it was passed about the waist of the king and tied then about another of the party and also tied then about all successively in the same manner. When this chaining arrangement was complete and the parties stood as far apart from each other as possible, they formed a circle. And to make all things appear natural, HopFrog passed the residue of the chains in two diameters at right angles across the circle. After the fashion adopted at the present day by those who capture chimpanzees or other large apes in Borneo. The story just keeps on giving, doesn't it? Yeah. Poe, he got weirdly specific there. Yeah. Like happened that one time. Yeah. Should I keep going? Yeah. Man the grand saloon in which the masquerade was to take place was a circular room, very lofty and receiving the light of the sun only through a single window at top at night, the season for which the apartment was especially designed. It was illuminated principally by a large chandelier, depending by a chain from the center of the skylight and lowered or elevated by means of a counterbalance, as usual. But in order not to look unsightly this ladder passed outside the couple and over the roof. You got that? I got it. Okay. The arrangement of the room had been left to trapeza's superintendents but in some particulars, it seems she had been guided by the calmer judgment of her friend, the dwarf. At his suggestion, it was that on this occasion the chandelier was removed. Its wax and drippings, which, in weather so warm it was quite impossible to prevent would have been seriously detrimental to the rich dresses of the guests who, on account of the crowded state of the saloon could not all be expected to keep from out at center, that is to say, from under the chandelier. Additional sconces were set in various parts of the hall out of the war and a flambow emitting a sweet odor was placed in the right hand of each of the Cariatides what do you think it is? Carryatids. Okay. There you go. That stood against the wall. Some 50 or 60 altogether. So they got rid of this giant chandelier that hung from a chain in the center of the place where the masquerade ball was going to be held. And now there's basically just a hole in the center of the roof where the chain that held up the chandelier would have been. Yes. He tells me the king and his guys are in for a surprise. Yeah, I think you might be right. All right, I can take it away here. Please do. The eight orangutangs, taking hot frog's advice, waited patiently until midnight when the room was thoroughly filled with masqueraders before making their appearance. No sooner had the clock ceased striking, however, than they rushed or rather rolled in altogether, for the impediments of their chains caused most of the party to fall and all to stumble. As they entered, the excitement among the masqueraders was prodigious and filled the heart of the king with glee. As had been anticipated, there were not a few of the guests who supposed the ferocious looking creatures to be beasts of some kind. In reality, if not precisely, orangutan many of the women swooned with a fright. Had not the king taken the precaution to exclude all weapons from the saloon, his party might soon have expiated their frolic in their blood. Wow. So they looked so much like a ranging tanks, he feared he would have been killed. People are expiating their blood. As it was, a general rush was made for the doors, but the king had ordered them to be locked immediately upon his entrance, and at the dwarf's suggestion, the keys had been deposited with him, while the tumult was at its height and each masquerader attentive only to his own safety. For, in fact, there was much real danger from the pressure of the excited crowd. The chain by which the chandelier ordinarily hung and which had been drawn up on its removal, might have been seen very gradually to descend until its hooked extremity came within 3ft of the floor. So there's a hub up going on and no one notices this chains being lowered from the ceiling, right? Yeah. And it sounds like not a lot of chivalry either, just a lot of pushing and shoving in every person for themselves. Okay, here we go. Soon after this, the king and his seven friends, having reeled about the hall in all directions, found themselves at length in its center, and, of course, in immediate contact with the chain. While they were thus situated, the dwarf, who had followed noiselessly at their heels, inciting them to keep up the commotion, took hold of their own chain at the intersection of the two portions which cross the circle, diametrically and at right angles. Here, with a rapidity of thought, he inserted the hook from which the chandelier had been wont to depend. And in an instant, by some unseen agency, the chandelier chain was drawn so far upward as to take the hook out of reach and as an inevitable consequence, to drag the orangutans together in close connection and face to face. The masqueraders by this time had recovered in some measure from their alarm, and beginning to regard the whole matter as a well contrived pleasantry set up a loud shout of laughter, predicament of the apes. Leave them to me now. Screamed Hot Frog, his shrill voice making itself easily heard through all the den. Leave them to me. I fancy. I know them. If I can only get a good look at them, I can soon tell who they are. Take us home. Oh, jeez. I was not expecting it here. Scrambling over the heads of the crowd, he managed to get to the wall when, seizing a flambo, I think a torch from one of the let's just say torchy Scots on the wall. Okay? He returned, and as he went to the center of the room, leaping with the agility of a monkey upon the king's head and thence clambered a few feet up the chain because, remember, he's got that upper body strength. Holding down the torch to examine the group of orangutans and still screaming, I shall soon find out who they are. And now. While the whole assembly. The apes included. Were convulsed with laughter. The jester suddenly uttered a shrill whistle when the chain flew violently up for about 30ft. Dragging with it the dismayed and struggling Orangutanks and leaving them suspended in midair between the skylight and the floor. HopFrog. Clinging to the chain as it rose. Still maintained his relative position in respect to the eight maskers and still. As if nothing were the matter. Continued to thrust his torch down toward them as though endeavoring to discover who they were. So thoroughly astonished was the whole company at this ascent that a dead silence of about a minute's duration ensued. It was broken by just such a low, harsh grading sound as had before attracted the attention of the king and his counselors when the former threw the wine in the face of Trapeza. But on the present occasion, there could be no question as to whence the sound issued. It came from the fanglike teeth of the dwarf who ground them and nashed them as he foamed at the mouth and glared with an expression of maniacal rage into the upturned countenances of the king and his seven companions said at length the infuriated gesture, I begin to see who these people are. Now, here, pretending to scrutinize the king more closely, he held the flamboy to the flax and coat which enveloped him and which instantly burst into a sheet of vivid flames. In less than half a minute, the whole eight orangutans were blazing Fierces amid the shrieks of the multitude who gazed at them from below, horror stricken and without the power to render them the slightest assistance. At length, the flames, suddenly increasing in virulence forced the jester to climb higher up the chain to be out of their reach. And as he made this movement, the crowd sank again for a brief instant into silence. The dwarf sees this opportunity. And once more he spoke. I now see distinctly, he said, what manner of people these maskers are. They are a great king and seven privy counsellors. A king who does not scruple to strike a defenseless girl and his seven counselors who abet him in the outrage. As for myself, I am simply half Frog, the jester, and this is my last guest. He dropped the mic. Yeah, he did. He dropped the mic while the king was on fire, owing to the high combustibility of both the Flax and the tar to which it adhered. The dwarf had scarcely made an end of his brief speech. Before the work of vengeance was complete, the eight corpses swung in their chains a fetted, blackened, hideous and indistinguishable mass. And leave it to Poe, he hurled his torch at them, clambered leisurely to the ceiling and disappeared through the skylight. It is supposed that Tropetta, stationed on the roof of the saloon had been the accomplice of her friend in his fiery revenge and that together they affected their escape to their own country, for neither was seen again. What you get them? Hot Frog? Somebody needs to name something. Hop Frog in honor of Hot Frog and Trapezo. I agree. Because, boy, the king was a jerk. He was cruel. Don't forget oily. Oily. And he got his come up andce yeah, I would say being burned alive has come up for sure as an orangutan tank too. Yeah, to say the least. Insult. Injury. Yes, I want to say you got anything else? But that would imply that you have, like, another short story up your sleeve. Do not. Well, that's it, everybody. We want to wish you all a safe and happy Halloween. Get scared, but not too scared. You know what I mean? Sure. Like Algernon Blackwood scared. How about that? Agreed. And we've will see you next time with our regular type of episode. But until then, till long, happy Halloween, everybody." | |
4468ff0e-53a3-11e8-bdec-779958d2ec0a | How Pain Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-pain-works | In recent decades we’ve come to understand that there’s a lot more to pain than: touch hot stove/feel burning hand. Pain is a far more sophisticated experience and, unfortunately, a system that can often go haywire, with terrible effects. | In recent decades we’ve come to understand that there’s a lot more to pain than: touch hot stove/feel burning hand. Pain is a far more sophisticated experience and, unfortunately, a system that can often go haywire, with terrible effects. | Tue, 17 Nov 2020 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=17, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=322, tm_isdst=0) | 49720072 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W, chuck Bryan over there, and Jerry's out there running around somewhere. We gave her a high hot foot. It's hilarious. And this is stuff you should know. Right? Our continuing exploration of pain. What else have we talked about with Paint? We did one on the pain scales a couple of years ago, and then we did one on something about perceiving pain. Well, this one, this is just totally Stuff You Should Know Them because we did a bunch of more niche stuff, and now we're going back and doing, like, the umbrella topic, right. And we're talking about pain, which is a super ancient old evolutionary trait, I guess, that's shared basically throughout all living things. I would say it's a pretty fair guess. Is it? I think so, yeah. Because there's something that pain specifically, which is this we'll get into defining it and how hard that is in a second. But it seems to be a fairly almost universal process where our body says, hey, there's something really bad going on, say, on your hand. So move your hand away from wherever it is in space right now, and hopefully that will help keep it from getting further damaged. Pain is a signal saying, do something, dummy. Move. And you see it in basically any animal we've ever encountered, including the beaver and the porcupine. That's right. And by the way, we did other people who can't feel pain ten years ago. Yeah, it actually seems longer ago than that. That's funny, because I thought pain scales was forever ago, and it was 2017, so I have no sense of time anymore. So we are talking about pain. Chuck, you feel pain, right. Do you have a high pain threshold or you sensitive? Well, it's funny because I went back and listened to the pain scales, and I kind of chatted about that for a bit, but I have a pretty high pain threshold. Yeah. Okay. I would say mine's average. Let's just go with that. I wonder what I said in the pain scales up, because there's no way I didn't respond to yours. Apparently, pain is the most common reason that people go seek medical attention. But when they go seek medical attention, as we talked about in the pain scales episode, the whole reason there is such a thing as a pain scale is because it's a fully subjective experience and it's really difficult to describe. And it's taken medicine, like, many years to get to a point where they tell the people they're training doctors and nurse practitioners and medical staff, if somebody tells you they're in pain, they're experiencing pain, you have to take them at their word. And that's actually kind of a new development because there are plenty of times when it appears that there's absolutely nothing wrong and that the person shouldn't be in pain. And for years, doctors just kind of treated people like that, like cooks, and didn't believe them, which was very sad. And now we're finally figuring out there's situations where you can be experiencing pain even though there's no reason for you to be experiencing pain, which really underscores just how subjective it is. That's right. In 1973, there was an actual definition for pain that was introduced that has a couple of really important caveats that will kind of play out through this episode. Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience. There's the first caveat associated with actual or potential tissue damage or described in terms of such damage, which is a big caveat there because you can walk into a doctor's office and say, I've got some big time tissue damage, Doc. I'm experiencing big time pain. And they can look you over and be like, this guy didn't have any tissue damage at all. Right. So that's in the actual definition of pain. So I think that the reason they caveatted. That was for the very simple reason that pain can be emotional. And I don't mean like real emotional pain, I mean a physical pain that is maybe made worse by emotion or brought on by emotion, or that you really don't have a pain. Like you've got a chronic pain, let's say, but nothing's going on under the hood to cause it. Yeah, and we've learned so much about pain since 1973 that I saw that just this past July, the International Association for the Study of Pain updated and revised their definition. It's still basically the same, but they've included a lot of stuff that we're going to talk about in this episode. Does it say pain? Whatever you say, dude. Right? Yeah, that's all good. They said pain is 2020. Yeah, it is so far. There's a bunch of different types of pain, though actually not that many, but there's a few. Yeah, acute pain, which is very short lasting. If you put your finger on the burner of the stove or something like that, or slam it in a window, that's going to be an acute pain where it's really helpful. So your body is going to say, wait a minute, that's super hot. Or by the way, dummy, you just put your finger in a window and you immediately have a reaction to stop that immediate acute thing from happening, even though the pain is going to still be there. It's not like you slam your finger in the window, yank your thing away and shake it a little bit and it's gone. Right? Well, it can be depending on the level of pain, but it makes sense that it would still linger even in acute pain, which from what I can tell is like the ideal version of pain. It's like you said, it makes you stop doing whatever you're doing. But the fact that it still hangs around for another minute, it's almost like it's teaching you a lesson, like, not only stop doing that, don't do that again. Yeah. And there's some overlap in these, by the way. So when we talk about the next one, nociceptive pain. This comes about from tissue damage, like real tissue damaged by physical or a chemical agent. We're talking a chemical burn or a trauma or a surgery. This can also include slamming that finger in the window. It can also include you worked out really hard the day before and you're really sore the next day. Yeah. As long as there's some sort of, like, mechanical reason or some sort of damage to tissue or even temporary damage like a sore, sore muscle. It also includes malignant pain, which is cancer pain, which is where a tumor starts growing in your tissue and presses on nerves and blood vessels and creates pain like that. Nociceptive pain is what most people think of when they think about pain, and it can be both acute and chronic. But I guess the best way to kind of differentiate no susceptible pain from the rest of it is there is actually something going on that is causing the pain signal to be created. And like I said, it can be short lasting or long lasting. And it's different from a different type of pain, appropriately enough, called neuropathic pain. Whereas Nociceptive arises from tissue damage, neuropathic arises from damage to the actual nerves themselves. Yeah. Like, I don't know if you remember this story from almost a year ago. It was last October when I hit my shin on my bed so hard that water started leaking out of my eyes. I wasn't crying. It was just literally water coming out of my eyes. And I'd never felt pain like that before. And it was clearly some kind of literal nerve damage because for three or four months, I had, like, a three inch by three inch square on my shin that was completely numb. Wow. And it's the worst pain like, physical pain I've ever felt in my life. I mean, that would definitely qualify as neuropathic pain. You clearly messed up the nerves in that little area, and you're lucky that it only lasted three months because apparently, neuropathic pain, which can include everything from hitting your shin to banging your funny bone, your elbow, to things like sciatica, even multiple sclerosis anytime the neurons in your nerve fibers are damaged, that's neuropathic pain, and it can last. It can very easily translate from acute pain over to chronic pain, which is pain that lasts six months or longer, which can itself be nociceptive or neuropathic. It can also, unfortunately, be psychogenic. Chronic pain can be which is where you have lasting, sustained pain over six months or longer for no good reason whatsoever. Yes. And this is it gets really sort of murky and confusing here. We are not saying that chronic pain is all in your head, but we're saying that in some cases that there is no reason behind you continuing to feel chronic pain. Right, but so many people suffer from chronic pain. I think roughly it kind of varies depending on the year, but somewhere in the neighborhood of 20% to 25% of adult Americans suffer chronic pain every single year. And when you hear people talk about that, I just feel bad for them. I can't imagine what it's like to walk around in constant pain. And it's probably even more frustrating when a doctor can't trace it to a thing like, hey, we fix that. It shouldn't be hurting anymore. Right. Especially if they're being patronizing and treating you like your Kooky. Well, that's a bad doctor. You should not go. Sure. But again, I feel like people with fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue, I don't know if you experience pain with chronic fatigue but have long been treated like they're nuts, like it's all in their heads just because science has not been able to identify exactly what the deal is. Yeah. I would say if your doctor is like that, go to a doctor with a little better bedside manner. At least they might be saying the same thing. But they would should treat you with respect. Yeah. And if they're wearing oversized clown shoes, so much the better. That's usually a giveaway for a great doctor. That's right. I don't think we said that. We talked about nociceptive pain, but nociception is taken from the Latin word for hurt. And pain is its own thing, like pain perception. We're talking about what's going on with the central nervous system, the peripheral central nervous system as well, and how it processes. This information is really interesting and still cloudy because the brain is involved. And we've done dozens and dozens of podcasts that involve the brain. And at some point during all of them, we usually say something like this is kind of their best guess right now because the brain is still such a mystery. Yes, we have made, like, advances by leaps and bounds since the sixties when we kind of started to change our understanding of pain and definitely refining it. But one of the things we figured out is that no section itself is separate from the experience of pain. It's like the body giving the brain information about something that's going on with your body right now, but it's not pain itself. Pain is the brain responding to that information. And so no section, as we'll see, is kind of this process where your body detects some sort of noxious stimuli in the nociceptors, your specific kind of little sense receptors that are attuned to pain as we'll talk about, they send a signal to your brain saying, hey, there's something going on here. And then in your brain, your brain starts to sort through the whole thing and decides how to respond. So no susception and pain, they're very much intertwined, but they're definitely different things. And we've actually seen that one can exist without the other. Yeah. I mean, they've done studies that and we had to talk about this and other people that can't feel pain. Right. Congenital analgesia. I don't remember ever saying those words before, but I think we had to have sure, there's no way to talk about it. Although, knowing us, it's possible. We walked around that one. Maybe so, but there are studies, including ones on that people who can't feel pain that have shown that no section can occur without the experience of pain, and pain can be experienced with the absence of nociception. So it's sort of a two way street. Yeah. That's like that psychogenic pain where there's no reason for you to be feeling that pain right then. Right, yeah. And because it's the brain and you put in here, it sounds funny, but your brain is what's feeling the pain. Like, when you smash that hand in a window, you might think that you're hand feeling the pain, but technically it's your brain, if that makes sense. Yeah. Or even that like that window smashing. Your hand set off a specific, unique kind of signal that transmits a pain signal directly. Your brain your brain experiences the pain. That's just not quite right. That's actually Renee Descartes interpretation of it. What do you know? Well, considering he was working in the first half of the 16 hundreds, he wasn't that far off the mark, especially considering that before him, the Greeks had thought basically up to date cart, everyone had thought, starting with the Greeks, that pain was like a spirit intrusion. It was like something external. And in fact, our word pain comes from pena, like subpoena, which means penalty. So this like, pain was considered a punishment from the gods and Descartes like, no, I think this is an internal process. And he had like, the broad strokes of it. It's just that he didn't have the details that we have now today. Yeah, well, he got one half of it pretty right. But I mentioned it was a two way street. It's a two way street in a lot of ways because what we've learned since Descartes is that we do have pain signals that go up from nerves in the body to the brain to say, hey, I'm hurt. Those are called ascending signals. But then we also have another signal going. I'm just going to call it downstream, for lack of a better term, descending signals that come from the brain that can kind of mute the pain or turn off the pain signals. And as we'll see later, when it comes to medication and stuff, it's sort of managing that whatever traffic light is on that two way street. Yeah, that was like a huge thing, Chuck, to figure out that wait a minute. First of all, the experience of pain is totally in the brain. Right. Your hand itself isn't actually hurting. Your brain is what hurts. It just feels like it's coming from your hand. And then secondly, the idea that your brain can influence the experience of pain, that was just revolutionary. And so as a result, we've come to kind of see pain as the brain. There's a neuroscientist named vs rama Chandra who is just brilliant, and he said that pain this is paraphrasing him. He said that pain is the brain's opinion of the current state of your health. You got no pain. It's all good. You got pain. Your brain is interpreting there's something wrong with your hand or your leg or your guts or something like that. It's just an opinion. And the opinion can be gotten wrong, too. Well, you know what they say about opinions. Yes. Everybody's got an elbow of them. All right, I think we should take a break, and we're going to come back and dive into some hard science right after this. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office when you could be using stamps.com? Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses. Because stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and ups shipping services you need right from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No longterm commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com. Click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. All right, so your brain has an opinion about the current state of your health. We're still at the stage where we're sort of testing out how pain is generated and how we experience it. But what we kind of think right now is what we mentioned a little bit earlier is that some of the sense receptors located on the nerve endings are really finely tuned to different kinds different kinds of pain, but really tuned to different kinds of things that might cause pain, like a hot stove or needle going to your arm. Yeah. And you can pretty much divide them into three categories mechanical, which is pulling, stretching, tearing, cutting, chemical, which say, like exposure to acid or something, and then thermal, like heat or cold. And the idea that these nociceptors are capable of being triggered by exposure to those kind of stimuli from the external world. That is what kicks off the noses and process. Yeah. And they're all very different, and they have different ways of communicating with the brain. There are some that do things really fast. There are some called afibers. It's kind of like a little express train. Instead of having to make stops along the way, it has a fatty milean sheath that's going to insulate the electroconduction basically on the wire. And it really just zaps it there really fast. Not a lot of information losses going on. And that's like that first really intense pain you feel when you burn your hand or when you slam it into the window. That's kind of what's going on with the afibers. Right. And then you got C fibers which aren't insulated and they are slower conducting, but they also have a bunch they recruit a bunch of them to conduct signals from different parts or different areas to the brain to say, hey, this is actually pretty problematic. We got a real thing going on here. And they account for the follow up, like usually burning, throbbing kind of sensation that can be followed by that first bolt of pain that the affiliates deliver and then that's from the actual nociceptors, there's other stuff that happens too. Like if you cut open your hand, those damaged cells spill their guts and so like potassium and glutamate and Substance P start firing off like other neurons in the area. You might have an inflammatory response to things like histamine show up and they start setting off other nerve fibers too. So it's more than just the cut hand nociceptors telling the brain that something's happening. A whole bunch of different responses from the area are going to arrive at the brain and produce this really complex, rich message saying, here's generally what's going on here's how bad it is. You ever had a bad burn? Yes. Man, that was the worst. They are pretty bad. I don't even remember what happened, but I definitely have burned myself pretty bad. Yummy has the same spot on her hand that she gets in the convection of it. Basically every time it heals, she just re ups it again. She's always got this little thing on like I think it's her pinky knuckle on her right hand. And she always like hits the same spot on the yes. Oh, man. You get that lady a glove, a hot knit. Yeah. I think by now it's just so callous that she's just dead. She fights sailors with it these days too. Yeah, those burns really linger. And that's like every time I hear someone or see somebody that has been in a fire and had really, really bad burns over a lot of their body, I can't imagine the lingering pain that they go through. I know we've talked about this on some episode before, but just those burns, it seems like they hurt forever. Yeah, I mean, you got exposed nerve fibers to just the air, which you know as well. Also see, when you undergo a particularly brilliant experience of acute pain, it can be so thorough and it's energizing of your nerves that they actually become sensitized. So, like, they become more sensitive than they would have before that, which is actually also a problem with chronic pain, too. But if you experience burns like that deep over all of your body, not only are you going through the normal pain, you're probably more sensitive now to normal stuff like air blowing on your exposed nerves than you would otherwise. And that just makes it that much worse. Yeah. And then some things that you might think really hurt don't hurt. Like cuts. I've had cuts before that don't hurt. They might freak you out to look at it and to see, like, your skin exposed. And some people are really freaked out by the blood. I've had other people I know I've never broken bones that have had some pretty gnarly injuries like that. That said, it didn't really hurt that much. Yes, they're walking around like a skeleton. You hang on the door with their arms just flopping back and forth. It's really interesting how it all works, but it really underscores how the brain can get its opinion of what's wrong with the body based on the pain information. Wrong sometimes a lot of times. Like, think about a hang nail. A hang nail is no threat whatsoever to your survival. But those things hurt. Or a paper cut. No one's going to die from a paper cut. But it really hurts, too. It can be overblown, it can be underblown. But it really goes to show like it's the brain taking all this different information together and saying, here's how bad I think this is. Yeah, it's pretty cool and painful. So let's say you get hurt. Let's say you slam your hand in the window like I was talking about, which I think has happened. I don't know why I keep going to that. So your worst fear? I don't know. That better not be your worst fear. That is not that bad. That'd be hard. It's a lot easier to shut your hand in a car door than a window, but oh, man, that hurts either way. Yeah, man, I had knock wood. That hasn't happened to me in a long time. Yeah, same here. Every time my daughter shuts the door, which I tried to let her do whatever she can on her own, I'm always just like, don't do it. Do you put oven mitts on her hands first? No. Nanny stated at our house. Okay, so you get hurt on your hand, let's say the signal that is going to travel, it travels into the gray matter of your spinal cord, and there are going to be a lot of different connections made with the spinal neurons there. And it's going to cover a broad area of the body, which is why sometimes if you get hurt, especially if it's like an internal injury, you don't know exactly where the pain is coming from, you might tell your doctor, you just might rub around your whole torso when in fact, what's actually hurt is a fairly small area. Yeah. Or it could be like a completely different part of your body or kind of near. It's called referred pain. Like, if you're having a heart attack, you usually feel pain in your arm. If you have brain freeze, that's your blood vessels on the roof of your mouth expanding because they're cold. But you feel it on your forehead really terribly, which doesn't make any sense. So yeah, I think that's from the nerve or the C fiber information where it makes it tough to also figure out where it's coming from. You ever been to a cardiologist? No, I haven't. I'm going to one this week. Man, I've known two people in the past, like a month that have dropped dead that are like my age. What? One friend of mine from college had oh, no. Been experiencing chest pains, and he drove himself to the hospital and collapsed and died on the way into the hospital. Oh, my gosh. Just terrible. And I haven't been out of touch since college, but it really hit me hard to where I was like, you know what? I want to go just see what's going on in there. That's great. Yeah. And get some preventative or not preventative, but just some proactive tests done where they see how your arteries are doing. Because I've got cholesterol issues because of my family history and stuff, and I don't want it to be one of those things where they're like, oh, well, it turns out that you were 90% clogged this whole time. Right. So I don't care what they say. I'm going to demand those tests. Yeah. I think you probably will have to pay for them out of pocket. But that's not the end of the world. If you have concerns about it no. If you have genuine concerns, cardiologist might actually go ahead and prescribe it anyway. Well, I don't have concerns in that I have chest pains or anything. Right. But if you have a family history, they may go, yeah, I want to know what's going on. I think that's great. And actually, it's funny, like you had suggested we do something like that too, so maybe we'll see at the cardiologist's office. Well, I think for women, you can go get heart screenings for women very easily. And I don't know if it's because I thought it was for both. And I talked to the lady on the phone. She said, oh, that's only for women. And I guess that's because women are less likely to talk to doctors about their heart. Because I think it's maybe generally thought of as something that men experience more. Yeah, I guess now that you say that, it does seem like more of a man. So I think they're trying to be proactive and saying, like, hey, women, you need to think about this stuff, too. So we'll offer, like, $100 heart screening or something like that. Gosh. Is there anything socialized medicine can't do? So we were talking about those first set of spinal neurons. Then you have secondary neurons that are going to send their signals up through the white matter of the spinal cord. And this is an expressway where all the traffic from all of these lower segments just speed up the spinal cord. Yes. Which is normal for any kind of sensory information. But the pain information follows the same superhighway, and it goes through your brain stem, your medulla, and then it synapses again onto a third set of neurons in your thalamus, which is your brain's relay center. And then from there, things start to get kind of murky. It goes out to different parts of the brain. And we'll talk about pain in the brain in a second. But one thing that it does, it was helpful to me to imagine paying a pain signal as, like, a pinball when you hit it with the flippers. Say that's like you cutting your hand, that pinball goes up, and it's going up to the top of the pinball machine. But on the way, it goes through all these other things, like these gates that flips around 360 degrees, much time. Imagine that it's doing that in your brain stem or in the gray matter of your spinal cord. It's going through all these different things, and as it does on its way to that final destination of the brain somatosensory cortex, it can have effects on the way, too. Like, if it's bad enough, it may enter what's called a spinal reflex loop, where that pain signal doesn't even make it to the brain before part of it gets redirected back down to, say, your hand to make your hand jerk away from that hot stove before it even hits your brain. Literally, before your brain even knows that there's pain going on, you have a signal going down to your arm to say, move that hand, dummy. Yeah. Because if you think about burning your hand, it's very fast and very fast succession. The actual pain burn happens after you've jerked your hand away. Right. And like I said, it's pretty lucky split. But you jerk that hand away, it's not like you keep it there, and you're like, oh, my goodness, I feel pain on my hand. Oh, my Lord, it's got fire on it. I should probably move it eventually. Another thing that can happen is pain signals can set off your fight or flight pathways yes. As it's going through the medulla. It's been a long time since we talked about fight or flight. Yeah, it's been so long, they added a third one. Freeze. Last time we talked about it, it's like an old friend coming back to visit, but bringing a new obnoxious friend with it. Yeah. So it could set that off through the medulla. And what happens there. Is your heart rate is going to go up, your blood pressure is going to shoot up, you're going to start sweating if you're me rapid breathing. And it really depends on the intensity of the pain, but it can definitely set off that fight or flight or I guess freeze. And again, all this is before it even gets to the brain. And then finally, like I said, when it does get to the brain, we're not quite sure what happens there. We know from observations that the brain is definitely involved. And one of the ways that we know this is because you will move your hands. Sometimes it's not an immediate reaction, but sometimes it's a little later. So clearly some of those signals get sent to the motor cortex to say, okay, get the hand out of there. But we also can tell from things like the fact that if you consciously distract yourself from thinking about the pain with something else. Like, do you remember how Edward Norton in Fight Club, when he had that lie on his hand, he kept trying to think of like, a snow covered, like, forest or something. Yeah. He went to his happy animal, I think was a penguin. That's right, that's right. He started to try to concentrate on that, and that didn't work then, but it could have worked depending on what other kind of tissue damage was going on. And it really kind of underscores the fact that if you think about something else, your pain may decrease. Well, if the brain has nothing to do with pain or controlling pain, then that wouldn't happen at all. And so observations like that and some other ones show us that, okay, the brain's definitely involved in this in some way, shape, or form. And pain is not just the reception of a pain signal coming from the lower parts of the body up to the brain. But there's also a reciprocal thing, like you were saying, where the brain descends, there's descending pathways that the brain uses to say, OK, all right, let's just all chill out down there, okay? Let me figure this out. Everybody just shut up. Shut up. I can't think when you're all screaming at me. Yeah. And as those signals are on the way down, there might be those ascending nerve signals going up, and those descending signals could overpower and say, hold on, you stop right there, buddy. I'm trying to calm this person down. You just stay put. Right. And so there are other things that we figured out that can actually influence your experience of pain. Like to say that it's subjective, it's just no joke. There's probably no experience more subjective than the experience of pain. And there's all these different factors that are involved that will have an impact on how much or how little pain you experience. I think improv comedy is the first that's right, man, to see good improv is just so rare. But it's so good when it is good. Yeah. I mean, I've seen a handful in my life that just blew me away, and I've seen a bunch more that it's tough to get through. It's like horror movies. Like a truly great horror movie is really tough to beat. But there's a lot of really bad horror movies out there. Yeah, a lot of good ones. These days, though. We're in a new renaissance. What you got? Well, I mean, in the past five or six years, I think it follows. And the babadook hereditary. I think there's been a bunch of new horror masters. Now, this is not a horror movie, but I want to shout out enola homes on Netflix. Have you seen it? No. It's a coming of age movie about Sherlock Holmes younger sister. Interesting. And it's super cute, but it's also really smart. Like, very smart. And it takes it for granted that the viewer is smart and paying attention. It's a really great movie. Great movie. You have to check that out. It's Millie Bobby brown, as you know, the home. She's about as charming as they come. Yeah, she's wonderful. Yeah. Not a horror movie, but definitely worth watching regardless. Is that based on any literature or anything? Or did they just say, like, hey, what if he had a little sister? I hadn't thought about it, but I think it's the latter of the two, which makes it all the more amazing because they did such a great job of capturing that whole world. Very cool. Where should we take a break? Yeah, why not? Let's take a break and we'll come back and talk about a few of the factors that influence your experience of pain. 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 we were saying before we started talking about inola homes and horror movies that there's, like, a lot of different things that will influence an individual's experience of pain and it has to do with not just you biologically, but weirdly also you sociologically too. Yes. In this first one, age is to me a little counterintuitive in some ways, as you age, your brain circuitry is just going to degenerate a little bit. That's just the sad fact of the matter. And if you are one of our seniors and if you're a senior that's listening. Hello. I got an email from a lovely 80 year old lady the other day that just warmed my heart. Oh yeah, she was great. She was great. So if you are one of our senior listeners and you might have a lower pain threshold and more problems dealing with pain right. This seemed a little counterintuitive because I could also see a case where the neurons don't fire in the correct way such that you could be feeling something painful and not really realize it. So the way I took it was a little different that it was almost like, you know how when you form a habit or a memory or something, it's because the neural connection has gone over again and again. So like that pathway is just kind of blazed a little more clearly. My interpretation was that the same can be true with pain to where once you fire a few times or over and over again, it becomes easier to conduct that pain signal more efficiently. And so that would account for sensitization. That's how I took it. Okay, I'm no vs. Rama sham drawn. There's also gender and because we're talking about medical research, they are basically still saying men and women and they're not doing research along the gender spectrum. So having said that, research shows that women have a higher sensitivity to pain than men could be maybe psychosocial stuff at work because men are supposed to not show their pain or not report pain or just suck it up. Dude. There could be that at work. It also could be sex linked genetic traits or hormonal changes that might change that pain perception. Right. Or even the culture you're raised in. Sure. Women in Uganda I read, are expected to be stoic in the face of pain, whereas men in Ukraine are expected to not experience pain at all or show any kind of pain whatsoever. So the idea that culture can affect your interpretation or how you experience pain is kind of weird if you think about it. It's also weird because I know many women who would say, are you kidding me? My husband is the biggest whiny baby every time he gets sick and I generally suck it up as the wife. So Ugandan. So Ugandan. There's also memory. Like if you've experienced pain before, your memory of going through that pain can impact how you experience it. A follow up time too. Yeah, and for both ways. I used to be really scared of needles and I think that was because I went a long time without getting shots. Right. I think when I was younger and in college, I wasn't giving blood like I should, and I wasn't getting flu shots like I should. But now that I'm a real sentient adult and responsible adult, I have needles in me all the time, and they don't really hurt that bad anymore. So when I go back, I get that initial fear of the needle because I've always had it. But then my brain tells me, hey, Chuck, it's not that bad, remember? Do you just suck it up and get the shot? My sister in law is like a genuine shout no and run out of the room like Needle. Needle Person. Yeah. Needle foe. That's a great band name. Oh, my God. Pretty good. That's the best band name in years. Chuck, what kind of band is that? Needlephobe is clearly some sort of metal, maybe new metal if it were going to be ruined, but there's definitely something in there. Maybe along the lines of, like, Queen Strike or something. Yeah, I could see that. Or maybe even, like, horror metal. Oh, yeah, like the Norwegian stuff. Sure. Okay, so it's about to get weirder. Chuck so you're talking about needles. If you look at a needle injected into your arm, it hurts more than if you're not looking. Even if you're thinking about the needle injecting into your arm being injected in your arm, just not looking at it makes it hurt less, studies have shown, which is weird, but in a sense, it also makes sense because you're being provided with additional information about that through your eyes. So your brain has more information than it otherwise would have, which can actually make it hurt more. Yeah. And I know I've mentioned this, I still got to look. I used to request a mirror to look at dental work as it was going on. I don't do that anymore. I try and just check out, but I always have to look at the needle. There's no way. Yeah, same here. I'm like, do it slower. Yeah. You're not a Needle Foe, you're a needle. Whatever. The opposite is a file. That's right, a needle file. And then there's emotions, too. And not just like you were saying earlier. There's a different thing, psychic pain, where your emotions are so overwrought that you actually feel physically uncomfortable or hurt from it. That's different. Your emotions can actually affect physical pain as well. Yeah. And back when we were trying to understand and we're still trying to understand this, but why emotions and stuff might influence pain. In the course, when all this kind of cool research was going on, there were a couple of dudes named Ronald Melzak and Patrick Wall who threw up a proposal about a gating mechanism existing among the connections in the body, sensory pathways that can help determine how you're going to feel pain and how that works with the brain. Yeah, because there's the ascending painful pathways and then the descending let's all just mellow out pathways. And I don't know if we knew that before Melzac and wall, or if we know it as a result of them, but the current general understanding of pain is this gate control theory where there's stimulation of these pathways going up to the brain, and they have to be of, like, a certain amount to overcome an inhibitory neuron. And so if I just press my arm, I'm sending somatosensory information through the same pain pathways, but the inhibitory neuron that keeps those pain projector neurons from firing are not overcome. But if I took a butcher knife and cut that same part of my arm, they would be overcome. The inhibitory neuron would basically be turned off by the signal, the intensity of the signal, and that projector neuron would fire. And now our brains would have that pain signal saying, yeah, in that case, the gate is fully open for business. And when otherwise, when there's no pain, no sensory information, the gate is closed. Or if it's just normal some added sensory information, the gate is still closed. It's just when it's the intensity of the pain information, the gate flies open. Yeah. And this is interesting because it doesn't explain everything, but it does explain, like, if you smash your thumb with a hammer and your reaction is to go and shake your hand really hard or to suck on it, maybe if you smash your finger with a hammer, it seems like a weird thing to do. I know it is, but it works. It does. That stimulates your normal somatosensory input to those projector neurons, and that's going to help override the projection neurons and basically kind of close that gate down. Okay, so now that you understand the gate theory of pain, and this is the general understanding among Western science and medicine of pain, this is pretty much the common knowledge now you can understand how it can go wrong. And so they think that this also explains how you can experience psychogenic pain, where people have fibromyalgia or chronic pelvic pain or tennitis or TMJ or chronic back pain when there's no reason whatsoever for them to experience this. The really great author and surgeon atul Gawande, I believe he writes for The New Yorker. He writes some books as well. He's one of the best writers out there right now, and he's also a very accomplished surgeon. And he likens that situation to a faulty car sensor, where if you have a sensor on your dashboard coming on saying, like, hey, you got an engine problem, you go to the mechanic. And the mechanic is like, you don't have an engine problem, eventually they're going to figure out that the problems with the sensor itself. And they think that because of this gate being open, the sensor is open even though there's nothing tripping it. That is the problem. That is what it accounts for psychogenic pain. Very interesting. And that makes sense. Yeah, definitely. So when it comes to managing pain, there are a bunch of different routes you can go, depending on what your doctor might recommend, depending on what you as a human, what road you want to go down, and we'll get into these. But these vary from over the counter medications to prescription medications, to surgery, to go into a massage therapist or an acupuncture specialist. Acupuncturist. But as far as the medications go, you've got a couple of different kinds. You've got your nonopioid analgesic, like this is a Tylenol or an Elite or an Advil or something like that, and it's going to act at the side of the pain. When you have that damaged tissue, it releases enzymes that stimulate the pain receptors locally. And what these do is they interfere with those enzymes. They're going to reduce inflammation and hopefully reduce pain. Yeah. Which is really interesting because that is your mind saying, this pain is not nothing that my brain needs to worry about. I'm going to actually go to the site and cancel out those pain signals where they're beginning, because I'm judging that they're not that important. Right. Pretty cool. Yeah, it is cool. But these can have effects on the liver and kidneys if you use them a lot, so you don't want to pop an advil every day if you have like, back pain, that kind of thing. Yeah. And then there's opioids, which they actually go to the gate and they can close the gate on the one hand, and then they can also go to your brain and excite the descending pathways, which will bind with opioid receptors. And of course, those are hugely addictive and have a huge possibility of overdose as well. But they do help treat pain a lot. Yeah. We should do one of opioids in the opioid epidemic. I agree. It's been one of the darker spots of the new era. The new era? What is that? I don't even know of the last ten or 15 years. I call that a new era. The modern era is what I meant. Sure. What else do we have there? You can actually use medicines that aren't meant for treating pain, to treat pain, like anti, epileptic drugs, off brand stuff, antidepressants anesthetics. They all do things like they block nerve conduction in some specific area and so they weren't meant to be treated or used for pain. But they actually can come in handy for things like chronic pain or neuropathic pain. Yeah. You can also have surgery as a kind of a last resort if you have severe I've had a couple of friends, actually, who have had back surgery where, let's say you have a herniated disk and that thing is compressing on a nerve. As a last resort, they can go in there and maybe remove a little bit of that disc it's hitting that nerve and relieve that pressure. Yeah. And from what I've seen, yes, that is meant to be a last resort. There's also like cortex in the where they go in and say, we're just going to sniff that gate so that it just doesn't function at all anymore and make you a super soldier. And then there's also alternative therapies and mental control techniques and these work to varying degrees. One of my favorite alternative therapies is the Tens unit transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation and it sends electrical impulses from the site of pain. It's basically like a defibrillator for your pain gate. It's saying your pain gate is open and it shouldn't be open. So we're going to send some nerve stimulation in the hopes that we can restart that inhibitory neuron and get it closing that pain gate and or we can make it all the way up to the brain and get the brain's descending pathways kick started as well. Is that like when I had a back then about five years ago where they gave me this electrostimulator thing that I put these little pads on the back? Yeah. And there's like a little handheld thing about the size of a Game Boy that was connected to you, not mine, but I'm sure they're all different kinds, but you could basically level the amount of sort of low level shock and when you turn that thing all the way up, man, it was pretty intense. Yeah, that's a tens unit. And as a matter of fact, it's based on some really ancient thinking. Apparently pre Dynastic Egyptians from like 5000 years ago used electric catfish from the Nile for the same effect and impact. Wow, it's pretty amazing. Yeah. And then we mention going to the Chiropractor massage therapist. Obviously there are hot compresses and cold compresses. There's acupuncture, there is relaxation and hypnosis. And we've already talked about distraction. If you want to know what you think about hypnosis, we did a pretty good episode on it a while back. So yeah, there are all sorts of mental ways because they've shown that oh, I'm blanking out. What do you call the drugs that aren't real drugsbos? What are the sugar pills? Placebos. Placebos, yeah. The placebos have been shown to work sometimes with limiting pain. Yeah, I mean, you can trick the brain for sure into not feeling pain. Like phantom limb treatment usually or sometimes involves a mirror where you put a mirror over the amputated limb that's experienced pain and you move the other limb while you're looking in the mirror so it looks like your amputated limb is back and you're tricking your brain into being like, oh, okay, it's there, it's fine, I don't have to experience pain anymore. And it actually works. Yeah, but there's a threshold there. Like you can mind over matter it to a certain degree, but as you say in the article, your mind and your brain are two different things. So you can't shut down that gateway just by thinking it away. No. And there's a real push to believe that over the last few decades. But it's becoming clear you can impact it to some degree, but just not to a full degree. Yeah. And I think the mind over matter is a person like the pain doesn't go away, you're just able to mentally overcome it such that you're not going to either show it or let it get to you or let it affect you. Right. You have actually a lower stress response and at the same time it also cuts down on suffering, which is different from the experience of pain. It's like associated with pain and that's like that whole why me thing. And that seems to be fixated on anticipating more pain in the immediate future. And people who are mindful and meditate can actually cut down and alleviate that suffering. So they experience pain, but it goes away a lot faster and their response to it isn't nearly as pronounced. Right. So it does have an effect. Yeah. Chuck, this is a good one, man. Pain in the house. And if you want to know more about pain, well, I'm not even going to suggest what you can do. How about just go read up on it a little more? And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. I'm just going to call this the Las Vegas Beavers. Just got done listening to the Beaver podcast, which by the way, we get a lot of response on that one. Sure. People love their beavers. I see baby beavers. Yeah, they're the best. I just wanted to give you a fun little tidbit of information. Chuck said that you can find beavers almost everywhere except the desert, which is somewhat true. They can't live out in the open amongst the cacti, but the size of the population of beavers in Las Vegas is testament to their ability to survive the heat. They're about 80 to 100 beavers living in the Clark County wetlands, just about 20 to 30 minutes from the Strip. That's crazy. It was a shock when I first heard of this, but have since taken several trips to see them. Thanks for all the work. Enjoy the show. That's from Josh. Very short and sweet. That's from Josh Eretix. That's a great first name. Great last name, Josh. I love how that email just kind of petered out at the end there. Yeah. So his new name is Josh petertic. Okay, great. Thanks for the email. JP. And if you want to be like JP and send us an email, you can do so wrap it up, spank it on the bottom and send it off to Stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is the production of Iheartradios how Stuff Works. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app ApplePodcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
3c00113a-8fc4-47e9-8a6b-ae7d0120f35d | Just Say No to... Bottled Water | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/just-say-no-to-bottled-water | Bottled water is huge business, and terrible for the environment. But where did this all start? Listen in and learn.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Bottled water is huge business, and terrible for the environment. But where did this all start? Listen in and learn.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Thu, 21 Apr 2022 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=21, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=111, tm_isdst=0) | 50866969 | audio/mpeg | "Binge. Listen this and all your artist stations plus any song from our library of millions of songs all ad free. Get your free 30 day trial of iHeartRadio AllAccess. You'll love it. Don't be basic, be extra. Start your free 30 day trial of iHeartRadio AllAccess. Now, welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of. iHeartRadio hey. And welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and there's Jerry. And this is stuff you should know. Unscrew the caps and plug it down. That's right. And you know what, I think we should say the outset here. No, you have to you know what I'm going to say. No. Well, it's from Julia Layton, actually one of our writers. But it's from an old Houseworks article and when I say old, I mean that it's from 2005 or six or so 16 years old on bottled water. So it is old but I think most of the stuff in here is still true from checking in and researching further. But what it did do was provide an interesting look at statistics because we had to get updated statistics on how much bottled water we use and how big the industry is. It's really amazing though just to have sort of a before after picture from 2006 to now, 2000. I mean, I saw stats from like 20 and 21. Yes, there's been a tad bit of growth since 2006 in that industry. Yeah, I think like one statue sites and we're going to go through all this, but just as an example is 7 billion gallons of bottled water were consumed by Americans in 2005 and I got from 2019, that is I'm sorry, 2020, that is now 15 billion gallons. That is a tremendous increase in bottled water consumption. 45 gallons per American per year, per American includes dumb babies. It's a lot of water. I guess it's better than if we had decided to all start drinking like that much high fructose corn syrup. Sure, every year. But there's a lot of problems with bottled water as you can imagine, and maybe some you can't quite imagine yet. But we're going to go over all that. We're going to give you the ins and outs of bottled water. Okay? The ins and outs. So please forgive us. This is kind of an old article. What perched my ears up, Chuck, is that she referred to bottled water as newfangled. At one point she really said people who drink bottled water just think they're so fancy. I was like, this seems old. This seems like an old way of looking at things. Well, it is interesting because I think that was true for a while and then I think we're at a point now in 2022 where there's a large portion of America that doesn't want to get bottled water at all anymore and refuses to use single use plastics like this. But there are also still a lot of people that you go and you see them loading up by the case full to stock their house. I can see an emergency stash of something maybe, right? But I'm just talking. Let me give you an example, okay? Late on me, fella. I have to tread carefully because this is a person in our lives, not your life, but our lives, mine and Emily's lives. But we have a human in our life that came to see us and bought a bunch of when we did like, hey, I'm going to the grocery store for the week. And they went with us and they wanted to buy like a case of bottled water. And we were like, oh, no, please don't. We're trying to tread carefully, though. We're like, we got really good filtration, good water. It's good. And they said that they're on a thing where they have to drink so much water. I was like, oh, that's great, and we have a good filtration system here. But they were like, well, it really helps me keep up with how much I'm drinking if I do it per bottle. And Emily just looked at me like she's just like, just shut up. She gave me that look, and I did. But it was really frustrating to know that it's not any easier to keep up than drinking a glass of water. I wonder how much also that person really just felt like bottled water was healthier or pure or whatever. And it was more than just that. Who knows? I don't know. The reason they gave, though, is keeping up with it. Like they lined the bottles up at the end of every day and shot them with a six shooter. That's right. Right into the ocean. They drove them out to the beach. But anyway, it's a personal frustration and I'm going to try not to just live on my soapbox in this episode. But suffice it to say, I really don't like bottled water. And I've seen the light and I will only get bottled water if I'm in a real, real pinch and have to got you. If somebody is pinching you and they're like, I'm not going to stop until you buy bottled water, you do it sometimes when you get a kid you're stuck somewhere and you're like, you have to hydrate your child. Sure. You're like, oh, God, I got to get this bottled water and I hate it. You're out of high fructose corn syrup. And then I try to at least let me get like spring water or something. But when the only option is and we'll get to all this, it's just like purified bottled tap water. I just want to crawl under the rug. Yeah, well, come out from under the rug, chuckle. We got to talk about bottled water. I know. I just wanted to level set. Okay. I think you did that pretty well. Let's talk a little history about bottled water. And this comes to us from our friends over at sirius Eats. This part is interesting. I thought so, too. So bottled water has been around, I saw, somewhere, since the 18th century in America, certainly in the mid 19th century, there were people bottling water and selling them, and usually it was like, as a remedy, it was a healthy thing, and you would buy them at, like, spas or something. But that's definitely the origin of bottled water. Yeah. In Perrier. I'm sure you remember when we were kids before, like, bottled water as we know it was such a big thing. Perrier was something you started seeing ads for on TV and in magazines that was just I think they were smart enough to brand it early on or not early on in their I mean, they've been around since the mid 1800s, but early on in the in America of, like, a fancy mancy thing to do. Yeah. The Patrick Bateman types really slurped it down. Right? Yeah, absolutely. But that was because of a rebranding that they did 120 years after they started selling the stuff here in America. They hired Orson Welles, they got People magazine to write about. It just became, like, a thing. And it really dovetailed with that kind of health consciousness that was starting to kind of blossom among baby boomers who are, again, all Patrick Bateman types still are. And so Perrier became, like, the first bottled water that America kind of became obsessed with. But it was like, aspirational it was expensive, and it was a status symbol, plain and simple. It wasn't until Coke and Pepsi really got into the game that it became, like, the thing that it is now. Yeah, and I think Pepsi got in first in 94 with their Aquafina brand, and I think Coke for a while not, I think Coke for a while. No, we're in the soda game, and we don't want this water thing cutting into our soda business. Because I think they were scared by Perrier because they were also marketing it as an alternative to soda. Right. Like a healthy alternative. And then Pepsi started crushing it, and then Coke was like, oh, well, we can't have that. No. So they launched Dasani, which apparently it means nothing. It's just supposed to evoke a kind of like a refreshing pure sensation, I guess. I guess. Sorry. A clean. Fresh taste. Said a Coke spokesperson back in the late nineties. Early two thousand s. And then that also set off a huge consolidation rush. Where some of the brands that you know today of bottled water. Like Arrowhead and Poland Springs and Deer Park. They've been around since the mid 19th century. That's what they got snatched up by all these larger brands or consolidated when people started to say. Yeah. We'll drink bottled water. And I remember very clearly in the late 90s, early 2000s, there was a big cultural discussion, I guess, but also kind of chiding of people who drank bottled water because people like to point out, a lot of that stuff is coming out of the tap somewhere. It's just purified. And after all that, after the whole discussion was done, america said, you know what? We want bottled water. That's what we're going to drink. And in 2017, it became the most consumed beverage in the entire United States. Bottled water? Yeah. Wow. How that works. More than coffee. And I've been doing my part to keep coffee up there, statistically speaking. And it still beats coffee, still beats Coke, beats everything else. Bottled water, beer. One beats beer. Yeah, bottled beer or canned beer. Crazy. Yeah, it's hard to believe, but that's kind of what's happened here. Julia points out that there are a few reasons, and you mention them a little bit with Mystery guest that some of the other reasons people might drink bottled water is they think it might be healthier or more pure, or they might just think it tastes better than tap water, which actually could be the case. There is certainly some funky tasting tap water in America, depending on where you live. Yeah, definitely. And there's a lot of people who take the opposite tack. They're like, America has some of the best cleanest, safest drinking water in the world. And in some parts of America, it's just straight up amazing. Like, remember our episode on the New York City water delivery system and just how amazingly good New York City tap water is? Like, in some places, the local tap water is what they sell as spring water, basically. So some people have it better than others. But in general, people who drink tap water kind of they just take a certain tack toward bottled water. Like you're a dummy for drinking that. It doesn't make any sense. Whereas people with bottled water say you're drinking poison right out of your kitchen sink. I can't believe you would do that to yourself and your family. So there's kind of like a disconnect there between those two groups. Yes. And to be sure, we are not talking about my friend Dave Barnhardt is a documentary filmmaker who has made a documentary on the water in Flint, Michigan. And we're not talking about places where the tap water is legit, dangerous, and it's shameful that that kind of thing goes on in this country these days. So we're not talking about that. We're talking about garden varieties. Half water, that's generally pretty safe. Florida's got some funky water too, my friend. Egg water. Yeah, well, I went to on my Disney World trip, I got some pretty funky egg water there. Yes, it can be funky. And it's not just funky to drink. It's funky to bathe in. It's funky to be like in the same city as it's funky stuff. For those of you who have never experienced egg water, it's called that because it smells a lot like rotten eggs. It's got a lot of sulfur content in it, totally safe. Nothing's wrong with it. It may even bestow some health benefits compared to water that has a lower sulfur content. Oh, interesting. The upshot of it is funky and it smells bad and it tastes bad and you don't really want that. But unfortunately, there are some parts of Florida that do have that as their tap water. Now, can you get a filtration system that actually gets rid of that taste if you do have that coming to your house, sure. If you want to get rid of everything, you just get a reverse osmosis system. It's as simple as that. The problem is it takes out everything. So there's beneficial stuff in water you don't really want to take out magnesium, potassium, calcium, and probably a bunch of other little micronutrients and minerals too, that we don't even know about yet. Reverse osmosis takes everything out, which we talked about. We did some sort of water purification episode not too long ago. Yeah, I think that was our water treatment. That was a good one. Okay, so in reverse I think we also did one specifically on reverse osmosis, too, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. So it takes everything out. So if you want to get everything out, just get a reverse osmosis system and you're fine. You should be the spokesperson. That's pretty tight. Well, I don't personally believe in reverse osmosis. I think it takes too much out and you just have pure water. And I think the water that we drink is supposed to have a little more in there. This would make a terrible app for reverse osmosis. The second part would for sure. Julia and this is again from 2005, so this is when this was around. But it is pretty interesting to look back at. Bottle labeling is a big thing, and you can't lie on a water bottle outright, but you can get really generous with how far you stretch things. And there was a company, it's not around anymore, called Alaska Water. At one point that said Alaska premium glacier drinking water, pure glacier water from the Last Unpolluted Frontier, and it came literally from Juneau. Alaska tap water. Yeah. The municipal supply. Yeah. Which I guess is if you trace it back, it might come originally from the Last Unpolluted Frontier. Sure. Yeah. There's a bit of legitimacy to that. But it's dishonest though. Yeah. There was also one called Glacier Clear Water that until 2002, was owned by the Dairy Farmers of America in Kansas City, Missouri that was sourced in Greenville, Tennessee. So it had nothing to do with glaciers. Like there may have been glacial activity at the last ice age around that part of Tennessee, maybe, but the water in Tennessee was not coming from any glacial activity and so stuff like that, that really made the rounds in the early two thousand s and made people who are into bottled water look like idiots. But again, even through that kind of gauntlet, that bottled water drinkers that Americans in general had to go through. On the other side, the propensity for bottled water was not beaten out of us. It just got even more honed. I guess it's strange that that happened, that there was a pushback on the whole thing, and then that pushback just got totally overwhelmed. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. I think before we break, maybe we should at least go over the kinds of bottled water that the FDA like. The terms that the FDA regulates? Yes, at least. Okay, we should start with artesian. It's a great sounding word. It sounds very fancy. And that means it comes from an artesian well, which means it comes from a confined aquifer, which is a porous rock. It's underground, and it comes from porous rock or sand formations that it's under a lot of pressure from these layers of rock or clay, and it forces that water up. I think we might have talked about artesian water, but maybe not. There's no way in the last 14 years, we've never mentioned artesian water. You know? I think so. There's also mineral water. Like mineral water. Yeah, I do, too, a lot. Mineral water is just water that has a higher content of total dissolved solids. It sounds gross, and it can be gross, for sure, but it's more talking about things like I mentioned earlier, calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, stuff that gives water taste a distinctive taste, and in particular, a mineral water taste. So I think the standard, because you said the FDA regulates us, and we'll talk more about that in a little bit. But the FDA standards that to be mineral water, it has to be spring water that has at least 250 parts per million of total dissolved solids. Regular old spring water, non mineral water has 50. It's a big difference that your tongue can pick up on. Then you got your naturally sparkling water. And this is yes, folks, there is water that comes from a spring or an artisan well that is naturally carbonated. And even if they take that carbonation out and then put it back in, according to the FDA, you have to recarbonate it to the levels that it once was naturally to qualify for that language. Yeah. And I went and looked, and I was sad to see that my favorite San Pellegrino water, it is artificially carbonated after the fact. And that's sad because I was looking into this, and apparently natural carbonation, which, like volcano, is heating the rock that holds the aquifer, and it turns the carbon into a gas. And so it's naturally carbonated. Apparently, it's much softer, less harsh on the throat, in the stomach. But it's really hard to keep water carbonated and then get it to market. So they take the water out and then recarbonate it and then sell it. So it's really hard to find naturally carbonated water. And I think it's very expensive, too. I like that topo. Chico. I don't believe that that is naturally carbonated. I'm sure it's probably not because it is good, though. I agree. It makes me sneeze every time I drink it. But that comes in a glass bottle. It tickles your nose. It does. And we don't buy cases in case of it. It's a treat. Yeah. And it does come in a glass bottle. But, Chuck, I've seen you you have a ritual where every time you finish off a bottle of Toe Bochika, smash it on the ground and shout, say, Yahoo. Yeah. And sometimes I'll smash it against something hard and then hold the broken bottleneck in my hand and tempt anyone to come at me. Yeah. You'll say, Any takers? Never had any takers either. He. No, you never have. It's very menacing. What else we got? We got the purified water I was talking about and this is when you're talking about the Dasanis and the Aqua phenas, is when they take public tap water and they purify it. It comes from, in other words, a municipal water source. And that's pretty much the long and short of that. And, I mean, if you're talking about pure water, this is like the most artificial water. It's the most heavily treated water because you're taking tap water and then you're bottling it and selling it. And the FDA says, OK, there's some things you have to do. If you're selling purified water. If you're selling it from, like, a municipal source, you have to either filter it, you have to distill it, you have to run it through that old reverse osmosis. You have to take some oxygen and subject it to electricity and create ozone and then infuse the water with that so it goes and reacts with all the stuff in there and purifies it. Or you could run it through UV light treatment or some combination of that. That's what purified water is. And as a matter of fact, I didn't realize this, Chuck, but you can buy and I could not find what labels this was, but you can buy water that was originally nonpotable water, meaning you should not be drinking. This is not for human consumption that can be treated through these ways. And it can be bottled and sold as purified water because the end result is the same. It's almost devoid of anything but water molecules. Yeah. And I think and we'll get into the different FDA versus EPA standards because EPA regulates your tap water. But I believe the EPA standard or the FDA standard for bottled water allows more poop in your water than the EPA does in your tap water, right? Yeah. The EPA says you can have zero poop in your water. And the FDA says, hey, let's relax a little bit. Let's take our hang ups off of the American public. Oh, man, what's wrong with a little poop in your water? Right? You got spring water, which I love. There's nothing better than if you can drink directly from a spring when you're hiking in the woods, cupped in your hand like Daniel Boone did, just the best thing in the world. It comes from a protected underwater spring, and it flows to the surface on its own. It just bubbles right up there. It's a really wonderful site to behold if you've never seen a natural spring. I love it. I love it. And then it's collected there at the surface in the case of bottling, or they may drill down if they can't get to the surface, but it's like a sanitary protected area that is drilled down to what's feeding the spring. Like, they might just go to an area that's more accessible, I guess. But if they do that, though, it has to be the same composition as it does from the source. Yes. Hi. I'm going to put three words together, and you try to convince me that they don't evoke an image of a future medical kink, sanitary, protected hole. Isn't that an awful collection of words? Yeah, that could be the new album title for Diarrhea Planet. I guess so, but it's kind of the opposite of a diarrhea Planet, if you think about it. Yeah, I think that's the twist. Yeah. Hey, Diarrhea Planet. I hope you guys are still doing it. So then you got well, water is the last one before we go to our break, and that comes from a well. It does. Simple. Simple. I'm testing out because I've been using easy peasy too much. Did you just say simple with simple? Yeah, but really, you could make anything. You could use any consonant or combination except for simple. Simple. That'd be kind of gross because they simple simple, I guess. But that's unnecessarily complex. I like easy peasy lemon squeezy. Yeah, I do, too. But again, it's starting to kind of take off a little bit, so I'm going to go elsewhere. All right, simple. We'll be right back. I don't know that, you know, it's stucknet. That's the name of it. It's a great name. All right. Stuxnet with an X. Want to learn about terrorism and in the Gary? All right, Chuck. So like we said, the FDA regulates bottled water, and it's kind of a quirk of bureaucracy that it does. It would make way more sense that the EPA does, but the EPA says, no, we're too busy concentrating on drinking water and our standards. FDA, you go handle this. And the FDA says it makes sense because we're going to consider bottled water a packaged food, which is I can't remember what episode we talked about it in, but that's why water has an expiration date, because it's considered a packaged food, and all packaged foods have to have an expiration date, even though water is never really going to expire. Right. So the FDA is in charge of regulating bottled water, and they do a so so job of it. Yeah, I think the deal is the FDA considers bottled water, they categorized as low risk, just a presumption. Yeah. And I don't know, I guess that lets them internally off the hook. Surely it shouldn't be as robust as, like pharmaceuticals or something. I'm not saying that, but yeah, they categorize it as low risk. It says that it must come from an approved source. But that doesn't mean it's not like the FDA goes out to the spring in Tennessee or whatever to check it out or anything like that, right? No, they definitely do not. They say it has to come from one of these, like an artegian well. It has to come from well water. It has to come from municipal water, like all those sources that we mentioned. And by the way, the source is hard there. Right. And by the way, you have to actually put on your label what kind of water this is. Those aren't just like categories. Those are terms that you will see on a bottled water label. Because by law, they have to say what kind of water it is. Right. And then further than that, they have kind of sub regulations for the different kinds of water. Like if it's from a spring or something like that, I think it has to be tested like once a week or something to make sure it's sanitary. That's another one. If it comes from municipal water, it has to go through that filtration process like we said. And then also if you add anything to the water, because remember I was saying reverse osmosis chuck is like it takes everything out the water purification does well, they usually add some stuff in to give that water flavor. Again, if it's like that, say, like they put they fortify it with protein molecules or chunks of fat or something like that. It's got to say on the label it contains chunks of fat or with added fat is probably how the marketing team would want them to say it. And like a starburst on the label. Interestingly. Fluoride is when we did an episode on Fluoride that was jeez, I feel like one of our earlier year, one or two episodes, definitely the fluoridation of our drinking water in the United States. Bottled water is not fluoridated. So some dentists have talked about the fact that if you only drink bottled water in your house, then you're avoiding that fluoridation that they think you need to make your teeth strong. Yeah. So if it's bottled water with added fluoride, like, I think a lot of baby water, that's the thing, right. Is there baby water? Yeah, I think there's like gerber bottled water for babies and stuff like that. I think those things usually have added fluoride, but it's going to say it on the label. If you don't see on the label with added fluoride or something like that. That's not a thing. I'm sure this will happen at some point. Why has no one tried to collect rainwater and market. That is like Icelandic rainwater bottled up. I would bet you $100 someone has. You think? Sure. Got to be. Because I was thinking, like when I said what other water sources are there? Obviously there's the ocean and stuff like that, but it's like, well, I guess there's rainwater. And why hasn't someone touted that is like the next big thing. I mean, it's supposed to be some of the purest water you can get your hands on is rainwater, which is surprising but true. They don't know why because it's come out of the sky and the sky is poisoned to all of us, obviously. Yeah. You would call it, though. You call it Skywater Skye with like an UMLA over everything. I hope it didn't give someone an idea again. I think somebody's probably done that. All right. So the FDA also says there's just certain amounts of stuff you can have in there. Again, poop. You can have a certain amount of poop, bacteria, viruses, parasites. You can have a certain amount of radon in there. You can have a certain amount of lead in there. That's actually right. That's actually one place where the FDA exceeds the EPA standards is with lead. The FDA says you have to have a much lower amount of lead in your bottled water than the FDA allows for, because the EPA allows for in tap water, because a lot of the pipes in the United States have lead in them. And supposedly, as long as your local water supply is not over chlorinated or being overtreated, the water won't corrode the lead, and very little lead will be brought to your tap. So the EPA, some lead is going to be in your water just by virtue of flowing through these pipes. And the FDA says, well, this stuff is not supposed to be flowing through pipes. Or if it did flow through pipes, it has to be so well filtered that there should be almost no lead in it whatsoever. But other than that, the EPA usually beats the FDA, right? Yeah. And then this is the federal standards. Then your different state may or may not have state regulations for the industry. Some states don't have anything at all going on. Some states are going to be a little more strict, obviously, and say, like, you have to have a license. You have to submit to inspections of that kind of thing. So if you're out there thinking, what is one to do, then it sounds like the Wild West. There is a voluntary body. The International Bottled Water Association. The good news is that I believe, and this is an old number, but I bet it's still pretty accurate that about the bottled water in the US. Is a member of the IBWA, and they have their own internal self enforced regulations as far as it's called, I believe the IWBA model Code. And they talk about all the filtration types and all. The disinfecting that you have to do and stuff like that. Yeah, and really they really stepped up their game with the let's Get the Poop Out campaign of 2013. Really had a big effect on the industry. Right. But to be clear, this is not like a body that imposes fines or stuff like that. It's all just sort of self regulated and voluntary. Yeah, it's like, oh man, what episode we were talking about where it's like I have a feeling this is the industry getting out ahead of a problem, like problem legislation that's going to make them do stuff. I don't remember. I don't either, but I have a feeling and I think anytime you see an industry coming up with its own voluntary regulations, it's a lot of PR stuff. You know what I mean? You almost had Gobbledygook. I did. But they do have these standards and they do have certification. You can get through them. But yeah, again, it's voluntary and like you said, if you are not selling water from state to state, technically the FDA does not have jurisdiction over you as long as you're only selling within your state's boundaries, as long as the source of this water comes entirely from within that state's boundaries. And then if that state is one of those, I think seven or eleven states that don't regulate bottled water, there's no one looking over your shoulder whatsoever. Your water is totally unregulated. It falls in a weird little loophole like what that part in Yellowstone Park that supposedly has no laws on it or whatever? Kind of like that situation? But then I saw that there's a way that FDA can still get you if your packaging was made in another state, any part of it, you're now subject to full FDA oversight for your bottled water, interstate, whatever. Packaging. Packaging? Yeah, I guess so. I think we should talk about leaching some because I feel like leaching is something that is kind of just started to come around in the past like six or seven years, which is the idea that wait a minute, we have all this bottled water stored in the garage, cases and cases of it stored in our hot garage in Arizona. Is that bad for you? And the answer is yes, it is. Leaching happens. We'll get into all the different kinds of plastics, but mainly what you're going to find is polycarbonate. You're going to find PVC and you're going to find polystyrene. And back in the day there were some people that said like, oh it's really fine, it's no big deal. Other people would say, well we're really not sure, and other people would say no. If you heat up a bottle that has how is it pronounced? Phthalates. Phthalates, yeah, phthalates. Phthalates thalates philanthes. P-H-T-H-A-L-A-T-E-S. Everyone knows what those are. Yeah, that it's going to be leeching chemicals into your water, especially if it stays warm, especially if it's stored for a long, long time. And I read recently, and this is something I would do if I had to get a bottle of water in a pinch, like I was talking about, I would say, all right, at least I'm going to keep this bottle and refill it for as long as possible. They said that that's not a good thing to do either because multiple reuses will encourage leeching, which I didn't know. Right. So did you mention the 2018 study at all? Not yet, sir. Go ahead. So this article, this is like a little time capsule because Chuck in it they quote a guy from the PG Research Foundation who basically says, it's all good, we're fine. And I went and looked it up. I'm like, that sounds really fishy. Where did they get their funding? What is it that PG stand for? They're defunct. They came along in 1998 just long enough to tell everybody that plastic was fine and now they're defunct. So it's even fishier. I couldn't find any funding, stuff like that. But since then that suspicion that, no, there's some sort of like leaching going on and it's probably bad for us has finally been quantified. There's a 2018 study in Frontiers and Chemistry, and in the study 259 different bottled waters sold in eleven different countries were tested. And what they found is like no surprise whatsoever. 93% had micro plastics in them and I suspect the other 7% they screwed up the testing. I can't believe it's. Not 100% of these bottled waters have microplastics. Yeah, if you want to read the original article, it's really good. It's from Time magazine. Your bottled water probably has plastic in it, should You Worry? By Markham Hyde, I guess. And it's from May of 2019. And yeah, it's definitely good. Like a real source and a real study and not just a defunct organization that's like it's pretty good. Yeah, it's fine, don't worry about it. So in this they found that there's a substantial amount of micro plastics and it's not like little trace amounts. Remember the parts per million or parts per billion of some of the stuff that the FDA and EPA allows in bottled water and tap water? The average among these 259 bottled waters was 325 particles per liter of micro plastics. Yeah, that seems like a lot. Okay, if that seems like a lot, buckle in for this one. Nestle Pure Life bottled water had an average of 10,000 particles per liter of micro plastics, you might say. Okay, that's fine. I get a little plastic in my teeth, I pull it out, it's fine. It's becoming clear that micro plastics are probably endocrine disruptors. Yeah, I think they fall into a class called obesogens and polypropylene in particular seems to be an endocrine disruptor. And you'll never guess what our bottled water what type of plastic our bottled water bottles are made out of that. Yes, polypropylene. So this seems to be one of those things where everybody's like, no, we don't understand it, so it's probably fine. And now we're finally getting to the science where it's like, man, microplastics are really screwing us up. And even worse than just being in our bottle of water, they're everywhere. Like, we have an episode due where we just talk about micro plastics. Okay, yeah, we'll take a break here in a SEC, but I think to set us up for the next part, which is the environmental nightmare, which is just the bottles themselves, like, after you drink it in the environment, because we're talking about drinking the water itself. And we'll get into the nightmare of after you've had that water in the single use plastic aspect in a SEC, after the break. But microplastics, I read basically that plastic water bottles don't break down at all when they say, like, oh, it takes them 500 years to break down. Right? They don't break down. They basically say that they just break apart in the micro plastics. That micro plastics, ironically, will end up in the water supply, which could ensure one day that we can only drink things like bottled water because there's so much microblastic in the water supply. The plastic water bottles that people drank that never break down. Isn't that amazing? Full circle. Such a beautiful circle of life that we got going on. All right, we'll take that break and we'll talk more about single use plastic and why that's such a problem right after this. That's the name of it. It's a great name. All right, stuxnet with an X. Want to learn about a terrace or react? Okay, Chuck, so we're talking about single use plastic, which means you take a bottled water, you drink the water, and then you just toss the plastic bottle. Apparently, if we've come a long way in recycling, it used to be something like 10% of bottled water bottles were recycled back when this article was first written. Now we're up to almost 30% yeah. In the US. Specifically because Norway recycles 97% of their plastic. Okay. And then so part of the problem with that, if you'll remember back to our Recycle Update episode, china recently said, you know what? You can take all your dirty plastic bottles and shove them because we're not going to recycle them for you anymore. Which is a big problem because recycling plastic can be actually fairly expensive. And China is basically the world's plastic recycler. For a long time now, people are trying to figure out how to handle this issue, which has now become even more pronounced. And that's kind of where we are right now. While America is at the same time in the world, frankly, stepping up to use even more plastic water bottles than ever. Yeah, there is one alternative that I've seen being used here and there. It's corn based. It's called PLA or it's made from polylactic acid. And it is biodegradable compostable. Three months to degrade in a compost pile. But here's the fine print. It sounds great. And I saw that a major fancy schmancy hotel chain made the big switch and made a big Todo about this. Like, now we use cornbase and it's compostable, but it's only compostable if you compost it. And even the head of the hotel chain was like, yeah, we found that very little actually makes it to the compost pile, so it's not recyclable. Like, if you throw it in, the recycling PLA will mess up. And it doesn't even take much for it to really mess up the other kinds of plastic that they're recycling and they just dump it all in the trees. Yeah, exactly. Or they try and send it on a boat to China. And that's a long, long way. That's an environmental nightmare. So beware if you see corn based biodegradable plastic, unless you really take it upon yourself to compost it, then you're doing the right thing. Good for you. But it says very little of this stuff ever makes it to the compost. Yes. So there's, like, 50 of our previous episodes just hanging around here, like our episode on soda, our episode on recycling or episode on composting, our episode on plastics. Remember the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? We talked about plastic never breaking down. They're all showing up for a friendly hello. Our episode on Diarrhea Planet. That's right. Which, by the way, we should just explain real quick. There's probably a lot of people, they're like, what are you talking about? Because it was a random reference years ago. They're a band. Diarrhea Planet. And they're great, and I'm a big fan, and I just always thought that they should change their name. So that's why it's a call back from years ago, and I think you should fill them in in case they don't stumble across the episode where that appeared. And what did you say they should change their name to? Do you remember? Yeah, I don't remember. Who brought the whole thing up? Frozen Poop knife. Oh, that's right. You remember if somebody made a knife out of their poop and killed a bear or an interloper or, like, an evil brother in law? I don't know. And that's what brought the whole thing up. Yeah. They're great, though. They're from Nashville, and I don't know that we've ever heard from them. We did. They rejected our offer publicly, our suggestion publicly on Twitter. All right. Yeah, man, I got to fill you in on the last 13 years. You're getting blank. I know. So just to kind of button this up about the single use plastic, it is a problem, everybody, and it's just one of those things. Like, our trash also did a landfill episode that we just kind of put out of sight and out of mind, but that doesn't mean it just disappears and goes away. So, fortunately, one of the things that a lot of people are thinking of who think about this kind of stuff is something that has made sense for a long time. But in our littering episode, we talked about how there was a huge corporate push to basically say, you're the litter bug, you're the person using it. We the people who are making this plastic packaging and who are using it to sell you our products and it's not our fault. Finally, some people in legislatures are calling BS on that. And there's something called extended Producer responsibility laws. I like the sound of this. Yeah, me too. They're thinking of them in Washington State, Maine and Michigan, and it basically says you have to figure out, like, you are responsible for dealing with the packaging waste that your product is sold in. You don't just get to walk away from it. And I think they're trying to figure out how to make that happen. But the fact that they're even talking about this stuff is another example that we're starting to wake up finally. That's amazing. That's cool. I love hearing that. I do too. Chuck will it make a difference? Stay tuned. I should chat up my friend's film. By the way, I just realized that Dave is one of my very best friends, if you want to watch that documentary. It's very eye opening and it is called Flint the Poisoning of an American City. And boy, if you want to eyes open about the fact that it can be in the that we're still just like pumping poison water to a town astounding rates, then you should check it out. Yeah, I'm going to take that one out. I'll bet it's good. Sounds blood boiling. What about the taste of bottled water? Because that's sort of the one thing we haven't really covered, is some people say they like the taste more and there certainly haven't been very scientific studies, but there have been random, like 2020 things and stuff like that where they will do like, blind taste tests and it depends on where you are, obviously. And I think a lot of these have happened in New York, but yeah, unfair. Yeah, because they have good water. But in blind taste tests, it seems like a lot of times that people either can't tell the difference or they rate tap water kind of higher than they ordinarily would if it was labeled as such. Yeah, I think depending on how gross your tap water tastes or how much you're into mineral water, taste can be a factor. Like, if you don't want your water taste at all, go get yourself some purified water and call it a day. Or if your tap water is pretty bland and you like a little taste to it, you might want some mineral water or sparkling mineral water. Who knows, right? So taste is probably the one thing that you can say. Yeah, that might actually be a factor, but not always. A lot of people choose tap water and blind taste tests like you were talking about. Yeah, I saw a water Somalia in New York. Oh, I've seen that guy. Yeah, did you see that? Why do I want to say it was that TV show that Zack what's his face? Who's the hunky guy? I think all guys named Zach are hunky. Zack Galifinachis? Yes. Prime example. He really is. He's been hunky. I can't remember the guy. It's Zac Efron. He has that show. And if I'm not mistaken, he sat down with the water simulator and it was really interesting. I mean, it's very easy to scoff at something like that, but what different kinds of water, for sure have different flavor profiles and it's interesting to sit down and sort of listen to someone walk you through that. I don't know if I would go to the water cafe or wherever this was that they were doing this, but I just found it interesting. It is interesting. It's like the water boy. Remember that movie with Adam Sandler? Sure. He had that magic water that just tasted amazing. Yeah. My brother is on record. It's very characteristic of him as saying that his favorite water is hosewater. Yeah, hose water is pretty good. It's got a nice rubber taste. Yeah, he's being serious, too. And I think it evokes childhood stuff. When you're outside playing and having, like, a water hose fight, then you drink some of that stuff. Yeah. The added sensation of, like, that slight sting because it's coming out a little faster than you wanted to. Yeah. Or is the spider perhaps going to come out? Right? So there are some people who are like, hey, this is all fun and games to poopoo Americans over use of bottled water and everything. There are plenty of places that don't have access to clean drinking water. And in that sense, baldwater is literally a lifesaver. Yeah, there's nobody arguing that or denying that. I think what people are saying is, like, look, if you live in America, your tap water, for the most part, with some places shamefully accepted, is probably as healthy, tastes probably as good, and is roughly as pure as the bottled water that you're paying hundreds to maybe thousands of times more for drop for drop. And it's having far less of an ecological impact than your bottled water is your little bottled water habit. And I think that makes sense, and that certainly was a sensible thing to say in 2005. But there are people who say, okay, maybe we don't do bottled water. I get that because I'm concerned about micro plastics. I also realize it's an ecological nightmare, but I don't know that it's a good idea to say, everybody just drink water out of the tap. And what they point to is the safe drinking water act from the believe. I think ironised Cody really had an impact on that one. And then it was updated in 1996 and then that was it. And since then, our science of, oh, what's this thing in the water we didn't notice before that we said was fine? Maybe we should start studying that. Oh, turns out it gives you bladder cancer. Or is it okay to have chlorine in your water? Really? Even in small amounts? All of this research is happening, and more of it needs to happen. But just as much, Congress needs to say, hey, scientists, what have you been finding out about water that we're drinking since 1996? Let's update the laws. Because the municipal tap water can be within those quotas or limits set by the Safe Drinking Water Act, that doesn't mean it's actually safe. It just means that from what Congress has set the limits for, it's safe. It's what Congress has said is safe. It's not necessarily scientifically safe. So we need to do more and more research on the water drinking because it's such a vitally important part of our world. And it's pretty ridiculous that here in the United States, it hasn't been updated for 25 years. Yeah. And that would give some Southern member of Congress to stand up and beat their shoe on the desk and say, these laws are as outdated as an old, wide article on how stuff works. That was a great Trent Lot. Trent Lot. Yeah. Is that guy still around? No. I'm just trying really hard to demonstrate how irrelevant and out of date we are. I thought I had something else to say, but now I can't think of it. Sorry, man. I didn't mean to derail you. No, I'm good. Well, if you want to know more about bowl water, you could do worse than checking out this antiquated article on how stuff works. You could check out Sirius Eats for some great history. We also got Time research from Time magazine, Healthline all over the Internet, and there is something called the Environmental Working Group. They have a tap water database. It's awesome. You can go in, type in your zip code, select your water utility, and then just have the socks scared off of you when it reveals to you what's in your water. Check. Yeah, I did that yesterday. I know what I was going to say. The little box water that they're doing now is a better alternative even than single use plastic. Oh, yeah, the box water that sends you a check every month in the hopes that you'll mentioned them. You shill. Isn't that a brand? I don't think is it? Yeah. Oh, is it really? It's called box water. I believe so. Okay. I just meant water that's packaged in something that's not leaching plastic and it's easier to recycle. But I got you. You know those boxes are made from baby lambs. What are you going to do then? Nothing. You just give up, I guess. All right, well, since I said give up, everybody, that means it's time for listener mail. I'm clicking and I'm finding it. So I've got four good ones stored up here. Oh, good, kitty going. I'll do this one because this is promoting a documentary that I want to see another one. Hey, guys. Love your show. Always thrilled when a new episode pops up. My girlfriend and I both listened separately and together. It was great to hear an entire episode dedicated to Wiseman's movie Tita Cut Follies. Though any self respecting documentary filmmaker knows it well, it's a movie that many in the civilian world quote unquote don't. Surprised by how many people have never even heard of Grey Gardens. Anyway, I've been wanting to write for a while in hopes of turning you guys onto a movie that I made, and this recent tidyut Follies episode seemed to be the perfect excuse. It's called Strad Style. It's a documentary about a rural Ohio gentleman with an obsession for strategy. The vineland, of course, who through the magic of social media, convinces a famous European concert violinist that he can make a copy of one of the most famous and valuable violins in the world. If you've ever seen and liked something like American Movie, I think you might dig this. It was shot by the way that Strad Style has a shot in it that has an homage wink to Titicut Follies in it as well. And he sent me the trailer. And it looks great. It looks like it did quite well in the festival circuit. It's like a real deal documentary, and it's called Straddstyle S-T-R-A-D made by listener and filmmaker Stefan Abalos. And go stream it. I'm going to watch it. It looks really good. Same here. It does sound magnificent, actually. Yeah, it looks good. It looks right up my alley. Well, thanks, Stefan, or Stefan, depending on how you pronounce your name. Congratulations on your dock. That's a huge achievement. And we're proud of you. We don't even know you, and we're proud of you, so thanks for letting everybody know. Thanks to you, Chuck, for letting everybody know. Sure, if you want us to let everybody know, let us know via email. Send it off to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My HeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
Is lethal injection humane? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/is-lethal-injection-humane | Since the Supreme Court's ban on capital punishment was reversed, states have sought a humane method of killing sentenced criminals. They settled on lethal injection, but is this quasi-medical means of killing as quick and painless as we think? | Since the Supreme Court's ban on capital punishment was reversed, states have sought a humane method of killing sentenced criminals. They settled on lethal injection, but is this quasi-medical means of killing as quick and painless as we think? | Thu, 19 Dec 2013 14:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=19, tm_hour=14, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=353, tm_isdst=0) | 42109884 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the allnew 2014 Toyota Corolla. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and this is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And this is Stuff You Should know. The podcast. Greetings. This is not a capital punishment show, although we will deal with that, obviously. But at some point we'll probably do a full episode on capital punishment, I would guess, don't you imagine? Because we have an article on it and we're going to touch on it here with lethal injections. Yeah, and just coming across some stuff on the electric chair. To me it seems like it deserves some episode as well because it's so nuts. Sounds like we're cooking up a suite. Yeah, the Capital Suite. We come up with the best suites, don't we? Well, it's a big deal. It's important I agree to cover. You know, Chuck, about 14 hours ago, a guy named Joseph Paul Franklin, I can't remember what his birth name was, but he legally changed his name to Joseph Paul after in honor of Joseph Paul Gerbils, the Nazi propagandist. What a nice guy he must be to change his name to that. Right? So Missouri just executed him at twelve one Wednesday, November 19. Yeah, it's today, the 19th or the 20th, I don't know. One of those two. And actually, Hustler publisher, Larry Flint, was making a big hubbub trying to keep the man from being killed, which is somewhat ironic, although not really if you followed Larry Flint's career, because he was the man who supposedly shot Larry Flint and paralyzed him for life. Supposedly. Was he not convicted of that? No, he confessed to it and it was quite possible. The reason that he gave for doing it was because Hustler had some interracial spread that the guy didn't like. Yeah, sure. And he was targeting interracial couples. He shot a couple of black kids in Ohio, I believe. And he was killed in Missouri because he randomly picked St. Louis out of the phone book and went and found a synagogue and just sat outside and took shots at people as they came out of a bar mitzvah. So he's racist. He's an anti Semite. He also had serious mental health issues as well, and he shot Larry Flynt. Okay. But he was executed. And the whole reason that Larry Flint was creating this hubbub about not killing this guy, one, Flint had a famous quote from the last news cycle that he didn't think the government should be in the business of killing people. So he's against capital punishment. Anyway, you're going to say it like Larry Flint. I don't do a very good Larry Flint. You put some marbles in your mouth, right? Yeah. You're going to try? No. So he just doesn't think that the death penalty is a good thing anyway. He's an abolitionist, you would say. And then secondly, he filed a suit to have the name of the supplier of the drug that was going to be used in the lethal injection revealed unsealed because it's secret and it's not supposed to be secret. But as we'll find out, states recently have had to scramble to come up with the drugs to execute prisoners of the states. Yeah, there's a big thing going on that we'll talk about, but that was the most recent execution in the United States, which makes 35 for the year. And all but one of those were lethal injections, the other one being the electric chair. Yeah. It is fast become the go to method for most states in many countries. If you're going to get capital punishment going, then probably going to do it by way of lethal injection these days. Yeah, but it's also the newest one, too. And it came out of this world, basically, what amounted to an abolitionist movement in the that sought to just get rid of the death penalty. And that was the third major movement in the United States since the late 18th century where people were just trying to get rid of capital punishment altogether. Yeah. They did halt in 1972 after Supreme Court ruling furman v. Georgia. And they remember reading about this later. Obviously, I didn't read 1972. I was a very advanced one year old, but they said it was cruel and unusual under the 8th Amendment, violating the 8th Amendment of the Constitution. And then but four years later, they reversed that and Greg versus Georgia and said, you know what? Maybe that is cruel and unusual, so let's come up with a way that's not. And they came up with lethal injection. Yes. And the reason why that cruel and unusual had a lot of traction was because there were hangings before. And hangings are very messy. Sure. If the noose isn't right, the head can pop right off. Or if the neck isn't broken, the person just hangs there and suffocates for a minute or two and then dies. And then electrocution is really awful, too. I was reading a list of botched executions, and electrocutions are very frequently botched people. Their heads catch fire, blood comes out of their eyes. It's really awful stuff. So there was this idea that the whole point of this is retributive. You did something so bad that we as a society have decided that you can't live any longer, but with a society aren't as cruel as you are. Right. The point isn't to make you suffer. It's just to take your life. Right. And to do it in the most humane way possible. Well, electrician hanging, gas chamber, none of those really fit the bill. So somebody came up with the idea of lethal injection. But this wasn't the first time that was proposed. The first time was in the 19th century, I think. Oh, yeah? Yeah. There was a guy named Julius Mount Breyer, and he was a doctor out in New York who said this would work because it would be efficient, humane, and it would keep the person from having some sort of hero status develop around them that sometimes comes from people who are hanged. Got you. But they went with electrocution instead. Well, in 1982, the US Became the first country to use lethal injection. And like we said, since then, it's really become predominant. I think the current number of states that have the death penalty is 32 as of today. Yeah, but it's tough because states have been repealing it. It's dropping like flies. Not like flies, but maybe like honeybees. Right. And those are states that have taken the possibility of capital punishment off of their books, right? Yes. 32 is the number that have the death penalty. Right. 32 have a death penalty. Okay. Not necessarily meaning that they use that in the past year. Right. Necessarily. There's something called de facto abolition, which is basically like, yeah, it's on our books, but we haven't used it in so long, we might as well not even have the death penalty. So, Chuck, like we said, lethal injection is the most frequently used method in the United States, and it's fast becoming the same around the world. China picked it up after the United States, and they replaced their shootings, and that kind of led to it seems like almost a domino effect throughout Asia of other countries picking it up as well. Yeah. The Philippines? Taiwan. Guatemala. They're in Central America. They have all gone to lethal injection. And right now, I have, in 20, 12, 58 countries used lethal injection in 2012, down from 67 and 2010 and 63 in 2011. And 140 countries have outlawed the death penalty worldwide. And like you said, states are kind of starting to abolish it. Executions are down in general. In the United States last year, there are 43. This year, like we said, there's been 35. And we're fast closing out the year. But lethal injection is the go to method of execution, and so we're going to figure out how it works. That's right. Right now, there are 3108 people as of spring of this year on death row. 98% are male. Of course, because you don't find a lot of females on death row because they're smart enough not to kill other people, generally speaking. Is that what it is? Yeah, women are much smart. A lot of these folks have been on death row for decades waiting to die. Maybe they're working through the appeals process, because that all has to happen first. Some will die on death row without ever going into an execution chamber. Yeah, it happens. Some people commit or try to commit suicide before they can be executed after their appeals run out. Sure. There's a guy in Georgia who almost successfully killed himself. He cut his carotid artery. Wow. With what, I wonder? A razor that started giving him, I guess, to shave with us sensibly. Here, take the razor. And the guy they rushed into the hospital, saved his life, and then executed them a week later. Wow, it's a funny country. So you're on death row, you've exhausted your appeals, you're finally going to get that execution order, and a date will be set in place for that execution. At this point, you're going to be moved from death row to a place called Death Watch. Yeah. And that is basically that's the last stop. That's your holding area for the last days or weeks. Right. So Death Watch is both a physical place, like, it's frequently in the same part of the prison that the execution chamber is located, or it might be in another prison entirely. Some states just maintain one execution chamber for the whole state and a certain prison, so you'd be transferred to that place. And then Death Watch also is supposedly they're supposed to watch you so you don't commit suicide. And it's also, I think, rights kind of open up a little more. You get visits from people. Your treatment is a little better. I think you get a room with a view, as it were, and you start the preparation of dying, of saying goodbye, and of coming to terms with the fact that it's happening. Yeah. You know, the state of Texas has these death watch rooms on highway exits. Most highway exits. You got your gas station, your subway, and your death bunch room. I believe it. I'm kidding. But Texas execute a lot of people. It does. Texas Bears, they execute a lot, but they're not the only ones that have all sorts of weirdness going on. Apparently, 2% of counties account for 50% to 70% of executions in the United States. It just seems like Texas comes up all the time when they're like, the last time this method was used, or the first time this method was used. Texas. Well, Texas was the first one to use lethal injection, like you said. Exactly. They kill a lot of people there. Yeah. Not picking on you. Texas. I love you guys. No. Here, I've got one. Alabama. Okay. In Alabama, it takes a unanimous jury to hand down a life sentence, but it takes ten or twelve to hand down a death sentence. Really? Yeah. And a judge can overrule a jury, a life sentence jury. Yeah. And say, no, this person needs a death penalty. And they do it frequently. Interesting. We'll pick on Georgia, too, in a minute. Okay, well, Georgia was the one that executed the guy after saving his life after the suicide attempt. All right, great. I just want to make sure we do it out enough embarrassment for each state. So you're on death watch. You can be visited more often, generally by friends and family. We're in, like, the last 24 hours if now, right? Yeah. Your attorneys, spiritual advisors, you're going to get your last meal. That is not a fallacy. Whatever you want, they'll prepare for you. No, that's not necessarily true? Well, it depends. Generally, they satisfy your desire, but when does it not get satisfied? What state doesn't do that? Texas. Texas, really? Yeah. There is a legislation that was passed after this one inmate ordered a meat leverage pizza, like 24 tacos. Like this awesome spread that just reading it, I was like, oh, man, I'm kind of hungry for this reading about this man's last meal. And they didn't eat any of it. Even still, there's probably $200 worth of food. Sure. But it caused enough outrage in the state legislature that they passed the thing where it's like, you can have whatever the prison cafeteria is cooking that night. That's your last meal. Really? Yeah. There's a really great article in Lapam's Quarterly online for free called Last Meal. Go check it out. It's just basically this awesome history and contemporary evaluation of last meals. That's pretty sad. It is. But it's really interesting what it says. Like, there's a guy in Arkansas who was executed in the 90s. His name was Barry Lee Fairchild, and he pointed out that it doesn't make a lot of sense to give a condemned person a last meal. He said it was, quote, like putting gas in a car that doesn't have no motor. But you have no need to take in food because you have no need to derive the energy from it any longer because you're about to lose your life. Well, it's not about deriving energy. It's about enjoying one last thing. Right, but if you look at the capital punishment system, it makes no sense. Yeah, it's interesting. I say go read the article. I'm not getting the point across very well. I mean, I see what he's saying, but it's not like you got to fuel up for the big day. It's like, here, enjoy a steak. Yeah, I know. I'm just saying, like, it flies in the face of the rest of the criminal justice system. Oh, well, sure. Enjoy the steak then. And time was they used to get you drunk, like, beforehand. That's what I'm saying. If you're going to get hanged in London yeah. Like, from the prison to the gallows, they would stop and they'd let you drink as much as you wanted and would take you super drunk and kill you. Yeah. That's interesting because that could provide a more docile victim or a really weepy one, which would be really yes. Or like someone who starts causing lots of trouble. Yeah. He wants to fight one last time. Exactly. Right. But apparently I read somewhere that they sedate criminals or they condemned here first. Right. So that's kind of like a modern incarnation of taking them and getting them drunk, handing them a volume. Yeah, that's true. Okay, so you've had your last meal, which may or not be awesome, depending on where you live. Yeah. Your warden and your chaplain are going to visit. They're going to stay with you till the end, unless you don't want them there. You can probably refuse any kind of religious associations if you want. We'll get to all that. But the witnesses arrive at this point. They're kept away from you, though. They don't get to walk by and say things to you? No. As a matter of fact, most witnesses are required well, in Texas, they can take potshots at you. Six shooters. Sorry. Texas. The witnesses pretty much across the board, I'm sure, are required to be totally silent the whole time they leave and are brought into the execution area. Yeah. Not like the people outside of prisons who are making lots of noise, usually. Right. One way or the other. Protest or kill them. Kill them. Yeah. That's as ugly as this country gets, man. When you see the footage of people outside prisons at controversial executions yeah, it's pretty bad. And then your final preparations. They're going to give you clean clothes, but you take the last shower. Sure. Shower, get dressed, and then connect you to the old EKG, which is going to let everyone know if you're gone, if you're still with them. Yes. They hook the EKG up to you. It's not hooked to anything yet, but they got it like you're pre wired. Exactly. Basically. And then once you're showered and dressed and wired up with an EKG, the warden and the chaplain are hanging out with you. At the predetermined time, they will start to move you into the execution chamber. And meanwhile, the witnesses are there. And let's talk about the witnesses. The fact that there are witnesses at executions is actually the modern incarnation of very long tradition. Like, we used to have public executions in this country. Yeah. Like, thousands of people would show up. Sometimes they would charge admission, and eventually that stopped, and only a select number of people were allowed to witness. But they're still witnesses. Have you read about the last public execution? I did. You read that book? I didn't either. Okay, so I thought you were asking. No, just about it. Okay. There's a guy named Marini Bethea in Kentucky who was hanged in 1936 for rape and murder, I think, and his execution was attended by, like, 20,000 people. Wow. The big reason, was it's not because they knew it was the last public execution. I think they decided to stop that after this execution. There was a Kentucky basketball game after. Is that it? The sheriff was a woman. So this is going to be the first execution in US. History ever conducted by a woman. And people wanted to go see how badly she was going to screw this up. And even though she didn't, the press still wrote that she'd fainted, that like everything had been botched or whatever, but that's why everybody turned out. But there were charges from out of town reporters that people were having hanging parties, that they were drunk in the streets, partying, that basically there was just a sense of revelry that shouldn't attend an execution and that was the last draw for public executions in this country. But the idea that you need to have other people witness a death when the state's executing somebody just to make sure it's totally transparent, that was carried on with witnesses today in execution. Yeah, that's part of it too. And part of it is also to give victims closure. The families that is a victims. Sure. There will be sometimes family members of the prisoner too and they are generally kept apart. Not always. Generally yes. The prison warden is going to be there. You're going to have medical people on hand of course, to make sure it all goes as planned, which is pretty controversial as we'll find. You got your spiritual advisor like we talked about, you got your guards, state selected witnesses. Maybe there might be members of the state government there to watch it all go down. Yeah. You got media there. You also have what are known as reputable citizens and those are basically just average everyday citizens that witness executions. Is that like a lottery or something? No, it's like you contact your state doc and say, hey, I want to witness an execution. And they send you an application form. You explain why you have to be over 18, you have to explain why you want to do this. But apparently the pool is thin enough that they're not real selective. As long as you don't say like because I want to see them bleed or something like that, they will let you do this. And apparently when there was a surge in executions in the 90s, truck departments of corrections were so hard up because a lot of state law says you have to have six reputable citizens or twelve reputable citizens, that their pool was running thin. So departments of corrections were actually advertising looking for people to witness execution. Why do you have silly? It's just that holdover from it's antiquated having the public be a part of this state monopoly on violence. It's stupid, but so much so that they're trying to force it now. Well I don't think it's a problem anymore. It was just in the 90s like they were killing everybody in the 90s. Yeah. All right, so you've got your witnesses there. Your execution chambers may have clear glass with a curtain pulled. It may be a one way mirror where you can only see into the executed into the condemned. It all depends on your state basically. But it's generally going to be a pretty quiet thing. Oh yeah. No matter where you are, it's a whole group of people that are just being utterly silent watching you. Or if there's too many family members, they might have a closed circuit feed going on in another room. Yeah, if it's like roomy. And apparently in Illinois if you're a family member, the only way you can witness it is via closed circuit TV in another room in Illinois. In Illinois. All right. That's another state. It's a new one. We haven't mentioned Illinois yet. Yeah. We didn't really make fun of them, though. I guess they're excusing chambers. Small. Yeah, we can make fun of them. There are many seats in there. Nice state budget. You've got your timeline of events. It's all very much scheduled, like down to the minute. You're going to have your person properly dressed, you're going to escort them into the chamber. I was thinking about this when I was reading this article, Chuck. Imagine just taking a shower too fast. So you just kind of have to sit there on the edge of the bed with the warden and whatever spiritual advisor they throw at you waiting to go be executed. That has to be the worst weight ever. Yeah. I can't imagine it being much worse than that because they can't be like, well, we'll just get this started early. No, everything is on a very delineated schedule and they're just going to have to sit there until the time comes to go to the execution chamber to get started to take a long shower. That stuck out to me. Yeah. Okay. The longest shower of your life. The saddest shower of your life, for sure. You might be rolled in, like, restrained beforehand and rolled in on a gurney. Sometimes you're allowed to walk there yourself and then you're restrained once you're in there. And at that point, they are going to go ahead and pre rig you with the IV tubes to lead you in there. And then those, once you get in there and you're strapped in, they will be fed into what's called an anta room where the actual death cocktails await and the executioner awaits. Yeah. It's like an enclosed room away from the eyes of everybody, including the condemned and the witnesses. Oh, yeah. But you have two tubes. Most states require two. There's a backup to one to serve as a backup. At this point. You have your final statement, if you so choose. They'll read that out loud on the news that night. Yeah. Do you care for what you say? You can go on to are we giving advice to death rows? It just occurred to me that we yeah, you can go on to departments of corrections websites, and most of them have last statements on there. Some of them are what you'd expect. Some are eerie, I'm sure new. And generally the head is unrestrained, so they can look around and stuff. Although sometimes they do have like, a hood or a sheet. Again, it depends on the state and how they do it. Yeah. So the condemned is strapped into a gurney, strapped down, but their heads under restrain. They've got tubes leading into the IV needles and ready to go. Yeah. I think now is a good time for message break and then we'll get into the actual process after. Okay, so like you said, it's go? Time for a solemn moment. Yeah. For a long time, states were using something called, basically an electronic lethal injection machine, which makes sense. It was what Coworking came up with, basically, if not directly based on his model, it was at least very similar to it. But then they worried about mechanical failures, so they said, no, humans need to do this. I think they had mechanical failures. I can imagine. Yeah. And so in some states, you have one executioner, in others, you have a couple of executioners. And again, they're in this anti room where the actual drugs are that the ivy tubes are leading to from the execution chamber into the anti room. And if you have a few different ones, a few different executioners, they're all putting drugs into IV tubes, but none of the executioners know which one's the real IV tube and which ones are leading to a mannequin. Is it actually a mannequin? That old trick? Like, they used to do the same thing with flipping the switch, too. I think they have, like, several switches. Firing squad. Yeah. Because they don't want any one person to have that weight. They can always think. I guess I had a 33% chance that it was me. Right. So I guess we should move on to the drugs that are used. It used to almost always be a three drug cocktail, but things are getting weird these days, I've noticed. Yeah. Originally, it was three drugs. You would have an anesthetic, a paralyzing agent, and a toxic agent, and those were used for years and years. And then due to some circumstances, a bunch of different circumstances that converged were, in some cases, down to one. Like Joseph Paul Franklin was killed with just one drug. Well, I looked up almost every single execution in 2013 used a single drug, pinto barbadol. Okay. Which is an anesthetic. Yeah. And it's basically a substitute when they're in short supply of other ones. But I did see that it's actually illegal to use this drug this way, and the manufacturer is Danish and was like, oh, no, you can't use our drug that way. Right. They started fighting people who sold that drug to state agencies. Exactly. Very controversial. And states were trying to get this stuff anyway they could. So since it was banned for use by correctional facilities for executions, the ultimate correction, the DEA was actually rating departments of corrections and taking their drugs because of this ban, because of the drug maker. And so first you had the drug maker that was making penthol. Right? Yeah. And then people were like, well, how about this? We have Propyphal that's the anesthetic pinophal is right. And so what they were replacing it with was Propafol, which is Michael Jackson's milk that killed him. Did we hit it right this time? Yeah. Okay. And then the maker of Propafol said, you can't use that to execute people. It's not what we made this for. Right. And they said, Well, TS, we're going to use it anyway. And so the maker said, if you use that to kill anybody, we're going to cut off supplies to the entire United States, including hospitals, and you're going to have an enormous problem on your hands. And so all the hospitals contacted the Department of the Corrections and said, do not use that. Like we can't have a proposal. False shortage. Yeah. Like we need it. So now they're turning to compounding pharmacies, which are generally regulated mostly by the state, not so much by the feds, and trying to get their hands any way they can on some sort of general anesthetic. And the anesthetic, ideally, if they were using penthol or penobarbital. Pentobarbital, yes. If you were in a hospital and you were put under general anesthesia, they would use about 100 milligrams of this stuff delivered over ten to 15 seconds, and you would be out. It's an anesthetic. You wouldn't be asleep, you wouldn't be unconscious. You are under general anesthesia. You're not feeling anything, you're not anything. So that's 100 mg for just general anesthesia. When you're given a lethal injection of penalbarbital, they give you 5 grams, 5000 mg. Not 100 mg, 5000 mg of this stuff. Yeah. And that's enough to kill you flat out. And proponents of lethal injection will say they don't feel anything after that. Right. And again, that should just be enough to kill you. Which is why a lot of states are just using that one drug now. Yeah. In the original lethal injection cocktail, that was step one. Yes. Once they administered the anesthetic, they would flush the lines with saline solution and then they would introduce the next one, which is a paralyzing agent. Yeah. That's basically the heaviest duty muscle relaxant you could ever imagine because it relaxes your muscles so much that your diaphragm and lungs don't function any longer. Yeah. That's a serious muscle relaxant. Right. So you stop breathing. So that's way to die number two now. Yeah. And that takes about one to three minutes for that one to take effect fully. So then that one's been kind of abandoned because it's been criticized or the use of it's been criticized because a lot of people point out that that's really for the witnesses, because without it, when somebody's dying, a lot of times they will rise, they will gasp for breath, their back will arch as much as it can when it's strapped down to a gurney. When you administer a paralyzing agent, none of that happens. So the witnesses are like, oh, look, it looks like he wanted to die. Look at what a peaceful death that man just went through. So it's for the witnesses. And then, number two, it could also conceivably mask pain. Sure. So if it's masking pain, then it's also masking a possibly inhumane method of execution. So they kind of discontinued the paralyzing agent. But that was traditionally step. Two, and then once that one was administered so are you getting the point here? That they're really going the extra mile to make sure you're dead in the 90s through lethal injection? Yeah, and you know what? I might as well go ahead and get into this. We just put our dog down two days ago, and they do the same thing with that paralyzing agent. Three different things were injected into her. It's like the first go to sleep thing, and then the second paralyzer, and then the final thing, like, she's gone. But, hey, let's just inject this just to make sure the heart is stopped. Okay, so it was the toxic agent, potassium chloride. I'm not sure. I mean, they said it was a trade concoction for their company. I got you. Okay, so then it probably wasn't potassium chloride, because I don't think probably not that's proprietary, but in some states, the use of potassium chloride, the toxic agent, which is the third one, that's not even allowed for use on pets, but they were using it on inmates because it induces cardiac arrest, because it could conceivably cause pain. Okay. Yeah. Interesting. I'm sorry about your dog, buddy. That's right. I appreciate that. And hey, thank you to everyone. I put that on. The stuff You Should know, while people were super supportive and told a lot of their own stories of their pets passing. So I think maybe at some point I might put together a little like you did the pet costumes. I might do, like, a pet memorial thing where people can send in. That would be very nice. memorializer pets stuff. You should know. Anyway, I did find it interesting, though, that I picked this topic. Yeah, I kept wanting to send you stuff about it yesterday, and I picked it knowing I guess it was just this weird subliminal thing, like maybe I was trying to work through it or something, I don't know. Yes. But I did find interesting the triple drug cocktail similarities. I don't think it was the exact same stuff, but it's the same process, basically. All right, so death from beginning to end, five to 18 minutes after the execution order is given, kind of just depends. Okay, so that's ideally, remember, the execution order is when you've moved into the execution chamber. Yes. And the warden says it's time to ringing. The governor's not calling. Right. So that's when they start working on you, like putting in the IV tubes and all that stuff. Right. Now, remember, the whole point of execution in the United States criminal justice system is not to inflict pain or cause suffering. It's simply to take that person's life in the most humane, efficient means possible. Right? Yeah. So what happens if you can't find a vein? That happens very frequently. Oh, yeah. There's a lot of cases of the condemned helpfully saying, we'll try this vein over here. I think this one feels pretty good. Try this one. Right. Like helping these people stick them to put these lethal drugs in them. Sure. And that particularly is the case with IV drug users who have lots of collapsed veins. It's also part of the problem when you don't have experienced medical personnel, which is one of the big controversies of lethal injection, because if you notice, it has a lot of the trappings of a medical procedure, but it completely flies in the face of medicine. Sure. Because the Hippocratic oath says, first do no harm. Well, carrying out or even assisting in an execution is doing harm. So the American Medical Association tried to pass a resolution saying, we're going to take the license of anybody who is involved in an execution. Right. And all the states said, no, you can't do that. We're going to protect the doctor's license because we need these people. And that's kind of a conundrum. Do you not have anything to do with an execution and let some prison guard try to find a vein and stick this person for 60 minutes and prolong the point from okay, start executing to death so this person is more aware and anxious and thinking about it? Or do you kind of throw your hypocrite goes to the side and help this person's execution go as painlessly and humanely as possible? Yes. Finding a vein is not too tough, though. I was reading like Botched. Really? Executions, and that's the number one that they can't find a vein. Yeah. Where are they feeding these people? Because they're not using heroin in prison, are are they? They or no, but I think if you use heroin for a significant portion of your life, your veins are collapsed forever. Oh, really? Yes. I don't think they grow back. Okay. So it's generally, though, a prison guard or somebody that works for the prison, though, that actually administers it, right? Yeah. Okay. That's what I thought. And plus, also, there's another thing, too. If they're not good at delivering the drugs, if they're not practiced at that the flow of the drugs, if you push it in too fast can cause a lot of pain and suffering. That's one. Right. That's another one, too. Which is another reason why some states require that medical staff be on hand to assist with these things. Yeah. There's really no humane way to put someone so that's kill somebody. Like you can't affixate someone with feathers. Okay. No, and it's true, but I was looking around, like, okay, if lethal injection isn't even considered humane, which a lot of people say that it's not. Right. It's possibly there's a lot of pain. One of the drugs that's being used these days is called midazolam, and it's a sedative. It's not an anesthetic. So if you put somebody out with it, that doesn't mean that they can't feel pain any longer. Right, but that's due to this shortage of Petobarbital. People are using that, so they're saying, Wait, we're using untested drugs. These people are possibly feeling excruciating pain, but you can't tell because we're using a paralyzing agent. Right. There's got to be another way to do this. And some people recently have been speaking up and saying heroin. No, but I think there's probably a few seconds when you're introducing the pentobarbital, where they're like, all right, this feels pretty good. Yeah, no, it's called inert gas asphyxiation. Okay. So when you suffocate, apparently the pain and discomfort is caused by not being able to expel CO2 with inert gas asphyxiation. You are inhaling gas that's not oxygen, say, pure nitrogen gas. But you're still capable of exhaling CO2, which means that the whole process should be painless. Right. And unconsciousness takes effect in a couple of seconds, death, a few more seconds after that. So they think it's possible that they may have figured out the most humane method of capital punishment around inert gas asphyxiation. Are they, like, practicing that? No, but I suspect that if this kind of reform thing continues going on right. We'll see inert gas chambers pretty soon. Yeah. You know, the old firing squad is instantaneous, probably. No, it's done right. Yeah, but it rarely is done right. That's the thing. What do you mean, rarely it's done right? Give me a statistic. Okay. Like, how many shooting firing squads, percentage wise, aren't done properly? So I would probably say the vast majority. Really? Yeah. If you're doing something humanely and efficiently, you want to remove human error. So finding a vein, introducing the drug at a proper rate, like, all of these things are subject to human error. Right? Yeah. Shooting a bullet at somebody from 50ft or whatever, that's got all kinds of human error involved in it. I would say go read a and I'm not an activist. I'm not being an activist here. Go read this article called on the possible pain from Various Methods of execution. I believe it's what it's called. There's a guy in the 80s who basically went around and said, let me get all the evidence I possibly can from the different types of execution that people are put through to figure out how much pain and how frequently they feel pain and how much they feel as well. And he came up with this amazing study, and firing squads are not good. Well, I know they're bloody, but I didn't know that they were botched so that people lived most of the time after being shot by eight dudes in the head. But that's another thing. They don't aim for the head. A lot of times, only one guy has a bullet where they aim the chest. So you're shot through the heart. Right. Is that, like, all countries across the board, or I don't know. I'm just curious. I'm just saying. I would say go read that study. My money is on inert gas, definitely not on firing squads. The guillotine, well, that came out of that one reform movement from the late 18th century. That's as instant as it gets. No, it's not. Do you not remember our yeah, we said it's possible that the head is alive for a couple of seconds. 4 seconds. Yeah. I feel like I don't even know you right now. I got one last one. All right. So there is a huge disparity in the death penalty as a whole among races. So it turns out 89% of capital cases feature a black or hispanic defendant. And then with victims, there's a big race disparity, too, in death penalty cases in the United States, I think either last year or in the last few years, 77% of the victims have been white, 15% have been black, 6% have been hispanic for the victims. Right. So it's disproportionately doled out against people who have killed white people than it is to people who have killed black or hispanic people. And the other was like 2% or something like that. Interesting. You got anything else? I got nothing else. So, lethal injection. Man, that was a weird one, huh? Well, I mean, this is touchy stuff. If you want to learn more about lethal injection, you can type that into the search bar@housetepforks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for a listener mate. I'm going to call this what a long, strange trip it's been because that's what Whitney called it. Hey, guys. I'm Whitney, and I'm a 20 something band teacher from Provo, Utah. My husband, also a band teacher, introduced me to your show in 2009 when he was commuting 1 hour each way to park city every day. When I started my current job last year, I started listening to you guys after I realized how crappy radio was and I exhausted the music on my ipod. I started one on episode one and just today caught up with the werewolf podcast. Wow. Yeah, not bad. I was excited and sad all at the same time. We hear that a lot, actually. I know you get lots of emails and you're probably sick of them, but I felt like I had to write once I caught up during the last school year, I had my first child, started my new job and moved twice. The second move being into our first home. Needless to say, with all this change, I started to get pretty stressed and even depressed. On top of all this, I teach beginning band the 6th and 7th grade kids. My job is very exciting. I love it, but I can get frustrated and even develop road rage at times. Stupid kids. Your podcast was my sanity. Through all this, dudes, I was able to focus my mind on exciting things like Barbie dolls and serial killers, and it all made my day a little bit brighter. So I just wanted to say how much I appreciate all the podcasts. I feel like I'm learning, keeping my mind engaged, and enjoying your banter. And I think my 18 month old daughter also enjoys since she's heard your voices, since she was just a tiny thing. Hope you keep making them. Whitney Werner. Thanks a lot. Whitney from Provo, Utah. Band teaching and we are shaping young minds. 18 month old minds. Yeah, in Utero even we've heard. Yeah, people for some reason play us. Forget teaching your kids sign language. Just have them listen to stuff. You should know exactly if you want to let us know how we have helped your life out or how we've influenced the development of your child. It's a good one. You can tweet to us at syscapodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffyshadow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. And as always, check us out at our awesome website. It's called stuffyouhenko.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Brought to you by the all new 2014 Toyota Corolla. Hey everybody. 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Nirvana: Not The Band | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/nirvana-not-the-band | Hinduism and Buddhism are closely related in a number of ways, including their vision of what comes after we exit this mortal coil. Learn about the religions' interesting interpretation of the state of existence outside space-time. | Hinduism and Buddhism are closely related in a number of ways, including their vision of what comes after we exit this mortal coil. Learn about the religions' interesting interpretation of the state of existence outside space-time. | Thu, 27 Aug 2015 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=27, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=239, tm_isdst=0) | 31069486 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there. This is stuff you should know. Here we are. Are now fetcher enlightened Buddha mode. Yes, Josh, but I did include a Nirvana reference in there, and I said, Here we are now. Oh, did not catch that. I noticed. Very nice. Very subtle. I split that one in there. Yeah. How are you doing? Are you feeling centered? No, I'm all whacked up. Your chakras are all over the place. My chakras are all over the place. So much so that I couldn't think of anything. So all I did was repeat you. Well, you know, man, I have to say, while we were researching this, I was like, this is some beautiful stuff. It's very appealing. Yeah, actually, it's neat stuff. I became calm in researching this. In researching Nirvana. Yeah, that's a good thing. I think you can tie this in. We have a couple of related episodes, and we might as well just call this the Enlightenment Suite. How about that? Sure, I'd like that. Karma from July 2011. Yes. And Reincarnation from July 2010. And Burning Man. The angriest people in your first house. Yes. And our buddy in New York, Rachel Grundy, is a Buddhist. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I've talked to her about it some, because Grundy I've meditated some, and it really appeals to me. And like a true Buddha, she's like, It's great, man. Here, I'll send you some stuff. No pressure. I'll send you some pamphlets. Yeah, that's basically what she did. She wasn't like, you should look at this. It's a little less overbearing than other religions I've found. I got you. You know what I mean? Now, Rachel Grundy does the literary pub crawl, right? Does she still do that? I don't know. She still does that. She used to, but we can plug her band. Coyote Love. How about that? There you go. And she just adopted a dog, so congratulations. Congratulations to everybody. That's the Buddhist way. That is so Nirvana, I thought, was the perfect way to cap off karma and reincarnation. Yeah, it's the third part, and maybe we should do meditation. Maybe we should make it a four parter. Yeah, that could probably be interesting. I'm sure there's a lot of studies about the physiological effects of it and all that. Yeah, let's do it. Okay. All right. It's agreed upon them. And then what did you call it? The what suite? The Enlightenment Suite. The Enlightenment Suite. Not to be confused with the transcendentalists or the Enlightenment episode. Right. Which doesn't factor into this at all. No. Okay, so, Chuck, you're talking nirvana. Yes. You have, like, a conception of it. I have a conception of it, but in researching one of the things and I also knew that Buddhists and Hindus share a lot of cosmology. I thought you were going to say they hate each other. No, I don't get that impression. No, of course not. But Buddhism is an offshoot of Hinduism. Yeah, it's a spinoff. It's the aftermath. It is. Of religion. It's the Joni love chachi of religion. That's right. What else? Maud, what was that? An offshoot of? Mary Tyler Moore. Mary Tyler Moore, right. It's the Jeffersons from Archie Bunker. Or family. Absolutely. I could do this for at least 30 straight minutes. Yeah. We should do an episode on spin offs where we just say spin off names yeah. And just hold thumbs up or down. But we don't say people just guess. Right. What are we doing right now? Yeah. It's the Three Company spin off of Hogan's Heroes. That's good. Okay. We're done? Yeah, we're done. Okay. I did not realize that, I guess, is what I'm saying. I knew that they were related. I didn't realize that it was like a direct offshoot or basically, I don't think I knew either. The Buddha whose name whose original name was Sidartha Gua Tama. Did you know that? Actually Sidarta? Okay. So the h is silent. Galtama Nice. Yes. I actually looked at pronunciations or listened to them for this episode. For once, I'm proud of you. Yeah. I'm also a little ashamed because you did that and I didn't. That was all for grundy. I was going with the original status quo. It's just mangling words before in origin. Well, I'm trying to mix things up here. 15 years, then, in scientific words, too, not just foreign ones. Right. So you were talking about Siddarta Caltoma. Right. He was born as a Hindu a Hindu family. Sure. And decided I'm not too hip on Hindu. I think there's other ways to go. And there's Buddhism. That's the quick version. There's Buddhism. Yeah. This is fifth century BC in Asia, of course. And like you said, he would later become the Buddha, which is not to be confused with Buddha. A Buddha. Exactly. You want to be a Buddha, go do it, Chuck. You can do it. You couldn't be the Buddha. Right. Because that's Sidarthe's. Right. Yeah. But you could be a Buddha. It could be a layman's version, I believe. Right, okay. Because only monks generally achieve the state of a Buddha. So in researching this, if you wanted to, you could be like, Cyano life. I'm going to become a Buddhist monk and conceivably achieve nirvana. Yes. In this lifetime, you could. Sure. Because you're a human being, you're incarnated as a human being into this moral coil, and if you wanted to, you could go do it. But in researching this yes. Apparently it's typically left to the Buddhist monks because they're the ones who are, like, at the time, san our life. Yeah. Because you got to drop out, sort of in a lot of ways. Not entirely. I mean, Buddhist monks still filter amongst the masses and all that. Sure. But for the most part, they're focusing a lot more on achieving nirvana than the average day to day person does, even, like, a day to day Buddhist or something. Yeah, it's not a part time job. You're not, like, sitting around on Netflix, like, should I watch Orange as a new black, or should I meditate for 8 hours? Can I do both? You can, by the way. It's called zoning out. So let's talk a little bit more about SADA's journey. This is 563 BC. In modern day Nepal, or what would be modern day Nepal. Does the way back machine go there? Yes. You want to go? Let's go. All right. Sounds like a lovely time. All right, here we are. It's cold. It's lovely. You know, it's funny, I didn't take it as cold. I thought we'd be going back to, like, maybe spring, but yeah, it's really cold here right now. Yes. It's a good thing you're wearing that oxide lined with Sherpa so over there. And he is a rich dude, and he is a very sheltered dude, and despite all these riches and this lifestyle, he's very pampered. I can see it in his eyes. He is dissatisfied. He is dissatisfied. He was born into a ruling class, very powerful, like you said, rich family. And he's part of the idle rich, but he's part of the thinking idle rich. So he started to question his place in life, which is basically what you said, right? Yeah. He starts to mull this over and, like, maybe there's more. It's a very long story, and we could spend hours talking about this, but I'm sure people do. I've seen that. Yeah, because you can't do it part time, like I said. All right. But I'm looking at him, and basically I can tell that his disillusionment has reached apex, and it is culminated by him looking out the window one day, and he sees three things from his little palace window. He sees a decrepit old man, he sees a diseased man, and then he sees a corpse, and he's done. So it's like the progression. I guess so. And he's like, you know what? I'm done with this life. Can't take it anymore. Even though I have my arranged wife, my cousin, whom I married, I was forced to marry, I have a beautiful son whom I love, I'm going to leave them. I'm going to leave all my possessions, and I'm going to go on a quest, vision quest, if you will, to understand the true nature of life. And here I go. Right. And back we are to the present day. So you can hang your oxide. And that sherpa on the coat right there's more to the story. Do we have to go back? Yeah, we got to go back. I got short pants. Put your pants back on. Right. So, Chuck, here we are, back again. And SADA, he's gone from a very rich, powerful family. He's decided to go on this vision quest. He thinks, well, I mean, if I was very dissatisfied. And I think it's kind of wrong to be as grossly rich as I was. The family I was born into. I'll just go the exact opposite route and I'll become a hermit, a completely poverty stricken hermit who has not even a pot to pee in. Yeah, not even that. Right. And he figures out that as he's starving to death, that it's not leading to any kind of enlightenment. He's actually growing increasingly uncomfortable. It's getting harder and harder for him to pay attention to enlightenment because, say he's hungry and hungrier. Sure. And he realizes, wait a minute, maybe this isn't the right way to go. Maybe polar extremes are a little too extreme. What if I die without achieving my goal? That would just have been a wasted life. Yeah. It would have been poverty stricken and great, but that doesn't lead to enlightenment, clearly. So here comes a stranger who's offering me a meal. I'm going to take it. I'm going to be poverty stricken no longer. And maybe I don't need to be rich, but I also don't need to be poverty stricken. I need to take this middle road to enlightenment. So I'm going to kill that stranger, take all the food with a pigeon hammer. Oh, wait, that's not the middle road. That's far from the middle road. That's kind of extreme as well. I kid. So he takes a meal from a stranger. He figures out, I think, finally that like, okay, this is the way to do it. Go and sits under a tree and achieve Nirvana. He achieved omniscience. Yeah. There were three stages of that. He saw his past lives, all of them. He saw the past lives of all others. And he's like, I'm really starting to catch on to things here. Things are revealing themselves. And finally he identified the four noble truths, which we'll talk about in a bit, but those were the three stages under the tree. And in the end of it he said, you know what? I gained a perfect understanding of the laws governing the cycle of birth and death. It's Nirvana. Boom. It's Nirvana. And Nirvana. We should probably say, once he achieved Nirvana, he didn't say, it's Nirvana. No, he couldn't say much. Actually. One of the things that came across in research time and time again is that he very famously couldn't put it into words, a description of what he experienced in this new state of enlightenment that he was vibing in. It's like Cthulhu kind of it was the unnamable. Yeah. But everybody trusted him. Anyway, they said, this guy knows where it's at. We're going to start following his teachings. Yeah. In Sanskrit, nirvana means to extinguish. Though in this case they're talking about extinguishing suffering and hatred and ignorance. No good. So we'll talk about the Buddha's path to enlightenment and his teachings that came out of this achievement of Nirvana right after this. And we're back. It's pretty funny. Put an ad in the middle of a Buddhism lesson. Well, we take all. Comers here, my friend. So if you achieve Nirvana, what you're doing is you are breaking that cycle. If you listen to our reincarnation podcast, samsara is that cycle of reincarnation that you can be caught in or stuck in, I guess. And this is where Karma and again, we have a great episode on Karma. Karma comes into play because what you're doing is you're rewarded on your past actions in your current life and earlier lives. Right. Does that make sense? No, it makes sense. Yeah, sure. And I love that this article says, it's important to note that the law of karma isn't due to God's judgment over a person's behavior, and it's closer to Newton's law of motion. That makes more sense. Right. For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. Yeah. So when you step on a snail, you're just like, man, didn't mean to do that. It's going to come back and bite me later on in another life. And you build up this karma or whatever. When you reach Nirvana, you stop accruing bad karma. That's right. You transcend it. Yeah. And when you transcend it, then all of a sudden you can spend the rest of your life working off that karmic debt that you have already accrued, because that doesn't just go away. It's like paying down a credit card. Exactly. But it's like when you achieve Nirvana, the credit cards cut up, so you're not adding to your account any longer, but you still have some money that you owe and you're paying that off in this life or conceivably other lives following. But at some point, your golden ticket has been granted. You have achieved Nirvana. That's right. And when that happens, you have escaped that samsara and you have achieved patty nirvana. And that is the final stage that you find in the afterlife. Right. And in the case of Saddata, he was 80 years old when he passed and he died in a state of meditation, basically saying to his people around him, it's all good, man. This is the goal. It's like a great way to pass. We should all pass that way. Sure. Telling everybody it's all good. Yeah, pretty much like Waterson style. He's going, all right. Those were his last words, if I'm not mistaken. So when one achieves Nirvana and you escape the cycle of Samsara, eventually when you die and you work off your karmic debt and you're no longer reincarnated, you basically travel to another dimension, another realm, to something different that basically exists outside of space time, as modern Buddhists would say. And you are kind of one with the universe. You just become a selfless part of the universe. That sounds beautiful to me. Sure. That's nice. So part of Nirvana Day or just Nirvana Day is celebrated on February 15 in East Asia. Celebrations vary, evidently. I looked it up. Apparently some people just meditate. Some people are just reflective. A lot of times in monasteries, food is prepared and shared, but that is February 15. Okay. Nirvana Day. Yeah. So, Chuck, if you become a Buddhist monk and you achieve Nirvana, and let's say you're not a Buddhist monk, okay, let's say you are. Okay, so you're a Buddhist monk. I keep putting on these clothes and taking them off. You achieve nirvana, you become a Buddha. Right. Again, not the Buddha, but a Buddha, which means an enlightened one, right? Yes. And if you say, I have got some time and money and I'm going to hire you a Buddha to lead me to Nirvana, you're almost like a junior Buddha. There's a different word for them. They're called rhots. Yeah. Rhett is what I found. Rhett, yeah. Okay. That's right. That's when you have a Buddha guide to guide you and you're enlightened, you're just not omniscient. Yeah. Not bad, though. Yeah. Big difference, though. Not omniscient and omniscient. There's a pretty big difference between those two things. Right. So when the Buddha came back from his well, once he achieved his enlightened state, he started trying to tell people, like, you can be like this, too, and here's how you do it. He said that it's very simple. There are just four noble truths. That's all you need to know until you realize that the Fourth Noble Truth mentions an Eight Full Path, and suddenly it's exponentially more involved. But it's still fairly simple stuff. Yeah. He taught this for the last 45 years of his life. Number one is that life is suffering. And I think that he was clued into that from his window that day. It was the suffering that really made him go like, man, this is life. That old guy, that dead body. If this is life, who needs enemies? Good point. Number two, suffering is caused by ignorance of the true nature of the universe. So ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is no good. No. And basically, the true nature of the universe is that we are made unhappy by wanting, by craving things, and that we can free ourselves from those things by overcoming them. That's right. That's number three. You can end that suffering. And then number four is if you attach yourselves and follow I'm sorry, the Noble Eight Fold Path. Not before. Right. Then you're all set. You can overcome all that junk. It's like, just remember these four things and then these extra eight things. So the Eight Full Path, the Noble Eight Full Path are the ideals that guide you along the way, and they're broken down into three divisions. They're Samas. The divisions are Samas. No, the individual paths are called Samas. Got you. Well, the first two are under the division of wisdom. Right views and right intention Samas are frequently translated into right here in the west, in English. Sure. And this article I read by this one guy said, that doesn't mean that the opposite of that is wrong. Right. It's more like right in the sense means complete, perfect, whole. Yeah. So the opposite of that would be incomplete, perfect, not whole. That makes sense rather than wrong. Right? Yeah, I get it. The second division is Ethical Conduct, and under there, you have complete or right speech, right action, and right livelihood. Right. So working for Goldman Sachs or Clubbing Baby Seals, you're going to have trouble achieving Nirvana in those positions, I would say. So you're probably not seeking Nirvana either. Right. So you're fine. What about podcasters? Podcasters are totally in there. We're somewhere between Clubbing Baby Seals and Goldman Sachs, and then finally, concentration is the last division. And that is right effort, right mindedness and right contemplation. Yeah. And the right mindedness is being mindful, being aware. Right effort is like you're directing your effort toward these good things. You're not being slack in your path to enlightenment. And then the last one, right contemplation is kind of difficult to understand. At the very least, it's difficult to explain, I found, in researching, but it's basically focusing your entire self on this, on the eight fold path and the Four Noble Truths. You're really directing all of your thought and energy into that. Yeah, and that's what I got from Grundy. When I talked to her last time we were up there at the Bell House, she was just very soothing. She's just like, man, it's just practice. You're like, it's a cycle. You're just continually trying to do the right thing. Got you. And that's like the simplest breakdown. But if something bad happens and you don't, you start over and you try harder. Got you. Which is like, that sounds like really great life principles. So that's Buddhist thought as far as achieving Nirvana goes, and Hinduism is actually very closely related, but there are some major distinctions, and we will talk all about that right after this. Okay, Chuckers, we're back. That's right. Buddhists typically talk about Nirvana as Nirvana in Hinduism is usually referred to as Moksha, but they're basically talking about the same thing. It's the highest plane of existence, wherein you stop being reincarnated, you have worked off your Karmic debt, and you reunite with the cosmos, with the universe. And in Hindu cosmology, they're talking about Krishna, which is the godhead, which is the source of all things. And Krishna is very frequently or Krishna incarnates in three major deities. Okay. All Hindu deities are extensions of Krishna, but the big three are Brahma, who's the creator, vishnu, who's the sustainer, and Shiva, who's the destroyer. And when you die, when you achieve Moksha, you go and get absorbed into Krishna again. Yeah. And the big difference that I think we found between Buddha Nirvana and Hindu Nirvana, or Buddhist Nirvana, is that with Hindu, you're working your way up through this cash system. Eventually you start out by you have to be born through every type of organism that exists on the planet. You actually make it through under Hindu cosmology, 8,400,000 different species of animals before you even get to humanity. And then once you become a human, you can go through countless lives in different casts over and over again. But those casts are hierarchical and, like you said, are working your way up. Yeah, that's called the varna. And you get that good karma you perform by performing duties in that cast. And then basically, once you have, it's almost like a graduation in the next life if you've done well to the next cast up. Yeah. And there's actually a lot of debate right now because Gandhi was famously thrown out of his cast vaisha, I believe it's the merchant class, and he was thrown out of it because he championed for the rights of the lowest class, the Sudra, who basically were responsible for handling picking up dead animals and taking care of the rest of the community's waste. And basically, we're just generally mistreated by the higher castes. There's this question now in modern Hinduism, like, does the caste system still fit? Is it still appropriate? Right. But the thing is, if it's not a reflection of, say, god's punishment, but something as physical as, like, the second law of thermodynamics or motion sorry, that it's just a reaction to some other action you took in a past life who are humans, to say that the cast system is no longer appropriate, it's just part of the universe. But then if it turns out it's a human construct, well, then it gets kind of ticklish. Right? Because it undermines this Hindu cosmology. So it's a weird place that modern Hinduism is in right now, talking about whether or not to do away with the cast system. Interesting. What do you think? I think that's up to Hindi. Good answer. Thanks. So I would imagine that Gandhi then, in his next life, was definitely in that next cast up, huh? I would guess if he didn't just achieve moksha right then and there, yeah, he's a pretty good guy. You're Gandhi, you can skip a few levels. Exactly. Grades. Yeah. And that's the thing. The highest class is the Brahman class in Hinduism, and they're the priestly class. They're like the Buddhist monks who go off and try to achieve nirvana. Their station in life is to achieve moksha. They've worked off their karmic debt to a tremendous degree, and their focus in life is to get rid of the rest of their karmic life so they are not born again. Right. The one below that is Kashatria. That's the ruling warrior class. That's the one that Sidarta was born into, apparently got you when he was like, this is wrong. Anybody should be able to achieve enlightenment. Yeah. And that was one of the main reasons that Buddhism was born, right, was that he rejected that cash system. The main reason, yes. But within this, if you're a cash, you're working on your karmic debt, because as far as you're concerned, if you can work off enough of it, you will be born the next life into the Brahmin class, and then you can work really hard and get out of that and end up achieving enlightenment. So there is like a hierarchical progression. Right. And as you were saying, one of the main things that you're tasked with as a Hindu is Dharma, which is responsibility to your cast. Right. Like acting like a member of your cast rather than acting out like Gandhi. I love it. You got anything else? Yeah, there's actually four tenants just like the eight what was it? The Noble Eight. Full path. Right. There's like, four in Hinduism. One of them is Dharma responsibility to basically your caste society's rules, but more importantly, like, Krishna's rules and also having a responsibility and a duty to your own calling in life. And just like living like that, arthur is pursuing wealth because in Hinduism, there's this idea, it's kind of like in Buddhism where you don't need to be super rich, but you also shouldn't be poor either. And one of the things is, just like with Buddhism and Hinduism, you're trying to escape earthly desires and wants. One way to do that is to have the money, to not have to worry about where your food's going to come from, freeze you up for a lot of time to contemplate and get toward enlightenment. Right, sure. That's Arthur comma is more fulfilling. Desires frequently, like sexual desires, that kind of stuff, but there's all sorts of, like, taboo and constraint and all that kind of stuff. It's not like a free for all in Hinduism as far as sex goes. Right, right. And then lastly, there's moksha. Once you have moved past your earthly desires, you become free from delusion and realize that there is no earthly self. There's just your connection to Krishna. And then you can become enlightened, which is also called Moshe, correct? Yes. Nice. Pretty interesting stuff, huh? Yeah, that's Nirvana, not the band. Not the band. Man, I hope we pointed that out at the beginning of this, or else everybody's really confused right now. Oh, well, probably call it something like Nirvana, not the Band. There you go. If you want to know more about Nirvana, not the Band, you can type that word into the search bar@houseofworks.com. Since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. And if you want to know more about Nirvana the Band, watch the great documentary montage of heck. It's not called Nirvana the Van no montage of heck. It's very well done. Is it? Oh, it's great. Impressing. All right, I'm going to call this our biggest fan in Uganda. Hi, guys. My name is Joshua Quizzenberry. I'm huge, possibly the biggest fan of your show, and I listen to every chance I get. My wife, son and I live in Kampala, Uganda, where we run an NGO for children with severe special needs who have been abandoned, orphaned or abused. The Nazi sabotage episode. We spoke about the brilliant but poorly executed plan of Germans to infiltrate the US. And cause chaos. I wondered if you guys knew that wasn't an original idea by Hitler, but in fact, during World War I, kaiser Wilhelm number two had an entire sabotage ring running out of New York City that was responsible for numerous acts of terror, including blowing up, attempting to blow up railroads, bridges, canals from the East Coast all the way to San Francisco and Canada. Did not know that. This is during the neutral period, our neutral period of 1914. One of the largest and most devastating was blowing up in munitions depot on New Jersey's Black Tom Island. Apparently the blast was heard all the way in Philly and through shrapnel that actually damaged the arm and torch of Lady Liberty herself. What? Bring me Kaiser Wilhelm. I just want to kick his body. What was that? I just figured that was you guys were going is that what I sound like to you? Yeah. No, like I'm drunk and about to throw up. Some of the other plots that were thankfully discovered were attaching rudder bombs on chips. Another interesting one was trying to buy us passports from dock workers to smuggle more spies. And it was found out and ushered in putting photos on passports. I think I understand. I think so, too. So they couldn't be stolen and used anymore. Anyway, I thought you guys would find it fascinating. The Germans, they were a little better at sabotage and would have made a better film in World War I. Josh Clifberry. It's a lot. Josh, thanks for the work you're doing out there. Nice. Yeah. If you want to get in touch with us to let us know more about something, we walked right past in a previous episode. We love to hear more stuff. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com STUFFYou, know you can send us an email stuffpodcast@housetheforks.com. And as always, hang out with us at our home on the web, it's stuffyshando.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/2017-01-26-sysk-pacifism-final.mp3 | How Pacifism Works (And Could It?) | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-pacifism-works-and-could-it | There is deep disagreement over whether humans are essentially peaceful or essentially warlike. Depending on your view you may see pacifism as either hopelessly naïve or the unsung response to conflict that’s kept us from wiping ourselves out. | There is deep disagreement over whether humans are essentially peaceful or essentially warlike. Depending on your view you may see pacifism as either hopelessly naïve or the unsung response to conflict that’s kept us from wiping ourselves out. | Thu, 26 Jan 2017 08:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=26, tm_hour=8, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=26, tm_isdst=0) | 70475109 | audio/mpeg | "Hey. Stuff you should know is brought to you in part by Blue Apron. They are affordable for less than $10 per person per meal. They have a variety of great new recipes each week to choose from. They are super flexible because you can customize those recipes each week based on your preferences. It's easy and it's guaranteed. Blue Apron's Freshness guarantee promises that every ingredient in your delivery arrives ready to cook or they'll make it right. Check out this week's menu to get your first three meals free with free shipping by going to BlueApron.com Stuff. 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. Everybody's getting along nicely in here. You have a very interesting outfit on. Thank you. I've never seen such a variety of patterns in one torso. Yeah, I like it. It's interesting. Yours is great. Yeah. I got sort of made fun of in high school for combining patterns and never did it again in the 9th grade. I think it was yesterday. Yeah. I think I wore, like, checkered shorts and a striped shirt. I think you should publicly shame those people find it's not supposed to combine patterns. Well, in fact, I didn't know that. I didn't say that an old Chuck would have. I'm suddenly sick and need to go home. I have a wet spot in my pants. It's funny. Like, I can't see because you have a beard but I wondered if that was a turtleneck you were wearing for a second. Then you moved and I'm like, oh, it's a crew neck. It's a mock turtleneck. Right. Remember that? Steve Jobs style. Yes, I saw that movie. Have you seen that? No. The one with what's, his ice vendor? Yeah. No, it was good. I'm sure that guy is great. He's great. Kate Winslet, boy, she's the ticket. She plays Steve withnewski that was actually what's his name? Seth Grogan. That's right. I forgot. He plays wise. How does he do? He was good. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, acting was just great. What was the problem, then? Why is there a curse on any movie that has to do with Steve Jobs? There's not a curse. I think there were Academy Award nominations on that movie. Okay. Who directed it? It was Danny Boyle, which is great. That guy can do, like, any genre. Sure. But it was written by Aaron Sorkin, who I had a little problem with. That was the problem. I knew there was some problem with it. And I know everyone thinks he's God's gift of writing, but who says that? Well, Aaron Sorkin. Okay. He's just so wordy, man. That's just so many words. I know. And everybody has, like, the perfect retort at the tip of their tongue. Yes. None of his movies speak of reality of the way people really talk. Which, to me is the mark of a good writer. Right. But it's a good movie set aside. I'll check it out sometime then. Yeah, it was very nice. Steve Jobs. And you get over the fact that the full title steve Jobs Colin. Very nice. You get over the fact, or at least I did. That fast vendor doesn't look anything like Steve Jobs. Because when it came out, I was like, oh, man, how am I going to get past that? It's Michael Fossfender. Right. But he did it well. That's the mark of a quality actor. He had a job seeing aura about him. And that's my movie pick of the week. Nice. We need, like, a jingle now. Pacifism, are we ready to get started? Yes. Let's tear through this one. This is a good one. You like this one? Yeah. This is a request by me. Oh, wow. Yeah. And it got done. Pretty psyched about it. Yeah. So before researching this, would you call yourself a pacifist? Well, I would not have known the specific kind of pacifist. Right now I do. Yeah. But I'm a kind of pacifist, for sure. Extremely violent pacifist. Like, I'm well known to have never hit another human or been hit myself. I've never been a fist fight. So that's a kind of pacifism. Right. But I'm also, like, sometimes I think you kind of have to go to war, maybe, if you're fighting slavery or Hitler. Yeah, there's a lot of conundra. Yeah, I think that'd be right. Surrounding pacifism and the decision of whether or not to use violence. Yeah. I mean, even Gandhi, for God's sakes, before people are like, oh, man, Chuck, I thought you were a chill dude. Yeah, Gandhi was a chill dude. And he even said but hey, sometimes you have to take up arms. Yeah. I think it's good that you characterize Gandhi as a chill dude rather than a pacifist, because he pretty technically was not the pacifist that most people consider him to be or think he was. He actually said it's cited in this article. No, you should be able to defend yourself. He believed that India should be able to defend itself after it gained independence if someone else was an aggressor against the state. He suggested that some of his fellow Indians fight alongside the British and South Africa during the Boer War. Not very pacifist. Right. So his views and identity and the fact that he's still considered a pacifist kind of reveals that pacifism is actually almost never the staunch version that people think of when they think of pacifism, which is no violence under any circumstances. Yeah. Very few people can or want to adhere to that. I'm not certain that anyone has ever been able to do it in the history of humanity. Yeah. I mean, I should add for myself, and I think I've said this before, I never avoided a fight either. Right. It just never happened. Like, if someone came and hit me in the face, I do my best job to swing back. I've seen a bar fight or two on TV. Sure. I just do what Burt Reynolds did in paper. Yeah, he got the job done. Yes. I think you throw like a beer pitcher in a guy's face and he trips over his friend and then you make a kind of funny laugh and then you throw him out the front window of the bar and I'll play banjo along with I'll do the score. And in the end, though, you end up slapping back with the guy you were in a fight with and you all just have a good laugh about it. That's how it goes. Alright, so let's talk Pacifism Man. Alright. The word itself, actually Pacificus is what it's derived from. It's old Latin word. Everybody knows Latin. Super old. But the use of the word pacifist in the way that we use it today is actually fairly new from, I think, a piece conference in 19 six that it was officially coined. And although that concept, this pacifism that we understand it today, it did kind of spring out of this rational humanist peace movement that came as a result of just this transformation of people in the 19th century. People have been espousing pesky police's for many thousands of years now. Sure. They just didn't call it that. No, they called it being a chill dude. Right. Should we get in the old wayback machine? Let's, man. I was hoping you'd say that. All right. It's fired up and it's quite lovely in here. I like the music you picked out. Thank you, Tranquil. It is very nice. I thought you were going to have on like Rage Against the Machine or something. No, because they're pacifist. Are they? I don't know. I could see them being pacifist, actually. Yeah, well, I said it as a joke. Then I was like, well, wait a minute, it rang a bell. I really have to think about that. Yeah. They strike me as the kind of dudes that well, I don't even know I don't know those guys. You don't know. Rage against the Machine. They're musicians. No, but I saw Zack in La. In my neighborhood. Yeah. I used to see him getting tacos all the time. Yeah. We shall fight power, he said. Wrong group. So, Pacifism, if you want to talk about the OG, or at least the OG that I'm sure there were Pacifists around, but the one that got notoriety, at least first one, was probably Sidhartha, as you point out, the grandfatherer of Buddhism who said, you know what? This fighting, this warrior stuff is no good for me. And so I'm going to break with that tradition and I'm going to try and take the path less traveled. Yeah. And he was a part of the warrior cast, right? Yeah. So him saying, no, I'm not doing this, I'm not fighting, was pretty significant. So much so that a religion formed around him. Buddhism right. Yeah. So he's kind of credited as one of the earliest pacifists, at least on record. Sure. And pretty quickly, his pacifist views spread. And there was a king who was a Buddhist king in India. His name was Ashoka. Great name, by the way. Yeah. And he said, you know what? My kingdom is not going to be involved in any more wars of conquest because I am a devout Buddhist now. Nice. It's a great way to go. The Greeks followed with their stoicists. Boy, I could not have said that. Neol toothless days. That was presented a lot of problems. Yeah. The stoicist, they were definitely not down with violence. Of course, Jesus himself was known to be a pretty chill dude. Yeah. He said, Turn the other cheek, man. Yeah. Famously. In fact, one of his followers, Roman named Maximilian, very famously became one of the early Christian martyrs when he said, you know what? I'm not going to serve in your legion. I'm not going to kill anyone. And they said, Fine, we'll kill you. Yeah. He said, Fine, which is the irony of all this, is, as you'll see throughout this whole podcast, is all these pacifists over the years, they're like, I don't want to fight. Like, all right, well, we're going to be violent on you and make your life a living hell. Yeah. I just don't want to fight you guys or fight anyone else. Yeah. Just leave me alone. I know. I don't know what it is. Well, it's a duty and an obligation, I think that warists, and we'll talk about wars, which is the other end of the spectrum, I think that's what they feel like. It's like, no, you have a duty to take up arms against an aggressor, against you or your countrymen. Yeah. Go kill that guy. Somebody of a higher socioeconomic status commanded you. Yeah, pretty much. So moving along, we'll just jump forward to Renaissance Europe. Yes. It's much nicer. There was this thanks to the blossoming of science, there was this kind of idea that, well, it was the foundation of humanism. Right. That humans should take care of other humans. And part and parcel to that was kind of picking up on the idea of pacifism. And it really started to take root in Europe and the Western world around that time during the Renaissance, thanks in part to a guy named Erasmus, a Dutch writer, who famously said, building a city is much better than destroying one. He probably dropped the mic. It was like, Argue with that. Right. They're like, Mics haven't even been invented yet. And then, of course, if we jump ahead a little bit more to the early days of what would become the United States, there were people here called Mennonites and Quakers who came to colonial America so they could just sort of be among themselves and beach ill dudes. Right. Then the Revolutionary War broke out and they were like, what do we do now? We came here to be chilled, dudes. And now everyone expects us to fight for our freedom. Yeah. And actually, Pennsylvania, I was watching this short video about pacifism yesterday, I think, and they were talking about Pennsylvania and how it was the first colony to outlaw slavery. And there was just a lot because of the influence of the Quakers and the Mennonites, there was a lot of, well, just kind of pacifist ideals. Interesting. Yeah. And they would thrive. Like, Philadelphia was the most important city in the colonies at the time. It was in Pennsylvania, but yeah. When the Revolutionary War broke out, it was tough to be a Quaker pacifist. Sure. Because everybody else is saying, hey, does that mean you're loyal to the king? Yes. If so, we're going to beat you up. And then the Tories would say, hey, you have to come fight with us. You're obviously loyal to the king. You're not fighting with the rebels, so come fight with us. And they'd say, no. So they were caught between this rock and the hard place, where both sides just treated the Friends very badly. Yeah. In 17 seven. Seven. 1717. That is so confusing. See? Yeah. In 1770, 717 Quaker leaders were accused of treason, and they were exiled to Virginia by the wigs. And I guess they got there. We're like, Virginia is not so bad. Right. Not much of a punishment. But they wanted to be home in Pennsylvania. They're like, oh, tobacco. You can smoke, probably. So and then, like you said, if you're a Quaker who stuck to your pacifist ideals, you could have been abused or you could have had your property confiscated. It was not good. Yeah. And apparently they were so committed that when war broke out, when the revolution broke out, the Quakers who were running the government all quit. They all resigned. So we can't have anything to do with this. We're going to go make oatmeal yeah. And find furnitures. Exactly. Polyonic wars in the 1800s was a very bloody affair. They were a very bloody affair. And so this gave rise to a lot of people saying, hey, like the London Peace Society, maybe we should try and think of a different way to go about resolving our conflicts rather than just, like, trying to kill more people than the other guys. Yeah. Apparently, the War of 1812 was extremely unpopular in the United States. Yeah. And that, combined with the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, just kind of allowed this mentality to really blossom on the continent. And in the states where this peace movement kind of developed over the 19th century and things were going pretty well, actually, it was getting a lot of attraction. People are starting to think, like, hey, maybe we can go without war. Maybe we can just be peaceful. And then the Civil War happened. They ran headlong into this problem. Right. Because there's this immediate problem that was facing the pacifist. It was great. You guys are doing a heck of a job keeping the peace. But part of that piece is there's a group of people over here who are enslaved, living in horrific, brutal conditions, being forced into labor against their will. So what do you say about that? Is that piece okay? Right. And the pest is still grapple with that one today. Yeah. There was a writer named Angelina Grim queuel the political activist and very much into peace as an advocate, and she said, oh, yes, war is better than slavery. So I think there are quite a few Pacifists that probably said, you know what? Sometimes you just have to take up arms and do what's right. Yeah. And it created a big division in the past, fist movements. That American Civil War. And like I said, people are still grappling with it today. But before the whole thing could sink in, pacifism, I think, kind of congealed again, because it seems like when World War I finally came yeah. Pacifism was back. It was a thing still. It hadn't just been blown away by Napoleon or the American Civil War. Right. Should we take a break? Yeah, let's. All right, let's take a break, and we'll come back and talk a little bit more about the opposite of Pacifism. All right, so you put this thing together, and you did a bang up job. I expanded on a Patrick Kiger joint. Oh, is this from our original article? Oh, good. Well, at any rate, you and Patrick yeah. Did a great job. But you guys make a great point that if you want to understand Pacifism, you have to understand war. And there was this pacifist name and a writer named Arthur Ponsonby. Yeah. He was a member of parliament. Okay. And he has this great quote from one of his writings about war. War is a monster born of hypocrisy, fed on falsehood that really dates it. Kept alive by superstition, directed to the death and torture of millions, succeeded in no high purpose degrading to humanity, endangering civilization and bringing forth in its travail a hideous brood of strife, conflict in war. More war. Yeah. Pretty down view on war. Yeah. And I think most people, probably even professional soldiers, would agree with Posembey's assessment. Right. Yeah. There's basically no one out there who's like, no, war is good. War is great. Right. Let's go to war right now. Go find somebody to go to war with. People don't think like that. Right. Generally, sure. That's not the mentality. That's not the basis of wars. Warriors, is the idea that war can be morally justified, and there's even some circumstances that could require it. Right. Right. And if you go back to the early Christian church, the earliest version of it, there was basically nothing but nonviolent Pacifism. And then the church started to join forces with the state, the government specifically at first, and the guys of the Holy Roman empire. And the Holy Roman Empire was all about conquest, getting new land, subduing people. And so one of the tasks that fell theologians, Christian theologians, was to figure out a way to justify that. And starting with, I believe, St. Augustine, they came up with this concept called the just war. Right. And the just war basically says it effectively cancels out the possibility of absolute pacifism, where absolute pacifism is just war and violence are never justified under any circumstances. This was there is such a thing as a war that can be conducted in a certain way, that can be entered into for all the right reasons. Right. And if all these conditions are met, then you have a just war. And technically, you're not really breaking any Christian ideals or morals. Right. Still morally justifiable. Yeah. And those are the two big questions that you just said, are simply, when is it justified? And once you have justified it, how do you go about it? Right. In regards to the first one, there are six conditions, and we should point out that in order for it to be adjusted war, you have to meet all these conditions. Yeah. Not some yeah. It's not like the first couple. Right. But never mind. We got most of them two through six. The war must be made on behalf of a just cause is number one. Yeah. The decision to go to war must be made by proper authorities. It can't be some jackass. Right. Participants must have a good intention rather than revenge or greed. That's a big one. Yeah. It takes care of a few wars. Sure. What do you mean? Just like cancel smile. It must be likely that peace will emerge. That should be the ultimate goal. Right. Not a war that would lead to another war. And that's that mentality I'm talking about, like when people who even war like people will say, well, the goal is peace. You just have to do it through violence. Right. Which is tough to wrap your head around, especially if you're a pacifist. Going to war is the last resort. That's a big one. These are all big. And then finally, the total amount of evil it's like a formula. The total amount of evil resulting from the war is outweighed by the good that will come out of the war. Right. So you have to fulfill all six of those before entering the war. Right. And then once you're in the war, you have to say, okay, what parameters do we have to work within for it to remain adjust war? And we actually did an episode rules of War. Yeah, the rules of war So it was pretty good. If I remember correctly, we recorded that in serious studios in DC. Remember that? That was weird. Yeah. It was like a hallucination just to show how great we are or were they trying to pilot us or something? I think so. Man. I remember those days. Hardly. Yeah, it's a long time ago, but yeah, we did do that one in Sirius Studios in DC. I think. Yeah. Weird. But when you're within a ward to maintain it being justifiable, you have to say you have to be discriminate. And the stuff you're doing has to be proportional. Right, right. So with the proportional thing, like if somebody is shooting at you with a machine gun and you fire a missile at that person right. If that's the way you're conducting the war, you're not really carrying out a just war. Yeah, but dudes are into war like no, that's exactly what you should right. Bring a gun to a knife fight. Sure. And then discrimination is a big one. And that's the one that we seem to be having increasing trouble with as the century goes on, or as the last century went on. Is that collateral damage? Yeah, where you have to discriminate between okay targets and not okay targets. Right. Okay targets are other soldiers, other members of the military, or people who are enabling the other side to carry out war. Like, even workers in a factory making missiles, they're a justifiable target and adjust war. But the people who live around the factory, they're not. So if you're going to drop a bomb on that factory, that bomb has to hit. And if it misses and you kill those people, well, then you're not carrying out a just war. Supposedly there's been a lot of bending over backwards to say, no, there's spillage, there's collateral damage. Some civilians who aren't intended to be targets are going to die in a war, but you want to limit those people. And the key here is to not specifically target civilians and you're okay. That's a lot of bending over. That's been done as war has gotten less and less discriminate over the 20th century. Yeah. And it's kind of ironic. We're far more precise than we ever have been in terms of targeting, but I think that just the sheer size of the armament, you can't help but have collateral damage. I saw a UNICEF article that said that at the beginning of the 20th century, collateral damage, civilian deaths represented about 5% of casualties in war. Yeah. It used to mainly be soldiers who died. Right. By the 1990s, it was up to 90% of the casualties in a war were civilian targets or civilian people. That's beyond collateral damage. Yeah. And I think part of the problem and boy, I'm just speaking off the top of my head here, let me preface that. But part of the problem there is the kind of wars we fight these days. You'll drop a bomb on a house where there are like five suspected terrorists right. In a neighborhood of 2000 people. So that probably has a lot to do with the and I'm just guessing here, but it should have a lot to do with the casualty rate of civilians. It's not like there are 3000 troops in that house. It's just not how it works these days. No, it's not. There's these small, tiny little groups. Right. And I think specifically, also, from what I understand, I'm speaking off the top of my head as well. From what I understand, the modern battlefield takes place much more in more populated areas. Whereas before there used to be things that essentially resembled pitch battles. Yeah. Let's go meet in this field, right. And get out. You wear this color coat. We'll wear this color coat and then we'll shoot at each other, right? Yeah. But yeah, as it started to move more and more into urban areas and of course, more and more civilians are going to die. Right. But I think part of the other thing that really started to drive up those numbers, Chuck, and it's stuff that you don't learn about in school and history class, where the bombing campaigns that were carried out on both sides, but the Allies too, the British and the US. Carried out bombing campaigns where we were just leveling civilians, just whole cities. We were just leveling with bombs. Like fire bombs. We firebombed Japan in World War II? The British fire bombed German city centers in World War II. That was part of the strategy, which is killing so many people that we were trying to force them into unconditional surrender. Yeah. It wasn't like nowadays where they're, like, have a geo coordinated target. Right. And it looks like a video game. It was like, you've seen the old footage. It's like, well, we're over the city. Start shoving bombs out the door. Exactly. Bombs away. Yeah. So I think that drove up the numbers and really drove it from 5% at the beginning of the century to 90%. And I'd love to hear from people that know a lot more about this, these couple of points that we just yeah. Both sides. Yes, that's for sure. But the idea that war used to take place basically outside of populated areas, away from targets that should be discriminated against, some people say maybe those wars were acceptable, but the type of war that we're fighting now has evolved so far away from that, that war is no longer accessible. You can't justify it any longer. And there's actually a name for that type of pacifism, specifically, that I believe is selective no. Technological pacifism. Yeah. And I want to quickly say that I think that's part of the idea of terrorism and the cowardism of terrorism is like, hey, let's go set up shop next to this nursing home. Sure. They don't want to be out in the open in the middle of the desert right. As an easy target. Right. Yeah. So you mentioned one of the types of passivism I counted here, and including the subgroups, I think they're about seven. And you should think about pacifism as a spectrum from absolute pacifism on one end, which is like, nothing ever. No violence. No violence. No violence no matter what. Not even I bet I'd rather die a morally just death than even defend myself or your loved one. Anybody. There's no justification for violence ever. That's absolute pacifist. So that's on one far end. So then next we have conditional pacifism. And that's basically when you're like, you know what? I'm opposed to violence in this particular situation. I don't think it's the right solution to this problem. Yeah, conditional pests is kind of like this umbrella that really falls basically between absolute pessimism and everything else. It covers everything else. Basically, there's some time when violence is useful. Right, right. And then there's a bunch of subgroups under that conditional pacifism umbrella. For example, Pragmatic pacifism. Right. So Pragmatic pacifism basically is a type of conditional pacifism where you're saying, I don't really have any problem with using violence, but in this particular circumstance, it's going to make things worse. It's not going to solve the problem at hand. Right. I'm a pragmatist. Thank you for listening to me. And the example that this article gave was a war over slavery. Can ending slavery justify a war? And a pragmatist may say, yeah, totally, we really should, because that's what it's going to take to end slavery. And slavery is so bad that it's worth the lives that are going to be lost to end slavery. Ultimately, the good that comes out of it is better than the evil of the war. But the pragmatic pespas could also say, on the other hand, no, we really shouldn't start a war here because it's just going to cause the slaveholders to kill all their slaves out of spite. Right. So that's two examples of pragmatic pacifism. Yeah. And under that, even as another subgroup fallibility pacifism, how we talked about meeting those conditions of adjust war, this is the kind of pacifist item. So fallibility pacifism is like, yeah, sure, you could be down with that, but there's so much you don't know. And the scale of war is so massive that you have the information you need to decide whether or not it's a just a war. As a citizen, there's so many factors involved in a war and going to war, so many things you're told are not told. There's so many ways you're manipulated through the media. There's so many personal vendettas possibly involved. Money, oil contracts, who knows that because of the scale of it and all of the factors, we can't possibly know even enough of the details, let alone all the details to say, yes, this is adjust war, let's go to war. That's right. That's Fallibility passive. Good one. Collectivist pacifism is that maybe you might think that executing this person who murdered and sexually assaulted children is okay, not into violence, but this guy should not be walking around in the earth anymore. Yeah, he needs to be wiped out. But maybe the sheer magnitude of a war, you might still. Be against. Yeah, for sure. Maybe you should call that pick and choose pacifism. Well, that's a part of conditional pacifism saying, yeah, it's okay. Violence is okay in this sense, but not in this sense to me. And that's the thing. Like, pacifists are called on to justify their beliefs a lot or else be thrown in prison or just be treated horribly. But the thing about pacifism is it is about as personal a belief as one can come upon. Yeah. And people may ask you to justify it, but you have no burden to justify your own personal pacifism. It just is. It exists in you in that sense, and it's personal to you. Right. It's an interesting thing. Like a collective pacifist might be against the death penalty even, but they might have children. And if someone murders children, that might even sway them to say, you know what? I don't even believe in this, but I believe this person revoked their card as a human when they did that. Right. That's the way that they would put it. That basically they at one point had a right to be free from violence inflicted upon them. Right. But what they did was so bad that it erased that. Right. Yeah. I'm kind of in that camp because I've never been a staunch advocate for the death penalty at all. But there are just some things it's not like you can get the death penalty for any old thing. There are some things like just don't do that the worst thing. Don't do the worst thing and you can still live and maybe be rehabilitated. But when you have people, like, clearly sick serial killers and like the Jeffrey Dahmers of the world, what good does it do unless you're just literally studying their brain to keep them around, keep them alive? I don't know, man. I have a lot of big moral tug of war going on when it comes to stuff like that. Yeah. And that's just too people have been trying to wrestle with this thousands of years now. The black and white thing. No, it really isn't. I guess unless you're touched by the pacifist bug. Right. And you just know how you feel about it. Aka smoked a dooby, maybe, or saw somebody shot in front of you or whatever. I think, like, personal experience definitely leads to epiphanies regarding pacifism. For sure. That's my new favorite euphemism for smoking marijuana. Doobie. No, touched by the pacifist. I think we could make that a thing. Probably spread that around. We just put on a T shirt, sell it on our spreadsheet store. I mean, we made sniff them off the case. A true saying. Well, not really. Mike's on pants off. Yeah, Clark me something. Yeah, Clark me something. And those are all just dumb. Yeah, they're terrible. Touch by the passive bug. That's for real. That should be an album title. It's going to be. Who is it? Soup Dragons. No, diarrhea Planet. Yeah, they'll be the name of their album. These guys are going to be like, why are you obsessed with the Pretend? We don't exist, okay? And then finally, selective oh, I'm sorry, not finally. Well, we sort of talked about technological pacifism, but I guess penultimately selective pacifism is when you impose certain kinds of violence. And nuclear pacifism was a big kind of this was like, hey, I'll even support a war. But, man, nuclear war, forget about it. Which these technological wars a lot of people say that's as bad as nuclear war. Yes, some people do. But if you're a nuclear pacifist, you may be one of those people who say, no, as long as you're not using nukes and the war is just war, I'm fine with it. But there's no way you can justify a nuclear war because it's just too indiscriminate. It kills too many people who couldn't possibly be legitimate targets. So you could never justify a nuclear war. So that's why nuclear pacifism has its own thing. There's also other ones, too, like ecological pacifism. People are like, no, war destroys the planet. There's a lot of different reasons people have pacifist beliefs. Some people, too. Also, Chuck will say, I'm a pacifist and my country is going to war, so I'm not doing anything. I'm not going to register for the draft. I'm not going to drive an ambulance, I'm not going to do anything. Right? Other people will say, I will go to war for my country, but I'm not going to carry a gun or kill anybody else driving ambulance. Or what was the new Mel Gibson movie The Hacksaw Ridge was about a guy who was a pacifist who rescued a bunch of people, never fired a bullet. I wonder if it was one of those guys on that Cracked list. Yeah, but it was totally mel Gibson himself is a famous pastor, right? Oh, no, wait, that's not the word. Lover of pornographic violence. There's one other thing we have to say about pacifists or what makes a pacifist. Anti violence is a huge part of pacifism, right? But also there's this thing called positive peace, too, which is, okay, not only you can't just sit there and be like, no, no war. Yeah, no war. Come up with an alternative. And pacifists say, oh, yes, we have tons of alternatives. There's things like diplomacy is a big one. Like, the entire existence of the State Department represents the idea of pacifism by the US. Government. And even on a very local level, pacifists believe that the more groups understand one another and the more they can possibly share in common, the less likely they are to engage in violence to resolve their differences. And so the idea of getting groups together to share stuff or to understand one another or to see that their differences actually enrich human experience rather than threaten those people's stability is the promotion of positive peace. Promoting positive peace and being against violence are basically the two halves of the pacifist whole. Yeah. Really interesting. Yeah. Should we take a break? Sure. All right, we'll come back and talk a little bit about a little bit more about conscientious objection after this. All right, you know what? I want to amend my statements from earlier, the death penalty. Okay, let's hear maybe amend. It's tricky to throw that stuff out there in the public. I think my deal is I don't care what you have done, even if I think you might have revoked your card, there's still a compassion inside me for that person that's done the worst thing. Really? That's really fascinating. Yeah. Because I think that either what happened to them to make them like that or to lead them down that road, man, my hat is off to you, man. Well, you don't just turn out that way by accident. You either, I believe, have something scientifically wrong, biologically wrong with your brain. It's tough to fault people in that situation, or you have suffered so much at someone else's hand as a child that you have become a monster yourself. And I still might say that I'm not one of those people that would go out at an execution and party outside with soccer. No, that's pretty sick. I still have compassion for that person deep down. Well, that's impressive. No, I don't think so. Like, I would never be one of those people who celebrated someone's death ever, under any circumstances. But those people that you can feel compassion for, people can do something that turns off that switch in me, and it's replaced by just vengeance. Like, no, you're done. No, I hear you. I think, for me, if you just pick someone on death row, looked at their crime and then looked at their history and childhood, they were probably victims of some serious abuse. Yes. And I also want to say I would guess that I would not feel vengeance toward almost anyone who's on death row right now. For that vengeance switch to be flipped right. You have to have done something, like, objectively evil, as evil as it gets. And I'm sure there's plenty of people on death row who would flip that switch for me, but just them being on death road, I don't automatically say, oh, well, you deserve to die. I like, I'm a little more selective than that. But when you hear about somebody who is like, you use child rapist, murderer. It's an excellent example. Yeah. Even if they are redeemable. Is there a point that you get to where it's like, why Baha? Yes. You gave up the right for us to exert any effort or give you any leeway any longer. And what you did, you should be punished for not the door should be left open for redemption. You should be punished by having your life ended. I struggle with this a lot. This isn't an absolute thing in me at all. I don't see any of this as black and white, but I have encountered crimes before we hear about it, and I've just been like, yeah, that person should die for that. And it's a terrible feeling. Like, it's not a good feeling at all. Again, I would never celebrate that person's death. But it's something to struggle with. I think people should struggle with it. Yeah, I guess so. My wife is one of the most compassionate, kind hearted people I know, one of the best people I know. And she reads a story about someone doing something to animals and she goes cold. She's like, Put me in a room with that person in a chair and give me a baseball bat. That's another good example. Yeah. And she's, like, the least violent person you could imagine. And when it comes to animal torture and stuff right. She's like, oh, man, I wish I could just take care of that. Sure. Anyway, boy, who knew that we'd have, like, a deep conversation during the pacifism? Well, we need to step out and get touched by the pacifist frog. So one of the reasons pacifists are largely famous is usually in reference to resisting a war. Yeah. Right. World War One was a big one, and actually, starting in the colonial war, the Quakers, by the way, could have paid somebody to go serve in their stead and everyone in charge of the colonial militias. And I think you could do this in the Civil War, too. They were fine with that. It was fine. Like, here, go pay somebody and the person makes some money, and if they survive, great. But you're considered having served by finding a replacement. Clickers are like, no, that doesn't count. Yeah, but World War I was a conscientious objectors, really started to become part of the cultural landscape. Yeah. Which kind of surprised me. I was surprised that way back in 1917, there were 21,000 men, young men, who sought to get exemption from the war in the draft. I don't know. This is way more than I thought. You get the idea back then, like, everybody was always behind the war effort. Yeah. And that just wasn't the case. Yeah. And that was in the US alone. Great Britain had another 16,000 conscientious objectors, and in both countries, the groups were treated horribly. Yeah. Very badly. In Great Britain, there was a kind of a grassroots campaign that was started, I think, by one of the military officials in Great Britain where women who saw a man on the street during the war who wasn't in a uniform would be given a white feather, and a white feather was a symbol of cowardice. So a shame campaign. Yeah, and it worked. A lot of people went and joined up after getting a white feather and then went and died on the battlefield. But, hey, at least they proved they weren't a coward. Yeah. I'm surprised they went through all the trouble of being a conscious objector, like, I got out of the war, and they're like, I got that feather. That feather did it. I guess I'm going. But it actually did do it. And one of the reasons why there was such a campaign is because this is during the time when countries, including the US. Had universal conscription for men. Right. Which was if you were a man between this age and this age, and you're able bodied, you're in the military, you're being drafted to war. During world war I, the idea that these people had brothers and cousins and uncles and husbands and fathers who are going off to war to fight and possibly die, and these guys were walking around saying, I don't believe in war, that was their side. The other side was they didn't believe in war, they didn't believe in violence, and the ones who really stuck to their guns, they suffered for it, for sure. Yeah. Should we tell a couple of these stories? There were these dudes, the Richmond 16 I thought it was just one guy's name confusing. 1770, 717, quick. There were a group of conscientious objectors. They were sent to Richmond castle, which was not the place you want to go. It was an NCC base, and they were sent to war camps in May 1916, and court marshalled basically sentence to death by firing squad. And then prime minister esque stepped in and said, no, let's not kill him. Let's send it some to. Ten years hard labor breaking up rocks in a Scottish query, and one of them died of pneumonia. They were all pretty upset when they found out they were busting up this rock to make military roads. Yeah. Because, remember, still part of the war effort. Yes. They were like, no, we're not helping you with your war. But even breaking up rocks into gravel to be used for roads for the military, that was a big one. That was a big deal to them. Yeah. And I don't think any of the 16 came out of it. Okay. No, I'm sure there was death and suicide and malnutrition, depression. Yeah. None of them came out of that. Okay. Over in the states, there's a guy named Evan Thomas who apparently was not the only person who was treated like this. He was a conscientious objector who was thrown in jail because he wouldn't do anything for the war effort, and he went on a hunger strike and refused to eat. And so the prosecutor, I guess an army prosecutor, tried to get the government to just go ahead and execute them as a show of strength, and the government said, yeah, you know what? We'll just give him 25 years hard labor instead. Right. He was freed on a technicality, actually, sooner than that, but he was oh, it wasn't him. I'm sorry. There was another guy in England who was still working after the war was over, after world War I was over. He was still being put through hard labor himself right after the war for being a conscientious objector, which is just vile. At the very least, once the war is over, just let him go. He actually died during hard labor. He was on a diet of a slice of bread a day. His name was Ernest. England of England. Yes. Well, pretty on the nose. The word got out about these horrific stories and how these people were treated, and there was a little bit of public sentiment that moved in the other direction of respect and said that, you know what? It actually takes a lot of courage to object to something and to stick to those values in the face of all this brutality that they're going to face. Yeah, it's really interesting to go to prison and live on one slice of bread a day, die from hard labor, and not just be like, okay, fine, I'll drive an ambulance. Right. It takes a lot of courage. And so as a result of that, by the time World War II rolled around, the conscientious objectors in that war were treated much better. Yeah, much better. They were treated almost respectfully, really. Some were still thrown in prison. If you wouldn't do anything, you would go to prison. But the US government in particular came up with the Selective Service and Training Act of 1940. Part of that said, okay, you can drive an ambulance, you can be a medic, you can have a non combat role in the military, or if you're a rat. Yeah, that was one. Or you could just go work for the Civilian Conservation Corps where you're just doing infrastructure stuff within the country that's really not directly helping the war effort at all, or yeah, you can be elaborate. Yeah. And there were dudes that did that and said, oh, that's great. I'll be a human guinea pig. That beats going to war. They said, all right, get in that room. We're going to spray you down with DDT, or we're going to inject you with a hepatitis virus or make you go on to starve yourself for a year, basically. Yeah. The University of Minnesota starvation experiment. Yeah. So how's that? Maybe this isn't so good either. Do we get to eat if we're license fested? Yes. Actually, there's a quote from one guy who was a CEO. His name is Neil Hartman. He said, I was young and I wanted to show that I was not a coward, which is why he signed up for medical experimentation. Wow. Well, the Korean War kind of had a similar things were just kind of going along in a similar fashion as far as being offered alternative jobs of construction or farm work. And it was really the Vietnam War where things changed. It became a lot harder to get that Co status because the law changed and said, basically the only reason you can be a CEO is if you have a religious reason and you're religiously opposed for a religious basis to all wars. I don't think the Vietnam War is just or I'm opposed to all wars because I think all soldiers are pawns of the elite ruling class. Right. It has to be for religious reasons. And so a lot of people, I think 170,000 were granted Co status during Vietnam for those reasons, but other ones and I think if you're a true conscientious objector, you're not going to lie and say it's for religious reasons when it isn't for religious reasons. Right. So those people, a lot of them went to fled to Canada. Sure. Or Mexico, I imagine too. Yeah. The two countries. The other two in North America. Yeah. I'd like to think if there was a draft today, I would try and get out by saying, you don't want me. I would not be good at this. I'd go across the trenches and no man's land and say, hey, let's get a conversation going. Yeah, this is the last guy you want fighting for you. Really? Just let me stay at home. Maybe I'll do some good writing for you, or maybe I'll do a great podcast on your efforts and they'd hand you a picture of beer, say, get in there and go throw that on that guy's head. You're in war now. Wait, there's one other thing that Vietnam changed. Vietnam conscientious objection. And pacifism in the Vietnam era became inextricably linked to hippies free love and their version of the peace movement. Sure. And it just disgusted everybody who wasn't a hippie. And pest of them actually really became disjointed disorganized and fell to pieces during Vietnam. Not because Vietnam was a just war or that even most Americans were behind it, but because the pacifist groups were just so poorly organized during the time that it almost gave pacifism a bad name. And it wasn't until the early eighty s that nuclear pacifism sparked a revival of pacifism in the United States that was non hippie. Yeah. Just about anybody could get behind of all stripes. Nuclear pacifism was I remember that being a big thing in the nukes. Sure. Or nuke the whales. One of the two. In 1973, the draft ended and wars from that point on were voluntary, or military service at least was voluntary because there were still conscious objectors within the military. In 2004, in Iraq, there were 110 soldiers who filed their paperwork to become a Co, not a commanding officer. Right. They're like, I don't want to be a grunt, just send me to the top. And about half of these were granted, and the ones that were rejected, some of them went AWOL, that went into hiding. Some were court marshalled and went to jail. Which is unusual that this is a volunteer force. Yeah. But they still had conscientious objectors on it. Well, they didn't believe in that particular war effort, perhaps. I guess so. Let's go back to Gandhi a bit. Okay. He had this bag. His bag was called Satya Graha, and that means truth Force. And his whole thing was, peace is a weapon. Yeah. And we can use it that way and basically equalize this struggle, using all kinds of folks in a peaceful way. But not just to say, I'm a pacifist, but to really try and disrupt the efforts of the war through pacifism. Yeah. He would be a thorn in the side. He would be characterized technically as a pragmatic pacifist because he realized that violence was not going to help the Indian cause and it's going to make it worse. And that nonviolence in this case could be weaponized, any weaponized. Nonviolence. And it really worked. And the reason why it worked was because the world saw these British soldiers, like, beating helpless Indians who were not fighting back. And the British had long said, not just in India, but everywhere we have colonies, we're civilizing these areas when you're beating an unarmed, non resisting, Indian elderly person. Right. And it worked in that sense. But again, he was not against the use of violence in other situations. So while nonviolence is a part of pacifism, they can be separate things. Yes. You don't have to be a pacifist to be nonviolent. It can just make sense in certain situations. Yeah. And there are three main ways that you can kind of go about this nonviolent resistance. The first, you can write letters, you can lobby, you can petition and pick it. You can wear symbol, you can march and protest if you want to kick it up a notch. You can move on to non cooperation, which is boycotting something, slowing down something, reporting sick, having walk outs, embargoes. And then finally, if you really want to go for it as a pacifist, nonviolent resistor, nonviolent intervention, which is fasting and sit ins, form a shadow government, write an underground newspaper, basically just acts of civil disobedience. Yeah. Pretty powerful stuff there, all that's nonviolent. But again, you don't have to be a pacifist to engage in these kinds of things. Correct. So there's a lot of if you're sitting there, like, what about this? But what about that? What about this? You might be a pole hooker. Pole a pole poker. Right. Which is like a grand tradition among humanity. Yeah. Because there's basically two ways of looking at people. And we did an episode on, I think it was called what's the Most Peaceful Time in History? Yeah. And we talked a lot about whether humans are inherently violent or inherently peaceful. Right. So people love to say, like, hey, weirdo who thinks there's no justification for violence? What about this situation? Yeah. Poll hokers. Right. So the Poll Hoker might first say something like, well, wait a minute, wait a minute. You're trying to tell me that you're cool with executing a criminal or shooting a guy who's coming at your family to set you all on fire, but you're not okay with going to war. What's the difference? Right. Or they might say, well, yeah, it's super easy to be a pacifist as long as someone else is going out there and fighting the war. That keeps you free to be that pacifist. Right. And that's one that pacifism probably has the hardest time answering. Right. Because yeah, for a pacifist to sit around, say, in the United States, you're in a pretty safe, comfortable position, in part because other people went off and fought wars. Right. Or in a country that's been invaded before, that's a tough one to defend. And really the only solution I've seen is that pacifists say, well, I think that we should outlaw all acts of aggression or all acts of violence, even against aggressors. And that's just how I feel. If other people are going to go fight, that's their thing. But if somebody came to kill me, I would let them kill me. That's a tough one, for sure. Yeah. Because I think a lot of people who would say something like that might not necessarily stick by it when they're actually being assaulted by somebody who intends to kill them. Sure. Or probably more to the point, like their loved one is being assaulted by someone who intends to kill them. To just stand by and say, I'm sorry, but pacifism is the most morally upstanding thing I can do, so you're dead. Yeah, and I'm talking off the top of my head here again, but I think a pacifist, it probably has to be a practice, like an active thing you work at. Right. Because I think mostly the innate human response, if someone tries to kill your child or your loved one, is to snap and defend them. So you probably really have to like a meditation is a practice, I imagine that kind of pacifism has to be a practice. But one of those poll hookers, as you call them, might say, did you do what's morally right when you let that person indiscriminately kill your child in front of you and didn't do a thing about it to stop them? I think that's so extreme, though. I know, but that's where philosophy exists on those extreme ends. When you take an idea and you test it to its furthest tensile strength, that's when you really get into the meat of it. Like, what about this? What about that? I don't necessarily know that's moral. But then the pessimist would say, well, why is my child's life worth more than the life of this aggressor? Right? To which I would answer, well, your child's not an aggressor. Aggressor is taking a step below your child by being an aggressor. Boy, the tensile strength is high. Shall we talk a little bit about World War II here? Kind of have to in the closing moments. Yeah, for sure. Because it's really easy to look back at World War II and kind of whitewash it as boy, the Allies were out there to fight Hitler because he was trying to kill Jews and commit atrocities against humanity. And so we had to go in there and stop him at all costs. Right? And a lot of people point to World War II saying finally, after 1500 years, here is what proves the just war theory, right? This guy was somebody so bad and the stuff he was doing was so bad that we had to go to war to stop him. Pacifists you're idiots for saying otherwise. Yes, but here, with the benefit of hindsight, there are some people out there, historians theologists there's one guy named Nick Stanton Roark, who said, it's a sad fact that the Allies did little to thwart the worst of Hitler's atrocities. Times with death camps which were bringing in and vetting more people every day. Transportation routes into death camps could have been targeted with no tactical risk to the Allied forces involved. But they are routinely denied, often because the military was careful to avoid the appearance of fighting, quote, for the Jews, which would have lost popular support for the war. So a lot of these historians now make a point that a lot more diplomacy and pacifist resistance could have saved more lives than the way they went at it with Hitler. I didn't know this. Did you? I didn't know at all. So basically, really eye opening from what we found is that apparently the Allies were well aware of the threat to the Jews in Europe. It's going on for a long time before we got involved. Yeah. And he was publicly saying, if this turns into a world war, I'm laying it at the feet of the Jews and I'm going to exterminate the Jews in Europe. So us take that for what it's worth. Right? And the US apparently knew this, that if they entered the war, it would spell doom for the Jews in Europe. And this is the pacifist stance. Had we gone to Hitler and said, you know what? We will accept conditional surrender if you will allow free passage for the Jews out of Europe into other places where they're going to be safe if you'll just let them go. You're saying that you have to get rid of them because they're useless and you can't afford to feed useless people, so you got to exterminate them. Well, we'll take them from you. There was a lot of stuff that could have been done that wasn't done. So from the pacifist standpoint, to point to World War II and say this proves the just war theory and that pacifist doesn't work, the pacifist would say, actually, it proves that we were not willing to try pacifism even when it was apparent that that was going to possibly work way better than going to war was going to going after an unconditional surrender. Well, and some historians point to Denmark as being a prime example. Of how things could have gone differently, perhaps, and how they handled Hitler's aggression. Denmark, very famously, what did they say? They were neutral? Yeah, they said we're neutral in Germany. Said, we don't care. Yeah, so Germany invaded them anyway. But they said, you know what? We can't resist Hitler with arms. Like, we're all going to be dead because we're just too small, we have no means to fight this war machine that's coming at us. So they basically kind of gave up, said that would be a suicidal move to do anything otherwise, and said, here's what we're going to do, we're basically going to be pacifist, resistance resistors. Right. And they slowed things down, they delayed transportation, they sabotage equipment, they sabotage railroads and infrastructure. Workers went on strike when they were producing materials for the Nazis. They basically just said, we're not going to follow your anti Semitic policies. And when Hitler said, all right, I want to deport all the Danish Jews, they said, no. And they hid them. They said, what? Danish Jews? Yeah, and they hid them all, in addition to about 1500 more people who are refugees there seeking protection, and not a single Danish Jew died during the Holocaust. Right. And apparently in the same post from Nick Stanton Rock, he said that later on, some of the higher ups in the Third Reich said that they were confounded whenever they were confronted with nonviolence because they didn't know what to do with it. Yeah. And that nonviolent resistance to the Third Reich actually was more successful than bombing it into nothingness. Well, yeah, because you still need some sort of public support behind you. And if the news reports are of Nazis just wasting away, danish citizens who aren't fighting back, they're not going to have any support from their own followers. Well. That would erode remember in our dictators episode. We talked about how belligerent from a foreign nation often causes the population to be afraid and get behind their dictator. Where Nicholson Baker. Who is an author. Who is also a famous pacifist. He basically said that it was fear that bound Hitler and Germany together. Whereas if suddenly there was a cease to fighting and there was no threat any longer of being invaded or bombed by the Allies. That who knows what could have happened? There were a lot of traitorious conspiracies against Hitler within his own ranks. Sure, there are a lot of resistance movements against him. Maybe he would have been replaced and at the very least, he would have died eventually and probably some of the victims of the Holocaust would have been safe. But think about it, that's almost flask for me to talk about. That like not being violent or aggressive toward Hitler, but apparently that's because of a revision over time over the goals and the reasons why we entered World War II. Super interesting. It really is. It's very eye opening. And then lastly, does pacifism work with terrorists like ISIS. I love how this article basically sums it up. Probably not. No. Yeah. No. Pacifist knows what to do with something like ISIS. Maybe they probably break Pacifism even more than Hitler does. The idea of it. Yeah. Well, that's a big one. Yeah, boy. Good. We haven't had a good deep talk like that in a while. Glad we touched. What was it we were touched by? The Pacifist bug. Yeah. Glad that happened. If you want to be touched by the Pacifist bug, just type that word into the search bar. How stuff works and it will bring up this great article. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. We got an email about our CTE episode from an NFL player from a Dallas Cowboy. Did you read that one? No. Wow. Emma Cleary. He's a guard. He's a guard for the amazing offensive line of the Dallas Cowboys and a smart dude at Boston College. Thanks for writing in. Yeah, I was pretty excited. He said that I could read this. Hey, guys. Current NFL player, big fan of the show. I have a background in science biology at Boston College and my interest was piqued about CTE. You covered all sides of it, but I wanted to share the perspective of an active player. As the research has progressed and garnered media coverage over the last ten years, awareness of the risk of repetitive brain trauma among players has grown. Can't speak for everyone, but guys seem more cautious with their brain health. From the time I started college football culture has changed. Players have become more proactive reporting head injuries and more conservative in returning to play. I've seen my teammates look out for each other and advise each other towards safety in an occupation that promotes a warrior mentality. This is a good thing. We understand that nobody gets out of the game healthy. And while most people are okay with bad knees or shoulders or back problems, brain health is a serious concern. As this all went public, it became increasingly apparent how deceitful NFL leadership has been. While the league office and club medical staff include many good people who undoubtedly care about our long term health, the leadership is consistently obfuscated evidence, promoted pseudoscience, and outright lied about the effects of head injuries. Retired players feel betrayed, and active players have no reason to trust that league that the league will prioritize our health over covering its own. But legally, protecting brain health is good for everybody involved. But the league is more concerned with avoiding liability and convincing public that football is harmless. Until longitudinal studies can accurately quantify the risk of football, we do the best we can with the information we have. Guys balance the known risks of against the joy and benefits of playing. Personally, I am hoping to enjoy my career and get out relatively healthy. I love my job and don't want to jeopardize my long term well being. Thanks for bringing your typical rigorous research and balance your point to a critical issue. Offensive guard, Emit Clary. PS. Don't tell anybody I said this, okay, man? I know. That was a great email. Thank you. Offensive Lymancleary. Yeah. Is that how you address professor? He said if we come back to Dallas or Chicago because he's maybe from Chicago in the office. Well, hang. Well hang. Cool. Drinking contest. Nice. And we'll put on the helmets and crack them together. Yeah, I watched a game. Oh, man. I think it was Louisville versus somebody who knows a team that had different colors on. Right. College football. Yeah, it was a bowl. Louisville versus somebody. Well, whoever they played in their bowl with the LSU, I'm not sure who they played this year. Well, somebody led with the crown of their head and hit somebody else in the helmet and got rejected for the game. And rightfully so. They made a big deal of it. Yeah, college football, they'll do that. They call it targeting it. Yeah, they did, but, I mean, I remember a couple of years ago, they're like, that's a good hit. Yeah, he rung his bell. But everybody's talking very seriously and quietly about how this is a big deal. Okay. It's progress. Yeah. Well, thanks a lot again, offensive line and cleary. And if you want to get in touch with us like he did, you can tweet to us. I'm at Josh Clark, and I'm also at SYSK podcast on Twitter, chuck's at Charleswchuckbryant on Facebook and@facebookcom stuff. You know, we can both be reached at stuffpodcast@howstoughfworks.com via email. And as always, hang out with us at our luxurious home on the web, Stuffyshoeno.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. I'm Matt. I'm Noell. I'm Ben. And we are stuff they don't want you to know. Each week, we cover the latest and strangest in fringe science, government coverups, allegations of the paranormal, and more. New episodes come out every Friday on itunes, spotify, Google Play, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. 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." | |
c5b8a1aa-5460-11e8-b38c-77ef4116a1a9 | Selects: Will We Find Evidence of Aliens by Their Engineering Projects? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-will-we-find-evidence-of-aliens-by-their-e | In 1960 physicist Freeman Dyson suggested that in the hunt for alien life, we should search for evidence of massive engineering projects that encapsulate stars with solar arrays to harness their energy. Could we humans ever make one ourselves? Find out in this classic episode. | In 1960 physicist Freeman Dyson suggested that in the hunt for alien life, we should search for evidence of massive engineering projects that encapsulate stars with solar arrays to harness their energy. Could we humans ever make one ourselves? Find out in this classic episode. | Sat, 23 Oct 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=23, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=296, tm_isdst=0) | 43268093 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody, its your old pal Josh. And for this week's select, I invite you to listen to our ridiculously interesting episode on Dyson Spheres. It's a really cool look at how we'll start harnessing energy in the solar system in the future, and eventually from the universe as a whole. And when we do stand back, I hope you find this one as interesting as Chuck and I did. So giddy up and enjoy. 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. Jerry's over there. Their foot on the button. And that means this is definitely the podcast. The foot on the button just waiting to cut us off. Yeah, that's what no one knows, but Jerry has a kill switch at her foot for all of our profane tirades. Yeah, it would kill us if she ever pressed it. That's right. That's why they call it that. But she's not very good at it. I've noticed. I've noticed, too. Some stuff slips by. Yeah. I told her she's like Keith Richards of podcast producers because he can't use guitar pedals. So he's known for that. Is that a thing? Well, I mean, I don't know how known he is maybe among guitar players, but he just plugs right into the amp. It's pretty great. Oh, I see. And he was on Mark Marin's podcast. It was a great interview. And Marin is pure Keith Richards, and he was just basically like, I have a hard time standing upright. Like, I can't mess with trying to press foot pedals. That's Keith, man. Yes. Very pure. Yeah. And by pure, I mean pure heroin. Yeah. Pure China. He's clean now, but is he really that's astounding well? No, I mean, he doesn't do, like, hard drugs anymore. I got you. I think he drinks and smokes weed. I got you. Come on. Yeah, it's like Christine, actually, Marin smoked his first cigarette in a decade in that show with them. Oh, that was smart. Good decision. He was like, I have to. How can I not? Yeah, he easily could not have done that. I'm disappointed. Did he really? Yeah. Keith richard offered him smoke, and he's like, sure. Yeah. I mean, I see that. But at the same time, I also see not smoking. Listen to you. I know. I'm being judgy wagging your finger. So, Chuck yes. Have you ever used energy? Yes. Well, you know, when you're using energy, most likely you are using something like a fossil fuel. Right. Yeah. Right. Like gasoline or natural gas or something like that. Stuff that comes from decomposing dinosaurs. Yes. Okay. The problem with using decomposing dinosaurs, as most people know, is that it's essentially a non renewable resource. There's no more dinosaurs to decompose any longer, and even if there were, it would take tens of millions of years for them to decompose into fossil fuels for us. Right, right. Even if we had dino DNA and we could make new dinosaurs just to kill them and watch them decompose. Which is something we would do if we have the capability. I guarantee it. Oh, sure, right. But we don't have that capability, as far as I know. No one's working on that track right now, I don't think. Just Steven Spielberg. Right. Maybe someone at Rutgers. So we have to come up with energy sources that we won't eventually run out of. And obviously there's like, wind and solar. And as far as solar power goes, from what I understand, we're actually doing pretty well right now. Right now we use something like 0.1% of the sunlight that reaches Earth to power our world. So there's a lot of room for growth potential. Sure. The thing is, I also saw that if we keep growing and our energy consumption keeps growing at something like 1% a year, within 1000 years, we'll be using more than the entire amount of sunlight that hits the Earth can provide. So we really need to come up with something else. Yes. The problem is, even if we harnessed all of the energy here on Earth, we would very quickly outgrow whatever energy is provided. So some people have said, well, why don't we just go straight to the source? If the sun is such a great source of energy, but it's shooting that energy out in directions other than the Earth, the stuff that is starting toward the Earth doesn't make it very frequently. Let's just go to the sun and basically strangle the life out of it to get energy from it. Right. Great idea. And one of the first proposals of it, I don't want to say a serious proposal, because although it's been taken seriously over the years and almost been interpreted like scripture, it was a thought experiment to begin with. It's something called a Dyson sphere. Yes. Well, I guess we should introduce the man. Not that we have him here. That'd be awesome. He's still around. Yeah, I know he's an old dude, but we're talking about Freeman Dyson, not to the maker of the vacuum cleaner or the bladeless fan or the bladeless hair dryer. Is that really a thing? They have a dyson hairdryer. Yeah. You know what? I was so disappointed when I found out what the Bladeless Man was. Why? Have you seen those? Yeah, you can stick your hand through it. It's amazing. Well, I know. And I was like, Is it magic? Like, how in the world is doing this? But it's got a stupid blade. It's just housed in a casing. Yeah, so there's a terrible name for it and then it just channels it up and squirts it out the front. The Dyson invention that always got me was the air blade hand dryer. I think we've talked about this before, where you stick your hand down in there. I love those. Yeah, but they're so filled with germs that actually, I was in a bathroom the other day, and they have an airblade now that just blows downward onto your hands, and it's actually I'm like, okay, now I'm satisfied with this invention. Well, you know, you're not supposed to rub your hand on the air blade itself. No, but it's so close. It's like you're playing Operation. Like I'm trying to remove a funny bone or something like that. It's almost impossible not to hit the sides of the thing. Your big meat hooks are just rubbing all over everything. Gross. Yeah, it is gross, believe me, because I walk out just crying with my hands held in the air every time I go to the bathroom. Well, you and I have a very big thing about airport bathrooms, and I think I had the worst one of my life at Boston Logan on our last tour. Oh, yeah? What happened? It was just not up to snuff. First of all, the door, and this might have been just this one bathroom, but the doors to the stalls, none of them secured. They've been ripped clean off. Well, they were there, but the locks didn't work. I basically had to push my hand against it, which grossed me out. Yeah, that's not okay. And then the gap when the door was shut was like two or three inches big. Like you could fully just look in and say, how are you doing? How's your poop? Yeah, the Mr. Peepers model. It's just not acceptable in this day and age to not have complete privacy in there. I agree with you. Again. I'm going to Reiterate. I think there should be one stall for an entire bathroom so that no one could possibly sit down next to you. But barring that, one stall to rule them all. Exactly. But barring that, though, what we have in our office is acceptable. It's a good second grace. There's like a complete wall in between you. There's a complete wall in front of you and a door securely shut. Yeah, it's a water closet. Oh, yeah, I guess it is. A lot of water flowing there. Oh, man. I knew we were going to get distracted by poop. Yeah. This isn't even the port and potty episode. I know. All right, so sorry. Back to Freeman Dyson. Not the vacuum maker. He was born in England. He worked most of his career he's retired now, but worked most of his career as a physics professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University. Not Rutgers. He was a civilian scientist with the RAF in World War II. Cool. I went to Cambridge, then Cornell for grad school. This guy's got some bonus. And then he's been in news recently by being a big I mean, brilliant, brilliant man. But he's been in the news recently by being one of the more prominent scientists as a climate change skeptic. Oh, is that right? Yeah, and not like a complete skeptic. Like he does believe that. I believe what his stance is that he does believe that it's manmade, but he doesn't think we have enough detail about all the variables for these computer generated models to be accurate. I see. So he's basically saying, like, this is not the end of the world. And in fact, he thinks that increasing levels of CO2 can be a good thing for humanity ultimately. How so? I don't know. I didn't get that far. He's like, it gives you a pretty good buzz, maybe. I don't know. It's pretty interesting, though. I think starting about six to ten years ago, really started making the news with his somewhat controversial because he's a brilliant man and all these other scientists are like, wow, he's such a smart guy, but he's so wrong on this. But then other people are like, no, he's totally right. That's pretty interesting. Anyway, so that's who he is. And he, in the 1960s was reading a book from 1937 called Star Maker from science fiction author Olaf Stapleton, and he saw this thing called A Light Trap from this book. And this book also had predicted things like virtual reality, and it's kind of pretty much a landmark Sci-Fi science book. And he said, hey, this light trap sounds like a good idea. I'm going to rip it off. Yeah, he did. And he actually, I think, a paper that was published in Science in the Journal of Science in 1960, and it's really short. Did you read it? Yeah, yeah, I think it took up two pages in science out of like a thousand or something like that in that volume. But he basically said this would be a great thing, as you say, to rip off for a thought experiment I'm working on. Right. Because just very recently, something called Project Ozma had been created, and that was they started to search the sky for extraterrestrial intelligence. It was the first setting, and they were looking for radio signals, still are, but Dyson was saying, well, hold on a second. If you're going to start looking for extraterrestrial beings, like signs of intelligent civilizations, you should maybe start looking for these. And they came to be called Dyson spheres because he was the first one to popularize it, even though he got the idea from Olaf. Yeah, he actually said he thought a Stapledon sphere was a better name, but I guess not good enough to actually use it. Right? Yeah, he said it once. Right. Very quietly. This Dyson sphere, it was originally created as, again, a thought experiment. He didn't talk about how to construct it necessarily or anything like that, although there were some follow up correspondence after the letter first came out. But almost immediately, people started thinking about how you would create one of these things, this Dyson sphere. And the whole point, we should say, basically, at its basis, a dyson sphere is an engineering project, a megastructure that initially was thought to be basically a hollow sphere that you built around a star, for example. We would build it around our sun. Right. And the whole point of this thing is on the inside of the sphere are solar arrays, so that all of that sunlight, like we were talking about earlier, that gets wasted, as far as we're concerned, is captured and converted into usable energy for us. Freeman. Dyson's point was, if you build one of these things, you're going to capture Light. Light won't get out. But infrared radiation. Heat. Thermal heat will escape. And so if you're looking around the skies for aliens, look for something that has a tremendous amount of like the infrared radiation of a star, but isn't putting any light out. And maybe you just found an alien civilization. That's How It Began. But people started trying to figure out how to make one of these things almost as soon as he published that letter. So the one thing I don't get was he saying that look for this because other civilizations out there are using a Dyson sphere. He said that it would be likely that this would be an invention they came up with. Yeah. Got you. Yeah. All right. Well, let's go. Should we go to this Nikolai Tartaref real quick? I think we can't put it off any longer. It's Pretty Interesting. In the 1960s. It was an astrophysicist named Nikolai Kardashev, and he was a Bond villain. And actually he wasn't, but he should have been. He had this idea that there were three classifications of civilization. Type one, which is basically we have learned how to harness all the energy on the home planet, like everything you can possibly harness here on Earth. And you would think, well, that's probably us. We're not quite there yet. A really smart dude named Michio. Kaku not a Bond villain, either. He said, in the next 100 years or so, maybe 200 years, we might actually be a type one civilization. Yeah, like you said it's where every bit of geothermal energy, every drop of sunlight, every bit of hydroelectric power, all that stuff, every potential bit of energy is being harnessed by us. That's Right. Yeah. We're nowhere near that right now. I think cocker's assessment is a little rosy. Oh, wow. And I can say that because he was on our TV show, sort of, but he was yes, he appeared on but we didn't interact with us in any real way. Exactly. He has no idea who we are. None. So type two is the next, of course. And that kind of civilization would understand how to harness all of the energy not only on your own home planet, but the energy of a star in its own solar system. Right. That's where the Dyson sphere comes in. Yeah, that's what we aspire to do one day. Right. Maybe a million or so years from now. And then type three is just kind of like following this logical progression. Right. And that's harnessing all the energy of all the galaxies or of entire galaxies, not necessarily all of them. Yeah. I think the second stage, the type two civilization, would be either the hardest to get to or take the longest to get to. Right. And that's because when you build that first Dyson sphere, your technology and your energy efficiency and your productivity is going to just shoot forward exponentially from that point on. Once you build that first one, you can start building more and more and more, much more quickly. So you jump from a type two to a type three civilization pretty fast compared to how long it took you to go from a type one to a type two civilization. Yeah, I think it's like any product, even that first one is tough and then you can scale it. Well, we'll get to the robots here soon. Okay. In fact, let's take a break. I'm getting a little psychedel. And we'll talk a little bit more about the sun right after this. All right? So I went when I said the word sun. Yeah. I thought that was odd. No, it's not. I honestly had no idea where you're going with this. Well, you do. You're being coy. Most people out there, most longtime listeners, know that our sun podcast was one of our biggest struggles and would have been our biggest achievements had we done it right. It's the biggest pity applause we get for the sun. No, it was fine. You tried. Yeah. Good for you for trying. But let's talk a little bit about the sun. This stuff I can deal with at least. Okay. As far as it's immense power and energy, and I love that our own article has some of these comparisons. The sun can generate five times one zero twenty three horsepower. I think that is a typo. I think that it's supposed to be five times ten to the 23rd power. You think? That's the only explanation I have for that? That doesn't make sense. That's a really small number, actually. Yes, I agree. It would be like about 5200. That's five times ten to the 23. It's got to be someone just got lazy there. Seriously, I don't know how to do the little 23 thing right. I don't know how to use SuperScript. What am I, like, a great editor? SuperScript. That's what it is, right? SuperScript and subscripting. Right. So let's put it this way. And this one is the one that cracks me up. The sun has enough energy to melt an ice bridge 2 miles wide and a mile thick from Earth to the sun in a single second. In a single second. That's pretty good. This is the only article I think I've ever seen an ellipse in. Like, the author was like, wait for it. In a single second? Yes. I don't even think they did the ellipse right. And the ellipse supposed to be right after the letter, or is it their space? I think there's supposed to be a space on either side. Oh, really? Technically, yeah. I've been doing these wrong men. Well, don't feel bad. This thing says five times 1023 HP. It's all good. All right, what else? 1,000,000,000,001 megaton bombs going off every second if you war like. And then finally, one single second of sun action, whatever that is, is enough to power our Earth for a half a million years. That drives it home. It does. But it also gives you an idea of just how primitive we are energy consumption wise. It's crazy because we're really worried about running out of our non renewable resources, but we use such a minute amount of energy that the sun could power the energy use we use currently for half a million years in 1 second. Yeah. That's nuts, right? So that also kind of takes your mind, though, too. And this is, I think, one of the buttons that Freeman Dyson pushed. It makes you realize, like, holy cow, we could do some really amazing stuff if we could capture a significant amount of that power that the sun puts out, even an insignificant amount. Yeah. Really? You keep Iggy Pop going for, like, another 100 years. So, like you said, the idea behind the Dyson sphere is this structure. He originally proposed a hollow sphere and kind of referred to it as a shell. But I think now I think he went on to make it a solid sphere. So he actually said he was really what's the opposite of clear? Convoluted? Fake? Yeah, I guess a little convoluted. He didn't really go to the trouble of spelling out because, again, remember, this is a thought experiment that had to do with finding aliens, not an engineering schematic. So he used some very it was vague. That was the word I was looking for. He was using some vague words. What are you talking about? What is this sphere? Is it cohesive? Is it like a solid body? Is it hollow in the middle? What's going on? And he came back and said in a letter, a follow up, he said, no, there's no way you could build something that would go around our sun that would be a solid body that was hollow in the middle. It couldn't be a cohesive hole because the rotational forces, the shear forces, and the gravitational forces acting on it would just obliterate it immediately. Yeah, like it would just be mechanically impossible to make it like that. So he said, maybe you would make something like a bubble or a swarm or something like that. Yeah. And he said in the letter, I've enclosed some blotter acid, put it on your tongue. You're going to love this is a dynamite, and call me in an hour. It might make a little more sense. Yeah. Our own article points out that one of the first downsides, obviously, if you surround the sun completely, is that sunlight? I mean, I know we'd be harnessing that energy, but sunlight provides a lot more than just energy. Oh, yeah. Like it makes us happy. Yeah. People write entire songs about how sunshine makes you happy, like John Denver did on his shoulders. It would be a global bummer if somebody enclosed the sun. That's like supervillain kind of stuff, right? Yeah. Okay, so that's a problem. Another problem, though, is that if you're going to build something like this and Dyson even suggested the size of it, he was saying it would need to have a radius. So a radius? Not even a diameter, half of the diameter. A radius that was two times the distance of the Earth to the sun. So this thing would be massive. Which means that it would also enclose the Earth too, right? Yeah. Like he wasn't proposing you just go up and create this tight ball around the sun, it would be much further spread out, and it would actually encompass the Earth's orbit within it. Oh. So it would be like, this is mine. It belongs to the Earth, and no one else can get any sun. Yeah. It would block off the stuff outside of two times the distance of the Earth's orbit. So there's a couple of planets out there that would get the old screw job, but the ones inside twice the distance of Earth's orbit would really benefit from it. It's very selfish. But the other problem is to Chuck, is I imagine things would get pretty hot pretty quickly inside this thing. So the Earth would be destroyed yes. To get around this. And a lot of people, I don't think, got it immediately, he said, well, you just live inside the Dyson sphere, like in the outer shell of it. Oh, sure. Make it habitable. Yeah. Right. Well, that makes sense. Yeah. But what you were saying about just the sheer size of it, there literally aren't enough raw materials on our entire planet to make something this big. In fact, in our entire solar system, there probably aren't enough raw materials to make a structure like this. No. And not still try to inhabit it. There's just no way. Yeah. Some people say, though, in Freeman himself, I keep wanting to call him Freeman, like that's his last name, but I just end up sounding like I know I'm on a first name. He was saying, you might be able to build something like this by disassembling Jupiter. That was his suggestion. Oh, really? Yeah, he said, disassemble Jupiter and put it back together and you could build a Dyson sphere that had a radius twice the distance from the Earth to the sun and make a solar array of it. Must have been some good acid. Yeah. Good for him. Yeah. All right. So I think we're both in agreement, and most people are in agreement, that this severe idea is not at all tangible, not as like a cohesive whole no, it just remains in the realm of thought experiment. So why bother? Well, that's the interesting thing. To me. It basically is kind of like he meant it as a thought experiment. It's been brought out of the realm of thought experiments. And, yeah, we're in no way, shape, or form capable of doing this, but a lot of people have tried to figure out how to do it, and I think it's one of those things that it's like, yeah, it's theoretically possible, but we're nowhere near that level of capability right now. Well, I think his other ideas that he came up with, though, are decent. Oh, like the swarm and stuff? Well, yeah, let's get to that. He himself even said this sphere is probably not very realistic at all. So why don't we do this? Why don't we think of different machines, maybe that are independent of one another, that actually circled the sun, collect this energy, and then beam it back to Earth? Right. So to him, his initial idea was that sphere. And then what it came to be was that the sphere was like this umbrella term for these different, slightly more realistic ideas, like the swarm or the bubble. Right. So what's the swarm? Well, the swarm, maybe they're in different orbits. And, like, the swarm likens it to bees. Like, instead of gathering pollen, they're just around the sun, moving around, gathering energy and power. Right. And some of those might be habitable, too. Right. And they're solar arrays that are satellites that are moving around on independent orbits of one another. That's right. And the way that they would make a Dyson sphere is there's a lot of space in between them. But if you step back a few orders of magnitude further back into the other parts of the galaxy or the universe, it would appear as basically a whole sphere around the sun. Yeah, sure. So it still falls under that category. Right, yeah. He had to keep that sphere thing because of branding. He didn't want to lose that. He's like, the genie is out of the bottle. They're like, you really don't need it to be a sphere. He's like, It's got to be a sphere. So those satellites are actually they would be called statites. Well, no, if they were the bubble, they would be satisfied. This guy has got it wrong. Oh, really? I thought the solar sales could be the stattes now. So what I saw, the difference between the swarm and the bubble was that the swarm has the satellites in orbit around the star, and they're in their own orbits, not interacting with each other. Oh, I got you. A bubble is where the satellites are in a fixed position relative to the star. So those are the satellites. Right. So they're just kind of hovering outside of the star, not in orbit. Okay. Just kind of hovering instead. And then those are the two, and then the third are the solar sales. Correct. Well, you can make a solar sale or you can make any of them with solar sales. And I don't know where that guy got that. Yeah. Do we do a whole episode on solar sales? Yeah. So, I mean, it makes sense, if you get a bunch of these solar sales orbiting the sun, you might think that you could harness the power and send it back to Earth some way, right? Exactly. You could use that with any of these, whether it's a bubble, whether it's a swarm, whatever you're doing. And if you, like you said a second ago, made them habitable, then all of a sudden you have a recipe for survival for the human race if Earth ever becomes untenable. Right, correct. Or we can't TerraForm Mars. We can go live on these things. When we think about living out in space, my brain immediately goes to the cramped, tiny tin can conditions of the ISS. These things don't need to be like that. I mean, if we're creating Dyson spheres, we're going to be advanced enough that we could build some really luxe satellites and statites as solar rays to go hover or orbit around the sun, right? Yeah. They can be huge. So big. In fact. That Dyson was saying. This doesn't have to be an engineering project that's carried out by a central global government that's directing the whole thing. That as our energy consumption and energy needs continue. Nations could take it upon themselves individually to create these solar sales that are habitable. Put them into orbit independently. And just through the desire to preserve one's own life. Would make sure that their orbit wasn't going to intersect with somebody else's orbit who was already up there. And just organically a Dyson sphere in the form of a swarm or a bubble could form on its own just by self interested nations developing this technology basically independent of one another. Wow. He had some far thinking thoughts. Should we take another break? I think so. All right, we'll do that, and we'll wrap it up a little bit with how to get this energy back to the home planet. All right. So earlier you talked about dismantling Jupiter with a socket set, couple of screwdrivers. Mercury is another planet that people have talked about as potentially harvesting. The good thing about Mercury a couple of things. One is that it is near the sun. Yeah. So who needs it already? Yeah. So it would make it proximity wise, it makes a little bit of sense, and I think this Oxford University physicist Stuart Armstrong is who proposed this. And one of the other great things about Mercury is it has a lot of great raw materials, namely iron, that we could use. Right. And he actually suggested that we could disassemble Mercury fully in basically what amounted to a 40 year stretch. I thought you can say 30 days. I could do it. Right, exactly. If. A contractor tells you you can take Mercury apart in 30 days, don't trust him. Agreed. No, this is in basically 410 year stretches combined equals 40 years, obviously. But I think his point, Armstrong's point, was that you don't have to disassemble Mercury as a whole and wait until it's fully disassembled to put it together to start creating a Dyson sphere. You can disassemble and then start reassembling as you go. And once you start getting one bit of it online, it's going to help power and create better efficiency to harvest and reassemble the rest of Mercury like we were talking about earlier. Yeah. And not only that, but you could use that energy, all of a sudden there would be super computing like you've never seen, space travel would get faster. All these technologies that we can't even think about yet would be growing at exponential rates. Right. And I mean, that's the point when you're like, well, what would we do with all of this energy every second coming off of the sun? Who knows? We cannot conceive of the stuff we could do with that amount of energy yet, but I guarantee it's not going to be using, like, charging our smartphones. It should be for some pretty neat stuff, I guess. So the other cool idea is that, holy cow, how many people would have to take part in this kind of a project, just literally the labor force you would need. And I think Armstrong is the one who said. Well. You could use robots. Actually. And with the same idea that once you get some of these robots going. If they could self replicate and build themselves. Then you can just kind of sit back and watch the paint dry on Earth and all these robots are up there just building themselves and working and working and doing everything for you. Exactly. I don't know if it was his point, someone's point along the way is that when you build that first Dyson Sphere, all of a sudden it's just going to keep going and going and going faster. It's going to spread at an exponential rate. So you would go from a type two civilization to a type three civilization pretty quickly. And as a matter of fact. You would also. If this project was carried up by a centralized government. It would spread so quickly and so far in such a relatively short amount of time. Something like going from that first Dyson sphere to colonizing an entire galaxy in something like a million years. That even if it was a centralized government involved at the beginning. They would very quickly lose control of the colonies because they'd be so spread out and there'd be so many of them that they would just basically become selfsufficient and spread over the galaxy. So the reason this is noteworthy is that if you found one Dyson Sphere, you would probably find millions or billions or trillions of them in just one section of the universe. Right, right. You probably are not going to find just one Dyson sphere. You're going to find a Dyson galaxy, a type three civilization. And that's what they're looking for by sifting through some of these old sky surveys. And they found a couple of candidates, actually, in the last year or so, I think. Oh, yeah? Yeah. There's a couple of surveys that have found stars, and they have, like, typical star names. One is KIC 846-2852, which is a sexy name. Yeah. And then the other is Epic, which I'm pretty sure they call Epic 204-27-8916. Right. Wow. And Epic was discovered by the Kepler spacecraft in 2014. And the reason these things are noteworthy is because there is some sort of weird transit pattern where the light dims, I guess randomly or not necessarily on some sort of set schedule around these stars. And you would say, well, that's probably just a planet or something coming in between it. Well, yes, they thought about that already. Yeah. And normally, a star will dim by about 1% when a planet sized object comes in between you, the observer, and that planet. These things are dipping. In the case of KIC, star 22%, and in the case of the Epic star 65%. Right. Okay. They have no idea what could be massive enough to dim those two stars that much. They haven't encountered it before. There's a couple of theories. One of them said a swarm of comets. Somebody else said, well, you could very easily go from a swarm of comets to a swarm of solar arrays. So maybe these are evidence of Dyson's fears. Yeah. I mean, it's possible. Well, it's kind of fun to talk about robots building themselves and them doing all this work up there. One of the big problems is we're not nearly I mean, we have robot technology now, but nothing close to that at the present. And as this article points out, that you would need, like, it would have to be so advanced, these robots would have to be operating without fail up there because they would be by themselves or be able to fix themselves and fix problems. Like, the intelligence would need to be so far advanced, we can't even imagine what that would be like. No, but even if Michio Kaku is off by 100 or 200 or 500 years, that's not that far off. If we can harness all the energy on Earth, we should very quickly improve as far as our technology is concerned. So who knows? Maybe those robots aren't that far off. Yeah. One other thing that I saw from this, though, was when Freeman Dyson was talking about disassembling Jupiter truck, he said that it should take roughly 800 years worth of the Sun's energy output to disassemble and reassemble Jupiter. It's not bad, but do you remember how much comes out of the sun in a second? And we're like, Whoa, that's so much. We would need 800 years worth of that to disassemble and reassemble Jupiter. Not only do we not have the capability of billing a Dyson sphere, we don't even have the capability of disassembling Jupiter. We just don't have any way to harness that energy which creates this kind of chicken or egg dilemma. We almost need a Dyson sphere to create a Dyson sphere at this point. Yeah. Somewhere. Freeman Dyson is laughing on acid somewhere in New Jersey. One of the other big issues is, okay, let's say that you could even do something like this and harness this energy to get it to Earth is another big problem. If we want to make it actually usable, some people said we could laser it over. But the problems with laser beams is, after about a mile, you're going to lose a lot of efficiency with it. So good luck with that. Microwaves have been floated out there, but microwaves, even though they're more effective farther out than lasers, you're still limited to about 100 miles, which will do us no good. Right. So what's the answer? I don't know. Yes. I don't have one either. I mean, I guess one of the easy ones is, well, just inhabit the solar arrays. Go inhabit the Dyson Sphere Stop being so precious about living on Earth. Yeah, that's true, which makes sense. But I like living on Earth. Yeah, but would Earth 800 years from now be worth living on? It depends, Chuck, whether it be skipping to school and skinning knees and spelling bees and all that stuff. Because if so, I don't know what you're talking about. It's another Simpsons reference. Okay? It's the one where Principal Skinner came back. The real Principal Skinner. Oh, yeah, great. He goes, if you think skin and knees and spelling bees are corny, well, then Mr. Corn me up. That's right. That's when they introduced we'd like to introduce a Principal Skinner, principal Ski More Skinner, arm and Tanzanian. Yes, that's a great one. There's one other thing. You got anything else? I got nothing else. I got one more thing. So there's that whole idea that Dyson came up with to search the skies for this imprint where there's a lot of infrared radiation but no visible light. There's a problem with that because this guy came along. His name was Robert Bradbury, a futurist, I think maybe a science fiction writer. No, Robert. His little brother. Robert Bradbury said, well, you know what? If you really wanted to make these Dyson spheres efficient, you'd make them in, like, the same manner that those Russian nesting dolls are made. Like so you'd have the internal sphere and then outer spheres going around it, catching all that lost heat energy and turning it into usable power, which is awesome, because you'd have basically 100% efficiency as far as the Dyson sphere was concerned. But if you're looking at the stars, you would see nothing, because not only would there not be visible light, there also wouldn't be any infrared radiation. And Freeman Dyson just hung his head, went into his room, shut the door, and laid down on his bed for a while. The end. Yes. Well, if you want to know more about Dyson spheres, you can start with this article on howsuff work.com by typing Dyson Sphere into the search bar. How stuff Works. As I said, and since I said how stuff works twice, that means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this we helped the lady out. Hey, guys. Hope this email finds you well. I've been listening for only a short time, but it becomes so addicted. I've already binged about half of your episodes offered on Spotify. I think she meant pains. I know. We're on Spotify, by the way, and you can bing us all you want from that platform. Like many others, I absolutely adore your show. I came across the podcast after a very upsetting event in my life. Save you the sob story. Just say. I was going through intense grief. There was something about your kind voices, strong intellect, and raunchy humor that gave me a thirst for learning and a new purpose in life. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Do we have raunchy humor? Sure. I didn't realize that. Oh, I think she picks up on that. That's like Cheech and Chong. The sideways comments. We're like the new Cheech and Chong. I thank you a billion times over for just being who you are. The podcast was a large factor in saving my life. Don't ever underestimate or doubt what you do, and know that there are people like me out there soaking up every word. Sincerely, Cherry B. Thanks a lot, Cherry. That's nice. I like fearing that we help people. Yeah, it makes me feel good in my belly. Yes, we appreciate the compliment. It's very nice of you to take the time to write in to let us know. And if you want to get in touch with us, to correct us or call us out for something or whatever, lay it on us. Send us an email to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should Know is the production of iHeartRadio. For more popular podcast, my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2018-02-06-sysk-mold-final.mp3 | What is a Mold-A-Rama? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/what-is-a-mold-a-rama | In the 1960s, a very cool machine debuted at the Seattle World's Fair - the Mold-A-Rama. It made real plastic toys on-demand from melted plastic pellets, to the delight of children and adults alike. They didn't last too long, but can still be found at var | In the 1960s, a very cool machine debuted at the Seattle World's Fair - the Mold-A-Rama. It made real plastic toys on-demand from melted plastic pellets, to the delight of children and adults alike. They didn't last too long, but can still be found at var | Tue, 06 Feb 2018 14:18:04 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=6, tm_hour=14, tm_min=18, tm_sec=4, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=37, tm_isdst=0) | 37762686 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody, if you live in Boston, DC, st. Louis, Cleveland, and Denver, we are coming to see you. That's right. Stuff you should know. Live. Brand new topic. So if you're traveling from a nearby state where you've seen us before, this will be new and exciting and awesome. Yes. On March 4 and fifth, we're going to be in Boston and DC. On May 22 and 23rd, we're going to be in St. Louis and Cleveland. And then on June 28, we're going to be in Englewood, meaning Denver, Colorado. So come see us. And you can get tickets and information at s ysklive.com. Welcome to stuff you should know from howstepworkscom? Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And there's Jerry over there. And this is stuff you should know. Arama you know, it's kind of funny that you did that little, because I'm going to go ahead and plug this right off the top, okay? We're doing the show in mold aroma, which, spoiler, is a machine that makes that made and still makes these little plastic things, but has maybe one of the worst trade names ever, moldorama. Yeah. So I'm going to go ahead and plug this. There is a YouTube video from this young lady where she shows off her mold arama little plastic toys that she's collected. Carpetbagger.org moldorama. Just look up that YouTube. She is adorable, and she's the best. And when she shows her suitcase full of mold aroma plastic toys, she does a little song, and it's just adorable and great. I got to check that out. I saw her use one of the Disneyland toy factory. Mold aromas. Yes. So I know who you're talking about. She's great. So that was nice of you, Chuck. Well, let's wait for everybody to come back from watching her YouTube video show. Okay? Let's wait for, I think, five or six minutes. And done. Yes, time passes faster. Here stuff you should know, doesn't it? It does. I'm 80 years old, like you said, mold rama. I've seen it described as a factory in a case. Okay, I thought that was a pretty app description. But for those of you who don't know, it is basically an on demand, injection blow molded plastic toy dispenser. That's a technical definition for it. And while that might not make sense yet, it all will make sense in about 30 or so minutes. All right, how about this? Picture this. All right, let's start over. Wait, should we edit my part out? No, let's leave this all in. All right, good. Picture this. You walk into a room. Let's say it's the Sears Tower. Now? Willis tower is it? Willis? Oh, yeah. That was Willis tower. Sears Tower. Who keeps calling it Willis Tower. Stop that. Sears Tower or a world's fair or something. And there is a machine that looks sort of like a jukebox from 50ft away. Oh, yeah, that's a good way. And then you walk up closer to it, and you're like, oh, wait, what is this weird mechanical thing? Let me put in right before your very eyes. It will mechanically create a little plastic toy of an alien or a building or a lion at a zoo, and it will spit it out, and you will say, that was just melted from plastic and molded and shaped and given to me right in front of my eyes. What a fun, neat thing, right? And you'll say all this after you recover from fainting from the fumes of melted plastic and then get up and get your toy out, which is good, because they say that you should wait a half a minute for your toy to cool before you grab it from the mold. Arama right. I think that was a pretty good job you just did. It describing it. And I think this is super neat because this reminds me of a bygone era. I went to Nashville recently and went to Jack White's Third Man Records, and he has one of those booths where you can go in and record a record. Where did you record? Well, I didn't do it. I chickened out. Okay? What I wanted to do was go in and sing a little song for my daughter and give it to her as a record. And I was thinking, like, what could I do? What do I know in my brain by heart? Because they have a little guitar you can take in there. And it was such a small room, and it was in the room with everything else, and I just got weirdly shy. Like, I don't want people to hear me. You got shy? Jack White made you shy, huh? Yeah. I didn't want to do it in front of people. Like, if there was literally no one in there, I would have cut ten records. Oh, I got you. You should have stuck your head on. But can you all just leave for a little while? Just trust me. Wow. But anyway, this reminds me of those days gone by where you could cut your own record or they had these really cool machines at fares and things. Now, I guess you can still get your picture taken and printed digitally. Or the Penny Smasher that's still around, too. I see that compared to this a lot. Yes, those are cool. Not really, but still, it's an app comparison. I will just say I'm surprised that my brother doesn't have a mold around it in his basement. So I am, too, because there's a guy who collects these things called moldville, and I saw videos of his collection. Did you see this? Yeah. It's like a warehouse full of mint conditioned molarama machines. This guy must be richer than an astronaut. He's got so many of these machines. And you're right about this evoking the memories of a bygone era. But what's crazy, Chuck, is that these things are still in use today. You can find them all over the country and they're still working. And this is what's amazing to me. They are the original machines that were made for about a seven year period during the 1960s. Every moldorama machine that you might encounter, including ten at the Toledo Zoo, by the way, that's awesome. We're built in the have been operational ever since. Should we talk about the history? Well, first let me ask you this. Did you ever use a molar almond when you were a kid? No. Oh, you did? No, and I'm dying now to go do one as an adult. So they're still around? They're still around. I got one. There's a thing in Toledo called well, actually it's in Mommy, which is a suburb of Toledo, but it's called Children's Wonderland. And it's like this amazing 3D Christmas walk through diorama. Basically, nothing can put you in the Christmas spirit as a kid better than Children's Wonderland. And at the end of this, there was a moldarama machine and it made a gold, smelly plasticy angel. It was kind of boring Christmas angel, but it was mine, and I was so glad to have it. And I have no idea what happened to it. I'm sure it broke pretty quickly, but I was like, holy cow. I've had one of these before. I had no idea what it was called that it was moldorama. But I looked it up and I actually found the angel. Well, I think that's the cool thing about these as a kid is it's not putting your quarter in a gumball machine and seeing all those things and one of them falls out. Right. This is made just for you, right in front of your face. Yes. Pretty cool. All right, so now can we go back in time? Yeah, I'm done. nostalgizing. All right. Wait. What is it? Reminiscing. Sure. Okay. nostalgising. I think it's a word, right? It is now. All right, we're going back to 1937 in the winter when one j h. Miller tike is his nickname. I don't know what that comes from. Was he little? Not that I saw, because it's spelled differently. T-I-K-E. Yeah. I don't know what it means. Anyway of Quincy, Illinois. He made figurines. He and his wife made figurines and they needed a replacement for his nativity scene. I guess his little baby Jesus was decapitated by his dog. He needed a new one and he couldn't find a place to sell him just one little piece. Yeah, you got to buy the whole nativity scene. And he was like, what am I going to do with that? Yeah, he said I just needed one. And you can understand the department store's position. Like, if they sell you just one piece, there's a whole set that they can't sell. Because who wants that set without the one piece, right? Unless it's like, maybe a donkey. Maybe I remember the donkey. That was a good one, though. That was one of my favorites as a kid. But anyway, he and his wife said, here's what we're going to do. We're going to take these lemons and make them into lemonade in the form of making our own little plaster replacement figure. And apparently they're pretty good at it because they ended up doing this for a living and founding a company doing this because the Germans evidently had the market cornered on nativity pieces. And when World War II came around, they said, nine for you. And we had a shortage. Yeah. All we wanted was liberty figures is what they called them during World War II, not nativity, because the Germans had supplied us with nativity figures. So American main ones you could call liberty figures. So, like, freedom Prize, right? I think they actually called sauerkraut liberty cabbage. I'm not kidding. So the tyke and his wife established this company, and in World War II, it really kind of grew because they cornered the market and they just kept going from there. And then about ten years after World War II, they decided to move from plaster. And by the way, he started selling nativity figures, individual ones, to those same department stores who would only sell them sets before, which I think is kind of sweet revenge. But they moved from plaster figures to plastic and got into a type of injection molding where air is blown into it, which saves on plastic and creates a lightweight plastic figurine. And really, honestly, nothing says 1950s Midwest more than plastic nativity figures. Probably so, yeah. Made by a man named Taik. Yeah, they did pretty well for a little while, I guess. I'm not sure exactly when the company was founded, but if in 1937 he came up with this idea and they went bankrupt in 1959. Sounds like they had some good years in there. Yeah, they did. And I did not see why they went bankrupt. I saw they were nothing but successful. I don't know. I don't know if maybe they sunk a bunch of money into these machines and it just didn't quite make it or what. But he was very successful. He had a line of plastic toys that kids would buy by the fistful at the local five and dime or novelty store or something like that. And he had lines of, like, dinosaurs, I think, toy soldiers. But the one that really put his company on the map as far as kids were concerned, were called Earth Invaders, also known as Miller aliens. And there was a line of tons of them. But the one that is still today the most prized of all was the Purple People Eater. And it actually inspired that song from the 50s. Which I didn't realize that song was quite that old. But the song about the one eyed. One eared flying purple people Eater. That was based on Tike Miller's creation from the think it was the other way around. I don't think so. I think the song was based on the figure. It says here the Purple People Eater was inspired by the hit song. I read that as the opposite. Good catch. I think that's the case because that song was a big hit and they were all manner of purple people Eater, souvenirs and things got you. It was a big business back then. Thank you for that one. No problem. We would have gotten some email from like three people on that tack is great, grandson. Yes. Little tike. So in 59 or 60, they went bankrupt. And it was right around this time where he said, all right, I've got this idea for an actual vending machine that could make these things on demand. And he licensed this thing, actually, to what would eventually become Ameramark, which everyone knows that company is still around. At the time, they were called the automatic retailers of America, and he developed these machines with them. And then in 1962, at the Seattle Worlds Fair, they premiered there doing little space needles and Monterales and Buddhists and Buddhist for like $0.50, which is about $4 today. Yeah, it was not a little cheap thing. It's not like sticking a dime in a machine today. Right? No, they were definitely expensive. But they were a huge hit at the Seattle World's Fair. That was, what, 1964 at the New York World's Fair, they blew up. They went from a couple of machines in Seattle, I guess three machines in Seattle, to as many as 150 at the New York World's Fair from 1964 to 1965. And even more than just having that many more machines, they also had branded machines. Right. So if you were a company like Sinclair Oil or Disney, and you wanted to just kind of give people an extra little amazing experience, you could license and brand your own mold aroma. And they had plenty of those at the World's Fair. Some pretty cool ones, too. Yeah. So like you said, anywhere from Disneyland to Montreal's. World Expo. And that's the cool thing, is that Disney World or Disneyland, there could be I think they were some of the characters that were actually acting like they were working the machine. Right. It's kind of clever. And you're in Montreal, it's going to be Canadian Mounties or maybe an Eiffel Tower, right. If you could contact the company. Get them to make you your own signage. I guess. To put on the machine. And then most importantly. They would sculpt and then manufacture a mold from that sculpture. Whatever you wanted. Say your logo or your brand or something like that. Some sort of statue that had that you could set it up and people would take home your little branded chocsy. It was pretty cool. It was a big hit in the Errmarker. Ara at the time, they were like, well, this is great, but apparently they were just looking at the whole thing as a proof of concept because they had their sights on not just like on demand novelties, but on demand everything. Like on demand dishware on demand, jewelry, on demand, combs, on demand ashtrays, that they felt like this was the future. Because at the time, in the early 60s, plastics was the future. Pretty soon, everything was going to be made in plastic, and no one was ever going to have cancer from it a day in their life. Right. There's a plastic optimistic time. That's right. And in the end, they manufactured about 200 of these machines over a seven year period. But by 1971, they said, you know what? Ara said? We're getting out of this mold aroma biz. Yeah. Should we take a break? Yeah, we're going to go press together our own little moldy dinosaur and be right back. Hi, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office when you could be using Stamps.com? Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses, because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need right from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. All right, Chuck. So Ara gets out of the biz, and it's kind of understandable why there's a couple of big problems with moldorama machines. One, they're expensive to manufacture. They were like, apparently $3,600 per at the time. That was back in 1962. So just under $30,000 today for vending machine. And then also, once you set these things up, they required almost constant attention. You had to go refill them with plastic. You had to top off the fluids. You had to fix any parts. You had to keep them clean. You had to get gum off of them, because, again, these are interfacing with little kids. So there was a lot of maintenance and upkeep to them as well. So, Errmark said we're done. In the 70s, they sold off their machines to a couple of different groups. Yes, this is a mechanical hydraulic machine that required oil and anti freeze. I guess we can go into the process a little bit. It gets a little wonky for my taste. Okay. But I guess we should talk a little bit about how these actually work, right? Yeah, we kind of have to. And it'll be fun, I promise you. You ready? Well, I will say this. First of all, there are hydraulics and there are these two molds. And you can go on YouTube and look at how these things work. It's pretty neat. These two molds, it's basically one half of the little toy on each side. Yeah. Like a three dimensional sculptured statue. Yeah. So they move toward each other with these hydraulics, and they're pressed together, forms a big seal, and it ends up being hollow on the inside. That's kind of a big point to make it's a negative of the sculpture. Yeah. So then there's a couple of holes in the bottom that lead into that sculpture cavity and into that, you inject hot plastic. Because one thing that a lot of people don't realize about the mold, the matic is just beneath this work surface. That is the floor of what you can see below that is a VAT of 225 to 250 degree Fahrenheit height. Molten plastic just sitting there bubbling hot. Yeah. Little pellets. They feed it in little colored pellets. Right. Although for a little while, they actually had just kind of neutral pellets that they use colored powder. But they at least wise up there and said, why don't we just color the pellets and just stick with the one color? Yes. And then the system has a closed steam system that runs hot steam through coils crazy. That runs through these plastic pellet VAT. This plastic pellet VAT, and it melts the pellets and then keeps them molten. So then when the mold seals up above come together and form that seal, hot plastic is injected into the mold and fills it up. That's right. Hot plastic injection. Great band name. Yeah. And then these things obviously have to be cooled pretty quick in order for them to solidify. Is that the right word? But when they do come out, like you said, they are warm. And I'm surprised. I mean, this seems like something that you could not create today without there being so much liability on your hands. Well, again, they still are in use. You can still go to the Toledo Zoo, the zoos all over the Midwest, in Florida, and tourist attractions and rest stops, and you will find these things still in use. It's just so funny to me that it literally says on the little door that you open, hold upside down while it cools. Don't let the molten plastic drip on little Timmy's hand. That's exactly right. So we got the injection molding part done, but there's one step that we missed, and that's the blow part that makes it injection blow molding. And this is how these companies manage to actually make money. And one of the reasons why the mold arama chachkis are so fragile is that they're hollow inside. So the mold is filled with hot plastic and then compressed air is blown into it. And the compressed air does two things. One, it pushes the plastic against the mold, so it completely covers it and it takes on the shape of the mold. Right. And then it also blows the excess plastic out the bottom so it's hollow. And then the excess plastic goes back into the VAT when it's reused. Reused, exactly. So it might use enough plastic at first to make ten of these things, or five or something. I'm just totally guessing here. But then it reuses it by blowing it out the bottom and making it a hollow object rather than a solid one. Right, okay. And then it comes out hot. They say, wait 30 seconds, or half a minute, I think is how they put it. And the reason why they say hold it upside down is because there's still that hole at the bottom that that little hot plastic can, like you said, burn Timmy's hands. That's right. The smell, Chuck. You've never smelled anything like it. Do you remember the smell? Yes, I can remember the smell. It's at the same time pleasing and totally noxious interesting. Like as a kid, you're like, it smells weird and cool. But as an adult, I'm sure you'd be like, this is going to kill my whole family. That's going to kill my great grandchildren somehow. Well, back then, no one cared. No, they didn't. And like we said, tons of upkeep. You've got steam, you've got hydraulic fluid, you have antifreeze, sometimes cold water, but I would suspect antifreeze in most cases and until the 1970. So, like I said, you had powdered coloring. I mean, this whole thing is I'm surprised they didn't explode at any point. Yeah. One of the other things that I really admire about this is that, again, the machines that are still in use today that still work just as well as ever today, were built exclusively from 1962 to 1969 when AirMark was making them. And then these things also, because they put off these terrible fumes they're kept outside. So they've been sitting in the elements for 50 plus years and they still work. They're pretty well built machines for sure. I think they've got some now that they have been able to move indoors. Yeah. From using a different type of plastic, I think. Yeah. It's crazy that these things had to be outside. Yeah. And they still are. Most of them are. A lot of them have kind of built in little canopies over them or something like that. But if you look at the canopies, you can tell they're kind of new. They've been outside basically for 50 years. I'm so going to be on the lookout for these now. So there is a website, Chuck, called Waymarking. Waymarking.com. They have a comprehensive list of every single Molarama in use today in the United States. And they have actual longitude and latitude coordinates if you wanted to, I guess, geocache your way to them. Well, what I want is an app that will text me when I'm within 500ft of one. Oh, that's a good idea. There's a $10 app. By $10, I mean, you would make $10. Yeah. Although people are crazy for these things still, as we'll see. None in Atlanta, right? Not that I saw. No. But again, there's a bunch in Toledo. I found the machine that I almost certainly got my angel from. Oh, wow. They keep it in storage at tamushana, which is an ice skating rink in, I guess, a Scottish ice skating rink, I don't know, in mami, which is where they have children's wonderland. But I saw a picture of it, and now it looks like the most recent thing it makes is polar bears. And your DNA is on that machine still somewhere in the form of a wad of gum. All right, well, let's take another break. We'll come back and talk a little bit about some of these fun figures and the people that are still trying to keep this traditional live. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office? And you could be using stamps.com. Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses, because stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and ups shipping services you need right. From your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the homepage, and enter code stuff. All right, so here's the thing that I wanted to know and that our article didn't get to till three quarters the way through. I was like, do they have different things for each machine? The answer, sadly, is no. If it spits out a dinosaur. It can only spit out a dinosaur unless you change up that mold. Yes. But you can change the color and you'll have a different color dinosaur. Well, until they started using the single color pallets. Right. Well, no, then they just put in a different color when they refill the thing, and all of a sudden, it went from a purple dinosaur to a green dinosaur. Right. But could you say purple and hit a purple button? No. Or it's whatever the kid who worked there decided to put in that morning. That's exactly right. The thing is, though, is and again, it's not even just the toy that comes out. The toy is, especially as a kid, invariably disappointing. Sure. But it's the process. It's watching this thing happen. And the moldorama machines will have little different lights that light up. Like, now we're cooling, now we're about to launch the toy to you. It tells you what's going on. So you're following the process, which is at least probably 80% of the appeal of the whole thing. Stand back right now, because if I were to explode, it would be during this next 8 seconds. All right? Your mom, who's standing there missing her one arm from saving you in a car wreck, it's like you probably should stand back. Exactly. No one knows exactly how many of these molds were made, but like we said, our enthusiasts who collect these, and this one dude, Bill Bowlman, who owns one and runs Moldville Combat URL there, right. Yeah. It is bad, I got to say. I looked it up and it's a dead domain. But he's got a Facebook thing that he does now. That's where he's moved to. Yeah, he went MySpace and then he went Facebook. But there will never be another site better than Facebook, so I'm sure it's all over, right? Probably. So his estimate is about 300 designs. I bet it's more than that. I don't know. This guy knows what he's talking about. That's true. He counted 196 original ones, and then he said after the people started to make them, they weren't just commissioned by Era Mark, who was keeping track of these things. And I would say this guy is probably the person on Earth who could estimate how many there are, the closest. And not just me guessing randomly, but it's more. And what's cool, though, also, is, again, you could be anybody if you wanted a mold arama thing at your event, it could happen. Sure. I found there was a circleville. Ohio pumpkin festival mold. Arama figure. So one of the 300 molds is pumpkin from Circleville, Ohio's Pumpkin Fest in the 70s. Another one. So apparently Toledo was crazy about these things because again, there's ten at the Toledo Zoo. There's the one at Tamil Shannon that I got mine from. There was one in the Toledo Mudhead Stadium. And there's a Mud Hens figure, which is pretty cool, actually. And I looked and there's like zero for sale anywhere. But now I'm kind of on the lookout for that thing. But all you had to do is just make a bold get your hands on one of these, and bam. Circleville, Ohio's. Pumpkin Fest went from zero to hero. Right. And you too could have a snowman or a Gromin's Chinese theater or a space lab or a Lawrence Welk. Yeah. Or a Titan missile. Yeah. NASA had a lot of these things, actually. I'm sure what. Else was there? Well, the Lawrence Welk. And none of those were jokes. Those are real. Yeah, for sure. There was a Titan three C missile in the Lawrence Welk. It says other famous people. I'm kind of curious. I didn't see anybody besides presidents and Lawrence. Well, there's one of the Georgia State Capitol building. Oh, really? Yeah, there were some cool ones, actually. The St. Louis Arch is surprisingly cool. You wouldn't think it'd be that cool. The Oscar Meyer Wienermobile. This one is kind of random. It's a highly player. And then at the base, it says Hi Ali in Miami. Okay. The water skier from Cypress, I think. Cypress Gardens, Florida. And the mermaids from Wikiwatchy Springs, Florida. Oh, we talked about them. Oh, here's one. Universal Studios had one that made a Frankenstein coin bank. That's kind of cool. It is very cool. A lot of these are actually super cool, especially the original retro ones. You can actually see. Like, I can't remember the woman's name, but there is a woman who was hired by one of the companies that still operate these things to start making molds, and she's been making them for the last 25 years. And compared to some of the ones from the 60s, she's just head and shoulders above the people who were sculpting them then. These are really well made sculptures, not only in the actual sculpture that she's making, but the decision she's making produces just a better mole aroma toy. Because, again, you're dealing with melted plastic in a mold that is two halves pressed together. There's a lot of details that can go wrong. And this great sculptor is taking all of them into account, making some really boss ones, like the Wiener Mobile. It's art to behold. Just the detail in it is really nice. So we talked about a couple of these companies that are still going strong. Yeah, for sure. At least going no, they're going strong, man. Okay, good. There are a couple of them. One called Replication Devices and one called Moldorama Incorporated. Replication Devices founded by Eldon Erwin, who bought a bunch of these. It says dozens in the early 60s eventually passed down through his family, and right now, his grandson and his wife, the Strike Owls in Florida are operating 60 or 70 of these. Yeah, and let's think about this for a second. So Eldon Irwin bought dozens. Now they're up to 60, maybe 70. And those mold around machines have supported three generations of this family fully, from what I understand. Yeah. Okay. I saw an interview with Tim Strigow, and he said he was surprised that the business was still going when his parents took it over. And now he the grandson and his wife operated. And yes, from what I understand, it fully supports it. The San Antonio Zoo estimated that they make 130,000 figurines a year from their one mold aroma, $2 a pop. That's 260,000 gross time, 60 or 70. So yeah, they're doing just fine. This other one, Molder Rama Inc. We're not asking anyone to open their books for us now, for sure. And I certainly don't want to shine a light on these people's finances, but I'm just saying it's astounding to me that these machines, built in the 60s, left out in the elements for 50 years, are managing to support three generations of the families who have been operating. I just think that's super cool. Yeah, it sounds like it's kind of like people on car washes. Sure. Isn't it like a front always to launder money from drug sales? I would guess. I think it's low hanging, easy to buy. I'm just kidding. Everyone out there that owns car washes, I've watched too much breaking bad. Oh, that's right. But I think that is, like, a legitimate thing, like yeah. Cash businesses are ripe for the picking. I forgot they bought that car wash. Yeah. So moldorama Inc. Like I said, William a. Jones company changed their name in 2011, but they got into this in 1971 when William a. Jones bought some of these from one of the guys who worked for the original Molarama. Then they expanded, bought more machines, and it is still a family business again. They got about 60 of them. Yeah. And they were the William A. Jones Company. And then I guess they got their hands on the molderama trademark in 2011, and they changed the name of the company to mold around Inc. Again, because that's originally what it was called back when Aramark was running it. Yes, they're mainly in the midwest, minnesota, Michigan, bunch of them in Illinois and one in Texas, it looks like. Right. Not bad. And then every once in a while, you have just some independent operators. Like Knoxville zoo owns their own. They apparently got theirs from dollywood, which, man, mold around is at Dollywood that make your wig spin. There's this one cool thing I wanted to shout out. This toy store in Chicago, rotofuge or rotofugee. Not sure how you pronounce it. I don't know. They repurposed their own mold aroma. They bought one and repurposed it. That was originally the lazoo, and they call it the roto automatic. And they have something called a helper dragon that you can get for $6. And if you look up the helper dragon and these dudes, it is clear that they are Simpsons fans. Did you see this thing? Yeah, I did. I saw a video of it, but it was kind of out of focus. Yeah, like, just google image the helper dragon roto a matic, and it is, to me at least, clearly, the cyclops alien from the Simpsons. Yeah. With its head stuck on the body of a winged lion. Nice. That's my take on it. Very nice. And then there is this one other guy. He is a Disney world imagineer named James Durand, and he has built his own mold aroma called the mini molder and you just look at this guy, you know, he's an imagineer. You look at this machine and you're like, I would hire that guy to build and do anything because he's clearly a brilliant genius. Yes. Really cool looking thing. And a bit of a show off, frankly. You think so? I've got two more things. All right. The mold arama used to be fifty cents in its original incarnation in 1962, which again, thanks to our friends at Westgate Inflation Calculator, tells us it's about four point twelve cents in two thousand and seventeen money. Today you can get a molarama for $2, which means that the price has gone down by half over the last 50 years. Oh, interesting. Pretty cool. And then lastly, so after Tike Miller got out of the plastics injection molding business, he had another invention that he called the Golden Goat. And it was this big machine that apparently he invented to put out in parking lots at, like, grocery stores. And it would take up about two parking spaces and customers would come in and put in their used aluminum cans, and then the Golden Goat would weigh it and then give them some money in return. And then it would come back those cans. And then later on, that aluminum would be sold as scrap for recycling. The thing is, this was years before the Green movement was ever even thought of that's how ahead of his time this guy was. And I don't think the Golden Goat ever made him a lot of money, but it's a pretty cool invention that this guy had. He was like one of those great Midwestern tinker inventor guys. Yeah, hats off to him. God bless all those people. Yes. So there you go. Nativity figures. Plastic. If you want to know more about molderama, man, you can fall down a rabbit hole just looking at pictures of them on the Internet. So why don't you go do that? Take some time for yourself. Why do you always have to work, work, work. Since I said that, it's time for listener mail. Let me call this just kind of a quick shout out. We don't do these a lot because we get a lot of shout out requests. But this one was adorable because this little kid so this is from Jenny, she's the mom. She says, how about a shout out for my son Jake? He listens to every episode more than once. He's got me and many others into the show, and we love it. So young Jake is out there spreading the word. And we appreciate that, Jake. And you love the show so much, you named well, not quite yet, but Jake says he wants to get a puppy and call it Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And he says this most of the time he will be called Chuck, but when he does something wrong, I'll be like, charles W. Chuck Bryant? Why did you do that? Yeah, well, jake, we have a really big surprise for you. If you will go to your back door. I think you're going to find something pretty special out there. I'm just kidding. No, we're just kidding, Jake. There's not a puppy at your back door. Unless your mom, Jenny, heard this beforehand and is the best mom in the world. Yeah, that was pretty cool for her to write in and let us know. So way to go, Jake, for listening to us. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you, Jake. Thank you, Jenny. We literally count on people like you to spread the word, so we appreciate it. Good luck with your eventual puppy, too. Named Charles w Chuck Bryant when he's bad. If you want to tell us about your cute kid, we want to hear about him or her. You can tweet to us at joshamclark or s yskpodcast you can post it on Facebook.com. Charleswelbriant or stuffychildo. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@houseofworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the Web stuffyoushineknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseworks.com. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out. The sun is shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarif and Georgia Hardstarkk, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | |
How Gender Reassignment Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-gender-reassignment-works | In this episode, Josh and Chuck take a comprehensive look at gender identity "disorders" and the gender reassignment process. | In this episode, Josh and Chuck take a comprehensive look at gender identity "disorders" and the gender reassignment process. | Tue, 19 Oct 2010 20:25:36 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=19, tm_hour=20, tm_min=25, tm_sec=36, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=292, tm_isdst=0) | 48076405 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff. You should know from how stuff workscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Joshua Clark. It's my nickname. M. Joshua M. Clark is my nickname. Okay. And there's Charles W, Chuck Bryant. Japan. Already? Already. This is stuff you should know. I broke the rule. The rule that you set on, like, the first week I was here. You were like, don't say anything for the first 60 seconds or you're out of here. That rules. True. Chuck, I'm afraid we'll talk about this later. I have a prediction really quickly about this podcast. What? I predict that it will be our most serious and joke free podcast to date. Yes. I also predict, piggybacking on your prediction that by the time we leave the studio, we'll have bloody crescent shaped wounds in the palms of our hands from making this joke free. Yeah. Now, you can't joke about this. No, you can't. And the reason why we should probably go ahead and specify why. Because we don't want to give anyone the impression that we find transsexualism or gender reassignment funny. Right. That's not the point. The point is what we've learned from this research is that more than just transsexuals have a stake in gender reassignment. We could conceivably tick off 80 different special interest groups with this one podcast. It's our most precarious podcast. And my whole point is we just joke about everything. It's not like we find this funny. We care about everything, and we can't get about this. We can't. Because people get so upset if we make jokes about this. That's right. But I will lead with a joke if I can. I went and typed in transsexual into Google because I was looking something up, specifically, I can't remember what. And you know how they have images that pop up? The first image that I saw was of a woman in a bikini, and someone had Photoshopped don knots his head onto the body. That was like the first Google image for transsexual. Weird was a bad. It looked like a Martin Van Nostrin photoshop shop on a bikini. Yeah. All right. That's my only joke. You ready? I wonder, van Austrians could pretty much just reuse some of the Photoshopped images that he's already sent us for this one. Yeah, probably. He's put our head on lots of bodies. He has. Most recently roller derby. Chuck. That's right. So, Chuck, have you heard about a man by the name of Scott Moore? Now. Scott Moore. He's a hefty guy. He was born Jessica Moore. Okay. And by age eleven, Jessica now, Scott was pretty sure that she was supposed to be a man. Right. And basically got short changed by being born a girl. Sure. Scott went ahead and had gender reassignment surgery, but didn't go the full nine yards and is now the world's second pregnant man. You want to see him? Sure. He actually just looks like he's been drinking way too much beer lately. Yeah, he just looks like a big fat guy, but he's living as a gay man. But he's a pregnant man, and he's the world second. As far as I know, the only other pregnant man is a guy named Scott Beatty, who in 2008, became the world's first pregnant man under pretty much the same circumstances. Scott was born a woman, became a man, didn't undergo all of the surgical procedures which we'll get into later, and was capable of having a baby. A pregnant baby? Yeah, pregnant with a baby. I'm glad you clarified that, because I think we misspoke we just brought him up in a previous podcast off the top of our head, and I don't think we said the right thing. What was that? Cannonball Run? Yeah, I think so. Joke number two. Yeah. As long as we're not joking about the disorder, then I think we're fine. Right. I'm scared. Okay, so, Chuck, let's talk about exactly what people like Jessica, who became Scott and Scott and I don't know what the other Scott's first name was originally. Scott Beattie. Could it be more confusing, that last little quandary right there? How do you get to that point? Why do you get to that point? And what are some of the paths that they took and didn't take? And what is gender reassignment surgery? Okay. Okay. Well, transsexualism. We should begin there. It is classified as a gender identity disorder. And I've actually looked there's a lot of people that have a problem with that. It's classification as a disorder. Even I had a problem with that right off the bat because basically mental disorder. Yeah. It's classified in two different diagnostic manuals as a mental disorder. That's being fought, though. Like, right now, the battle is going on. I saw that England and France have both declared it not a mental disorder. They declared war on it. Exactly. And critics say that there's no evidence, there's no scientific consensus or evidence that says that points to the brain and something being wrong. Right. One of the reasons why it's still classified as a mental disorder is because our understanding of gender is really we have no idea whether it's socially conditioned, as the radical feminist lobby would believe sure. Or whether it's natural, which is basically inadvertently supported by the existence of transsexuals. Right. They're saying, I was a biologically born man, but I'm a woman and it's not social. I've been like this all my life. Sure. I should have been a girl. Right. So that's just two groups that kind of butt heads over this. What gender is just two of many that probably but heads. Also, the field of psychology has a lot to lose in this one because they've been handling transsexualism. They stick their claim on it decades ago. Absolutely. Now, like you said, there's a lot of debate over whether it is a mental disorder. Yes. And who knows where that's going to end up in the future. But transsexualism, we should go ahead and define this because we'd never defined roller derby. We had some foreign fans that wrote in and said, it's all great, but we didn't even never even said what it was until, like, 20 minutes in. Well, it's like doing a podcast on hot dogs. I just figured people knew. Yeah, roller derby is a sport. By the way. We should do a podcast on hot dogs. Transsexualism is when you were born and you were dissatisfied with your sexual identity or your gender role or your bodily characteristics. Like, if you were a boy but you're feeling like a girl, you don't want to look down and see your penis every day. And when you do, it's going to have a detrimental effect on your life when you lead. It very confusing. I'm sure. And it's not necessarily even confusing, but at the very least irritating. Both okay. And you often hear the term trapped in a woman's body or trapped in a man's body. And I think that's probably how they generally associate it. I have a couple of stats here, too okay. That seem a little more frequent than I thought. Apparently one in every 2500 US citizens has undergone male to female gender reassignment surgery. That is a lot. So if you go to a big concert, like a big stadium show with like, 50,000 people, there are potentially 20 people there. Get it? Depends on what show. But 20 people who have undergone male to female reassignment surgery. Now, it seems high. It does seem high, but that's the University of Michigan State and Linda Conway. That one link I sent you was University of Michigan. They have a, if not poorly presented, but very comprehensive site on transsexualism. Interesting. Yeah. And one in almost 120 males and one in about 30,000 females are transsexual adults. And I took way more full on all the way down with surgery has gone step by step through the process. Whereas the University of Michigan estimate was they've had some sort of surgical enhancement way more men than women. Like almost three times as many. Yeah. So there's something to that. And when we were talking about Jessica becoming Scott, right? Yes. So Jessica becoming Scott, girl to guy, is trans man. Yes. And then going from male to female is a male identifying with female gender is trans woman. Yes. So trans man or trans woman reflects what you identify with, not what you're born with biologically. Right. And this has been around probably as long as there have been people, but it has just been I don't want to say popular, but in the public eye, it's so hot. It hadn't been in the public eye since about the 1950s, when an American woman named Christine Jorgensen had to go to Denmark because they didn't do the surgery in the States until 1966 to get her gender reassignment surgery. And she was a pioneer, along with Dr. Harry Benjamin, who was the physician who first coined that term, and he did a lot of work, established a foundation that today is known as the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. And they establish standards of care, and basically they are the place to go if you're a doctor, if you're a person who's confused for support. So Christine Jorgensen couldn't have had her operation because had it not been for Harry Benjamin, probably so. I read that a guy who was an influence on him, his name was Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld. He was an early proponent of homosexual rights. Oh, really? Huge in the 20s. Wow. He was also a psychiatrist. And he influenced Dr. Benjamin, as did Alfred Kinsey, the sex researcher, the sexologist, the executioner. So these two men were friends of Harry Benjamin, and they kind of their ideas and theories and research combined into Harry Benjamin, who became, like, this pioneer in the field of transsexualism, basically took it out of the freak show status that it had. And as with most things that psychologists helped with, especially in the middle of the 20th century, kind of brought it into a treatment kind of view. And the weird thing is, what we've come up with as a treatment for transsexualism is gender reassignment surgery. Yes. And that's unusual among what would be considered mental illnesses. I would say so. And that's step five, actually, in a five step process that begins long before the scalpel hits the body parts, let's say the first thing is diagnostic assessment. We'll get into these in detail, but I'll just list them here. Psychotherapy, what's called the real life experience. That's my favorite. Mine, too. Hormone therapy. And then finally, if you make it through all those steps surgery. Right. If you want to. You don't always have to get the surgery. And you better have some dough, too, depending on where you get it. Yeah. What does it cost? 30 grand? More? It depends. According to our article, which sourced the San Francisco Gate newspaper, it's 37 to go. Trans man. Female to male to male. No, I'm sorry. It's 77 grand to go from a female to a male. And the penis is the price pusher. Apparently, if you want a really good surgically constructed penis right. You better be rich. I would think so, because I guess it's an affordable, functional, sensitized. Surgically constructed penis is kind of a joke. Apparently, among the transsexual community, a joke is in. It's really hard to come by unattainable. Unattainable unless you're rich. And even if you're rich, I have a feeling that it's not the easiest thing to find. There's probably one guy out there who knows exactly how to do it because the magic tile, and he makes, like, $5 million of procedure. They also recommend well, they don't recommend, but they say if you go to other countries like Thailand, you could pay as little as eight or $9,000. Yes. But I don't know about you, my friend. This is a pretty important surgery. If I was choosing to become a woman, I would not go to Thailand to do it. I think. Well, if you're not certain male to female, it's 37 grand. And I have the impression that it's an easier procedure, probably because it's cheaper. Chopping off the bits. Actually, that is not true. And Chuck and I know it stopped emailing right now. Calm down. Not true. We went through some on that University of Michigan site. There were illustrations of how to basically perform trans man no. Trans woman surgery. Sure. Removing the penis, et cetera, et cetera, creating the vagina. We're quite aware it's not just chopping off the no. It's pretty amazing, actually. It is. Chuck. Josh. So you talk about diagnosing this as a mental illness, and if you're in the United States and I take it also in Europe as well, you have to go in to see a shrink and say, I'm a transsexual. Let's get the mental health aspect out of the way so I can keep going. Yeah, you can't just sign up for surgery next week unless you go to Thailand and you have eight or $9,000. Yeah. In order to get diagnosed, though, there's a couple of components. You have to have the desire to live and be accepted as another sex, and you have to have the desire to actually transform your body through hormone therapy and surgery. Right. Because there's different types of gender association disorders. I make air quotes every time I'm saying disorders, bothers or mental illness. But transsexualism falls under the larger umbrella of gender identity disorder. Right? Yes. Okay. And transsexualism is like the money. Gender identity disorder. If you are transsexual, you don't want to be in this biologically born body any longer. Right. You want your container. You want your sex organs changed. You want to live as a member of the opposite sex. You probably want to marry somebody who's of your same born biological sex. Right. And you're willing to go through the steps for that. There's also dual roll transvestism. Yeah. That's when you don't want to have the surgery at all. Correct. No. But you identified with both, possibly. Right. Is that like Ed Wood? That's what I took it as. Okay. Transvestitism or transvestism is, from what I understand, cross dressing. Sure. That's a symptom of it. Okay. And I don't believe Edwin ever wanted to be a woman. He just liked wearing women's clothes or be with men. It had nothing to do with homosexuality. Right. But again, it's like you're abnormal because you like angora. So this is a mental illness number two. You're not transsexual, but you are a transvest site. I like angora, too. There's also gender identity disorder of childhood. Who doesn't? Chuck yeah. That's where you like to play with dolls rather than tonka trucks. Right. Nature or nurture yes. And then that 1 may clear up eventually. What do you mean? I think that since it's of childhood, there's another diagnosis according to the DSM four, that gender Identity disorder of adulthood. No, I'm sorry, that's in the International Classification of Diseases ten, there is gender identity disorder in childhood and then adolescents and adulthood. So if your William wants a doll, they say you might grow out of it and eventually want to play football because guys can't play with dolls. Right. Or William might really want to be Sally. But if you take him in as a kid, he's going to get diagnosed with gender identity disorder childhood. Right. If he stays in therapy or is treated or whatever into adolescents and adulthood, that diagnosis would change. Or if he went back later on as an adult, he would be re diagnosed as that. There's a lot of diagnosis and what I gathered from this article is so much has to go into getting this done. They really want to make sure that you are sure that this is something you want to do. Right. You got to jump through a lot of hoops. You can go in there and I can get my belly fat removed tomorrow if I wanted to. Sure. They don't ask you it right now. Let's do it. Yeah, but I don't know any other kind of like plastic surgery. You can just go in and get anything you want done. But this you have to jump through groups for you definitely do. It may be for a good reason, because real quick, let's talk about there's also other gender identity disorders, which is like the and unspecified, which is like that. I really don't know what this is. A lot of times they're associated with intersex conditions. Like ambiguous genitalia. Yes. Like the old rumor about Jamie Lee Curtis. I'm glad you brought that up because her father died yesterday. I know. Rip tony Curtis. Isn't that weird that we would do this? Yeah, but the Jamie Lee Curtis thing I should mention is not confirmed. There's always been a rumor, and the reason it still has legs, I think, is because she's never commented on it publicly and said, no, this is not true. She's just been like, you know, it's dead of my business. Good for her. Yeah, that's what I say. You go, girl. That's what I say too. Chuck. Apparently ambiguous genitalia is a very, very rare disorder. And I was reading up on it on Mayo Clinic's website. The most trusted leader in health, the most regular consumer, the most voracious consumer of white lab coats. Yeah, that was a lot for that stupid joke, wasn't it? Yeah. And they were saying that most surgeons like to talk the family out of gender assignment surgery. Sexual assignment surgery, actually, is what I found. It's called sexual reassignment surgery when they were born with ambiguous genitalia. Anytime. Technically, this article on our site should be called sexual reassignment. Okay. Most of the sources I ran up on was called a sexual reassignment surgery. Got you. But most surgeons, when a child comes out with ambiguous genitalia, the surgeon is like, we should wait for the kid to see if that works itself out more like we want the kid to grow up and decide whether he or she wants to be a boy or a girl. Got you. We should leave it up to the kid. That's if it's really down the middle in some cases, apparently an enlarged clitoris can look an awful lot like a penis. Yeah. And that can be the result of a hormone imbalance. So they'll just give you hormones and then the clitoris goes and shrinks. Right. And then a lot of times, also, the internal reproductive organs will dictate what the external genitalia should be. Does that make sense? Right? Yes. But if it's really up in the air, the physician apparently likes to wait until the kids can say something. That makes for a rough adolescence, I bet. But it's probably the right thing to do, you know? Yeah, that's a tough one. Alright, Josh, so you're diagnosed, you've gone through the psychiatric evaluation, you're clinically diagnosed. Okay. And now there are three phases hormone therapy, your real life experience, and surgery. Yeah. And it doesn't always happen in that order because every person's journey to their ultimate gender destination is different and you get it tailored for your own path that you want to take. So you don't always have bottom surgery. They call it sometimes you just have top surgery. They do not call it that. That's some of the common language for it. It absolutely is. Because Chas Bono says that she had top surgery and she says that I'm not going to talk about whether or not I had bottom surgery. That's my business. And also, these things don't always happen in that specific order. So let's say you are a female transitioning to a male. You may undergo hormone therapy and go ahead and have the top surgery for your real life experience to make that more realistic, I guess. Well, then you have the hormone therapy after. I mean, it just depends. You can do what you want to do, basically. But that makes a lot of sense because the real life experience is you immersing yourself, preoperation, you're preop transsexual, and you're living for a year, I believe, as a member of the opposite sex. That's the real life experience. Yes. But the point is, you're finding out if you can stand being treated as a woman or a man, if you are comfortable with it, if it really is the way you're supposed to be, or if there was something else going on. That's what you thought, but you found out before it was too late. It's like a test drive. It's exactly right. It's a one year long test drive. So you would think that if a woman is going to try to live as a man. That's a trans man. Preoperative transsexual, you would want to remove the breasts, which is a pretty standard procedure, and you would want to do that before you immerse yourself in the real life experience, or else they're going to be, like, not fooling anybody with that ace band. Yeah, sure. Before you can do this, though, before you can begin hormone therapy or surgery, you have to actually get a letter of recommendation from your physician and your psychiatrist or psychologist or go to Thailand. Go to Thailand. And there are also a few other criteria. You have to be 18. You can't get this done as a teenager. Right. Or I'm sorry, pre 18 year old teenager. You have to understand, have a full understanding about hormones and what they can do medically, what they cannot do medically, which is probably even more important, and what the benefits and risks are. You have to have that minimum of three months of psychotherapy, a minimum of three months of life experience. Real life experience shows stable or improved mental health, which is interesting. And you have to demonstrate you can take hormones responsibly because there's no light matter. No. So check. Let's say you go ahead and meet all this criteria. You've undergone your psychotherapy, and you have a letter of recommendation from Dr. Egbert. Norbert right. Saying this man should be a woman. Right, right. You undergo the hormone therapy, and there's a lot of stuff you should expect. Sure. Right. There's some stuff you're going to be expecting, and then there's some unexpected side effects depending on which way you're going. And by the way, hormones, if you're trans man, you're going to be given androgen like, testosterone, things like that. And if you're trans woman, you're going to be given estrogen, and these also may be synthesized from animals. Yes. There was a huge breakthrough in gender reassignment, the process in 1941 when something called permerin, which is a synthetic hormone that's synthesized from estrogen of pregnant mares, pregnant horses hit the market, and all of a sudden, it was like, Holy cow, this changes everything. Interesting. I think that's when hormone therapy was really introduced, around that time. Yeah. I think some steroids are from animals, too. Sure, that makes sense. But do you know some of the side effects? Yeah, well, I just want to add, you might also be taking progesterone or testerone blockers if you are a female trying to become a male, and you can take it orally, injected, or transdermal. Yes. So those are your options. But yeah. Josh, if you're a male, you're undergoing hormone treatment and you're getting your injections, you can expect, as expected, breast growth, decrease in body hair. They're going to redistribute your body fat into different places, decreased fertility. Your testicles will shrink, and you will get less frequent and less firm erections, which is a key if you want to be a woman. Sure. You probably didn't want them in the first place. Right. Good news is, if you decide about halfway through, oh, you know what? I don't really like this, actually. Most of these changes are reversible. If you stop yes. You stop taking the hormones exactly. And it will go back to normal in most cases. And those are the positive effects that you want to happen. Right. Well, that's what you're expecting. There's some side effects that you wouldn't want. For example, blood clots, weight gain, and not just weight redistribution, but weight gain. Sure. As Chesbono has undergone. Yes. Liver disease and hypertension, I should say. He you want to refer to transsexual by the gender they identify with. Right. He had the surgery in 2009, late last year, and Chaz is officially a man now. Right. So I apologize. So, Josh, let's say you're a female undergoing hormone treatment. What are you going to get? You're going to get facial hair, buddy. That's one thing. You're going to get testes gonads, maybe. Okay. Your clitoris will be enlarged. Yes. You are going to have a deeper voice. Yes. And you're going to have a lot more body hair, but there's also a want wand. You're going to go bald. Yeah. Male pattern baldness begins. That, to me, is just nature's cruelest joke. That's nature's cruelest joke to me, period, with men, because a lot of guys have a big problem with that. Sure. Well, your hair moving down to your back, and it's kind of like your reproductive years are over. Well, yeah, but it's really unfair that you're saying, all right, you're transsexual. You want to become a man. Like, this is what being a man is. You're going to go bald, and you're going to have to start shaving your head, and then nature just smacks you on the bottom with the towel in the locker room. That's right. That's what being a man is. Just one of the guys. That also has some negative effects, too, though, like infertility acne, increased risk for heart attack. Also, welcome to being a man. And increased potential for liver tumors. And you noticed that with hormones in both directions, there was the risk of infertility. So there's a lot of talk about ensuring that transsexuals know ahead of time pre surgery, pre hormonal therapy that they need to bank their sperm, bank their eggs, just in case they're happy living as a member of the sex, but they want to reproduce using their own genes. And prior to 2008, when Scott Beatty got pregnant, this really wasn't much of an issue. The infertility was just impossible to have a kid in utero at post op. This is something else that has to be discussed and explored prior to surgery. But before you take hormones, if you're a transsexual or you're considering undergoing gender reassignment, you better bank your junk. Not your junk. Bank your genetic junk. Right. So, Josh, we've been calling this gender reassignment surgery. We should be calling it gender reassignment surgeries for a very good reason, because it's not a single procedure at all. And you can get the full works if you want, or you can tailor it to your own expectations, but potentially you can get a lot of surgery. Yeah. And I guess, Chuck, we should probably say here that if you're a squeamish type, if you couldn't handle the Cremation podcast, you should probably go ahead and just stop listening now, maybe fast forward a few minutes. It's my favorite thing when you encourage people to stop listening to our podcast. I don't encourage anybody to even begin listening. It's a warning. Chuck? Yes. If you're a trans woman, male to female yes. You are going to undergo a number of surgeries, like you said, including let's start off with the Orieectomy. Yeah. What is that? The Orietomy is the removal of the testicles, but the penis and the scrotum remain. Orchiectomy, by the way, okay, there might be an OREC. To me, that's different. What is it? Orchiectomy. Orchiectomy. Yes. So it's removing your ORC. Okay. Which is your testicles, but the penis and scrotum remain until the penectomy. Yeah, that one's self explanatory. The amputation of the penis. Yes. What's next? Well, we should probably say as a rule of thumb, when you're talking about surgeries, an ectomy is the removal or the amputation something, a plastic. The suffix plasti indicates that something is being reshaped, remoulded, or modified in a way that doesn't include amputation. Rhinoplasty, for instance, is everyone knows it's a nose job. Yes. Because they're reshaping your nose. Even though they may remove parts of the nose, it's still a reshaping of it. They're not just taking your whole nose off. That would be a rhinoectomy, I guess. I guess it would. That's probably not a very common surgery. No. So, Josh, since you mentioned plasty, we should mention male to female patients might get vagina plastic, which is the plastic of a vagina clitoroplastomy, the plasty of a clitoris and labiaplasty. Yes. They're all pretty self explanatory, but I think that probably goes in order, removing the testicles first. And that's going to do more than any hormone supplements are going to do by themselves, because your testicles are your little hormone androgen producing buddies, and you take them out and the hormones really kind of kick in, and then you remove the penis, and then you start the rebuilding. Right. And again, on the University of Michigan website were illustrations, and apparently there's this guy I didn't tell you this. There's a doctor who single handedly made a little town called Trinidad, Colorado, one of the capitals of sex change operations. Really? How so? He started doing sex change operations. Got you. But he was like the town surgeon, so he did everything. But somebody came to him in 1969 and said, can you help me out? The guy corresponded with the two other doctors who were doing it because, remember, we just started. In the US. In 66. This is 69. So he started corresponding with a physician in New York and then called Johns Hopkins, probably wrote them a letter and said, do you have any info on this? They sent him an illustrated step by step procedure on how to do this. He took a draw of a cigarette and was like, yeah, I can do that. Yeah, that's exactly right. And he actually kept it a secret at first because it was a Catholic hospital and he didn't want to offend the nuns. And then eventually he did. And so this community became, like, one of the capitals of the sex change operation. Healthcare industry. Wow. Yeah. And that town is now called gender reassignment Colorado. Well, the guy died in 2006, but he was still in the 2000 article I ran across. He was still doing them. Thank God for all these pioneers that in the 1920s and did things that were what I think very brave at the time, especially they could be ostracized. It could be fired. Well, we'll get into that, but it still happens. So, Chuck, if you want to go from a woman to a man, trans man well, hold on. There's a few more male to females. Oh, okay. So that's just to really take care of things. If you want to go over and above, you can have anything from facial bone reconstruction, like correcting your hairline, making your forehead more prominent, brow lift, cheek implants, lip filling, jaw recontouring, and a tracheal shave. You just said recontoring like a spaniard. What would you say? Recontouring recontouring or a tracheal shave? The only thing I can think that might be would be maybe your Adam's apple. That's exactly what it is. Thyroid chondroplasty is also called a tracheal shave, and that is getting rid of your atoms. That's a dead giveaway. Oh, my God. Just imagine real quick sticking a bamboo shoot under your fingernail and pulling up. Oh. That's what happens to me when I think about shaving off part of my Adam's apple. Really? Yeah. I don't have a prominent Adam's apple. Do you? Not really. Shut up. My buddy Scotty boy, his is like he's got a golf ball down there. Yeah, but don't you see guys like that and think, how do you not bump into things with that thing? Doesn't that hurt? Like, it's just kind of out there. It's very vulnerable. Yeah. I don't want anything to hit my Adam's apple. I don't either. No, it isn't very prominent. Is it karate chop? No, not really. Maybe. I don't know. I'm feeling fine. And then you can also have vocal cord surgery or voice training to bring it down a little bit. Yeah, because we said with the hormones, if you start taking androgens and you're a trans man, the hormones are going to lower your voice. But if you're a trans woman, you're going to have to do something about your voice, because the hormones probably aren't going to raise it. Right. So female to male, let's go there. Let's go there. Chuck so you need to have my favorite, the Salpingo euphorectomy, which is the removal of the fallopian tube and an ovary. Apparently, you don't need to remove both hysterectomy, of course, which is the removal of the uterus vaginactomy. Removal of the vagina. And then you have all sorts of plastics which see if you can guess what the scrotoplasty is. I know what that is. The falloplasty. Yeah, that's pretty obvious. Again, that's the price pusher. Right. And then you will probably have Nutrials installed testicular prosthetics. But hold on. Let's see. We have the Scrotum, the penis creation of a neophyllus. Did you mention that? That's the phalloplasty. Okay. And interestingly, sometimes the clitoris will be turned into the head of the penis. The neo phallus, yes. And then they'll basically just take other parts. I don't know exactly what the rest of the penis would be constructed of, but the head of the penis is often the clitoris. I thought you were saying the other way around. All right, here's the deal. Okay? Let me break it down easily. Sometimes the head of the penis will be used as the clitoris. Sometimes there will be a neophylus with the clitoris at the end of that. Chuck actually, that's a methodioplasty, metallidioplasty methodioplasty, right. Which is basically the clitoris is enlarged chemically, right. And then it's cut off, and that's the head of the penis. Now, okay? So the goal here with both that and when they obviously they're using the clitoris and the head of the penis is they're trying to give you sensitivity in your sexual organ post op. That is the goal of keeping all these parts instead of just going complete plastic surgery and making fake things. Fake parts. They want you to be able to have a successful sex life after your operation. That's a big part of it. There's a lot of study. Well, not a lot. I'm sure that it's been called for more, but there's been studies of regret among postoperative sexual reassignment patients. And one of the things that they found is a big factor is the presence and quality of a partner and the presence and quality of a satisfying sex life afterwards. I would say that's a huge factor. Sure. I didn't trust this stat for some reason. Maybe it's because it was from the article that said that less than 1% of female to males say they regretted it and one to 1.5% of male to female say they regretted it. I don't know if it's so long ago. Do you trust that? There was one that was written in 2006 and I didn't see any stats, but I did get the impression that it's pretty low. But there are really two factors or there's two standards that the world WPATH who, by the way, Chuck, will have just wrapped up this time next year, 2011, their biennial symposium in Atlanta, Georgia. Oh, really? Yeah. We should go. We totally should. But WPATH their standards of care says basically, like, if you have deep, irreversible regret where you're openly saying, I want to go back. You can't go back. You can. There's a BBC documentary on a guy whose family left him after his business went under. He's a millionaire, and he was a trans woman, and the documentary is about how he wants to become a man again. Got you. The two measures of failure or when you shouldn't have gotten the gender reassignment surgery is deep regret and suicide. But I did get the impression that it is fairly uncommon. Yeah. Well, did you remember what we were even talking about? Yeah. And I think it's probably in common because of all the hoops and the length of time it takes to really complete this thing. Right. Which is, like I said, it's a good thing. They really want to make sure that you're positive that this is something you want to do. So let's say that you've undergone it, you're happy with the result, you don't express regret, and you're living a new life. What are some of the things that you're going to be facing as a trans man or trans woman whose head, top and bottom surgery, as it's put? You're going to be facing bigotry hatred. You might have things thrown at you. You might get beat up. You might get fired. You can get married. Yeah. So that's a good thing. Yeah. But a lot of bad things are going to come your way from a lot of people, and there's not a lot of protection. Now, under the law for transsexuals, they don't fall into hate crime bills. And as a matter of fact, see if the structure is draconian. In most states, to undergo a sex change operation legally, you have to put a notice in the local paper in the Legal Oregon. Yeah. Is that still a thing? I think so. Do you remember the case of Vandy Beth Glenn in Georgia? Yeah. Recently? No. She worked for two years in the General Assembly's Office of Legislative Counsel as an editor in proofreader of bill language and right here in Georgia. And she was fired when she told her boss, you know what? I want to be a female now, and I want you to refer to me as a female, and I'm going to undergo the surgery, and this is what I'm going to do. And he fired her, and she just won a lawsuit this year. Good for her. That's tough, too, though, because there's not a lot of, again, discrimination, anti discrimination protection, including in the workplace. Basically, they were able to prove that this is the reason that I was fired. What other famous cases besides Chad's Bono, did you hear about Warren Beatty's daughter? This is alleged. What? Warren Beatty and Annette Benning's oldest kid, Kathleen, is 18 years old and allegedly has been living as a man for the past two years as Steven IRA and wants to have gender reassignment surgery now that she's 18. And this is all alleged. I mean, this is as of this week, that's starting to come out. Apparently, Annette Benning is trying to be supportive, and Warm baby is having some problems with it. What is wrong with that generation? Well, it didn't say that he was being a big jerk about it. They just said that he's kind of struggling with it. So, you know, maybe he'll struggle through it and come out the other side and everything will be all right. Remember that Saturday Night Live ad for Home of Sale? No. It was like an antidepressant for parents whose kids are gay. Oh, really? And they're like, because it's your problem, not theirs. That was, like, the slogan for it. It was awesome, actually. Have you ever seen the T shirts on St. Patrick's Day? Mom, dad, I'm Gaelic. These are pretty funny. It is funny. And I also should mention, too, that my brother, when he lived in Los Angeles, his super underwent gender reassignment surgery. Wow. He went from Calvin to Rissa over Christmas, so Scott left to come home. Calvin was a man I think was from Thailand, and he came back and he was met with Russia, a very lovely woman. Wow. As his super. That was good with her wrench. So, Chuck, I don't know anybody who's undergone reassignment surgery, but I'm glad that I know more about this now. Yeah, me, too. I'm interested to see in 20 years how the mental health industry, what kind of claim it still has on it or what it's doing to help it along or whatever, because it's clearly facilitating this process. But again, I don't think it's a mental illness. So I think probably most transsexuals don't think that they're mentally ill. Well, I know for a fact we have some transsexual listeners because they have written in before, and so I hope we did a good job with this. I hope you were appropriately respectful and all that stuff, let us know. For a couple of lunkheads who like to joke around about everything. And if you're not transsexual and you got a problem with it, don't be a jerk. Just don't be a jerk in life. That's our motto. Since we said don't be a jerk, that means I should probably pitch this article to you. Gender reassignment. You can find it by typing gender reassignment. Actually, just type gender in the search bar@householdworks.com. We have a lot of cool articles on it, including how fluid is Gender, an article I wrote a long time ago about why blue is for boys and pink is for girls. It's all made up and a bunch of other stuff, including gender reassignment. You can type that@houseoffworks.com, which means it's listener mail time. Right? Well, hold on, Chuck. First, let's do a little pluggage. Yes, you are a big sports guy? I am. You my friend. I know where you could get assigned Tom Glavon baseball. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Remember our friends co ed? Yeah. They are having their fault fiesta atl in Atlanta. So if you're in Atlanta or the southeastern United States, you're going to want to be in town on October 21, which is what is that Thursday? I believe that is a Thursday. It's at the Metropolitan Club in Alpharetta. Anyone who's familiar with Atlanta knows that it's spread far and wide yes. In 100 million mile in each direction. And Alfredo is in part of that. Right. So it's going to be at the Metropolitan Club in Alpharetta from seven to 10:00 P.m. On October 21. Right. So tell the people about what's going on. Well, Josh, it's $20 to get in. That, of course, goes to Co ed, and it also gets you food and wine and beer, and it gives you a chance to meet and hang out with Jerry. Jerry. Jerry's going to be there. Totally. And we would be there, but we're going to be out of town. Yes. We are going to be in New York. And we are low that we're not going to be there. That's right. But if you want to meet Jerry in the flesh, she will be there in the flesh. Coed and Guatemala got under Jerry. Like, our hearts are aligned with Coed. Yes. They own Jerry's skin. They got under her skin. They own her subdermal region. That's right. And they're going to be auction items, and they're raising money for their awesome nonprofit. And you can win, like, signed sports memorabilia. You can win a week long African safari. Dude, that's pretty big. Yeah. You can win a mama gift basket. Oh, yeah. Is Emily doing something? Yeah, she can donate a gift basket. That is very nice. And all of this goes to help Coed. For those of you who don't remember or need a refresher, go back and listen to our two part Guatemala Adventure episode. And this is a nonprofit that pulls money together to buy textbooks for schools in Guatemala. And believe us, they need it. We've seen it firsthand. And escrow accounts are set up where the schools rent these textbooks. The money goes directly to these escrow accounts, and after five years, it reverts back to the school who can then buy or which can then buy new textbooks. So it's a self sustaining system, and Chuck and I put a Good Housekeeping stamp of approval all over it. That's right. Yeah. So there you go. Fall fiesta atl October 21, metropolitan Club in Alpharetta, seven to 10:00 P.m.. And there's a link on the co ed website. It's www.coeduc.org. Right? Yes. Okay, so let's get to it. I have an email from Nick Has this to say. Hey, guys, I just returned from a run Listen to Your biosphere podcast in which Josh said the word warsh in one of our tangents. I know you said wash and I asked you about it. Well, regardless, it's in there somewhere. I grew up in Washington, Pennsylvania, a small but growing coal town in the western side of Pittsburgh. I'm sorry, south of Pittsburgh in that area. The whole tri state area, in fact, of Pennsylvania, western Virginia or West Virginia and Ohio. They regularly use wash in reference to washing hands or their cars. Did you know that that was an area thing there? They say wash there. I know it's regional for sure. Okay, I didn't know that region. The best part is, in my particular situation, being from Washington, I always heard it pronounced Washington. I do not speak with that particular piece of vernacular, as my mother would have sooner cut up my tongue and then hear me say that. But I would like to offer a few more unique pieces of vernacular from that area. Let's hear it. Read up. You ever heard that? I need you to write up the table. I guess that means set the table. Okay. Ready it. Or remove one of the four legs. Actually, here he says the definition is synonymous with clean or clear off. Like red up your room. BA boucher. That is a kerchief worn by Polish women in the northeast. That's what he says. A piece of cloth tied around the head similar to a durag. And by similar, I mean exactly like Yens yinz. You heard that? All Yens come inside. The pirogis are ready. I guess similar to you all in the south, right? And finally, there is no plural to the word mile. Emily's dad says this go about 80 miles up the road. Emily hates it so bad. Yeah. Her dad's from the area, right? Yeah, from Ohio. Okay. That's right, guys. Just remember that Washington, Pennsylvania, is the town that changed his name officially to Steelers, Pennsylvania before the 2005 Super Bowl. I, however, live in southeastern Virginia now, but I do recall my roots. Thank you, Nick. Lucky for Washington, Pennsylvania, that name change wasn't irreversible as a lot of gender reassignment surgery is so great. If you are a transsexual and you have undergone surgery or considering it, we want to hear from you. Even just say hi. Send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstoughfours.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?" | ||
How Landfills Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-landfills-work | Well-planned landfills have only recently come into
widespread use. Recently, waste managers have found that they work a little too
well and now the landfill is being reinvented. | Well-planned landfills have only recently come into
widespread use. Recently, waste managers have found that they work a little too
well and now the landfill is being reinvented. | Tue, 23 Jun 2015 14:45:50 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=23, tm_hour=14, tm_min=45, tm_sec=50, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=174, tm_isdst=0) | 39377258 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetoforcecom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there. And this is stuff you should know. Hello. Hi. How's it going? It's great. Good. Yourself? I found this topic, and I was starting to tell you before how interesting I thought it was. Yeah, it's awesome. I was like, stop it's, Gold. So now I'm going to say it. It's awesome. It is. And landfills, the concept of a landfill, even though it ain't perfect, is pretty neat. Yeah. And even though we need to reduce the amount of trash, especially Americans produce, there is still going to be trash in the world, and it needs to be dealt with. And this is way better than the old days, when in pre 1930, New York City, they would dump their garbage in the ocean. And then between 1930 and we still do that, you realize, well, New York City doesn't dump it right. In the Atlantic Ocean. No, but a lot of garbage is dumped in the ocean. Well, we talked about the Great Pacific Garbage Band. And then between the 1930s and the 1970s, they had what they called dumps, which is a big hole in the ground covered in rats and birds. And you would just dump garbage yeah. To leach into everything. Yes. Which is messed up. And the EPA comes along and I think the 60s, definitely the like, we need to do something better about this. But the idea of the landfill was born in about the believe well, the first modern sanitary landfill was 1937 in Fresno. Okay. That's right. And it's like a national historic place or something. Yeah. Because it kind of kicked off the whole thing. But it wasn't until the that they started passing laws saying that every state really needs to start doing the same thing. Right. And like you said before, that they just dumped their trash in a pit, which people have been doing for millennia. At least they were burning their trash also. Yeah. And it sounds mind bogglingly awful, and it is, especially from an environmental standpoint, but they didn't have the trash problem that we have now in the 60s, since the our trash generation, municipal solid waste generation has doubled, tripled. And I was like, why is that? What's going on? Apparently it's the advent of cheap packaging before styrofoam packaging, before plastic, before aluminum cans that everybody just threw away. Everything was wrapped in a T shirt that you could wear. Exactly. Like when you weren't carrying around a slab of meat in the t shirt from the butcher to your house, you wore your T shirt, so you reused it. Right? No, but no, you would have maybe like do you remember when Sam the butcher brought Alice the meat is the boys reference. I was just about to say fresh flintstone driving around with 2ft, I think all fall feet. Yes. Which is I guess a really weird way of putting it as barefoot. Well, that didn't rhyme. Bald feet. Anyway, he would bring it to a wrapped in like, white butcher's paper. Yeah. And she would throw it away and it would really not take up much space of the dump. It would decompose. It wasn't like styrofoam, which lasts for 50,000 years. Right. Yeah. And so starting about 1960, packaging, especially very non biodegradable packaging took off like a rocket. Yes. You could still go to the butcher, though. Now you can and you get it in paper, but you go to that big chain grocery store and it's going to be plastic and styrofoam. Right. So between 1960 and 1990, our packaging waste increased by 80%. That meant that we had to do something. We had a lot more trash and we had to take care of this trash in ways that we had before. And so the modern landfill, based on that Fresno model boomed, fortunately. That's right. But even now they're finding we went too far in one direction. Now we need to adjust it, massage it a little bit, refine it. And we're coming up with a new generation of landfills. That's right. So if you're talking about a landfill, the goal of a landfill is not to compost trash. And a lot of people probably know this. Yeah. It's not to compost trash such that it breaks down super quickly. And biodegrades it is the opposite of that is to keep it as dry as possible in an airtight environment and just bury it, lock it away from the surrounding world. That's right. And so that's what a landfill is. A sanitary landfill, municipal solid waste, or MSW landfill. They isolate the trash from the environment. They don't just dump it on the dirt and let things leak in. And this thus begins the landfill podcast. There are a lot of components to that, but that's a long and short of it. It's true. And what that's called in the whole idea behind that landfill, that was in reaction to mind that's one. A dry tomb is the industry lingo for it. And it was created in reaction to trash just being allowed to seep into the groundwater. Sure. And methane to just leak out into the air, blow up. Yeah, sure. Apparently houses that have utility pipes that pass by old landfills, methane will get into those utility pipes and get mixed in with the electricity. And when you go to plug in your toaster and it sparks kaboom. Really? Yes. It's a problem with old landfills because they were all idiots with trash. Like up until the even still, we have a big problem with trash, but nothing like it was before as far as taking care of it. I'm starting to really get a handle on it. Americans produce \u00a34.6 of trash per day per person. Yes. And you know what's crazy is you think, well, America is probably like as bad as it gets. No, the UK is America's, like, in the middle, roughly, for trash generation, we were the worst. No, the UK is the worst. They produce per capita. They produce the most and they also throw away the most. They have the lowest recovery rate, although it's gone up, I believe. I think they had some sort of national initiative. Right. Because it says here that it went up from 31% recovery rate, which is like recycling and that kind of stuff. Sure. Basically diverting it from the landfill to 50%. So it's actually better than America. As far as the resource recovery rate goes. Canada is the worst. I'm sorry? Canada is the worst? Yes. That's hard to believe. I would think so, too, but it's true. The standout is Germany. Germany produces way more trash per person than any other country per capita, but they also have the highest recovery rate at almost 80%. 80% of their trash gets diverted from the landfill. That's amazing. Actually, that's efficient. What's the American number on that diversion? It hovers about a third, 30% for at least a couple of decades now. Maybe three decades, you could say. Americans, they divert about a third of their trash from the landfill. You'd like to see that number get better in three decades? For sure. And it always hovers around 33%, and it should be a lot better than that. You know what that sounds like to me? Whoever's in charge of doing that study is just like, let's just use license numbers. We can all live with that, right? Yeah. All right. So if you want a landfill in your municipality, you're going to have to start with a proposal by saying you can't just go start one. Yeah. You got to look around and say, we need the landfill, everybody. So let's do an environmental impact study. Right? And let's find an area. Let's find a lot of acreage, because I think they use the Northwest County Lanfield in Raleigh, North Carolina, as their go to example in this article. So how stuff started? 230 acres of land, about 70 acres of which is the actual landfill. You're going to need a lot of land and you're going to have to do an environmental impact study to determine a lot of things. How much land do you have? If there's enough of it. Sure. What type of soil you have and what bedrock is underneath. It very important how water flows over the surface of the site. Yeah. Does it flow right down into the river? Does it circulate? Right, exactly. And then the impact it's going to have on local wildlife. Sure. And if it's an historic site, like an archaeological site yeah. You don't want a landfill on an archeological site. What's funny is, if you go back and look at the Fresh Kills landfill, which is one of the biggest in the world new York, right? Yeah. And it wasn't even the only one for New York. It's closed now, right? Yes. Okay. And the guy who created the High Line, James Corner, is creating a park there out of it, like a massive park. Interesting. I think, like, three times the size of Central Park. Are they calling it Cancer Park? I think they're avoiding that. Okay. I don't remember what it's called. I read a really interesting New York magazine article about it. Really well written and clever, where it's basically like, that's awesome. That's awesome. This guy's got this great vision. But it's a landfill, right? Sure. At the end of the day, it's still buried garbage. Exactly. All right. So when we talked about the bedrock, that's really important, because if you have what you really want to try and prevent when you're building a landfill or operating landfill is leakage. And seepage, that was the big thing yeah. When the EPA came along and started saying, like, you can't just bury your trash anywhere. There's groundwater. Yeah. Dummies. And as trash decomposes, it's not just like old Coca Cola and banana peels. When those things break down and start mixing together, some really horrific stuff, like ammonia gets produced and that gets into the groundwater, and all of a sudden you're drinking ammonia. That's bad for you. Yeah. It's called leachate is the liquid or garbage juice is, in other words. Yeah, that's a better way to say it because that defines it all in one go. Right. And the whole point of the Dry Tomb landfill was to do everything you could to prevent this garbage that you're burying from reaching the water table. Right. So you studied that bedrock. If it's too fractured, it's not going to work because it's going to seep into that junk. No mines, no quarries, because they probably already have broken through the water table before they were abandoned. That's right. But at the same time, you also need to be able to sink wells in various points. So the bedrock needs to allow for that as well. That's right. You're really looking for a specific area. When we talked about the water flow, of course, you don't want it flowing near wetlands or any kind of rivers or streams. It's a no brainer. Fresh kells is an old marshland that they just filled the marshes and lakes in with garbage. Did they name it that? Is that the area or like, hills is a Dutch word for stream. Okay. Because I was about to say that's, like, the worst kind of name for anything. Totally. Unless it was a butcher. But it really means fresh stream. Fresh kills. Charcuterie. Fresh stream. Garbage dump. Yeah, that makes sense now. What does kill mean? Stream. The old Dutch word, because you've heard, like, faury means fish kill farm. Really? Yes. That would be fish stream. That makes a lot more sense now. Yeah. Fish kills. We wondered about that for years now, you know, star. All right, so local wildlife, they're going to really study that to see what kind of can't be in the area of a migratory route for birds or like a nesting area, A-K-A marsh. Like Fresh kills. Lancell that's right. And then once you figured all this out, and they say, oh, wait, you skipped over the historical or archeological site. Well, you already mentioned that. Like Freshkills lanfell. Okay, apparently, I think it was stated it all wrong. Henry David Thoreau said that arrowheads were the surest crop to dig from the ground at Fresh Hills before it was a landfill. So archeological site, wetland, and very close to the groundwater seeping right into it. Unbelievable. And I believe there was a large bunny rabbit population that they just dumped it right on top of. Once you've figured out this is not Fresh Skills, it's actually a great spot. You're going to get your permits, you're going to raise your money. This one in North Carolina costs about $19 million to build. Cheap. That seems a little cheap, but I don't think that one's brand new. Yeah, it's probably from the 90s. Yeah. And then you probably have a public vote because you're probably going to be using public dollars, and no one will know that that vote takes place. And you're going to get a landfill built. Exactly. Boom. Yes. They just build it in the night. All right, so let's take a little break here, and we will talk about building that landfill right for this. All right? So you've got your permits, you've got your money raised. It's time to build a landfill. Yeah. You shouted down the old guy at the Board of Commissioners meeting who objects. Yeah, old man McLean. Right. The tree hugger. Yeah. Let's recycle all our garbage crackpot. So we will list the basic parts of a landfill and then go over them in detail. How does that sound? Sounds like a bulleted list. You've got the bottom liner system, you've got these cells, you've got the storm water drainage, you've got the leachate collection system, aka garbage juice, methane collection system. And you've got the cap, the covering kaboom actually, that's the opposite of what you want to happen with the cap covering system. You don't want to cabo so start with the bottom liner. Man again, this is the original purpose of all landfills that are in use today, unless they're bioreactor, although it's part of it. But this dry, tomb landfill, the main part is the bottom liner. So they use a very thick, like, sometimes 100 millimeter thick, very sturdy, like polyethylene liner. Yeah. Synthetic plastic that they line the whole place with. Puncture resistant, strong, able to withstand a lot of trash being dumped on it. And just to be 100% certain, they'll often use some sort of, like, fabric mat that they'll lay down first and then put the liner on, and then put another mat on top of that to help prevent it from being punctured by rocks below or garbage above. Everything is trying to puncture this mat. Yeah. It's a moisture barrier. Right. But that liner is the main component, the initial component of the landfill. That's right. Next we have our cell. And the cell is basically the days garbage. Yes. It's the days garbage that you dump in there. You compact it. Airspace is key. That's where the more airspace you have, the more trash you can bury. Right. So they want to keep it as compact as possible, and they do this by rolling over it with bulldozers and flatteners and rollers and graters, and they smush it down. And a cell is a hole in the ground, apparently in the North Carolina landfill. That house, of course, went through back in the day. A cell is 50ft long, 50ft wide, 14ft deep, and all the trash is put in there. Like you said, there's heavy equipment that rolls over and compacts it. And did you read the Atlantic article I sent you about Ponte Hills? Yes. They said that there's an added benefit of compacting trash. Not just does it take up less space, it also kills about 50% of the rats in there. Oh, good. And then at the end of the day, when the cell is filled, they cover it over with about six inches of dirt that they then compact. That kills the other 50% of rats. So that's where the other half goes. And that makes that type of landfill what's called a sanitary landfill, which means 100% rat free. Because they're all dead. Yes. They're squished or they're suffocated. Yes. By this process of compacting and covering over. And by covering over this stuff every day, you protect it from being blown away by the wind, by being carried away from by the rain. You protect it from being dug up by coyotes. Yeah. Or trash scavengers. Right. And so that's what makes it a sanitary, dry, tomb landfill is what we've described so far. That's right. And to get this thing as compact as possible, they're going to weed out things like that huge roll of carpet that you took out of your 1970s bedroom or that mattress that has a brown stained, like, looks like a map of Asia from the 1600s. Right. Because you raised that one lady from hellraiser from the dead. Yeah. They're going to take out all that stuff and make it all the yard waste and make it as compact as possible. And then that is compacted at a rate, depending on where you are, about 1500 pounds per cubic yard. Yeah. So boom, flat dirt is over it now. And now we need to worry about drainage. Yeah. Basically, once you've created that sell, you've just completed a portion of the landfill, right? Yes. For the day. One day. Stress is so weird. It's like yours. Tuesday's whole. Right. 365 days a year. Yeah. Well, the Pointes Hills people in that Atlantic article were saying that they, in retrospect, figured out that they could have predicted the economic crisis. Interesting because about a little less than a year before it happened they would fill up their day's cell by 01:00 p.m. And closed. Now they stay up until five and it's not even necessarily full. So they know it's like a downturn in building materials and consumer waste. Like a year or two before the actual crisis happened, before the collapse. Well, you know what the old saying if you want to know the state of the country's economics, go to a landfill. That's a good thing. That's what I think. Jimmy Carter first said that. So you don't want liquids in that solid waste as much as possible. So they test the solid waste for liquids. Right. And if it's not liquid, then it's fine to go in the hole. Right. So they put that in there and the other way that they want to keep liquid out and again what they're doing is trying to prevent garbage juice from forming that's right. Is to have storm water runoff drainage going on. So all of the first of all, you never want a flat landfill ever. Oh, really? Are they? You want to mount it at least slightly. You never want a plateau. Right, that makes sense. Yeah. So you want the water to run off and then when it runs off, you want to collect it in the pipes. You want to basically create an Eave system like you have on the roof of your house and then shoot it all down to some concrete gulches French drains at your house. Aroyo's shepherrals what else? Gutters. Yeah. Habitat her. Right. And all that goes to a collection pond. That's right. This is not the kind of thing you want to swim in. What they wait for there is for the suspended particles to kind of settle on the bottom and then they will test the water for the garbage juice and depending on how nasty it is and riddled with chemicals, they'll go from there. They may treat it like regular wastewater. Well, that depends. If just the storm water shows some leachate, they'll send it to a leachate collection pond. If it turns out to just be normal storm water then they'll let it flow out of there. That's like whatever river or whatever. Yeah. And sometimes it's gravity or sometimes they use a pump. Right. Depends on the lay of the land. But if it's leachate they have a separate collection system for leachate. Yes. Which is basically perforated pipes that are running through the cells. Yeah. And the leachate is going to happen like they try and prevent it as much as possible. But there is no hole in the ground where you're not going to have any garbage juice. Right, exactly. So they collect that garbage juice as it's forming and they run it out to a separate collection pond. That's the leachate collection pond. And if you don't want to swim in the stormwater collection pond, you don't even want to look at the leachate collection pond. No. So, again, they let the particles settle, they test the concentration of the leachate in the pond, and then they send it either to an onsite water remediation system like a wastewater plant, or else they send it to the local, city, or county wastewater plant for treatment. Yeah. Boy, we got to do one in wastewater treatment at some point. You got it talked about. Fascinating. Yes. You poop in the water, and eventually you drink that water. It's pretty remarkable what we've learned to do. Yes. So the other big thing that we mentioned earlier was methane, and that is a byproduct. That's a gaseous byproduct of anaerobic decomposition. And about 50% of your gases coming out of this thing are going to be methane, about 50% carbon dioxide. And they say, a little bit of nitrogen, a little bit of oxygen. It gets nothing. Enough to be a percentage point, almost negligible. So methane can be dangerous and hazardous, but it can also be very useful. So these days, they're finding ways to harness this methane and use it as fuel. Right. Which is pretty great. Yeah, it is very great. And actually, there's a lot of money in it, they're finding, too. Sure. Especially if you go to the trouble of building an on site power plant where you just basically extract the methane from the landfill gas. LFG is what it's called. And then you burn the methane, you can create electricity. Right. You can power a turbine, and boom, there's electricity being produced. And actually, at Fresh Kills, New York City gets $10 million a year from a company that has exclusive rights to extract the methane from this place. That's pretty great. 10 million. That's not in Lincoln, Nebraska, did a pilot study in 2010 and found that they could make about $300,000 a year from methane collection from their landfill. That's awesome. So if you're a city that's trying to figure out ways to at least keep your landfill open, methane collection, I call my worst days LFG, actually, when I have landfill gas, then you've got your covering or your cap, is the final piece of the puzzle here. Right. And it depends on what kind of a landfill it is. Generally, it's going to be covered with six inches at least, of compacted soil, and that's to keep rats and stuff out, the ones that aren't killed, and getting back into the trash. But like we said earlier, airspace is key. So six inches, if they could find a way to make that one inch, that would be much better. And so they've been experimenting with that, too, like paper or cement emulsions instead that you just spray on top instead of that. Six inches of soil. Yeah, it's like a quarter inch. Yeah. Then all of a sudden, you have five and three quarters. Extra inches for trash. Extra inches for more trash. That's a lot, man. Yeah. Sure it is. It adds up. Speaking about this, which we are right now. Absolutely. And then eventually, though, it will have a permanent cap, some sort of polyethylene cap right on top. And so even after it's closed that Pointes Hills landfill outside of La. That was the focus of the Atlantic article or Fresh Kills Out in New York. When it's closed, you don't just walk away from a landfill. You plant stuff on it. Well, yes, you have to plant stuff on it, because when you cover it over with dirt, you want to plant something with a low root system that won't go into the landfill, but will still hold the dirt in place to prevent it from eroding. So, like grass. Kudzu kazoo is great. Not trees. Don't want to plant trees. But you also have to stick around and leave some people behind to monitor the groundwater for temperature changes. Change in temperature suggests that there's leachate that's intruded. Yes. Sometimes you can see the leachate seeping up through the ground. Yeah, that's gross. And that means that you need to address an issue. It looks like the Beverly Hillbillies thing where Jed shot and missed that rabbit, and instead oil comes up. That's what leech kind of looks like. Yes. Bubbles up. But you have to keep an eye on this place for decades and decades and decades. Yeah, I think they sit in here, like 30 years. It needs to be maintained and monitored. Yeah. At least. I think that's definitely in the loan. So we'll talk a little more about operating a landfill and how to, well, I guess alternatives. Landfills is the way to put it. Yes. Right after this. So, Chuck, let's say you are Tommy landfill, and you want to fulfill your birthright and open your own landfill. Tommy landfill. And you got everything all set. You got the municipal bonds, old man what was it? Mcsabish. McBaine. Something like that. McLane. McLane. He's been shouted down. You got the place open. How are you going to operate it day to day? Well, what you're going to do is it's going to be open to a couple of different things. It's going to be open to the municipality that collects the trash. Of course. Sure. It's going to be open to demolition companies, construction companies, and many of them, including the one I go to, is open to you and me. Okay. So let's say I'm doing work on my house, which I've done. Yes. And I end up with a bunch of junk in the back of my pickup truck. It's called construction waste. Yes. Construction debris, which I try and reuse as much as I can. But you still end up with construction debris. Didn't we do, like, a green renovation episode once? Yeah, I think so. Okay. And I will drive my truck out there to the landfill into Cab County, and I will drive up onto a platform. It's the very first thing you do? It's a waste station. Does it make you go up on two wheels and then you drive through the landfills? You drive up on the waste station and they weigh your truck or your car or whatever full of trash. You go dump it. There's going to be various stations. There's like a recycling station here's where yard waste goes. Kissing booth. Kissing booth. There's a dunk tank, the traditional infillite Catholic school carnival, the one in the Cap County. There's actually free mulch and compost if you want to pick up stuff, which is kind of neat. But then eventually you'll be directed to, here is your dump. And I pull up my truck and dump it in a big dumpster, and that dumpster is then taken to the cell, I imagine. I don't follow the route, but that's what's supposed to happen. Does it make that Bugs Bunny conveyor belt song? Yeah, someone wrote in and had a bunch of song was Powerhouse. Yeah, powerhouse. If you look up power, is that the one that you were thinking? Yes, totally. Okay. I can't remember the composer's name, but it was the 20th century composer. I think it was old man. It was something. McLean something quintet. Yeah, I can't remember the guy's name, but anyway, look up to Something, something Quintet, Powerhouse. And then I think it starts about almost a minute and a half in. You'll be like, yeah, that's it. You know what I'm talking about. Yeah, absolutely. When I heard it, it was unmistakably looney tunes. So I dump all my garbage, and then I drive back out onto another platform, and then they reweigh my truck. They do the math. And when they weigh it, they charge you a tipping fee, which is usually a per ton amount, right? Yeah. And so it's not that much money. Like, I'll have a truck full of junk, go dump it. And then it's like ten or $12. Got you. And of course, it depends on how heavy the junk is. Right. But in my case, it was always light wood and stuff like that that I couldn't reuse nails. So that's basically everything we just described as a dry tomb landfill, right? That's right. But as companies like Waste Management and local municipalities have figured out, like, hey, there's actually money in this rotting garbage, they've been looking into ways to get more methane out of it. And what they figured out is that you don't want a dry tomb. You want a kind of a little wet tomb. 35% moisture. Yeah. I was really surprised that this isn't how it's done by now, because they said it could take decades in a dry tune to break down. Can take just a few years. If you just add a little water, just a little bit of water. Like there's already about ten to 15% moisture in a dry tomb. No matter how much you try to keep it out, there's going to be about 10%. They figured out that if you add another 2020 5% water, you're going to greatly increase anaerobic decomposition. Yeah. And it can be leached. It's not like they have spring water. Exactly. It can be that stormwater you're collecting. It can be leachate. It can be gas condensation from the gas that's coming off. Basically, what you're doing is you're speeding up that anaerobic decomposition that's already going on. So these things are breaking down. The organic stuff, the banana peels and the grass clippings and all that stuff that's already in there, they're not breaking down the styrofoam, at least not very quickly. So that stuff is still going to be left behind. But that's kind of that barrier and walk away mentality as well. Still. Right. But at least the density of your landfill is going to increase tremendously as all that other stuff decomposes. And you're going to have the added benefit of a lot more methane production. Yeah. And a lot more methane and a lot shorter time span. What they've had to do, because this is basically accelerated production, is create collection systems that can handle they can't just throw the old methane collection system in there that's used to collecting slowly but surely. Right. They have to do something. Collect a lot and a little bit of time. Yeah. Because they used to collect the methane in that they would harvest it and then burn it. Which sounds horrible because you're just releasing all that stuff into the atmosphere. But it's better than just vending it. Sure. Just venting methane. Methane is much more potent greenhouse gas than even, like, CO2. Like, by far. You don't want to just vent that stuff, so you burn it off. But even better is if you're going to burn it, at least use it to power stuff. So by adding just a little bit of water, you can accelerate the anaerobic decomposition. And since the anaerobic decomposition is what makes the landfill like a moving, living, evolving pile, once that's done, in ten years, you've got all the methane you're going to get from it. The things aren't going to settle anymore, and you can walk away without monitoring it for the next 50 years. Yes. So the bioreactor model seems like far and away the wave of the future, right? For sure. I guess it's just a matter of building more of them. Yes. We got a couple of more things here before we close. For sure. This is very interesting. One neato thing that I didn't know. I think I knew about Giant Stadium, but I didn't know that. I just heard Jimmy Hoffa was buried there. Well, you might have just been in the landfill, right? Yeah. Apparently some sports arenas like Kaminsky in Chicago, mile High Stadium in Denver, giant Stadium in New Jersey, built on landfills because they're cheap land. Yes. And some speculation that it might give athletes cancer. Yeah. Apparently there are a lot of Giants players or several that came down with cancer. That one of the linebackers, Harry Carson, told the New York Times It makes you wonder what's going on around here. Referencing the fact that it was built on an old landfill. And apparently there was a game at kaminsky park in Chicago where there was, I think, a short stop, ran into a piece of metal sticking up from the diamond and started kicking away at it and realized it was getting bigger and bigger. And the grounds crew came out and investigated and it was Jimmy Hoffa. It was a copper kettle from the landfill that had moved its way up. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. So they had to dig it up and then refill it. Unbelievable. I'm sure that was a lovely break for the fans. Yes. Cause sit around for so fast moving that they needed they needed a breather. I read an article on slate called go west garbage can exclamation point. And the main gist of it is, when are we going to run out of space? It's a great question. You can't keep bearing trash. Right. Apparently you can, because what they're doing now is there are fewer landfills than ever before. They're making these huge landfills. Yeah. In 1986, there were close to 7700 dumps in the US. By 2009, there were just under 2075% decline in less than 25 years. And so essentially what they're creating are these super landfills, which is kind of cool. Fewer landfills. Right. But what's the problem? Do you know? Stinkier landfills. What the problem is, you're now trucking garbage sometimes 500 miles away to dump in the landfill because your state may not even have one. So then they're looking at how much CO2 is used to do that. Is it really greener to have fewer landfills and truck your garbage on a train or in a truck every day? Right. And they basically said they don't really know. Go back to burning every day. Yes. Which is more environmentally friendly in different states. Apparently there's a lot of money in it. Different states have way more room than others. And then some states don't even want that stuff. Of course, in the northeast, Massachusetts, they're like, we don't want landfills in our state. Right. Rhode island, same way. So they send it to Springfield. They send it to Kentucky. Well, no, remember the commissioner episode? He accepted other states waste. Yeah. That's exactly what's happening. Right. Let me see. Arkansas has enough capacity for more than 600 years of trash without any more facilities being opened. There you go. We'll just send it all to Arkansas. Whereas Rhode Island only has twelve years remaining. New York state only has 25 years of capacity left. Send it to Arkansas. So that's what they're doing. Kentucky is $29 per ton, making about $6 billion a year. Ohio, $21 billion a year of available landfill space. Because Ohio knows how to negotiate. That's right. The buckeye state. That's right. Don't tread on me. Wait. That's New Hampshire. The Tea Party. I think it's either new Hampshire, Vermont, one of those. No, new Hampshires. Live for your die. Right. They make their inmates make those license plates. Yeah. Don't tread on me. Wasn't a state model. I think that was just a flag with a cut up snake. Right? That the Tea Party adopted member. Did they adopt that? Yes. If you see a bumper sticker with one of those flags on it, they're not just like a history buff or anything. Yeah. Or if it says who was John Gault? Yeah. That'll tell you something about the driver of that vehicle. Was that a Tom Cruise movie? No. John Gault was the main character in Atlas Shrugged. Oh, yeah. Iran. I'm thinking of Jack Reacher. If you want to know more about landfills, you can type that word into the search barhowtworks.com. And I said, search bar. So it's time for listener mail call this very sad email. Okay. But uplifting at the same time. That's good. Hey, guys. Two weeks ago, my amazing and wonderful father in law Walter passed away. We had to drop everything, my husband and son and I, and fly from Florida to Germany where he lived. He's been in my world for 24 my 50 years and I was so sad. I felt like I was going to throw up all the time. When we arrived in Germany, walking through the front door of the family home without him there was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. It was and is devastating. My husband and youngest son and I sat in a dark days for days mixed with crying and feeling lost. I always listen to podcasts while I run now, which I do every day. And after ten days of being there in Germany, I finally decided to queue up one of your podcasts while running. It was Blood Types. I laughed the first time in two weeks out loud, guys. It was so nice to laugh again and it really opened the door for me. I realized that we as a family are going through is so tough. But I also started to realize that if I could laugh, then I could heal. Yesterday, my husband and I, still in Germany, decided to go to walk to the nursing home where my aunt lives, which is two and a half hours through the forest, up and down hills. I love this family, by the way. Yes, walking to the nursing home like that. We of course brought our 13 year old son Oliver, who is moaning after about 20 minutes of walking. I handed him my phone and he listened to three stuff you should Know podcasts along the way and is now hooked. He loves you guys. My husband and I had a badly needed quiet get in touch with nature walk. As a result, we didn't have to listen to our son moan at all. More long walks are in his future as long as I have you guys on my phone. And Oliver also asked me along the walk. Wait a minute, mom, these guys get paid to do this? When I said yes, I saw a sparkle in his eye. I love this email. Boom. That is from Jennifer and Jennifer that is awesome. Those mean the most to us. Yeah, I mean that's a great top notch email. Great email. And there was more to it even. I had to leave out some of it for link. Jennifer, right? Jennifer and Oliver her son and she doesn't need it. Anonymous husband. Anonymous husband. Yeah. Thanks a lot Jennifer. We appreciate you letting us know that that's again, great email. And if you out there want to let us know how we've helped you or hindered you or even woken you up from a deep sleep, if you're French, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffychnow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at how stuff works.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyouw.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com." | ||
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-07-04-sysk-stoicism-final.mp3 | What exactly is stoicism? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/what-exactly-is-stoicism | The word stoic has taken on its own meaning apart from the philosophical movement which gave it life. Learn all about the early stoics, what the philosophy is all about and where the movement stands today. | The word stoic has taken on its own meaning apart from the philosophical movement which gave it life. Learn all about the early stoics, what the philosophy is all about and where the movement stands today. | Tue, 04 Jul 2017 13:00:04 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=4, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=4, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=185, tm_isdst=0) | 55278104 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody. It's us, Josh and Chuck. And we want you to know we are coming somewhere near you, we're sure, if you live in North America this year. That's right. We're going on tour. And why don't we just rattle through these dates? Toronto, august 8 at the Dan Fourth Music Hall. Chicago, August 9. The next day at Harris Theatre. Then we are taking some time off to recover after that two day grind. We're hitting Vancouver. The Vogue Theater, September 26, followed by Minneapolis. We're going to be at the Pantageous Theater again on September 27. That is correct. Yes. And then Austin Chuck on October 10 at the Paramount Theater yes. And very special show in Lawrence, Kansas, at Liberty Hall on October 11. Yes. And then we're going to do a three night stand, october 22, 23rd and 24th at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn, New York. And then, Chuck, take it home. Well, take it home literally, because we are finishing up November 4 right here in Atlanta, the Bucket Theater. And this is a very special benefit show, and all the proceeds will be going to Lifeline Animal Project of Atlanta and the National Down Syndrome Society. Yes, and for more information and to buy tickets, just go to sysklive.com welcome to Stuff You Should Know from Housetuffworks.com. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W, Chuck Bryant, guest producer. Noel jerry's been out a lot lately, Chuck. Have you noticed? No, I haven't really. Of course, Jerry's got big life things going on. She does. Buying and selling houses. She's like a real estate mogul, visiting the mall, doing all sorts of stuff. We're just a couple of deep thinkers hanging out on the Stowa. Yeah. Specifically what is it? This. Did you practice the word this pronunciation at all? I tried to pronounce a lot of this, but ancient Greek, you know the phrase, it's all Greek to me, it comes from not being able to pronounce these things quite literal. The Stoa. I think that's probably pretty close, man. So can I start this with a couple of quick thoughts? Sure. First of all, I took four different philosophy quizzes before we recorded. Like, what kind of philosophy do you subscribe to? Type quiz? Yeah. The ones that are super accurate. Right. Because they can figure that out in eight to 15 questions. Sure. And then you can move on and find out what muppet you are. So here's my results. Here for the first one. That was epicurian. Okay. The second one existentialism. All right. Third one, atheist existentialist. And the fourth, nietzsche. Stoic. Nietzsche was a huge critic of Stoicism. I'm surprised they put those two together. Well, that is Chuck, though. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. You're contradiction in terms. You're yin and yang. Well, I am. The reason why I took these is because when I was doing the research on Stoicism, I found myself a lot of times going, yeah, totally. And then a lot of times going, no, that's really not me. Same here. Same here. And I think even the Stoics from back in the day realized that there were very few actual, what they called sages walking around stoic sages who really fulfilled every aspect of this to a T. Yeah. I think one of the reasons why Stoicism today is making a comeback and it's so appealing is because there's two reasons. One, more than kind of a naval gazing type philosophy where you're trying to figure out the nature of existence or something like that. It's more a blueprint for existing day to day in a useful, happy way. Sure. And then secondly, you can kind of pick and choose. It's almost like a buffet. You can pick and choose what aspects of it you want to adopt or use, and no Greek ghost is going to come along and spear you in the face with the trident. Right. Besides punch. First of all, the age of reason fascinates me to no end. And second, I kind of wanted to cover some of the great philosophies of all time. That sounds like a good start. Well, it is, but it's just kind of daunting because people spend like that's their life's work. And for us to try and summarize any of them in 30 to 45 minutes is kind of like, I don't know what philosophy you would liken that to foolishism. Yeah. Duncan, that's what we do. Well, how about this? If this one goes well, maybe we'll take it as a sign that we can tackle some other ones. But you're absolutely right. Even just like, say, the Internet encyclopedia philosophy, which is meant, you know, it's sharp and it's detailed and it's exhaustive, but it's also clearly meant for lay people interested in philosophy. Right. It's just Stoicism is so involved that it's not possible for us to really capture all of it, even in an overview or just hitting the highlights. We can't possibly hit all the highlights. There's just too much to it. And that's just Stoicism. I still say it's worth talking about, though, just because it's so interesting. So if I get up in the middle, you're going to pull me back. I'll just keep going. Well, I like the Urban dictionary definition. Yeah. Stoic is someone who does not give a beep about the stupid things in this world that most people care so much about. Stoics do have emotions, but only for the things in this world that really matter. They are the most real people alive. And then in their little example is a group of kids sitting by the porch. Stoic walks by. One kid says something very mean, hey, you're a blankety blank and you blank blank. The stoic says, Good for you, and keeps going. Right. So part of me really like, I hear that and I'm like, man, I am so that person on so many levels. But then sometimes I'm totally not and I think what the differences are. What matters is well, it depends on if they say something that matters to you or if something does matter to you. Like, I might get really riled up about some stuff. Right. That would make you not stoic. That doesn't rile anyone else up, but also some things that really make other people I rate. I'm just like, man can't change it. It is what it is, and I only can get upset about the things I can change. Yeah. If you could apply that to everything, you'd be pretty high up there in the stoic pantheon. I'd be a Stoic five star general. Pretty much five finger punch guy. All right, so we beat around the bush. I mean, that was a pretty good definition, actually, even though it was from the Urban Dictionary. We should say we picked that one up from an Aon article. Why Stoicism Is One of the Best Mind Hacks Ever Devised. Yeah, it was a good one by Larry Wallace. Yeah, you did a good job kind of giving an overview of the whole thing. I think Larry Wallace is one of the great modern stoicists. Maybe there's plenty of them running around these days. Yeah. But we'll go back in time and study the beginnings of Stoicism because we're talking about, like you hear the word stoic today, right. And it means it was taken from this. But it's kind of someone like sort of a grim face. Stoic doesn't say much. And that's not what Stoicism and they say in our article several times with a capital S really is all about. Right. Yeah. These days, people typically, or I should say these days up to about three years ago, people thought of stoics as somebody who could watch their dog get hit by a car and their reaction was to raise their chin a little higher up in the air. Like, just grin and bear it, as Larry put it. I'm on a first name basis with Larry Wallace. That is a philosophy of grim endurance tolerating, rather than transcending life's agonies and adversities. Just kind of just taking hit after hit from life as it deals them to you. Right. Yeah. That was the idea of stoicism. It's not like that's just radically unlike actual Stoicism, but it's an outsider's interpretation of what the stoics are actually doing, what's actually going on, the purpose of the whole thing that outsiders view that doesn't really fully understand. It became the popular view until recently. Until it started to kind of gain some traction lately. Yeah. And throughout the years, stoicism has informed some religions these days are a lot of atheists. They're stoics. But I like how our article says it. Above all, it teaches the value of emotional control and living one's life fully. Yeah. So here's the basis of it. The basis of it is if you can detach yourself from emotional responses to things, then something that comes along whether good or bad is not going to get your goat. Right. Stoicism is all about protecting your goat and not letting anything get it. And the way that they do that is by saying, there are very few things that I can control in life and everything that I can't control. I'm not going to get riled up over lose my job. Well, it happens. It doesn't mean I'm any less of a person. I just need to go out and get another job. Dog gets hit by a car, well, that's really awful because I really like that dog, but I'll just go get another dog. Or maybe I'll just learn to live without the dog. Maybe I was becoming too attached to the dog, things like that. That's Stoicism. But the whole point of it is it's not just to get your goat or to protect your goat from being gotten. It's about living a moral life where you're a very good human being. And the idea is that the only way to really do that is through things like rationalism and investigating the universe and being understanding of knowledge and then pursuing ethics, specific ethics. And they figured out the best way to do that is dispassionately. Yeah. I think my bumper sticker would say, onboard colon, part time Stoicis, full time dreamer. Okay, that is a specific yeah, right. Bumper sticker. I used to have a lot of bumper stickers in high school, and now I loathe them so much. Really? What did you have? I had an old Volkswagen Beetle my family actually bought brand new in 1068 and was passed down from kid to kid to kid. The air lube. It was it was very cool. I saw it at the time. Well, it is cool. I love those old beetles. But I just went through all those phases where I was like, here's a Native American thing, and here's something about Mother Nature. And Bob Marley had this to say. Yeah, I was one of those. And now I see those cars with all the things, and I'm just like, shut up. Nobody cares. Maybe I'm an oily rat. Yeah, for sure. Did you have a 311 sticker? No, this is pre 311, actually. Okay. Got you. So did your mom come out and be like, what did you do to the family heirloom? You put stickers all over? No. It's funny. That car had the rear floorboard was missing on one side. My dad had a car like that in Malibu, so you could see the street there. Now that I look back, he didn't even have a piece of wood. Now that I look back, I'm like, that was extraordinarily irresponsible to be driving around with kids in the backseat with the street visible. Yeah. I love that. Your dad just like, watch your feet, kids. Yeah, easy does it. All right, so you want to go back and talk about the history a little bit? No, I want to keep beating around the bus. All right, let's get in the wayback machine. And we need to really juice it up because we're going way back. Got some kerosene, got some banana peel, and got some airplane glue. But that's just for us. That's right, because it's a long ride. Yeah. Ancient Greece is where we're headed to the time of the great philosophers. And as we said earlier, sitting here on the Stowa, that was a joke, but it wasn't. And you said stoa. Are you going to try it again? The Stoa poikilee. Yes. Or painted porch is what it means. And that was a public space in Athens, Greece. There's, like a portico yeah. Where people would hang out and talk and chew the fat. And that's what I love about this time, was people, they were just alive with ideas, these philosophical ideas of trying to figure it all out. Yeah. But don't you think everyone telling you, just be like, everybody shut up. I got to just live, I got to do something useful. Yeah. Play it to sound. Yeah. No, but I agree with you. Overall, it was a pretty thrilling time. Did you take philosophy in college at all? No, I didn't. I really did not. I don't think I took a single philosophy class, now that I think about it. Not even a survey. I took the one kind of general class. I guess it was the one on one, and I actually made an A, which I didn't make a ton of as in college. And I remember at the time kind of the same thing about half the class, I was like, man, so fascinating. And then the other half, I was just like, oh, man, what a waste of time. Do something useful. Go volunteer for a charity, go make something out of wood, anything. All right, so back to the Stowa. We're on this painted porch, this portico, as it were. Yeah. People are everywhere, running their mouths about what they think is important, and then this dude wanders up, Xeno of sidium yeah. Who had recently been shipwrecked. And there are other Xenos, not to be confused. I know that is confusing. There should be one Xeno in all of history. There were Xenos of other things. But this is Zeno of Citium. You're right. He was shipwrecked and he was wandering around after a trip from Cyprus. Did you say we're in Athens. Oh, yeah. Not Georgia. No. Although we did our fair share of sitting around on porches talking nonsense there as well. But that's a porch porch. Yeah. Not a Greek porch. And so Xeno took a little bit of insight from the Cynics and then eventually said, you know what? I could kind of forming my own thoughts here, and I think everyone else is doing it. I have my own philosophy. And it's called Stoicism. Yeah. Named after later. I don't think he called it that. I'm not sure. He probably called it Xeno ism they're like, yeah, it sucks. We're going to call it Stoicism after the porch. But this is like the Stoicism very quickly became one of the big philosophies at the time, and it rivaled some of the philosophies that it grew out of, like Socratic philosophy, and like you said, Cynicism. The Cynics, sure. And actually, if you look at Stoicism, it's kind of a compromise between Socrates or Socrates, as Bill and Ted call them, philosophy, which was that to lead a good life. And this is the point of all of the philosophies at this time, during this age of reason, was achieving what was called you dymonia. And you dymonia is a life worth living. It's thriving, it's flourishing, it's being happy, like real happiness. Right. That was the pursuit of all of these different ideas that were floating around at the time, was how to achieve that. Socrates had the idea that you achieved that through like, twelve cardinal virtues, and some of them were things you could cultivate in yourself, like courage, a sense of justice, that kind of stuff. But then there are other ones, too, that had everything to do with luck. Like being good looking was one of them, right? Yeah. If you weren't good looking, if you were ugly, sorry, buddy, you could never achieve you daimonia. Right? Yeah. On the other end of the spectrum were the Cynics, and the Cynics believed that earthly trappings like wealth and fame and glory, anything like that, was the path to ruin, and that the true path to Udimonia was living simply and living in poverty. And so Xeno comes along and hears all these, and as he's formulating his own ideas, he's like, Socrates makes some sense over here, and so do the Cynics a little bit, but I'm going to put them together. And that's where Stoicism came from. It was a compromise between the two, where you live a life of pursuing you daimonia through these virtues. Four virtues, I think there's justice, courage, wisdom, and then temperance. Right. So you're practicing those four virtues, so that's kind of a nod to Socrates. And you don't have to live in poverty. You can be wealthy because the Stoicism is anything. It's wealthy people who got into philosophy that weren't quite sure how to feel about being wealthy, to say, to kind of come to the point that having money is not a bad thing. Right. What they came up with was, sure, you can be wealthy, and that's okay. You can prefer to be wealthy, but you just can't be attached to it. You can't desire to be wealthy because you can't control being wealthy. And if you pursue being wealthy, you're pursuing something beyond your control. So if you just happen to be wealthy, that's great. You can be happy with it, but also be prepared to lose it at any given time. And that's a big part of Stoicism. Yeah. I think it's so funny though, to think about thousands of years ago in ancient Greece, they spent so much time thinking about living this all these schools have thought of living this life, so putting so much thought into living life to its fullest and all the different ways that they defined it. And eventually, over the years, as recently as the generation of our parents and grandparents in the United States, the philosophy of life was, like, you just go to work and you work hard until you die, and that's the only thing that matters. Exactly. Like, all that other stuff is garbage. Yeah. Well, I think that's one of the reasons why Stoicism is becoming appealing again is this idea that work seems to be kind of going through a weird transformation, doesn't it? Yeah, it's not like that anymore. That ethic is still around, for sure. But how many people do you know work from home? Like, almost entirely? A lot. A lot. And that's fairly new. So I wonder if this changing work dynamic is leading to this resurgence and Stoicism that you can find happiness through other stuff. Part of me thinks this is all, like, super worthwhile, and part of me thinks it's sort of indulgent and a bit like you said, navelgazi, and just start practicing good things instead of sitting around thinking about the best way to live life? Well, we'll talk about criticisms of them later on, but I think you hit a big one, though, Chuck, was the idea that it's self indulgent because it demands introspection almost every moment of every day? Yeah. You want to take a break and then get back to it? Yeah, I got to get my head together. Where's the airplane glue? All right. Nothing like airplane glue to get your head back on straight. Just kidding. Of course, everyone sure, we're smart guys. We don't do that kind of thing. No, it's pretty tough to be smart and tough. Model airplane glue. Yeah, you're pretty much making a choice between that and being smart. That's what they teach you early on. Yeah. You want to go somewhere in life, you want to huff airplane glue. It's the one thing Nancy Reagan didn't lie about. All right, so Xeno got things going. Peace of mind that comes with living a life of virtue in accordance with reason and nature. And then other dudes got on boards and of course, got on boards, got on board, and they were all dudes back then because everything was from the man's perspective. I just want to point that out. Yeah. Because it's changed so dramatically since then. But some of the other early Stoicist clients cato. Cato the younger or elder? Younger. Right. Cato the caitlin. I forgot about him. I'm not sure which cato. I think it's the younger. Yes. We'll find out from two people who email in to let us know. Seneca and then a very important Stoicist. Well, I'm going to pronounce it epictectus. Sounds like a vaccine shot. It does. E-P-I-C-T-E-T-U-S. It's that C going into a t that's getting you I think it's just Epictetus. Or Epictetus. I think Epictetus is what we should go with. I want another C in there. I want it to be Epotectus. But it's not. No, it's not Epictetus. All right. Don't forget Marcus aurelius man oh, well, sure. He comes a little bit later. He was the ruler infant, man. What is my problem today? It's okay, man. Everyone knew what you meant. He was the philosopher king. And that was when Stoicism was kind of the most popular thing going. Yeah. Apparently, they moved from Athens to Rome, which I didn't realize this I always had the idea that Rome Venerated, Hellenistic Greece, hundreds of years after basically the Greek civilization had just kind of gone into a bit of a twilight or had gone out of its heyday. Right. No, there was total cross pollination, including some of these early Stoics who traveled from Athens to Rome, and basically, with that move, transferred the seed of philosophy from Athens to Rome, from Greek from Greece to Rome. I didn't realize that they were actually, like, cross pollinating one another at the time. Did you know that? I think I recalled that from deep in my college memory banks. Nice. So Epitites, man, he had a big role in the Stoic movement. He was a former slave, which kind of makes sense in terms of Stoicism. He almost single handedly gives credence to Stoicism because so many other Stoics were extraordinarily wealthy, powerful men. Sure that it's like yeah, it's pretty easy for you to go through life saying, just take what life gives you if life is giving you nothing but goal bullying all the time. Right. This guy was born a slave, crippled in the knee for life, and became a Stoic, one of the great Stoic thinkers, and just through his life proved that stoicism can work. Yeah. And he wrote a handbook at the time was called An Incorridion. And he wrote the incorridion of epic. Tetas encryption literally means handbook. It means ready at hand. So it was a very famous handbook. And he attributed I mean, the first line of it was, some things are in our control and others not. Right. And that kind of sums it all up. Like, he could have said the end, but he decided to dive a little deeper. I agree with you. I think our brand of Stoicism has about the same contours, because right there, that's everything you need to know right there is some things you can control. Most things you can't control. There you go. Don't get too high, too low. Right. Don't get too mad about something. Well, ultimately, I think that's what it boils down to. I don't really find much of a problem when people are overjoyed. I don't think that's an issue. And technically, with Stoicism, that's a problem. You should not become overjoyed. Experiencing joy is fine, sure. But just being overcome with happiness or joy or grief or whatever it is, you're violating one of those four cardinal virtues, temperance, which is just being tempered and even keeled. Right. But I think if you're saying, don't get upset about something that's out of your control, don't blame others, don't try to control other people. Just know that whatever comes, you can handle it. There you go. That's all you need to know. For me. Yeah. How many times have you heard me say, it is what it is? Which is an annoying thing to hear and say, but it's pretty stoic. Well, it is, but it's also, in my case, like, it is what it is until it isn't. It just matters if I personally riled up about something. Yeah, but I think again, though, it's like there's probably some people who subscribe to at least modern Stoicism listening to this, and I would guess that they would say that's because stoicism is basically meant to apply to every day of your life. Like, no, stoics are really expected to become sages in their lifetimes. Right. That it's something you just do every single day and try to not get riled up. But of course something's going to come along and get you riled up. That's just human nature. Stoicism is trying to put a bridle on that. Human nature. Yeah. Well, and this is insider stuff. I think you and I complement each other because we rarely get worked up about the same thing. Just voter suppression. No, it happens here and there, but just in our personal lives and everything to do with work. Oftentimes I've noticed, like, something that will rile me up, you're calming me down, and the other way around. And I think that's one reason we've lasted so long. Two people were so similar that they're constantly worked up about the same stuff. You're just going to be working each other up and no one's going to be there to say, hey, man, it is what it is. Yeah, man. Hey, Melody, here's the Bob Marley bumpers. Exactly. So should we talk a little bit about the areas of study? Yeah. All right. Well, there are three main ones, and Stoicism, and this is all to deal with introspection, which is kind of like all philosophies. Physics is the first thing, and it's not physics like you think of that you hate studying in high school. Well, it falls under a larger umbrella term, I guess. Yeah. They're talking about the natural world, the natural universe, and also what lies beyond it. And when they say the natural world, they're talking about everything god, the divine, nature, everything that we know and things that we don't know. Yeah. Everything we would view as science or like you said, nature. Yeah. All that stuff. That's physics and all of it. One of the things the Stoics, I think, if they weren't the first to come up with it. They definitely popularized it, was the idea that all of this was interconnected. Yeah, which is pretty I mean, you take it for granted today. Like, everybody thinks that everything is interconnected these days, but to be among the first to kind of point that out or suggest that, it's pretty significant contribution to Western thought. Yeah, I imagine that was a pretty deep thing when it first started hitting people. Can you just see George Carlin being like, oh, because he was Socrates, man. Wait, no, he wasn't. So crates. He was the guy the spirit of what was his name? We'll just edit this part out. I didn't know I had to brush up on my bill and dead. I didn't either. I surprised myself. You should have seen my face. You know, they kept talking about remakes as recently as a couple of years ago, I think. Or not remakes, but sequels with the original. Oh, yeah. Keanu Reeves was like, man, I love those movies. I'd love to make another one. So was Keanu Reeves bill or Ted? Why are we even doing this to ourselves? Boy, I want to say he was Ted. So the guy who played the other guy yeah, alex Winter. Oh, jeez. Wow. Nice job. So Alex Winter was in what was the Charles Bronson vehicle? Like his most favorite death Wish Three was what he was in, which was when Golan Globus got their hands on it and turned it into, like, a schlock, violent, like, almost post apocalyptic movie. And he's great in it, but he's also in a documentary on Golden Globus. I can't remember what the name of the documentary is, but it's just about how bad the movies they made were and how gleefully these guys made them. But he's interviewed in it. That guy has aged a day. No, he looks exactly Bill. Okay, so he's Bill. Yeah. All right, so we got that settled. Physics is done. What's next? Logic. Which they wanted to include social sciences, psychology, sociology, history, which I kind of like. I'm down with that. As far as the philosophies go, they want to include all this stuff, but collectively, they kind of called this all reason. It was a very big deal to Stoicism. Perhaps the biggest deal. Right. And they also were engaged in epistemology, which is theories of what knowledge is, how we gain knowledge, what's true, what's belief, what's false, how do we differentiate between these things? And they spend a lot of time investigating this and putting it all under logic, because it was through logic that you could investigate physics, which included investigating God and the nature of the universe and stuff like that. And then through all that investigation, the introspection, that navel gazing, you were ultimately figuring out how to best pursue and best live out the third part, which was the ethics of the whole thing. Yeah. And you mentioned the four great virtues. Earlier courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance. And the whole idea here is it's not like you want to block out the bad and only embrace the good. You want to consider both the good and the bad, but just don't let any of it get in the way of anything that you're trying to pursue in your life. Right. Pretty simple. Yeah. And the whole good bad thing, where did you find this thing on ethics? That was the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy from their entry on it. Yeah, it's pretty good. The whole thing was, dude, you should have seen how in depth they go, though. But I thought this one was a good snippet. Wow. Sure. Yeah, they dive pretty deep. But I thought this is a pretty good little summation they're talking about. Like you said, money isn't just not good or aka bad things like this. They called indifference, as in indifferents. Right. Not indifference. And it's like not good or bad. It could be either one. It's really kind of all about not letting something like that get in the way of your pursuit. Right. And again, it went back to wealth. Right. And this person in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy points out that money definitely being wealthy usually is helpful or beneficial to the individual. Sure. But it can also not be beneficial, where, say, you have a big heroin problem. Well, the more money you get, the more money you're going to spend on heroin. So in that case, being wealthy is detrimental to you. Not beneficial. Right. And for something to be a good, it has to be good under all circumstances. And to a Stoic, there are only four things that are good under all circumstances, which are those four cardinal virtues. Right. Everything else, like you said, is an indifferent, and it can either be preferred or disprferred. Like, wealth typically would fall under being a preferred indifferent, whereas, say, disease, having chronic disease would be a disappoint independent of man. That's tough, though. It is. But the point is, whether it's fabulous wealth or diabetes, they should affect you about the same. Or you might want one, you might not want to have one, but if you have either one, you can live with it. And that brings up a huge component of Stoicism that's really been blown up and exploded in the 21st century, which is you should take adversity and turn it into an opportunity for growth. That is a huge aspect of Stoicism that's really being practiced and espoused these days. Yeah, I'm down with that. I like being able to take from all these philosophies and different religions to form your sort of pathway through life. Sure. Like when I hear sometimes I've started to read about Buddhism, and the whole thing with Buddhism is like, every day you start a new and you have a new chance. Like, that really appeals to me too. Right. What I don't like is when either religions or philosophy, say, like, this is the only way, then everything else is BS. Sure, yeah. That's a harsh buzz kill. It really is. Not only is it BS, but I'm going to kill you for thinking otherwise. Yeah. So Seneca, who was one of the great thinkers of Stoicism, he was an advisor to Nero, and we'll talk about him as criticism of Stoicism later on, but he had a very famous quote where he says, you are unfortunate in my judgment, for you have never been unfortunate. You have passed through life with no antagonists to face you. No one will know what you are capable of, not even yourself. And that kind of shapes the basis of that idea that no matter what life throws at you, you take it and you say, I'm going to become a better person from this. Like, oh, this happened. Well, that's great, because that means that I can learn to be better at this. So my dog just got hit by a car. I'm going to practice fortitude and make it through this really hard time and become a stronger person on the other side. Yeah. He may as well have said, you trust fund kid comma. Sure. Right? Exactly. People turn that on Seneca as well. But a lot of modern Stoics come to his defense, is like, now that I had a harder life than you would think. Should we take another break? Yeah. All right, let's do it. We'll talk about Seneca and Cicero and all other kinds of weird names. So, Chuck, you were saying you were talking about religion. Buddhism apparently informed Christianity in a lot of ways, yes. And Buddhism in some ways, yes. Yet atheists embrace it. It's kind of weird that way. But I mean, the early Stokes were definitely they definitely believed in a divine intervention. It was kind of the basis of the whole thing that this is God's will, so why try to control it? Who are you to try to control it? Just roll with the punches. Yes. That's a big when I was taking all those philosophy quizzes, they're all a little bit different, but you saw through line, through a lot of these questions, and the free will one was in every single one of them. How do you feel about free will and different ways of asking it, but free will, what do you think? Exactly. If you want to find out which philosophy that you jive with, you have to answer the free will question. Free will question? Yeah. Hey, that's easier to say than just preferred indifferent. Nice work. One of the big points, especially today for practicing Stoicism is looking at adversity as an opportunity for growth. Right. That's just a good tool in life. In it another one. Really? This is where a big time diverge from Stoicism as part of a daily practice is something called negative visualization. Yeah. Like trying to imagine the worst case scenario constantly. Yeah. I'm not into that at all. No. So say you're at, like, your child's birthday party, right. And not you specifically. This is you just a general person, and you're having just the most intense moment of joy and appreciation for your child. According to Stoics. You should follow that up with a thought about how at your child's next doctor's appointment, your child could be diagnosed with terminal leukemia. But that is what you should be doing basically all the time, negative visualization. And the idea is it's two fold. One, you're preventing yourself from becoming overjoyed at that moment. Right. Don't do that. Yeah. And then secondly, you're exploring how you will feel if your kid does get diagnosed with something horrible or something bad happens. And when it actually happens, you'll say, that's not so bad, I'm already used to it. Or you'll be able to confront it through your imagination and say, this is what I'm afraid of. That's not that bad. But I mean, that's a really extreme, horrific example. Yeah. But it is ultimately, it's definitely in step with Stoicism that you should be visualizing the worst case scenario all the time. Yeah. And that's one of the reasons Stoicism has such a downer reputation, such that Cicero wrote a Stoic rouse enthusiasm, he is much more likely to extinguish any enthusiasm the student may have to begin with. Yeah, it was a pretty good burn. And I get that if that was one of the first things you learned if you started to poke around with Stoicism, 99% of people would probably be like, man, I don't like the sounds of that. Yeah. I like not having to control everything aspect, but the thinking about nothing but negative thoughts all the time. And I get the point of it. It doesn't appeal to me. No, I mean, you shouldn't be Pollyanna either. Well, no, it's in direct contradiction to the idea of the power of positive thinking. Right. Which is Stoic like, you fool, what are you doing? All you're doing is setting yourself up for nothing. But let downs when that doesn't actually come true. Well, but I also agree with that to a certain degree. You can conjure it up just by thinking positively. I think that's on the opposite side, equally BS. Sure. I think so, too. I'm kind of right down the middle, I guess, when it comes to that stuff, and I think most people are. But I think that's what's fascinating about this kind of thing is it's like, well, some people actually are to these degrees, these extremes. It's interesting to me. Well, yeah. And the other interesting thing is you're talking about Christianity, and then it's weird how Stoicism, on one hand, like atheist, I can totally see how they'd be down with Stoicism, but also the whole notion that some believers in God and some Christians, like, give it all up to God because only God can control anything. So all we're going to do is pray about it. And that's popular amongst Stokes as well. Right. So it's just interesting that it has such a wide range as far as from atheism to, like, serious give it up to God Christianity. Right? Yeah, definitely. It's that buffet thing again where people can come along and take what they want from it and it becomes part of their own philosophy or their own religion or whatever. Let's talk about some of the ways that it's been used over the years. Stoicism. Right, okay. So there have been a lot of people who have followed Stoic thought, like, Adam Smith apparently was very much informed by Stoicism when he wrote The Wealth of nations, because one of the big aspects of it was individual liberty. One cool thing about the early Stoics was that everybody is equal. Right. It doesn't matter whether you're man, woman, gay, straight, black, white, whatever, everyone is equal. And this is at a time when slavery was rampant. Right? Yeah. So that's a big aspect of the wealth of nations. Anybody can come along and become a capitalist. You just have to compete. Right. Another place that it popped up kind of famously was in cognitive behavioral therapy. Yeah. Which initially when I saw that, I was like that kind of surprised me. But then it all made sense. Right. Like exposure to something bad can help you get over it is kind of like that conjuring up the worst possible it's almost numbing yourself to the worst possible thing. If you think about that worst case scenario thing all the time, it's almost a way of preparing for that. Yeah. And it's rooted specifically, one of the founders of CBT, Albert Ellis, was an adherent of Stoicism as a younger man. And what's known as the cognitive model of emotion, which is the basis of cognitive behavioral therapy, is based on affected US. Maximum, that people are disturbed not by things, but by their view of things. And that's part of that whole Stoic philosophy, which is nothing is good or bad. There's only good in the four virtues. Everything else is how you view it, whether it's losing your job or winning the lottery. Those things aren't inherently good or bad. It's you the person experiencing that who bestows good or bad on them. Why label things? Sure, I'm down with that a little bit. Did you hear about Admiral Stockdale? Yes, I remember that name for sure. When he came out with his book Courage under Fire colon testing epithetus'doctrines in a laboratory of human behavior. In he was a famous prisoner of war in Vietnam for seven years, endured some of the worst of the worst that you can imagine in war. And what got him through was certainly not Christianity, because he thought that's nothing but false hope. Well, not only that, he shared the POW camp with people who clung to that and did not make it. Yeah, right up front. Right. So what got him through was his Stoic beliefs. Yeah, he was a huge big time adhering of Epictetus. He'd studied him in college. Apparently, he'd read everything that Epictetus had written or said that had been written down and attributed to Epictetus twice from two different translators. So this guy knew his Epictetus, and he said, well, I'm a prisoner of war in Vietnam. I've got some broken bones. I'm starving, I'm being mistreated. I'll be here for seven years. What a perfect opportunity to put Epictetus teachings to the test in a real life laboratory experiment. And he said Epictetus passed the flying colors. Was Stockdale's final report on it? Yeah. He said, if Epictetus lecture room was a hospital, my prison was a laboratory of human behavior. I chose to test his postulates against the demanding real life challenges of my laboratory. So, man, talk about a strong will. Like to be faced with that and be like, well, hey, this is a great chance to work on my philosophy of life. Exactly. What else am I going to do? But that follows in and of itself on the whole, too, of turning adversity into a room for growth as well. Yeah, man stronger than me, let's just say that. So you want to talk about some criticisms of Stoicism? Well, Cicero certainly thought it was a big downer. Yeah. He said well, you already said what he said, right? Yeah. It basically extinguishes enthusiasm in students. Not a good thing. Right. And then over the years, the fact that some of the great Stoic thinkers of all time have been super wealthy and powerful. Seneca Marcus Aurelius was the emperor of Rome. He basically ran the free world. I don't know if the free world right. The Western world for almost 20 years. Yeah. When you sit there and again, if you say yes, you can turn anything into any adversity into an opportunity. If you're super wealthy, you have to worry about where your food is going to come from. Like, yes, of course you can be a Stoic. And then Epictetus came along and, like we said, kind of erased all that to an extent, for sure. But it is still kind of criticized as, like, a wealthy person's philosophy, and it kind of smacks of that a little bit today. To Chuck. With its huge resurgence in Silicon Valley. Is that happening? Oh, yeah. Most of the Stoic revival is taking place there. That's where it's cradle is right now. Well, our own article has a couple of good points to talk about it not being as appealing because it lacks the mystique of Eastern practice. And then they also said this is also regarded as a philosophy of merely breaking even while remaining determinedly impassive. Yes. I don't know if that's entirely fair, but it's it kind of catches it a little bit. Well, yeah, because the very next sentence is, this attitude ignores the promise proffered by Stoicism of lasting transcendence. And that one article that you sent talked about the power of indifference. Right. Which I thought was interesting. It's not about just like not caring about anything. It's about caring about only the right things that you have the power to change. Yeah. And also, though, I also see that even keel aspect being indifferent, the power of it. I mean, think about how much time whenever you are super happy about something going right or super upset about something going wrong, ultimately you're being distracted from keeping on keeping on. Oh, yeah. And then you go back to eventually get back to that middle again, which is the baseline anyway. And so I guess what Stoics are doing is staying on that baseline and not being distracted so they can get further along faster or at a more steady pace. Yeah. I mean, there's definitely something that's really frustrating in life, which is when you look back and say, man, I've spent two days stressed and worried about something that I have no control over and what a waste of time that was when I could have done X, Y and Z. One of the big questions I have, it's not necessarily a criticism. I guess it depends on what the answer would be. But my big question for Stoicism, since it places so much emphasis on the individual and self exploration and introspection, how would a Stoic suggest enacting massive social change where something, some ill is happening to some large group of people, but nothing's going to change unless you go out of your own personal sphere and work to make others change. Right. How do you do that? Do you just say, well, whatever, it's God's will that these people suffer and be put down by the majority forever? Or is there some way that that can be addressed through the Stoic philosophy? I'm very curious. So anybody who knows that right hand, please. Yeah. Maybe that's why it appeals to Silicon Valley. Right. Well, that's the other thing too. Right. So it also very much smacks when you hear of it from like wealthy people espousing it to anybody. It smacks of that whole aspect of Christianity where a medieval peasant, you know how your life is terrible and you're going to live to 35 and all you do is work all the time and you give most of the spoils of your effort to your king. Well, there's such a thing as Christianity and your treasure is in the afterlife, so don't worry about this life. It's smack is the same thing where you can keep a population placated and not searching for larger social change by saying, hey, just focus on these four things and everything else. It just happens and you don't need to get worked up about it at all. It seems like a bit of a pacifier too. Yes. Depending on how you look at it. It's fascinating. Are we done with Stoicism? I'm finished with it. Okay. I think that was a good overview. I think so too. It's a good thought starter. If you want to know more about Stoicism. Bud, there's a lot more out there than this. Just dive in and see what it means to you. And again, it's a buffet. Take what you like. Leave what you don't want. Leave the kernel pudding behind. Correct. Take the perfectly garlic green beans. Yum. What else? Did I already say that one part. Oh. Since I said green beans, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this Beaglebrigade Police Dogs. People love that one. Man who doesn't love Beagles, beagles on Brigade on parade. No one. Even people who get busted with whole pigs still are like that. Beagle is adorable. So this dude, Eric Stove is a sandwicher, meaning he follows our advice, which is to listen to the newest episode as well as whatever from our back catalog. He chooses to yeah. He's doing it right. Yes. Hey, guys. I work in the sports and entertainment business in New York and after 911, you have bomb sniffing dogs, mostly German. Shepherds became standard operating procedure for all events. A few hours prior to a concert one night, the canine units were sweeping all the backstage areas and one of the bomb dogs hit on an employee locker. If you can imagine, it caused an immediate and serious response. A bomb squad was dispatched and that portion of the arena was evacuated. Plans were even made to cancel the show. He doesn't say what show, which I was very curious about. I'm going to say three doors down. Okay. After some very tense moments, the police officers opened the locker. Those guys are super brave. Thankfully, they didn't find a bomb, but did find drugs. An employee must have brought in an extra bump for the show. Oh, man. It was definitely three doors. Then you might be asking yourself, no, this wasn't the bands green room. This was an employee. Oh, I know. Three doors downs fans are among the most drug addled of all. Are they? Sure. I thought that was the jugglers. No, they put the jugglers. A shame. Jugglers take time off once in a while, you know what I mean? Yeah, that's true. You might be asking yourself, how does a bomb dog find drugs? As it turns out, the dog had failed out of drug school and was retrained as a bomb dog. Poor guy. That's hilarious, isn't it? Poor guy. Which one? The dog or the guy who just happened to run across the failed drug dog? Still remembered something. There are no winners here. I guess he didn't completely forget his drug training, though. And he set off a chain of events that scared the crap out of us. The story ends with the employee getting arrested. The show went on and the fans none the wiser. My guess is the dog was reassigned to crowd control. Just barking at people. Get back in line. Thanks for everything. You guys do, please let me know if you ever need anything in New York City. Is that a hint? We don't do drugs. Eric. Yeah, we're terrified of dogs. That is Eric Stover in New York. And I guess he's still in the sports and entertainment business. Yeah, he's like, you need some sports, come see me. I could use some sports. Thanks, Eric. That's a pretty great story, right? That's right. If you want to get in touch with us, like Eric did, you can hang out with me on Twitter. I'm at Josh Clark. We also have an official s y skodcast handle. You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook.com, Charleswchuck Bryant, orsteffysheno you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstepworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the Web stuffvichiono.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howtofworks.com summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good, it's criminal. Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. 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Who owns an abandoned house? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/who-owns-an-abandoned-house | Ever since the real estate bubble in the U.S. burst in 2008, American cities have had to deal with a substantial uptick in abandoned houses. Faced with hundreds of thousands more than usual, new questions have arisen pertaining to who owns a house the own | Ever since the real estate bubble in the U.S. burst in 2008, American cities have had to deal with a substantial uptick in abandoned houses. Faced with hundreds of thousands more than usual, new questions have arisen pertaining to who owns a house the own | Thu, 18 Jul 2013 14:52:42 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=18, tm_hour=14, tm_min=52, tm_sec=42, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=199, tm_isdst=0) | 27310786 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. My name is Josh Clark, and across from me is Charles, Debbie Chuck Bryant, and because of that is the two of us and Jerry, of course you have stuff you should Know. Okay. Yeah. Stop protesting us. A sweet little trifecta of people in here. All right. Two of my favorite people in this office two of my two favorite people thank you. Are in this office. Me and Jerry. You're doing all right? Yeah, man. I know for a fact that you're not because I have an abandoned house across for me. Do you really? Yeah. We're going to work in some personal details here. Well, that's good, man, because I feel like if there's anything personal in this world, it's an empty, unused house. Okay. Yeah. Especially one that's left in your neighborhood. Isn't that a big, like, fu to the rest of the people who live there? Yeah, I've actually got two side by side now. Oh, that's delightful. Yeah. That's great, ma'am. Because as you already understand and now I understand from researching this, and our listeners will soon understand, that's a real problem yeah, just one is a real problem. Two side by side. You may want to rent a bulldozer. Well, there may be a happy ending. Okay, good. We'll play it out dramatically over the course of the show. That's good, man. So we should probably set the stage for everybody. Okay. It's the early to mid 2000 suite. Yes. The first decade. Early to mid part of the first decade. I'm in Los Angeles. Yeah. Okay. And the real estate boom is in full swing. Everybody's forgotten about the.com bubble. What was that? That was a fluke. Let's start investing in real estate. We'll make it like 1920 Florida. And these prices sure do seem exorbitant, but, hey, I'm sure we'll make our money back. And this bubble just keeps growing and growing and growing, and people are buying, like, four, five, six houses. And I mean, like, people, not companies. Like, people who are just flipping it. Ice gets a show about flipping real estate, actually. Yeah. Okay. But still it came out of this, and this bubble is just growing and growing and growing. Then all of a sudden, it just pops, and it popped because everybody figured out that the prices for the houses were more than they were worth. Bubble had grown. It was artificial. There was an artificial market, and everybody just kind of walked away. Yeah. It was a truly fascinating it was things it was fascinating and scary, but also, it was like just to watch it. I mean, we watched it. We chronicled it largely. Yeah. So the bubble bursts, and there's a lot of people those speculators investors and ordinary people who took out terrible, terrible loans and overextended themselves, oftentimes at the hands of predators. There's a lot of people to blame. Sure. But there were a lot of houses that suddenly were not worth what they had been paid for. Yeah. Or house flippers that maybe said, my job, I kind of hate I can flip a house. People are getting rich doing this. Right. And not only that, access to credit is so easy right now. I can afford six of them and take this kind of Blighted area and fix these six houses up and just create a whole new neighborhood out of it. Yeah. And some of those people were left not with a single family that just got burned or burned themselves on one house. But I've got six or seven houses now that I'm underwater on, and I'm going to foreclose on all of them or maybe just leave. And that was an option that a lot of people took. Here's the thing. A lot of those people did this under the guise of LLCs. Sure. And so they didn't have to file for bankruptcy. Their LLC just had to go away. Yeah. Their liability was limited. Exactly. It was very limited. So there's a lot of people out there who just walked away from their houses. And those houses now this is 20 07 20 08 20 09 Those houses now are just sitting there, abandoned in cities all over the country. Of course, Detroit has it worse, but there's a lot of other cities that have it pretty bad, too. And actually, Detroit is kind of leading the way in figuring out what to do with these houses, because right now, they're sitting there. Even as the market recovers, the houses that are leftover that are abandoned are in really bad shape. Yeah. So they're the ones that aren't going anywhere ever. And now we all have to figure out, as a society what to do with these things. That's right. So who owns an abandoned house? Well, we'll get to that. Okay? I want some stats. All right. 2012, that's last year, 2.3 million homes were foreclosed on nationwide. Compare that to 2000. 470,000 homes were foreclosed on. So it's quite a jump. Yeah. It looks like things peaked in 2011 at about 3.9 million homes in that year. And now we're kind of back down to mid 2007 levels. And then I just pulled this today. Florida. And they do this, like, monthly, quarterly. Florida is in pretty bad shape right now. Yeah. Like, forget Detroit. They lead the country with one out of every 104 housing units in foreclosure in Florida. Oh, my gosh. Nevada is next at one in every 115. Illinois, one in every 147. Ohio, one in every 188. And then Georgia, one in every 200 housing units is being foreclosed on. Yeah. And Florida has, I think, four of the top five metropolitan areas in the country as well. For just for closeposed homes. Yeah. Miami is number one. Orlando, Ocala, Jacksonville, and then Las Vegas, right? Is number four. So Florida is a bad shape, although we are going to be talking about Detroit because this article talked about Detroit. Well, there's a big difference between and this is why Detroit comes up. Detroit probably has more empty houses, especially per capita, than any other city in the country, I think 80,000 businesses, factories, or homes right now. So what I saw most recently was something like 99,072 abandoned homes. Well, it probably depends on where you gauge that. Okay. And that's out of something like $370,000 in total. So something about like 36% of Detroit's residential spaces are empty. Abandoned, yeah. Vacant? Yeah. Like, remember the Silver Dome deal? No. Where the Detroit Lions played since 1975. It cost $55 million to build it. 1975, and it sold in 2009 for $583,000. No way. Yeah. What do they do with it? The dude is fixing it up, apparently. And they have had, like, a friendly soccer match there and a monster truck jam there, and he's reinvesting in it. That's good. The Silver Dome lives. Apparently. It's going to live, but the dude has a steel like, there was a $20 million deal that fell apart, and then this guy bought it for half a million bucks. He's just some dude. I'll bet he was Hawaiian shirt. Yeah. I don't know what he wears. I don't know. For that much money, I would turn it into, like, the biggest house, studio apartment. I bet you're a heating bill kill you every winter. Yeah, that's true. I just built small fires. The silver dumps where I saw my first rodeo. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, you could probably see a rodeo there again. Probably. Or just livestock kind of grazing inside. Okay, so hold on a minute there. I think it's time for a message break. And we're back. So we're talking about the vacant homes. Like, there's a big difference between foreclosed homes and even, like, when it's in foreclosures, there's a lot of different aspects to it. Yeah. They can say in foreclosure for years, essentially be a vacant home. You can get your first letter of an intent to foreclose. That means your house is in foreclosure. The company who actually kicked you out could be bidding on it on the courthouse steps. That's the end of foreclosure. And there's a lot of stuff in between, and there's a lot of foreclosures that just don't go all the way through. So the house is technically still in foreclosure, even though it hasn't been repossessed by the bank, and the person may still be living in there under those circumstances. So for those isn't equal vacant? Well, yeah, and it's such a mess right now, sometimes it's hard to even get anyone to claim ownership of some of these houses. Like, they don't know which because banks would sell the loans to other institutions, and sometimes it's hard to even track down. All right, who actually owns this place? Right, exactly. So let me give you an instance. If you own a home and the bank says, hey, you're behind on payments. We're going to kick you out. You move out, they foreclose. And it comes down to the time when the sheriff's department holds an auction on the county steps, the steps of the county courthouse, and the bank doesn't show up to bid on it, and nobody does. Yeah. That original owner who is out of the house still owns that house, right, by right. But the owner may have no idea because you don't necessarily follow up on the house that you were kicked out of five years ago. So they might not even know and they've moved and they might not know that they own the house. The bank, even if they did foreclose, may say that they don't technically own it. And the whole reason these houses are hot potatoes is because all this time, that property that's sitting there is accruing taxes. Yeah. And eventually it may be worth less than the amount of taxes and liens against it so that the people who actually own it don't want to claim possession of it because they're going to have to pay all those things. So these houses just sit, and eventually the concept of ownership over them fades. Yeah. That's the case with the house across the street. For me, here's the deal. We bought our house in foreclosure and are now turning it around. We decided we're just going to stay there forever because we've done some very great things with that. I appreciate that. But across the street is a house that's been vacant since we moved in eight years ago or whatever. And every couple of months, this lady would come by in a truck with a dude with a lawn mower to cut the grass. She would sit in a truck and then they would leave. And that's the only action I've ever seen. They quit doing that. So it looks like you would anticipate a house has been cared for at least a year. It's all overgrown weeds, plants growing into the house. The rear of the house is busted out at the bottom so that people can get in and out. And supposedly there's been vacant sleeping in there. I haven't verified this, but that's like the neighborhood rumors. Right. So it's a derelict house, and one of the neighbors, I think, filed, which we'll talk about with the county to get something done. And apparently there are some back taxes owed. Right. So this lady may be washing her hands of it. Just the very fact that there's a house built on a piece of property that somebody owns means that there's taxes accruing. Yeah. And now that your neighbor called code services or code enforcement, that means that they're going to come out and start writing tickets assessments against the house, like for the lawn not being cut, for being some sort of nuisance, like maybe there's fire code violations. Well, there's burning, whatever. It's got water problems and there's like rats and stuff. Now, if your house floods, you have to, by law, clear it out. And if you don't, they assess against you. And so all these things just add up to the amount of money that somebody would have to pay to gain full and free possession of this house, which makes it even more unattractive. So it's like this vicious cycle that's going on, pretty much. And you kind of hit the nail on the head with mentioning that migrants are possibly living in there because one of the biggest problems, rather than vermin or flooding or the mosquitoes that develop in long, tall, uncut grass sure. Is the fact that abandoned houses tend to attract crime. Yeah, in a big way. What do we have? Some stats here from Queens, New York, between 2006 and 2008. In 2008, neighborhoods in Queens that had high foreclosure rates at an average of 424 more burglaries, robberies and murders and auto thefts than in areas with lower foreclosure rates. It's up 150% in two years. And that's in Queens, which is transitional in parts, but not a bad neighborhood at all. Right. And apparently in Detroit, in what was Mitt Romney's old childhood home, it's like really nice neighborhood. Apparently crime increases in these neighborhoods as well at about the same rate, not aggregate number of crimes, but at the same percentage increase, I think. Right. That's a big finding. Apparently, they raised Mitt Romney's birthplace. Birthplace? Home in Detroit. But there's this whole idea, it's called broken windows theory. And these two guys named George Kelling and James Wilson came up with this idea that if you police small stuff, like if you really throw the pickpockets in jail and write tickets to teenagers who are playing their music too loud and make sure that the broken windows and a house are repaired, you kind of sustain the sense of order. And from order comes the abidement of law, supposedly. So it trickles up. Pretty much. Yes, it is. It's paying attention to the small stuff supposedly has an effect on the big stuff. I can see that it makes total sense, but studies have kind of found that there's not a lot of actual quantitative evidence backing this up, necessarily, but it creates this mindset. They think that possibly everyone points to Times Square. So, like, the police commissioner who came in with giuliani and cleaned up Times Square to get rid of the peep shows, he was in the broken window. All the awesome things I can't even imagine now. I never went to Times Square, and it was like that. I saw the tail end of it. I can't imagine what it must have been like. If you watch Basket Case, he's walking around Times Square. It's like that's. Time Square. Times Square is crazy. I know. Where's the Disney store? Exactly. But the commissioner was into broken windows policing, and they very firmly believe, like, that's what cleaned up Times Square. A lot of people say, well, maybe it was the end of the crack epidemic. Maybe that cleaned up Times Square. Maybe it was led got out of our brains. Remember that one? No, I don't remember. That the real criminal element. Lead from Mother Jones awesome article that ties together the decline in crime in New York and elsewhere to the decline in the prevalence of lead in our air in the world. Yeah. Wow. So there's a lot of other things that it could be, but there's this idea that if you fix the windows in an abandoned home, the crime will decrease, but as you said, they find the same amount of crime in nice areas or already low income areas. Yeah. I think it's the same increase in crime rate because I don't think there's no way it could be the same amount of crime. Right. Once the house is vacated there. Yeah. So even if you live in a good neighborhood, you're still going to see, like, if that half a million dollar home is vacant, you're going to see increase in crime. Yeah. And that kind of supports that broken windows theory. Yeah. Is that true, though? I just have a hard time believing that percentage wise, it could probably be the same. Yeah. Because think about it. If you have, like I'm just trying to picture my brother's neighborhood, and if there were a couple of empty homes there, there wouldn't be like rapes and murders and drug deals going down there. Well, think about this. He lives in a nice neighborhood, is my boy. If you have ten burglaries in an area and a new abandoned house opens up, ten more burglaries happen. It's 100% increase. That's true. If you have one burglary in an area and an abandoned house opens up in a high income area, okay. You have one, that's another 100% increase. I can buy that. Statistics. Yeah, I hear you, but it does make sense. Yeah. The reason why is because an abandoned home attracts people who normally might not have a place to congregate and carry out illegal activity. Yeah. Do drugs, squat. Sure. I'm not going to judge. Squatters. All right, so what can you do? We realize it's a blight on the neighborhood. Crime goes up, it's no good for anyone we feel sorry for. If it is a family that couldn't afford their house, it's very sad. And that's actually the house next to this one. I do feel really bad because his family lived there for a long time. The guy was a trucker, and out of nowhere one week I looked up and noticed the truck wasn't in the driveway and no furniture was in the house, and there was like a sheet of paper tape to the front door to get out. I don't know what it said. I guess I'm not sure what the deal is, but you can get in touch with that guy. You should tell him that he may still own that house. I don't know if he owned it, though to be honest, he may have been a renter. Oh, well, that's another thing. Like, yeah, if you're renting and something is foreclosed on your sol. Yes. But this lady I know did own the house, and possibly good news. Just yesterday I saw two dudes checking it out, and of course I hustle out there and I was like, hey, dude, are you going to buy this house? And he was being coy. I think he totally is. But he said, maybe. Someone sure is. And I said, Great. I guess he was trying to, like, good to meet you, weirdo. Sniff me off the case or something. Sniff you off the case? If there's ever been, like an older adage or an older phrase, it's actually not old, it's brand new. He made it up, but yeah, he was trying to get me off his case, I think. Okay. And so I was like, dude, please buy this house and fix it up. That's what we're after here. Yeah, he's going to hit you up for a subsidy now. I don't know. He played all your cards. So what do you do? Let's say that guy had never showed up and you had not one, but two abandoned homes in the neighborhood. Well, you could do what I think the next door neighbor to that house did, which was called the county, and here they called it a derelict house. I guess you would just call the code enforcement officer and explain the situation. And they will, six months later, probably start to do some investigating as to the back taxes, who owns it, what state it's in, inspections, that kind of thing. Exactly. And then they'll start writing tickets against it, and there will be more and more liens, try to find the owner. Like we said, that can get very difficult. And then even when you find the owner, it may be an LLC that disbanded and no longer has any legal obligation to claim ownership of that place. And at that point, when it becomes unclear as to who owns the place, some counties this is becoming such a problem that some counties are setting up land trusts. Oh, really? Yeah, where they'll take a certain percentage of property taxes, especially ones that are like back taxes that are paid. Like when the guy across the street buys that house, he's going to have to pay those taxes in addition to purchasing it. Yeah. So even if the county takes possession, somebody's still going to have to pay those back taxes usually, right? Yeah. So the county might take like 5% of those and set it aside into this land trust for houses that no one will ever claim. And they'll either use it to raise the place, to rehabilitate the place, maybe they'll use it to subsidize a community development group that wants to turn it into a community center. Right. There's a lot of new ideas that people are coming up with to handle abandoned properties because it's becoming such a problem. Well, it's definitely hard to wrap your head around as an American, there being that many homeless people and that many abandoned homes. Right. And I'm not saying, no, just move all the homeless people in there, because it's way more complicated than that, obviously. But it's definitely kind of weird to think about. Yeah, it's so complicated. Like, even if you said, you know what, I'm tired of this. I'm going to go across the street and mow the lawn, you could be sued. Oh, really? Yeah, you could be sued. If you hurt yourself, you could be arrested for trespassing. If you hurt yourself, you could be sued. You could be liable for insurance on the property. There's a lot of, like it's extremely complex and it's extremely intricate and then thrown into the mix that you might not know who the owner is. Yeah. Nobody wants to touch this place. What if I snuck over in the dead of night to steal an Azalea bush? What does the law say about that? Probably trespassing and theft. Okay, but it's all petty. I haven't done that. Just don't break your ankle on the property. I threatened to do that. Well, don't, because that'll be bad for you. Really? It's like the nicest plant on that. And there's only one nice plant on the property, azalea. That may be a trophy for having to look at this place. Maybe. We'll see. I don't know. That thing disappears, it's not my fault. Okay? That's all. Even though it's in your backyard? It would definitely not be in my front yard. You got anything else? Yeah, well, we talked about Detroit to open the show and the fact that they have a lot of houses that they are raising. That's how they're taking care of their problems. Just yesterday, the city has decided to utilize about $100 million in unused federal funds originally intended to prevent foreclosures, to, quote, aggressively address blight. That's what the governor, Rick Snyder said yesterday. And they're going to use some of that money, and they plan to finance a demolition of about 4000 structures. And that's just the Michigan State Housing Development Authority. There's another effort going on that is on track to demolish 10,000 abandoned houses by the end of the first full term. That'd be significant. Yeah, that would be 14,000 out of 80 to 90,000. Well, plus also the 3000 that Detroit already demolished. Close to 20 then. Yeah, they're about a quarter of the way there. I don't know if you read the article I sent you from Dayton. There was this lady, she was kicked out of her house. The foreclosure process was never followed through on. So she actually still owned the place. And she got in touch with her somehow found out, I guess maybe a code enforcement officer contacted her about back taxes or whatever. So she got in touch with her bank and then basically renegotiated her loan and after five years was able to move back into her house. Wow. The only thing was, she was kicking herself. Like, I just spent five years paying rent when I could have been paying down this mortgage, which sucks. But she found her way back to her house after five years, which is pretty cool. Yeah, it's a nice silver lining. Yeah, totally. To shut up a bunch of be happy you got your house back. I got nothing else. Okay. If you want to learn more about abandoned homes, you can type that word, those words into the search bar stuffworks.com. You could also type in Sniff me off the Case. See what happens. Man, I'm curious about that one, officially. Like, how do you claim that? Can I copyright that somehow? Yeah, just write it down on a letter and mail it to yourself. Mail it to you. It's ironclad, legally. All right, great. So I think I said ironclad, which means it's time for a message break. And now it's listen to mail time. Great. I'm going to call this grunge beef. Remember we talked a little bit about Sound Garden? Sound Garden and Pearl Jam and all those bands. Oh, how they didn't like each other? Yes. Apparently, someone's got a beef with that. Paul Hilt of Wakeisha, Wisconsin. Guys, I'm a longtime fan and extremely important bone to pick regarding The Trees podcast. He's going to sniff this off the case. I feel I need to let you know that the members of Pearl Jam and Sound Garden and their respective fans have always had a friendly relationship. You may recall that the shortlived The Temple of the Dog. Remember them? Yeah. Tribute band to late Andrew Wood, lead singer of Mother Love Bone, consisted of the members of both Pearl Jam songs, eddie Better with Chris Cornell on vocals, although Eddie Better did sing in their most popular song. That one about stealing. Brett. Yeah. Hunger Strike. Chris Cornell was also briefly a roommate of one of the members of Pearl Jam in the precrunch era of early 90s Seattle. I forget exactly which one at the moment. Additionally, Matt Cameron, the original drummer for Sound Garden, has been Pearl Jam's drummer for the last 15 years. I did this while I'm at it. Members of Alison Chains and Pearl Jam also collaborated in a so called super group. Mike McCready, PJs Pearl Jam's guitarist, and Lane Staley were both part of Mad season. Remember them? No? Which has recently released the deluxe remaster box set of their only studio album. Above it was Nirvana and Pearl Jam that had the so called rivalry in the 90s. Josh the rivalry mostly consisted on the part of the fans and was inspired by many of Kurt Cobain's jabs at Pearl Jam for being a, quote, corporate rock band. Take that, Pearl. Jim, hopefully you'll excuse the grunge era nerds of this email, but this is a topic that hits very close to my rapidly fading youth. And it's Friday, and I don't want to work. If you enjoy the history of this era, I highly recommend the Cameron Crow produce and directed documentary PJ 20 for calling the 20 Year History of Pajamas. No, wait. The Pearl Jam. If the history doesn't interest you at all, there's still lots of good music. I have been meaning to see that. Thanks for all the great work, even if it prevents me from doing my own work. Paul Hilt. While Kesha, Wisconsin. It's made up? I think so. Thank you, Paul Hilt. We appreciate the lesson. We were just kidding, but thank you. I'm glad it spawned us. Yeah, little history lesson. Nirvana, which is Pearl Jam. I forgot about Nirvana and Pearl Jam having a little friction. Let's see how that ended. Yeah, Pearl Jam got a documentary made about their 20 years, and Nirvana went away. Nirvana went on becoming cold, banned forever. That's right. Let's see if you want to give us a little history lesson. We love those things. They're awesome. Seriously, please send this isn't just me coming up with an easy sign off. You can tweet to us. It would be a pretty short history lesson, but you can send us something to SYSK podcast as her Twitter handle. You can post on our Facebook page, which is stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. You can hang out with us on our home, on the web. Our website called Stuffyouhoodnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit householdworks.com. Now that the show is over, don't forget to sign up for your free trial of Hulu Plus and start watching your favorite hit shows right now. For your extended free trial, go to HuluPlus. comStuff. Again, go to HuluPlus. comStuff 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." | ||
430db94c-53a3-11e8-bdec-d7df25c64803 | The Unsolved Indiana Dunes Disappearances | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-unsolved-indiana-dunes-disappearances | In July 1966, three women out for a day at the beach waded into the water of Lake Michigan, got onto a boat and were never heard from again. To this day, not a trace of them has ever turned up and theories of what became of them abound. | In July 1966, three women out for a day at the beach waded into the water of Lake Michigan, got onto a boat and were never heard from again. To this day, not a trace of them has ever turned up and theories of what became of them abound. | Tue, 18 Feb 2020 15:11:37 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=18, tm_hour=15, tm_min=11, tm_sec=37, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=49, tm_isdst=0) | 39349696 | 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. 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. Hello, everyone in podcast land. If you have ever wanted to see us on stage telling jokes and slinging facts, and you live out west, you can come see us in Portland, Oregon, or Vancouver, Canada. Yes. We'll be at the Chan Center in Vancouver on Sunday, March 29. And then we'll be at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland on March 30. And if you want tickets and info, then the best thing you can do right now is to go to Sysklive.com. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. There's, Josh. T just producing away over there. And that makes this stuff you should know super Duper mysterious Mystery Edition. That's right. This is a super mysterious one. Super Duper. You could say this is a good one. I never heard of it. I hadn't either. Maybe we should have a spin off show just about mysteries and missing persons. I've long thought that. Yeah, but then everyone's like, no, just put them on. Stuff you should know. Yeah. Every once in a while, to pepper it, they got to spin it out. Right? Spin it off. What did they say? The Cleveland Show. Oh, man, I never watched that. Was it good? I never watched it either. You weren't a Family Guy fan, were you? I mean, it's fine, but no, I wasn't a fan. Yeah. All right. What about Laverne and Shirley? What is this? Laverne and Shirley spin off from Happy Days, right? That's right. Let's do this. And Mark and Mindy spun off too. What is this? Too Close for Comfort? Was that his good off? You got this, man. Too close for comfort. He wasn't no, I don't know. What was it? Oh, no, I'm sorry. I was about to say I don't think that's right. What is this? The ropers. Oh, well, sure. Trees Company. Okay. What is this aftermatch? Right. I thought too close for Comfort was a spin off. I think it might be well, my first guess was it was might have been Ted Knight's character from The Mary Tyler Moore Show. But that's not true, because in Too Close for Comfort, he was a cartoonist. That's right. Remember? Yeah. And the only thing I remember well, I remember a lot about the show because I loved it. I was in love with those daughters, man. I don't remember them. I mean, that was the whole set up, is that their daughters lived in the same house or next door or something. Caused trouble. Yeah. They were just a couple of hail, razors hail raising beauties. And who was the guy that was so great? I think you're talking about Charles in Charge. No, I'm thinking it too close for Cumber. But he was a cartoonist, and he would wear college sweatshirts as part of his character. And he wore a Georgia Bulldog sweatshirt one time, and I was like, I thought it was the coolest thing ever. It's like, how did they know that? That's the thing. You're like, I'm basically on TV right now. Oh, man. Monroe. That was him, the Monroe character. Jim J. Bullock. Ted Knight. Yeah. No, Ted Knight was the lead, the main guy. Jim J. Bullock, man. What was he, hollywood Squares? Sure. Among other things. Like Too Close for Comfort does this kind of a tangent if we haven't actually gotten started. No, this is a preamble. Okay. Preamble. Nicely done. Check. Yeah, this is a good one. And you put this together. Where did you get most of the stuff? Wrote it myself. Oh, wow. There's one part that I was like, here, this is easier if I copy and paste from a Chicago Tribune article from 1987. I read that one. It's very good. That's one of the things about this case, is anyone who kind of gets involved in this will see there is not a lot of information out there. Yeah. And funny enough, one of the biggest mysteries of this whole thing is what kind of boat that was, which we'll get to. That was my bad. Well, no, man. I saw in a couple of other articles, it called this Boat a Trimaran, which is very much a catamaran. Right. They made the same so they were just rolling. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Because it's the same thing. So tri Hold. I was like, oh, it's a Tricat, which is a sailboat. And that's what I thought it was. No. There's a tri hold speedboat called the run about. That was kind of big in the 60s. Well, more specifically, it's a Tri hole run about. A Run About doesn't necessarily mean it has three holes. Okay. Those are my favorite boats in the world. Of these. Fifty s and sixty s fiberglass runabouts. They're amazing. Fifty s and sixty s. Runabout. Of all time. Yeah. With three holes, you thought one was crazy. Just get ready for three. Yeah, the boat will come up and I had to mark out tricat in just about 75 places. I'm very sorry. It was again, my bad. So what we're talking about here finally now is the disappearance of three young women in suburban Chicago in the mid 1960s at Indiana Dunes State Park on Lake Michigan. Yeah. Now it's Indiana Dunes, National Seashore, national Lakeshore, national Lake Shore. But at the time it was a state park. And this is Saturday, July 2. 66. That's right. The three women. There was a 21 year old named Patricia Blau. Yeah, I think so. She got in her car, which was eleven year old at this point. Buick sedan, 55 Buick. Went to pick up her friends, Anne Miller, at her house. She lived with her folks. And then to her other friend, Renee Brulee, who was the only one who was married, went to pick her up at her house. They were 19 and 20, and they were like 19 and 21. I think one of them was 22, at least 1920 and 21. Oh, is that right? Okay, but those are nitpicky details. Sure. They're all late teens, early 20s. Wait a minute, did you just call me nitpicky? No. I think you did. No. Okay. You guys just called me a liar on national TV. TV? I think he's a c. Anne and Patricia were friends. They were horse riders and they were friends from these horse stables. But they were all three buddies. Not since grade school, but for the last couple of years, it seems like. Right? Yeah. And they all lived around Chicago. And that's where they were traveling about 60 miles, 80 miles. I've seen both to Indiana Dunes State Park to just basically go hang out on the beach. That day. Again, it was Saturday, it was the July 4 weekend. It was super crowded. They were just going to the beach to have some fun, as most people think. They got to the beach by 10:00. A.m. Parked the Buick Hiked over the dunes on the kind of rickety boardwalk over to the beach and set up camp, I think about 100 yards from shore. That's a pretty substantial beach. Wow. Either there they hiked 100 yards and set up near the beach. It might be the latter of the two. That sounds more right. And on this weekend, again, because it was July 4 weekend, the beach was just absolutely packed. This is Lake Michigan, which is a pretty big lake. And the beach itself, for this park itself, I think it's like 26 miles of shoreline or something like that. But even still there's like 9000 people on the beach that weekend. Yes, I saw nine to 1010 people, four to 5000 cars in the parking lots and four to 6000 boats in the water. Packed, just packed. It's like Jaws or something up in there. Right. Amity island 4 July so the Renee, Anne and Patty set up shop, put down their beach blanket, just kind of close by to this teenage couple who are like, their beach neighbors. I imagine everyone was pretty close. Sure. Kind of with that many people elbow to jowl. Is that what that's called? Sure. Okay. And this teenage couple kind of factor in big time, but just kind of note their presence for now. That's right. So about noon, Chuck? Well, actually, the teenage couple factor in now. They noticed that the three women were waiting into the water about noon, so I guess for about 2 hours, they're just kind of hanging out in the sun. And they got hot enough to go into the water about noon. That's right. And that was the last time that this couple saw them. Maybe. Perhaps the day went on. They never came back. This teenage couple said, their stuff is still laying here. They may be off partying somewhere. So they didn't think, like, these three young ladies are missing and perhaps murdered. I think they were worried that their stuff might get stolen. Yeah, I think it was as innocent as that. Yeah. The teenage couple, they were about to leave, and they didn't want to just leave it there. They felt kind of somehow responsible for it. Like you will. Yes. Which is what you did in 1966 or today still, if you're a decent person. That's right. So they went to a ranger, and they said, hey, these young women were here. They left their stuff. The ranger thought the same thing. He's like, well, let me just take care of this stuff and collect it so it doesn't get stolen. They're probably off partying. But that was the last that anyone saw. These three young women. No one to this day knows what happened. They vanished literally. Without a trace. Yeah. There's never been any evidence of what happened to them. No trace of them? No. Nothing from that point on. I think we should take an earlier break because of that dumb, long preamble. Okay. And this is a great little spot for a cliffhanger. Okay. So we'll be right back. What if you were a trendy apparel company facing an avalancho demand to ensure more customers can buy more sherpa lined jackets? You called IBM to automate your it infrastructure with AI. Now, your systems monitor themselves. What used to take hours takes minutes, and you have an ecommerce platform designed to handle sudden spikes in overall demand, as in actual overalls. Let's create It systems that rule up their own sleeves. IBM let's create learn more@ibm.com It automation 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, chuck so about 18 hours after that, park ranger collected their things. I'd say around dusk, a call came in to Indiana Dune State Park Ranger station, and it was from Harold BLA. Blao, Patty's father. And he wanted to know if the rangers had seen his daughter because she had been reported missing by her family back in Chicago, like, a few hours before. Yeah, so they went through her stuff. The rangers did. They found a set of car keys that had a little miniature Illinois license plate that matched a license plate in the parking lot. Either a great coincidence, or you could get those custom made at some little beach shop. Right. Which is probably what happened. So they find her car. They found her Buick there in the parking lot. Indiana State Police say, we're going to take over here, because it's pretty clear that this is a missing person's case. Yeah. And so it was obvious that they had never left the park, or at least they hadn't left in the car. Right. And they left their car, they left their stuff. That's suddenly very highly suspicious. The idea that they were just off partying is suddenly kind of a tenuous theory. Yeah. Like, left all their stuff, like purses and personal stuff. We should talk a little bit about that. Money in their wallets. They left their transistor radio. They left their magazines open. They left their suntan lotion. It seemed like the way they left their stuff, that they were planning on just getting into the water and then coming back from the water, and then that was that. There didn't seem to be any kind of forethought to their stuff. Right. And then the fact that their car was still there, and this was a full day after they had last been seen there was suspicious. Like, if they were going to party, they would have said at least, like, oh, let me grab my purse. Right. By now, a night had come and gone, and the next day, it was already halfway done, and there was nothing. That'd be a hell of a party. Yes. So people started to get kind of worried, and they started to search the park, and they couldn't find them anywhere. And that's when the police became involved, when it was obvious that they were no longer in this park, even though they didn't seem to have left, which means they just kind of vanished. Yeah. And they had a pretty big search party. They had soldiers volunteering from a missile base. They had obviously, the sheriff had the Civil Air Patrol get involved. I think Patty's dad was he a pilot. He was a colonel. He's a colonel in the Civil Air Patrol. Coast Guard gets involved. Dive teams, airplanes, helicopters, sheriff's posse on horseback. Yeah. Like, they had people combing this area. They went back to the 19th century to get people to search. They searched about 250 cabins in the area. They had a dune buggy trolling the seashore at night, seeing if bodies were washing the lake shore, see if bodies were washing the shore. It was a land, sea, and air search of this area, and it was a pretty extensive area, but it was a really extensive search. The big criticism that's leveled today against the whole thing is that two full days passed before the search was mounted. This is July 5, the first 48 1st 48. Anybody who's ever seen that show knows, like, those are the most critical moments or the most critical hours in trying to solve a case, because it gets colder and colder with every hour that passes. Yeah. So that was a big thing. And one of the most startling things about this case is that search turned up nothing. No evidence of what happened to them at all. Yeah. The first little clue that they found wasn't something they found while searching. But inside Renee brulee's purse that she left behind, there was a letter that she had written to her husband that was kind of like, I've had it with you. All you do is work on your hot rods and party with your friends, and I'm kind of done. Hinting that she wanted to leave the marriage. Obviously, that's going to be a suspicious kind of thing to find. Go talk to the husband. And they interviewed the husband and the family, and everyone seemed to agree, like, hey, things aren't perfect, but she probably wrote that letter when she was really upset. She didn't give it to me. I might work in my hot rods a little too much, but I didn't kill my wife, and our marriages is fine overall. And then the cops believed it. Well, her family backed that up, too. We don't have marital troubles. This seems like something Renee would have done right and then just forgotten she even had the note. So the cops cleared her husband of being involved in any wrongdoing. But it raised a long standing theory that's still around today, that we'll talk about theories later that possibly Renee ran off. And if Renee ran off to kind of start a new life or whatever, maybe the other women had, too. Maybe. So. Another interesting thing they learned anne Miller was, by all accounts, about three months pregnant and had talked to her friends, by some accounts, not all. Yeah. Like her closest friends had said, she said she was pregnant. Right. But I don't think they have physical evidence of, like, a pregnancy disease. Right, right. So they said that she had friends said that she had talked about having to go live in a home for unwed mothers. She was sort of up against the wall with this. Obviously in the mid 60s. It was not a great thing to be an unwed mother. Possibly. We don't know this either for sure, but she was dating a married man, and it could have been his baby, which would have been problematic as well. Right. Another good reason to R-U-N-N-O-F-T. That's right. Okay. I think now two of them have a motive to run off and start a new life. Yeah. And we should also mention, too, that Patty was also dating a married man, supposedly, and they both were buddies from this horse stable. And it turns out there was a real scumbag. I looked into this guy more, silas jane. He was a rapist. He was linked to the murder of three boys. He was linked to the murder of two the Grime sisters. He was looked into for the disappearance of some heiress in Chicago. He had a hit put out on his brother. He had a fire bomb planted and in this other woman's car. Like, this is a bad dude. And he had an affiliation with this horse stable. Yeah, his brother, I believe, owned the horse table. And Sigh was, like, the organized crime boss running the criminal ring out of the horse stable. And this is the stable that Anne and Patty rode their horses at. I think Anne was actually she had a job as a horse exerciser at these stables. So they were really involved in just rubbing elbows with this organized crime ring. And so cops were like, oh, wait a minute. This is kind of huge. As far as looking into their backgrounds. This was the biggest red flag the cops had turned up for sure that they were known. Not that they were, like, criminals themselves, but just that they came in close contact with a really dangerous, violent criminal and his gang. Yeah, and one of the later theories was that they witnessed the rigging of the fire bomb on this car of this woman, and they had to be taken care of. But we'll get to the theories later. Sure. These are. Like. The leads that the investigation turned up. But the cops also very wisely involved the media pretty early on. And so other leads started to come in. And there's the usual. Like. I saw them in Pontiac. Michigan. Going off of a bus. Or they were all in my drug store alive and well last week. Even though they've been missing for three weeks. That kind of thing. But there were some solid leads that came in. And one of the big ones was a call from a couple from Indianapolis who'd been on the beach that day. And I think this is the problem with this. There's so little writing about this that you kind of have to piece together. I'm pretty sure that this is the same teenage couple that were their beach neighbors. Okay. I'm pretty sure they said that they saw them go into the water at noon. And while they were hanging out in the water, a man, probably in his early 20s, with dark, wavy hair, well tanned, came up in a Trihold Runabout ski boat, which is to stop and look up Trihole Runabout. And some will come up. They're really cool looking. Like, it looks like Frank Sinatra would drive around on a lake. Totally. And it's the kind of lake that you would if you were like an early 20s guy, pick up, like, girls at the lake. And it's just like a fun, cool, zippy boat. Yes. And side note, if you are turned on by those boats like I am, you can find these things and buy them for like twelve hundred dollars. Yes. These old fiberglass boats and engage in Mecca. Philia, you can you can't buy the old wooden boats. You can, but not for one $200. Okay. Those are really expensive, but the fiberglass ones you can get for fairly cheap. Yeah, well, that's what this guy is supposed to do and like, restore it. Sure. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Are you saying that this is what you're going to do now? No, I'm not saying that, but I've looked into it because they're just so, like, stylish and cool, and they had like this one was turquoise interior. They all have those, like I like the red ones, 60s sort of colors and diamond dusted upholstery. Yeah, they're pretty sweet. Yeah. So this is a white tri hole run about with turquoise interior. And this couple from Indianapolis who called in later said that they saw the three women get on the boat with this guy and drive off. Yeah. So that's a big one. Huge. They also get another report from witnesses who said these girls came back at some point, got something to eat, and were hanging out on the beach. And then a third lead that came in and said they actually got on another boat, this big cabin cruiser. Right. And this is about 03:00 P.m. With three dudes, and the boat didn't have a name on it that we could discern. So in that first week, they get some boat wreckage. It washes ashore, some styrofoam, some seats, an oil can look probably like a busted or wrecked boat. But the police said, listen, we got two boats we're targeting here, and none of the stuff from this wreckage or potential wreckage is from those boats. Yeah, they didn't think so, at least. Yeah, right. Yeah. But the weird thing about that boat wreckage is that no boat was reported wrecked that weekend on Lake Michigan. Certainly not in the area around Indiana Dunes State Park. That's right. That's a big one. And then secondly, like you said, it doesn't seem to match any of the boats that they were looking for. So if you step back and take these leads altogether. A timeline. A possible timeline emerges where Patty Anne and Renee wade out into the water around noon. Go on. Like. A little pleasure cruise on the little tri hole run about shortly after. Come back to shore. Go get something to eat. Hang out. And then at three. Go out on another boat. A bigger boat. Which is possibly also manned by the same guy who is in the tri hall with a couple of his friends. And that boat definitely had the name Sanded off of it, which was a huge red flag. Exactly. It's very fishy. They found sandpaper and red paint on the beach that had been sanded off. So the cabin cruiser seems to have been largely disincluded from suspicion by the cops, because from what I saw, the cops talked to some guys, three guys in a cabin cruiser who were there that day, who said, we tried to pick up some girls and they wouldn't go. One of them said, I'm married, I can't go. And none of them could have been them. Maybe. The other thing that really kind of seemed to have disincluded the cabin cruiser was that someone was actually filming this is 1966. They were filming home movies on the beach that day. Yeah. That was inevitable, I think. You think so? Yeah, sure. I found it astounding oh, really? Yes, man. That's where all those old great color super eight films. I bet there were ten of those cameras on the beach. Yeah, you're probably right. Now, this guy was because he was filming the day, he was doing a lot of panning back and forth, which was very fortuitous because it kind of proved out some of the stuff they saw. And of course, this is old film and it wasn't like zoomed in or anything, but they did see what looked like these three women on this little run about, just like everyone said. So that was, like, a pretty good find. Yeah. The cabin cruiser there, like, it looks like there are three women on there, and they could be similar, but maybe they don't think so. The cops seem to have zeroed in on that. The three women waited out into the water around noon. The guy came up in the tri hole run about shortly after they got on the trihole runabout. And that was the last time anyone saw them. Yeah. And apparently, too, it wouldn't have been the weirdest thing in 1966, like, to go off with a stranger on his boat. The thing I read said that dudes are always pulling up on their boat and like, hey, ladies, let's take a ride. That sounds like the 7 July. It's fun. Sounds like the 70s. Yeah, maybe. Sure. Or the 80s. Right. What about the no, not the people were not voting in the 90s. Should we take another break? Oh, sure. All right, let's take another break. Okay. We'll talk about the further investigations, right? For 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. 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Just remember, no one can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transactions at all businesses. But everyone can save up to 25% off their first year by going to LifeLock.com stuff. That's LifeLock.com stuff for 25% off your first year. LifeLock identity theft protection starts here. So, Chuck, one more thing about the boat that we should say is despite having eyewitnesses, despite having film seemingly show them in this boat, nothing ever came of it. Yeah. And the cops even put out the word. They were like, surely someone knows this boat or this boat owner trihaul turquoise interior. Not a crazy boat, but not the most common thing in the world. Right? But they never found it. It just kind of vanished along with the women. Yeah. Mystery novels. That's pretty good. Do you think so? Yeah. Thanks. So the weeks and months were on, and as it did, there are fewer and fewer people actively looking for them. As it happens. It just happens that way. But sadly, Harold Blow kept this vigil basically for the rest of his life. He just kept that stuff is always just heartbreaking. Yes. I don't know if he kept actively searching, but I know he did some traveling even later on in Life to go check out leads that he had heard about. He kept in contact with cops and reporters who were working the case. And even afterwards, after other groups stopped searching, he chartered his own plane so that he could fly reconnaissance flights looking for evidence. All to nothing. He never. Found any trace of his daughter or what happened, and he was convinced that all of them were dead or they were being held against their will. Right. He was like my daughter. He said, we're not overbearing parents. He's like, she's got all the freedom in the world. Do what she wants. She wouldn't have to run away because we're the coolest. Basically. There was a psychic that got in touch, and this is pretty interesting. A psychic said, I visualize a cabin on Lake Michigan not too far from the beach, blanket with dark colored sand, rickety wooden stairs up from the beach. The cabin is on a bluff, and it has a lawn chair outside with its bottom out. One of the cops investigated, drove as far as he could drive, then did some hiking and found a cabin that met this exact description right down to the chair with the bottom rotted out. And this was nine years later? Yeah. I mean, you hear stuff like that, you're like, man, I don't believe in psychics calling the cops with clues being super accurate, but it turns out there was nobody there because she said to dig, and they dug for three days and found nothing. But unless it was a prank, it was a weirdly, eerily accurate description. Yeah, but I mean, if you have an old abandoned cottage, is there like a 50 50 chance there's going to be a lawn chair at the bottom? Exactly. Rusted out? That's my theory. Maybe it could be coincidence. I'm with you, though it is pretty interesting, at the very least. So the case remains open, and again, not a hint, not a trace. Nothing has ever surfaced, metaphorically or literally, that suggests what happened to those three women. And so theories have been allowed to kind of grow and take different shape and be argued over, and there's, like, a handful. Most of them are fairly sensible, actually. Some are kind of pedestrian, some are kind of sensational. But because no evidence has ever come forward, each one is just about as likely as the other. Yeah. I think we should mentioned before we do that drowning, miller and Blow were both really good swimmers. Yeah, like super good. Yeah. And I think that's supposed to be 20 to 30 minutes, right? It's really not miles. I saw miles. Really? Yeah. Let me look. You do some tap dancing. That's like serious elite athlete endurance swimming. Yes. I'm pretty sure it was miles. Okay, I'm looking. I don't want to get too NIT picky. Well, if they were swimming 30 miles and they were international champion athletes, okay, so regardless, they probably did not drown. It is possible that the boat crashed and they did drown and washed up somewhere. Because Lake Michigan is huge, 1640 miles of shoreline, it is the deadliest of the Great Lakes. But it's possible that they washed up somewhere and weren't ever found. Yeah, because, remember, that search didn't start for two full days after they weren't noticed to be missing. Right. So that's one of the more mundane theories. It gets a little more sensational when you look at Dick Wiley's theory. Right. Dick Wiley was a crime reporter who basically, I guess he reported on the case almost from the outset and really stuck with it for years and years and years. And he developed a theory that Anne Miller being pregnant. It was Anne who was pregnant. Right. Yeah. Anne Miller had gone out there with her girlfriends that day because she planned on getting an illegal underground abortion. It sounds very unbelievable to me. Yeah. A lot of people don't believe it, but because so little has been written about this case and this guy is one of the kind of authorities on it yeah. There is some credence to it. Not that she would have gone to get an underground abortion, but that would be performed on a boat. That's one of the huge flaws in that. It seems weird. I can't imagine a more terrible place to perform a delicate procedure like an abortion on a houseboat on 4 July in Lake Michigan. Well, that's another thing, too. Okay. So what Wiley's theory is that Anne went out there to get this abortion, and Patty and Renee went there as moral support. Right. And they went out and met this guy who took them to the houseboat for the abortion to be performed while the abortion was botched killing Ann. And the abortionist said, well, we've got to kill you two now as well. And they got rid of all three bodies, and that's what happened to them. They'd make a heck of a movie. There are a lot of holes in this theory, including the fact that why would you perform an abortion on a houseboat? But there are some things that kind of give it a little bit of credence. In particular, there was a couple named the Largos. I always wanted to call her Wanda, but it wasn't was it Helen? Yeah, it is Helen, actually. Frank and Helen Largo, they actually did have an underground abortion clinic in 1966 in Gary, Indiana, which was very close to the state park. And their nephew Ralph bore a striking resemblance to the description of the man in his early twenties who came up in the Tri Hull run about right. And I think Ralph is verified as being there that day as well, and he lived with Frank and Helen Largo. So the Wiley's theory that this guy came up and got them to take them to go get this procedure done again, why would you do it on a houseboat when your clinic is 20 miles away? Yeah. And then, secondly, why would you set up this kind of highly illegal procedure in front of that many witnesses? And then, thirdly, why would they leave their stuff on the beach the way that they did if they knew they were going for this appointment. Yeah. This theory is bonkers. Okay, so we'll discard Wiley's theory. Yeah. The other one, obviously was the Silas Jane, the criminal dude from the stables. People say that they think that they may have witnessed the car bombing of Cheryl Lynn Rude and that he was just getting rid of them and snuffing them out. There is every reason to believe that this guy would have done that, looking at his history, if they did possibly witness this rigging of a car bomb. He also had an associate who supposedly bore a resemblance to the man in the tri hole run, about ten, wavy hair. Yeah. Early twenty s. And I saw this and I could not verify it elsewhere, but there is a widespread rumor or an unsubstantiated claim that that associate to Silejane Silas Jane put in an insurance claim for a boat that had gone down around that time. Interesting. Which would definitely account for things. It would also account for why there was no boat reported missing. You wouldn't report a boat missing if you used it to cover up a triple homicide. Yeah, because that's the biggest thing to me is if there were other people in this boat and it was an accident, someone would have said, hey, my dark, wavy haired son is missing and he has this boat. And there were no missing person support aside from those three. Yes. And what's more, even if that guy was just a total loaner who had no friends or family, somebody would say a boat like that probably would have been towed by car and trailer, and that car and trailer would have just been left there over time, somebody would have noticed that there's this abandoned car and trailer hanging out in the parking lot at the state park. Nothing like that ever turned up. Yeah. The other theory in regards to Silas Jane is that these young women did witness this car bombing and knew that they needed to disappear before they were disappeared on purpose and they faked their own disappearance. And that's Patty Blau's brothers theory. Yeah. He showed up on a forum called Webslouths and apparently he's verified, he's like, yes, I am her brother. And he said that he thinks that they did go to stage the disappearance, but that the guy who was going to help them was actually in the employee of Silas Jane, and this helping them disappear actually turned into this triple murder and that their bodies were disposed of. That's where her brother thinks and the one who wasn't one of the stable people, renee. Yeah. That she was just there to help them disappear, got caught up in this I don't know. Because why would she have gone out? I mean, bad marriage, who knows? Maybe it's a little thin, but I think it makes sense for his sister, the other two. It doesn't necessarily make as much sense for maybe for Anne if she was in danger as well, I don't know. I think the most likely thing is it Peter Principal. No, the trolley problem, Occam's Razor, is that they drowned. I mean, that's possible. Didn't wash ashore. But here's the thing. In Lake Michigan's, the deadliest great lake of all of them, all five, I think it accounts for out of all five, it accounts for half of the death in any given year. But most bodies do turn up. Most bodies are recovered. So if three of them or four or however many people were on that boat, that boat went down, you'd think some trace of at least one of them would have eventually turned up. You would think so. It's a true mystery. It's also possible that they were taken away by somebody. They weren't planning on disappearing. They weren't planning on leaving. They just went on a pleasure cruise with the wrong person who murdered them. Right. If a guy got three women out on a boat and got it out into the middle of nowhere on this enormous lake and then pulled a gun on them, one person could conceivably stay in control of three under a situation like that. And sadly enough, that's a real possibility that that was their fate. They just went with the wrong person. That seems unlikely to me, too, that a serial killer just picked up three women. Here's the thing. There's one serial killer in particular that some people really like for this. His name is Richard Speck. Oh, yeah. So Richard Speck is actually not a serial killer, is a mass murderer, because he killed eight women at a nursing college in one night, which makes him a mass murderer, not a serial killer. He did that on July 13, 1966, in Chicago. On July 2, 1966, he was dropped off at a dock about 20 miles away from Indiana Dunes State Park. He was not tan with dark, wavy hair, though. That is very true. He was a real creep, though. He was a super big creep. Had a terrible personality, not a charmer, not good looking. So the idea that he could get three women into a boat of his is kind of unlikely. Also, he was well known as a very sloppy, opportunistic killer, and that if they were killed by somebody, this seems to have been planned. The fact that their bodies never turned up suggests that if they were killed by somebody, they would have had to have planned to have killed them, because they would have had to have brought along all the weights needed and stuff, whatever it is. Like any one of those theories is just as likely as the others. Good stuff. Sad. Tragic. But I love a good mystery. Yeah. Well, if you want to know more about the disappearance of Patricia Blow, anne Miller, and Renee Brooke, you can go read the Chicago Tribune article on it, the Northwest Indiana Times article, websoluth, and the Charlie Project. All those are great resources. On this case. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. Hey, guys. I'm writing to say thank you. You see, I recently divorced and I spent about half the time I used to spend with my three young kids. She just stay with me. I'm not going anywhere. Depressing. She said the divorce was the right move and we're coparenting quite amicably. And it's all good. I've got a full life and meaningful relationships and lots to do 99% of the time. But the quiet of my day at times when it is a kid free house, is something that's gotten some getting used to. I realize, without even thinking about it, that I've taken to playing old episodes like Bizarre Ways to Die. It's an oldie. It's a real oldie she's like, just because they make me feel in a totally well adjusted and not insane way, like I'm in the company of pals. I've been a listener for about five years. Only recently have I come to appreciate that. I'm always cheered up and made to feel less lonely by hearing you guys talk to each other and to all of us in podcast listener land. So thanks for what you do. Thanks to the team who helps you. Like Jerry. You do a good thing for a lot of people, and I appreciate it. Big hugs from Catherine in Chicago. Chicago. Chicago. How appropriate. Thanks a lot, Catherine. We really appreciate that. It's good to hear. Keep on keeping on. Yeah, keep on trucking. If you want to get in touch with us, like Catherine did, to let us know how you're doing, we want to hear that. You can go on to Stephiesheno.com, check out our social links, and 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. 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. 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4a19a9f6-bfa8-4164-9b64-ae7700dac23a | How Mensa Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-mensa-works | Most of us know Mensa’s a smart people club. And that Geena Davis is a member. But did you know it was originally intended as a rolodex when the government needed the UK’s most intelligent minds? And that the Kansas City chapter staged a revolt in the 60s?
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Most of us know Mensa’s a smart people club. And that Geena Davis is a member. But did you know it was originally intended as a rolodex when the government needed the UK’s most intelligent minds? And that the Kansas City chapter staged a revolt in the 60s?
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Thu, 14 Apr 2022 13:21:37 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=14, tm_hour=13, tm_min=21, tm_sec=37, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=104, tm_isdst=0) | 47364455 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry Rowland's lurking in the background. And this is stuff you should know. Smartypantsa dish. We're doing minsa, right? Oh, God, no. We're doing a cage free redux. Oh, no. Yes. This is about mental. That's what I have pulled up too, Chuck, so this works out just fine. All right, let's do it. So Dave Ruff helped us out with this one, and he mentioned a bit of news that if you looked up Mensa recently, it would be hard to miss, but I believe it was their youngest member ever was inducted into Mensa. Mensa, by the way, for those of you who don't know, bills itself is the high IQ society it stands for oh, wait, it doesn't stand for anything, which is super smart, if you stop and think about it. Yeah, it feels like it should be an acronym, but it's not. Definitely. I'm with you, but we'll just go ahead and say it. It means table in Latin. Yes. And in Spanish slang, it's a female goofball or dumb person, strangely enough. Oh, the ironies head tip to Dave ruse for pointing that one out. Yeah. So, as I was saying, it's a high IQ society. It's a society for smartypants, as you put it, and they inducted their youngest member recently, who was two years old. Two years old, sure. They don't discriminate by age, which is great. Bully for them. And I believe on their website, they say their membership ranges in ages two to 102. I knew they were going to say that. And I wonder if there's like, a 104 year old Mensa members, like, what's the F? Yes. It didn't fit in with the cool. It's not even a rhyme. You know what I mean? Yeah. I've always felt really bad about what is that Christmas song? Kids from one to 92, 93 year olds still appreciate Christmas. I cut that whole group out. You stop and think this is written in the mid century, and there was, like, almost no one living in 92 because they were all having Coronaries from cigars and scotches and steaks all at once. It's kind of a random age, though. It is, but it rhymes. Which is what I think Mensa did here, too. But regardless, this two year old cache quest just queues a button has an IQ of 146, which means she's got it all, basically. And with an IQ of 146, that puts her well above the minimum requirement to be accepted in Amena, which is usually about an IQ of about 132. Yeah. So you may have seen that in the news. David is right to point out, if you mentioned Mensa, the first thing most people will say, and I don't know how this got so into the public consciousness, I do, but they will generally say, oh, you know, Gina Davis is a Mensa member. She must have mentioned it in an interview or something. But it's been a long time because I've heard that for a long, long time as, like, the sort of go to fact for Mensa. Yeah. I also heard another thing about Gina Davis. She used to bake cookies and bring them to, like, meetings. She was born on for that as well. I heard another thing about Gina Davis because our friend and friend of the show, Jesse Thorn, interviewed her on his great interview show Bullseye, and he said that Gina Davis is the best person. And he said she is exactly what you hope she would be. And everyone just felt like it was their cool aunt. Oh, that's pretty good. Everyone in the office. Like, she was just the nicest person. And she sounds like the kind of person who would bake cookies in her mental style. Yeah. And Jesse Thorne's hearing this and is like, she didn't bring cookies to our meeting. Maybe she did. So, yes, Gina Davis is world renowned as the most famous member of Mensa, even though plenty of famous people have been members of Mensa over the years. Bucky Fuller. Arthur C. Clarke was the vice president of Mensa International for a while. Sharon Stone famously told people in the 90s that she was in Mensa. She finally called out by Mensa, saying, like, no, you're not in Mensa. Yes, she did lie, apparently for a good decade until somebody finally said something about it. And then james woods is often confused as a member of mental, but I don't believe he actually is. Who else? The guy who created the antivirus software. McAfee. John McAfee. And, yeah, there's a handful of people. And then, as we'll talk about later, there are a lot of journalists who say, well, I qualified to be in Mensa, but I didn't want to be involved. Yeah. Because that's the one thing about Mensa, is a lot of the popular press that's done on that group takes easy potshots at them because they are a group of they're a high IQ group, and they're, by definition, very smart people. Sure. But also, enjoying a club like that, it bestows a bit of an air of superiority on to you. So there's a certain undercurrent of that. And so people who write about them or cover them usually take potshots at them and generally lump them all into one big group. But that's not necessarily fair to say because they are a varied collection of people. For sure. There are weird undercurrents that are distasteful here and there, but overall, they seem to be okay from what I can tell. Yeah. And there are all kinds of minsons, which is what they're called from all kinds of backgrounds in socioeconomic strata. I guess we could break down the percentages here if you want to get specific. It is 66% male. This is from their stats. 34% female. 82% have a four year degree or more 63%. Graduate degree or more 38%. Boomers. 31% genetics, 13 millennial and then the rest. Say it again. It's not a big group, though. Like, their total membership is a little less than 150,000 worldwide, with about 50,000 of those being in the States and 19,000 being in the UK, where it was founded. But it's a lot more people could be in Mensa that aren't in Mensa. Does that make sense? Dave did the math as if to show off that he could be a member of Mensa if you wanted to. But what Mensa membership means is that you have tested aptitude for intelligence within the top 2% of people. Right. So in the United States, say there's 300 million, just to make it easy, but I think there's much more than that now. That would be 6 million people who would qualify as members of Mensa. And yet, like you said, there's only about 50,000 in there. Yeah, and I get if some people think that's a weird thing to say because you still have to take these tests, you have to be good at test taking. But if you just go by numbers of the top 2% of intelligence, then sure, yes. But it also reveals something that it's not for everybody. Like, just by virtue of being smart or testing really well on an intelligence test, that doesn't mean you automatically want to be a member of a group that shares that in common. There's a very slight tranche of people who qualify or who would qualify, who actually do want to join Mensa. But the ones who do join Mensa seem to tremendously enjoy and feel very accepted and happy there. Yeah. And that's also in itself a potshot that journalists have taken commonly, which is these are people who are smart enough to be in Mensa and want to be able to tell everybody that they're in Mensa. And I'm sure there is some of that to some degree. There are people that like to flaunt their Harvard degree or drop the H bomb, as they say, or their Ivy League education or their mental membership, but I'm sure there are out of 150,000 people, there are lots of Gina Davis that probably are just like, oh, yeah, I'm in that, but it's really no big deal. Yeah. The worst of the worst are people who are in Mensa, went to Harvard, are on Keto and are in the CrossFit. God, make it stop. And who recently quit social media. Can you imagine? Yeah. Party of one. Should we talk about the history? Yes, party of one. That's a good joke. So Minsa got its start in 1946, like I mentioned, in the UK, and it sort of happened by chance on a train. There was a postgrad student from Oxford named Lancelot Ware who was coming home for Christmas break, shared a cabin with a 50 year old named Rowland Barrel, or Burial. And burial was like, oh, you got to Oxford. You know what? I wanted to go to Oxford. I couldn't get into Oxford, and it sort of haunted me. And he said, I'm into all kinds of stuff, though. I'm a smart guy. I'm into phrenology and astrology. That's very interesting. I'm into testing intelligence. The younger Lancelot said he said, I was in the army in Britain, and we did aptitude testing on troops. I became fascinated by it. When I went to Oxford, I was surrounded by smart people, and I thought it would be really cool to form a high IQ society within a school of people that were already super intelligent. And Burrill said, very interesting. I envisioned him clapping his hands together and saying, Splendid. Okay, sure. Because you left something out about him. One of the things that usually is touted about what Barrel was into Barrel is that he had a plan to make all men wear very brightly colored clothing. For the life of me, find out why or what the point was, but anything. So Borell said, this is a very great idea. I think we should explore this further. And young Lancelot Ware, post doc student at Oxford, said, well, you know, older gentlemen who I've only just met on this train, why don't you come stay with me at Oxford when I get back to school after Christmas break? And Burrell took them up on it. And it was there that they hatched the plan for Mensa after Burrell was given an intelligence test by Lancelot Ware. And when Lancelot Ware calculated the results and said, mr. Burrell, you are within the top 1% of all people in terms of intelligence. It's widely reported that Roland Burrell cried because he was so happy and touched by that right and had funding to start this thing up, which was key. And so how it really went down was he told them that he cried and said, oh, can I see the results? And where quickly watered them up and said, that's not important. Take my word for it. You're in the top 1%. Make the check out. Dumois and bureau said, splendid. But they needed a name. And like you said, they landed on Mensa. I think initially they wanted to call it capital M-E-N-S which was short for the Mental Health Society. It's not even close. No, it's pretty close. Where's the H? Yeah, where's the H? And also there was, I think, a gentleman's magazine called Men's that's in scare quotes. And so they said, well, how about Mensa? Which, as you pointed out, is Latin for table, because I just envision all these smarty pants sitting around a round table talking about wonderful things. And they said, I guess they said, sure. That's as good a name as any. So originally, if you've ever seen that Simpsons episode where Lisa joins Mensa I don't remember that one. It's a pretty good one. It's a cautionary tale about letting an intelligent elite determine the fate of everybody else while just completely discounting anyone who's not an intelligent elite. Right? Yeah. And like Comic Book Guy and Dr. Hibert and a couple of other characters, side show mail, they're all in Mensa with her, and they basically take over the town, if I'm not mistaken. And it just goes awry. It ends up going terribly awry. But that's kind of originally what Lancelot Ware and Roland Burrell were envisioning when they founded Mensa, this group of the most intelligent in the UK, who would kind of be assembled to be a group that the government or scientific projects or whoever wanted to tap their intelligence could tap their intelligence. That was the original idea for Mensa. That's right. And by the way, the keen ear listener would have just picked up on my one word impression of Julius Ibert. What did you say? I'm not going to repeat it. You got to be a keen listener. Oh, man. So if you heard it, then that's off to you. You're not allowed to rewind if you're listening at home. Can I rewind? You can't rewind. Nobody can rewind. You had to have heard it live. Okay. And, like, two people will have gotten it, and the rest of us are all mad now. Oh, that's okay. I'll do it for you. Mike from the sounds of it, almost like a rolodex of smarties, because they wanted to not just have that list, but they even said in their charter they wanted it in the hands of anthropologists and ministers of the Crown. Like, they wanted people that mattered to have this list on hand. Like, I need a smart person. Let me look at my mental list. And their goal, I think, did you mention, was 600 people with their contact information so they could get in touch. And it took them 13 years to get to that benchmark in 1959, is when they finally got it. And it wasn't until some American expats joined in England, got written up by the Village Voice in The New York Times that it kind of really started to gain a little bit more traction in the States and then around the world. So it's crazy that it took them 13 years to, what, 1959, to hit 600, because right after that and I guess it was because of the interest among Americans that initially started out, like you said, with expats, and then after a couple of articles captured everybody else's attention, that it just took off. Like, if you saw a chart, it would look like that hockey stick of global warming, I think it is. Remember that from the hockey stick graph? Yeah. So that's pretty much what Mensa membership would look like. I'm 1950, 1960. And it was largely thanks to a few people over the years. But one of the first people who really kind of helped, meant to take off as an organization, was a guy named John Cadella. Who was an American PR guy, and he took this group that was almost had, like, fraternity like origins. Like, apparently Roland Burrell had. Part of the early rules was to have a woman seated on a throne wearing a leopard skin and nothing else as part of the meetings. It had that kind of vibe to it. Sure, that vibe. Sure. Kind of Anton Levee vibe. When John Cadella came in the picture, he dusted off all that stuff and turned it into a legitimate type of organization. Definitely legitimized it, if not made it legitimate. Right. So in 59, they had 600. By 67, a mere eight years later, it had swelled up to 12,000 and change. And he would get people on TV. It was that kind of thing. Like, he was a genuine PR guy. So all of a sudden, there were Mensa members, some very charismatic, that were being sort of bandied about in articles and on television. Well, there's one in particular. He was the chairman, I believe, and he was the guy who I think would go on like Johnny Carson and stuff like that. That's right. That's what I was talking about. Victor Cerebriakov. I think so. I've seen it compared to Cerebrico or Cerebral, so I think it's Cerebria cough. Yeah. There's an extra valley in there that's coming up. The works. That's right up my alley, though. Should we take a break? Sure. All right, let's take a break. We'll be right back. All right. So Member is gaining members very steadily. It is growing throughout the decades. If you wanted to be a member, you could mail them some money. And I know a cynical view would be like, they're just trying to make money, but it's an organization that needs money to run. I doubt if they have some super rich fund that they dig into, because when you look at the things they do, it's really nothing, like, super lavish. They don't have, like, yacht parties and stuff? From what I can tell. No, but I've never run across any kind of intimation that it's a money making scheme of any sort. Yeah, I just mean for the listener, like, oh, yeah, mail them a check and they'll send you a test. But that's how it works. You mail them a check back in the day, they would send you a test. I think it was Cerebral who said, you know, what we can also do is we can have these supervised. Like, actually, someone would come and administer a test. It would be a little more official, it might cost a little more money. We need a constitution. So they said, not a bad idea. And if you read their constitution, the three tenants are really pretty great. It's identify and foster human intelligence for the benefit of humanity. No problem there. Encourage research in the nature, characteristics, and uses of intelligence. Check and provide a stimulating intellectual and social environment for members. Sounds good to me. Yes, of course. And then number four, force breeding of people according to intelligence. Yeah. No problems, right? No, they didn't do that. No. So there was kind of a heyday, it seems like, in the think, and apparently there's a lot of tension at first between UK and US. And within just a couple of years of coming on the scene, the Kansas City chapter staged a revolt against the UK headquarters. They grabbed their six shooters, basically. I saw that they launched like a poison pen attack where they would write yes, they would write the employers of these mental hire ups and basically accuse them of terrible stuff and finally got the American chapters to basically be independent and equal. And that formed Mensa International. But the 60s were kind of a heyday. The 70s seemed to be hohan. And then apparently the 80s took off because from what I saw in this article. And I can't remember what maybe the Independent from 1996. It said that kind of the throughline of an organization like Mensa. The idea that some people are just naturally more intelligent than others. Really jibs with that Reagan Thatcher era of mentality. Of getting away from the idea that you can achieve if you're given the right kind of stuff. It's like, no, you got this problem over here, we're over here, we're not going to help you because why would we? Because you're beyond help. You're not naturally gifted. That kind of conservative thread that was really present in the Thatcher Reagan eighties made mental a lot more respectable or a lot more appealing during that time, from what I saw. Yeah. And I think in England, it peaked in the 1990s specifically with about 30,000 there, and now it's fewer than 20,000. So Dave said some of this might be the Mensa image problem, might be to blame, but it's just one of those organizations. It's going to have its ups and downs over the years, I'm sure, as far as membership numbers. Yeah. So how do you get in, Chuck, if you want to get into Mensa, what do you do, hot shot? You bake some cookies for Gina Davis? Sure that doesn't hurt? No, it's really easy, actually, in practice. You just need to score within the top 2% of an intelligence test. And it's not like you can just take any intelligence test. It depends on well, I mean, now there's an official Mensa test that you take, but there are also other IQ tests that can qualify. The Stanford beneath test the catel three B test I think we should hold off on sort of the big reveal, the big twist here for another few minutes. Okay, we'll keep that in our hip pocket. I can't wait to know what it is. An official from your country will administer their test to you and it takes a couple of hours. If you take the official mental test, if you've ever taken an IQ test, it's not like the Sat. It's a logic and reasoning test generally, and the questions are things like you're doing a lot of sequencing, like looking at the shapes, which shape would come next, which number would come next. It does test verbal intelligence and vocabulary and stuff like that. Math is a part of it, but it's timed, which is one of the big sort of not caveats. But the big thing you have to remember is you have to be a good test taker and you have to be able to take tests under pressure. Time to pressure. Right? Like that one scene in Swordfish with poor Hugh Jackman. I didn't see that. You didn't miss much at all. Okay, so that's the standard mental test, mensa Admissions test. And some people say, well, hold on. If you're a non native English speaker and you're in America, those tests have been shown to be biased toward certain people, usually based on language. So mental also administers what's called the Culture Fair test. And it's nothing I are weirdly. Yeah. It's nothing but shapes and symbols and what comes next kind of thing. And I took a test like that. It was, I think, Norwegian in origin. And I got to, like, question six before I'm like, I have no idea whatsoever what shape would come next. The first few is like, oh, okay, I can do this. And then it just got so increasingly difficult that I just stopped. I just had no idea what was next. Was this recently? You did that for this? Yeah, it was yesterday and a little blood coming out of my ear. I felt really disoriented and I woke up in a pool of my own urine. Yeah. You can also take a 30 minutes online, like, Mensa workout thing for free, which is sort of just a mosboost to see if you might want the full deal. A gift of the chef. I thought about taking one of these for this episode and then I was like, I don't want to. I don't care. Yeah, that's I think another thing, too, is like, taking a test like that is probably up your alley if you're interested in becoming a mental member. Yes. I don't think I'm great at tests like that, and maybe I don't want to know that I am or am not. Maybe I'm just happy with my life. Yeah, there you go. I'm happy doing my New York Times crossword and spelling b and playing Wordle, and that's good enough for me. I think that's fine. I mean, it's not like you're proving anything to anybody by becoming a member of Mensa, except maybe to yourself. I tried. I mean, honestly, it's like, oh, that'll be fine. I'll take it. And I'll embarrass myself to our listeners by saying what I scored. And every time I went to do it, I went, I don't want to do this. Yeah. So I didn't do it. So there's a whole hook to that whole thing a catch, I guess, is what you'd say if you use the right word. You can take those tests, the standard test or the Culture Fair test, once, one time each. That's the big one. And if you don't pass, meaning you don't score in the top 2% of the average American, you can never take those tests again. Like, you just have been denied admission in dementia through those tests. There is another way. There's a backdoor man way, is what I think they call it at Memphis. Yeah. This was the thing we were keeping in our hip pocket. You don't have to take this test because two thirds of all members did not take that official minsa test. You can also pay a fee. Not just people like what? Pay like, $1,000 to get in? No, pay a regular $40 fee. And they can accept results from about 150 different standardized intelligence tests that they evaluate based on the general population. So they'll basically just say, give us your test that you took. We'll see if you're in the top 2% and you can get in that way. That's a big backdoor. It sure is a big backdoor, Chuck. So one of the ways that you could get in is if you qualified for your high school's gifted program, or if you were super smartypants, your middle school or even elementary schools gifted program. They gave you a bunch of different intelligence tests back then. If your school didn't burn down in a fire, it's possible they still have those records, and you could have them via a sealed envelope from the school. Send your test results to Mensa. Mensa will check it out and be like, Yup, you're in, buddy, you're in. Now, question about these gifted programs, does that mean, like, the AP classes? Yes. All right, here's the deal, my friend. I was in AP English and AP history. Okay. And then when I saw and we'll go ahead and mention this, you can submit your Sat and act scores, your GRE and your LSATs, and if between I'm sorry, between 74 and 94, if you scored a 1250 or higher on the Sat, you would get into Mensa, even retroactively. Yeah. And, buddy, I scored in 1170. I wasn't as far off as I thought. Oh, that's great. You're not in Mensa, but that's great. No, but if I would have known that back then, I might have tried a couple of more times. I took it once. I took it once, too. I got a ten point 90. That's good, too. No, it's average. No, 1090. I think anything that breaks 1000 is on the higher, not high. But it's higher than average, right? I don't think so. I think that's pretty comfortably right in the middle of average. They don't even score it that way anymore, though, right? No, they don't. So after 94, they won't accept your Sat scores anymore because the Sat switched from testing general intelligence to testing what you've learned in school thus far. It went from being like an IQ test, basically, to an exit exam for high school, which is worse on that kind of test, actually. Would have done worse. Yeah, I think I took the intelligence one. I don't remember because I definitely took it in. Well, now I probably would have taken it in, like, 93. I think you probably would have taken it your sophomore or junior year, right? Yes. So it was probably 92, 93 that I took. So I took the original intelligence test, and I got a 1090. It doesn't feel great, Chuck. I feel good saying it out loud, but it doesn't feel great. Well, that was, back then, very easy to get into the University of Georgia. It's a lot harder now. They've really tightened it down. Yes. Because of the Hope Grant, which started the year I started to try to get in. So it's hard to get into Georgia the year that I started to try. Yes, I was. And I got to tell you, when I showed up with my 1090 Sat score, they said, Keep walking, pal. Do you remember your high school GPA? What are you pleading with this? I don't even know what that is. I don't remember my GPA. I want to say my brother, I think, was a 40, of course, but I think I was like a three two or something low threes. That's pretty great. Slightly above average, I would think. Mine was probably lower than that. I was not at all interested in school. I liked history. I thought Earth science is pretty cool. It wasn't until I got to college and wanted to go to college, I just suddenly turned from Saul to Paul all of a sudden, as far as college is concerned, and just completely started to take things seriously and got interested in learning. And it was then that I started to become, like, a four A student in college. Not at all in high school. That was a for a student. Well, I went to some easy colleges on the way to Georgia. Well, my deal was, and I still am like this I have a hard time tackling anything with enthusiasm that I don't want to do. So I've always been that way since I was a kid. And so in my English classes, I made A's and B's. And in my non major classes, not all of them, but the ones I wasn't super into, I made C's and a D or two. Oh, yeah, I have those under my belt, too, especially math. And it wasn't because I wouldn't try. I just genuinely couldn't get math. And one of the best things I ever did, as far as math is concerned, was I took geometry twice in high school, and the second time it just clicked. I understand. Like I was walking around like I was pythagoras. All of a sudden at high. School. I just understood geometry that second time around. It was really cool. It was a great feeling to just have something like that click that was so foreign. It was so difficult before. All of a sudden, I just understood it second time around. Well, and we went to school in an era when, boy, there were not a lot of accommodations made for different kinds of learning at all, much less different learning disabilities. And it was a different time. There's so much better now about every kid learns in their own way, and we can try and accommodate that. And in a lot of schools, not every school, obviously. Still a lot of work to be done. Yeah, I can't remember. I guess it was probably the NBC Nightly News, the national news. They have, like, a sweet human interest story, like, at the end of every show, and they had one recently, and it was about an integrated school in that they didn't separate kids with learning disabilities or physical I don't even know what you call it. Differences. Thank you. And kids who don't have those, they were all in the same class together. And I was like, Holy cow, that's a huge improvement. Because they used to be like, if you had facial differences and no cognitive disability whatsoever, just facial differences, they would put you in a class. Yeah, it was like the Dark Ages. Eighty s and ninety s when we were in school. But now they're just integrating kids, at least in this one school. I thought it was so cool, but it was based on this Instagram post where this little kid, I think he was probably about five or six, has cerebral palsy, and he just had a little friend who was a girl who was the same age, who just loved him and just played with them. They were like best friends. She didn't seem to treat him any differently than she did any of the other kids, but it just so touched. Her mom, she posted on Instagram. Of course it went viral, and it was a sweet story, but I just thought it was really remarkable, and I was really glad to hear that. Now they're just, like, integrating kids by age level and not separating them by anything else. So hats off to school districts doing that. I love it. The final kind of test we should mention that can get you in is if you were in the military prior to 1980, you might be able to use your aptitude test that you took back then. Now they do more vocational aptitude testing, but back pre 80, they would do intelligence testing, and you can use some of those. If you did, you want to take a break and then talk about what you do if you get into Mensa. Let's do it. Okay, Chuck, let's see if you get into Mensa. There's a lot of things people do. One thing people do is take the test, say I'm in Mensa and congratulate themselves for a couple of weeks and that's it. Other people like join Mensa because they have this sense, and rightfully so, that they will probably meet a lot of people like them who are smart, probably really like games, really like trivia, really like Star Trek. That is not a stereotype, that is for real, might be in the nudism, might really love beer, just stuff that you would have an interest in. But if you wanted to hang out with other high IQ people who have interests in that, you could do worse than joining Mensa, I think. Yeah. To be an active member. You have to keep up with your dues. Which are $79 a year and they have not a sliding scale. But if you sign up for and pay multiple years at a time. You can get that number down by average and stuff like that or you can pay for like a lifetime membership prorated by your age if you want to pay all at once and save some money. But the dues are $79 a year and then, as you said, they're called special interest groups. If you want to drill down in your local area and be a member of like the Mensa Investment Club is a really popular one where I imagine people sit around and talk about finances and smart ways to take care of your money. It's like any other local group that there's probably a mental knitting group, I guarantee you. It's just that you're meeting with people that are like minded and that they're all good at their highquality and they're good at taking those kind of tests. Right. And again, if you want some unkind characterizations of what it's like at some of these, you can just throw a rock on the internet and you'll find some article about somebody who took the mental test and ended up in a mental meet up and now they're writing about it, but they're not really a member kind of thing. There's plenty of stuff out there, but suffice to say that they're people who really like board games and really like beer and are probably like really sexually active to a surprising degree. And one thing I saw, Chuck, that seems to be genuine is that there is a kind of a libertarian right leaning bent that seems to be fairly common in the mental world. Yes, in the modern mental world. I've seen that in more place than one. And like you said, someone will go to one of these conferences and then do a write up about it and say, like, there was a lot of drinking late night, there was a lot of people hooking up. It's sort of like any conference you would go to again, except they're made up of people that are good at taking this kind of test. But there usually is some sort of mention of like yeah, there seem to be a sort of right wing bent to and again, there's 150,000 members. That's a generalization, but at least that's what's being written. Yeah. So the big deal gathering that they have every year, the big conference is called the Annual Gathering. The AG. Last year they had one for it was like a world gathering because it was the 75th anniversary of Memphis founding. And they had that in Houston, of all places. So the 2022 one is coming up in July. It's at the Golden Nugget in Sparks, Reno, Nevada. And they're having the hidden figures. Author margaret Lee. Shatterley. Nice. I think she is the keynote who's going to speak about hidden figures. There's also a drag show during a breakfast brunch probably on Saturday or Sunday. And then the other thing they're going to do is drink, drink, play games, drink and drink, I think. What else is going to go on at the AG? It's really interesting. There are other smaller get togethers. There's one called the Colloquium, which is an annual thing. It's just one day. And they'll have like themed topics at this one, like Crime Scene Intelligence would be one. There are Mind Games, which is a four day board game extravaganza where people this is since 1990, they get together and play board games. And a game can actually qualify as Mensa Select on the label if they deem it. So technically, the stuff you should know, board game might be played at the Mine Games conference, that it might even get that stamp one day. Yeah, you never know. Great. You never know. I mean, apples to apples. Got it. And our game is at least as popular as that. Yeah. Taboo. Got it. Yeah. Categories. And then there's culture quest. Obviously, Minsa members are probably generally into stuff like trivia. And there's a trivia dave calls it a trivia throwdown, where they play trivia games against one another. So one of the other things about mensa that it's well known for at their meet ups is that people will wear name tags. Third try and there'll be a colored dot next to their name. And depending on the color of the dot, it indicates how welcoming they are toward hugs from other people. And this, by the way, this has been going on for a while, this is kind of like a longstanding mental tradition. It's very forward thinking. It is very forward thinking because, frankly, we could all kind of use the green dots or the hug dot system. Yeah. I mean, a lot of people I'm a hugger, but a lot of people don't like to be hugged. And it's one of these things I just learned in the past few years that, like, with choosing what you do with your body and what people do to your body, that you shouldn't just go up and hug somebody. Some people genuinely don't like that kind of human contact. And it's not like I go up and just like, tackle everyone I see. I don't think I've ever been in a situation where I made someone uncomfortable, anything like that. But it's good to realize that, like, yeah, not everyone is into the same level of human contact, and you shouldn't put your norm on them. And they have a very elegant way of doing that with these green dots, yellow dots or red dots or blue dots. Yeah, green is all hugs are welcome. Yellow hug, ask before hugging. Well, that's Chuck now. Red dot, no hugs at all. That's you. Yeah, it should say burns like acid. Blue dot means I'm single. I think that means more than I'm single. I think that means, like, lead with your hips when you're hugging me, please. Yeah, I think so. What else, Chuck? What else do we have to say about Mensa? Well, I think we talked about their image problem a bit. Like you said, you can throw a rock on the Internet and open almost any article and you will see someone bagging on Mensa in kind of a snotty way. And I don't know, man, the more I read about it, the more I just thought, you know what? A lot of these people probably got teased growing up because they may be fairly bookish and, like, stop now. You're adults don't continue this sort of bullying in newspapers by saying, yeah, I went to these things, and it was a bunch of dorks playing board games and trying to get laid. They literally say that stuff in these articles. They do. And so I don't think it's just out of meanness. I think whether they're picking up on it unconsciously or overtly, the people who write those kind of articles typically are not right leaning, so they're picking up on that right leaning undercurrent, and then they're also kind of pointing to some disturbing and alarming and just straight up gross ideas that people from Mensa have supported over the years or proposed. When you take a group that focuses on IQ and inherently suggest that some people are superior to others, that can lead you to all sorts of unsavory rabbit holes. And some people on Mensa or part of Mensa are not afraid to go down those rabbit holes and discuss them and talk about them. Free speech is a huge thing among Mensens, and they very much resent not being able to say whatever they want to say with those articles. It's revealing. There's, like, a culture clash between the person who's writing the article and the Menson's that are like, the foil to them. That seems to be, like, the crux of those articles. Yeah. And there was a lot of news made kind of more recently when a comedian named Jamie Loftus, who, by the way, has a podcast on our network called The Bechtel Cast great show, Movie Show. Jamie is a comedian who did a four part episode called My Year in Mensa where she joined Mensa I think the story was sort of just took the test one morning while hungover and then didn't have a good experience and became the target. There's this Facebook group, amensa Facebook group that's unmooded called Firehouse, which can be very unkind. And I think Loftus had a bad experience there and again with the sort of altright undercurrent. And so that's what the basis of that podcast was. So I'm certainly not defending that stuff. Yeah. Anytime anybody's attacked online, that sucks. But Dave, I think, kind of discovered, like, the genuine criticism that you could level against mensa as a whole, and that is they're basing everything on IQ and IQ tests, test a certain kind of smartness, completely leaves out things like emotional intelligence, street smarts, creativity. Yeah, that kind of stuff. It's a group of people who do really well on aptitude tests. It's a society of people who do really well on aptitude tests and like the idea that they're joining the ranks of people who are in the top 2% of that group of people, that type of person. So the fact that it's kind of bandied about is like the society for intelligent people. It kind of misses a lot. But he also points out that they don't build themselves as that they build themselves as the high IQ society, which is a much narrower definition. And if you take it on its face value, then that makes sense. But most people out in the general public who hear about mensa don't kind of differentiate between those two things. Right. And if you get 150,000 of any people together in a group, you're going to have a couple of hundred that are pretty bad people that do bad things on Facebook. So it's like I just have a hard time sometimes when entire organizations get lumped in because of, and I don't want to say a few bad apples, but just the actions of what's clearly a minority. Sure. You know what I mean? Yeah. Except Nazis. Yeah. There are nothing but bad apples. That's right. Well, if you want to know more about mensa, you can start poking around on the Internet. And since I said you can start poking around the Internet, that means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this young listener. Hey, guys, brand new listener to the show. I first heard about you through the new book, which I checked out of the library the day before my baby was born. After my husband returned to work, I was trying to figure out a way to get the baby to sleep and tried reading to her. So I picked up stuff you should know, hoping the soothing sound of my voice would lower to sleep. And that is how my husband walked in on me reading about jackobork in to a three week old and put a temporary moratorium on reading to her. I think that's probably a joke while I was hooked. And now that I've returned to work. I'm going through the backlog of episodes and learning while in the car. Thanks for helping me get through that postpartum period, Jessica. That's fantastic. I'm glad you're bringing them up. Young Jessica. Thank you very much. And congratulations on your little gift to the world. Yeah, that's right. Well, if you want to be like Jessica and let us know about your late night readings or listening or goings on or anything like that, or if you've had experiences in Mensa, if you're a member of Mensa, we want to hear from you. You can send us an email to stuff. Podcast. I heart radio.com. Stuff you should know, is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, My Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-03-14-sysk-pain-scales-final.mp3 | Pain Scales: Yeeeow! | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/pain-scales-yeeeow | Pain is subjective; it is whatever the person experiencing it says it is. But to effectively treat pain, it helps to quantify it, which is why medicine came up with pain scales. | Pain is subjective; it is whatever the person experiencing it says it is. But to effectively treat pain, it helps to quantify it, which is why medicine came up with pain scales. | Tue, 14 Mar 2017 16:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=14, tm_hour=16, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=73, tm_isdst=0) | 41696516 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody. If you want a great website, you want to do it yourself. With no must, no fuss, turn to Squarespace. They have everything to sell anything. They have the tools that you need to get your business off the ground, including ecommerce templates, inventory management, simple checkout process, process, and secure payments. And if you're into analytics, hold on to your hats, because Squarespace has everything that you need. Just head to squarespace. comSK, and you can get a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code s YSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun's shining, the daylight's longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing Poolsite, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, my Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, my Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilguera and Georgia Hard Stark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. Welcome to stuff you should know from howstuckworkscom? Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Hi there's. Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Hi. And Jerry's over there silent. Well, you put those three together, you get stuff you should know. Sorry. In advance. Those three, you just had a disassociative experience. I did. Because I want to be anywhere but where I am right now, which is in a lot of pain. Are you in pain? Yes. I just hit my hand with a hammer really hard to get ready for this episode. Nice. Right in the middle of the middle knuckle. You know, one of the very first dumb jokes I made, like, really, I think I need to go to the hospital. In my very first podcast appearance with you, I said that I was a method podcaster and that I just got through brushing my teeth and drinking orange juice. Oh, yeah. You have revived that dumb joke from 37 years ago, right? With the hammer. And here we are. And here we are, Chuck talking about pain. Yeah, you know, I thought this one, for all its kind of sameness and basicness, was way more interesting than I thought. Once you dig in a little bit more yes. Pain. How about that? Yeah, I thought this one was pretty cool, too. We need to do, like, a pain episode just on pain, just in general. House of Pain, the TV show and the group. I didn't know this is a TV show. Yeah, it's a Tyler Perry show. Okay, that explains it. It's about the pains and their house. Yes, I get it. I think it's kind of like Mama's Family a little bit. Either same production quality, that kind of stuff looks like it's recorded on a stage. Sure. Probably is. You know what I'm talking about? Mommas Family. Yes. I didn't watch that. Well, had you, you would have known pain, which is weird because I love The Carol Burnett Show. Yeah, this is a pretty far cry from that. Mama's house. Mama's family. Mama's family with Bubba, the grandson. Oh, man. It was bad. But anyway, yeah, there's no segue. Let's just get back to pain. Yes. And not just pain, because, like you said, we're going to do one on that one day, but pain scale specifically, which is r, I should say, because there are many of them. As this article, astutely points out, there really isn't a physical instrument, although they have tried over the years that can accurately measure pain. And so doctors rely on a couple of methods, which is, hey, dummy, how much do you hurt? Hey, you, stop crying. Tell her how much you're paying, or I'm going to look at you and talk to you a bit. And I'm going to make my own assessment because I'm the doctor, right. And I'm going to write, like, could brush his hair a little more than it does. I'm going to make my own observations about you. Man, I haven't used a hairbrush since I was probably 13. I have to once in a while because my hair is kind of longish now. And when the wind blows, it really turns it into a bird's nest pocket. Yeah. I stand in front of the mirror like Marcia Brady right before bed and count off 100 brush trucks. Yeah. So let's talk about basically, we're talking about self reporting or observation. Those are the kind of the two methods, because it's important. There's a lot that goes into determining how much pain someone's in from the kind of meds they get to relieve that pain to diagnosis of what the heck is going on. Well, yeah, the medical community just in the last probably decade or so, is really waking up to the fact that it's doing a lousy job, or traditionally it's done a lousy job of managing pain. There's a lot of assumption that people are big babies who don't really need medication, they just need to suck it up. Sure, there's a lot of problems with med seating where people pretend that they have pain that they don't actually have because they want the drugs. But then there's also just this idea that managed pain care isn't quite as good as it should be. So part and parcel of that is realizing, like, well, then we need to be able to quantify levels of pain a lot better. And the idea that they're waking up to it is fairly new. But the idea that we can't quantify pain is a pretty old one. People figured it out pretty early on that pain is subjective. It's subjective. Horrible, terrible experience. And I actually ran across one definition of pain from a researcher that said pain is whatever the person experiencing it says it is. Yeah. It's as simple as that. That doesn't really help a doctor who's trying to figure out how much medication to give you or whether to just go ahead and put a pillow over your face or something, make you go to sleep. Yeah, because that's what doctors do. Well, yeah, it's a last resort, but it's in their toolbox. Yeah. And it's become so important that there's a group called the American Pain Society, which is a great band name. It really is. Yeah, right. Probably some sort of metal. Right. Or I can see kind of like a sex pop, kind of I don't even know what that is. I don't either. You just invented the genre. Yeah. They're calling it the fifth vital sign, which means that's important. Kind of like thrillkill cult or who is the other Lords of Acid? I don't know who they are. What? Dude, that's your what? You got requested at our San Francisco show to say that. You're so famous for saying that when I haven't heard of something. What? Well, go listen to those bands, and you'll be like, oh, sex pop. Okay, but that's more like sex techno. I don't know what sex pop would be. Didn't sound like it's up in my alley. Okay. But I'll give it a shot. All right. So quantifying pain specifically. Or pain in general. Actually was. Like you said. Misunderstood for a long time. And it took all the way into the 20th century. Quite a bit into the 20th century with doctors still kind of struggling with how much anesthesia to give. How many meds to give if you were in pain. If you were having surgery and childbirth. Literally. People waking up in surgery and going. Oh. Well. We didn't give that person enough anesthetic. And we talked about that in our anesthesia episode a little bit. Oh, man. There's just a lot of trial and error. I guess that's not enough. Someone screaming on the table in front of me. Well, plus, also, pain apparently, is pretty widespread. I saw that in the US. Alone, nine out of ten people regularly suffer from pain at any given time, 25 million people. Well, I guess over the course of a year suffer acute pain. In the US. Another 50 million suffer chronic pain. Many of those people report suffering chronic pain for five years or more. The medical community says we need to do something about this. And it's like you were saying, the American Pain Society, they say that pain is the fifth vital sign. Yeah. The fifth beetle. What was his clarence. Yeah, it's great. Eddie Murphy's kid. Yeah. So if we go back in time to the time where they were trying to be a little more objective about it and actually come up with a little more what they thought were, like, fool proof ways to determine pain measurement in there were some researchers, a trio, one James Hardy, one Harold Wolf, and one Helen Goodell of Cornell University. Those are some 140s names. Sure. Harold Wolfe. Yeah. James Hardy. Yeah. Helen Goodell. All three of them. They actually built a device called a Doloriter. And what this was was basically a 100 watt lamp with a lens that they could focus. You know how you do when you're burning ants? Yeah. With a magnifying glass. Yeah. That's kind of what they were doing. And they were cranking up heat. They got these nurse volunteers, apparently, and I think they were all pregnant, which is even a little more sadistic. But what they were trying to do is compare it to their pregnancy pains, their labor pains. Yeah. And I was like, Why would you do that to women in labor? Well, you can predict when something was going to happen. It was one of those few instances when you can predict someone's going to be a pain. Yes, I get it. But it was also the 1940s, so they didn't care. Right. So that hurts a lot. They're like, Great. But I guess these were volunteers, so take that for what it's worth. Sure. And they were either nurses or wives of doctors, which is even a bit more sadistic. And they would focus this light on the back of their hand and make it hotter and hotter and compare that to the intensity of your labor pains by shrinking, I guess. Yeah. And they've been made of a unit. We've reached equilibrium. They even invented a pain unit called Dolls DoLS. And it went supposedly one to ten, but there was a lady, one of them tough march, who cranked it all the way up to 10.5, maxing out the machine, and she was still like, no, I can take it. Which is amazing. Yeah, she was, like, hurt so good. She loves sex. Pot music. But there was a problem with the Dolorometer, which is in subsequent experience by other doctors, they could not reproduce this, which means it's junk. Well, not only that, I don't understand how it quantifies pain. Right. What you're really saying is compare your labor pains to the amount of heat energy that we're applying to you. It just didn't translate to me. I didn't understand it. But apparently it created this new cottage industry for machines that were used to measure objectively paint. And there's some still around today, but they do slightly different things. Like, there's one that is like a ray gun that's used to see if someone under anesthesia is under deep enough. Right. You just sit there and shoot them with it for fun, too. Yeah. And if they don't wake up, great. The fun gun. That's right. And then in 1945, I guess this is just sort of the decade of trying to perfect these things before they realize they couldn't. Time magazine wrote an article on Dr. Lauren Julius bella. Glutesec. Great name. And he had a machine. It didn't use heat, but it put pressure on the shin bone and increasing amount. That sounds awful. The shin is like surprisingly sensitive. Oh, yeah. Just put a coffee table in any room. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. It should be tougher than leather, like Run DMC. But it's not. No, it's not. And this one actually, I don't know what the name of it was, but he measured it in grams to quantify it and was supposedly, and I think this is self reported by Dr. Bellagut, 97% accurate. But since you've not heard of it, most of you, that probably means that was not true. Yeah, he thought if he said 98% accurate, people would have been suspicious of his findings. Yeah, that's right. 97%. The funny thing though is while all this, what was it going to call it? Quackery, because they were trying to legitimately invent something, right? But while the same time all this is going on, there was a guy named Kenneth Keel who said, why don't we just ask people? Let's use our brains, people. How about that? Why don't we just ask folks and tell them like zero one or two or three on the scale of not painful to severely painful. Why don't we just ask them and see what they say? And that kind of caught on as the standard. Well, let's take a break and then we'll get back to when sensible pain scales came into effect. Josh Clark. Josh, my friend, do you know where your passport is right now? Well, you better dig it up because Adventure is around the corner and there's a card that's going to get you closer with the City Advantage Platinum Select Card. Every swipe earns you advantage miles and loyalty points and two times Advantage miles at restaurants and gas stations so your everyday purchases can take your travel to new heights. Plus, card members get access to built in travel benefits. For example, your first check bag is free on domestic travel, so you and your family have room to pack for every possibility, like coming home with extra souvenirs and with preferred boarding, you'll be in your seat sooner, ready for takeoff into Adventure. The hard part is deciding where you'll go first. Because when you earn 50,000 Advantage bonus miles after qualifying purchases, adventure is on. So fasten your seatbelt and put away your tray table because there's so much world to see. And the city advantage. Platinum Select Card is your ticket. You can learn more at city comAdventure and travel on with cityadvantage. You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? For all their days at the dog park and nights sleeping in bed. Your bed. Yep. We mean that kid your dog. Halo Elevate is natural sciencebased nutrition for their best health. It's guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leading brands. That means digestive health, heart and immunity, support healthy skin and coat, hip and joint support and strengthen energy. Find Halo elevate at Petco pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores. Learn more@halopets.com. All right, Chuck, so the 40s were full of dingbad ideas. The 60s. Well, actually, I guess the guy you mentioned, Dr. Kenneth Keel, he came up with his idea of a pain scale, a subjective self reported pain scale in the 40s, but it seems to have really caught on in the 60s. Yeah, agreed. And so with a self reported pain scale, with any well, yeah, any kind of self reported pain scale. It's basically you are asking the patient, how much pain are you in? And it's not enough for them to be like, oh, a lot. Right. You have to give them, like you said, a scale of, like, zero to ten or zero to 20 or zero to 100. Yeah. Some people, just for fun, have one that goes up zero to a million. Sure. And everyone chooses a million. It's crazy. I always have a difficult time because I have a high threshold for pain. But that makes sense because pain is subjective. Yeah, but I have a high threshold for pain, but I also want the good pills. Do you wink when you're talking? No. I'm in a tremendous amount of pain, doctor. Please help me. I usually try to quantify and this doesn't happen much because I don't often have an injury to where I would need pain pills or something, but I always try to quantify it as if I didn't have a high threshold for pain. You know what I'm saying? I'll think of my number, and then I'll add a couple so I can get juiced up. You objectively self report then, rather than subjectively. Yeah. Which they say is very much wrong. Sure. And you should be super honest with your doctor. Yeah. Because, like you said, there are addicts who seek this out. Yeah. I'm not one of those, but I'm just like, the paint pill makes the pain feel a little bit better. Even if I have a high threshold, that means I don't want that pain to go away some, you know? Yeah. Well, the way to get around that, though, is to just, like, dress up when you go to the hospital. Like, wear a suit. Sure. Tie, that kind of thing. Yeah, I walk it with my baseball hat and beard and a tie. Well, see, you would see med seeking. Yeah, I totally would. It would, at the very least, cross their mind. Whereas if you dressed up and you said and shaved sure. They'd be like, what drugs can we give you? Right. Just write down whatever you want and we'll sign it. I don't know the name of any of them. Fentanyl is a big problem these days. Is it? Making its way into heroin, killing people. What, taken with heroin? Yeah, they're using fentanyl to cut heroin. I don't know if they still are anymore. But towns around America, it'd be normal to have one or two overdoses a year. They were having like, a dozen or so all of a sudden because people were like, It's like heroin, and then the highest grade pharmaceutical heroin mixed in. And apparently people didn't have any warning, or else maybe they were told, this will knock your socks off. I think that's what killed Philip Seymour hoffman, too. I think he might have had fentanyl in his heroin. But it's like, what these people are used to. The dose they're used to right. Normally with heroin would not be a lethal dose, but with fentanyl mixed in, they're dead. Well, that reminds me of the great Kamal Nagiani joke, which was my intro to him. I heard him on this American life. He was talking about a new drug that kids were doing, which was Tylenol PM with heroin, and he was just like, you're already doing heroin. What could that possibly add to your experience? Very funny joke. Yeah, but also sad at the same time aren't the best jokes. Yeah. A little sad sometimes. So with self reporting pain scales, it sounds like I said so basic, like, okay, it's a no brainer. You ask someone, you've got zero to whatever, three or ten or 100 people say that, and then the doctor knows. But you don't think about children or in their understanding of pain, or maybe the elderly and reasons how they experience pain, or people that are cognitively impaired in their understanding of pain. And then you start to think, oh, wait a minute. Well, we need all kinds of pain scales and ways of asking people, because not everyone is the same, and they do have them. Adults specifically are pretty good at rating their pain on a scale using numbers. Yeah. They can also use words like severe pain or something like that. Right. And usually if you're being presented with the pain scale, it's not open ended. Like, describe your pain in flowery language. Which of these words best describes your pain? Like no pain, moderate, severe, intolerable. The one that gets me is the worst pain imaginable. Yeah, that's as bad as it gets. I can't conceive of any pain worse than what I'm in right now. It just runs a chill down my spine thinking that something could happen that could put any of us in that situation where you're experiencing the worst pain imaginable. I just don't think that should be able to happen to a person. Yeah, and it's weird, too. It seems like a lot of times, injuries, like, whether it's a cut or a broken bone or something I've never broken a bone, but I've been cut open a lot of times. You better knock on wood. I know. I'm knocking right now. It seems like those injuries are less painful a lot of times. And other kinds of injuries, like, I hear people say, like, yeah, I broke my bone, but it was just sort of numb and it looked awful, but I didn't feel actual pain. Right. Whereas pulled muscles and things like that are the things that really hurt, or back pain, for God's sake, is the worst. You know, I'd like to do a call out to emergency room physicians or nurses or elderly s, anybody who's seen people in a lot of pain and tell us what is reliably the worst type of injury, pain wise? I think burns. Oh, yeah, I'll bet burns. I've heard that. That's just and I've had small burns. That it's just that pain that won't stop. And I can't imagine, like, working in a burn, the kind of pain those people suffer. Yeah. Man so, talking about children, there's this really great story about the Wong Baker faces all caps FA CES for something that's right. For treating kids with discomfort and pain. And it was developed in the early 80s by two women, donna Wong, who was a well, Connie Baker, I think, first started with the idea, and Connie Baker was a Lifechild child life specialist excuse me. Which I had never heard of, but it's a really cool job where they work in hospitals and they work with children not in, like, a nursing capacity, but I'd love to hear from someone who does this, but it seems like they kind of work in a more of a social services capacity and helping a kid just deal with being hospitalized. Does that sound about right? Yeah, that's my impression. Okay. And then Donna Wong, who is a pediatric nurse consultant and apparently an author well, not apparently an author, very much an author, but apparently just this legend in the nursing industry. And she came to visit in Tulsa, where Connie Baker worked, and they got to talking, and she was like, I had this idea where we can do better with trying to determine and get self reporting out of children, because children don't sometimes they're pre verbal or nonverbal, and sometimes they don't get, like, the numbers or the color charts, right? So we need a better way. And ingeniously they developed this with children. They started with just blank circles and said, hey, you draw a face that looks like the pain that you're having, right. The kid withdraw. They'd be like, this is terrible. Did you do a better job than this? What is that? Is that a chimney with smoke coming out of it? They're like that. I feel like I'm on fire. So these kids, you look at some of these early drawings, and it's super cute. They've got these crayons, and they put these details like hair and noses and typical kids drawings. And interestingly, some of them drew left to right, some of them right to left. I don't know how to explain that, but I guess maybe kids that hadn't learned to read yet might have done right to left and not understood that that's sort of the opposite of how we learned to read. Or they grew up in a culture that reads right to left? I don't think so. I think these are just like normal, dumb American kids. Got you. And so these kids actually participated and started drawing these little faces that range from smiling to tears. And they got a little bit of heat for using tears as well as the smiles. Why? Well, some researchers said you probably shouldn't use those, but they said, no, every kid drew smiles. So we think that is really informative to us and them describing how they feel. So let's keep that. They kept the tears, but they told the kids, and they continue to tell kids when they look at this thing, you don't have to have tears necessarily to have to be in the worst pain, because not everybody cries when they're in pain. Got you. That's why they said you shouldn't have tears on there. Yeah, I think so. To confuse the kids. Yeah, exactly. So what they did was then they got a professional artist and basically kind of picked out the most frequently drawn features and had them draw like, a professional composite of these spaces. And I think they ended up on six circles after experimenting with less or more. And children actually helped develop the the Faces chart, which is an awesome story. It is. It's pretty cute. Yeah, in a sad way, which makes it a joke. All right, so, Chuck, let's take another break and then we'll come back and talk about some other ways of assessing pain. Josh Clark. Josh, my friend. Do you know where your passport is right now? Well, you better dig it up, because Adventure is around the corner and there's a card that's going to get you closer with the City Advantage Platinum Select Card. Every swipe earns you Advantage miles and loyalty points, and two times Advantage miles at restaurants and gas stations so your everyday purchases can take your travel to new heights. Plus, card members get access to built in travel benefits. For example, your first check bag is free on domestic travel, so you and your family have room to pack for every possibility, like coming home with extra souvenirs. And with preferred boarding, you'll be in your seat sooner, ready for takeoff into Adventure. The hard part is deciding where you'll go first, because when you earn 50,000 Advantage Bonus miles after qualifying purchases, adventure is on. So fasten your seatbelt and put away your tray table because there's so much world to see. And the city advantage. Platinum Select Card is your ticket. You can learn more@city.com Adventure and travel on with Cityadvantage. You know you're a pet mom when your camera roll is all pics of your pet. At Halo, we get it because we are pet moms, too. And just like you, we know their nutrition is one of the most important decisions you'll make. Halo is natural, high quality pet food that's rooted in science and thoughtfully sourced it's the World's Best Food for the World's Best Kids. Find halo at specialty pet stores and online. So, Chuck, you've got pain scales that use numbers, you've got some that use faces for little kids. But one of the things they have in common is that they exist on a spectrum. One of them is so advanced that you have on one end, no pain, and on the other end, extreme pain. And an adult or somebody will point to wherever they are on that scale, and then the doctor has to get out a ruler and measure it in millimeters. Right. And then they mark that down. And then one of the benefits of objectively assessing someone's pain, even through self reporting, is that you can track whether it's getting better or worse by assessing it several times over time. Right. But part of the problem with self reporting pain scales is there can be obfuscation, like we said. Like if you're med seeking the elderly apparently don't like to talk about their pains. Yeah, there's a lot of reasons for that, from the shame of getting older and not feeling well to, like you said, just like they don't want to be a bother a lot of times. Yeah. I read that they don't like to talk about their pain or whether they're in pain, but they will respond to other words that are virtually the same thing, like sore, ache, discomfort. And that if you're a good physician, you're going to figure out what words they respond to most and then just replace pain with that to get them to talk about the type of pain they're in. They have a little translation chart, pretty much. Yeah. It's like a two right Acry .5. And this is killing me. That's an eleven. I wonder if there are any pain scales where it's like weather patterns, like Spring Day to Tornado of Pain. Tornado of Pain. There's another band name. Yeah, that probably is a band. And then they make them draw that, too. Draw a better Tornado. I meant to say something, too, about the faces chart for kids, a lot of times they'll still, even though they have the chart, let kids draw it because they found the kids really enjoyed doing it. It probably takes their mind off of things. Yeah. And the kids will, like, draw it and then take it home and stuff. It's kind of cool. And while they're busy drawing, the doctor sneaks up behind them and injects them with a heavy dose of opioids right into their neck while they're distracted and they can't bam. Most of those drawings have, like, a big crayon streak going off the edge of the page. So some other reasons that you might need to pull out different charts is maybe someone doesn't speak the language that the doctor speaks. Right. Or maybe there's a cultural difference that just makes the scale a little more difficult to grasp or translate. Or like you said, They could be cognitively challenged. Sure. There's a lot of different reasons why self reporting scale might not work in a situation. And so in that case, the doctor needs to rely on his or her own observations to come up with a pain assessment. I found this extremely interesting that regardless of your level of consciousness, if you are conscious and receptive to pain, your body is going to make you react in predictable and, from what I can tell, universal ways. Yeah. Right. So no matter where you are in the world, no matter whether you are cognitively challenged or whether you have Alzheimer's or whether you are a nonverbal baby, like, there are going to be things that you are going to do when you're in pain. Like for example, facial expressions tend to change and take on reliable expressions. Yeah. Like if you have back pain and you go to sit down, they're assessing you before they've even started asking questions. So you come into the room and you grab the arm in the chair and do that when you sit down. That's a big cue to a doctor. This person is having trouble sitting and standing there in so much back pain. Yeah. And if someone took a picture of you at that exact moment, you would see that your eyes are drawn shut tightly, your lips are drawn back away from your mouth and your teeth are clenched down, you're grimacing, in pain and you're doing it involuntarily. Yeah. These are behavioral cues. Yeah. There's basically two categories. You can put observational pain assessment into behavioral and physiological. Right. Yeah. So on the behavioral hand, you've got facial expressions like grimacing, you've got sounds like moans, grunts, even people just talking about their pain, but not because they're being interviewed, but just being like, oh, my back, or something like that, my aching back. It really works me like a dog today. And these are super important for all the reasons we talked about people either not being able to report their pain accurately. We talked about a couple of reasons, like the drug seeking, but little kids might be afraid of needles and they might think I'm going to get I mean, I actually remember doing this. I remember under reporting pain because I was afraid I was going to get a shot if I said I was in too much pain. And so maybe that's why I have a high threshold now. It has something to do with it, but I used to be really needlephobic and am not anymore. I don't love it still. But the needles have gotten so tiny that it's not that big of a deal. So you were needlephobic when I was a kid? Yeah. Needles, they were a lot bigger. Obviously. It wasn't like the 18 hundreds where they have a railroad spike. Right, but it's not like today where those little tiny, tiny thin needles I don't know the gauges, but yeah, when I was growing up, I hated getting shots. Yeah, I wasn't really big on it either, but I don't know if I would be nel phobic. Do you watch the needle go in or do you look at sometimes it depends on my mood. Oh, really? Yeah. It depends on your mood? Yeah. I mean, if I'm feeling curious and frisky, I'll watch it and I'll be like, you missed that one, and I try to psych them out. Yeah, that is kind of bad when they can't find the vein. Sure. For blood drawing. Right. But yeah, sometimes I'm just like, I'm not into it today. Look away. The other cool thing, too, about when you get blood drawn today is they've just come so far, man. Remember they used to have to if you had multiple blood tests, you would get stuck, like six times, and now they have those awesome little tubes that they can just unscrew. Phlebotomy. Is that what that's called? Whoever invented that? Mr. Flobo, MD, I salute you, because that has really changed things for me. But I still, weirdly, have this fear of, like, when they're doing that and unscrewing it, I have this fear that they're going to knock the needle and it's going to kind of rip out of my arm. Me too. Okay. Is that a common thing? Maybe? Oh, yeah, for sure. It's so flimsy looking and it's basically being held in by the needle, but there's this big top heavy tube that's attached to it that is just going to rip it out and it's going to pull all of your veins and your muscle outright after. It like a bunch of bloody party streamers. I know what you mean. And I'm slightly phobic still about them not being able to find the vein. So, like, they give you the ball to squeeze. I turn that thing into dust because I'm watching them and they're like, I think I got one here. I'm like. Are you sure? I don't see it. I want to see that vein bulging out for them to go in with that needle. Maybe I'm still needlephobic it. Sounds a bit like it, yeah. I don't think you like the needles. No, but I mean, hats off to the nurses. That's a tough job because there are varying degrees of needlephobia and I know it's probably never any fun. Sure. Well, that's good, though. That means your chances of becoming an intravenous drug user, like zero. Yes, exactly. Zero chance. So, Chuck, in addition to those behavioral cues, right, like body language is another one, too, where you've got your arm kind of guarding your broken rib or something like that. Get back. Yeah, sure. Everybody stay back. That's fairly universal, from what I understand. There's also physiological changes, too. Like, you may become nauseous or your heartbeat or respiration starts increasing, you sweat. There's a lot of changes that the body undergoes that can be objectively observed. Right. Would that where it's like, oh, that guy is sweating like a chunk. Okay. He must be at, like a ten right now, even though he can't talk, because that's another one too. Like, you may be in so much pain that you can't talk. You can't focus or concentrate on talking, so you certainly can't self report your pain. Yeah. Or have an injury that keeps you from talking. I almost bit my tongue off when I was a kid. Oh, man. And I couldn't talk very well. Yeah, well, now you talk great. So much so that I do it for a living. Sure. And like I said, there are so many of these pain scales, and some of them can get very specific for the kind of person that they're treating. There's one called the CNPI checklist, and this is specifically for cognitively impaired elderly. Oh, that's specific. And it's a nonverbal checklist, basically, that doctors can use. And we talked about cognitive impairments. Doctors have to be really skilled and careful there, because when they're assessing pain, because if you're assessing behavioral traits and someone has a cognitive impairment, it can be very confusing to assess that, because there may be another need not being met. Like, they might be hungry or overstimulated or thirsty. Right. And that's coming out or anxiety, maybe, and that's coming out in the way they're acting. And the doctor has to be able to kind of wade through that to get an accurate reading. Right. And then so with these observational scales, in some cases, the doctor will just be like, oh, that guy is really grimacing. Horribly so. He's probably at, like, a ten. Other ones actually quantify these different observations, like the cries tool for infants in pain, which is about as sad of thought as there is, but it's basically several different observations that fall into behavioral physiological tranches. And then the doctor rates each one, I think, is zero to two or something like that. And then if the sum total of each category adds up to four or more, then the baby is in a type of pain that would require some sort of medication. Yeah, I looked into this one a bit more. Cries stands for crying, requires oxygen for saturation greater than 95%. That is a terrible acclimate. I for increased vital signs, e for expression, s for sleepless. Zero would be a cry that's not high pitched. Yeah, I guess like a whimpering cry. One would be high pitched, but the kid is easily consoled. And a two would be high pitched and not inconsolable the oxygenation. Is there an increase? Sorry? In two at certain levels. Number three, the vital signs, which is heart rate and blood pressure. In this case, zeros. Unchanged increase. Less than 20% is the one. Greater than 20% is a two. Right. Expression, no. Grimace is zero. Just a grimace by itself is a one and a grimace with a non crying grunt, it's a two. That's not a good one. Well, because they've already covered crying. So, yeah, a non crying, grunt, and then sleepless, continually sleep. Zero awake, and frequently one and always constantly awake. Two. Man and then they total those up, like you said. That is a sad scale. It is. Man. I think I've said before, I used to do PA jobs in La for this one company who did two hospitals. They did City of Hope cancer research, which is where I saw the head in the bucket. Right. And then children's Hospital Los Angeles. CHLA oh, man. Which was a really rewarding experience, but the toughest job I ever had. Like, the worst stuff you can imagine. And I got to say, kids are the bravest, best attitudinal they had the best attitudes, and they were the bravest of any humans I ever saw. In the face of the most daunting things, like, compared to adults, I was just like, man, adults need to take some lessons from kids. Yeah. Because it's amazing, like, the attitudes these kids had. Yeah, that's neat. It was. And I've also been in the emergency room, on the flip side, and seeing adults that I think they think they might be able to get sooner if they whale in pain. Right. Like when they're wailing and wailing and then you see them, like, open one eye and look around, because maybe they are in that kind of pain, and that's just how they express it. But usually when I'm in the emergency room, there's one person that's just like, oh. And I'm like, Come on, man. I say you're just trying to get to the front of the line. Hurts. And then I see these kids in the cancer war. They're just, like, smiling and playing. I'm like it's hard to not be a little cynical about adults and how they handle that stuff. Yeah, no, it's true. It does seem like you do kind of get worse here as you age. Up to a point. Yeah, I agree. So you got anything else? No. I mean, there's tons and tons of pain scales that we didn't cover, and they're all basically after the same thing in slightly different ways, so let's just leave it at that. Okay. Pain scales. Who'd have thought that we would do pain scales before we did one on pain? Well, now when we do one on pain, we can just say and there are also pain scales, which we've detailed thoroughly. Yeah, we do that, don't we? All right, well, if you want to know more about paying scales, type those words in the search bar@housedeforks.com. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this just email from a seemingly very nice guy or a big phony. Hey, guys, been listening for three to four years, I think. I've always wanted to write in, but was shy. I thought it was worth mentioning that I listened to about 30 hours of podcasts per week. And you are in my top two favorites. This guy's a pro, which basically that means we're number two. But he said we're his favorite. Yeah, I guess you're right. Which is fine. I guess I kind of want to know what number one is, though. Yes, I'd like to know as well. To Scott, follow up on this, please. Second, but related, I'm a master's level board certified behavior analyst at BCBA, and I am almost finished with my PhD. And I think you might enjoy hearing that you guys actually do a pretty decent job handling psychological concepts where many other podcasts don't. Often times, they're too cursory, too credulous, or they oversimplify or something else. And you guys do a great job. And it brings me to my third point. You guys have been on a super hot streak lately. I think the last month contains some of my favorite material to date. I don't know what's going on, but keep it up. I've been listening for two months. We're on steroids. That's it. And finally, I really loved your episode on Pacifism. I actually consider myself on the more extreme end of Pacifism. Do not wish harm on anyone under any circumstance. That's nice, right? I like to believe I would die to protect my enemy, to save a life. Wow, he really is on the far end. Yeah. He makes Gandhi look like Idi Amin. Yeah. Although I've never actually tested this, to be fair. That being said, I also don't think that I could allow someone to come to harm if I could do something about it. Although I'd prefer to take their place and then rather than hurt their attacker. Also, similar to what Chuck said about his wife, I cannot stand to see harm come to animals. As John Lennon said, war is over if you want it. You guys are fantastic. I wish you all the best. If you ever have any questions about behavioral psychology, I'd be happy to be as much of a resource as I can be. And that is from Scott Miller of the University of Nebraska. Go corn dogs. Corn huskers. Oh, yeah, that's right. You got to husk the corn before you can make it into a corn dog. That's true. Unless you're doing it, like, farmhouse style, in which case you would include the husk into the ultimate corn meal. Yes. And you can find those at county fairs. Thanks a lot, Scott. If you want to get in touch with us, like Scott did, you can tweet to us at Joshmclark or S-Y-S Kpodcast. You can hang out with us on Facebook.com STUFFYou know or facebook.com charleswchuckbryant. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyournow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetepworks.com. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon Music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, My Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored 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 Animal Camouflage Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-animal-camouflage-works | The wild kingdom is filled with examples of animals that can camouflage themselves into their environment, but the means and the methods are also wildly varied. Learn about the ins and outs of blending in through this episode. | The wild kingdom is filled with examples of animals that can camouflage themselves into their environment, but the means and the methods are also wildly varied. Learn about the ins and outs of blending in through this episode. | Thu, 23 Oct 2014 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=23, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=296, tm_isdst=0) | 30464287 | 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. 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Welcome to stuff you should know from housetoporkscom. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's Charles W, chuck Bryant. There's Jerry Hooray. That makes this stuff. You should know that's. Right? How's it going? It's going well. Great. You got your Candace soda. Diet soda. Unfortunately, it contains fennel keto nurse. Yeah. It's a big problem. Have you looked into that? Well, I mean, I don't drink that stuff as a rule, because of all the junk in it. No, but have you ever looked into that condition? It's a metabolic condition where it's like you can't have protein, basically, but you also have to live. Interesting. Yeah, it sounds terrible, I know. You can clean the toilet with canned soda and you can make a penny shiny overnight. Yeah. You can loosen rusted nuts and bolts. Yeah. Or you can drink it. Right. It's the most delicious thing. Go juice. It is. Goat juice of the type. Sure. You know me, I like my orange soda every now and then, though. Like the Wooponi Loo. That and the root beer is about all alfred root beer is great. What about cream soda? Yes. You're not a big cream soda fan? No, it's fine. I'll have one of those every two years. I'd say that's about right. Five root beers a year and about ten orange. So does the air. Do you have them in your fridge with, like, a little bit of masking tape so they're numbered? No, I don't buy them and keep them in the house. You should. It's probably cheaper by 30. $0.40? Yes. And this is not a big statement on health and wellness. My family didn't buy that stuff growing up because they were teachers and we didn't have a ton of money. What did you drink water. Just water. A lot of water. Really? Yeah. Especially in restaurants. We'll just have water. Yeah. That kind of deal. Got you. Because the other stuff costs money. But in retrospect, I'm glad because I never developed the big affinity for sodas. Yeah, no, it's pretty great for your mom. Yeah. So thanks, mom, for the milk and water. Way to go. So, Chuck, I would say this is a perfect segue to what we're talking about today. Animal camouflage. Yeah. We covered a little bit of this in the coolest animal ever, the octopus podcast. Yeah. We also talked about iridescence, I think. Yeah. And how to butterfly wings get their color. Yeah. When people say, like, what's an episode that everybody overlooks that you thought was great, there's like 50 of them at least. Sure. More like 650. Yeah. But I would say that the butterfly wings episode is a really sterling example of that, where it's just like, you think it's going to be boring, but it led us into all sorts of stuff. Optics, color, butterflies, migration, like, all sorts of really cool stuff. Yeah, that one turned out to be really neat. Yeah. And you know what? You just reminded me? We should mention that we have close to 700 podcasts now. We're really close. And a lot of people that maybe find us via itunes or another Pod player think we might only have, like, 300. Yeah. It's funny to see that triumphant tweet, like, just listen to all 300 episodes and stuff you should Know. My life is complete. Oh, boy. I'm so sorry. You got a long road to hoe, but you can find all those. We have an RSS. If you just Google Stuff you should Know RSS, or go to our website, Stuffysheno.com, click under Podcast. We have all 700 of them there. Yeah. You can also search Stuff You Should Know Archive, and it should bring up the Archive page on our website, which has every single episode of Stuff You Should Know ever. And I think you can download them there too, can't you? I think so. Who knows? In this day and age, it's 21st century. That's right. So, animal camouflage. Chuckers. Yes. Also, I want to give a shout out to a board panda. Article 20 Amazing Examples of Animal Camouflage oh, nice. It's nuts. Yeah. Some of the stuff these animals are doing these days, it's pretty cool. And you know why? Because they want to live. Yeah. It's natural selection at work, which is kind of like it's happening right in front of our eyes. We've covered natural selection at length in that episode, in the Darwin episode. Right. But as we all know, if an animal gets munched on or stomped on, it's not going to be around. So it adapts to the world around me and says, hey, I think I might want to look like that twig, or I might want to blend in color wise. Then I won't get eaten, and I'm going to pass that down to my kids and they won't get eaten. And all of a sudden, we're a healthy, thriving species. Yeah. And through natural selection, an animal that has a trait that keeps it from being eaten allows it to, say, blend in. It raises the likelihood that it will live long enough to reproduce, to pass it on. And on the other hand, an animal that's brightly colored and stands out in its environment, it's probably going to get picked off early on, won't have a chance to reproduce. So whatever traits it has won't necessarily be passed along. Yeah. And that's why almost every animal that you'll see on the planet Earth has some sort of blending in capability. Right. Not always. You'll see a big blue bird in the middle of the woods. Obviously, you're a cardinal, but you'll also see a lot of deer and squirrels and ground mammals that are sort of brownie and gray. Yeah. It's not because they're just drab and because they're again, trying to survive. Exactly. They blend in with those earth tones. And if you look in the ocean, you will see some crazy fluorescent things, but you're also going to see a lot of blue grayish coloring and sea creatures because they'll blend into the light that soft light under the water. Right. And one of the reasons why animal camouflage is so widespread and adaptation is because it doesn't just help you from being hunted yourself, it helps you to hunt. You can use it to capture prey as well as hide from predators. So it's just really versatile and great, fantastic stuff can help you kill and not be killed. Exactly. Just the whole key. So there's a couple of different ways where there's some factors involved in how animal camouflage will develop within a given species. First and foremost, it depends on how the animal behaves and its physiology. Yeah. If you're a mammal, obviously your fur is going to play a large part. If you're a fish or an amphibian, your scales, your skin might right. If you're traveling big packs, you might use that to your advantage. Or if you're a solo flyer, you might find a way to work that into your routine, your survival routine. Yeah. So, I mean, the animal itself, the camouflage it develops, what type of animal it is and how it behaves, those are going to have a huge impact. So too, will the environment. Probably more than anything else, the environment will predict how the animals camouflage will develop because what you want to do is blend into the background. And so the natural habitat, the environment that the animal lives in, will become the model for the camouflage. Yeah. Like, if you're surrounded by green, you're probably going to be green. Right. Or you might be dead soon. The final way is the physiology and behavior of the predators and prey that seek those animals out for lunch. So for instance, if your main predator is color blind and you're not going to mess with changing color, you might alter over time, just like maybe the stripe pattern on your body or something. It's about pattern, not color necessarily. So your own physiology and behavior, the behavior and I guess physiology of your predators or your prey, and then the actual environment that you inhabit. These are the big three when it comes to determining animal camouflage. Yeah. And most of the camouflage that we see around us all falls under the banner of blending in to your surroundings. Just being casual. Yeah. And then there's basically two ways. Color is huge. It's not the only thing, but it's one of the bigger points of animal camouflage. Sure. And then there's two ways that color is produced here on planet Earth by animals, and it's either chemically or physically. Yeah. And chemically colors are produced through pigments. That's right. biochromes. They're microscopic natural pigments, and they produce these colors chemically. And for instance, your chemical makeup might absorb some colors of light, reflect others. That's going to make you appear to be a different color or be a different color. Right, exactly. So I looked up human pigmentation to see if that was an example of camouflage. I couldn't find anything. It wasn't like one of those ones where you do a Google search and you're like, oh, this is obviously a dumb question. There just hasn't been a lot of academic study on it, or whatever. Oh, for humans? Yeah. Like if brown skin or peach skin. Yeah. Interesting. I think what it is ultimately is just an adaptation to the exposure to the sun rather than trying to blend in with your environment. That makes sense. But I wondered I got my answer, I guess, through the fact that there wasn't an answer. All right. The other way you mentioned was actually physical structures, and these are also microscopic, and they act like prisms. And one example they gave in the article was polar bears, who actually have black skin, but they have translucent hairs. Translucent hair turns all visible light into a rainbow, which is why polar bears look like rainbow colors. Well, I don't think that's true. It's like on the Pink Floyd album cover. Yeah. That's a polar bear. Right? Right. That's a polar bear hair. Right. That prism. Not true. No, but apparently they have black skin underneath, but their hair manages to bend and reflect all light, almost all light. So they appear white. Isn't that nuts? That is nuts. But it's almost like, why not just have the darker skin evolve out just because the hair made it so it didn't need to? Maybe. I wonder if it serves some other purpose. Yeah, maybe. Who knows? Good question. Solar bear experts. Yes, but just someone's going to know. Please let us know. Butterflies also have physical structures. Scales are also a physical structure because they do crazy things to light and then some animals have both chemical and physical structures that create their camouflage. Apparently a lot of reptiles are green because they have physical structures that bend light and reflect light, except for, say, yellow. But then they have pigments underneath the skin that create blue or vice versa. Probably now that I say it out loud. And then you put the two together and you have green, which helps for a snake that lives in bright green trees. Sure. Yeah. And all these animals have their own method, I guess, with their physiology. Like, obviously mammals have their fur, fish, amphibians, reptiles, they're going to use their scales, birds have their feathers, and even insects use their exoskeleton, which can actually the texture of the exoskeleton can be changed over time to better blend in. Yeah, right. Like think about the wings on grasshopper. They look a lot like a leaf, right? Yeah. But one of the reasons they look like a leaf is not just because of the color, but because of the texture. It's got kind of this matte thing. If they were like a high shine polish, the thing would stand out pretty clearly. So it's not just color, it's also texture as well and patterns, as we'll see. But color is probably the most widespread part of animal camouflage. And apparently the squirrels fur is rough and uneven to resemble the texture of tree bark. Yeah, makes sense. Yeah, I never really noticed that. I can spot a squirrel a mile away though. Well, that's because there's a casillion of them in Atlanta, because I hate them. Oh, that's right. So we'll talk more about animal colors and all the neat stuff that can happen right after this message. Hey, summer is here, my friend. Which means school is out, the sun is shining bright, the days are longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. Yeah. Whether you're road tripping or you're relaxing by the pool, you can tune into the podcast 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. 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That's K twelve.com podcast and start taking charge of your future today. All right, we're back and we are talking about changing of the seasons now, because animals will change themselves depending on the change of the seasons, they can actually adapt to the seasons to blend in. Do you see how cute these foxes are? Look at how cute that fox is. That's the same type of fox. I love foxes. So the Arctic fox lives in an environment, a habitat, where some of the year it's snowy, other parts of the year it's well, woody and muddy. Yeah. And so, as a result, the Arctic fox has evolved to change its coat depending on the season. That's a sharp adaptation. It's pretty awesome. And it's actually triggered by hormones. The animals senses the changing of the season because of, like, the shift in daylight, maybe shifts in temperature, and they'll release hormones and there will be a reaction. And all of a sudden there are different biochromes being produced. And that little fox can change color. Right. They're making different pigments. The thing is, some bird species do this, too. Well, not a lot of mammals, but some mammals will change their coat. The thing is, you can't or the fox or the bird can't do anything to change its actual coat. Right. Once the coat is grown out sure. It has to shed its coat or molt its feathers and then regrow new ones that better match the new thing. So that's why apparently a lot of mammals molt is to change the color of their coat. Yeah. That's pretty awesome. It is pretty awesome. Have you ever seen the videos of the pet foxes on the Internet? Yes, they're very cute. Little fluffy tails, wagon and like those little chirpy noises they make when they get bedded. Yes. That one in particular. Adorable. And then, Chuck, have you heard about the peppered moth? I don't think so. You have? It's a sterling example of natural selection in practice, but it's based on camouflage. So in London during the Industrial Revolution. That's London, England. Yes. Okay. It became so sooty. That the white bodied peppered moth, which is exactly what it sounds like. It's kind of peppery looking. Yeah, it looks like if it landed on the side of a birch tree. The white ones. Oh, yeah, those are beautiful. It would just blend right in because of the mixture of white and black. The thing is, there's so much soot produced during the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in London that these molls that had any white to them would stand out like a sore thumb and were predated. There was a variation on this called the black bodied peppered moth. Did it change because of the soot? So the thing is, the animal itself didn't change different varieties of the same species. One was eaten, one thrived because of the change in the amount of soot. But it happened very quickly. How do they know they just weren't white moss covered with soot? They're pretty sure they weren't. Okay. And then, now that the soot has been whipped largely in London, the white bodied pepper moth is now predominant again. Well, because it can blend in a lot more easily. Because there's less soot. Because London cleaned up its act. Yes, in some ways. Right. What ways is it not? I don't know. They like to drink a lot. They do, but don't they stop at like eleven? No, I just remember everybody starts drinking at four and then they drink for several hours, but then they stop at eleven. Oh, like the bars aren't open all night or something? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. The only time I went to London, I just remembered thinking, man, they really do drink a lot. This is great. And I remember buying beer, canned beer in the store. I was like, oh, they've got is tall boys. And they're like, what's the tall boy? Right. We just call that a beer. That's a shorty. Yeah, you should see our tall boys. You call them kegs. I can't wait to go back. We're hoping spoiler. We're hoping to maybe come to London for a show. Fingers crossed. All right, so where were we? We were talking about biochromes. Those are the cells near to the skin surface, or in the case of the octopus or the cuttlefish, you can have deeper cells called chromatophores, which we talked about at length in the octopus episode. And those are amazing. Those are pigmented cells that the octopus and the cuttlefish can basically manipulate these cells and contract and expand these things. Yeah. Like the surface area can expand up to 500% when they want to show that particular pigment. Yeah. I don't know if we mentioned this in the last octopus one, but a good way to see this in action is to take like a balloon, like a red balloon, and just blow it up a little bit and tie it off. If you squeeze that balloon, it's going to change its color, it's going to become lighter, and then when you unsqueeze it or let it go, it's going to go back to that dark red. And that's kind of the same thing that's going on with the manipulation of the chromatophore. Right. And that's different shades of the same color. They have different chromatophores of totally different colors. They can call up what they want, right? Yeah. So if they want like all black, they could reduce the size of everything but black and just show the black but they can also mix and match to create colors that are basically a blend of their different colored chromatophores. So if they have blue and yellow and they're showing those equally, they'll have a nice, healthy shade of green overall. And with cuttlefish in particular, they've done some recent study and they found that not only do they have chromatophores, they have two other structures that help, too. They have leucophores, which scatter light very efficiently. Then they also have eridophores, which produce iridescence. So that's why it's not just like a flat color change. It's like magic when you see an octopus quick change color or a shuttlefish. Yeah. Rid of force, too, right? Yeah. It looks like it's just become a completely different animal. Not just color wise, but texture and all that is all just optical illusions. Yeah. The octopus can shape, texture and color in a second. Right. If you've seen the video, it's not the kind of thing it's like, oh, it's changing now. You blink your eyes and it's an underwater plant. Exactly. What's nuts, though, Chuck, is they've studied the cuttlefish, and it's a color changing maniac. Cuttlefish are color blind. They have no idea. They know that it's visually driven because they've deprived it of visual cues before and shown that it's not quite as adept at changing its colors. So they know that it's visually driven, but they have no idea how a cuttlefish can tell what color to change to because it's color blind. Isn't that cool? Well, maybe. I don't know. There's no mirrors down there. Maybe they don't even know what color is. Maybe not. Maybe it's all some other sense that we've yet to discover. Yeah, the cuddle sense. I know we mentioned this in another one about the chameleon. It may have been or is that a don't be dumb episode? What that? Chameleons don't change their color to blend in. They actually change color depending on their mood. I've not done that one. I heard that, I think, for the first time a couple of years ago. I had always thought, like a lot of people, that the chameleon lands on something green. It's going to turn green. Yeah. As far as any paint commercial I've ever seen featuring chameleon, that's the story. Yeah, but like I said, they change when their mood changes and not necessarily depending on their surroundings. Right. So they're basically showing, like, I'm happy I'm in fluorescent orange right now. Let's go to happy hour. Right. So far we've got hormonal changes to either changes in temperature or changes in sunlight leading to molting or shedding a fur and a new coat. You've got some sort of visually driven behavior in some pretty amazing animals like the octopus or the cuttlefish. You've got chameleons changing based on their mood, which, again, I guess, would probably be hormonally triggered. And then you've also got some that changed their color, their camouflage, based on diet, like the nudi branch, or as I like to call it the nude branch. Yeah, the nude branch. Did you look at these? No. Amazing. It's one of those like super brilliant fluorescent, very colorful things. And they are sea creatures and they alter their diet depending on what kind of coral they are near. They will eat that coral and deposit that pigment from the coral into their skin right. And their intestines. And it'll just change the color to blend in with what they're eating. Basically, yeah. Because what they're eating is also what they're living on. So when they eat a specific type of coral and it changes their color, they blend in with their surroundings. Pretty ingenious. Yes. Smart. Nudibranch is. Way to go. There are also fish who change color without changing their diet. And that is sort of like the molten in mammals and birds, the fish. And this is something that happens over time. It's not like I'll eat it and change colors, but if the fish changes environment as a species, it's going to get new cues and look around and say, well, I might want to think about turning a little more green over time as a species, I might want to think about that. So I'm going to release some hormones and maybe over time my sons and my sons might eventually really blend in well. Right. And oh crap. He becomes a shark. Yeah. Hide. Exactly. Have you heard of the glass frog? It's neat, it's translucent, so you can see it's internal organs very clearly. Wow. But I was like, what adaptation is that? Seriously, how does that figure with animal camouflage? And no one's sure. There's no definitive answer, but it seems like the best theory I saw was that it's translucent skin makes it invisible. Oh, really? Which makes sense because it's guts are green and I think it's a tree frog. So it's invisible, I guess to some predators. Or maybe it just wants to be a part of the body's exhibit really badly. It looks like that it's the frog version of the Invisible man. I'll have to check that out. So we'll talk more about some other uses for camouflage right after this. Hey, summer is here, my friend, which means school is out, the sun is shining bright, the days are longer. And best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good thrilling story. Yeah. Whether you're road tripping or you're relaxing by the pool, you can tune into the podcast here. It's on Amazon music that's so good. It's Criminal Morbid. That's right. 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Stride Career Prep prepares your team for indemand careers in business, tech, health, science, criminal justice and more. Students can take courses developed by industry professionals, prepare for certifications, get handson, experience network, and most importantly, gain the confidence they need to succeed. Stride Career Prep is backed by over 20 plus years of experience in online learning and education. Take charge at K. Twelvecom podcast. That's K Twelve compodcast and start taking charge of your future. Today. We talked about coloration and stuff like that, but they're also designs that animals can use to blend in, and that is the model pattern that they are using by, let's say, a zebra. Stripes. Right. They have those vertical stripes. Yeah. And it's black and white. And if you go on a safari, probably the first thing you would ever notice is a zebra. Yeah. Sticks out like a sore thumb. Yeah. Look at that crazy, weird looking horse, right. That can never be domesticated because they're too wild and too mean. The thing is, the zebra is not camouflaged for you. It doesn't care about you or your family. No. It cares about the lions that's hunting it. And lions are colorblind, so they can't see that a zebra is black and white and the leaves and grass that it's blending in with are brown and khaki and green. Sure. It just sees the pattern, which is the whole point. Yeah. And then the other cool thing about zebra stripes is they are specific to the zebra. It's like a fingerprint. Oh, yeah. So they help them identify each other. Or maybe the pack like, oh, look at that pack. That's not my pack because those stripes are not my stripes. Right. It's pretty interesting. Or this is King Seraphan, king of the zebras. And I can tell it's him because of his stripes. And by the way, when I say peck, I mean herd. You're right. Save your email. Well, what's neat is zebras do work in herds or live in herds, and they use stripes to identify one another. Like a mom will be able to keep an eye on her kids to fall from a wave off, because to a zebra, it's plainly obvious that that's her kid. It doesn't look like anything else to us. It looks exactly the same. Right. But another adaptive measure of the animal camouflage zebras is that since they do exist in herds, it makes it really hard for a lion to pick out what the heck is going on. When you've got a herd of zebras because their stripes are running into each other and you can't tell which zebras ends where or begins where and it makes it harder for them to pick out, like, the weak and the injured. Yeah. And that's the same truth. A lot of striped fish, a shark might just see a big blob of stripy things and not realize and that's why they travel in schools. Not the only reason, but to help themselves look larger and sort of blend in as a big gelatinous, stripey fluorescent thing. Exactly. Because they're kind of like, well, there's no way that a shark is not going to see the school of fish or there's no way a lion's not going to see this herd of zebras. But we can make it really difficult for this predator to create a good attack strategy because this is very confusing. That's right. And that's called disruptive coloration. It's pretty neat trick that they use. Another thing they can use is what they call visual disruption. Visual, yes. It's typically how it's pronounced. It sounded weird coming out of my mouth. Yeah. This is when patterns are out of line with the body's contours. So it looks like someone has thrown some sort of projection superimposed on top of that animal. Right. Or it looks like it really just blends in with the grasses or whatever that it's walking along right. Rather than if it did follow the contours, it'd be like, oh, well, look at that zebra right there standing in the grass. Exactly. Another cool thing that animals can do is imitation or mimicry. And this is when they say, you know what? I can't manage being ignored. I'm not that good, but at least I can be seen. I can't manage to not be seen because I'm not that good, but maybe I can manage to be ignored. Yeah. Like I'm a walking stick. Insects are so neat. They're so cool because they look so much like twigs and sticks and that's what they're trying to do. They're like, Well, I know you see me, but hopefully you just think I'm a stick. It's funny, it looks like a stick with the head of beaker from the muppets. Yeah. The Katie did is another one. You ever seen those? They look like leaves. Yeah, like really green leaves. Yeah. Did you see the hawk moth caterpillar? Yeah, that's one of my favorites. It is awesome. I was like, what do you mean it looks like a snake? Come on. And then I did a Google image search. Yeah, it looks exactly like a snake. It does. I would be freaked out thinking it was a snake. And I'm a smart human. Yeah. There's certain photos I've seen. I think maybe the one you found where it compares a snake to this thing. No, I didn't see one compared. It was just on its face, cream of facey. Pretty amazing. Yeah. And that is the hawk moth caterpillar. Our favorite moth caterpillar, for sure. Another thing that they can do sometimes if they live in an ecosystem where a lot of times, like, super poisonous animals are really brightly colored. Oh, yeah. The non poisonous animals will be like, you know what? Everyone's ignoring that guy, because if they eat it, he will die. So, over time, let ourselves evolve to have bright colors even though we're not poisonous, so we can look like that. Dude, that is poisonous. False flag camouflaging. Brilliant. Brilliant color mimicry. So, Chuck, you got anything else? I got nothing else. That was Animal Camouflage, one of our great animal episodes. Those are always fun. They make me feel like a kid. Yeah, I agreed. Sure. If you want to learn more about animal camouflage, you should type those words into the search bar at how stuffworks.com. Don't forget. To you. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. Greetings from Connecticut is what I'll call this, because Christina lives in Connecticut. Makes sense. Or as I like to say, Connecticut. Okay. That's how I remember how to spell it. Sure. Why is that C in there? It's sort of weird. I don't know. Yeah. I want to thank you guys for your podcast on bipolar disorder. I've struggled with this since I was first diagnosed at 18. With bipolar two, I always said I got the short end of the stick and disorders, as I suffer from only small bouts of highs and long bouts of lows. Oh, yeah. Most recently, I suffered a nervous breakdown due to stress from work. I'm currently on medical leave from work. My bipolar has progressed to hallucinations, which are not fun. I see something that my mind is trying to tell myself isn't really there, but the anxiety and fear that it's really there overcomes me. My family is old school and chooses to ignore it. Old school? That's one way to say that. Sure. And act like it isn't happening. I should also add that I come from a family of medical professionals and therapists. Wow. That doesn't make sense. Now. That's very surprised. They're like, Absolutely, honey, there's a clown with a knife coming at you, for sure. That doesn't seem like a good strategy. No, not at all. I sent your podcast to my family, though, and it allowed us to have an open conversation about what is going on. How neat. I'm a little alarmed that her medical professional families needed our show. Right. But we saved the day, though. We did. Your podcast truly is a wonderful tool for anyone that wants to explain to someone what we struggle with on a day to day basis. You guys are great and often keep me company while I paint during my hypomanic episodes. So she is eternally grateful. And that is Christina. And, Christina, I wrote you back, but hang in there. I hope your family is more understanding now, and I'm glad we could help. Yeah, for real. Thank you very much for letting us know about that, Christina. We appreciate it if we have helped you through a tough time or fostered a conversation that panned out well, just ones that panned out. Well, we want to hear about those. Yes. I don't want to hear if you got in a fist fight because of something we said. No, it's not our fault. Unless you won. You can let us know about all this stuff and more by tweeting to us at sisk podcast, by hanging out with us on our Facebook page@facebook.com, Stuffychenelle, or by sending us an email to stuff podcast@housetofworks.com. And don't forget our great website, our home on the Web, the Internet Clubhouseknown as Stuffyoushouldnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means schools out, the sun's shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarif and Georgia Hard Stark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You know you're 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 amazonandalopeets.com." | ||
462eb634-cf93-11eb-b6e0-036c36507c3b | Selects: How Historic Districts Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-how-historic-districts-work | A fascinating thing about Americans is that we can disagree on anything. Such is the case with historic districts – areas of historic importance protected by local laws. Seems innocuous, but are they also to blame for the affordable housing crisis? Learn all about it in this classic episode. | A fascinating thing about Americans is that we can disagree on anything. Such is the case with historic districts – areas of historic importance protected by local laws. Seems innocuous, but are they also to blame for the affordable housing crisis? Learn all about it in this classic episode. | Sat, 10 Jul 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=10, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=191, tm_isdst=0) | 43305332 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody, and welcome to the Saturday selects. I'm Charles W. Chuck Bryant, co host of Stuff You Should Know. And this week, we're going to dive into the archives to talk about an episode that I quite enjoyed, actually. It's about historic districts. Don't live in a historic district. I kind of wish I did. I live in an old house from the 1930s, and there's a lot of old houses around me, but it ain't a historic district. And the reason I know is because I did this podcast on them, and just having old houses around doesn't make it a historic district. If you want to find out what that really means, well, then just open up your ears and continue to listen, and you'll be done. So please do enjoy our Saturday select for this week all about historic districts. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of. iHeartRadio hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W, Chuck, Bryant, and there's Jerry over there. And that makes this stuff you should know. Save the clock tower. It's good. You like that? Good. It just popped into my head. Oh, for real? Yeah. I wasn't reading this article and doing this research, thinking Back to the Back of the Future, I'm surprised it just popped into my head. I actually hadn't thought about Back to the Future at all, but that's very appropriate, Chuck. But that is not a historic district. That is just a landmark building. I think that could still qualify for a registry on the National Register of Historic Places. It just wouldn't be a historic district, which is what we're talking about today. Maybe this should just be the end of the podcast. The end? Have you ever gone into a neighborhood, just been walking around town, and all of a sudden you realize that you're in the most charming, adorable place you've ever been in your life? Sure. Well, then you've probably been in a historic district. Yeah. This is pretty cool. We haven't done one like this in a while. You like this one? I was fully expecting you to say this so much. I love historic places. I know. But sometimes yeah. I don't know why I thought that, but I'm glad that it panned out. I actually selected it because I knew you're going to hate it, so eggs on my face. I don't know. Kind of hearken back to some of our episodes. We used to do, like, row houses and shotgun houses. Yeah, that stuff. Sure. They say row houses. Yeah. Shotgun houses. We did do a full episode on shotgun houses. Yeah. And their architectural importance. I thought that was a pretty good episode. Agreed. I think we released it as a selects recently, too, didn't we? I don't think I did. But that might have been one of your picks. I don't think I did. It was Jerry ghost producer. We need to let Jerry select them some from time to time. Jerry didn't have time for that stuff. That's fine. She needs nothing else on her plate besides miso. That's true. And overseeing the largest podcast program in the world. Yeah. It's pretty impressive. Jersey. Jersey said thank you. Yes, she does. She said thank you, holding miso soup in her mouth. So I think I've already kind of gotten the intro out of the way where I asked if you've been in a charming area and said you've probably been in a historic district. Well, I mean, there's a good chance that you have if you've been in the United States, because there are more than 2300 of them. Yeah, that's a lot. There's a lot of all over the place. And you might say, like, okay, well, that's great. This is an area that has been designated to have some sort of historic significance. Can I please go to sleep now? It will say, no, please don't go to sleep yet because there's a lot more to it and one of the more surprising twists you're ever going to have in your entire life. It's actually controversial. Historic districts can be oh, yeah. Yeah. Did you not read that one article? Yeah, I was just being coy. Okay. My stomach just bottomed out in tear. So should we talk about Charleston, South Carolina? Yes. A place where well, I didn't go there. I went to the beach near there. Oh, the Isle of Palms. Yeah, just a few weeks ago. Oh, yeah. But we were within spitting distance of Charleston, South Carolina. Why would you spit on Charleston? I wouldn't. I love it. Bill Murray lives there, for God's sake. Yes, he does. Apparently, he's a man about town there, and I think his family lives there, too. Yeah, that's why he lives there. Oh, got you. Yeah. So they formed the very first historic district in the United States. In 1931. They established the Board of Architectural Review. And this quote here is pretty great. This is the official quote from that architectural review board. Can you please read it in a mid Atlantic accent? Mid Atlantic? Why that? Because that's the one the old timey one okay. That you're probably going to use. I was going to do an old Southern thing. That's okay. Yeah, that's way more. Way better. The preservation and protection of the old historic and architecturally worthy structures and quaint neighborhoods which impart distinct aspect to the city of Charleston. That is beautiful. They actually have quaint neighborhoods in their charge. Yeah, right. From what I've read, too, charleston actually is legitimately interested in its architecture and preserving its architecture. Yeah. Although, as we'll see later, there are some people that think Charleston didn't do it right. Oh, is that right? Yeah, that's in the article. Or that they're overdoing it. That's how I took it. Yeah, sure. Okay, cool. But Charleston was the first one to basically say, this is historically significant architecture. This is a historically significant area, and we want to make sure that it stays that way. That's right. So we're going to add a layer of protection, legal protection, over this area that the rest of the city doesn't have. And within five years, the word had spread to New Orleans and they said, that's a pretty good idea, Chief. We're going to do that for the French Quarter with my New Orleans accent. Oh, is that it? Yeah. What they're basically saying is that it can be either one and it all depends on your local jurisdictions, which we'll get to. But historically or aesthetically, these buildings in this area, they're linked together. Right. And so the Charleston thing basically provided the Charleston and then the New Orleans one basically provided the groundwork, which was, this area is protected and we're going to form a board who is charged with making sure that it stays this way as much as possible. We're going to vest some legal authority into them. And these people are who you have to go through if you want to do anything significantly altering to the exterior of your place if you live in this area or have a business there. Right. Or maybe not even significantly, depending on where you are, it could be very picky. So it kind of like plotted along this idea. It was around for a couple of decades and then this whole process of urban renewal that was kicked off after the highway started being built, in part because of the highways, because people were saying, wait, you're going to blow right through the Lower East Side in Chinatown with this highway in Manhattan? We don't want you to do that. This is worth protecting, so build your highway elsewhere. And then also as the highways were built and traffic started being rerouted away from other towns, these other towns that used to be thriving started to fall into disrepair. Some people are saying, like, hey, let's knock down these old buildings and build new ones and maybe business will come back. It initiated this idea that, no, we've got some historic stuff here and we need to protect it. And it really started to kick off in earnest. In the by 1956, the Federalist had gotten involved and, through the National Park Service, established the National Historic Preservation Act. That said, you NPS. You're in charge of designating what's an historic site and what's not. That's right. In 1966, they created the National Register of Historic Places run by the national parks, or not run, but I guess just sort of maintained. Sorry, yes, I said I'm at okay. I got everything else, right? Yeah, that's right. So here's the deal. You can be listed on the National Register. And that's really like I mean, it means something. I don't want to say it doesn't mean a whole lot, but if you really want to protect something, you have to go with your local historic district. You have to create and protect it locally. That's a very big deal. But we're going to go over both national and state, which is sort of like national and then local, which is pretty different. It actually is. But it's impressive that the local level is the one that has the real teeth as far as historic districts are concerned, as it should be. But most people want to start out with the national district at the very least, because there's a certain amount of cachet to it, to having your place designated as a national historic either structure, district or area. But there's multiple things that can fall under or be logged onto the Register of Historic Places. Apparently in other countries they have similar registers, but they'll include things like events, people, just not necessarily things or objects. But in the United States, there's a real emphasis on place and situation and buildings in particular. And so if you're on the National Register of Historic Places, you are two things. You're an object and you're inanimate, and you probably are situated in a specific area. Like where you are or what you are is kind of tied to the area you're around. That's the real focus of the United States National Register of Historic Places. That's right. So there are five overall categories. Buildings, it's pretty obvious. Structures also kind of obvious. But it says in here that could even be an aircraft as a structure. Yeah, I saw that. There's a grain elevator in Fox, Illinois, that's protected because it's an example of the transition between one story and two story grain elevators. Amazing. It is amazing. And I don't want to yuck anybody's. This is the thing about this to me, as you can see, Chuck, I'm bleeding a little bit out of the corner of my eye from being bored at even saying that sentence, but I'm sure there are people out there who really appreciate the different architecture of grain elevators. And that's the point. It means that if it's on the National Register of a Story Places, it is important to some group of people. And so don't yuck their yum, even if you find it's boring. Agreed. Because they might find what you find interesting is boring. Number three, it can be an object. Number four, it can be a site. And this is a big one in the United States because, like, Civil War battlefields, stuff like that. Appalachian Trail. Yeah. Or MLK historic site. Sure, there's a bunch of well, we'll talk about that later. Or it can be a district, which is basically some kind of combination of those first four. Or just let me group like the street has ten houses, ten beautiful Victorian houses that were all built by the same architect. Is we're going to consider this a district, right? So maybe in each of those instances, if one of those houses was in a neighborhood, it might qualify for designation as a historic building. But if you put them together because they're together, they form this district, which is the sum of these parts, form something larger, and that connects them. And there's a couple of qualifications that they have to meet to be part or listed on the National Register. Almost without exception, they have to be 50 years old. I think the law is that it has to be exceptionally important to be younger than 50 years old and still be designated on the Historic Places Register. That's right. The other thing it has to be is significant, which sounds kind of broad, and I guess it kind of is because significance is in the eye of the beholder. But that's why we have boards and things like that to determine whether or not they think it's significant to behold things for us. And then finally, it's got to be evaluated that significance in historic context, which kind of speaks for itself. Like, did any great history happen there? Right. Was this Bob Dylan's house in Minnesota when he was a child? Sure. Although I don't know if that's on the list. I just threw that out there. It could be that's a home run. But say, like, let's say you said, well, this building used to house a soda shop that made pretty good chocolate malts, and so it's representative of that time. Well, if you were on the board looking at this application, you would look around and try to put it in context. Like, yes, people liked chocolate malts at soda shops at one period in American history. But was this the place where chocolate malts were invented, or is this the place where everyone widely agreed made the best chocolate malted? It's like no, it has a history, but not necessarily significant history in context of the larger area that it's a part of. So it would probably get passed over. Yeah. Like the four sort of historic context that it's not shoe, necessarily, but you have a good chance if something important historically happened there, this is the place where so and so was shot and killed or born, perhaps on a more up note. Okay. Did someone live here that was significant? George Washington slept here. Sure. Or associated with them. Didn't have to live there, necessarily. Yeah. Is it related to a certain architectural period or method of construction? That's a big one for the Park Service. Sure. Like, this is the last house to be used that used plaster and laugh for their walls. Or there's a college in Florida called Florida Southern College that is like, the entire campus was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Sure. So that is clearly going to be accepted on the National Register. Or finally, was there information at this place that is historically important? Yeah. Or might there be? Because they can afford protection to say, like, an archaeological site that's a known archaeological site that they haven't really dug yet. Like, we'll find it. Right. They're saying there's a pretty good potential that some information or history or historical significance will be yielded from investigation of the site. But we want to protect it now before developers come in. That's right. Here's the thing, though. If you want to be a historic district, if you want to say, like, these three square blocks or historic district, that doesn't mean that every single property in there is what's called a contributing property to that district. Yeah. They're non contributing properties are allowed. Sure. Like, if you have those 15 Victorian houses on a block, and then there's the one modern McMansion right. That's not contributing, I think we can all agree, but it doesn't disqualify the rest of the area necessarily. It depends on from what I've seen, it's very much a subjective measure how much that McMansion detracts from the feel or the authenticity of the rest of the site, what they call integrity. Yeah. That's really kind of interesting, I think, because all this stuff is subjective, but the integrity there is how the physical characteristics of that property reflect, like, on this day, reflect that significance historically. Right. So, like, if you have that row of Victorian homes, but every single one of them was altered in the 60s or the 70s or the people inside made some really weird decisions and so altered the interior, the exterior of these homes that, yes, they were all part of this Victorian era, and they were once pretty good examples of it. They aren't any longer. Even though it qualifies for all these other things, it would not be considered a site with integrity, and it might get passed over unless everyone agreed to restore the houses back to that Victorian era. That's the saddest letter to get, I think. I'm sorry, you've been denied because your property has no integrity. Pretty much, and you, sir, do not either. That's how they finish every letter like that. Should we take a break and talk about how you might create a historic district? There is one other thing before we do, chuck, I think it's a fine idea. I'm not shooting down your idea, but I do want to point out that areas have to be unified, not necessarily physically, visually, geographically, but somehow they have to be linked to be considered a district. That's right. All right. Now, you want to take a break? Yes. Okay. If you want to know that you're in luck, just listen up to you. All right? So if you're a person and you live, let's just take us for instance, okay. Like, let's say I wanted to get my house in my neighborhood in Atlanta recognized my block as a historic national historic district. Okay? And the real reason I want to do this is because of the street near my house are going to expand, and it's a real bummer because they're going to have to tear down a few of the houses that are really what I think are significant, and they might take possession of that little strip of land that you've been exercising squatting on? Yeah. More importantly, they will take my little strip of land. Right. Okay, so what would you do? What are you going to do as step one took to protect your home? Well, to place it on the National Register, I would start at the state, the State Historic Preservation Officer. And this is a person, every state has one. You can go to the NPS website to find out who yours is and get in touch. And they're basically going to help you out with I mean, you're going to plead your case, of course, but they're going to help you fill out this form explaining why they may say, listen, don't even bother. But what they're supposed to do is help assess whether or not it might be eligible and help you fill out all your national forms to send in. Right. They might say, like, how old is your house? And if you're like, oh, it's built in the 90s, it's still pretty nice. They'll be like, don't bother. That's right. But since you have never done this before, you're a dingus at it and they're there to help you figure this out and how to do it right. They're not the ones who are going to judge this. No, a board will, and typically a state board for a state Historic Preservation board, their review board is made up of people who know what they're talking about. Architects, historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, people who have been trained in this stuff who can say, yeah, this actually isn't that great. There's a much better example of it a couple of blocks over. As a matter of fact, why don't we go to the other place and make that a historic district? And then you're like, no snobs. But the officer that you are contacting, it's their job to help you get your application and state your case and then get it in front of the review board, who will then take it from there and say, this is a great idea, this is a terrible idea, or I don't care either way and it's time for lunch. Approved. That's right. And this is again, going for that National Register. And one reason you might want to do this is because here's the thing. It's sort of a badge of honor, like we said before, and we'll talk about again later about the local one. That's the one you really want. But if you are on the National Register, it does provide you with some legal protections federally. So if that road is a federal highway project, then it could protect your house. Or even better, even if it's a local or a state project, if it's getting any federal funding whatsoever, same thing applies. Sure. Where they have to say what's going to be the impact on any historic district of this project? And if the impact is deemed too great, the project won't go forward. So there are some protections for it, but for the most part, it's kind of symbolic and there's a little bit of cachet. And you can put it on your Zillow page that your house is part of a National Historic district. Right. But they can't say, I mean, you can live in a National Historic home and you can let it fall into disrepair and like, garbage, and they can't come in and say, Whoa, whoa, whoa, you're on the National Register. You can't let your house fall into disrepair like this. Right? Yeah. Clean yourself up. You got a stain on your shirt. Get a shape. What's your problem? Exactly. They don't say that those are individual property rights, and it's only up to local governments to infringe on individual property rights, not the state or federal government. So while the state or federal government will have laws restricting its own activities in regards to historic districts, like expanding a road or something like that yeah, if you get on the National Register of Historic Places, your whole neighborhood gets on there, your neighbor can do whatever they want with their house still. So if that was your whole ploy all along, Chuck, to really keep your neighbor from doing something like, say, I don't know, putting a second storey on their house, you're going to find that you have been frustrated. That's right. You can go to the state, but the state is basically like federal as far as protections and stuff like that go. Where the real teeth come in is with the local historic districts, and it is very different. They don't have to meet the same guidelines. A lot of times are very similar, but they don't have to have the same exact guidelines as the National Historic Districts, too right. So the first thing that you're going to need, though, is there's got to be an ordinance, a local preservation ordinance, which is basically just, hey, here are the rules on how we do this around here, here's how we're going to identify these houses, and here's what it means if you have one. Right. So this is like square one stuff. This is what a city has to do before it ever creates its very first historic district. If your city has already done this, then you would just basically go through the same process that you would with the National Register and applying to get historic designation for your neighborhood in your city from your local municipality. But if they've never done it before, they've got to create new legislation for it, new laws protecting historic areas, and then they also have to set up a preservation commission to basically the same thing that Charleston, South Carolina did all the way back in 1931. That's right. So you're going to go in front of the commission, they're going to hold some public hearings where people can come and argue the case for or against. Yeah, because not everybody likes this idea. No, not everyone does, as we'll see. In fact, it's kind of hard. The community has really got to be behind this in order for this to go through. Yeah. In most cases, from what I've seen, you need a majority of homeowners and business owners in the area to agree to this. And I think even if the opposition is particularly vocal and mad about it, they still might be able to derail a local ordinance designation. That's right. But it's all going to be considered by the commission, and they're going to make that recommendation to the officials. They're going to say, you're going to reject this. Are you going to say, It's okay? Is it all great or not? And here's the deal. If you get named local historic district, this is when they can say, no. You live in a historic home in this district. You can't let it fall out of disrepair. There was this one case where was it? In Maryland, I think, where I guess these front porch columns were being replaced by a family, and they skimmed a little because wood is expensive and used fiberglass or something. Right. And they said, no, you can't do that because you live in the historic district, and you have to use these original materials to preserve this house. Yeah, you got to use wood, like you said. I don't know, maybe they were like, we don't want to cut down a tree, or maybe they were just cheaping out. But I think they sued. Yeah, I believe they sued in order to try to keep them. But that's a really typical part of any local historic district ordinance, is if you're going to make any kind of repairs, especially significant repairs, any alterations to the exterior, anything like that, you need to use historically accurate materials. You have to submit it for approval to a local design review board, too. Right. Sorry. I got ahead of us. So the first thing you have to do is say, I want to replace the columns in the front of my house because they're falling apart. I want to replace them. Can I please do that? Please, sir, please let me. And the local review board or commission will analyze this. And they'll say, sure you can, but this is what they have to look like. This is the materials they have to be made out of, and this is the color that they have to be painted, and you have to follow that or else you can be fine. They can place a lien on your property, and the penalty can be pretty stiff, actually. Yeah. And here's the thing. I can at least understand this, and we'll talk later about freedoms to do what you want with property that you own. Sure. But this I can stomach a little bit. And we've talked about homeowners associations before. Those are the ones that really get me to where it is not historically significant. It is an excerpt with 700 houses in a subdivision that require you to have the same mailbox. Right. So in that sense, having a homeowners association covenant and having a historic preservation district on a local level where they both have teeth that they can actually find you or tell you what to do to the exterior of your house or your yard, the point is the same in this sense in that they're trying to keep things a certain way. Right. I think what you're saying is at least with the historic district, they're trying to preserve something that has been historically important, whereas with the suburb, it's just they want to make sure everybody's lawn is cut, just looks the same, or no one paints their house pink or whatever. Sure. But they have the same aim, which is like, this is what we're all saying is very nice and pleasant. I just watched Pleasantville last night for, like, the 500th time. That's a good movie. I only seen that once. Oh, man, it's so good. But we've all agreed that this is Pleasant and this is what we want our area to look like, and then this is how it's going to stay. And you can't change it. And if you do, you have to petition and this review board can tell you, no, you can't do that. Yeah. And of course I know that the answer to my problem with the exercises. Don't move there. Then, like, you know, the stuff going in. Sure. Then don't buy a house in that neighborhood. And I think most people who do buy out there are pretty aware of that, and I think some of them are looking for that because it tends to protect property values. Like, you're never going to have a neighbor who just parks like a boat with a moth eaten cover over it in their front driveway for five years. That's just not going to happen out there. But at the same time, it's also eye bleedingly boring to live out there as well. Can I also just say that I love that your Halloween October movie watching is pleasantville. Do you know what I watched last night? What? The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Oh, it's so good. The original? Yes. I had never seen it. Can you believe that? No, I had never seen it. That's really surprising. What did you think? Wow. It was disturbing. Yes. That hammer scene dragged out for like 20 minutes of the hour and 20 minutes long movie. Yeah, it was tough. And I realized that I'm prepping for a movie crush slasher movie special. Oh, nice. But I never watched a lot of that stuff growing up. I don't know if it's because I was churchy. Sure. But your answer right there. Maybe so. And I don't think it was like, oh, I thought I would be in trouble. I think just like the people I was around didn't really get into that stuff. So you missed a really crucial. Window in horror movie watching because I can see coming into it as an adult, you're like you said, this is highly disturbing stuff and this isn't fun. It has to kind of dovetail with that period of your life where you feel immortal. Right, sure. So it kind of bounces off of you, the Disturbingness of it. And then as you get to be an adult, you can kind of start to appreciate the truly disturbing aspects of it, but it's still tempered by that teens and 20s something viewing that you remember as well. Yeah, I didn't have that. Just coming into it like this late 40s is not a good time to start watching Texas Chainsaw Master, man. I feel for you. I liked it. I mean, I thought very much. Appreciate it. It is well, it's a classic. All right, Chuck, so we've kind of hinted a little bit at the idea that not everybody is on board with the historic district. And for getting a real designation, like a local designation where there's actual restrictions on you, the person who owns the home can or can't do things without permission from a board of people you might not even have ever met in your life. For it to be really successful, you need the community behind that to get that designation. And everybody going in with their eyes open saying, okay, we're willing to spend the extra money on wood. We're willing to spend the extra money on a handmade window if one breaks because we're not allowed to replace the original single pane windows that make it 20 degrees in our house all winter long. We're going in with our eyes wide open like that. But even if most of the community does, there's probably still going to be somebody who says, I'm a libertarian. I don't believe in this kind of stuff and I'm really not happy about this. And that person is basically going to have an historic district shoved down their throat. Yeah. And you'll probably not you, but if you are that person, you will be the one that's vocal if you know about the meeting and you're there and you want to make hay, but you can be overruled and all of a sudden you are subject to those whims libertarians hate that well, there's a bunch of sides to this coin here. There's a bunch of factors. Let's talk about the pros. How about that? Yeah, I mean, one of the pros is many times it increases property values because there is a standard that has to be upheld in your house, and those around you won't be falling into disrepair. Right. And plus, if your housing prices are stable and rising in relation to the rest of the town, your tax base or your taxes also tend to rise, too. Right. And so these areas very quickly start to become very wealthy areas of town. So it's a way for people to basically secure their investment in their property. Yeah, and I guess we're talking about disadvantages mixed in here, too, because there are some people that say, hey, in the US. That can be code for keeping the wealth in the pocket of the few, because who's going to be owning these houses are people that have a lot of money. Yeah. There's a guy named Kristen Caps who wrote an article on City Lab back in 2016 that basically said the inequality in housing and the housing pricing crisis laid it at the feet of historic preservation districts, which is pretty preposterous in a lot of ways, but he did make some factor. Sure. But I think his point was just do away with historic preservation for districts, for neighborhoods, because most of these things are covered by zoning laws that say you can only have single family homes in here. Well, only certain people can afford really expensive single family homes. That's right. With really high taxes. And so it keeps out people who would otherwise love to enjoy this amazing neighborhood with these mature oak trees and beautiful sidewalks and neighbors walking around being friendly and Trader Joe's on every corner or really good schools. These neighborhoods shouldn't just be for extremely wealthy people. But in saying that it's only single family housing allowed in this. No one can ever build a high rise with a bunch of apartments that those people who might be able to afford to live in and enjoy the neighborhood, on the one hand, they're like, well, yeah, we don't want high rises here. It has nothing to do with the historical architecture, and it's a blight. And other people say, well, you're also just keeping poor people out, too. Right. It's definitely a double edged sword because that's very much accurate, but it's certainly not the cause or even a major solution to the housing crisis either. Yeah. And there are Republicans in Michigan that are trying to do away with a lot of these. I don't know about districts, but maybe potential future designations, because their whole thing is you don't want the federal government coming in here and telling you what you can do and what you can't do with your house. Although it wouldn't be the federal government. I know it would be local. Be local. But these must be state reps and local reps. But they're saying, let's do away with some of the stuff. Like, Michigan has far too many of these, and your freedoms are being squashed. Right, exactly. You want to paint your house pink, then you should be able to. And so some preservation district commissions are a little more laid back than others. Apparently in Georgia, it's up to you to pick what color you want to paint your house. If the repairs you're doing are minor, you don't have to have a certificate of appropriateness. And then in other places, it is staunch is kind of an understatement old town. Alexandria very famous. Like, you can't do anything to the outside of your house in this Old Town district. But as a result, it's an extraordinarily charming place to be. It's great. Tons of people who visit DC make the trip over to Old Town to go shopping or to eat or to do whatever, just walk around. So that's another benefit of having an historic preservation district. It attracts business or it attracts customers to our businesses. And very frequently you'll find an influx of tourism dollars coming into this area too. Yeah, and we've talked about a bit before, the legendary, fabulous Fox Theater here in Atlanta are only remaining, like, amazing, huge old school Egyptian style theater was going to be a bank parking lot in the 1970s. Like, they were literally going to put a parking lot there. And I remember when I was a kid, they had to save the Fox Eater campaign, and it took these celebrity benefit concerts to raise money. Ben Vereen. Did he come? I could see it. It was the right era. Frank Sinatra came. He was one of the big wigs. Really? Yes. Frank came to Atlanta and performed and raised money and was like, no, you can't tear down the fucks guys. That's my Frank. It was, okay, I should have gone with Sammy. You should have done a Charleston accent. Very frank. But that's the other side of the coin, which is like, if people don't I mean, there was a time in this country in the where that can very easily happen. And that did happen in downtown Atlanta. If you look at old pictures of downtown Atlanta, it looks like a smaller version of New York City. And now we've gotten some of that character back. But there was a period where they just tore down everything old in favor of putting up these bland white buildings in the name of the future. And they called it urban renewal. And thankfully, in the last 1020 years, I'm not sure where the idea came from, people said, no, you can have the same effect. You can have businesses, you can have mixed use development by reusing and rehabilitating these same buildings. You don't have to tear it down and build something new. It's usually cheaper to do that, but it's much better if we do it the other way and kind of preserve the history. And that's definitely become the push lately. But, yeah, there was definitely a period in the middle of the last century where a lot of stuff was torn down. And as a result, I was on a website, I can't remember the name of it, where they were listing the most boring cities in the world. The world, Chuck, and the first one was Atlanta. What the reason? One of the criteria they were using was history. Like, how much history is just kind of mixed into the fabric of the city. And part of it is all the tearing down that they did in the but also part of it was laid at the feet of General Sherman, who burned the town to the ground and burned up a lot of the history as well on the march to the sea. So Atlantis has kind of had a two fold knock around where a lot of historical stuff was not preserved and was actually torn down as a result. It lacks a certain amount of character because compared to other cities that have more history, the old two fold knock around. Yeah, that's a dumb I mean, I'm not saying this just because this is my hometown. Atlanta is not the most boring city in the world. In the world. It was in the top ten, the dumbest thing I've seen ever. Well, here's the other thing, too, and this isn't necessarily about preserving history, but I think there's just been a general return to taste and craftsmanship across the board in the last 15 years. And some people may call it hipsterism or whatever, but there are artisan bakers now and handcrafted cocktails instead of fern bars. And when they are building new buildings, they're trying to make them blend in. And I just feel like there was a time where I think everyone in America thought the future was just going to be sterile and white, right? And these sterile white buildings were going up everywhere. And the baseball stadiums that were just round white objects. And then starting with Camden Yards in Baltimore, they started building these old style ballparks, and that's all you see now. And I think that's just across the board is I think people are respecting craftsmanship and history a lot more than they did for a long, long time, like decades. I agree. But it is true that that comes at a price, because if you look at those neighborhoods where they are being rehabilitated and preserved by the people who are moving in there as they're doing it, they're raising the home values, which also raises the taxes. And so people who have traditionally, historically lived in these neighborhoods are being pushed out of the neighborhood. That's one facet that has yet to be cracked. How do you keep a neighborhood mixed as far as, like, income goes or use goes? How do you really preserve that kind of thing? So it's not just like, yes, we're preserving this neighborhood at the expense of the residents who used to live here because it's richer people who are coming in and rehabbing areas. Gentrifying basically is talking about, we'll cover that in our Gentrification podcast. Okay, but that's a big thing. So it is a criticism of historic preservation, but it's certainly not a reason to do away with historic preservation. And one of the other challenges I've seen is, okay, so let's say we're going to allow somebody to come in and build a high rise in this amazing historic neighborhood. Do you really think they're going to be building it for low or mixed income people to move into no. They're going to build it for the wealthiest people who probably have even more money than the people who own the houses in this historic district. And it's not going to help this housing crisis at all. It's just going to exacerbate it. And we'll have ruined a perfectly beautiful historic district in the process. We should totally do one on gentrification. I agree. I love episodes like these where it's like, oh, what's the resolution? There is none yet. You got to stay tuned to everybody we know. You're very anti resolution. I've read before that people who read fiction tend to be able to deal with open ended endings more than people who don't, which is weird because I don't read much fiction these days, but I can still hang with no resolution, no closure. No closure. You got anything else? I got nothing else. You're just waiting for me to stop talking, it looks like. Maybe. Well, if you want to know more about historic districts, why don't you go try to get your place put on the national register, why don't you, as you do that, let us know how it goes. Maybe keep us posted. In the meantime, though, first, before I tell you how to get in touch with us, to keep us posted, let's say it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this government shutdown follow up. Hey, guys, I'm a member of the permanent government in DC. I thought you did a great job. It was great. To emphasize the cost of a shutdown is the key thing. Most people don't understand these things aren't just a blip. I want to point that the effects of the last shutdown still aren't over. When we got back to work, we were told that it took the agency six months to recover from the previous shutdown that lasted 16 days. And these things are exponential not linear. Wow. With a 35 day shutdown, we just don't know how long it's going to take to catch up. We have settled into our normal and just expect to miss deadlines. People we serve regularly understand and are working with us, but I don't think the general public gets it. You can't just push back all deadlines by 35 days because new work is constantly coming in. There's no pause button just because the government has shut down. We're all working to catch up, but it hasn't happened. It's not like we can blame the shutdown either. People don't understand how work submitted after the end of the shutdown can still be affected by it. But we can't just double our workload. There's only so many hours in a day. And that is from Nate. Thanks, Nate. That was a nice little follow up. Yeah. Thanks for bringing us down here. You're right. We've just kind of gone out on such a mediocre level, and now it's down level. Well, if you want to get in touch with us, like Nate and bring us down or to keep us posted on how it's going. In your quest to get your house or your neighborhood on the National Register of Historic Places, you can go on to Stephensono.com and check out our social links there, or you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more Podcasts, Myheartrad radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
c39d096a-5460-11e8-b38c-ff329b497aab | SYSK Selects: What Happened at Kent State? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-what-happened-at-kent-state | On May 4, 1970, four days of anti-war protests at Kent State University in Ohio culminated in the unthinkable when Ohio guardsmen opened fire on protesters, killing four students. How could this tragedy take place? Learn more in this classic episode. | On May 4, 1970, four days of anti-war protests at Kent State University in Ohio culminated in the unthinkable when Ohio guardsmen opened fire on protesters, killing four students. How could this tragedy take place? Learn more in this classic episode. | Sat, 28 Sep 2019 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=28, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=271, tm_isdst=0) | 37237331 | audio/mpeg | "Hey everyone, its me, Josh. And for this week's SYSK Select, I've chosen this episode on the history of the Kent State massacre. Somewhat unknown, surprisingly, and definitely largely misunderstood moment in American history. Street and kind of a bummer, so prepare, but it's a good one. Enjoy. 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. And it's snowing outside, which means stuff you should know. Snow edition. Snow edition. Yeah, I know. And we're like, we got to record and get out of here because this is Atlanta and snow kills us. I just mainly don't want to be locked away from the snow. I want to be able to look out the window and see it. I can now, but not as well as I'd like to. For me, it's just a traffic thing. Like people are probably leaving work right now. People have already left the office here. Well, maybe everyone will be gone by the time I get out there. Yeah, okay. You'll just be the lone guy trudging through the snow. That's right. Like Viggo Mortensen in the road. Yes. Although he was not alone, and there wasn't any snow. It was just nuclear ash. Although there was snow because Charlie's there and kills herself by going out into the snow. But that's before everything really takes a downward turn. Spoiler alert. Retroactive spoiler alert. Chuck? Yeah. Are you familiar with Kent State? Yeah, man, I've been singing that Neil Young song all day. How can you not? You cannot by having never heard it. Like me. Shut up. You know that song? Never heard it. I never listened to Neil Young. You've never heard the song Ohio? No, I know the pretender song, but I don't think that's about Kent State. I'm shocked. Okay. Young without like, how does it go home and for him? No, I'm not going to maybe I have heard it. Ten Soldiers and Nixon. Okay. Yeah. I didn't know that was about Ohio. Four dead in Ohio. Yeah. Okay. I had no idea. All right. I didn't know what that song was about. I was just like, oh, Neil Young. Really? Yeah. Oh, man. Get ready to hear it. I'm sure. All right. I'm used to it by now. You're bulletproof. Oh. So you are familiar with the Kent State shootings? Sure. May 4, 1974, students were killed. I believe another eleven were injured. Yeah. Including the one was paralyzed, like, some pretty severe injuries. And this is a big deal. That would be a big deal in and of itself. If it was just some sort of campus shooting or something like that, it would be a very big deal these days. But what made the Kent State shootings, for those of you who aren't familiar with them such an enormous deal was that the shootings were carried out by National Guardsmen. They were Americans firing on Americans. Americans on one side of the equation, firing on protesters on the other side. And it was one of the darkest points in American history, modern or otherwise. Yeah. I think what's so upsetting is it was random. That guy's coming at me with a bottle or a brick, shoot him. It was random shooting into a crowd. That's the kind of thing that would happen in countries under dictatorships, not here in America. But it did happen here in America, and not just at Kent State. There was another similar incident just ten days later that we'll talk about as well that gets overlooked. But yeah, it was a very dark moment in American history, and it came out of the tensions over the Vietnam War initially, but I think it was more than that. It was also, we should say that's the kind of obvious thing that led to it. But also, there was a real tension also between the establishment and the antiestablishment and the people in control and the people who were in control students, elders. There's just a lot of tension between two sides. And the dividing line, the obvious dividing line, was the Vietnam War. Yeah. And I think if you're not of that generation, you may not know the full story. You might know that four people were shot in a protest, and that's about it. Maybe even if you're from that generation, you may not know the full story, but we're about to tell you. Okay, let's take it back a little further than 1970. All right. Vietnam, a country which had won its independence from France in the 50s. Have you ever seen? We were soldiers. Yes. For Melanie, it's almost like a snuff film. It's one of the most graphically violent movies I've ever seen in my life. But it's about that transition from France leaving Vietnam and America coming in. Yeah, go ahead. Well, just initially serving as advisors and then becoming embroiled in the war. I forgot all about that movie. Yeah. In Apocalypse Now, there are some deleted scenes of them meeting up with a French family in Vietnam and, like, having dinner. Really? Yeah. And I remember when I heard about that, I was like, what? Why were they French? And then I did a little more homework on it. Oh, yeah. If you eat Vietnamese food, it's very clearly, like, French influenced. Well, most food is. Yeah, sure. So, anyway, in the 50s, they split between Communist North and non Communist South Vietnam, and America didn't want Communism spreading throughout Asia. No, we had a policy of containment. Yeah. And so Richard Nixon, when he won the 68 election, part of his promise was something called Vietnamisation. It's kind of an awkward word. And that meant to transfer the combat duties from our soldiers to the South Vietnamese. That sounds familiar, doesn't it? It does. But what happened was at some point, he said, you know what? In 1970, in April, he said, I want to send our soldiers into Cambodia. And that caused sort of a firestorm because it was a bit of a reversal of what he said he was going to do, and it really embroiled us in the middle of things. Well, yeah. He escalated the war in Vietnam, which is already a very contentious issue, in that it was a war, but also it was a war that Congress never openly declared war. So that's why, historically speaking, it's referred to as a Vietnam conflict. Right. And so Nixon gets elected partially because he's saying, I'm going to get our boys out of there. We're not going to let the Communists win. We're going to prop up the Vietnamese, but we're going to get out of there. Instead, he escalates things by invading Cambodia, where the Viet Cong were stationed, and that led to immediate protests. That was April 30, 1970, that he announced that we had invaded Cambodia. And the next day is when the first protest takes place at Kent State. Yeah. And Kent, the article points out that it was not the most likely place because it was a little more blue collar than, say, Ohio State nearby. The Ohio State University. Man, I'm sorry. That is so stupid. Sorry. OSU Alums and fans and students. But it is stupid, and everyone outside of Ohio State thinks it's stupid. They take a lot of pride in that. V I know. Which I think just kind of fans the flames of derision. I can just start saying the University of Georgia. That makes a little more sense. Does it? Yeah. What was the difference? The Ohio State University. The University of Georgia. So if it was the University of Ohio State, that would make more sense. Yeah, a little more to my ear. I got you my ear right there. See it? That's very nice. Thank you. At any rate, can't say it was a little more blue collar and you wouldn't think there would be, like, protesting, but there was protesting at schools all over the country, and you can read between the lines here. Kent State had a lower hippie population than Ohio State. Can we just come out right out and say it? Right, but there were protests there. There was a protest on May 1, and it was a standard war protest. Yeah. Three days before the shooting. And it's kind of when things got kicked off. Right. But these kids were still pretty good. They were at school holding a protest in the Commons, I believe, which is the Aka, the Quad, or like, the big grassy area in between in the middle of campus. And they said, you know what? This went pretty well. Let's take the weekend off, and we'll meet back here on Monday and have another anti war protest because we're really steamed about this. And everyone said, okay, let's do that. And for tonight, let's go out and hit the bars in Kent, is what they did, yes. The first one, they buried the constitution as a symbolic gesture. Oh, yes. Thank you. The second one, they got drunk. Right. Not at the protest, but later that night. Right. So that Friday protest is when they buried the constitution. Yes. This is like a real protest, not just walking around, there's like stuff going on and there's symbolic acts. It was a real protest. Yeah. And if you combine alcohol and protesting, things might get a little rowdy. So bonfires broke out, they start throwing bottles at police cars, breaking windows. It's probably a little rowdy. I mean, that's a riot. When you said bomb fires in the streets and throw bottles at police cars, that you have just basically said, we've drawn a line in the sand, where are you going to do caps? That is one way to look at it, for sure. The mayor, Leroy Satrum, said, this is an emergency situation, people. I need to call the governor, James Rhodes, we need some help. I'm going to close the bars. Which isn't going to make anyone very happy. No. And it had an exacerbating effect, apparently, because that meant all the people who weren't riding in the streets, who are busy drinking in the bars, were now suddenly in the streets, too, and joined the protest and the aka the riots. Right, that's right. And the police were called in. They used tear gas and said, go back to your dorm rooms, basically get back on campus. And that was Friday. Now we move on to Saturday. Yeah. And the mayor is obviously a little jumpy. He's hearing rumors circulating that there's going to be another scene from the night before is going to happen all over again on Saturday. So he calls the governor of Ohio and he enters the person who, in my opinion, is singlehandedly responsible for what happened at Kent State. So the National Guard arrives. There were about 1000 protesters that actually burned down an ROTC building on campus, which is a pretty bold move. And they didn't find out who did that exactly, but they did cut fire hoses so they couldn't put out the fire and basically burn it to the ground. Yeah. The protesters set it on fire and then cut the fire hoses like they wanted that building burn. And apparently that's when the National Guard shows up like an hour or so later. Right. Yeah. And they broke everything up, obviously. And then come Sunday, you've got about 10 National Guardsmen and you've got Governor Rhodes arriving and holding a press conference and kind of flaming the fire again by calling the protesters the worst type of people that we harbor in America. Yeah. He compared them to the Brown Shirts. Mussolini's Brown Shirts. Yeah. The Communists. Pretty much anybody he could think of that would be disparaging. That's who publicly at this press conference compared him to. And you mentioned that on Sunday morning the National Guard was on campus kind of keeping order and everything, but apparently the relations between the guardsmen and the students were pretty amicable. Like, people were chatting friendly, like there was no tension. It was just kind of like, hey, I'm 19. Hey, I'm 19. I'm a student at Kent State. I'm in the National Guard. Let's hang out. And it wasn't until the governor showed up and held this press conference that things took a very sudden turn for the worst. And it wasn't just the Brown Shirts calling them the Brown Shirts of the worst element that America harbors, but also saying, I may also declare martial law. Yeah. And that I may message never quite got through. And there was confusion as to whether or not that actually happened. And basically the National Guard believed that that had happened. And they took control of the campus and said, we're running the show now. And not just the National Guard, but the university officials, too. The people running the university said, oh, well, Marshall Law is declared. And they knew that there was a protest scheduled for the following day, Monday. So they printed a bunch of flyers and pamphlets saying, hey, your constitutional rights have been suspended because the university is under martial law, so all assembly is banned, so don't protest. And that kind of fell on deaf ears, I guess you could say, come Monday morning, because the students showed up to protest. Yeah, that definitely didn't work. By noon, there was about 3000 people, about 500 actively protesting, another 1000 just there to be supportive. Right. Because it's a college campus. About 1500 people just checking it out. Yes. Stopping on their way to class or whatever, like, what's going on? I would have done the same thing, probably. And we should say also our buddy stuff they don't want you to know. Host and sometimes producer Matt Frederick. His parents were students at Kent State, and they stayed home that day. They did. They were like, there's some bad stuff that's going to go down. And they were right. So the article points out it was less an antiwar protest at this point and more of a protest of the draconian occupation of their campus. Yeah. Martial law by the army, which is not even real, which is just a misunderstanding. Yeah, pretty much. So the General Canterbury says, you know what? This rally is over. Drive me around in a jeep, give me that bullhorn. Let me tell everyone to go home. Because that'll work. Yeah. I mean, let's go back to where these tensions came from in the first place. It's establishment versus anti establishment. And establishment is the type to stand in a jeep and be driven around with the bullhorn telling people to disperse. I don't know if there's ever been a message relayed via bullhorn that doesn't fall on deaf ears. Yeah. It has the opposite effect. Unless, I guess, in like a FEMA situations, if you're trying to organize people and stuff that helps, but I always think of bull horns, stuff like this the general riding around the Jeep yelling at people to go home, and people saying, no, you don't understand why we're here in the first place. Right. So they started throwing rocks at the Jeep, not surprisingly. Well, tensions at this point. This is day four. Yeah. I think, though, I'm not justifying. No, I know you're not at all. But I think it's really easy to kind of choose one side or the other, especially once you know the outcome. But I don't think it should be overlooked that people are throwing rocks at this dude while he's driving around on the Jeep. People have burned down a building. People have rioted in the streets of the town, the college town. I mean, like, these are real huge events that scared the pants off of the people who were running the town, the state, the country to say that they were unprovoked as historically inaccurate. Yeah, I totally agree. Not justifying, but I think a lot of people might think the story is people got together to protest, and the army came in and shot them. Right? Yeah. And it was either the protesters fought, they shouldn't have been protesting, they shouldn't have burned down that building, or it was entirely the National Guards fault. And whatever historical event you're looking at, it's never just one side or the other. It's always great, and you have blinders on. If you think otherwise. You should write a history book called It's Always Gray. Josh Clark's history of America. I'd buy that. Thanks, man. All right, so where are we? They were throwing rocks at the general. He, at this point, ordered his troops to load their weapons, get the tear gas going. He said, they threw rocks at me. You guys load your weapons. That's basically what happened. Not because his feelings were hurt, right? Yeah. Although I imagine they were. I guess no matter who you are, I'm sure people throw rocks at you. You're like, I take that personally. So the National Guard came in. They pushed them back past the Commons, over a steep called Blanket Hill and into a parking lot of PRINTESS hall in a practice football field. Then, basically, the guardsmen found themselves cornered by a fence, retreated back up the hill. When they got to the top, 28 out of the 70 turned and began firing their guns into the crowd. Yeah, well, not all of them into the crowd, we should point out. Most into the air or the ground, actually, although some fired directly into the crowd. If they all would have fired directly in the crowd, there would have been a much higher blood count or body count. Oh, yeah, I'm sure. And, I mean, the protesters were about a football field away from them, and the fact that they started to walk up the hill and then turn and shot made it not just an attack of Americans on Americans, but a surprise attack of Americans on Americans. Yeah. I would say the students definitely did not expect bullet retaliation. It took about 13 seconds. Four students were killed. Allison Krause. Not the Allison krause, obviously. Jeffrey Miller, sandra Schuer and William Schroeder. And it's all tragic, but even more tragically. Sure and Schroeder were just walking to class. Yeah. They weren't even part of this protest. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. And like I said, nine people were wounded and one dean collar was paralyzed. So the shots, they shot into the air and into the ground, but also into the crowd. And over about 13 seconds, they fired between 61 and 67 shots. I think that could be categorized as a hail of gunfire. Yeah. 13 seconds, 60 shots. What is that? That's, like, a lot of shots a second. And just from 28 guns. Yeah. And apparently there was a professor named Glenn Frank who did a lot to quell the crowd and did talk them into not escalating this thing any further. Right. So this article really kind of glances over this guy's role, and it wasn't just him, but he was the head of the faculty Marshalls, whose job it was to basically keep an eye on the protests. Like the university's liaison between the university and the students. The protesters and this guy and his crew basically singlehandedly prevented, like, a massacre because they saw very quickly that if they didn't insinuate themselves between the guardsmen and the students, the students were going to be like, holy, holy God, they just fired live ammunition on us, and they're standing right there. Let's get them. They would have attacked. The consensus is the students would have attacked out of anger and that the guardsmen most definitely would have fired again when being attacked. And this faculty member and his team saw what was about to happen and slid in and was like, Wait. They first spoke to the guardsmen and said, Stop firing. We have to go talk to the students. Then they went and spoke to the students for 20 minutes and got them to calm down enough to stop provoking or did not provoke or advance on the guardsmen in retaliation and saved a lot of lives, probably. I wonder if there's a Glenn Frank statue on campus. There should be. I agree. So they closed school not for the day or the weekend, but for the rest of the semester. And a lot of colleges did the same. As far as shutting down. Well, because a lot of students went on strike and the universities were forced to shut down in the following weekend, 100,000 people went to DC to protest. Neil Young, news to Josh, wrote a song about it. Okay, so the shootings just happened. The crowd has been quelled, the dead and wounded have been taken away in ambulances, and now we've reached the aftermath that's immediate and otherwise. Yeah. President Nixon wasn't super compassionate. He had earlier been overheard calling them bums. This wasn't in his press release, obviously, but it definitely got out in the press, did not bode well for his reputation. And he said, when dissent turns to violence, it invites tragedy. That was the official line. That was the official line. Which is pretty cold that's the President like, yeah, you get what you pay for. Yeah, pretty much. His vice president, Agnew said it was predictable. Also not super compassionate. No. Considering these were Americans that were shot and killed, right. Two of which were just walking to class. He called them a bunch of scared kids with guns. The National Guardsman. That was Ray Price, the speechwriter for Nixon. Yes. Which is true. So basically the whole game is gray. It is like they probably were scared, for sure. I think that's fair. I think also, though, it's one sided, too. He's not saying and then also the other side, we're a bunch of scared, angry kids with rocks. Yeah. The only way and you can't even remove the gray, but you'd have to find out each person who shot and what their motive was. Right. Because some were probably scared out of their mind and reacted. There has been some people later on that said that some got together and decided to do this. Some of the guardsmen. Right. So when they had been pushing the crowd back onto the practice football field, apparently while they were loitering there, there have been allegations that a couple of the guardsmen said, hey, when we march back up the hill, we're going to turn and fire. Right. It's never been proven, but more than a couple of historians have leveled that accusation. There was also immediate word that the guardsmen said that they were acting in self defense because there was a sniper on one of the rooftops and that they were being fired on. They found out that there were audio recordings of this, and that was quickly changed to, well, it was self defense because these people were throwing rocks at us. Yeah. There was a presidential commission, obviously, and they concluded it was, quote, unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable. And then in an FBI investigation found that the guardsmen fabricated their defense and that they were not in true danger. Right. That was FBI. So the presidential commission and the FBI investigation both said this shouldn't have happened, and it's on the guardsman. But that wasn't the mood of the nation for the most part. There was a Gallup poll that was conducted shortly after, and the majority of Americans said that it was the protesters fault for protesting. Yeah, I mean, I went to trial too. It wasn't just like, oh, well, this happened, and it's super sad. And in federal trial, it was dismissed because of what was called a weak case by the guardsmen. And then the grand jury in Ohio put the blame on the university officials and the protesters and not the Guardsmen. And then there was a civil trial in 1979 settled out of court, where the victims and families got a collective sum of $675,000. Collective sum meaning I guess that was for all of them, right? Yeah. They all split that and apology was ever issued. They did issue a sign statement expressing regret. You want to hear it? Yeah. So this is the sign statement that came out of the civil trial that the Ohio National Guard released to the families of the victims. In retrospect, the tragedy of May 4, 1970 should not have occurred. The students may have believed that they were right in continuing their mass protest in response to the Cambodian invasion, even though this protest followed the posting and reading by the University of in order to ban rallies and in order to disperse. These orders have since been determined by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals to have been lawful. Some of the Guardsmen on Blanket Hill, fearful and anxious from prior events, may have believed in their own minds that their lives were in danger. Hindsight suggests that another method would have resolved the confrontation. Better ways must be found to deal with such a confrontation. We devoutly wish that a means had been found to avoid the May 4 events, culminating in the Guard shootings and the irreversible deaths and injuries. We deeply regret those events and are profoundly saddened by the deaths of four students and the wounding of nine others which resulted. We hope that the agreement to end the litigation will help to assuage the tragic memories regarding that sad day. Not an apology. No. Sort of like, we regret Hindsight being 2020. We might have should have done something differently, right. Saying we regret, instead of, I'm sorry. It's a big flashing light. Yeah, it's a big diff. And for many years the university itself wasn't quite sure how to handle moving forward. In memoriam and otherwise in, the officials at Kent State failed. They tried to, but they tried to commemorate it just once every five years instead of every year. And everybody who held the vigil is like, well, then you have nothing to do with this. And they kept showing up every year. Right. Like, what are you going to do, call the National Guard and remove us? Yeah, they went and do. In 1979, there were hundreds of arrests because the university tried to bulldoze the place where it happened to build a gym. That didn't happen. And it took all the way up until 1998 to keep cars from driving over the spots in the parking lot where the students were killed. Right. Then finally, in the mid two thousand s, the university finally reverses position and just kind of goes with the flow. And in 2013 they opened a visitor center that is all about commemorating this event as a historical event. But also I get the impression from the description of the visitor center kind of the spiritual aspect of it, the spiritual aspect of tragedy is that just last year wow. Now, the university, they say, is the nation's leader in courses of nonviolence and democracy and peace studies and conflict resolution classes were all established. So they are trying to lead the way forward and at least being a symbol of peaceful protest. Right. And people are still trying to figure out what happened. There's still lots of debate. Oliver Stone unsurprisingly favors a theory that the government placed a sniper in these protests and that there were government plant agitators who pushed the protest over the line. And this idea is supported by the fact that there were policies by governors and the president to crack down on dissent on student anti war protests. So there definitely was a policy that was like, if you want to get dirty, we'll send our goons to beat you up. But a lot of people think that the presence of a sniper is totally unsupported. But then a cassette emerged fairly recently that's an actual audio recording of that day that says supposedly you can hear the phrases get set, point, and fire, which means that this wasn't a surprise kneejerk shooting, that there was an officer commanding the guardsmen to shoot. Yeah. And also, with modern analysis, they think that there may have been shots fired before 70 seconds before the guards been fired. There's a Kinstate student named Terry Norman who is a photographer on campus taking pictures. And he also had a handgun, a loaded handgun, and he denied that he discharged it, but he has been accused of triggering this by firing shots. And I think they found audio evidence that there were shots fired, and they think it may have been Terry Norman wow. That kicked it all off. And can you imagine carrying that around? No, I could not. And then, Chuck, a lot of people say that Kent State was the beginning of the slide toward Watergate for Nixon. This is like the beginning of the end for him. Yeah. And then we should also talk about what happened at Jackson State, because race relations in this country are so messed up that everybody talks about Kent State, where four white students died and no one talked about Jackson State, which happened ten days later, and two black people died. Black students. Yeah. And could have been a lot worse. Like, they basically riddled a dormitory with a hail of gunfire. Yeah. So ten days after Kent State, at Jackson State University in Mississippi, they were also carrying out anti war protests, but there were also protests based on racism as well. And when these students were doing a lot of the similar stuff, a lot of the same stuff that was happening or had happened at Kent State, they were riding they had burned a building on campus down. And when firefighters came out to put out the flames, they started to get worried that these. Protesters were going to harm them, so they called the cops. Well, the cops came out, tried to disperse the crowd. The crowd didn't disperse, so they opened fire. And like you said, they riddled the building that served as the backdrop to this protest with bullets. Something like 460 rounds hit the building alone. There's no telling how many went on the sides or anything like that. 460 rounds? Yeah, they said every window was broken on every floor with bullet fire right. On a crowd of students. And amazingly, only two people died. Yeah. Philip Gibbs. He was a pre law major and a father of an 18 month old son. And James Green, he was 17 years old and he was a high school student walking home from his job at the grocery store. Which, again, the fact that he's not involved in any way and still died makes it so much worse. Yes. And this one also, I don't think we pointed out, started out because of misinformation. There was a rumor that the mayor, Charles Evers, and his wife had been shot and killed, assassinated, basically. Oh, yeah. It was not true. A relative of Mega Evers, right? Yeah, he was his brother. And so that's kind of what sparked everything. In addition to the anti war protest, it was very much about black and white. Well, yeah. So this is a historically black college. The cops had just opened fire on a bunch of students. Twelve people were hit by injured by gunfire. Two were killed. And the ambulances weren't called until the police picked up all of their showcasings and left. And then the National Guard came in. Yeah. And then after that, the police denied they even took part. I'm not sure how that panned out. How can you deny that you shot up a building so it was Mississippi in historically black college, and you probably never heard of Jackson State. That's very honest. Even so, we started researching this. I hadn't heard of it either. And there was only one source we used that made reference to it. That's how I heard about it, so that's great. It's just fantastic. That's what happened to Kinstate and Jackson state. And Jackson State. You got anything else? I got nothing else. There's got to be a better ending of this than this. These things happen. But there has to have been some lesson learned. I think so. It hasn't happened since. Yeah, that's true. I wonder on a campus. Yeah. We should do one on the Battle for Seattle. They didn't fire live rounds at that, though, did they? I'm pretty sure they didn't, but we should do one on that as well. Yeah. My friend John was there, agitating the black shirt. Now, he had these funny protest signs that reference The Simpsons. I can't remember. Or black block got the pictures. Really? Yeah. Well, I have to interview him then. I don't know that it would yield much information. Fine. I think he was just cooking around. I got you. All right, well, if you want to learn more about Kent State, you can type in the name into the search bar. Athousofworks.com. And we also encourage you to go look up Jackson State as well. And let's see, since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail, right? Yes, sir. I'm going to call this prison guard wrote in. Hey, guys. For the most part, I found the episode on capital punishment pretty even handed and interesting. However, I couldn't help but notice a bit of venom in your voices whenever you mention prison guards, especially in incidents of an inmate taking his own life with a razor blade while he's being observed on Death Watch. The implication was that the guard on duty negligently gave the inmate a razor in order to encourage him to take his own life. I don't think we implied that, did we? No, it wasn't implied. It was more just like, what kind of thing? Why did that happen? Right. As a former prison guard that worked on death row, I have to tell you that couldn't be further from the truth. It's a civil right for inmates to have access to razor blades. For hygienic purposes, I was required to allow an inmate on death row to keep the disposable razor for 30 minutes, despite the fact that he had nearly killed another inmate and murdered a prison official with a razor blade while serving his sentence. I'd imagine an inmate, even on Death Watch, would have similar rights. But I can't confirm through experience, guards that worked on death row weren't allowed to serve on Death Watch. This is because it was feared that we'd form an emotional bond to the inmates set for execution that might cause a scene. So, yes, prison guards have feelings and can have empathy for others. Pop culture nearly always portrays guards as heavies and villains and even smart portrayals of prison life, like Orange Is the New Black, as every prison official character is a comic book mustache twirling villain or a mouth breathing idiot, it's a hard job and should be respected as much as other high risk civil servant careers. A little disappointed you guys continued this trend, but I'm used to it, so don't sweat it. So that is from Craig, and he let us off easy, even though he feels like we insulted his job. Well, thanks, Craig. I think he did exactly what we were kind of searching for it then. We're just disgustedly confused. Yeah, we're disgustedly. Ignorant. One of the two. Yes. I will say that he is probably right on the money. As far as movie portrayals, it's pretty one note if you're a prison guard in a movie in general, unless it's The Green Mile and that movie has problems of its own. Or Oz. I never watched Oz. What? Yeah. Oz is the show that kicked off all the shows you love and binge watch now. The idea of binge watching a show began with a show like Oz because there was nothing like it ever created before. It all started with Oz. The Wire, the Shield, House of Cards, Orange Is the New Black, everything, every Breaking Bad. All of them can thank Oz. You can thank us. You should go watch Oz, man. Thank you, Oz. Good. Great, man. This one is something. I feel drained a little bit. Emotionally exhausted. I'm still not happy with the ending. I feel like we could have ended a lot better, but I'll have to think on it. All right. If you want to get in touch with me and Chuck, you can tweet to us at fysk podcast. You can hang out on our Facebook page, facebook. Comstenknow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcastuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web. STUFFYou Knowough.com. Stuff you should know is production of iheartradios how Stuff Works. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show. Hey, 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 Kilgarref and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. 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SYSK Selects: What's the deal with Rasputin's death? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-whats-the-deal-with-rasputins-death | In this week's SYSK Select episode, Grigori Rasputin, the Russian charismatic cleric and political adviser to the ruling Romanovs, is said to have been poisoned, shot, shot again, bludgeoned and drowned. Exactly how did he die and how would such a legend | In this week's SYSK Select episode, Grigori Rasputin, the Russian charismatic cleric and political adviser to the ruling Romanovs, is said to have been poisoned, shot, shot again, bludgeoned and drowned. Exactly how did he die and how would such a legend | Sat, 03 Jun 2017 13:40:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=3, tm_hour=13, tm_min=40, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=154, tm_isdst=0) | 30337253 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody, it's me, Josh. And this week, for SYSK selects, I've selected our episode on Rasputin, the mad monk. And I remember it was recorded during a weird time at how stef works for some reason. Reason. We were recording in an old corner office, and there were weird blackout drapes on the windows. It was very odd, but it led itself perfectly to this episode. A heads up, I should say. This one has a lot of talk about genitalia, so if you're a parent, you may just want to be aware of that. Are we talking about rescuting? You're darn tootin. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetofworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. This is Charles W, chuck Bryant. And this is stuff you should know. The podcast. That's right. Are we doing Rasputin? Yeah, we're doing Rasputin. Okay. No disputing. Rasputin. That's right. Actually, there's a lot of disputants. There's tons of it. The man's whole life is in dispute. Cream, mystic, hypnotist. Possible healer. Porn star. Yeah, pretty much. Not a porn star. He was into some freaky stuff. He could have been. He's a big dude. Six foot four. Yeah, I saw that written down. And there are pictures of him, which is great, because this is a time in our world history where we had photographs of these folks. Right. But even that said, the fact that there are surviving photographs of him when he was just some peasant in Russia really speaks to the impact that he had on the people around him. Totally. There are very few Russian peasantry portraits yeah. Or studies of a specific person from, like even that's a good point. But there are pictures of Rasputin before he became famous. Yeah. And those creepy eyes. Yeah. It depends on the photo, I think. I think some of them make a little more creepy. Some of them look photoshopped, like, the glowing ones and stuff. Plus, also when he's like I think he turns it on sometimes, too. Yeah. We're talking about recipe, and I think everybody kind of has a certain idea. He's also known as the Mad Monk, and he was a prolific lover. Yeah. He's a kinky man. Yeah. And he had the ear of the ZAR and the Zarina, the last ones. Zara. Nicholas II and his wife of the Romanoff. Yeah, the Romanoff. That's another way to put it. Yeah. So Alexandra and Nicholas II invited rescue into their court, which we'll get into let's just start chronologically here, though, okay. Like birth. Yeah. Well, he was born Gregory ifemovich Rasputin in Siberia, imagine being born in Siberia in 1869 is just a big ball of laughs. Or in 2013. Yeah. And he supposedly although this was disputed by his daughter, I believe. Yeah. I want to say, for me, this is how much the fact of the podcast rasputin had children. Yeah. Like, he had a family. He was married from age 20 on. Yeah. And they still exist, apparently in France. One of them lives in Los Angeles, I believe. Oh, really? Porn star? I don't think so. But I mean, think about it. Rasputin and just bear that in mind. He was married and had a family this whole time, from age 20 on. Yeah. That's a little weird, actually. So his daughter, I believe, disputed this, but apparently early on his religious activity, he was involved with a group called the Cliffs, with a K and an H and A-Y-Y and then everything else normal. And then they were into some serious, like, sexual activity, like self flagellation that erupted into orgies. Right. Self flagellation in front of a group. And then people would be like, okay, it's humpy time. Yeah. With the idea that in order to cleanse yourself of sins, you just had to do a lot of that sin. Is that right? Yeah. And the reason that they would have orgies was because it was part of their religious belief, was that if somebody was having trouble with sin, you had to help them work it out. Get rid of the sin by doing the sin. Right. And apparently it was a sin to have an orgy, so they did it a lot. Interesting. And they were hated among the Russians. Basically, they were mistrusted. They were just viewed upon as weird, and they were actually fairly subversive, and they knew that they were viewed like this. So one of the tenants of being a cliff was that you went to the church, the Russian Orthodox Church, and you were fervent and outspoken and super into the Russian Orthodox Church. By all outward appearances, that was what you did if you were a cliff. And then your dirty secret was you would whip yourself and have sex with like 20 people at the same time. Exactly. Nice. Well, like I said, his daughter disputed that he was involved, although historians say that he was, so who knows? I've read that she said that he was rejected by the cliff. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, he might have never mind, we'll get to that. He may have been too much for them. So he built his reputation traveling on Russia as a healer, as a mystic and a preacher, and eventually landed in St. Petersburg in 19 five, somehow got introduced to the aforementioned Zara. And Zarina, yeah. But before that, he had become undergone a religious conversion, apparently from about the age of twelve. He was like doing it with anything he could get his hands on. And I don't know what age, but I would say before 20, between twelve and 20, some monk came through town, came through the village and said, you know what? I think you should come with me to the monastery. I think you're kind of special, you've got some talent. Exactly, young man. So he took them to the monastery, and that's where rescue underwent this religious conversion there and came out really fervently religious, like the real deal. He actually walked from Russia to Palestine and back walked. That's not a short trip. Is there a disputing that or is that not that I understand. Okay. I haven't seen that disputed. Got you. But I think that's a good point to bring up. Anything that sounds even remotely a stretch that's attached to Rasputin, you should probably take with a grain of salt. Yeah. Because he was such an odd, unique individual in world history, there's been countless stories, and I'm sure at the time they were just like rampant stories about who this guy was. Yes, and not only that, most of them were written and spread by his enemies. He was a very hated person, contemporarily. So the original accounts are of people who are trying to make him look bad, and then people started basing biographies on those original accounts, and that's why he's got such a bad reputation. There's so much lore and legend and confabulation surrounding them, so you don't really know much about them. Well, for him, he was just like, I'm just a giant Siberian monk looking for a good time. Like, why everyone out to get me? Why has everybody got so many hang ups? I know the haters. So, yeah, he's already kind of known as a start. It starts a religious adviser by the time he gets to St. Petersburg yes. And he's hanging out there. He's like, I'm going to make it in the big city. This is where the Romanovs live. This is a good place for me to be. And apparently he, like you said, impressed somebody enough that he was taken to the Romanovs and introduced to them at court. This is my as WellBe. Boogie nights. Yeah, it is, isn't he's? Eddie from the valley. Yeah. All right, so he does get introduced and worms his way into the inner circle. Not worms his way through. He earned his place in the inner circle. He definitely did. By healing a hemophiliac son, Alexis, who was the heir to the throne and very important to keep around and alive. He was the only boy in the family. Yes. Despite being a hemophiliac, he would do dumb things like ride horses and fall off them. And apparently the first time that happened, the second time he was not doing so hot and rescued and supposedly healed him, possibly through hypnosis. So with hemophilia, I didn't really realize this. I always thought hemophilia was where you cut yourself and your wound wouldn't clot. It's that as well, right? Or not. It is, but I thought that was it. Right. Apparently the much bigger problem is with internal bleeding because you don't know what's going on. Right. And that's what Alexey had. And they were worried about him becoming a morphine addict, so they wouldn't give him any morphine. So he would just suffer, like, these bouts of internal bleeding. Poor kid. And resputin. The doctors couldn't do anything, and Rasputin came along the first time and basically just took away his pain. Yeah. And in 1912, it happened again. This is after the horse fall, and he was, I believe, not there at the time. And Zarina gave him a ring and said, hey, Rasputin, we need you to do your thing again. And he sent a telegram that said, don't sweat it, he's going to recover the next day. And I guess, like long distance hypnosis or whatever happened, or maybe healing prayers, who knows? Or maybe none of that. Yeah. There's also a hypothesis that he exerted the first calming influence over the house about this matter that anyone ever had, and that that in and of itself had some sort of healing effect, I think, because supposedly he's known to be a very calming figure. Well, with hemophilia, I think to lowering your stress levels will help. Yeah, I'll bet. Stress is a killer, isn't it? It is literally. So at the same time, while this is all going on, like you said, there were people out there that did not like him. One of which not the least of which was Prime Minister Peter Stolepin. And he was, like, gathering a case, putting a case together, basically, to present and get him ousted from the court, saying, this guy is a crazy sex pervert. Yeah, I think he was not the first one to accuse him of being a cliff, but really was taking that and running with it. Yeah. He wanted him gone and he died shot at the opera before he could make this case. And some say that old Czar Nicholas might have been behind that, but we don't know that for sure. Yeah, he was bizarre. They were records very well in Russia to turn this injury, especially not a cover up. Scandals. Yeah, that's true. What if you were a global energy company with operations in Scotland, technologists in India, and customers, all on different systems? You need to pull it together. So you call an IBM and Red Hat to create an open hybrid cloud platform. Now, data is available anywhere, securely, and your digital transformation is helping find new ways to unlock energy around the world. Let's create a hybrid cloud that can change in industry. IBM, let's create learn more@ibm.com. 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 Peter Stole a Pin, comes up, he tries, it fails. Yeah. Not trying to kill him, just try to get them removed. Right. Let's provide a little backdrop here. Okay? At about this time, the world is undergoing a huge transition from agriculture to industrialization. And the Russian peasantry loves the czar. I love those guys. But farmers, yeah, in the cities, an urban working class is developing, and they don't love the Tsar. They think the Tsar is disconnected, out of touch, is back in these agrarian days, and everybody's moving forward into the factories. And the ZAR has no love for these new people. And this is where Lenin came from and the Bolsheviks came from where? The factories. So this is all going on in the background. That's in Russia? Outside of Russia. Europe is going to war for World War I. Russia is torn between these domestic problems and these international problems. And it's headed by a family that is becoming viewed as increasingly out of touch with what's going on in Russia, and therefore are losing legitimacy pretty quickly. And now, all of a sudden, there's this weird guy who humps anything that moves and has the ear of the Tsar and the Zarina. And where did he come from? What's going on? Yeah, and increasingly less influence on the Tsar, apparently, over the years, but increasingly more influence on the Zarina. She was way into him, especially after he healed the son twice. Or supposedly did. Right. Well, she definitely believed he did. Oh, yeah, exactly. That's all it took. And he even called the mama and papa, which was interesting. I think that's manipulative. I take it from my impression that he was being manipulative by calling them that. And I'll bet it was creepy. I bet it was. So he's in the newspapers and stuff. He's becoming a well known guy. And I'm sure the industrialists are reading this. And like you said, who is this guy that's at the center of all this? And he's got this great influence. And who even is he even? Well, he had not only influenced, but once Russia joined World War I, was all over well, it was Zara. Nicholas goes off to command the army and the Zarina is left in charge, which means Ran is sort of in charge, very close to being in charge himself. And he was in a position to stack well paying, high level government jobs with friends, cronies who were incompetent and inept, and they almost completely undermined the infrastructure of Russia, like trains didn't operate, armaments weren't built for the war effort. People weren't fed. There was like, nobody running the show or nobody who knew what they were doing the show. And it was all Rescuen's fault and this was the last straw. Yeah. This is what led to a revolution. Well, and also to some murder attempts. Well, yeah. He's like Bob Marley. People would try to kill him, and it just didn't happen. The first one on June 16, this woman, Kyonia Kosovichina Guseva. Oh, that was good, Chuck. Thank you. Apparently it was sent by a former friend of his name Sergey Truvenoff. He was a monk who was tight with Rasputin, but they split up in 1911 because he was kind of disgusted by his humpiness and apparently sent this woman to murder him. And she stabbed him in the stomach, and it was gnarly. Apparently he had some entrails hanging out. It was easily immortal wound. But here in the article, they just said he healed a few weeks later. They made it sound like he healed himself. He had surgeries, and I think it was like eight to ten weeks of recuperation. I don't think there was any mystery to that. But they did manage to save his life. But he wasn't the same after that. He became an opium user and the daughter was one that was just like it was just different after that. That sucks. He had bad stomach problems, which we'll get to later, actually, that will play a role. So there's one other aspect of rescuing that I kind of gathered about him from researching him, and that was like he had this thing, not a sad thing he did. He had kind of a light, he had an exuberance, he loved life. He didn't seem to be even though he's been accused of all sorts of manner of crimes, we don't really know what he did or didn't do back then, because, again, contemporary sources are like, is he the devil against him? But he seemed to have something that was really neat about him. He was somebody that I think a lot of people wanted to be around. Yeah. And the idea that went out of his stomach wound oh, yeah, that's sad. It is not as sad as what ultimately happens to him, but let's keep going. All right. What ultimately happened is a plot was hatched and we'll get to the newer, possibly truer story, but here's the original story. Prince Felix Yusupov. He was the husband of the niece of the Tsar Nicholas on December 29. He was also the gay lover of the person who was also an heir to the throne if Alexey didn't make it, who the Brits favored. So keep that in mind. He was married to the niece and the gay lover of both his bases covered. Right? Exactly. Well, good for him. 1916. That's pretty forward thinking. Sure. So he plotted to we're all going to evolve into bisexual, maybe he plotted to kill Rasputin to save Russia. And here's where things really, like, the details of how this went down are really highly disputed to this day. Supposedly used to pop. Yeah, supposedly. He invited them over, said, hey, come take a look at my wife. He'd like her. I also read that he said, we got a gypsy wine party going on over here, and recipes like, I'm there. Well, here's the deal, though. He gets there, he laces pastries and cakes and wine with cyanide enough to kill, like, five men, supposedly rescue and starts chowing down. Nothing happens. The daughter disputes this and says he had bad stomach problems after his stabbing incident, and he didn't drink wine or eat sweets anymore. Okay. That's what she said. Well, that explains the later finding. That's what she said. It does explain the later finding. Perhaps. But he had hyper acidity in the stomach, and she was like, he just wouldn't have been doing that. Or possibly he was immune. That was another theory, which I think is bunk, that he had taken part in mithridataism, which is, like, slowly building up your immunity to poison by ingesting small amounts of poison. I've been doing that for years. I'm sure you have. Is that why okay. Or maybe they have a theory that the cyanide might have vaporized when they baked the stuff in cakes. Oh, yeah, the high temperatures, dummies. But at any rate, the poison had no effect on them. And they were like, what is going on with this creep? Like, he could have killed ten men with this stuff. Or an oxygen of Ov later said, oh, really? So they said, I don't know what we'll do. Let's just shoot them in the back. Easy peasy, peasy. And he did. So he fell down and died. That they thought he checked his pulse. Wait, first they went upstairs and partied well, they checked him out, and then he's dead. Let's go party. Right. And then he came back down, I think, to get a code or something, and checked him again to get a I think that's how the story goes. Really? Yeah. Okay, and that's when Rasputin is just like he comes alive and attacks the guy after they shot him twice in the back. Right. At least once, two times at that point, I think. So it ended up being four total with one in the forehead. Right. Which we'll get to as well. Okay, so they shot him once, and then they came back downstairs, and he's still moving. Not only is he still alive, he manages to get to his feet and bust out the door and out into the yard. Out into Yusufov's yard. That's when they shot him twice. Yeah. And beat him severely. There's pictures of his body. He was severely beaten with a rubber club, tied him in a blanket, dumped his body in the Neva River. So let's go over this again. Shot in the back once he gets up, goes outside, they shoot him two more times. They beat him with the club, they wrap them up in a blanket. Well, no, somebody shot him in the forehead, too. That was a fourth shot. Okay. Shot them in the forehead, wrap them up in a blanket, drop them into a frozen river that they've carved a hole into, and then that's that for Rasputin. That's that until they find them. And they found him, and his arm was outstretched, like he'd managed to struggle free of the blanket. Right. He managed to partially free himself, indicating that maybe he wasn't even dead when they put him in the water. So they did an autopsy on them, and the autopsy list rescuen's mode of death as hypothermia, not being shot four times, not being beaten to death, including the forehead shot, which they all manner of evidence says that this was a kill shot by a professional. Yes, but supposedly he died of hypothermia. Supposedly. And then mysteriously, they didn't although now that you've explained it, not so mysteriously, they didn't find arsenic in his system. Right. But that until, I guess, recently. I think it's cyanide. Cyanide. Okay. That was a big point of lore. Like, he ate all this stuff, this cyanide laced pastry, and it didn't even show up in the system. Right. It sounds like it didn't show up in the system because he didn't actually eat that stuff. And we have great cause to wonder if he was beaten. Was he? Yeah, he was beaten. Okay, so he was shot four times. Yeah. And I guess he was dumped in the river. But what's in dispute then? Who shot him? Yeah, who shot him? And what was the actual cause of death? Did he really free his arm, or was that just something that happened? Got you. Like, what was the cause of death? And did they cut his penis off? Well, that's a big one, too, supposedly. Man, all these double entendres. I know, I apologize. There's another one. I haven't met a single oh, my God. It just needs a stock. So supposedly they may have cut his penis off, and it has changed hands throughout the year, maybe even belonging to a French collector who loaned it to a Russian museum to put on display for a little while. There are pictures, and we just don't know if that's it or not. If it is, it's ginormous good for rescued. So much so that apparently no one's actually tested it. But just looking at it, some biologists feel like that's a horse. That's from a horse or a cow. Yeah. Or as you said earlier, it looked like a baby, so I'm holding an orange. So we don't know if that's his penis or not. It definitely adds another little strange sidebar to the story. It definitely does. Also, we should say that after he was buried and the Bolsheviks revolted, they dug him up and burned his body. Oh, yeah, because I don't think I knew that. We should say the Bolsheviks did revolt. Tsar abdicated the crown in March of, I think, 1917. And then the revolution happened. They were placed under house arrest, and then, very famously, the entire Romanov family, their doctor, two servants and family dog were all executed by Bolshevik revolutionaries, including Anastasia. Yeah. And Rasputin had predicted that, along with his own demise before he died, writing, if it was one of your relations who have brought my death, then no one in the family, none of your relations, will remain alive for more than two years. Yes, that was my rescue. And that's what happened. I mean, he was killed in December the end of 1916. They were killed before the end of 1918. So he was right. And apparently he'd also written that he didn't expect to make it to January 1, and he was killed two days before it. Yeah, there were disputes about the date, too, but I think they settled on December 30. So what's at the weirdness now? Well, they've dug into this more recently in the 2000s. Scotland Yard has a detective named Richard Cullen and a historian named Andrew Cook. And they have a theory that I think is probably true, that it was the SIS. The British Secret Service actually led the plot to kill him. And modern forensics believe they have tied the gun and the caliber of the bullet in the forehead was different than the other three. Yeah, and so they have tied that back because it was not a rare gun, but rare enough to where they tied it back to this guy, oswald Rainer. Oswald Rainer, who was a British officer who was there. He was there. He was also a friend of Yusufov. And while he's not named in Yusufov's memoirs about the murder of Rasputin Yuspov boasted about frequently, he does appear suddenly in that same time. So he's in the city. A retired Scotland Yard detective and an historian both think that he's the one who carried out the kill shot. Yeah, and Rayner actually supposedly told his cousin that he was there and that he was the guy that did the deed. But before he died, he burned all his papers, and he only had one son, and he died just a few years later. So all evidence is gone except for a memo. A memo was sent between Rayner superiors, john Scale and Steven Alley, who weren't there at the time. And the memo says this quote, although matters have not proceeded entirely to plan, which that's pretty true. Our objective has clearly been achieved. Reaction to the demise of dark forces, which was Rasputin's code name, have been well received by all. Although a few awkward questions have already been asked about wider involvement. Rayner is attending to loose ends. Will no doubt brief you on your return. Wow. So it sounds pretty rock solid to me that the SIS might have been behind it. Right. There was another conspiracy that's actually probably just a broader look at that. It was actually the Prime Minister of Great Britain, David Lloyd George, who was ultimately behind this plot to murder Rasputin and install Juspov's gay lover, the Prince. And the whole reason for either of these theories, the whole reason the British would want to get involved in the first place, was because they were worried that either one, Rasputin was going to persuade Nicholas to withdraw from the war or he's going to continue undermining the credibility of the Romanov so much that there was a revolution. And either way, Russia was going to withdraw from the war, which is a big problem, because they were keeping Germany busy on the Western Front, which meant that Germany was divided between the Western Front with Russia and the Eastern Front with the Brits dicey. It was. So if Russia pulled out, then Germany could put all of their attention on the Western Front. Right. Yes. I got them wrong the first time. I got them backwards. But you corrected yourself. Thank you. Yeah. So maybe so maybe Britain and it makes sense. If it was SIS, it might have gone all the way to the top. The Prime Minister. Yeah, it's true. So it's rescuting that's everything there is to know about them and completely factual every word of it. Yes. Well, let's see. If you want to learn more about Rasputin, you can type his name into the search bar@housetopworks.com. That is capital. R-A-S-P-U-T-I-N. Rasputin. As I said, resputin. That means it's time for message break. What if you were a trendy apparel company facing an avalanche of demand to ensure more customers can buy more Sherpaline jackets? You call IBM to automate your it infrastructure with AI. Now, your systems monitor themselves. What used to take hours takes minutes, and you have an ecommerce platform designed to handle sudden spikes in overall demand, as in actual overalls. Let's create It systems that rule us their own sleeves. IBM. Let's create learn more@ibm.com It automation. 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 longterm commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page, and enter code stuff. Now it's time for listener mail. Josh, this is a very special listener mail because of petri's Jerry. This wasn't even to us. This is like, forget you guys. This is for Jerry. So here's how it goes. I've been listening to your show from the very beginning, guys, and I have never missed an episode. I listened to about 15 podcasts on a regular basis, and listening to those other podcasts makes me truly appreciate the job that Jerry does on your show. While listening to other shows, I often hear pieces that were intended to be edited out, but obviously we're not. This is something that is extremely distracting to me. What usually happens is one of the host starts a sentence doesn't come out right, so they go back and start that sentence over again. It's not done in a very natural way, and it drives me crazy. Kind of like finding an obvious typo in a book. Why? I hate that, too. Yeah. When this happens, it takes away from the conversation aspect of the podcast and emphasizes the fact that there is an outline for these conversations. While I cannot guarantee that it has never happened in your show, I can't think of one time where something was obviously supposed to be edited out but was not, right? Yeah. The production of your show is so good, it feels like you did the podcast and one continuous take without any edits. That is not true, by the way. We're not that good. We don't stop and start a lot. It happens. Mistakes happen. Yeah. But we're pretty conversational. Sometimes we say things that we know we can't include. It feels like you do the podcast in one take without any edits. This is much more entertaining because it feels more like an organic conversation and a planned out discussion. Obviously, you guys plan your podcast with outlines and points you want to touch on. Not true. No, that is not true. And that goes to Jerry's Powers and Skills. That's right. That guy thinks that. Yeah. For those of you who don't know, I feel like we said it a gazillion times in interviews, but not everyone reads that stuff. We have our first conversation about the topic right here in the studio. We study independently, then we come down, sit down, and we have our first conversation about it. Right. Sometimes there are starts and stops, and Jerry takes care of that, finishing up here. It seems more natural in your podcast than any others that I listen to. So I just wanted to thank you guys for many hours of entertainment, and thank you, especially to Jerry. She needs to raise, even if it comes out of your pocket. I agree. That she needs a raise. Not out of our pocket, but not out of our pocket. And that is from Spencer M. Couch of Couch Law. And I was like, can I mention your law firm? And he's like, please do. Yeah. So that is Couch Law in Bountiful, Utah, for all your maritime law needs. Not in Bountiful. You called Couch Law? I'm not sure what kind of law he practices, but if you are in Bountiful, Utah, and you're in need of a lawyer, give them a call and say, hey, you've got good taste, and you appreciate the fine work of Jerry. So here's $400 an hour. And if you are in need of a world class podcast editor, you have to keep looking, because Jerry's ours. That's right. Yeah. Thank you, Jerry. Thank you, Jerry. All right. She just deleted it. Yes. If you want to sing Jerry's praises, we love hearing that kind of thing, Jerry. Oh, is it? No. I'm scared. Okay. You can tweet to us at s. Yskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffychnow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. Right? Yeah. Jerry gets those, too. And you can join us on our home on the web stuffyoucheknow.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 Kilgarif and Georgia Hardstarks, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | ||
44822de4-53a3-11e8-bdec-4b02b4f5bca1 | The Taliesin Massacre | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-taliesin-massacre | Everyone knows who Frank Lloyd Wright is, but did you know there was a grisly massacre at his home in 1914? | Everyone knows who Frank Lloyd Wright is, but did you know there was a grisly massacre at his home in 1914? | Thu, 10 Dec 2020 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=10, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=345, tm_isdst=0) | 40583073 | 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. Picture this, friends. You could be packing a carry on for a trip to Hawaii when you realize you're going to need a bigger bag. But it's cool because you booked your flight with your city Advantage Platinum Select Card. So you can check a bag for free on domestic travel and still have room for those souvenirs. And surprise, those souvenirs also earned you Advantage Miles. Actually, you earned Advantage miles and loyalty points with each swipe. So let's start dreaming about your next next adventure. This could be you, and you could be anywhere with the City Advantage Platinum Select Card. Learn more@city.com. Adventure and travel on with city advantage. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry's here. And this is stuff you should know. The long awaited Frank Lloyd Wright edition. Sort of. Yeah, kind of. It's not a full biography, but it is definitely covers some of a very dark period of his life. Yeah. One of the darker periods that any artist could have. And make no mistake, frank Lloyd Wright was an artist. He was an artist of architecture. Yeah. How many houses of his have you seen her buildings? I've seen a bunch. I've been to Hollyhawk in Los Angeles. I've been to Yusoni, and I can't remember which one in Washington by one of the I can't remember what other historic houses by. They moved it. There's a Utonian in Alabama, chuck in Florence, Alabama, which is really neat. Been to Falling Water. Been to Talias and west. I think that's it. Yeah. I've been to a handful myself. I've been to one in Tulsa and a couple in La. Of course. The Guggenheim. I think we've both been there. I have not. Really? Yeah. All the time. You've been to New York and all the museums. You never step foot in the Guggenheim. It's true. I've never been in the Guggenheim, sadly enough. I saw a movie where there's a shootout in the Guggenheim. One I highly recommend going to the Guggenheim. It's great. Okay. I thought it was George Castanza that designed the Guggenheim, not Franklin. Right, that's right. He always wanted to be an architect. That's right. My favorite line for that episode is when he talks about the redesign plans of the Guggenheim and they go, really? He goes, yeah. It really didn't even take that long. That's right. Yeah. He's saying that he was the one who redesigned it. It's impressive that it was just a really quick job. Yeah, that's a classic. But we're not talking about the Guggenheim's day, Chuck. We're not even talking about Hollyhock house. We're talking about specifically Taliesin, which is widely regarded as Frank Lloyd Wright's genuine bona fide masterpiece, like his greatest work ever. I think it said that it's his autobiography written in wood and stone, that it's just him and not just him in a specific time and place, but for like decades, where the work, his earliest work to his latest work all showed up and appeared over time at Taliesn. Yeah, there's a lot there. It was his home at times it was his studio, school and 800 acre estate. This was family land. It was his favorite hill in Wisconsin, in the river valley there where his Welsh grandparents originally homesteaded. And so it was very personal to him. So he did things like make the roof so it doesn't leak water into the offices below. Like his other properties. Exactly. Yeah. He wasn't one to just move his desk. Right, right. So this particular house, and it still is a huge, enormous house, I think it's 21,000 sqft. It's a classic example of what's called the Prairie style, which is a style of architecture considered to be the first genuine American style of architecture that Frank Lloyd Wright founded back in the 1890s, maybe late 1890s. And it takes its inspiration from the surrounding environment. It's meant to blend in with the environment and work with the environment rather than to dominate it. So there's a lot of horizontal lines, a lot of natural materials, a lot of woodworking. And Taliesn is very much in that style, I think it has 524 windows, which is a lot of windows, and it also has no gutters. There's a lot of candlelivered roofs, which kind of overhang pretty far, so there isn't necessarily a need for gutters. But I read that Frank Lloyd Wright specifically didn't want gutters because he wanted icicles to form on the ease of the roof so he could look out of those 524 windows in the Wisconsin winter and see all the icicles hanging. Do you like the Prairie homes that style? Yes, I do. My problem with Frank Lloyd Wright's work is that it's so dated and old timey that it almost makes me a combination of scared and nauseous. You know what I'm talking about? Sure. Have you ever looked at a wicker wheelchair from the turn of the last century? Yeah, you just kind of get the creeps from it for some reason. Okay. You get that same he did the bulk of his work a hundred years ago, somewhere in that range, but it was also very technologically advanced and he was just doing some really interesting stuff. So the way that a very dated, once technologically advanced piece of work can kind of call that weird feeling out of you. But at the same time, I'm like, in genuine awe of this stuff. You did like Falling Water is one of my favorite houses in the entire world. Sure. Gorgeous. Amazing. What about do you like the fairy style? I like them all right. They're fine, some of them. And I have some here in the neighborhood that pop up every now and then. Some newer builds are in the prairie style, and I like them more than some other kinds and less than some other kinds. Let's just say that you like craftsman. Well, sure. I live in a craftsman. That's my favorite. But I like craftsman too. I think they're good. I love a highly slick modern home. I don't want to live in one, but I love them. I would not want to live in one either. Those are hit or miss with me. Some of them are just too just god awful. Some of them are just when they hit the nail on the head, you're like, well, that's one of the best houses anyone's ever designed and built, but it's almost like documentaries and horror movies. There's a lot of them, but only very few, like, are truly great. That's my impression of modern homes. Yeah. We're into architecture, though, as a couple, Emily and I. We watch a couple of you and you and me. Great. Well, us, too. It's a triad. Well, I guess throw you me in there. But we have a couple of shows that we love to watch. There's one called Grand Designs on Netflix that I highly recommend. And oh, man. What's the other one? There's this not a married couple, but a pair that travels the world. The Great British architecture. Bake off. No, that's not it. I can't remember what it's called. But Grand Designs is really good, and they follow these sort of impossibly built houses designed and built by these incredible lunatic dreamers who are obsessed with sort of a thing. It seems to be the common thread is these obsessives, and it leads to something beautiful and great, usually. For sure. Yeah. So one of the things about Frank Lloyd Wright is that he is including during his lifetime, he's considered one of the greatest architects to ever live, certainly the most popularly well known, maybe, I guess you'd put it like anybody who's ever heard of any kind of architecture, even vaguely is probably familiar with Frank Lloyd Wright. Agreed. So when he put all himself into Talies and he was building a home for himself, and I think it was completed in 1011, and like it's worth pointing out, he was returning to his childhood home, to the valley where his clan settled. If you look around Spring Green, Wisconsin, everybody's got the name Lloyd in there somewhere. Like his maternal ancestors settled that area, and he was literally building on this hill, his favorite hill when he was a child, like you were saying. But he was doing this in the midst of one of the biggest scandals like any architects ever gone through. Yeah. So as you'll see through this show and if you know anything about the man, frank Lloyd Wright had a bit of a wandering eye and a bit of a philandering habit and he had an extramarital affair with a woman named Mama. Mama? I don't know. I've been testing it out too. I said, Mama mamma sure. Borthwick and they met in 19 three was in his mid thirty s at the time. He was already really famous as an architect and he was commissioned to design a house for her and her husband Edwin Cheney. And it was going to be built there in Wisconsin, pretty close to Chicago, where Frank Lloyd Wright was at the time. She was pregnant in her mid thirty s at the time with her second child and got really involved in sort of working with Frank Lloyd Wright very closely. And that sort of, you know, the classic story at first it starts out platonic, one thing leads to another and before you know it they're bumping uglies. That's right. Smashing. As the younger kids say. From what I just heard, that for the first time the other day. Didn't know that was a thing. So it's a thing now. So Frank Lloyd Wright by this time had six kids of his own and he had made a name for himself, like around Chicago, building homes, designing homes for the well to do, especially in the Oak Park neighborhood. Apparently just between 1000 901,000 1910, he designed 50 prairie houses. So he'd made a name for himself. But apparently by the time, I think when they started their affair, by the time rolled around he was getting kind of tired of doing the same thing. It's kind of like he was cursed. Like this school of architecture that he developed was so popular that's all anybody wanted and he had gotten bored with it by that time. So he seems to have been unfulfilled professionally and kind of took it out on his family in about the worst way you could possibly take things out on your family short of cutting them up with the machete. Yeah. By it was a pretty much well known open secret in Chicago and of that high society in Chicago that this affair was going on. And he was sort of looked down on from his friends and his neighbors and his peers, different colleagues. His poor wife Kitty was long suffering because she kind of stood by side anyway. And he realized that he really wanted to leave his family and he did. So he said, I did not know what I wanted. I wanted to go away. And he did. In September of 19 nine, Frank left with her, went to Europe, left his wife and his six kids behind. And here's one of the more selfish quotes I've ever seen from a husband and father. And this was in his autobiography. So when family life in Oak Park in that spring of 19 nine, conspired against the freedom to which I had come to feel every soul entitled. I had no choice. Would I keep myself respect but to go out a voluntary exile. So he really felt those were his words in his autobiography. So he had no illusions about himself, but he very much felt that, you know what, frank Lloyd Wright and I'm a man and I deserve this by my right. Yeah. So those are two key points. He's a man, so he deserved it. But more than anything, he was a legend in his own mind, which was sustained and verified by the public at large. But he was Frank Lloyd Wright. So more than anybody, he deserved to go do whatever he wanted and whatever the consequences were for other people emotionally, to hell with that. One other thing that I think is worth pointing out is that he had money problems basically his entire life, despite the fact that this man designed the Guggenheim. He designed some of the most iconic buildings and houses in the United States, and he had money just coming in by the truckload, but he would spend it as fast as he could get it and then some. So at this point in time, when he left his family, he apparently left them in financial straits as well. There's a biographer named Paul Hendrix and Paul Hendrickson. I'm sorry. And he points out that there was a $900 grocery bill that was laying on the kitchen counter when Frank Lloyd Wright walked out on his family, which, I mean, at least pay the grocery bill so the family that you're leaving in a lurch can eat. Yeah. So his mistress left her two kids with her husband. She went on a train to New York City. Met Frank at the Plaza Hotel. They had a few days there of, I guess, smashing, and then went to Europe. And he was famous to roll over. So it's not like he could lay low. Very famous face, very famous dresser of fine clothing and those hats. So he didn't exactly blend in anywhere he went. So he was found out in Berlin. Chicago Tribune had a headline that said, leave Families. Semicolon nice little switch there. Elope to Europe. And this whole time, poor Kitty, she says, it appears like any other ordinary, mundane affair with the trappings of what is low and vulgar, but there's nothing of that sort about Frank Wright. He is honest and sincere. I know him. My heart is with him now. I feel certain that he will come back. And that's one of the saddest parts about all this, is she was sort of like, he's just flandering a bit and he'll come back to us. Yeah, it is sad. But also whatever his kids were thinking, too, like, well, I guess dad didn't love us enough to stick around. Another, I think, kind of telling clue about Frank lloyd Wright's enormous arrogance was he called his and where are we going to call her, Chuck? Mama. I'm calling her Mama. Okay. His and Mama's flight to Europe after abandoning their families. He called it a spiritual. And I had not seen that word before. And it turns out hegera or hegera, H-E-G-I-R-A is what Mohammed's exodus from persecution in Mecca was called. And he left Mecca to go to Medina, where he founded Islam, and to Frank Lloyd Wright. This is what he and his mistress were doing when they abandoned their families and fled to Europe. Yeah. He thought a lot of himself. He was an Sob man, plain and simple. He's a classic example of having to compartmentalize the genius of the work and just the complete horribleness of the person. I know, but it can be done. It can be done. I disagree with anybody who says there's certain exceptions, I'm sure, but anybody who says, well, this person held some pretty terrible views, so we shouldn't pay any attention to their work from that point on. I disagree with that. I think that there are tons of exceptions to that rule, although there are tons of exceptions to the exceptions of that rule, too. If that's not confusing enough. Well, I think it's a personal decision. If someone wants to never gaze upon falling waters again, then that's their choice. Totally. It's not like I'm going to grab them by their hair and making them look but I would disagree with them in a lot of cases. Yeah. Like Manson's music. Fantastic. Just beautiful stuff. Really good stuff. For sure. So Frank Lloyd Wright returns to Chicago in 1910. Mima stayed behind. She stayed there in Europe for another year because she was getting a divorce from Edwin Cheney. And so she stayed there, wrapping that up. Frank moved back with Kitty. He had no intention of staying. And I think it was pretty clear to Kitty at this point because she said, Mr. Wright I wonder if he made her call her that. Mr. Wright reached here Saturday evening, October 8, and he has brought many beautiful things, everything but his heart, I guess, and that he has left in Germany. But he came back a bit of a pariah. Oh, just to tell you, they were pariahs before. There was a woman who grew up living next door to Mama and her children. And she, years later, in her diary, recounted a time when her mom refused to give Frank Lloyd Wright cream when he came over from next door to borrow some and said that they were sinners and she wasn't going to help them out at all. So when they left for Europe, made headline news for leaving their families. And then he returns, moves back in with his family just long enough to plan his next home for him and Mama. The people in his social orbit did not take very kindly to that professionals, neighbors, friends, gossip columnist, basically everybody in the Midwest who had anything to do with anything. Like we rejected him and Mamma. Yeah. And to boot, when he gets back, because he needed seed money for his new home, he had a benefactor named Darwin Martin. And he said, hey, listen, I want to build this great cottage, and this affair is long over, and this is going to be a cottage for my mom, and I promise it's not going to be our little smash shack. And so give me $25,000 to get this project going. He got it. He moved into the home with his mistress, and I think by Christmas 1911, they were officially living together there in Green Spring. Yeah. He said, thanks, jump. Thanks for the money. And because just trashing Frank Lloyd Wright as a person is a lot of fun, I want to add this detail, too. Darwin Barton, his benefactor, over the course of Frank Lloyd Wright's career, lent Frank Lloyd Wright 75 grand total. And when the stock market crashed in 1929, darwin Martin lost everything. Like he was Flatbrook. Went from an extraordinarily wealthy man to just flat broke for the rest of his life. Frank Lloyd Wright never repaid any of that money, but he made sure that when his autobiography came out, that Darwin Martin got a free copy. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, he really pulled that out at the last minute, didn't he? All right, so let's take a break, and we'll come back and talk about things taking a turn for the worst a few years later in August of 1914. Stuff you should know, josh and Shawn. Stuff you should know. Okay, friends, so imagine you're in an accident, and your injuries are extensive enough that not only do you have to spend time in the hospital, but you're going to need rehab, too. Well, you have insurance, so no problem, right? Well, not entirely. You get back from the hospital and notice there's a gap and that your insurance is only covering part of your bill. And it's a big bill. Yeah. And until you get back on your feet, you can't get to work. And now you have this financial burden hanging over your head like some dark rain cloud. So what do you do, Chuck? Well, if you have Aflac, you can worry less, knowing they can help with the expenses health insurance doesn't cover. Aflac pays cash, which can be put toward expenses, which may be impacted by a covered medical event. Things like your medical bill, copays, or even routine things like rent, groceries, childcare and more. Yeah, that's Afflac in a nutshell. They care about what health insurance doesn't cover, so those they insure can care about everything else. And care has always been part of Affluex DNA. It's the foundation that the company was built on more than 65 years ago, and it's at the core of who they are still today. That's right. They believe the cost of health care shouldn't come at the expense of peace of mind, which is why they are on a mission to help close health and wealth gaps for Americans everywhere. So when the unexpected threatens your peace of mind, let Aflac stand in the gap to help you to learn how Aflac can help with expenses. Health insurance doesn't cover. Visit Aflac.com. That's Aflac.com. What if you were a major transit system with billions of passengers taking millions of trips every year? You aren't about to let any cyber attacks slow you down. So you partner with IBM to build a security architecture to keep your data network and applications protected. Now you can tackle threats so they don't bring you to a grinding halt, and everyone's going places, including you. Let's create cybersecurity that keeps your business on track. IBM, let's create learn more@ibm.com. Okay, Chuck, so let's just go ahead and get in the way back. Well, I don't want to see this. We'll just talk about it. We'll leave the way back machine out of this one. Okay, so on Saturday, August 15, 1914, around lunchtime, actually exactly at lunchtime, mamma Borthwick, Frank Lloyd Wright's, mistress, longtime mistress, was sitting down for lunch on a terrace at Taliesin with her two kids. To his great credit, Edwin Cheney, her ex husband, by this time, was not interested in keeping Mama from seeing her children as punishment, so they went to visit pretty frequently. And this is a time when they were visiting. So the three of them were sitting down to lunch. John, I think he was ten, and her daughter Martha, who is eight. And we're sitting down to lunch on the terrace. Okay, just put that in your pin. Put that pin in your hat and smoke it. Wow. Really mixing metaphors. So they're out on the terrace. Inside, in the dining room, there are five of Franklin Dwight's employees emil Birdell, thomas Brunker, david Lindblum, herbert Fritz, and William Weston, and then Weston's son Ernst. So they were all sitting down to eat, I think, put a pin in maybe both of these scenes, and we'll tell you a little bit about the handyman of the property named Julian Carlton, who, in the weeks and months leading up to this date, had been acting really weird. He was aggressive. He was getting in arguments with other people. He was acting very strangely. He started sleeping with a hatchet and a sack beside his bed. He was married, and his wife verified this stuff. He was talking about killing people. And there was rumor that he was being let go and that he and his wife were already had basically a train book to Chicago to look for other jobs. So this is sort of the mindset of what's going on with Julian Carlton at the time of this lunch. Right. Julian was actually he was a handyman, but at this point, he also helped his wife, Gertrude, when she was cooking. He would serve. So he served lunch to mama, and then he served lunch to the five employees in the dining room. And then as they started to eat, he approached William Weston, the foreman of the whole jam. William Weston was a pretty important guy around Talliesn and asked if he could go get some gasoline out of the shed, I guess because he was going to clean some rugs with it. With gasoline? With gasoline, yes, that was the thing back then. Sure. That's some old timey rug cleaning if I've ever heard of it. Sure, of course. Go ahead. Things went downhill really quickly from that moment on. Yeah. So I appreciate you leaving this part to me. Carlton comes back. Oh, I'll fill in. Don't worry. He's got the gasoline and he also has an axe. And the sequence is a little bit unclear. I've seen both ways of which happened. First, but he slaughtered Mama Borthwick and her kids on the porch and then poured gasoline under the dining room doors and trapped them in the room and set the dining room, and therefore the house on fire with everyone trapped inside. It gets even worse than that, though. After he had slaughtered Mamma and her kids with the axe and set the house on fire, he went around to a dining room window where the people who are trapped in the dining room that had just been set on fire were jumping to safety from. And as they jumped to safety, he ran after them and killed them with the axe. He would finish them off. Sometimes they were on fire and he would hit them in the head with the axe and killed them. And there were nine people who were dining that day, and he managed to kill seven of the nine. Three people survived the initial assault, the fire and then the picking off with the axe. The first guy who got away was named Herb Fritz. He was a draftsman, a younger guy, I think he's still a teenager, who went on to become an architect, I believe. But he was the first one to jump through the window. And so he was able to get pretty far away from Julian Carlton before Carlton noticed that people were jumping through the window and came around to pick him off with the ax. That's right. William Weston got out of the window, carlton hit him with the axe, thought he was dead, but he wasn't dead. In the meantime, Fritz, like you said, carlton didn't even know he was gone. So he actually managed to get to the neighbors and contact authorities, which ended up sort of saving a lot of the house because they helped put it out. And the other guy who managed to at least get out the window was David Lindblum. He escaped with Fritz. So Fritz and Lindblum, when they ran to the house, it was like a half a mile away, which is really significant. That limblon was able to do it because he was burned so badly that he died from his burns. And yet one of the last things he did on earth was to run a half a mile to get help at the nearest house with a phone. Yeah. So people get there, they put out the fire. Hours later, Carlton was discovered in the basement of the house in an asbestos lined boiler room. He went down there to die in the fire, but also doubled up by drinking a bottle of hydrochloric acid to make sure he did the job, and neither one of them worked. He actually survived both of those things. I actually saw that he was in the furnace because he was trying to survive the fire, and he didn't drink the acid until he knew he was discovered. See. I saw the opposite. That he went down to the furnace because he wanted to die in the home. Yeah. The reason the furnace made sense to me is that he was trying to survive in the furnace, is that if he couldn't escape from the house, that would be the safest place, because it was the middle of August and the furnace wasn't on. So it would have conceivably protected them, or else it would have turned into that bronze bowl torture thing. You know, the bronze bowl that you put a human being in and light a fire under the bowl. I remember. That sounds like a pretty horrible way to die, either way. Yes, it should be. Restated that Julian Carlton drank what he thought was a lethal dose of hydrochloric acid. That's how he chose to try to end his life. Yeah. So there was never any motive really rooted out. Clearly, looking back now, he suffered from some kind of mental illness. I don't think you can just all chalk it up to a grudge over being fired because of his behavior over the previous weeks and months. And, you know, it's just one of those things. It was a time where they weren't diagnosing, things like that. So he clearly had some form of mental illness, I think, and they never conclusively determined a motive. But like I said, his wife testified that said we were headed to Chicago, we were going to get work, and he ended up dying, but he couldn't eat, basically, because he had torn up his stomach lining in his throat so badly with that hydrochloric acid. He died seven weeks later in jail from starvation. Yeah. Another interpretation I saw is that he had purposefully starved himself because the acid didn't work, that it wasn't just that he couldn't eat, but that he wouldn't eat, and that he died from self imposed starvation. Either one's pretty terrible stuff. Just a brutal, brutal crime. Yeah. And I agree with you. I think he clearly was mentally ill, not just from the act that he carried out, but also the fact that he'd been ranting and sleeping with. An axe for weeks leading up to it. But I think his perceived treatment or outright treatment around Taliesin, coupled with the idea that they had been dismissed and that was going to be their last day, is, I guess, what drove them over the edge. Yeah. So, Frank, you've noticed we haven't mentioned him. He was in Chicago at the time. He was working kind of finalizing everything on the construction of Midway Gardens there in Chicago, working with his son, John Lloyd Wright, who is the second oldest and in the autobiography of John Wright, called My Father, Who Was on Earth, said he remembered an unnatural silence when the phone call came in, except for his father's labored breathing. And then he came back in the room and he said, what's happened, dad? And his father said, John a taxi. Taliesin is on fire. Right. And if you're not too big on Frank Lloyd Wright, you might be like, well, what about the people who were murdered in his defense? He apparently hadn't learned about that yet. And he learned learned that there were some gruesome, grizzly murders of a lot of people he cared about from reporters who were shouting questions to him as he was going to the train station to take the train from Chicago over to Spring Green. Yeah. So Chicago newspaper headline reads the End of Lawless Loves. Sort of a sensational and cold way to treat these murders, I think. But they had been all over their affair for years now and then. Chuck, one other thing about Julian Carlton, have you ever been on that site Findegrave.com? Yeah, sure. Okay, so I was on findgravecom. Part of the purpose for those who don't know is, like to kind of memorialize, like, leave a tribute or something to the person or the dead person. And sometimes it's very sweet, but other times it's very awkward. And this is an awkward case because there was like a little icon that clearly shows up on every page on Find a Grave, but it said what's one thing you'll always remember when you think of Julian? Probably the axe murderarson killing of seven people. I could always remember. He could really get a stain out of a rug. Right, with gasoline. Yes. Very good at that. You want to take a break? Yeah, let's take a break and we'll talk a little bit about Frank's later years right after this. Stuff you should know, josh and Shawn stuff you should know. Okay, friends. So imagine you're in an accident and your injuries are extensive enough that not only do you have to spend time in the hospital, but you're going to need rehab, too. Well, you have insurance, so no problem, right? Well, not entirely. You get back from the hospital and notice there's a gap and that your insurance is only covering part of your bill. And it's a big bill. Yeah. And until you get back on your feet, you can't get to work, and now you have this financial burden hanging over your head like some dark rain cloud. So what do you do, Chuck? Well, if you have Aflac, you can worry less knowing they can help with the expenses health insurance doesn't cover. Aflac pays cash, which can be put toward expenses, which may be impacted by a covered medical event. Things like your medical bill, copays, or even routine things like rent, groceries, childcare and more. Yeah, that's Afflac in a nutshell. They care about what health insurance doesn't cover, so those, they ensure, can care about everything else. And care has always been part of Affleck's DNA. It's the foundation that the company was built on more than 65 years ago, and it's at the core of who they are still today. That's right. They believe the cost of health care shouldn't come at the expense of peace of mind, which is why they are on a mission to help close health and wealth gaps for Americans everywhere. So when the unexpected threatens your peace of mind, let Aflac stand in the gap to help you. To learn how Aflac can help with expenses health insurance doesn't cover, visit Aflac.com. That's Aflac.com. What if you were a 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 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 so this murder, really and of course, the fire really took a toll on Frank Lloyd Wright. For the next 20 years, he really struggled with his work. He struggled for his freedom from the press. Obviously, he was always in the press, but it was worse now than ever and he did not suffer long. Romantically, though, he took up very quickly with a woman named Maud Miriam Hicks. Noel. She went by Miriam and she was an artist. She was a morphine addict, she was a fan girl. They had a terrible abusive relationship. It seems like kind of both ways. Like a bit of a sit and Nancy type thing going from everything I could read, there are terrible people on both sides. Yeah, so he met when she was very young. She said, he hadn't been with me ten minutes before. He said, you're mine. And they had a ten year courtship that was very dysfunctional, very miserable. And when he got divorced in 1922 from Kitty, he decided at some point to marry, I think about a year later, to marry Miriam with that old mistake, thinking things would be different once they get married. And that's not at all how it went. They ended up splitting up, I think, six months later, something like that. He said that to oppose her now in the slightest degree meant violence. That's how bad the relationship had become. I get the impression from this biographer, Paul Hendrickson, the book he wrote, by the way, is called Dreams and Furies of Frank Lloyd Wright. And it's like 600 pages, I believe. But he does not paint a very flattering picture of Miriam at all. No, not at all. And like I said, they were not good for each other. It seems like 1924, after his divorce from Miriam, he gets married a third time to Olgivana. Her name was Olga Lazovic Henzenberg. She was married, she was a dancer. They met at a ballet where she was performing. And they actually had another kid. Frank had his 7th child with her, a little girl in 1000 1925. And Miriam comes back, though, and kind of tries to wreck their marriage, too. Yeah. When they had their baby, she showed up at the hospital and made a scene, which is a pretty nasty move. She refused to give him a divorce. She would talk to the papers about him. She teamed up with Olga's ex husband, her soon to be ex husband. She definitely worked against them, but I guess eventually either got bored or was bought off or just kind of went away. Because from what I can tell, olga and Frank managed to carve out a happy married life for themselves from the 1924 when they got married onward. I guess by the time once Miriam left the picture, they were able to kind of settle in until Frank's death in 1959. Yeah. And Miriam actually got him arrested at one point under the Man Act, M-A-N-N which was a law, federal law, that prohibits transport of women and children across state lines for the purposes of debauchery or prostitution. Yeah. And I'm not really sure how that happened. It did not stick. Obviously. He spent a couple of nights in jail and then the charges were dropped, but he went into a long dry spell workwise, did not get hired a ton over a certain period of time. And then from the when he died, he did some of his best work, maybe perhaps of his career. Absolutely. It was during that time he did Talias and west, which, like I said, you mean I went to we went out to Scottsdale and visited with our friends Blair and Aaron out there, who are Scottsdale Peeps. And we went to Taliesn and it was just chuck, dude, have you been to that one? Haven't been to Talies and west. No. It's really cool. Just so many details about it. And there's a lot of fountains, which is really refreshing in the desert. It's just a really great, neat little place, for sure. And a little I use that in the absolute wrong way. It's pretty big. It's a charming place, for sure. Yeah. And of course, he did the Guggenheim after that falling water. Yeah. So it was a very productive period of his life. Maybe. Should we do more in Franklin? Right. In the future? Is this it? No, we'll do it in true stuff you should know style and just chip away at different parts about his life and then do a full biography on him years down the road. All right, that sounds good. I thought I have another place. I went to Frank Lloyd Wright place. There's a florida southern college or university? I'm sorry is frank lloyd wright design campus? It's amazing how to check that out, too. You should check it out. There's, like, this really great covered walkway that you walk around everywhere, and it's really neat. You just feel immersed in frank. Lloyd Wright. It's not just one building or one house. It's a whole campus. I love it. If you want to know more about Frank Lloyd Wright, then just go out after the pandemic ends and start visiting some of his houses. And since I said after the pandemic ends, let's optimistically go on to listener mail. No, sir. No listener mail today. I think today we should take a little bit of an opportunity to talk for a few minutes about our book. Everyone's been really patient while we've plugged the presale of this book. I think by the time this comes out, the book will be out. Is that right? It's after the 24th, probably. Yeah. Jerry can make it. I think it is, but if not, it's just before. And I finally got the books delivered to my house in hardcover edition, and I got to hold it in my hand, as have you. And dude, it's great. I'm really proud of the work that we did, along with Flatiron, our co writer Nils, who's just an amazing dude. Yes. And our illustrator, Carly Monardo, who did just an amazing job throughout the book of bringing just passages that you didn't even think of, just suddenly kind of came to life through illustrations. Yeah. I mean, there's an illustration of Momo. There's an illustration of my daughter. There are nice little Easter eggs in there. We haven't talked a lot about the contents of the book. We had a lot of fun with the notes at the bottom, the footnotes. It really became kind of a fun part of the book. I don't even have a lost count how many podcasts we mentioned, but we notate those in the end. Yeah. And there were plenty that we missed. I shouldn't have done this, but I did another, like, fine tooth comb like, just scrape through of every word in the book. Of course you did. To see what podcasts we needed to link to. And I was like, oh, man, I found like 50 of these so far. And I emailed and was like, is it too late to add footnotes or podcast footnotes? And they're like, the time has come. In addition, yeah, exactly. Can we get these reprinted? I have the number here. Actually, we have listed in the book. We are referenced in the book. We have 274 references to other podcasts. But here's a few of the chapters we did. One on Murphy beds. One on back masking. One on aging. One on donuts. That's a great chapter. I love that chapter. What else? Kamikaze demolition derbys? It's like stuff you should Know in book form. It is, definitely. And as we've said, none of these are just like an entire podcast. It's more like we took maybe the history of something, or just one aspect of one of the things and kind of dove into it and flesh it out like that. So hopefully we'll be able to turn these into full size, like, podcast episodes one day. That's kind of our intent. But even if we don't, I think the book really covers them in an enjoyable way. Totally. Jack Kaborkian. That was a good one, too. Keeping up with the Joneses. That's one of my favorite ones. Yeah, there's like 27 just amazing chapters in there. Each one is better than the last, and then astoundingly it starts back over and somehow chapter one is better than chapter 27. But if you haven't bought it yet, I highly encourage you to. It makes a great gift, even if the person doesn't even know who we are. It's in the great tradition, I think, of the great bathroom readers. You can pick it up at any point in the book and read any chapter, and it's just a lot of fun. My daughter even likes it because of the pictures, and she loves looking at the back and going, there's you and Josh. I know. Very cute. It is cute. So one other thing I want to say is, like, we really appreciate you guys who have already preordered the book or who will buy the book, or who bought the audio book that's available to you. But if you can't, if you're like, I just don't have the money right now, or I don't feel like spending the money. I just like the podcast. That's fine, too. We're not mad at you, but we appreciate the people who have supported us by buying the book. So thank you very much to everybody who has or will buy our book, because that's very kind of you and it means a lot to us. And you can look forward to a kids version coming soon. Yes, right? Yeah. Eventually we're taking the same 27 chapters and kiddifying it, but without being patronizing. So that'll be square. Words. Right now. We're taking the square words out. The chapter I Miss Cal did not make the cut in the kids book. I know. I think this book is appropriate for kids as young as like probably twelve years old. It's not like it's dirty or anything. It might just be a little advanced for younger kids. But we're going to make sure that the younger kids have their version, too. Yes, it'll make every twelve year old who reads the adult book really want mezcal. So anyway, thanks to everyone who's bought it. It's called stuff you should Know. An incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. You can get it wherever books are sold. Of course, we encourage you to buy from independent bookstores if you can, to try and keep them in business. Yeah, for sure. I guess that's it. That's it. Okay, well, thanks everybody for hearing us out about our book spiel. And if you bought the book or the audiobook, thank you if you can't. Again, we love you anyway, so don't worry about it. And if you want to get in touch with us, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should Know is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts are 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. 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. Air cover for hosts." | |
How Cinnamon Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-cinnamon-works | In another commodities edition of SYSK, Josh and Chuck dive into the world of cinnamon, once the world's most prized and pricey spice. But did you know it was really just dried up tree bark? | In another commodities edition of SYSK, Josh and Chuck dive into the world of cinnamon, once the world's most prized and pricey spice. But did you know it was really just dried up tree bark? | Thu, 18 Dec 2014 15:41:09 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=18, tm_hour=15, tm_min=41, tm_sec=9, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=352, tm_isdst=0) | 36079142 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry. So it's stuff you should know. That a never ending year. Man, I am sleepy today. Yeah. Got into a little whiskey last night. Oh, that'll make you sleepy? Really nice. Suburban. Okay. I can't remember the name of it, but one of those small batches I wish I could. It was a bourbon and not right. I'd love to plug it. It was bourbon. It's delicious. Okay, cool. So very smooth. Let me let you know a little known fact. You told me to tell everyone else about rye. It's a big deal, man. I think we need to spread the word. Yeah. So you know all those little small batch distilleries that make rye, and they all have these crazy back stories and all that stuff? All lies. I know. Almost across the board lies. Most of the small batch rye sold in the United States by craft distillery is made in a single factory in Indiana. Josh was using a lot of air quotes then, including on Indiana, which I didn't quite get. And then they sell it to these people who, like, put a new label on it, mark the price, whatever they want, even though it's the same thing you're drinking. Whether it's this craft facility or that craft facility, it's literally the same rye. Put a folksy backstory on, and then you're a chump for buying it. That's not true with bourbon. It's just this rye. But a good giveaway is the Ryder drinking five year old rye, and the distillery has only been around since last year. Probably a pretty good bet that they bought and rebounded it. And that is a true Josh fact. Not like the cigars are supposed to be inhaled. One. Yes. That's not true. It's tobacco. What do you think you do with tobacco? Cigar riders right in. Let's clear this. Yeah, man. I will forever stand behind you're supposed to inhale cigars, all right? I mean, you're just puffing your mouth full of smoke for no reason. Okay, why would you do that? What's the point of that? I don't know, man. Well, okay, so not only can you do you have to write in and say yes, you're just supposed to puff on a cigar and not inhale. You have to explain them what the point of a cigar is. You know, you can read up on this. It's pretty easy. That's fine. Okay. I don't need to breathe. I know that I'm right. Okay, so you sit in your flooded yard and hail cigars all day long. That's right. We should just have an episode where we do this and just shoot the breeze. I think this is called arguing, not shooting the breeze. Shooting the breeze is talking about football scores and the weather and all that stuff. We could argue about football scores. Did the Falcons win or did they lose. They lost to the Browns. Yeah, they played the Browns. But it was a close game for a while, right? It was a heartbreaker. Yeah. Terrible, terrible, terrible team. I hate them. So that's shooting the breeze. That's right. So you mentioned cigars, which actually provides a segue. So let's walk it back to it. Okay. There's actually, if you think of cinnamon, which is what we're talking about today yeah. One of our commodity podcasts. Yeah. Which is the original name for the House Stuff Works TV show. Yeah. Little known fact. Very little known. But if you think cinema, you think of, like, you go up to the grocery store, and you pick up, like, that metal can of McCormicks and you shake it, and it makes that nice hollow, tinny sound with the sticks. Yeah. Okay. Or I guess you can think of ground cinnamon, too. I forgot about that stuff. But when you think cinnamon sticks, that's what you think of, right? Yeah. And you pop the top open, and you shake a couple out, and you look at them, and it looks like a little stick. And if you look really closely, it's, like, curled, right? Yeah. And then you put it back in the can and put it back on the store shelves and wipe your hands and go walk away. But what you would probably be surprised to find would be if you dumped one of those out into your hand and it looked kind of like a cigar, like rather than hollow and curled when you're looking down the barrel, it looks stuffed like a cigar. But if you did see that, what you would have just come across is Ceylon cinnamon. Also inappropriately known as true cinnamon. Yes, also known as tree bark, which to me is the fact of the podcast. I had no idea that cinnamon was tree bark. Yeah, but think about it now that you know that when you think about what cinnamon sticks look like. Yeah, totally makes sense. It looks like curl up tree bark, which is exactly what it is. Man. We could quit now, and people have gotten their $0 worth. I know. It's like lightning in their headphones. But we won't, because we're going to tell you more than you ever needed to know about cinnamon. Obviously, the stick form is how you can buy it. You can also buy the powdered form and sprinkle it on some bread with some butter and sugar. Yes. Cementos. Delicious. If you have an orchid that you've ever overwatered, you want to take some scissors and trim off any rotted roots and then dab them in cinnamon. No way. And it staves off any infection. I just recently brought an orchid back using cinnamon as an antimicrobial or fungal, I guess. Emily has made an all natural flea preventative, preventative, preventative for our dogs. It's got cinnamon oil, essential oil, and some other, I think, eucalyptus and maybe camphor, and then something that's all distilled or not distilled, but mixed with olive oil and water. Right. And yeah, it's, like, all natural. We sprayed on a little bandana and tied around their neck. Nice. It's also a proven mosquito repellent killer of mosquito larvae and natural pesticide. Right. Plus, it's a dynamite name for a pet cinnamon. Yes. It's pretty much got it all. That's pretty good. Again, we could stop here, but we won't. So cinnamon, the commodity spice, it has a pretty long history. Actually. I read that it first pops up in writing in 2700 BCE. BCE. Yeah. It's a long time ago in a Chinese text about botanical medicines. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Because of all the things we just mentioned you can do with it. Yeah. And then Moses was messing around with it in the Old Testament. Yeah, he used it in his anointing oil. His Moses brand anointing oil right. That he got rich off of. Hegyptians supposedly used it for embalming. I looked that up because the article was kind of like, isn't it weird? And I think they used it to mask the smell of embalming during embalming. It makes a little more sense. Yes. Well, that's used in embalming, I guess. Yeah, but not as the embalming agent. Right, but it may have been part of the embalming agent. Okay. Well, they definitely used it when they would burn with funeral pirates, when they would burn bodies, they would use cinnamon because it's so aromatic and pungent and dead. Burning bodies are stinky. Right. But it was also extraordinarily expensive, apparently. Ply Knee mentioned that. Is there any other he mentioned that at some point, the cost of cinnamon, the equivalent of a pound of cinnamon, would have been ten months wages for the average Roman. They used it but they used it fairly sparingly, which is to say Nero, who didn't fiddle while Rome burned, by the way. No, he burned, apparently, like, a year's supply worth on his wife's funeral. Power basically show off, I would guess. Yeah. I was thinking well, I was reading this about how I thought it was kind of funny how spices used to be so, like, the trade and so expensive, and then when I go to the store, I was like, spices are still kind of expensive. Some of them, yeah. Ten months wage is worth. No, but it's not a lot of slavery associated with it. No, but if you're paying, like, I guess it's because of the size of the thing, you're paying sometimes, like, $6 for a little no, I know what you mean. A little tiny jar of it. Right. Or what's the like, compared man. Yes. Super expensive. It is. Although Trey Joe's has them for a reasonable price. Yeah, they have a little mini fistful, a baby's fistful. I think it's the unit of measurement on the bottle for, like, $6. That's super cheaper. Not bad. And I think one of the reasons spices are still kind of pricey is many of them, including cinnamon, are still not mechanized. They're still very labor intensive to harvest. Well, the reason cinnamon came down in price, because even still, I think there was one of the Roman emperors decreed he set maximum prices for the whole Roman Empire. And at the time, that basically meant for the whole world. Right. And he set the price at about half or a third of what pioneers said was the peak per basis. Right, yes. And even still, it was extraordinarily high. Like you had to be one of the well, the aristocracy, basically, to avoid cinnamon. But then it came down in the late, I believe the late 18th century, by the time the English got into the game. And we'll talk a little more about this right after this. And this is not a message break, so everybody chill out. But it came down in price because originally there's just the true Ceylon cinnamon. And then people said, well, there's this other cinnamon in Indonesia, and Vietnam hasn't been established as a country yet, but there are still people living here and have been for thousands of years. And they got their own kind of cinnamon. And then there's another kind of cinnamon in China. And all these are types of cashier. But it's so close to cinnamon and even more pungent that everybody in Europe saying, we'll accept this as a substitute. So all prices came down because supply became more widespread. Got you. So that brings us to a very good point. There are two types of cinnamon, the Ceylon, which you mentioned, and the casha, which you mentioned. The Ceylon is Southeast Asian native, but it is not the kind that you're going to find in the grocery store, correct? The Ceylon, yeah, and I'm really high in grocery store. You'd find it, but mostly you'd probably haven't found it because I don't shop at those places. Well, I mean, you could probably find it at Whole Foods. But if you're going to spend the money for Ceylon cinnamon, you're probably going to want to buy it in stick form because there's a lot of unscrupulous spice dealers out there and they could powder anything and just tell you it is, but you wouldn't know the difference. Yeah, the street corner spice dealers with their knockoff nutmegs. Yeah. The ones who open the side of their transparent what do you want? What do you want? I got baby spicy saffron right here. I got Ceylon cinnamon. I can take care of you. The casha is cheaper and it's stronger in odor, in flavor. And those aren't the only types of cinnamon. Apparently there are more than 100 wild types of cinnamon trees all over the world. Yeah, and there's not all over the world, but in many parts of the world. Right. And there's true cinnamon, which is in Sri Lanka. And then there's Indonesian cache, then there's also Vietnamese casha and Chinese casha. And all of those are commercially available. If you're here in the United States or in Canada, you're probably eating casha. Right. And when you say true cinnamon, that's just not you being snooty it's called true cinnamon. Right. No, thank you for pointing that out. And then if you're in Mexico and Europe, you're probably eating Ceylon. Those are the most popular varieties. Oh, yeah. Nice. So I mentioned earlier on what I think is the fact of the podcast is that it's tree bark and how you cultivate it is pretty interesting. And we will detail that right after this message breaks. So if you want to get edible cinnamon, it's pretty neat. You basically cut the tree back to a stump yeah. Cover it with dirt and wait a year. And that makes it go like a bush. And these shoots are going to pop out. And it's gonna if you've ever seen these things online, it looks like it starts to curl already, like off the branch. Right. I mean, it looks like cinnamon just waiting to happen. Because it is. And they strip off that bark and set it out to dry in the sun. And that's what it curls up. Like what's the white tree with a real paper, like birch. Is it a birch? I think so. Yeah. It sort of looks like that not like pine bark. Is it a birch? I know exactly what you're talking about. I think it is birch. Birch tree. Yeah. Very pretty. And then once you have it dried out, you're going to cut it up into your sticks and from there you're going to package it according to what kind it is and like how good it is, basically how strong it is. Right. So that's cash for Ceylon. Truth cinnamon. It's actually the inner bark. So you peel the outer bark off and just like throw it away or light a fire with it or something like that. Then you go after the inner bark. And for millennia, there was actually one cast in Sri Lanka whose job it was was to harvest cinnamon. Wow. No one else could do it. Either you were too low on the totem pole or too high on the totem pole. And when the Portuguese came along, because the spice trade had been cut off by the Turks, in about 1200, the Portuguese came along, found the source of cinnamon, which is a huge thing, Chuck. Before, everybody just basically thought they fished it out of the Nile. People thought there were cinnamon birds that made cinnamon sticks. And knowing it was silly people, but it was because the traders along the Silk Road where they'd make up these stories and people would believe it. So finally the Portuguese find out to keep them from finding out. Yes. Okay. And misdirection. Yes. And to justify the ridiculously high prices of cinnamon. Sure. Well, we have to go harvest these sticks from a cinnamon bird's nest and we can get killed. Right. Or the Portuguese come along and they're like, well, we can point to at least one inefficiency. How about we enslave all of you and put you all the work rather than just this one cast of your society to harvest cinnamon and that up cinnamon production. But what's funny is it took the Dutch to come along in the Portuguese, and then they themselves continue to enslave the Sri Lankans. They thought maybe we could cultivate these trees elsewhere. Nobody had thought to take these trees and plant them elsewhere and then expand the supply like that. Right. They just figured, we'll just let Mother Nature do it. They're like subaru drivers. They're just leaving it up to Mother Nature rather than cultivating this stuff. It took hundreds of slogans, hundreds of years. Now, remember there was that stupid commercial where the guy just let his Subaru get dirty when he was, like, mudding and going camping and hiking and all that stuff? And then he's like, and I don't wash my car. I just leave it up to the universe. And then it starts raining and gets all the dirt and dust off of his car. That's great. Yes. Good for him. You know, Elvis used to shoot the TV when Robert Gule came on. When he was really mad, he'd shoot, like, the toaster oven or the dishwasher or whatever. But if he was watching TV and Robert Gule came on, he would shoot his TV. Did you see that thing I posted on our Facebook page the other day about his drug intake? Yeah. He was prescribed almost 9000 pills or injectables in the last three months before he died. That's a lot. That would just take up most of your time, ingesting all those. Yes. I think I calculated it something like 35 pills a day or something, or injectable. But my grandmother still says, God rest her soul, elvis doctors killed him. Yeah. And I didn't have the heart to tell her that Elvis was a big fat junkie. She was from Memphis, and they still were like, oh, no. His doctors, they just had him going every which way. Oh, yeah. No, I was really love taking those pills I got you. Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah. Sort of like the Michael Jackson thing. Yeah, he liked his milk. All right, so back to cinnamon. Yeah. They have a grading system called the Sri Lankan grading system, and that divides it into these coils into sizes. The Alba, which is zero two inches or less in diameter. The Continental, which is zero six. Mexican, almost zero eight inches. And then Zahambog, which is 1.3 inches around. That's a serious grill. It's like a cigar. Yeah. And some of these things, they use, like, circular saws to cut these in production sometimes. Really? Yeah. That's pretty impressive. Super impressive. The Ceylon is sold in quill form, and it's going to have that crumbling texture. It's really easy to grind up. And the cashier is the ground cinnamon that you're going to find in your grocery store, but it's too hard to grind yourself. It's not entirely true. I ground some up the other day for tajin recipe I tried. Probably not powdery, though. Was it still pretty chunky? It was, yeah. I mean, it broke it down pretty well. After reading this, I was like, well, that explains why it didn't get it all. But I'm glad I didn't mess up my coffee grinder. Yes. You really can believe me. Sure. What'd you make? Olive and preserved lemon tagine. Was it good? It was pretty good. It was hotter than I expected. And I think they should have mentioned that in the recipe. Like, this is very hot because the preserved lemons I used were hot in and of themselves, and so the whole thing was really hot. So you and I are eating and our noses are running so good, but I can't feel my face anymore. Wow. Yeah, but it was good. Elvis used to shoot his cook when she made things too hot. Right? That's not true. Yeah. He'd also inject preserved lemon. He probably did. I know he injected peanut butter and banana fluff. Yeah. So well, that brings us to cooking with cinnamon. What you were just talking about. A lot of times it's used in baking here in the States or the quote, west, unquote, like as a baking, like sugary desserts and stuff like that. Or maybe in a drink, like a toddy. Sure. But, like, anything at Starbucks. Yeah, that's true. They've got that shaker cinnamon out for a reason, use it. But like you were saying in the east, like an Eastern dish like that, it's used a lot to flavor meat and curries and stuff. Yeah, which is kind of the idea that the west only uses it to sweeten or for desserts or that kind of thing is relatively new because during the Middle Ages in Europe, the elite, again, we use cinnamon especially to cover up preserved meat and maybe even to preserve meat. But they used it on like, meat and savory dishes back when at some point it made the transition to dessert. I get it. It's nice on an apple pie. Yeah, like I mentioned. And horchata. That's good stuff with cinnamon. Horchata regular. Right, jerry, thumbs up. If you buy cinnamon in the store and you want to preserve it, you store it in a glass airtight container to be the best deal. Oh, yeah. It's going to keep it nice and fresh and flavorful. And it can stay fresh, the sticks, for about a year if you store it right, which is awesome. If it's ground, it lasts about half of that long. Yeah, I've had cinnamon in my cupboard for a long time. Oh, yeah. I've got some ancient sticks. It's like that in the bay leaves. The thing is, the difference, I think, between fresh bay leaves and dry bay leaves is significant. I know but why did they sell you 30 bay leaves when you need two for any given dish? Well, I know I always want to post on social media, like, I'm cooking with bay leaves, so please come by and get some bay leaves. Yeah, because they're just going to end up in the trash right now. I know. Anytime I've ever gone to your house, you've always given me bayley. Stale bayley. Kind of what you're known for. I put a little cinnamon in our chili recipe, too. Yeah, I think the Cincinnati chili is famous for that. Oh, yeah, that's right. You told me that. And curry's. It's really good in curries, too. And just basically any Indian dish or Bangladeshi dish. Yeah, a little goes a long way, though, by the way. Like just a pinch or so. And some of these dishes, you can really taste the flavor. If you overdo it, you're going to be tasting nothing but cinnamon. Right. If you use kasha, that's another big distinction. I think you already said it, but it's worth touching upon. Again, ceylon cinnamon is known to be much subtler and less pungent than cacha cinnamon. Yeah, and it offers a more subtle flavor. So you actually might want to use kasha for a dish where it could fade into the background. Right. And then use your Ceylon for, like, a tea. Yeah, because it'll melt right into your tea cup there, won't it? Plus, it may or may not aid in digestion, which is a pretty great segue to this next part, the health benefits of cinnamon, which we'll talk about right after this. All right, Josh. Health benefits. Now, a lot of this in the article says some believe may or may not. But didn't you find some pretty good, hard evidence of some of this stuff? There's been a lot of peer reviewed studies done on cinnamon that have turned up some pretty awesome things about it. Yeah. So let's talk about them. Antioxidants, for one. Fighting free radicals that damage cells. Yeah, we should do an episode on that. The whole idea of why we age and why we die eventually is because we get bombarded with ions and free radicals, like atoms that are unstable and are bouncing around our bodies and just wearing down cells. And that's why we age and that's why we die. Apparently, that's been coming under attack lately. Oh, really? Yeah. So I think we should do an episode on free radicals. I think it's called the Free Radical Theory of aging. Yeah, that's great, because everyone says antioxidants, but nobody knows what that means. Right. Well, supposedly those stabilized unstable atoms, and so they therefore go after the free radicals and clump onto them or stabilize them, and then your cell is saved. Right. But whether or not it actually does anything or is real, is the jury still out? Apparently so. Look for that in 2015. Yeah, right? Yeah. It is definitely known as an antimicrobial and antifungal. Yeah, antiseptic as well. Antibiotic astringent. It's got lots of neat properties, but you don't want to take pure cinnamon essential oil and put it on your skin. You want to dilute it some. Yeah. It also can blister. I mean, it's pretty severe. Emily has in her shop, and just the smell of it one of those things. It doesn't even smell like cinnamon. Yeah, because oil concentrated. Yeah. It doesn't take much essential oil, actually, to have an antiseptic effect. Apparently, one study found a 10% concentration of cinnamon oil, and the active ingredient I don't know if we said is cinnamoldahide. Yeah, we did not. So it's not the only ingredient in there. But cinnamoaldehyde is the big boss active ingredient in cinnamon antiseptic properties, and I think what gives it its taste. But the cinnamoldhehyde or the 10% cinnamon oil concentration has been shown to kill staph, e. Coli, MRSA, strip those are some big time players and making you sick. Mrs. It's apparently been found a 10% dilution can kill other kinds of antibioticresistant bacteria. It's like the real deal. Totally. And apparently did you see that thing on thieves oil that I sent you from the New York Times? I did not read that one. It was pretty cool. Yeah. There's this thing called thieves oil from the Middle Ages. Apparently people used to steal jewelry off of dead bodies themselves from getting sick, from having to stick their hands literally, neck deep into a corpse to get a necklace off. Sure. They would use stuff called thieves oil is, like, basically a hand sanitizer that consisted of cinnamon, lemon oil, and eucalyptus. Oh. And it really worked. And they would not get sick after they looted bodies. Yes. Well, that's nice, because they'd have a glove of that stuff on. We should have saved that for our Christmas episode. Tis the season. It also cinnamon has something called cowrin, C-O-U-M-A-R-I-N which is toxic, though. So while cinnamon has a lot of great helpful properties, you can overdo it, and it can cause liver damage, kidney damage, and dust form. It can cause asthma. There was a study done by workers, not by workers, on cinnamon workers. And I think they studied 40 workers with an average of four years service, and 87.5% had some sort of negative symptom like liver, kidney. No. Nine of them. 22% had asthma, 50% irritation of the skin, 37% loss of hair, 22% smarting of the eyes, and 65% loss of weight. That was the most common finding. So the jury is still out on that. And whether or not cinnamon can help you actually lose weight. Wow. It helped them, but I don't think in a good way. Right? Yeah. Well, I mean, some people believe you should take tapeworms. True. But whether or not cinnamon actually helps is kind of I don't know. The science is still out on it, but there's a little more science to cinnamon being helpful for type two diabetes because apparently taking, I think, a gram or something, or 6 grams of cinnamon, which is a decent amount with a meal, prevents your food from being digested quickly. So you'll still feel full, but your food doesn't enter. It doesn't hit your bloodstream in a big spike, which means that your blood sugar levels don't spike either. It turns your food into, like, slow release nutrition. Interesting. Yeah. So it could actually be very helpful for people with type two diabetes because it basically arrests the spike in the glycemic index that comes from eating foods. Are they recommending that at this point, or is it like they're sort of looking into it. They're looking into it still. Okay. I mean, depending on the website you go to, it recommends it, or else it doesn't seem like anybody's not recommending it. I think if anything, they're including a warning. Like, if you're going to do this, use true cinnamon. Right. Because cash is the stuff that has the more chumrin in it. Like Ceylon cinnamon has per kilogram of coomeran. But if you get the Saigon cinnamon, which is fairly widespread, which is a type of cash, it's got 7 grams/kg of chumrine. And that's the stuff that can hurt your liver and kidneys. Got you. So I guess if you're going to add that to your diet as a diabetic, you should probably definitely use the Ceylon cinnamon. Yeah. And one thing you definitely don't want to do is the cinnamon challenge. Like these morons on YouTube, including the governor of Illinois, who took the challenge. Robbie. Robbie a few years back. They got him for corruption. Yeah. I'm not sure if that was him or not. He was trying to sell Barack Obama's old seat when he became president. Oh, yeah, I remember that guy. I don't know, Robich wow. It's almost like you're vomiting the name out. Peter Bakanovic. No, that's easier to say. Yes. Bluet. Don't do the cinnamon challenge. That is a stupid thing on YouTube where I think you're tasked with is it a tablespoon? Yeah. Swallowing a tablespoon of cinnamon. In a minute. In a minute, which is not good for you at all. And harder than it sounds. In 2012, just the first six months of 2012, there were 178 emergency calls to poison control centers around the US. Really? Because of the cinnamon challenge. And that is because it contains cellulose, and it can lodge in your lungs because your body is not going to break down that cellulose. And Dr. Lip Schultz, who was consulted in this article there, read, said it's coated with the Caustic cinnamon oil, and it's going to lead to chronic inflammation and eventual scarring of your lungs. Pulmonary fibrosis. And he basically says it's equivalent to emphysema, and it can trigger an asthma attack. And if you have bad asthma, it can kill you, even. Plus, also, consuming cinnamon and excess can cause nausea, vomiting, redness of. The face. Lip swelling. You don't want that. And it's tree bark. Yeah, it tastes lovely in a pinch, but don't do that. That's stupid. Don't do what the governor of Illinois does. Yeah, if it was that same guy, then we can recommend that on many levels. He did a lot of dumb stuff. Yeah. Cinnamon. That's it. I got nothing else. If you want to know more about cinnamon, type that word into the search bar@howstuffworks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for editor. That's right. We're going to finish up today saying thank you to all of you who have sent us nice things. From postcards to books to music to mug rugs. We get a lot of stuff, and we always appreciate it. So here we go. Ketra obolanda for her original artwork. I'm assuming Ketra is a lady, but maybe not. I believe so as part of her Art of Generosity experiment. And she even said that's right. I remember that. She's like, I don't need a shout out or thanks or anything. I'm just doing this as part of Art for Generosity. Yeah, I think she does it's, like, one thing a week. Or wasn't there some rules to it? There were rules, but I didn't memorize something like that. And she specifically said not to say thank you. But we're saying thank you. Thank you. Did she specifically say not to or say she didn't need one? Because if she said not to, we really shouldn't thank her. No, I don't think she said not to. She said, I really don't need it. Okay. Yeah. We want to give a big thanks to Marty from Hawaii for sending us real Hawaiian sea salt. We got red and black from Pacifica, Hawaii. That's right. I've used that on my food. Good stuff. Thanks to Melissa Climer for sending us the book free Will by Sam Harris. Yeah. And we've been exercising our free will by not reading that yet. Bam. Peter McGraw and Joel Warner sent us a copy of their book, the Humor Code and a Whoopie Cushion. Go check that out. And you can follow them on Twitter, too. We got a whoopi cushion? I just thought that was Holly from Mystery Client. I know you thought that. Everyone knows you thought that. Emily and the flavia for the Ikea postcard and the well wishes. Yes. Tyler Murphy has sent us a bunch of stuff. Oh, Murphy. He is the man. Yes, he is the man. He sent us a copy of the DVD. CSA. Confederate States of America sent us the book The Mind of Adolf Hitler, which is a very hard to find world War II era analysis like psychoanalysis of Hitler. And very nice letter and a half pound of Dark Canyon Highlander Grog coffee, which is the bomb. Yeah, Tyler's awesome. He's a teacher as well, which means he's super cool. And he works at Puppy over the summer. Oh, yeah. Like Pirates Cove or something? Yeah. I was like, what do you do? He's like, you know, hand out the putters and stuff. Yeah, that sounds like a great job. That place is great. Congratulations to Mina Wen and Blake Rosendal on their wedding, and they invited us. And we appreciate that. And we're sorry we couldn't make it. Yeah. Elliot niece, Boziani, who is actually from Adult Swim PR. Oh, yeah. They sent us the Rick and Morty episodes. And one of my prized possessions, the book of boring science stuff, Fritzrate, that you open up a couple of pages and bam, it's carved out. There's a Rick and Morty flask inside. That's right. And I've got that sitting on my bar at home. Thank you. To Andrew. Golf. Golf. One of the two, I would say. Golf. Andrew Goof golf. He sent us coffee too, from the Reverie Coffee Roasters. We like our coffee. Good stuff. Yeah. Thanks, Andrew. Joanna and Jaron from Boogie board jot 85 inch LCD E riders. All three of us got those. That was a huge presence. Yeah, I've got that on my fridge, actually. Yes, it's magnetic. Yes, it is. Thomas Shaw, thanks for the illustrations that your brother made. They were really awesome. And you can go to Imagineillustration.com to check those out, we got two more. One, Bethany Jones of the Base Element from Ontario, gave us five types of handmade caramels. They were delicious. We got them a long time ago. We ate them a long time ago. There was fudge, vanilla, Florida cell and ginger and then cinnamon fudge. And they were awesome. I recommend them. You can go to the Base Element@gmail.com, and by go to, I mean email that address. Yeah. And then lastly, Caleb Bowler from Roanoke, Indiana, sent us some beautiful cobalt blue ceramic mugs that unfortunately arrived in a million, billion, trillion pieces. Yeah, he knows, too. He was like, they broke, didn't they? Oh, man. I think you need a new word to describe what happened to those things. Broke doesn't say it. Yeah. Huge. Thanks to Brian Bishop. Man yes. He actually works with Adam Corolla fellow podcaster, and went through cancer and wrote a book called Shrinkage Manhood marriage and the Tumor That Tried to Kill Me. And it's a really funny book. It's got a forward by Adam Corolla. And Brian is just super awesome. It made us feel good that he listens to our show. Yeah. Because he's a big shot in podcasting. So thank you very much for that, Brian. I've got another one, too. Garrett nice. Just sent us some homemade brownies. Yes. Garrett is I think he's like eleven or twelve years old. Garrett is very nice. I think he baked him himself. He also had some other things to offer. I can't remember, but it was like brownies or his own pancake batter or something weird like that. That is nice. Yeah. And my final one is thanks, as always, too little Bit Sweets handmade Candy in Brooklyn, New york. They've been friends and supporters for years, and they are growing, and they are awesome. You can visit them at Chelsea Market. Yeah. Go to Chelsea Market. Or just go to look up little bit sweets on the Internet and buy some of their delicious, delicious candy bars. Yeah, man, their honeycomb candy is as addictive as it gets. Yes, and I've said it a million times. The King Bar, to me, is the best candy bar on planet Earth. It's a good one. So good. All right, so that's it for administrative details. We are cleared out. No one send us anything unless they're Christmas cookies, I guess, for the rest of the year, Mona, so we can start over again fresh in 2015. Okay. Anyway, if you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at sciskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook, comstevychnow us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com, and as always, join us at our home on the Web stuffieshadow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetopworks.com." | ||
834b6186-3b0d-11eb-b411-cb8ca68a0c0d | Finding the Fenn Treasure | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/finding-the-fenn-treasure | In 2010 an eccentric art dealer hid a treasure chest with $2 million in valuables somewhere in the Rocky Mountains and published a poem with clues on where to find it. Hence began the most famous treasure hunt in modern times. | In 2010 an eccentric art dealer hid a treasure chest with $2 million in valuables somewhere in the Rocky Mountains and published a poem with clues on where to find it. Hence began the most famous treasure hunt in modern times. | Thu, 21 Jan 2021 15:33:39 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=21, tm_hour=15, tm_min=33, tm_sec=39, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=21, tm_isdst=0) | 46752155 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant over there. Bryant? Really? Did you say the first? I pronounced it with a real hard T. Bryant yeah. You only do that when you're mad at me. Yeah, like kissing through a clenched teeth sound. Like I say, Josh Clark. Right. Marge Simpson. You know, the one where that guy came in and introduced Marge a substitute teacher. Oh, yeah. Wait, what did you say? Boy, this is great podcasting. Right now I'm clearing my throat and asking you what you said 10 seconds ago. Well, I do have a couple of weird announcements. Yeah, let's do that before we actively get going. One is just a quick listener shout out. You know, remember in the Hell, Hell, Hell episode when I couldn't think of the Pixar movie where if you were forgotten, you go away? Yeah. It's Coco. Yeah, I saw somebody write that in. Is it a good movie? I've seen nothing but good things, but I've never watched it. Dude, Coco is easily the best looking animated film I've ever seen. Wow. It's amazing. It is striking. And that's from Joe Brown. He's a movie crusher. I felt so dumb because the main song from that movie is called Remember Me? And the whole thing is about being remembered. The title of the song is Remember Me, Chuck. And also we wanted to announce that we are edging close to 1000 books sold. Yeah, that's pretty good. It is. And we would really like to hit that number. Okay. Yeah. You don't. I totally do. It's just usually we coordinate with stuff like this so I can prepare some remarks. Come on, let's see what you got to say. Selling book good. Buy book good. You 100,000. Big number. That's what I have to say off the cup. Yeah, we'd like to hit 100,000 because that would please a lot of people. It's a good round number. And just because the holidays have come and gone, you still can go out and get that thing. The stuff you should know book of interesting facts and figures Is that what it's called? It's close. Stuff You Should Know. Invisible colon, an incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. We took some grief for not actually putting a colon on there. Oh, really? Yeah. After our colon heavy speech over the past few years. Yeah. My response is that it's invisible and silent. Invisible and silent. Much like us. Yeah, not at all. But the thing is, I wonder if we shot ourselves in the foot by making the thing bright red so people are confused and think it's only a Christmas present. Because you're right, it's not. Just because Christmas is over doesn't mean you can't get it. So it's available everywhere still. And you can get it from indie booksellers to giant global monopolies. Everywhere has it anywhere. You can buy books that's right. And then my final little quick shout out, because this is an episode on the Fen Treasure. I actually know a guy who looked for this thing and my old pal from my film industry days, Kimbro, and I remember when this well, we don't want to ruin anything, but I remember him posting on Facebook about it some, that he had looked for it. He didn't quit his job like some people, right? But he was a casual to moderately intense explorer for the Fend Treasure. That's really neat, man. Big shout out to Kimbro. Yeah. Oh, even better. You won't have to email them and be like, you should really listen to the Fed Treasure episode. Probably will anyway. So you just kind of let the cat out of the bag. You and the title of the episode we're talking about the Fed Treasure, and it's probably familiar to a lot of people. It made the news pretty widely over the decade that it was ongoing. But for those of you who aren't aware of it, it was a treasure hunt, like a real live treasure hunt. There was a chest of treasures, literally treasures of gold and jewels and gems and archaeological artifacts hidden somewhere by a very eccentric art dealer named Forrest Fenn, hence the name Fen Treasure. And he published something in his book, which is basically a puzzle map full of clues, I think nine clues, and said, here, everybody go find it and kick back and watch. By the highest count, I've seen about 350,000 different people search for this treasure, some of whom, like you mentioned, quit their jobs, moved out to the Rockies so that they could search more frequently. Most people, though, just kind of were casually involved or maybe followed it on the message boards, that kind of thing. But the people who actually did go out and look for it were kind of fulfilling this vision that Forrest Fent had, which was we're also just kind of stuck on our couches in front of multiple screens all the time. There's so much natural beauty out there that's just passing people's lives by. And he said, well, if you put a chest of treasure worth a couple of million dollars out there, tell people it's somewhere out there, it might actually get some people to go look for it. And that was the definite result of that whole thing. Yeah. I mean, it's a very cool thing. I did not know about it until the end, and I'm still trying to sort of dance around a spoiler. Okay, but anything could have happened. It could have exploded, could have never been found and been a hoax, right? Don't forget Martians. Could have been Martians. It could have been found. You'll have to listen to find out. But eventually when things came to a conclusion is when I learned about it. And I was kind of mad that I didn't know about it before. I definitely would not have gone and looked for it, but I would have done a lot of online sleuthing just to sort of poke around because it's kind of fun. Treasure hunts are neat. Well, yeah, that was the cool thing about this, too, is like, you could do a lot of it through online sleuthing and you could just kick back and join the forums and help out like that. But if you had your own solve is what they're called, where you figure out different solutions to the clues and you put them all together, that's a solved. And different people have multiple solves to prove whether it was correct or not. Try to find the treasure. You had to actually get out there and look, follow the solve that you would come up with. And so a lot of people did do that. And I think that's really cool because it drew a lot of people out to the Rockies. And the Rockies are indeed quite beautiful. They are. Should we talk about the man himself? I think we should, ma'am. Yeah. So Forrest Fenn, F-E-N-F-O-R as well, was born in Texas in 1930, and he was always into the great outdoors. Apparently, when he was a kid, they used to vacation at Yellowstone National Park, and it really made a pretty big impact on him. He went through high school and then joined the Air Force and became a pilot, served in Vietnam, and after about 20 years of service in the military, got out, moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and got into the art dealer business, which is something he really didn't know anything about at first. No. But he, I guess, had started collecting art even though he wasn't particularly enthused by art itself. But he liked the business of art and art collecting. I think he liked the art world. I get the impression also that it brushed up against celebrities and you could get rich people to part with their money pretty easily. Sure. That had something to do with it. Yeah, I think you really liked that a lot. One thing I do want to say I saw about his time in Vietnam was that he said that he had flown 328 combat missions in 348 days while he was there, which is just astounding. And then apparently that drove him to become a pacifist because after he left the military, he became a certified self proclaimed pacifist for the rest of his life, from what I understand. Yeah. Which quite a few Vietnam vets went down that path. That's interesting. I've heard a lot of those stories. Yeah. So he moved to Santa Fe in 1972, and like you said, by that time he had already collected some art. What he would do is go out and buy art from little known artists and then upsell it, which is, I guess, the whole not racket, but that's the business of art collecting is you buy low, hopefully and sell high. And he specializes in Native American art and also artifacts, and opened the Arrowsmith Finn Gallery with his partner, Rex Aerosmith. Eventually, he just became the Fenn Galleries with his wife Peggy, and he sold art for about eight or nine years. Well, he kept selling art, but in eight or nine years, he started selling it to really famous people and was making a lot of money doing it. Yeah, he had a pretty cool tactic, actually, where if you were of some certain level of rich or famous, he would put you up at his gallery, which is a compound which had lots of guest houses that were filled with art, and everything was for sale. And he just kind of, like, bathe you in luxuriousness while also simultaneously trying to sell you art. He seemed to have been living a pretty cush lifestyle in Santa Fe for a while, and he was making, like, I think grossing back in the year in 80s money, too, which is that's a lot of cheese for somebody who just came into the art world, because he said, I guess I'll go try this next. You know, the dirtiest money, too. It's pretty dirty. And a lot of people are like, that guy is no hero. He's very widely celebrated. But a lot of Native American communities, including, I believe, the Pueblo, say this guy is a plunderer. And archaeologists, too, are not a big fan of him either, because he would excavate archaeological sites, but without any documentation whatsoever. He just wanted to get to the artifacts, and then he would take it and sell it. He would ruin an archaeological site to get to the art and then make some money off of it. So he wasn't beloved universally in that sense, for sure, it's worth pointing out. Yeah. I mean, the FBI actually investigated him. They did an undercover operation where an informant, wired informant, just like you see in the movies, went over to his house, I assume sort of posing as some kind of rich art collector. And he was like, here, look at all this cool stuff. Like, here's some eagle feathers, which I'm not supposed to have. And here's some human hair from antiquity, and here's some chain mail and some prehistoric sandals and a basket. And don't tell anyone, but I'm not supposed to have any of this stuff. And after the raid in 2009, apparently no charges were brought. It says in our article that people assume that the artifacts were hidden or sold, but he had stuff confiscated, so there was definitely some of it there, and I'm just not sure why no charges were ever levied against him. He was a part of a bigger investigation with a lot of people, but that might have something to do with it. I have no idea. Well, he seems to have been slick and rascally like in the way that those kind of people attract admirers far and wide. And tend to get off the hook in situations that other people necessarily wouldn't. So who knows? I have no idea exactly why he wasn't prosecuted if he was caught with that kind of stuff, but it would kind of be in step with his larger personality, which is, you know, I saw him compared to the Native American coyote archetype. You know, the kind of the trickster, the slick one you can never quite pin down. He definitely had a threat of that going through, if not, that being like, his main trait. Yeah, I mean, he was definitely eccentric. He kind of flouted the rules of the art world. He thought they were kind of stodgy and he was going to do his own thing. Apparently in his galleries, he had signs that said, please touch the art. We are responsible. He sold master forgeries as master forgeries and basically said, hey, if you like the painting, by the painting, the real fakes are those people who just buy it because of the real signature of the real artist, which is interesting. And he said he had a roster full of celebrities jessica Lang, Michael Douglas, Steve Martin, Robert Redford, and as everyone knows, the largest art collector on the planet, suzanne Summers. Yeah, he was trying to help find a Georgia O'Keefe and from a 1988 profile of him in People magazine, that hadn't been successful yet. But who knows what the 90s brought. Well, she had that thy master money. Yeah, she was rolling in the thighmaster money. She wasn't hurting. No. So Forest Fenn is kind of going along, living his life just being Forest Fenn, from what I can tell. And he was diagnosed with cancer. His father had developed cancer. And when Forrest was younger, and his father decided that rather than undergo potentially losing battle with cancer, he would take his own life. So he took a bunch of sleeping pills and he died. And Forrest decided he wanted to do the same. But rather than like his father dying at home, he knew of a spot that he wanted to die in in the Rockies. And so his idea was he was going to put together a chest of treasure, and when the time came, he was going to walk out to the spot, take a bunch of sleeping pills himself and lay there and die. And then at some point, somewhere, sometime, somebody was going to come along, probably, and find this treasure chest being clutched by an old skeleton. That was his idea. But the whole idea kind of took a left turn, Chuck, because he actually got better. He didn't die from cancer. He actually beat it. And I think that came as a bit of a surprise to him. Yes, I imagine pretty pleasant surprise. So he wrote a self published memoir called The Thrill of the Chase, published in 2010, and in it contained a poem with six rhyming stanzas printed on the map of the rockies, and I think we should take a break and read this poem right after this. Okay? All right. Finn has written a poem, and I think we should just read it. You want to take turns? Oh, sure. Are we going to do our voices? Like the Halloween episode? Okay. You can do whatever you want. No, I agree. We'll skip that one. I'm not going to read it as Sammy Davis Jr. Though. Do you want to go first or me? Dealer's choice. Okay, I'm going to go. Are you ready? All right. As I have gone alone in there and with my treasures bold I can keep my secret wear and hint of riches new and old my turn? Yeah. Begin. It where warm waters halt that's the first clue of where to start, by the way. And take it in the canyon down not far but too far to walk put in below the home of brown capital B yeah, that's a big one. From there it's no place for the meek the end is ever drawing nigh there'll be no paddle up your creek just heavy loads and water high if you've been wise and found the blaze look quickly down your quest to cease but Terry scant with marvel gaze just take the chest and go in peace. Okay. So why is it that I must go and leave my trove for all to seek the answers I already know? I've done it tired and now I'm weak and finally so hear me all and listen good your effort will be worth the cold if you are brave and in the wood I give you title to the gold. This is really exciting, I got to say. Sure. Especially the back and forth. I'm really appreciative of us doing that. Was a really amazing literary device. So what this was was a very cryptic poem about this treasure that he's hidden. And it was a real treasure, like you said. Some people say possibly up to $3 million worth of gold and loot. I imagine just being a part of the fence treasure makes it even more valuable at auction, so who knows what it would fetch, you know? Yeah. I think from what I've seen, that there's a pretty wide belief that the treasure sold intact, as the Fend treasure, would be worth way more than its estimated market value of the combined parts. Oh, totally. There's some rich person. It's just like, I want to have this in my house. I'll pay $10 million for it. We should say the box itself was actually a treasure as well, right? Yeah. It was a 12th century bronze treasure chest, basically. I think a ten inch by ten inch treasure chest or chest. The fact that it contained treasure made it a treasure chest by definition, but I don't know if that's what it was originally built for. But, yeah, it's a remarkable looking box just on its own. It's the kind of heft and size and just shape that you would imagine opening and being like, wow, there's hundreds of rare gold coins, among other things in here. Yeah. So rare gold coins, two gold nuggets, supposedly as big as a henz egg. That's pretty neat to look at, I imagine. And then artifacts like pre Colombian figurines, some jade carvings from China, antique jewelry, emeralds, rubies, like the kind of thing that you would open up. And I think he wanted a bit of a wow factor and not just like a stack of cash. Yeah, well, apparently he was originally going to put $1,000 bills in there, but he was like, I don't know when this thing's going to be found, and who knows what kind of shape that paper currency is going to be in. And also he's like, who knows if there'll be banks accepting that kind of currency any longer? So he decided to put in more everlasting treasures, like gold and things like that. So he takes this box, Chuck, and this treasure chest. He goes to the spot somewhere in the Rockies where he was going to go lay down and die. But rather than lay down and die, he just leaves the chest there, comes back, publishes this book, and then lets everybody know about it. And it takes a few years to catch on because I believe he self published the book, so he didn't have a lot of marketing behind it. But word of mouth started to spread that there was a man from Santa Fe who claimed to have put a $2 million treasure chest out in the woods somewhere and had published a poem that contained all the clues you needed to it. And so people started really getting into this, right? Yeah, he gave away a few extra little clues, but basically he said, the clues are in this poem. There are nine of them. They are listed in consecutive order, and there are a series of steps that you have to take, starting with that second stanza. He did also say it's somewhere in the Rocky Mountains between Santa Fe and Canada. Another big clue was that it's an elevation of about 5000ft. So that's a big one that rules a lot of stuff out. And then this last extra clue is also pretty big. He said it's not in a mine or in a graveyard or near any manmade structure. And he said that last part from what I saw, because people were starting to do really dumb things and going really far afield. And he kept reminding people because this is something that kind of emerged from reading about this stuff. He became part of this community. People would call him up, they'd text him, they'd email him. Like, he became friends with a lot of the most hardcore searchers. And sometimes they would ask him for clues or hints, and he would just ghost them. But others just were kind of like, I'm sitting in this one spot and thinking of you right now because you sent me here through this treasure hunt. Just wanted to thank you. He became a friend to a lot of these people, but the one thing he kept saying to this crowd was, I was 80 years old carrying a 40 pound treasure chest when I went out to this place. This is not a place where you have to climb up any sort of precipice or go down a precipice. It's not that hard to get to. Just remember, like, it's the kind of place that 80 year old man carrying a treasure chest weighing \u00a340 can get to by himself. Because there was no one there, there were no witnesses, and it was just his word that this was actually there, that people had to take it for on face value. Yeah. One of his friends supposedly saw what he claimed was the treasure chest and his walking closet once, but that's kind of the only verification that this wasn't some big hoax. I think people took him at his word. And if you're going to figure something like this out, you have to start. If you don't get that first clue right, then you might as well not even bother. So it really comes down to begin it I'm sorry, begin it where warm waters halt and take it in the canyon down. You've got to find that place, and people are like, what does that mean? Are there rivers converging? Is it a hot spring going into a river? The first thing I thought was, like, maybe he's being cheeky. Maybe it's like some primitive national park bathhouse that doesn't have hot water. Right? Yeah. Don't look in nature. It's a bathroom. Some people actually took below the home of Brown to mean an outhouse. I'm not kidding. I saw that in a couple of places. But Brown is capitalized. Yeah, I know, but your idea about it being like a place without hot water, that's pretty mainstream thinking, actually. There were people who really got into this and started seeing things that just were not there. Yeah, of course. The whole thing is there was a lot of questions about how you should interpret this, and I didn't see that. The whole thing actually did start with beginning where warm waters halt. A lot of people suspected that the real first clue was in the first stanza, but apparently that's not the case. What is that? Santa? As I have gone alone in there and with my treasures bold, I can keep my secret wear and hint of Rita's new and old. People were looking at things, like in that first line, as I have gone alone in there, they're like, well, if you look at the word gone and the word alone, the number one is spelled out in those two words. Maybe these are some sort of coordinates that start with one one. Like, this is the level of thought that reading too much into it, way too much. And I think he even kind of tried to help guide people away from that. Like, you don't need to be a cryptologist to get this right. It's not that kind of a puzzle. It's different than that. Yeah. He said there were no codes, no anagrams. It was just like, warm water is dummy. Right. But that didn't stop anybody from saying, like, no, you're a liar, and it's clearly one or the first two numbers and whatever coordinates you're giving us. Interesting. So he did accomplish his goal as far as getting people out there. Like you said, he got emails where people talked about these amazing places they never would have seen otherwise. And I imagine that brought him a lot of joy, because that was the whole point for him, was to get people out there. And I think he had the idea initially during the financial crisis when everyone was feeling down about stuff, and he said, this is really going to if people find out about it, this is going to spice up a lot of people's lives and get them out into nature. Yeah. Because, again, you could sit there and be like, okay, this is where I think the starting point is, and I'm going to go onto Google Earth and start here and try to find the next clue and put together a solve. But again, if you had thought that your solve was onto something, you had to go out to the Rockies and go see for yourself. So it really did get all those people out to nature. And there are so many, like, thanks and messages. What's the word I'm looking for? Where you honor somebody with thanks or something like that? Praise? Accolades. Accolades. Yeah. There were accolades for forest fence for doing this, because we helped change a lot of people's lives. But there were definitely cases where things went far enough off the rails that some of these treasure hunters did not come back from going to verify their solves in the woods in real life. Yeah. Sadly, it looks like there were five people that died, certainly others that were rescued that could have died. One man named Jeff Murphy, I think died from a fall. A man named Eric Ashby was found in the Arkansas River. There was a man named Randy Bill U, who he was one of these full timers. He moved from Florida to Colorado, and he died and was found near the Rio Grande River. There was a preacher named Paris Wallace, a priest who died. And then just before this thing came to its conclusion in March of 2020, there were two men found. One of them was alive, and one of them, named Michael Sexton was actually dead. They went out as a pair, which is what he always recommended, like, go out with a buddy. Don't be dangerous. But one of these guys died near Dinosaur National Monument in Utah. Yeah. And the other guy, like you said, was rescued. That was the second time that pair had to be rescued in the area in a month. Yeah. So you can imagine that law enforcement in some of these places around Colorado and New Mexico where people were getting lost or dying, called on Fenn to say, just stop this. Just call us off, tell everybody where it is. This has gotten dangerous. People are losing their lives now because of this. Like, people have died. And Forrest Fenn had a fairly libertarian response to that. He said, life is too short to wear both a belt and suspenders. If someone drowns in a swimming pool, we shouldn't drain the pool. We should teach people to swim, which has a certain homespun, Wild West folksy sensibility to it, for sure. It makes sense. It's not like he was the original Tom Fool who was sending people to their death in the quicksand that he knew was going to catch them on their way to find this treasure. He was trying to get people out of doors, and he was trying to guide them as best he could in a safe manner without giving anything away. And you can make a case one way or the other that he was responsible or not responsible for those people's deaths. I think it just comes down to your philosophy on personal responsibility or indirect responsibility. Yes. And he also, after that quote, said, why do I have to pay school taxes when I don't have kids? Right. I don't care about your kids. And now I'm going to get emails from libertarians. Yeah. I don't think libertarians listen to us anymore. We discussed them. Oh, who knows? No, I'm sure there's some out there. I'm just kidding. Of course we have libertarian listeners. So there was some other you know, aside from the death, there are some other darker sort of aspects to this story. When you have hundreds of thousands of people looking for something in national parks and in wildlife, you're going to get some people that are not accustomed to being in these places and treating them with the respect they deserve and damaging protected spaces and species. There was one person charged with a misdemeanor for digging under a memorial cross owned by the New Mexico State Game Commission. They had to actually backfill the space to stabilize the monument. There was other people there were other people arrested over the years for digging in national parks, digging in cemeteries, people being indicted on federal charges. This is what you're going to get when you sort of have a Wild West treasure hunt in very kind of sacred areas. Yeah. Especially yeah. You're going to attract some nuts and kooks for sure, who don't listen and who just stop thinking you're using their brains. One guy, I believe, got a restraining order taken out against him by Fen and his family because he had decided that the real treasure. Was Fenn's granddaughter, and that was the key to everything and had started stalking Fence home, which is kind of scary. Yes. Did you see anything else about that guy? About the stalker? Yeah. No, I hadn't. His name was francisco paco Chavez. Paco is his nickname, and he was just clearly had issues. I don't want to diagnose him or anything, but it wasn't just about this treasure hunt. He at one point had sent pictures of hearts, the treasure chest, and a shoe with a message that said, one shoe can change your life. Cinderella me. He said he wanted to marry his granddaughter. He eventually was put on three years probation in 2016, and then in 2019, showed up at his house again. He had a gated home and was trying to get buzzed in. They saw who it was, and he just sort of disappeared before the cops could show up. But that's pretty scary. Yeah, I can imagine. I mean, that's super duper scary to have somebody zero it in on you like that under any circumstance. Yeah, I think there was another guy who tried to gain entry into the house with an axe and had to be held at gunpoint by Fen's daughter. But he was the kind of guy who inspired love and support by his family. And I saw a quote from his grandson, whose name is Shiloh Old, which is a pretty wide Wild West name, and he said, this has been really hard on the family, but we fully support our grandfather. I thought that was kind of neat. And it says a lot about his family that they were willing to endure all this without being like, just tell them where the treasure is. Like, this has gotten out of hand. So should we take another break and then talk about this mysterious conclusion you've been talking about? Totally. So people are still looking for this thing. It's. I believe 2020, right? June of 2020. Yeah. You're speaking in a past tense, right? Well, no, actually, I think there are people still looking at this for this, as we'll see, but they're not necessarily looking for the treasure anymore, because in June of 2020, there was an announcement made by Forrest Fenn that said, it's been found. It's over. Somebody found it fair in Square. And thus began this frustrating, maddening slow trickle of vague confirmations that this had been found, and it had been found legitimately. That actually encouraged conspiracy theories about whether the treasure had even existed at all or had ever been out there in the wilderness at all. That still kind of persisted among some people to this day. But from what I saw, most of the people who were involved in the treasure hunt are satisfied that it was found and that it was found fair in Square. Are you saying there are people in this country that, in the face of hard facts and truth, still believe in the conspiracy? Chuck, believe it or not. That may be true. I think the jury is still out, so I think it's kind of interesting what he said when they did find it. He said, it has been found under a canopy of stars in the lush forested vegetation of the Rocky Mountains and had not moved from the spot where I hid it more than ten years ago. I do not know the person who found it that would change. But the poem in my book led him to the precise spot and like he said, because of the conspiracy individuals, he posted a picture of it and he's like, here it is, here are some of the objects they have weathered. It's darker than it was ten years ago when I left it in the ground and walked away here's like a bracelet that's been tarnished. And yet some people still were like, no, I don't believe the facts in front of my face. This is a hoax. Yeah, I mean, the fact is that the guy who found it didn't want to be named. So now you had an anonymous person named the Finder who said that he had found it. He wouldn't reveal how he found it because he was saying that he had been to this place, obviously to get the treasure, and it was so beautiful and pristine that he said it was not an appropriate place to become a tourist destination. He didn't want people going out there and looking for maybe treasure that was dropped along the way or just trying to see for themselves this place. It was a sacred place, in his opinion, and he wanted to defend it. So to this day, the second part has still held true. People don't know where he found this thing, which is why I said some people are still looking for this. They're not looking for the treasure anymore, they're looking for the spot. Like the spot has become the treasure. And there was something that we left out before that I think is worth mentioning because Forrest Fenn was in correspondence with a lot of these people who are searching for this hardcore. They would tell him, like, where they'd been or whatever, and he wouldn't give them anything in response, he'd just take the information. But then later in interviews, he said that multiple people had been within a couple of hundred feet of the treasure and just hadn't been able to find it. And apparently one of the reasons why is this anonymous finder said that somebody had gone out that way and put a misleading blaze. A blaze is one of the clues, but it's also something that marks trail and it was the penultimate clue, I believe. If you found the blaze, you were very close to the treasure and somebody had put some other misleading blaze out there to be a jerk, I guess, or throw other people off the trail. But there are a lot of people who had come really, really close and just walked right past it, basically. Yeah. And apparently the original blaze had been damaged over the decade, so I don't think it was even visible to begin with. Then you had the misleading blaze. And this mystery person would eventually be outed, though, because of a lawsuit. There was a woman, a real estate attorney from Chicago named Barbara Anderson, who said, that treasure is mine. I solved it, and somebody hacked into my email and my cell phone and stole my solve. And it's this person, whoever it is. And so because of this lawsuit, jack Stef, a 32 year old medical student, had to be revealed and go to court. And we are one degree removed from Jack Stew. I was wondering if Randall Zoe knew him or not. They worked around the same time, I would guess, right? Yeah. So he was a writer for The Onion, and we knew folks from The Onion, and I didn't text our buddy Joe Rondazo, but I did text Joe Garden, former Onion writer. And he knew him, and he said after and asked him if I could quote him on all this, and he said after he found it, he said we had a nice little Onion alumni chat about him, and he said he's a decent enough guy. And he said, as my friend John Harris for The Onion put it, I didn't not expect him to find buried treasure. So he said that he was the kind of guy and I read a little bit more about him, he was apparently into this kind of thing when he was a kid. He was obsessed with the show Push, Nevada, which was a TV show where viewers could solve a real million dollar mystery. Joe said he admired his pluck. He had gained some notoriety before I'm sorry, after The Onion, when he wrote for something called The Wonkett. And he was the person who, in 2008, made a derogatory term about Sarah Palin's special needs son and kind of got a lot of grief for that. Got out of journalism, went to medical school, and then started searching for this treasure. Yeah, I guess he liked only meeting with patients. Everything else he hated about medical school. From what I read, he just kind of dedicated his life to this. From what I saw. He didn't really share how into it he was with friends and family because he didn't know if he was ever going to find it. And it was just a weird thing to be into this deep as far as he was concerned. So he seemed to have some perspective. But I saw some of the other treasure hunters were like, this guy, Jack Stew. He was kind of a lone wolf. But at some point he went on and joined some groups that were trying to solve the treasure hunt as a group. And there were questions at first about whether he had basically taken a solve from one of the groups that he participated in and solved it himself and wasn't sharing the treasure, but that group was involved in basically looking at, like a loan as the number one, and they were just totally off. What Stuf apparently did was apply his degree in English and literature and did a close reading and studied Forest Fenn and watched all the interviews with him. Read every interview he could find to see if he slipped up or just to kind of understand who he was more and then apply that to it and treated it less like a cryptogram and more like a poem that was symbolic. And that apparently is how he cracked the code. Yeah, he said that he did notice a couple of slip ups and interviews that Forrest Van had made and that he said, I just guess no one else noticed these. And he said he obviously used the poem to follow the steps. But in his mind it seemed like and there's that great Outside magazine article that if you want to read more about it, it's pretty in depth about him. But he said what he really wanted to figure out was where he thought he might want to die. And he thought that was sort of the biggest clue of all in that it would probably be some really beautiful place and not like a rocky, dusty hillside or something like that. And it turns out that he was right. And he said that one blaze had worn away over the years. But he went to the spot where he said, I think this is the spot where he wants to die. He went there about 25 times over a couple of years and I just finally found it. Pretty neat story. Yeah. That Outside magazine article on him is pretty interesting. I found one that I think is even better. It was in New York magazine by Benjamin Wallace called the great 21st century treasure hunt. I believe it provided a lot of extra details and different ways of looking at it that I hadn't seen elsewhere. And it also profiled a different hunter who didn't find it by the last name of Pose, but is a pretty interesting cat himself, too. Yeah. So Steve ended up he said he became friends, like legit friends with Finn before he died in September 7, 2020. He was 90 years old. And he said, I'm hanging onto this for now. I may split it up. I may display some of it. I may sell some of it. He's really not sure what he's going to do. I think I'm with you. Like, if he really wants to bring in the windfall, he should sell it all as one big package to some super rich person who wants to display this thing. But right now, he's kind of hanging onto it and seemed like genuinely broken up when Fenn died. Oh, yeah. That guy was very much beloved in the community for sure. There was one of those guys who went missing, one of the searchers who went missing, I believe. Oh, I don't remember which one it was, but he was missing for seven months, and after the initial official search and rescue was called off, forrest then paid for a chartered helicopter to continue the search. And a lot of the treasure hunters searched for him, too. So it was a very tight knit community. And this guy was like this kind of home spun god figure to them that they could text and say hi to. He was super approachable, and yet he wouldn't give you anything. He wouldn't give you any hint as to where the treasure was. So it must have been really interesting for him to kind of put himself in that kind of jeopardy or put the treasure in that kind of jeopardy by interacting with people who were spending tons of their waking hours looking for this treasure and not giving them anything. Not a single clue. It must have been pretty fun for him. That's how he spent his last days. Totally. And if you're thinking in terms of movies, like I always think, there is a documentary which I wasn't able to watch, called The Lure from 2016 that obviously before it was found, they made this documentary about people who were searching and you cannot stream it online, but I think you can actually buy it from the website. And they are making, supposedly a movie about it. Director Jake Zamanski has been hired to make a movie based on journalist Hudson Morgan's misadventures, looking for this thing himself. And it's about a group of millennials who set out to find it and get in wacky misadventures. And it's described as an action comedy, goonies meets The Hangover Points. I never thought I would hear those words put together in a sentence. So who knows, maybe we'll see that one day. Wow. Okay, well, let's see. You got anything else? Nothing else. That's the fence treasury. But if you want to know more about it, go check out that outside article in the New York magazine article, and then just prepare to dive in and you can still join it and figure out where the spot is. Just be safe, be smart. And since I said be safe and be smart, that means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this layoff Cisco, guys. So in our buffets episode, I think you specifically sort of bagged on Cisco, the restaurant delivery service. I was bagging on restaurants that use Cisco's premade ingredients and try to pass it off as if it's just their own stuff. All right, so take that, Brandon. But Brandon says this greetings guys have listened to many years and rarely needed it right in. But on the buffet episode, there was a massive misconception of the role of Cisco at restaurants. I have worked for Cisco for 13 years, delivery for ten and now a shuttle driver hauling food from Salt Lake City to Grand Junction, Colorado, every day. I love my job. Cisco was portrayed on the show as a prepackaged, frozen microwave food company. While we do have select items that are ready to eat and frozen, the vast majority of our food supply are fresh foods and vegetables. We supply restaurants, hospitals, schools, etc. And with everything needed for kitchens to become successful, our trucks are dual zone refrigerators for frozen and fresh items. I hope you can do an episode on food delivery and how semitrucks are used to keep the cold chain supply in action. I hope this didn't go on for too long. Didn't. And I hope your perception of Cisco will change for the better. Sure, yeah. I mean, I love Cisco. Now let's all go to Cisco. Lots of love. That's from Brandon writer in Colorado. And he said, PS. Can you plug my very small gaming channel on YouTube? Sure. It is Brandondued Gaming. And that is D-O-O-D all one word. Brandon dude. Gaming on YouTube. Yes. I haven't seen his gaming channel, so let's just go ahead and hope that it's all above boards. That's a good point. We should probably do that. Yeah, we should get busy on that. You go and click on it in the first video is Hail Satan. Right? Yeah, that would be the least of my worries, actually. Yeah, actually, that'd be fun. Well, thanks a lot, Brandon. Sorry for really kind of, I guess, indirectly, talking smack about Cisco. That was my intent. So thank you for calling me out. And if you want to be like Brandon and call me out, or call Chuck out too, you can do that too, once in a while, if you like, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
8da49aea-ba8a-11e8-a624-f3ad2305e6b9 | Short Stuff: Fish n' Chips | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-fish-n-chips | How did these two wonderful strangers meet up and become best friends? The answers lie within today's short stuff. | How did these two wonderful strangers meet up and become best friends? The answers lie within today's short stuff. | Wed, 02 Oct 2019 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=2, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=275, tm_isdst=0) | 13334611 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody. If you want a great website, you want to do it yourself with no must, no fuss, turn to squarespace. They have everything to sell anything. They have the tools that you need to get your business off the ground, including ecommerce templates, inventory management, simple checkout process, process, and secure payments. And if you're into analytics, hold on to your hats, because Squarespace has everything that you need. Just head to squarespace. Comsysk, and you can get a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code s YSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Hey there and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. There's Blimey. Old bloody old Jerry. And this is short stuff, everyone. I get you every time, buddy. I don't think there's a single short stuff introduced. I haven't made you snicker. They're all so silly. I love it. I'm glad you like it. So we're talking about chippies. Yeah, man. So apparently chips what we call in America, french fries. What they call in French just fries are called chips because it's short for chipped potatoes, which is cutting up a potato and frying it. Apparently that's chipping it, which I don't know, does that explain cream chipped beef? Like, do you cut up beef and fry it and then add it to, like, a creamy sauce? Is that where that comes from? I don't think it's fried. I think or is it? I'm asking, buddy. Well, you have the light bulb above your head. I thought that meant you had an idea, not a question. No, that's a question mark. Okay. I have a light bulb in the shape of a question mark. I'm glad you finally noticed. I think chip beef is just the quality of the beef is sort of chipped off. I don't think it's fried chipper. I like that. Okay, well, we're not talking about cream chip beef, are we now? Talking about fish and chips? We're talking about chippies fish and chips. The chippy is a fish and chip shop. They're synonymous with the United Kingdom, of course. And I ate fish and chips every time I've been over to the United Kingdom. Sure. You probably had a little bit. I never have. Really? I know I feel like a total jerk, but researching this made me definitely guaranteed I will next time. Well, I mean, there are plenty of great things to eat in the United Kingdom that are known. What? In the United Kingdom. Like tika masala. Sure. Right. Did you have any of that? Yes. Okay. Plenty of that. But fish and chips, they hit their boom in the late 1920s or about 35,000 chippies in the UK. Now there are about 10,000 and change, and they serve 360,000,000 meals a year in the UK. Efficient chips that's equal to 360,000,000 big Mac meals. That's right. And you might be thinking to yourself, this has probably been going on since the dawn of time over there. They've been frying up fish. But no, no, it was only a couple of hundred years ago. You would have to go back and ask for fish and chips where they would just look at you cross side right, and kick you out of their shop. Yeah, because it was a tannery. It was a tannery. But it all goes back very interestingly to Sephardic juice all the way back, apparently, to the at least the 8th century in Spain, where Sephardic Jews lived and thrived and worked and played and observed the Sabbath or Sabbath or Sabbath. It's in there. Which meant that they were not allowed to cook from sundown Friday to sun down Saturday. They're allowed to eat. They just weren't allowed to cook. And I believe that's still the case. So the Sephardic Jews of Spain said, you know what? I'll bet if we took some fresh fish and we battered it lightly and fried it, it would taste really good. Still, by Saturday afternoon, they were right. They were right. And so frying fish took off, and it became basically synonymous with Sephardic Jews. And they started to travel far and wide. They were pushed out of Spain and then later Portugal, once Spain and Portugal got married. And so they started to travel the world. And wherever they went with them, they took this fried fish recipe with them everywhere. That's right. And they would sell it on the streets in England with little, like sort of like the cigarette lady would come around back in the day. Cigars. Cigarettes. Exactly. Cigars. Selling it on, like, a tray with a strap around her neck, which, by the way, Portland, Maine, on the sidewalk, you can get oyster shocked from a cart. I did not see that. Like, just walk up and say, just give me a couple of oysters. It's like Chuck Auck type of thing. Do it right now. Give me some money. I would just follow that guy around. I can say I had the best salt water taffy I've ever had in my life that I purchased on the coast of Maine. Oh, really? Oh, just not even close. And I had eight lobster rolls between Boston and Portland, Maine, over four days. That's nice, man. Because I wanted to kind of find my favorite, and I did. That's good. Where was it? It was at the Sea Salt Gourmet Shop in Cape Elizabeth. Okay. It was delicious. Did you get a T shirt? And the worst one I had was in the airport. Oh, I can bet. That's like playing slots in the Vegas airport. It's just not the same. I was flying out and I was like, One more? Yeah, it's just like slots in the Vegas airport. So Jewish immigrants are selling these in England. Even Thomas Jefferson visited England and wrote about fried fish in the Jewish fashion. And it took trains and railroads to really spread it out of London and Far and wide throughout the UK because all of a sudden you could get fresh fish to faraway places really fast. And it was a pretty big hit. It was a big hit. But again, now we're still just talking about fried fish. The chips haven't made an intro yet, so we're going to leave you hanging for now, as it were. Wondering, will the chips ever come? We'll find out right after this message break. 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. Hey. Summer is here, my friend, which means school is out, the sun is shining bright, the days are longer. And best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. Yeah. Whether you're road tripping or you're relaxing by the pool, you can tune into the podcast here. It's on Amazon Music. That's so good? It's criminal. Morbid. That's right. It's part true crime and part comedy. Morbid takes you on a journey through murderous mysteries and major laughs, all in the same week. Yeah. From the paranormal to the pretty spooky and everything in between. Hosts Selena Erkart 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. I'm dying to know. Half the chips come. The chips are coming, finally. Okay, good. So it's funny to think of because you think of potatoes as, like, super Irish, you think of chips as super English, but they were actually South American. I mean, like, the potatoes that we know and love today weren't really brought to Europe until maybe the end of the 15th century. From the earliest explorers of South America. Yes. And people weren't eating them up. Like, they were hard and weird and everyone's like, I can't even eat this stuff. It's not even edible. So it took Belgium's, popular for their fries. Yes. Because they do it right. They do do it right. And that's where the whole fried potato thing started. Well, actually in Spain in the 16th century. But then they brought them north to what was called then Spanish Netherlands, which is now close to modern day Belgium. Right. And here's the deal. They would cut these things up into fish shapes and fry them. These fishermen would. Which is like the cutest thing ever to do in the 17th century. It is. But I don't think that has any connection whatsoever to fish and chips, does it? I don't think so. I think this historian said, basically, they eventually got to Great Britain in the 1860s and it just kind of coincided with the Sephardic Jews selling these fried fish meals, and it all just sort of went hand in hand. Right. So again, they think that Sephardic Jewish fried fish peddlers said, hey, man, I really like this idea of frying potatoes, too. I'll bet this would go really well with my fried fish. And there's a couple of claims of the first fish and chip shop, or chippies. One in London and one outside of Manchester in Mozville. In where? Mozville. How is it spelled? M-O-Z ville. Okay. After Morris. Yeah, I love it, but I think it's actually called Mosley. Mosley. Yeah. But Marsville is what I call mosley. Now I got you. Okay, so the one near Manchester was definitely, like, kicking butt by 1863. The one in Lunderhood, mazdale and Lunderhood. I love that. In the neighborhood in London. B-O-W-I don't know if it's Bow or Bow, but this was an 1860 and they claimed to be the very first one to sell that combo. And good old Lunderville. Yeah, Lunderville and Mozville. No, Lunderhood. It already evolved again. So this is the 1860s, when definitely the latest at the first chippies were established, and by the Siegel, which, as far as I know, applies only to the turn of the 20th century. Right? Yes. Okay. By the turn of the 20th century, the beginning of the 20th century, they are just everywhere. I think you said 35,000, and it's peak in the 1920s. Even by 1910, there was something like 250 of them in the UK. And just to keep morale going during World War I'm, prime Minister at the time, David Lloyd George, ordered that fish and chips and everything associated with making fish and chips be kept off the rationale. Yeah. They wanted to keep people happy. Yeah. And I think it worked. And so much so that in World War II, churchill did the same thing, right? That's right. He said, keep this fish and chip thing going because they are good companions. There's a little bit of Schwarzenegger in there. There was. So in that war at Normandy on DDay, apparently an identifier, a secret code for the Brits. They would yell out fish and they would wait for a coded response. And I love how this house stuff works. Article says barely coded chips. Right. Because Germans would figure it out and say chips and sea salt. That was schwarzenegger for sure. It was a little weak for Schwarzenegger, so robust. Here's the deal. I like mine with charter sauce. I didn't see anything about charter sauce in here. Oh, yeah. I think that maybe I don't know, I might be wrong, but that feels like even though it's a French thing in origin and American bastardisation. But that's just me guessing, because nowhere in here. Did I see anyone in the UK eating tartar sauce? I might be wrong. I think it might have been in the image on this How Stuff Works article. Well, that means nothing. But there's also in the article, there's a blob of green, which is apparently what you will find it's served with in the north peas, England. Yeah. Mashed peas, which, according to Dave Ruse, who wrote the South Software article, are way better tasting than they look. Yeah, I had that in Dublin. I went to a chippy and got some peas. Also, obviously, malth vinegar on everything. Yes, I've come to like that, too. I remember growing up at Long John Silvers, my family actually lived at Long John Silvers, and I was like, this is gross. And now I'm like, I have, I guess, a refined palette or something, because I do shots of that stuff. Yeah, I didn't like it when I was younger either. Now I fully get it. You got to have your salt as well. And apparently in the UK, they love the curry sauce. Sure. And we'll even go with the ketchup every now and then. Yeah. And then what? I always think of fish and chips being served in, because it's a street food, like, through and through. Even though there's chip shops, it was originally from the streets. Right. You know what I'm saying? And it would be served and I think even in the chip shops, too, it would be served wrapped up in yesterday's newspaper, which originates in World War II, where paper was in short supply. So somebody figured out, what we'll just use yesterday's newspapers to serve fish and chips in this kind of cone, wound up in a cone, dumped some chips on and said fries. I'm sorry, UK. Also, I'm sorry about Brexit. And then put some fried fish, usually fried, battered cod on top, and there's your fish and chips. But apparently that went out in the Thatcher era. I'm sorry about Thatcher, too. Yeah. I wondered about people walking around dear old Lenderhood with newspaper inc getting on their chip. I wonder if that happened. I don't know. I'll bet it did have to do with something, with becoming a little more health conscious. Like this printer's ink soaking into the hot oil that we're ingesting is probably not good for highly toxic. Sure. And all of the third arms that children were growing in the UK suddenly went away. You got anything else? No, I'm just going to shout out Gales. That was the first fish and chip place that I ever went in London, back when I first went in the mid ninety s. And I am looking right now, as you can see, it is still open, and that is in nottinghill. And that was before the movie Nottinghill. So I was cool before country was cool. Right, we need to get you a Gale's T shirt. And what was the name of the lobster roll. Place sea salt with the letter C. Salt. Gourmet shop. Oh, that's cute. We need to get you those t shirts. Okay, let's do it. Well, you can read a pretty interesting article by Dave Ruse on how stuff works about fish and chips. And that means since I said that short stuff is over. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio's how stuff works. For more popular podcasts from my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
7fdbea90-61a7-11ec-8dfc-4f16474a8169 | Short Stuff: Jaywalking | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-jaywalking | Jaywalking is a crime. Sort of. But why? Learn all about this weird law today. | Jaywalking is a crime. Sort of. But why? Learn all about this weird law today. | Wed, 19 Jan 2022 12:44:26 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=19, tm_hour=12, tm_min=44, tm_sec=26, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=19, tm_isdst=0) | 14408763 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's even here. Dave's not no one even knows where Dave is right now, but Jerry's here, and that's good. This is short stuff about Jaywalking. You. I think I want to start this out by saying that our mutual friend who shot so fusiono TV shows, the DP Scott Ipolito when we lived in La. Together, he got a Jaywalking ticket one day. Man, that is so Scott. And I was like, what? They do that? And he said, they do that. I could see Scott's face when he actually got a ticket and it was sinking in that he's getting a ticket for Jaywalking. It's great stuff, man. And I think it wasn't even, like, crossing against the crosswalk sign. I think he literally just crossed the street where he shouldn't have. The cops like, I don't like your face. Yeah, he's got a great face, too, supposedly. That's the thing, too, that we'll talk about later that Jaywalking is not equitably doled out among the different types of people in the United States, which is sucky. But at the same time, Chuck, we should probably start at the beginning of Jaywalking because Jaywalking hasn't always been around, because cars haven't always been around. And Jaywalking doesn't really exist without the context of cars because thanks to a really interesting Vox article that we found, it turns out the automobile industry is behind the creation and criminalization of the concept of Jaywalking. Before, it was just, here's the street. You're a pedestrian, which means you basically on the street. Go ahead and cross wherever you want. Yeah. So shout out to Vox and our old pals from Housetepworks.com for this stuff. What I couldn't derive from the Vox article well, let's just go ahead and say this. The term J back then was the name. If you were like a rube or a nudge or a hick, you would be called A-J-A lot of times, it was a name for somebody like that. It was very derogatory. It's my new one. You can call someone that's Jay. Yeah, I like that. But people were called jade drivers or they were known as Jay driving. But it seemed like Vox had it the other way around and that Jay driving came about after the term Jaywalking, and I couldn't figure out which it was. I couldn't either. But they were so very close that they were pretty much created almost at the same time. But they were both born, it seems like, out of this conflict between automotive drivers, car drivers, we might call them today and pedestrians, people who are just walking around. Because, like I was saying before, the street belonged to everybody, and there were like, core strong carriages and all that stuff. But for the most part, people were on foot. And the first people who were driving cars were super rich gadflies. Basically like F. Scott Fitzgerald types were the ones who were driving automotives at first. And so there was certainly class resentment out of the gate. But there was also more than anything, resentment for people who are just zipping through the streets that were crowded with people, including children playing in the street, because that was a normal thing to do. And so there was a tension almost out of the gate between drivers and pedestrians. Yeah, I mean, the drivers essentially were like, get off the road. And the walkers were like, wait a minute, the roads belong to us. And they said, no, that's why we started building sidewalks. And the walkers were like, what? You want us to walk over there on that little four foot span when we lived our whole life in the streets? There's cracks there that I can't step on. The term J driving. I think it may have been first, though, because this was like the 1920s when the automobile really started to come on the scene and started making a legit claim to the streets. And it looks like jay driving was in an actual newspaper in the Kansas Junction City Union, and the Kansas City Star talked about jay driving. So I think that may have been first. And this was driving on the wrong side of the road. And then initially jaywalking meant just being rude on the sidewalk. I don't know if it was right or left base, but basically walking in a way that wasn't appropriate on the sidewalk. Yeah, that's the how stuff works spiel. If you read that Vox article, it's basically saying that jaywalkers were called that for getting in the way of cars. It was a derogatory term for people who didn't know, better stay out of these new awesome cars way. And then in response, people called people driving cars J drivers, because it was just a retaliatory term from what I could tell. So this will be known henceforth as the Great House of Forks. Fox yeah, exactly. Between jay how stuff works and Jvox. But the long and the short of it is that once this started to be a thing, the automobile industry got involved and their lobby and their money got involved, and they got together with local police forces and they started initially like a shame campaign, didn't they? To shame people that were jaywalking. Yeah, there was apparently the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce who had the bright idea of creating a free wire service for local journalists where the journalists would send in the details of a car accident, like a pedestrian hit by a car, and the wire service would send them back a full article. Go ahead and run it. You can put your name on it if you want, but it would put the onus on the pedestrian. It would talk about how the pedestrian was a dummy for not getting out of the way of the car. It was the pedestrian's fault. And that was the level of underhandedness that this campaign was taking. Yeah. And as far as the shame campaign, it was literally on the streets. Like, they would advise police officers to shout them down, to blow their whistles at them and call attention to them. There were legit 1940s 50 style propaganda posters about jaywalking that they would put up, and all of a sudden, the pedestrian was persona non grata in the United States. Yeah. And then in very short order, they started making crosswalks. And then in very short order after that, there were laws that were passed that said, this is where the only place you can cross the street and be within the letter of the law. And as a result, cars came to dominate streets for the first time ever pretty quickly after they were invented and introduced. And I say we take a break and then talk about those laws that kind of came up as a result of that. Automotive industry lobbying. Let's do it. Well, now, when you're on the road driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck? It's stuff you should know. All right. All right. So back in 1925, Herbert Hoover, apparently, who was the Commerce Secretary at the time, before he was president, he wrote up a uniform law that guided pedestrian behavior in the hopes that everybody would just adopt this law and it would make sense. But instead, a patchwork of not just state laws, but municipal laws arose. So depending on where you are in the country, the law is going to be radically different from somewhere else in the country about whether you're in the right or the wrong for getting hit by that car. Yeah. I mean, that's still the thing today. It depends on what city you're in. And this is, like you said, even sometimes small towns and municipalities all the way up to big cities, like in New York, people jaywalk that's the only way you can get anywhere in New York is if you just kind of do your own thing. And I've never seen anyone get busted for it. It seems like that it's acceptable to do there in Los Angeles. It's weird that people will stop, and if there's no cars coming, they will sit there, will stand there and wait at a crosswalk until it turns. It's much less pedestrian friendly than New York is, obviously. But depending on where you are, it's either a faux pot to do it, or it's downright illegal. If you're talking right of way, it's anybody's guess sometimes who technically, legally has the right of way. There's an old saying that the right of way is something you give, not take, especially when you're in a car and someone's walking. I think you should always sort of be nice and defer to the person walking. Right. Don't you think? Yeah. Of course, the overall points of this is that if you're driving a car, you're not really in any sort of danger of being harmed yourself if you get in an accident with the pedestrian. But a pedestrian is in a lot of danger for getting hit by a car. And so you, as the operator of the car, have a responsibility to look out for pedestrians. And then conversely, you as a pedestrian, just out of a sense of self preservation, have a responsibility not just to walk in front of cars and presume they're going to stop. Yeah, because here's a stat. 3% of traffic incidents involved pedestrians, but 14% of traffic deaths are pedestrians. And I think 70% of those fatalities are outside of intersections. Just people crossing the street or whatever, wherever they want. Yeah. So the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration put together a publication called Pedestrian Safety Enforcement Operations. And you call in a how to guide. I added the and you part, okay. And they basically instruct cops to just go ahead and cite everybody, cite the driver and the pedestrian if there's any kind of accident. But they recommend really bringing the hammer down on drivers because they're the ones who are going to cause the most damage. So they really need to be taught to be on the lookout for pedestrians even if the car has the right of way. This house stuff works article makes a really great point. Regardless of any local laws of who's right or who's wrong, if you are a driver and you hit a pedestrian, it doesn't matter whether you're in the right or wrong, you just hit somebody and maybe seriously injured or maybe even killed them. And that's a life changing event. So forget the laws. Just look out for pedestrians at all times. Maybe if you actually do have somebody, you can look into local laws to see what the deal is or have your lawyer do it. But up to that point, you should be looking out for pedestrians. And if you're a pedestrian, you should never ever in a million years ever be looking at your cell phone when you slip off of a curb and cross the street. It is one of the dumbest, most easily avoidable things that you can do. And yet it happens everywhere. Yeah. There are towns that have in cities that have, I think, distracted pedestrian laws on the books for stuff just like that. Right? Yeah. And I also want to put in two cent for enforcing distracted drivers laws. Like, just seeing people driving around looking at their phone is it makes me crazy. It makes my blood boil. Like, if blood could boil, I would say it literally makes my blood boil. Speeding down the highway, just staring into their lap. Oh my God, 80 miles an hour. It's unbelievable. Yeah. Or they'll drop down all of a sudden from 80 to like 60 because they're checking their phone now and they're not really paying attention. But yeah, no matter how you're doing it, it's just wrong. Wrong. You're wrong. You're wrong. Yeah, I used to give a nice little friendly tap with someone in front of me at a red light. Haven't gone yet. On the horn. Oh, on the horn. I see. Yes. No, not the bumper. But now when I see the head down and they're on the phone, I lay on it. I don't care. Yeah, I'm with you. I got one more quick story, if I may. Sure. To illustrate yielding to pedestrians, it was Christmas Eve this year, and I was coming down McLendon through the neighborhoods of Atlanta toward Candler Park, and there's kind of a funky pedestrian crossing there that's a little it's not very intuitive. And there was a legit elderly couple, like, maybe in their 80s even, sort of like, should I go? Should I not? And they shouldn't have, but I could tell that they were confused, so I stopped, and they started to go. And a guy coming from the other direction laid on his horn and was, like, screaming and pointing up at the sign saying they shouldn't be walking as he went by on Christmas Eve. Oh, yeah, this elderly couple. And he was like he didn't look like some young jerk. He was like some middle aged guy. I think he had a normal middle aged passenger. You have to look out for them. Yeah, they're the worst, actually. Yeah, those are the ones you have to look out for the most. Oh. It just made me so mad. I couldn't believe that this guy just blew through there. Like, what it would have cost him to just let this whole couple pass. I know. And you see that so much. Everybody so keyed up these days. But it seems like middle age are the most keyed up of all. It's a time to be keyed up, which also means it's a time to be kinder than ever. Yeah, that's good advice, Chuck. All right, I'm done off the soapbox. I've got one more thing. Apparently, there was a 2012 study that looked at how jaywalking is enforced among races. And depending on the town you're in, you are much likelier to be cited for jaywalking if you're a person of color. Champagne Urbana, Illinois, is the one that's usually trotted out as the shameful poster child for this. But the 89% of people back in 2012 who were cited for jaywalking were black, despite only 12.4% of the population of champagne or banana Illinois being black. For shame. And it's not just them. This happens in towns all over the country. But it's, like, bad enough to get a ticket for jaywalking, but if it's not being doled out evenly, then that is even worse. I agreed. Be careful out there. Be nice to people. That's all I got. I think that's good. Well, then that means everybody's short stuff is out. 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." | |
8a475560-4a58-11e8-a49f-07f887bb3ea6 | SYSK Selects: How Foot Binding Worked | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-foot-binding-worked | Once in a while, all the necessary factors converge to produce a peculiar nationalized sexual fetish. In China, that fetish was foot binding and over a millennia three billion Chinese women's feet were brutally disfigured for men's pleasure. | Once in a while, all the necessary factors converge to produce a peculiar nationalized sexual fetish. In China, that fetish was foot binding and over a millennia three billion Chinese women's feet were brutally disfigured for men's pleasure. | Sat, 21 Jul 2018 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=21, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=202, tm_isdst=0) | 27184990 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody, its me, Josh. And for this week's SYSK selects I've chosen How Footbinding worked. It's about an unusual practice that was tradition for about a thousand years in China. And it's just absolutely fascinating. Were we a little judgier than usual in this episode? I would say that's a fair assessment. But hopefully you won't judge us too harshly and instead just enjoy this episode because it's a pretty good one. Take care. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there. And it's time for stuff you should know. Everybody to settle down, buckle in, get ready. Hey, congratulations to Kristen Bell. Stuff you should know. Celebrity fan kristen Bell and her husband, DAX Shepherd had their baby. Oh, hey, congratulations. Big congratulations to you. And I don't know, I thought you're going to congratulate her on a Kickstarter movie. Oh, in the Veronica Mars movie. Yeah. Well, congratulations on that. My wife is very much looking forward to that. Yes, and your wife is looking forward to meeting the baby. She's on her way right now. Christian Bell locking the doors. Oh, my God. What started out as small fascination with their show ended in tragedy. Dangerous, made for TV movie obsession. Anyway, just wanted to say congratulations. Yeah, that's nice. If you Chuck. Sure. I got no congratulations over here. Yeah. Interesting that I tied that to this podcast on, like, female torture, essentially. Do you think there's something to that? No. Okay. Well, we live in a world now where we don't have to worry about although I think they had a son or any little babies feet being bounded, I guess. Not babies, but four or five year olds. We're bound. Yeah. Because the feet were bound. Yes. Do you think we should explain to everybody what we're talking about footbinding? Yeah. I'm glad you congratulated Kristen Bell because I didn't really have much of an intro for this one because it's just so fascinating. I feel like we should just kind of dive right in. Yeah. Fascinating and horrible and oddly impactful in areas I never would have considered. Yeah. So we should say that over the course of about a thousand years, from roughly 970 to about the 1950s, like almost on the dot, a thousand years, about 3 billion women in China bound their feet to basically train them to become small and pointy in a really bizarre custom that just kind of came out of nowhere and stuck around again for about 1000 years. Voluntarily deforming their feet. Well, at the very least, their mothers and grandmothers voluntarily deformed their feet for them. Yeah, it's a very good point, actually. But at some point they had to take over and I guess then it became voluntary. Well, sure. Well, we'll get to all that. Spoilers abound. So basically this was purposeful deformation of the human foot, the human female foot, in order to attract men. Yeah. There was a standard of beauty, a bound foot, and we'll describe it in a minute. But the idea the whole thing kind of came from they think about, like I said, 970 Ad. In the court of an emperor named Lee. Yu. And, Lee, you had a favorite girlfriend, ballerina girl. Yeah. And apparently he saw her dancing once on a golden lotus pedestal because everything was made of gold back then in China. Sure. And she had her feet kind of wrapped up, I guess, like ballerina or something. And he apparently got very excited at this. Visibly excited. So much so that the other ladies of the court noticed this. Wait, did you say visibly excited? Visibly excited. Okay. Yes. If you know what I mean. Really? I would imagine. Okay. Hey, this guy has been dead 1000 years. Like, all slander and defamation, like, out the window. Sure. Like it was a rock in time. It was a Southern Tang dynasty. You never know what's going to happen. Yeah. It made Caligula look like watching it as an adult. Yeah. Boring. Yeah. So really, the Lee was very much entranced by this, enough that other women in the court noticed it and they started wrapping their feet as well. Yeah. And it just kind of took off from there. And it took a weird turn pretty early on. Well, what's the turn? Well, the turn is originally apparently the woman who started this whole thing just kind of wrapped her feet in bandages. Yeah. Okay. I see what you mean. That turn. It's a literal turn. Yeah. Well, it became a status thing at first because wealthy women did it and then it sort of spread. And it also would end up preventing women from doing like, manual labor will not prevent. But it made it tougher. So it was sort of a status thing that meant, like, if you had the bound feet out there working in the field yeah. I don't even have to throw a ho. But then it spread throughout China and only a few places. Actually, it was more than this article let on. I did some more research on that. I saw, like, where 50% to 60% of the women ended up binding their feet in China. And this says 100%, except in these provinces. Well, I think they were saying about close to 100% of the higher classes. Okay. But yeah, there was I guess that makes sense. So maybe about half of the Chinese population total. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. So the strange turn it took, though, was to go from simply wrapping their feet to actually the binding process, which is malforming your feet at a young age, like four to seven years old for life, to where when your shoe is off, it looks like you're wearing your foot. Looks like a high heel. You're disfigured. Yeah. You can't walk very well. Again, you can't work in the fields. And your foot has been brought to a point, basically, that's ideally three inches long. Three inches. Like, that's it and it's pointed. And you do this by training your foot and your bones to deform? Yes. And when I say it looks like a high heel, your foot looks like a shoe. Like, the heel is separate from the rest of the foot and a big block that looks like the heel of a shoe. And the foot is permanently arched and pointy, and the toes are curled under. And it's just if you look up pictures of this, it's horrific looking. Yeah. And it was so entrenched in the Chinese culture that when it was outlawed for, I guess, the first time in 1912, it continued on, and it took the Communists taking over to really get rid of it. And footbinding went the way of disco by just practical necessity. Women had to work in the field. And if you had bound feet, well, you're in big trouble. Yeah. Well, the end of it. Should we talk about the end now, or should we do it later? Let's do it now. Okay. Let's just mess with the structure. There were a lot of factors at play. One was Western missionaries came over there for the first time and said, yeah, this is really not what the rest of the world is doing, and it doesn't make you look good, by the way. Social Darwin has got on it, and we're like, yeah, you know what? We're not going to survive as a country because half of our population is hobbled, essentially. It's like, this is going to be really bad for business one day. And so they mounted, like, a real campaign, like an education campaign, which is really unusual back then. And they had three phases to it. One was that it made you look bad and look strange to the rest of the world. Two, that taught the advantages of having normal feet, like walking without pain. Right. And then they formed natural foot societies where people would pledge not to do this to their daughters or allow their daughter to marry a son, or allow their son to marry a girl who had bound feet, because that was one of the big deals. If you didn't have bound feet, then guys would just pass you over. Right. That's what it took to finally eradicate it. When was that? Was that after the 1912 outlaw or the well known as them? No, it was leading up to that. So 1912 was formally outlawed. Oh, got you. They had government inspectors that would come around and make sure that you weren't binding feet any longer. Right. And they would, like, hide girls that they still want to do. So it's, like, really impressive and weird. Yeah, because that campaign that you just described is basically point for point, trying to undo a thousand years of custom. Like, if you had unbound feet, like natural feet, you were considered a freak. You were ugly. There was something wrong with you. And even more to the point, no man would marry you. Yeah. Because bound feet were so idolized in Chinese culture that if you were just totally plain or even horrendously ugly in every other way, but have really knock out bound feet, like, that was enough for you. You were butterflies. You're going to do pretty good. That's hilarious. Yes. I mean, it's hard to believe now, but when you see these photos and, like the X rays and stuff, it's just like total deformation. Yeah. So let's talk about this. There's an actual process, fairly straightforward, although extremely painful and dangerous, I think. You said you grabbed your four year old daughter. You say it's time. Prepare for a lifetime of pain and suffering. Right. Starting now. Right. And you take your feet and you soak them in hot water for a few hours. Yeah. In animal blood, too. Oh, yeah. What did that do? Same thing, softened it up. Okay. So that was the whole purpose of the soaking, was to soften the skin, make it more pliable, and I imagine the muscles, too. And then after the soaking, you would scrape away any dead skin. And then after that, their toenails were clipped super short. So they're still kids are like, okay, I don't really like the toenail clipping part, but the foot soak more than makes up for it. Right. And boy, do I really It turns out I like animal blood soaking my feet in it. And then either their mom or maybe a learned woman in the village sure would say, all right, now we're going to start bending your foot. Yeah. I imagine these ladies, too, if they were the village lady that did it, they probably didn't take much guff. No, probably not. They probably didn't mess around. I imagine they came in there and just sort of took care of business. Like they've heard it all before. Right. But for as grizzly and grotesque procedure, it's actually a delicate procedure, too, because if you can wrap your mind around us, there's ways to do it wrong that can lead to problems. Good point. There's actual risk factors. So the one other thing I left out was a sprinkle TAUK in there to keep it from perspiring because you want it to be dry. Right. And then they start bending things. Right? Yeah. Well, then the cotton comes out, the bandages about two inches wide, about 10ft long, and they would soak those in the hot water and blood and herbs as well, because they want those to shrink up. It's all about shrinking. They want those to shrink up after they're applied to the feet. Right. And then the old lady comes up and she folds the little four toes that were just clipped, not the big toe under, as far as she can, and then starts to do little figure eight to keep them in place. You leave the big toe exposed? The bandages. Yes. And you leave the big toe exposed and the heel exposed, and you just cinch those little front toes under. They break the toes. It breaks the foot bones. Sounds horrific because it is. Right. And it brings the heel closer toward the ball of the foot. So the point of your feet is now your big toe, the slightly wider part behind it is the ball of your foot, and then behind that is your heel. And underneath it all are your four poor little toes. Yes. And the top of your foot is at this really unreasonable, odd looking arch. Right. Because it looks like you're on a high heel. Yeah. By making it arched, you're allowing that distance that was once between the ball of the foot and the heel to go up rather than between the two. You're bringing them together. And so all this has just been done to a four year old. Four year old is probably crying in pain. And after you finish with the bandages, the old lady or the mom would probably sew them, because especially if you're dealing with a four year old, it's going to try to get these things off. And then they say, all right, start walking. Yeah. They put a little shoe on there. And the first steps with these things, and I imagine many steps afterwards, are excruciatingly painful. Yeah. Here's the craziest part, if you ask me. You do this every day for years? Yes. Well, every couple of days. Okay. Every day or every other day is what I can to diminish it for a couple of years. It takes a couple to a few years for these things to be fully deformed into what are called lotus petals or new moons or whatever, because it's a bandage you unbind, and they actually would need the broken foot. Keep it broken. Right. And dry it all out really good. Because infection like the toes would cut into the foot if they weren't clipped properly, so infection and gangrene was too tight. All big threats to losing their feet. Right. Because if you wrap them too tight, they can become gangrenous because you get gangrene, which is a massive loss of dead tissue due to poor circulation. So the foot could just fall off. And like you're saying, if you don't clip the toenails chuck, you have to do that every day or every time you unwrap and then wrap your feet. And then, even worse than that, if you didn't wrap them pretty quickly after you bathed them every day or other day, they could start to lose their shape, which apparently was as painful as the initial footbinding procedure. Yeah. Like once your foot has started to take shape, if you wanted to say, no, you know what? I don't want to do this anymore, it's just as painful for the foot to undo itself because it's already malformed. But you didn't think that. I think once this happened to you from your mom or whatever. And you grew a little older and you started to take over for yourself and you were bathing and wrapping your own feet every other day. You understood why you were doing this because footbinding was so important that you could be just completely poverty stricken and some rich dude would still be like. I like your feet a lot. Two and a half inches. Yeah. I can't even breathe right now because your feet are so deformed that I want to marry you. It's so weird. Yeah. And beyond being wrong and gross and oppressive and all that stuff, it was just so odd to me that that was like a turn on. Yeah. And, man, it was a turn on. Like, footbinding was highly erotic. It's like, nice feet. Trust me. I get that. But these are formed I just don't get it. But this is pretty much a national foot fetish. Yeah. And it was nationalized, it was cultural and it was extraordinarily widespread. Like we said, about 3 billion women over the course of 1000 years bound their feet. Yes. And it had a lot of odd effects, side effects that went along with it. Yeah. When 3 billion people do something that hobbles them, there are going to be some weird repercussions yeah. That you don't think about. One thing it definitely did was it fostered dominance over women because of the simple fact that if a woman is being beaten, she can't run away. A woman can't travel very far, period. So they're going to hang around their village and their house. And so it's like hobbling somebody, all of a sudden they can't get around as well. So they're just dependent on you. Right. And they really aren't traveling much. Not a lot of traveling going on when your feet are bound. And then also the fact that women with bound feet had trouble walking meant that the architecture of China kind of was created to help this out. Like, they had to lean on windows or walls. I mean, so buildings were built close together so the average woman could lean on a wall while she was walking. Yeah. And there weren't a lot of six story walk ups in ancient China. Man, that would have been cruel. Everything was one story as a result. So it had a weird impact on the architecture and what else? Colonization. Yeah. That was a really big one. Yeah. Most people realize that China didn't do a lot of exploring while the rest of the world was it just kind of isolated itself and shut itself off. And one of the reasons given for that was that the women were footbound and they couldn't travel. Like women in other countries who could walk normally did. So with the Chinese women unable to travel and I guess, see the sites, their men didn't want to leave them, so they stayed at home. Yeah. And actually, the areas that didn't practice footbinding are the ones that actually did go out and colonize other places. Like the Philippines. Right. They were southern China. Yes. Or the Old West. Like every great Old West show has like the one Chinese immigrant family with the ponytails. Yes. The article points out, like, we're being hard on it because it's easy to look today at some antiquated practice is really cruel and unusual and weird. But at the time, the women wanted their feet bound. There were great bonds between the generations because it was such a cultural thing between the women. Oh, yeah. They would sew their shoes together. I listened to this one, NPR Fresh Air that interviewed some of these old Chinese ladies that still are some of the last surviving ones. And a couple of them said, I really regret it now. It's been a lifetime of pain. But most of them said, no, we wanted to do it, and I'm very proud of the fact that we did this. Yeah. And are these women who are confronted with the outside world and they still feel pride about their bound feet? You can imagine how much pride a woman had in her bound feet. While it was the norm, because it was basically the norm in China and these women weren't going out anywhere else. So if you had really nice bound feet, that was a huge point of pride for you. So one of the other weird things we need to talk about is sexy time because we talked about foot fetishes and things. But it really like something happened in the water at this time where Chinese men really got into it and they would take the shoe off in these odd deformed feet and they would do weird things like drink the water that they bathe their feet in or put nuts between the toes and eat the nuts from their toes and just really odd things. I also read that it became another orifice, I guess, if you can imagine. Oh, really? Yeah. And even outside of that, I guess one of the more normal things to do is to bury your face in the center of the bottom of the foot and really get like a good way for motor boat notice. Smell it got you. And then Chuck, we should point out that if you're doing that, if you're burying your face in the form foot of a footbound woman, one of the things that happens pretty commonly when your feet are bound is that they develop pustules that break and stink. So I read one guy, a contemporary report from several centuries ago saying that there is no other smell like it in the world. Nothing as sexy as a deformed foot with leaking, stinky pustules. Exactly. Wow. Yeah. There was a definite fetish that grew up around it. There was at least one sex manual released with, I think, 48 different things to do with a bound foot. Yeah. Wow. And the shoes we didn't talk about the shoes. They play a role in that eroticism as well, about the strengthening of the muscles. Yeah, that's a big part. Yeah. Yeah. Apparently there was a theory at least that because they had to walk so funny and oddly that their vaginal muscles were extra strong and thus more pleasurable to the man. Right. So the average woman with football with bound feet I'm sorry, everybody, she had at least four pairs of shoes. You had to or else there was no point. Sure. In having bound feet. You had to have one for each season. Ideally, you had at least four pairs per season. So 16 some women had hundreds of these, and they were designed to really show off, like, hey, look at my bound feet, buddy. That's what they were there for. But there was one specific one that were always red. They were your wedding shoes. That's right. And inside there was erotic embroidery, which the new husband and the new wife would look at and try out together. It's kind of an instruction manual for the bride by her mother or the women of the town, like, just do this. Here's a picture of what you're supposed to do tonight. Yeah. And slippers period, I think, were just almost like the lingerie at the time because the bedroom slippers were more embroidered, more sexily as well than just your average I got to go to the shop and pick up some rice. So the Chinese Communists came along, Mao and his comrades, and said, you know what? You're a woman. We don't care. Get to work digging ditches and oh, your bound feet hurt you. Well, I guess you're going to starve because we give food based on how much work you did. If you don't do the work, you're going to starve death. That led to the real conclusion of footballing. And apparently today they say with great authority that no one does it any longer. Yeah, that's good to know. Yeah. I'm surprised that it completely died out because do you think there'd be like some remote families here there? But yeah, it's possible. Well, welcome to the modern age is what I say. Isn't it just a bizarre, strange chapter, 1000 year chapter in one of the most populous nations on the planet's. History toes, and very few people know about it. Yeah. Well, now a lot more people do. That's. Right. You got anything else? No, there's no place we can direct people to voice their outrage because it doesn't happen anymore. No, but I'm sure we're going to get a lot of suggestions for female genital mutilation, and we should probably do that one female circumcision. We haven't done that. No, we did. Male circumcision. I don't think we talked about female. I think we mentioned it and said we'll do that later. Well, there you have it. We'll do it again. Okay. So if you want to learn more about footbinding and see some pictures of some unshod bound feet. You can type footbinding in the search bar@housetoforce.com. It'll bring up this article. And I said search bar, which means it's time for a message break. All right, now, listener mail, right? That's right. I'm going to call this we're plugging something. Okay. When we asked to plug things, we get a lot of people write in for, like, good charities, and we can only do a certain amount of them. Otherwise we'd be reading charity plugs all the time. So apologies to those who don't get theirs read. But this is from Kate Habenish. She said, don't worry about saying my last name wrong. No one does. If you just did, you get a fruit basket? I demand one. Habenik. It's got to be German. That's good stuff. She lives in Bozeman, Montana. She says it's the most beautiful place on earth. And she's just been listening for a few months because her brother Jack is awesome and turned her onto it. So during listener mail, guys, you supported some really awesome charities and groups that try to make the world a better place. A friend of mine works for such a place. It's a coffee brewing company called Brown Water Coffee, which got started here in Bozeman a few years ago and is now based in Denver. The great thing about these guys is that 15% of their profits go directly to getting clean water to those who need it. Hence the great double meeting of the name brown water. Oh, wow. They're also a small company with only a handful of employees, but so far I've done an amazing job. Not only is it a great cause, but their package design is awesome. And I can say that because I'm a recent grad of graphic design from Montana State University. Go, Bobcat. The coffee is fantastic. And actually it's really some of the best I've ever had. So she highly recommend. No, seriously, they sell in shops, mostly in the north west at the moment. So unfortunately you won't be able to get your hands on it. But if you send me an address, I would be more than happy to send some along. Do they sell it online? You would think so. Sell it online. She said, check them out on Facebook. Soon they will have their website back up and running after a quick redesign. I'd be ecstatic if you mentioned them on the show. Shout out to Ricky, owner and founder, and Katie, graphic designer, and Stevie, who was the master brewer at Brownwater coffee. So hopefully by the time this comes out, they'll have their website up and running. So I imagine if you search for Brown Water Coffee, it would come up, right? I would think in this day and age, you've got to be able to find something out online. I would think so by the time it's come through. So get with it. Breadwater coffee, if you haven't already thank you, Kate. Yeah, thanks for writing. And, Kate, it's pretty awesome of you. I feel like they owe you some coffee or something for that. Sure. If you have an awesome nonprofit organization charity that we can help out by giving a plug, you can send stuff to our Twitter handle at symbolpodcast all one word. You can join us on facebook. Comstuffynow and check out our website. It's got some good stuff on it. It's called Stuffyouchnow. 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How Samurai Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-samurai-work | The Samurai were legendary Japanese swordsmen and warriors, known for their loyalty and adherence to a strict code of honor. Josh and Chuck tackle the Samurai in this episode. | The Samurai were legendary Japanese swordsmen and warriors, known for their loyalty and adherence to a strict code of honor. Josh and Chuck tackle the Samurai in this episode. | Thu, 17 Jun 2010 19:21:16 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=17, tm_hour=19, tm_min=21, tm_sec=16, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=168, tm_isdst=0) | 32965496 | 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 actually, Konichiwa. And welcome to the podcast. Podcast. Yeah. I had no idea what samurai were all about. I didn't either. I knew that they were excellent swordsman. Sure. I vaguely had some sort of conception from Kill Bill, volumes one and two. And, of course, there was, like, the whole Wutang clan phase that I went through for a while. Sure. But that's really about the limits of my understanding of samurai until now, because we've been meaning to do this for about 1719 months now. Not true. And we've researched it just about every week. So if we fail on this one yeah. It's supuku for us. Exactly. Nice one. Thank you. Chuck, let's talk about the history of the samurai. Okay, Josh. I have a prepared joke. Should I say it? Yeah. No one is quite sure who the first samurai was, Josh, but we all know who the last one was. That's pretty good. And he was short. Yeah, he was really short. And is still I didn't like that movie. In the fifth, 6th, and 7th centuries, Josh, there were a bunch of rivalries going in Japan and a bunch of wars. Yeah. It's not a very good place to be. And a lot of these wars, most of them, in fact, were against the islands, the people who inhabited the islands of Japan, which the Imperial Japanese called Amishi, which means barbarians. Yeah. They were tough dudes, apparently. Yes, they were. And they were pretty good at riding horses, right? Yeah. Were they the ones that were the riding archers? And so were another group from the plains called the Kanto people, and the Kanto tribe actually were kind of in charge of fighting the emissions, and the Kanto and the Amishi were really good at riding a horse. Shooting a bow and arrow at the same time. Not easy. No, it's not easy. Not at all. And actually, the earliest samurai did this. This is what they remodeled on. They were horseback archers. Right. And that whole school of discipline that you identify with, samurai grew out of the kind of training it takes to be able to ride a horse and accurately shoot someone in the throat with an arrow. Right, right. Yeah. And to practice shooting someone in the throat with an arrow while you're galloping past them. What did they used to use? Chuck? This is a bad. And good bad was they used dogs, running dogs, which was awful. The good news is, even way back then, the show Gun came along and said, no more dogs. Right. He said, it's a cruel thing. Oh, did he really? And, yeah, they didn't use the dogs as target practice anymore. Right. Animal rights way back then. Yeah. Pretty cool. And so originally, the samurai was, like we said, based out of these horseback archers, but horses played a big role in the lives of the samurai. And this code that we'll get to more in depth, it's called Bushido, was grown out of another kind of code or a way of living called Cuba kiyuba. Man, do you know how many times I've said that in my head? I know that. I say it out loud. It's Kiyuba nomici. Right. Yeah. Which means the way of the horse and the bow, which basically, if you were dedicating yourself to being a horseback archer, that was your life. That's all you did. You lived, ate, and breathed it. Right. Sure. So that kind of discipline formed the foundation of the samurai outlook. Samurai way of life. The samurai super toughness. Yeah. Nice work. They're also an elite warrior, and that status sprung from the fact that there were powerful families that lived way out, far away from the capital, and they would, like, pass their land down in their prestige from one generation to the next over hundreds of years. So there are these warrior houses, and they attain noble status. You combine that with the Amishi barbarian and the code, what was it? The Cuba nomici, the warrior code. Right. And basically that was the formation for the early samurai. Right. And the reason that you had all these warrior clans was because, like you said, I guess the early millennia, the first half of the first millennia was a really dangerous place. Lots of civil war, lots of land grabs, lots of just general butchery PowerShell, plans. Sure. So these powerful clans grew out of this, and they started basically cultivating samurai. And one of the key aspects, key characteristics of samurai is pretty much the opposite of ninja. You remember when we did the ninja podcast? Yeah. They turned on whoever hired them. If somebody came along and offered them more money. Not so with the samurai. No, they serve their master, the Daimyo. Is that how you pronounce it? I believe so. Okay. They serve their Daimio with absolute loyalty, even if that meant death. And didn't you already say it means one who serves? I didn't. Did you? Maybe I just imagine that no, samurai means one who serves. Right. And that was actually, funny enough, originally applied to bureaucrats. Yeah, interesting. And then it was ultimately applied to samurai, which little by little, there's all these different foundations that finally come together. And I think the 12th century, when these two clans, these two warrior clans that were vying for power, the Tyra, T-A-I-R-A. We're going to go ahead and say the Tyranny and the Minimoto clan basically came together and clashed. And in Moto is one and the head of the household, Minimoto, Yuri Tomo. How do you like my Japanese now? It's really good. Yeah. He said, okay, you know what? We now run Japan. The emperor said, hey, way to go. I'm going to make you Shogun, which is essentially the head of the joint chiefs, the head of the military. Yeah, that kind of backfired on him. What did Minimoto do? He said, hey, thanks for making me show gun. I'm going to take over and strip you of all your power. Right. And if you say one word, I'll cut your head right off of your body. Right. And so what happened was the Minimoto clan set the samurai up for this elite status that they never had before. Yeah, they were served before. Exactly. They served the DiMeo, and there was still an entire class of lower echelon samurai who served the Daimyo. But then the Daimio, these feudal lords served the shogun. Sogun daimyo samurai and then everybody else. Right. And the Minamoto clan who set up the shogun, the government that they ran was the bakufu. Yeah. That was a dictatorship, basically. Right. And that was the last time the samurai really changed from that point on. The modern samurai was born. Right? Yes. So, Josh, we've talked about how they formed. Yes. Should we talk a little bit about just the nuts and bolts of what makes a samurai? I think we should. If you're talking samurai, you cannot skip the armor. The lamellar armor, it's called, and you've probably seen it before. It's made by binding metal scales together on a plate, and then they cover it with lacquer to waterproof it. And then all these little light plates are fashioned together by leather strapping. And that's the armor that distinctively you've seen on a samurai. You know, it's weird. I just wrote an article about skin disorders, and there is a skin disorder called lamellar ichiosis, which is basically like fish scale skin disorder. There you have it full circle. Yes. There were two kinds. Early on, the Yori, which was mounted samurai, it was a lot heavier with the heavy helmets and shoulder pads and stuff. Then the domaru, which was lighter, obviously, for the foot soldiers. And then later on, the gutoku in the 16th century. And that's what this dude is wearing right there. Yeah. That's a pretty cool picture that you got by Juan Cal. I didn't even see those a credit there. Yeah, that is a pretty cool illustration. And did you see that MoMA link I sent you? Or the picture from the MoMA exhibit? No, there's a MoMA exhibit of I did, yes, of the guy who had like, the black lacquered deer antlers coming out of his helmet. Basically, if you saw this guy coming at you with the sword, you would probably die of fright. At the very least, you would run. Sure. And I think that's kind of what it was intended for. They had iron masks that went with the iron helmets. Yes. Well, the helmet is called the cabuto, like you said, they would often add the devil face and they would add horse hair, mustaches, and little beards made out of horse hair on the front of the mask as well. Yes. Which makes them even scarier. Yeah. And they're riveted together. You see the rivets. And I got a picture of one here I'm showing Josh. Does this look like anyone familiar? It looks kind of like the parallel under Powell Perltus skateboard from the Darth Vader. Yes. Nice. This helmet is absolutely well, actually, George Lucas absolutely modeled the Darth Vader look and helmet after the samurai kabuto. Yes. Isn't Jedi a Japanese word? Yeah. And then the sword, the lightsaber was you might as well talk about the swords since we're there. The katana. Yeah, the katana and the Waikazaki, which together is called the Dai show. Dai is large, show is small, and the katana is a larger sword. Longer and thinner blade. Right. And the wazakashi. Yes. Or wakazaki. Wakazaki. Thank you. Is shorter with a broader blade. But you never saw a samurai without both. Right. And actually, you know where the katana is curved because of the process of making it no, no, it's purposefully curved. Remember we talked about how horses played a pretty big role in samurai role. The curved blade made for a deeper slashing wound, which was inflicted by a horseback swordsman. Got you. Yeah. Pretty cool. Did you hold one that day at the meeting? We took people are like, you guys took a meeting where there was a samurai sword? Yeah. Remember at the School of humans? Deal. I didn't see that they had a samurai sword. Yeah. This guy brought in a samurai sword at the end for one of their little jobs coming up. And I held it. Where was I? In my hand. You might have been in the bathroom or smoking. It's where you quit smoking. Okay. And I held this thing in my hand. And have you ever held a real samurai sword? I was messing with a couple in Japan, but yeah, I mean, it's like way heavier than I thought. And when you hold it and when you feel how sharp it is, you're like, I could literally cut you in half right now if I wanted to. All the ones that I was messing with were in, like, tourist shops. They were little plastic keychain ones. They were wood. Got you. Yeah. Well, it's really intimidating. It's extremely heavy. And you feel like the power of the sword when you hold it. Right. And the smith who made samurai swords are generally recognized as the greatest sword makers in the history of humanity. Absolutely. And one of the reasons why is not just because of these gorgeous, really heavy, perfect swords that they made, killing them again and again, that you could actually cut someone's head right off with one slice easily. But they created a technology or a method, a technique for an age old problem. Which was you want to sword with a sharp blade that won't break. Right. You can use a hard metal to keep a blade that will keep its edge, but it makes it a very brittle sword so it'll break easily. Right. Yeah. So what did they do, Josh? They made a sword with a core made out of soft metal that wouldn't break and then covered it with layers of hard metal that were folded and hammered. They hammer it to squeeze out impurities, and they keep folding it repeatedly until there's all these layers laminated together. Right. Like, literally millions of layers. Well, actually, this article has a slight mistake in it that's lore. I looked this up. When they fold the blade they hammered out, and there have been lore that they folded them hundreds of times and thousands of times to create millions of layers. Apparently, after anything over 20 folds adds no more layers. Really? That's what they said. So a 20 fold sword would have 1,048,576 layers. Wow. It's kind of like hammering a chicken that's been shot by a horseback archer. You just can't make it anywhere dead. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Okay. So you talked about kill Billy, though? Yeah. You can buy a Hatori Hanzo sword on the Internet. Autographed by David Caroline for $600. I can't believe he's dead still. I know. Hung himself in a Bangkok hotel room. It was fitting somehow, though. Yeah. An odd, but yeah, you can buy one of those for $600. Or if you don't want to spend that kind of dough, I think you can get, like, a functional katana for about $200 online. Yeah. Or you can get a wood one from a tourist trap in Japan. Yeah. Well, that's what these for training back in the day. Yes. The cruel tutelage of master pay from Kilbull. Yeah. And certainly Quentin Tarantino wasn't the first one to come up with the idea that samurai masters taught their students through rigid and brutal methods. Yes, that's been a recurring theme through samurai stories all along. And the reason why is because it's true. It really happened. There was one sword training master who used to walk around with a wooden katana day or night, completely unprovoked, and without warning would smack his students. It's pretty hard. Those things are hard. They hurt. Sure. Like, just holding it and like tapping it in your hand. Your hand starts to hurt. Actually, getting hit by one of these swords hurts bad. And if you get hit by one randomly, you learn pretty quickly never to let your guard down. Which is what he was trying to impart. Yes. You could be like a sleep and a sword upside the head. You can be using the bathroom. Right. Anything eating gruel. Yeah, sure. Hammering a chicken that's been shot by a horseback archer. Yeah, good point. Josh. They also use things called pole arms, which was a long pole with, like, a blade on the end of it that was good for stabbing at dudes on horseback. It gives you a little more reach, obviously. Right. And they even had guns. This is something I didn't know in the 16th century, they started trading with Europe, japan did, and they bought these matchlock guns and kind of kept them as backup, though. The same where I was like, I'll put a gun on my horse, but I'm not going to use it. I'm still going to use a katana. Right. Unless I really need it. It turns out they got those guns from European missionaries oh, really? Yeah. Look at that. Who are kind of infiltrating Japan to try to start trade their missionaries. Sure, if I relax, we're just missionaries. But have you seen a gun before? Check this out. This is my boomstick. So, Chuck, one of the other characteristics of the samurai is this idea of a very noble, loyal life. And we said that the Cuba nomici is the foundation for bushido, which means way of the warrior. Bushi is warrior and doe is the way. Right. So this is the way of the warrior. And essentially, it's just this code, this guide that was kind of put out by one samurai or another, and it formed the legend of the samurai, but it also informed the way they lived their lives. Right, yes. And a lot of people hear this and they think it's like a formal set of rules that everyone followed, but it was actually different depending on who you were and where you had passed it down or gotten it from. And it wasn't even written down until the 17th century. Right. There was a samurai named Yamamoto Sunitomo, and he turned into a Zen monk, and he had a follower who he just basically dictated the tenants of Bushido and he wrote them down. Darth Mall. Right. And actually, some of the high points of bushido, well, it covers everything from life and death situations. If you're presented with a choice, choose death, and you can't ever go wrong, you'll never be afraid because you're always prepared for death. I don't like the Bushida for that reason. Right. It's a little easier and then to really kind of trivial matters, like you should never sneeze in front of somebody because it makes you look foolish. Right. And then my favorite is the lesson of the downpour, where when you're being rained on, you're so uncomfortable and you're running and you can't get wet. No, my God, it can't get wet. Sure. So there's this bushito tenant that says if you remind yourself that it is natural to get soaked in a rainstorm, that's what's supposed to happen in a rainstorm. You'll never run for cover again. You just get soaked. It's the problem. Right. And this can be applied to all aspects of life. That's my favorite one. Yes. I used to play in the rain, like, up until trying to set fires. No, I mean, as an adult, sometimes it's fun. Yes, I highly recommend it. Okay. I didn't know I was following some samurai. Yeah, you're like, right there. If you would be willing to die, Chuck, you would be a samurai? No. I come from the Wham choose Life school. That's my code. Tiny running shorts and Choosing life. Nice. I guess we have to talk about supuku. Well, yeah. I mean, if you were dishonored, then you had to kill yourself. Yes. Otherwise known as I didn't know it was a vulgar phrase, but harakari. Yeah, it essentially means gut cut. No wonder that is vulgar. Vulgar also means common. God, you're right. I feel like an idiot now. Don't. I still am trying to figure out the way I'm referenced. Yeah. When I think vulgar, I think of nasty words. I know what you mean. But that's, again, common. Right. You know what I mean? You're right. Yeah. So this is what when you have seen the person thrust the sword into their gut, it sort of doesn't really happen that way. What happens is you got to wear the right garments. Very ritualized. White is it white? And they present you with a ritual knife wrapped in paper. Right. To give you a better grip. Sure. Normally, you're going to do this in a garden or a Buddhist temple, never a Shinto temple, because the Shinto temple is not to be tainted with death. I would choose a garden. Yes. That would be my pick. And you insert the knife. Wait. First, you write a little death poem. Okay. And you take four sips of sake. Four being she. Meaning remember the Friday the 13th podcast? Japanese. Yeah. Four and death are the same Kanji character. So four is kind of like a pun on, I'm about to kill myself. Got you. Okay, go ahead. And then can I plunge the sword into myself, please? Go ahead, Chuck. So you plunge the sword into your belly, and you go from left to right. It's very important. And you do a little final upward cut at the end. And if you're lucky and usually you're lucky there was another samurai behind you with their sword to cut your head off really quick. So you're not, like, writhing and agonizing pain. Right. What's that samurai called? The second in command is called the Kashuku NIN. Right. Kashakunin. If you were forced to commit supuku right. Which was kind of routine, you choose to, though, right? No, you could be forced to. Okay. The Kashakunin would be assigned by the bakufu, the military dictatorship right. To end it quickly. If you decided to do it yourself, then yeah, it was up to you to come up with a cashakun in, and probably who you would want would be a friend or and I've never heard of this before in ayjutsuka this is somebody who had practiced drawing a sword, slashing it, and returning it to its oh, no. Drawing a sword slashing, wiping it off and returning it to its sheath in one fluid motion. Wow. And the aya jut suka. Suka. They could cut your head right off. That's what you want with one slash. No, you don't. It's bad news for the second samurai. Oh, but that's what you want. You want to be killed immediately. Yes, and that was the point. But you didn't cut somebody's head right off. You would leave the throat, the skin attached to the throat, because it was bad for him to cut someone's head right off because you don't want it rolling all around on the floor. Yeah. I wonder how those conversations went down. Like, hey, man, you want to give me a solid this afternoon? I got to kill myself, and you could be there to cut my head almost all the way off. Right. I would really appreciate that. And let's see, what else is there? If you were young or if they didn't think you could be trusted with a wazukashi. Right. Wakuzashi? Are you serious? Yes. The second sword? Yes. Sorry. If they were afraid you get up and kill everybody in the room rather than kill yourself. Right. They give you a paper fan. Right. And then the moment you touch the fan or touch the fan to your belly. Right. See, I didn't know that was because of lack of trust. I thought it was just, like, a tamer version. It's both. Okay. Yeah. And then one last thing. I really was like, I want to understand supuku. Sure. There's this type called jumanji geary. Jumanji, yeah. And that was where you committed supuku and you bled to death. That was no backup sword. Right. And the last guy to do this was General Nogi, who did it in remember the Meji Emperor? That's after it was outlawed. Interesting. Somebody committed as recently as 1970, but they had the samurai, the backup samurai. Right. This guy did it himself. He cut himself in the ritual cut and then put his shirt on afterward and just sat and kneeled there and bled to death after the death of the emperor. And the shirt just held all his guts in, I guess, like the horse diaper. Yeah. It was officially polished, though, in 1873. Although, like you said, Japanese like to stick to their tradition. So it has happened as recently as, like, the 2000s. Right. Oh, is that right? The last I saw was 1970, but yeah. Oh, really? Or maybe it started to make a resurgence in 1970, and it's still going on. Yeah. I seem to think that was ahead of some corporation that did it recently, but really, I can't confirm that it's the way to go. Yeah, it's hardcore. So, Chuck, we should probably talk about what happened to the samurai. Right? Yeah. Where they went. Well, let me talk about this one guy first, okay. Remember, we're talking about warring clans and power struggles and everything. There was a huge civil war called the Sengoku, which is a civil war period in Japan. Right. It was from, like, 1338 to 16. Three. Right. And in that year, Takagawa Ayasu grabbed control, and this guy, he was the minimum descendant, so he took the Shogun title, and he kept the piece. His family kept the peace for 250 years. He kept a complete stranglehold on the other samurai, the Daniel. Right. He made it so that your family had to live in the capital. Oh, that's that guy. Right. And you lived, like, way out in the provinces. He basically held families hostage. Right. To keep the other samurai, the other daimyo, under control. Right. He also had a castle called Nijo joe and I've been in that castle, and we've talked about it. Wow. Yes. Remember in the ninja podcast, we talked about a guy who had a castle that had squeaky floors? Yeah, I've walked on those floors. Did they squeak? They sound like nightingales. They called nightingale floors. Did ninja come down and kill you? I tried walking on it. I got, like, two steps without making a sound. Really? So I could see a ninja possibly doing it, but it was random. Like, wherever you stepped, it was going to make the sound. It was pretty amazing stuff. I don't think you and I would be candidates for ninja or samurai. No. Maybe sumo, possibly. That's where I'm headed. Or Gaccia. So, like you're saying, we got to talk about where they went, what happened in the samurai, there was, would you say, two and a half centuries of peaceful rule yeah. Under the Takagawa family. Right. So during that time, obviously, if you got peaceful rules, samurai are going to decline gradually just because there's no one to fight. And then the main two things, Josh, are urbanization and the end of their isolationism. Right. That's what really drove them out of business. Yeah. Because Takagawa and his descendants didn't like the Europeans very much, and we're like, you guys need to beat it because we know how to cut someone's head off and just leave a flat with skin at the throat. Right, sure. So, yeah, they were isolationist, and then all of a sudden, the Americans started going, we'd like to trade with Japan. Yes. We get people who get shipwrecked around there somewhere, and we want to make sure they're taken care of, and we want to use this place as a supply port. So we're going to sail over there. Yeah. So in 1853, the commander Chandler Bing sailed into Edo Bay. Is that not his name? Yeah, I'm sorry. Commander Matthew Perry. Right. I had that wrong. He sailed over there to chat with the millard. Fillmore sent him to chat with the emperor, who was a figurehead. But you can't go talk to the show gun. You got to go talk to the emperor. Right. So he went and said just what you said. We want to open trade, and if we get guys that are shipwrecked here, please take care of them and open your ports so we can dock here and resupply. Right. Apparently when he showed up, he said, I'll be back in a couple of months. You guys talk it over. Right. Talk amongst yourself. But when he showed up, he showed up with full cannons out like guns. Everybody was basically strapped to the teeth. He's like, Think about it, see what you want to do. But I guess that kind of intimidation really struck a chord with the Japanese or some of the Japanese who are like, what's been going on outside the borders of Japan while we haven't been paying attention? Right. And so there was a split in the samurai class where some wanted to go ahead and open up Japan and modernize Japan. This is the people in charge. Right. The lesser Samuel didn't like that at all. So they actually went and staged a revolt. And the lesser Samurai actually won. Yeah, that was a surprise. It was because they beat the Shogun, which is kind of a big deal. Yeah, very big deal. Although they had gotten kind of fat and lazy in the two and a half centuries apiece. Yeah, that's true. So the Lester Samurai, who hadn't gotten quite as fat and lazy and comfortable overthrew the Shogunate and took the Emperor and restored him to power. The Meiji Restoration. Yeah. And it was actually a boy emperor. Emperor Meiji was, I think, like a teenager at the time. Yeah. I'm not quite sure. But he was young. He was boy king. Yes. And now he makes a really good yogurt drink. Really? You should try it. What's it called? Meghi. Really? Well, I mean, it's the brand they're like, nestle. Got you. So it was called the nestle restoration. Right. And the power of the Daimios was taken away. The government seized their land. There was no way to pay the Samurai. So they basically started paying them off with bonds, depending on what their rank was. Right. But it was like, here's your settlement. Yeah. And go and don't be samurai anymore. Right. They basically turned into the modern the equivalent of what in the modern era is somebody who falls in the grocery store and lays around watching Jerry Springer waiting for the settlement to come through. Yes. That was kind of what happened at the end of the same ride. That's pretty sad. Yes. And in 1876, it finally culminated with the final blow which was the Emperor said you cannot wear your swords anymore and we're going to draft an army. So that was kind of like, no more use for you. Right. And so there were some rebellions here. There Tom Cruise shows up and the rebellions in the outlying areas are crushed top a gun. That was the end of the Samurai. Japan became modernized. But it wasn't the end of the Samurai spirit. No. That was on. As Chuck said, there is a CEO that recently killed himself. Maybe the Pooku, probably, but also it kind of informs Japan that whole keep a stiff upper lip, don't complain kind of tradition and culture. And you can argue that the. History of the samurai is the history of Japanese culture. Right. But also in World War II, the Bushido was resurrected and kind of perverted by the Japanese government and sold to the Japanese military, who would go crazy and kill everybody before they were killed. Right. The kamikaze pilots. Yeah, that was part of it. Sure. There was the bonsai guy. Yeah, bonsai guy. And just basically their whole death before dishonor. Right. Because it's like a suicide bomber today. If you're facing somebody who would rather die than lose. That's the most dangerous photo you have. Right? Yeah. As opposed to the American way, which is do anything you can to save your butt. Right. Or go fall into the grocery store right. Afterwards. We would be remiss, Josh, before we leave, if we didn't mention a few movies, notably The Seven Samurai. Right. Or the 37 Ronin 47 47 sequel. They had a ten. Yeah. And the Magnificent Seven. The awesome Western with Yul Brenner was based on The Seven Samurai, but a Western version. There's also Ghost Dog, which I've been meaning to see but haven't. You haven't seen that? No. I was about to say that's my favorite all time, maybe favorite Jim Jarmish movie. Definitely top two. More than Dead Man. I think it's probably in a dead heat with dead man. Nice. It's awesome. You got to see Ghost Dog. That's where Forest Whitaker is. Like sort of a modern day samurai living in New York, in Brooklyn, I think, even. Does he raise pigeons? Yeah, he's very peaceful. It's full of the Bushido like it's broken up with him reading passages from the samurai code. Right. Pretty cool. Nice. Okay, well, that's about it. If you want to see some pretty cool images of samurai armor and learn more about the samurai, including what errone is and what happened to the 47 Ronin, you just want to type in samurai to the handychurchbarthousepworks.com. So now I guess then it's time for Listener Man. Yes. Josh I'm going to call this the cutest kid in New Zealand. Hey, dudes. Chuck and Josh, this email comes to you from Felix from Wellington, New Zealand. Oh, yeah. He's a cool kid. I'm nine years old and I've listened to pretty much all your podcasts. Dad usually plays them in the car on long drives. The recent one on Taxidermy I thought was seriously gross. I wish I could do a Kiwi accent. I'm not going to try it, though. No, I wouldn't have hired you. I had a thought that you guys might want to do an episode on really long place names around the world and how that came about and what do they mean? We have one in New Zealand called and I won't even bother to say it because it looks like the alphabet has just been written down in random order. I dared to try and say it in your podcast, but felix I will not. But I did attach an MP3 of me saying it to impress you with my skills. That's Felix speaking, not you. Yes. Okay. You guys are cool and funny. And by the way, it translates roughly as the summit where tomato, the man with the big knees, the climber of mountains, the land swallower who traveled about, played his nose flute to his loved one. That's what this name translates to. So we got permission from Felix's dad since he's a little kid, and he said, Go ahead and play it. So, without further ado, here is Felix from New Zealand. Hi, this is Felix. Here, listen to this. Thomas, that is awesome. I'm glad we finally got around to playing that clip. Yes, that kid is cool. Very cute little kid there. Well, I don't think we should make a call for audio files, do you? No, no. I think that one belongs to Felix. Pretty much his numbers being retired in the stuff you should know. Hall of Fame. If you want to come up with something cool and interesting and clever and have your number retired, you should put it in an email, send it to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. Want morehouseduffworks? 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 auto topsy technician Elena Erkart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. 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The Skinny on Probiotics | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-skinny-on-probiotics | You can find probiotics - bacteria thought to have healthful benefits for humans - in everything from pills to yogurt. But does any of it work? Listen as Josh and Chuck get to the bottom of the science (and need for it) of probiotics and health. | You can find probiotics - bacteria thought to have healthful benefits for humans - in everything from pills to yogurt. But does any of it work? Listen as Josh and Chuck get to the bottom of the science (and need for it) of probiotics and health. | Thu, 24 Jul 2014 13:40:41 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=24, tm_hour=13, tm_min=40, tm_sec=41, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=205, tm_isdst=0) | 33510789 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke with Charles. Debbie Bryant. I'm Gerry. This is Stuffy schneow, the 18. No. Guest producer? No. Ben Bowen. Just us. That really got a new crowd in it. What the 3D printing prank? I don't know. That prank Ben Bowen sitting in for you. Oh, that yes. How many pranks have we pulled? No, I didn't know it was 3D printing. I thought he printed something for me. No, I thought that was great. I thought it was pretty fun. Yeah. You know what I'm looking forward to? Our Christmas episode. Yeah. And our Halloween episode. Because those two no one can complain about. There are no sides to be taken. Oh, you guys seem to favor Christmas. In the Christmas episode, you weren't very neutral about it. Yeah, those are definitely we love those episodes. We do. Or like anything on Plato or Spam. We didn't do playdoh yet, did we? No. It's in the queue. Yeah, it's coming. Yeah. It's supposedly very neat stuff. That's right. I was deprived as a child. I was not allowed to play with toys, but I had to sit in a room quietly for the first twelve years of my life. Little Albert. I wish. Yeah. At least he got to be exposed to rabbits and stuff like that. Speaking of, I did a video on little Albert. Oh, yeah. Don't be dumb. No on psychology is nuts. Okay. And speaking of video, what a perfect segue. We have a new video series out called Studio Show Notes. And if you've ever wanted to get inside the studio with this, this is the best way to do it. Yeah, that'll win a contest. Yeah. We like, bring the cameras in here and we talk about some newsy things. It's usually a news item that relates to a path show or if there's an update or a correction. And it's short and sweet. It's cool. No, it's sweet. It's tangy. Yeah, short and tangy. It's good. Studio Show Notes. Yeah. And you can go to our YouTube channel, search Josh and Chuck YouTube. Check those out. And don't be dumb. We got some good videos going lately. And Psychology is nuts. That's right. Thanks, man. Yeah. So now on to probiotics. Chuck? Yes? You remember when we went to Guatemala? Yeah. You and Jerry both took Probiotics, I think ahead of time, didn't you? I did. And it did nothing to help you. It was a Jerry. Which one? Have you got sick? Oh, I did. It was you? Yes. Because of the ice and the rum drinks, man. What are you thinking? I closed my mouth in the shower. I did everything right all week. And that last night I went crazy at a dance club and drank ice with alcohol. And that's crazy. Yeah. I wouldn't trade it, though. That was like one of the best nights. How long were you sick for? I don't remember, but I had what do they call it? The Guate chocolate. That is so gross. It is so gross. That's so gross. Yeah. It tore me up. Luckily, it was after I'd gotten back home, right. Because I could not imagine I remember thinking at the time, man, if I was in Guatemala suffering through this right now, I would be miserable because I'll be missing out on the trip from our friends at Cooperative for Education. Yeah. Coed.org. Yes. The question remains, though, like, probiotics. Well, no, I know you took probiotics, but the question remains, like, did it help? Did it shorten the duration of your travelers diarrhea? I have no idea what someone calls no, you don't. No one knows. Because probiotics, although very intuitive, isn't backed up with science. Not a lot. Not yet. A little bit. And we'll get to findings, but yeah, I don't want to spoil it yet. We'll get to that later. No, but again, it's extremely intuitive. It makes a lot of sense. Probiotics means for life or good life in favor of a life. Greek. Yeah. The idea and the practice of taking bacteria that's been proven or suggested to be beneficial to the health of our gut and ingesting it, like either in a pill form or in certain types of food. Yes. Northern Europe and Japan have been big on this for a while. Yeah. As a matter of fact, the whole concept of eating bacteria to improve health rather than contracting disease comes from Europe. Comes from Central Europe or Eastern Europe. There's a Nobel Prize winner, and his name was Eli. What is it? Mechanicov. Nice. Yeah. And Mechanicov said Russian. Yeah, but he was studying Bulgarians. He was studying the longevity of Bulgarian peasants. And Bulgarian peasants were known to eat a fermented milk product called Cassello miliako, which is sheep's milk yogurt. Nice. Known colloquially here in the US. As Bulgarian sour milk. And it's a fermented milk product. Sounds so gross. It does. But although it's pretty tasty, it's probably like kefir or kefir. I've never had that either. It's not bad. It's like a much more liquidy Greek yogurt. Okay. I definitely know if I had a hot day working in the yard and about some Bulgarian sour milk. It's room temperature. Yeah. No, you would not want to do that. But after a just eat it. Okay. You're Bulgarian, you're balcony bartocomus now. Sure. And you are living forever because you've been eating Bulgarian sour milk for your whole life. Okay. So Mitchnikov was studying this at the beginning of the 20th century, and I think around 19 or seven, he published this whole idea, like, Wait a minute, I figured it out. There is a fermented, or fermenting bacteria called lactopacillus yes. That basically produces lactic acid during the fermentation process. And it's in this food stuff. And if you eat this food stuff, you will gain health benefits from it. And everybody is like, Shut up. You crazy Russian. You're probably friends with Rasputin or something. Yeah. We're not going to listen to you. But it turns out he's totally right. Well, yeah, I think he was like, these are Bulgarian peasants. They should not be this healthy. No, because they don't have all the benefits of living in a different place and having a lot of wealth. And you saw perfect strangers. Like, Balky was not risk averse, accident prone. There are a lot of reasons he shouldn't have been alive. Was he Bulgarian? I think so. I didn't watch it. What? Yeah, I didn't watch it. I know the show, but I didn't watch it. Wow. You should go back and watch it. Yeah, it's a cute show. I like the dude and the other guy, too. Yeah. I don't know why I didn't watch it. What year was that? Was that eighty s? Yes. Mid late 80s. Like 87, 88. I was watching Moonlighting. You could have watched them both. I don't think they were on in different time slots. You remember the time slot, dude? The one where they have to move a piano upstairs? Classic. It is. It's great TV. Let me guess. Did they get it all the way to the top and it rolled back on somebody? I think that happened in the middle. Oh, man. At Balky. So, anyway, Mitchnikov publishes his findings. They go largely ignored. And around the same time, actually, a few years before, there was a Frenchman named Henrietteissier, and in 1899, he started studying the poop of healthy breastfed infants. And he noticed that the healthiest ones all had something called what he called bifidobacterium. So y shaped Gramnegative bacteria. And he said, you know what? I think this is linked to health. And again, no one listened to him because at the time, it was like, we're all happy with germ theory. Yeah, that was probably like magic back then. This flies in the face of germ theory. It's like, yeah, we agree. There's little tiny things around, but they're trying to kill us. They're not making us healthier. But these two guys said, yes, they are. And they provided the basis for probiotics, which still today the two types of probiotics, the two genera of probiotics that are viewed as beneficial are lactobacillus and bifidobacterium. Yeah. It's crazy that they were onto this way back then, and now it's becoming a very trendy thing. And if you go to buy a supplement, they say to look for at least so many billion of those two strains. 1 billion is the minimum amount. Yeah. Ten to the 9th power. They recommend much more than that. Like, Emily takes ones. It's like 15 billion. Right. Because we'll get into this, too. You can't necessarily count on all those 15 billion being alive by the time they hit your intestines. I know, but we'll get to that. Although it's sort of just so, let's talk about probiotics in general. The World Health Organization, like, you said, Europe and Japan have been hip to the probiotics for a while. Yeah. And the World Health Organization created a definition that's just out of this world, live microorganisms, which when administered in adequate amounts, confer a health benefit on the host. It sounds on the host just say the person. Right. In live organisms that could be possums. Yeah, a bunch of live possums that doesn't confer health benefit. Well, there's only one way to find out if it does or not. Yeah, but tried it. And like we said, these days it's in a lot of food products. A lot of people are on the supplement plan, though, just to take them in a capsule form. Right. But when you add something like a probiotic to food, you create what's called in the industry, a functional food. And there's a bit of problem with functional foods in that they have made a lot of claims because they're not regulated by the FDA. They can say certain things, they can't say other things. And I guess we can go ahead and say because it's public news. Dannon, who makes Activia? We all saw the commercials with Jamie Lee Curtis. Activia. Just one serving will make you regular. Yeah, I even worked on a photo shoot for I just remembered that now with her for activia. For Activia way back in the day. And she got mad because PA was taking pictures of her. Like mad, mad. She wasn't very nice about it. What did she say? Well, I was just doing that PA thing where, you know, there's a scene and try and get close and listen. Were you the one who's taking pictures? No, my friend was, and it was on the beach. I just remembered him taking pictures in her. Like, she didn't smash his camera. She didn't show him Panama, but she had it smashed. Did she really? No, she had the film taken from them, though, because it's predigital. Oh, wow. Yeah, I just remembered that I'm not knocking. Jamiely curtis. No, I mean, you know what it's like. The paparazzi following me all the way. You can't even get away from it on the film. I smashed the camera. But Dannon did get into trouble because they overstated the effects. And while they're not under the FDA, the FTC got involved and said the Federal Trade Commission and called them out and they had to stop making those claims of regularity. They had to stop making claims that it prevented cold and flu. Yeah, that's probably good. And they had to pay out $21 million to 39 state attorney generals, which I guess those are fines. I couldn't get exactly how that settlements they were sued. Well, I don't think they were sued. Yeah. By the way, attorneys general. Yeah, sorry. It was William Sapphire's ghost going through me. But they sue. Like, they get together and say, hey, I guess they were losing. I just thought they were fine. But either way, they had to pay out money, and they had to stop overstating these things and go to more generalized claims, which they paid out 21 million, you say? Yeah. I mean, it may have ended up being more than that, even. That's not too bad, because the first year that activity was out, according to this article, it made $100 million in sales. It's fairs. But the point is, if Activity could make $100 million in sales, it's a yogurt, everybody. $100 million in sales in the US. And it's a yogurt. It shows. Like, wow, people really want this. They want probiotics. They believe in it. But we find after looking into it, like, well, there everybody like, yes, it makes sense. We know it makes sense. And, yes, yogurt can be delicious. We also know yogurt is good for you. Yeah. But we've got to get to the science of all this. We will get to the science of this right after this, everybody. So Chuck, everybody's really hot and heavy to buy Activity to take probiotic supplements. Everyone wants us to work because the idea of friendly little bacteria getting into our tummies and tickling everything just right to make everything go well, especially, like, if you can't poop or something like that. Sure. Or if you're pooping a lot. Right. Then it's funny. Then this idea very much appeals to you. Yeah. Eat some yogurt, feel better. That sounds great. That's like, what food ideally is supposed to do is to make you feel better, not give you diabetes and keep you from standing up from the couch. It's supposed to make you jump on the beach and have someone's camera broken when they take pictures of you. It's supposed to make you poop. That's what food's supposed to do. And I think that's why Activia sold as much as it did, and that's why people want this stuff to work. But like I said, we have to get into the science of it, and the science is there in some cases, but not nearly as far as it's being stretched at this point. Yeah. I went to the Harvard.edu site to look at the skinny on what they found, and right now, in mid 2014, they can pretty much say with great confidence through study, scientific study, that it can help your bowel situation. It can reduce diarrhea. Hey, man, what's your bowel situation? Your bowel sits. It can help you maybe if you have IBS or if you have taken antibiotics that give you diarrhea. Because they give me diarrhea like crazy. Right. They pretty much suss that out with studies. Yes. All those are backed up with study. Yeah. So it can help you if you have intestinal issues, it can help you. Right. There are other intestinal issues that it's being touted to be able to help. Like Crohn's disease. Jury is still out on that. A lot of people are like, yeah, probiotics can help, and that would make sense intuitively, because the beneficial probiotics like bifidobacterium and lactobacillus supposedly cut down on inflammation and an inflammation response. Right. That's what Crohn's disease is. Yeah. And they supposedly also can help with everything from vaginal infections to allergies childhood. Allergies all of these claims are being made about probiotics. And again, intuitively, they may help, they could conceivably help, but the science is not there backing it up. And that's not to say that the science is saying, no, we've shown that this doesn't have an effect. Right. It's at the point where these studies are just now beginning to be carried out. So a body of study on them is starting to now be amassed in the United States, at least. Yeah. It's a difficult thing to study because you have to study feces. And I think Molly wrote this. She pointed out a good point. Even if you do study feces, and even if you do find that a certain amount of bacteria has made it all the way through into your feces, you don't necessarily know what exactly it did. Right. It has to be reported findings like, I felt better, or I didn't have diarrhea as long this time I took antibiotics. And there's a lot of dispute also over what constitutes an effective dose. And when you're talking about probiotics, what you're taking are called colony forming units, CFUs, and these are viable bacteria that can reproduce and spread and colonize your colon. Right. Yeah. So this panel of, I guess, probiotic experts, academics got together in, I think, Florida in October of 2013 and said, we've studied all the literature, we've done some meta analysis, and this is what we've concluded. And they recommend that you take no less than 1 billion colony forming units CFUs. So it's ten to the 9th power. And like you said, Emily takes them that are like 15 billion colony forming units. And they also said that we need to study more particular species and strains. Right. Because if you say bifidobacterium or lactobacillus, you're talking about an entire genera of bacteria, not even like a strain or species, a genera. Right. Yeah. And you can't say, oh, bifidobacterium is good for Crohn's. That's like saying red pills make you healthy. What type of red pills, and what do the red pills specifically do? So, thanks to the Human Microbiome Project, which we've talked about before yeah. We're starting to get a clearer picture of what constitutes a healthy gut in an average person, depending on your genetic makeup. Right. And what constitutes an unhealthy gut. And once we start to understand what a healthy gut looks more like, we can kind of enrich that environment and maybe add more bacteria to the beneficial bacteria probiotic list. Yeah. There's a researcher at the University of Colorado School of Medicine that says that there's just a misconception out there, that you're just receding your good bacteria that's missing. Her basic point is there's a lot of over generalization going on like you were talking about with the red pill. She thinks there's a lot of potential in the future and that it could end up doing a lot of this. But the notion of you're receiving your bacteria and it's good for you, and that's all you need to know. It's just a big oversimplification of what's going on because everyone is different. And like you said, the different strains and what's good for one person might not be as good for another. Right. It's, like, super specific. But the two genera, Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus, have been shown to the reason they're considered probiotics is because they are not necessarily going in and recolonizing your gut. Those things are present. But again, the healthy microbiome we're starting to understand is just this huge grab bag that can change from person to person, from race to race, basically. But those two specifically those two generic specifically have effects on things like your immune system. Like, they spur the production of immunoglobin A or beta defense in, which are both immune proteins that go after pathogens. So they help with your immune system. These two things do specifically. Yeah, that's what you want to look for, those two. Right. And those are the two main players anyway. Like, if you're going to get a probiotic, you're probably going to find those. Right. But not coincidentally, those are also the ones that were discovered 100 some years ago and have been studied in one form or fashion ever since. So as we start to come across more potentially good bacteria from the Human Microbiome Project, they'll be studied in more detail and we'll get a better idea of this particular strain of this species, of this genera is probably good for this, right? Yeah. And then there's the whole thing of prebiotics, which we should talk about right after this. Okay, so you're in the store and you want to get something good for your gut because you've been pooping, you've had diarrhea, and you just got general trouble with your stomach lace forever. You go in and you see probiotics and you think, hey, I've heard of those on the news. Jamie Curtis is dancing on the beach, coating herself with yogurt, and she's doing great. But this prebiotic, what in the world is that? That is not the same. Prebiotic spurs this growth. It's like these bacteria. It's like food for probiotics. Yeah. Instead of a probiotic, which is the actual bacteria you're ingesting, prebiotics will help them grow. Yeah. You're giving it a nourishing environment to grow in, and you can take them both at the same time. Yeah. There's something called symbiotics, which is prebiotic and the probiotics. So it's the food and the thing that eats the food all mixed together. And things like yogurt, kefir, kimchi, miso, sauerkraut, fermented, foods like that, they have it naturally. Those are symbiotics. They have both. And in prebiotics, it's kind of just fiber. In a lot of cases, dietary fiber, that they like to eat and ferment. All right, well, we talked earlier about you don't know exactly how much you're getting in some of these foods. That's a problem because you don't know what dosage you need. You don't know how much is it because these things are that's why there's 15 billion of them in a tiny little pill. They die very easily and through packaging and shipping. You don't know how much you're going to be getting. In the end. Yes. Not in the end. You know what I f you go into a health food store or something, right? And they have probiotics. They might have some that are refrigerated, but then they have some on the shelf. And like, what's the difference? Well, the ones on the shelf have undergone a process of freeze drying. They're basically in cryonic suspended animation right then. And it protects them being in that state. They're frozen, basically. And it protects them from exposure to if they're exposed to heat or cold or moisture, although not moisture. Once they're exposed to moisture, they come back and they're in trouble. Unless they're in your Tommy gremlins. Those have been free stride. The ones that are in the refrigerator are likely not free street, and they're much more fragile. Yeah, that's what Emily's are refrigerated and expensive. Well, yeah, because it costs a lot more to take care of them, to keep them in a state of life so that they can have an effect. The problem is when you buy those at the store, you have no idea of what you're buying is the real deal or not. Because like you said, the FDA isn't regulating this. True, but you can do a little research and find out. Like, I don't think there's a ton of snake oil out there, is there? Well, so I read this article from ConsumerLab.com. Was it called? Snake oil. As probiotics. No. Basically it was saying, like, in 2009, they did a random sample of probiotics on the market and 85% didn't have the advertised amount of bacteria because they had died off some for whatever reason. Yeah, that's the thing. Like, let's say I sell you a bunch of bacteria and you're going to put them into pills. Man. I got some bacteria. I got lactose. What do you want? How much? We'll talk later. I'll give you a good deal. All right? But you don't invest in better not be like that last batch. This one's even cool. I had them dyed neon green for you. All right? You can do something with that. But they have, like, vacuum machines that you deal with this bacteria and put it in a pill form or whatever. Let's say you don't invest in that. You just run into a regular pill machine, all the bacteria dies. Even if you know that's dead, you can still slap that in and be like, there's 50 billion CFUs in each pill. Go get it. Knowing they're dead, nothing's going to happen to you. You're not running afoul of the FDA so long as you're not saying, and this stuff can cure your Crohn's disease, because all the FDA is concerned with is your claims to what your product can do, not whether that stuff's in there. Right. Yeah. I will say this. I often find myself buying them for her because I'm Aaron Boy at the health food store, they have very boring labels. They look more like medicines. Right. And they say 15,000 or 15 billion. Sorry. 15,000. Wow. It's all listed on the label. I went to get her recently. I was at a big chain grocery store, and she said, hey, I'm out. Just see what they have there. And I knew that they wouldn't have the stuff that the health food store had, but I perused, and what you find in the grocery store are major brands selling what to me looks like a bunch of BS. Yeah, for sure. I mean, why not? If people want to buy $100 million worth of Activia yeah. And you're a supplement manufacturer, why wouldn't you get in on that? You already know the ins and outs of federal regulations here, sucker, buy this. That's the problem. Even with the good stuff that you trust at the health food store, it's not necessarily snake oil. It is probably made in earnest. Right. But the key is it may have undergone the refrigerator truck, maybe break down on the way, and the whole batch was ruined. They're still going to sell it, and there's no repercussions, and you will have no idea whether it's effective or not. That's why we need probiotics. Probably do work, but we have to figure out how much is the right amount and how to deliver that amount in a way that is going to basically stay effective throughout the production and transportation and distribution segments. Yeah. Some kind of regulations. And then when it hits your stomach, it's going to survive your stomach and then dissolve in your gut, which is what's supposed to happen. Yeah. So we're just not quite there yet. No, but that doesn't mean that those probiotics that you trust don't actually work. They very well may work. Yeah. And the consensus that everyone agrees on is you're not going to hurt yourself by taking probiotics. Right. There have been studies that have shown that if you're a healthy person, it may not do anything for you. Right. But it's probably not going to hurt you. But there was one big exception with pancreatitis. In this article, there's a study that cited to where a group of people who have pancreatitis, 300 patients with pancreatitis, some received probiotics, others received a placebo. And even with everything else being equal, all things being equal, the people who are taking probiotics, 24 of them died, which is twice the number of the deaths in the placebo group, which is just weird. That is weird. And then also, if you have a lowered or compromised immune system you probably should avoid. Probiotics is the other warning that I came across. I've also seen that it could possibly, maybe help with not getting cancer, but you shouldn't take them if you're getting cancer treatment. But I don't know if that's right on either. I haven't heard that one. Some Canadians have researched and see it's still the Wild West. Like we said, there's so many claims that they think might like, in ten years this would be a completely different show. But researchers in Canada have linked supplements to lower levels of anxiety and stress. And this past December, the British Journal of Nutrition found that women supplementing their diet were more likely to lose weight compared to the placebo. Again, that just could be correlation too. You never know. But it makes sense because there's that mind gut connection where the vast majority of our serotonin is produced in our gut and travels up to our brain. Yeah, well, that's what the Canadians are thinking. Exactly. That as far as stress reduction. They're thinking that's a two way street there. So what do you do in the meantime? You buy the yogurt and just take a bath in it. That's one thing you can do, especially if you have some sort of gut related disease or condition. Find peer reviewed academic articles on what probiotics may or may not work for that condition, and then try that. Go find the best ones you can find are the ones that you trust the most. And the National Institutes of Health actually has a pretty open minded probiotics page. Several probiotics page, but at least the one I like to bacillus gives recommended doses for different, I guess, bowel conditions. Yeah, I bet you it's probably not the hardest thing to get some funding for studying this stuff right now. Yes, really. It's probably a good time to be in that research. The microbiome is so hot right now. Yeah, they're testing all kinds of things. The lady from Colorado said that they've done studies in rodents that suggest that certain microbes might mitigate high fat diet. So maybe it could help treat obesity. Who knows? Who knows? This is one we should definitely follow up on with studio show notes. Oh, we will, man, in a year. OK. If we're still doing that show. We are, by God. Got it? Yeah, I got nothing else. They won't hurt you. They could help give it a try. Although, again, if you have pancreatitis, look into it. Yeah, it compromised me. And again, I suggest if you really want to see if it works, go to the nutrition health food store. Spend a little money on the real deal. Don't buy the little box at your grocery store that has like it has a lot of pictures of people smiling and things. I say no. Okay. Wise words from Chuck. Yeah. If you want to know more about probiotics, you can type that. Word in the search bar@houseofworks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. This is an archeologist wrote in to say we did a good job. Nice, guys. I'm so relieved my faith is maintained. I always knew you weren't experts, but you do do a lot of research and so I take things you say with a pinch of salt, but you were really spot on with my field of expertise with archeology, and I'm going to trust you more from now on. Since university. I've done digs. The Viking Age in York, the Tala Yokic Bronze Age in Mallorca, and the Hellenic Byzantine period in Georgia. So he's done a lot of digs? Yeah, he's touting his digs. I've encountered many different archeological methods and from now on I think I'll refer them to your podcast. Though you only use the example of excavating by meter square holes, which always causes a single tier to roll down my cheek when an entire site is done like that. You also mentioned the B word brush, which must never be spoken of, let alone used on a dig. It smears what you're excavating and makes it hard to see. So apparently they don't brush. Maybe. I bet it's air. Canned air or something. Oh, yeah, exactly. Movies get it wrong, then, because everyone uses a brush in the movie. Everybody knows that. Maybe this guy is getting it wrong. Movies. Overall, though, guys, I give you nine out of ten. You covered all the important bits, like uniformitarianism, the conflict between civil engineers and archaeologists at a development, illegal antiquities, and the thorny issue of returning artifacts to their country of origin. Was that repatriation? You even got the Nazis in there. I can't tell you about Aryans or North Germanic peoples because I'm hardly an expert and don't want to muddy the waters, but one of my lecturers told us that the first non combat unit into Stalingrad in the Second World War were the SS Archeologists. They were digging a Bronze Age burial mound, an earshot of the siege guns. So that is all the best from Will, the archaeologist in Sussex, England, and not a fan of Brussels. I'm sorry. He says Sussex, UK? Yeah, he just died. The bullet there. That was close. Thanks a lot, Will, we appreciate that. We're glad we gained your trust or it was fortified by Archeology episode, which I think both of us like. That was a good one. If you want to let us know how we regained your trust, or gained it or it was fortified or whatever, who cares? Just let us know. Whatever you want to let us know, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com, Stuffychannel, and, as always, send us an email to stuffpodcast@houseofworks.com. Join us at our home on the web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstepworks.com." | ||
442864a8-53a3-11e8-bdec-eb0c99297b3b | Conjugal Visits: Not exactly what you think | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/conjugal-visits-not-exactly-what-you-think | After reaching their peak, conjugal prison visits are all but gone in the U.S. Learn all about these frisky visits in today's episode.
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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | After reaching their peak, conjugal prison visits are all but gone in the U.S. Learn all about these frisky visits in today's episode.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Tue, 29 Sep 2020 13:53:18 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=29, tm_hour=13, tm_min=53, tm_sec=18, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=273, tm_isdst=0) | 44681185 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And there's Jerry over there. And this is stuff you should know. Another prison edition. We're starting to fill it out a little bit, aren't we? Yeah. I don't remember even talking about this in our prison episode, did we? There's just no way. We didn't mention it. Somehow. We certainly didn't go into depth. I remember wanting to do this for a while and looking into it before and being like, oh, it's not really a thing. Luckily, you put Julia laying on it and she did a little more digging, and it turned out it was kind of a human rights criminology thing. Yeah, but you're sort of right that it's not really much of a thing. Which is sad. I've learned. Yeah, I think so. We'll get to it. But yes, I'm in favor of extended family visits, which may or may not include sex. Where I got that from. No. Hobgoblins. The Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of Hobgoblins. Okay. It's pretty great. Just go check it out. It'll show up eventually. Yeah, well, I mean, you mentioned sexy time, and I think when you think of conjugal visits, that's originally what it was. And we'll get to the history, but that's the first thing you probably think of is a time set aside at a certain place at a prison, probably not a separate building at a prison. And you generally think of a wife going to have sex with her inmate husband. Yeah. And in fact, that's actually a pretty good term for it because in biology, to conjugate means to become temporarily united in order to exchange genetic material. Man, if that's not a clinical term, I have never heard of one before. Yeah, right up there with mouth parts. Yeah, it does. Everybody's heard of conjugal visits. I mean, it's just kind of like this legendary mythological thing. Like, if you've ever seen a Bugs Bunny cartoon from the know about conjugal visits, you know what I mean? Really? But you could see it, though, couldn't you? Wouldn't that be like one of those random things where as an adult, you went back and you're like, I can't believe this is part of this cartoon. I think I would be surprised if Bug's Bunny featured prison or sex. So, yeah, I'd be pretty surprised. All right. I guarantee prisons made an appearance. But the thing is, there does seem to be, like, a huge misunderstanding about conjugal visits or an understanding about them, but then a complete lack of understanding about how much further these visits go. And actually, I think that kind of has led to their decline because you need public support to keep something like that up, because it's really easy to get rid of if you are so minded. It's very easy to get rid of. And as you'll see here that's been happening over the course of the past 20 years in a big way. And a big reason is because what you mentioned earlier, what we're really talking about these days in the United States, and we'll get to other countries, other countries are like, bring it, do it six ways to Sunday, once a month. But no, like, we really have to watch. They're called extended family visits in New York, they're called family reunion visits. And it's really easy for a politician of a certain kind of politician that doesn't want this kind of thing going on to just lump it in there as your taxpayer dollars are going toward these hardcore criminals just being able to have sex, and like, why would we support that? Right? That's not the case. They can say, watch this, I'm fiscally conservative and tough on criminals. And then the people say, how much did you save? And they go, yeah, well, we'll get to that, too. So let's talk about how we'll explain how much beyond what the public's understanding of conjugal visits are that it goes. But let's talk about the origins of these things. You want to? Yeah. The basically racist origins in Mississippi. Mississippi State penn in the early 1009 hundreds, there was a for profit labor camp called Parchment Farm where the warden basically said, you know what, everybody knows that black men have an insatiable sex drive, and that's one reason they're in here to begin with. So if we get these guys having a little bit of sex as an incentive, then they're going to work harder for us and increase our profits. That's the origin of conjugal visits, period. Really? That's it. And so this warden started this program at Parchment, which became, I believe, the Mississippi State Penitentiary. And this was in yes, 1918 is when he started bringing in sex workers. Right. And you just hit the nail on the head, as it were. On Sundays. No way. On Sundays, the warden would bring in sex workers to lay with the inmates and do more than just laying. Yeah, like married, not a problem. Single, not a problem. We got the shack out in the back. And I don't know if you want to be like 10th on that list for the day, but that's how we're going to do things around here. Yeah, and you were right about the race and storage of it, because it wasn't until twelve years after that program was instituted that it was extended to white inmates, and then it wasn't another, I think, 54 years before it was finally extended to female inmates. And along the way, what's crazy is between that gulf of time, 1918 and 1972, when women first became eligible in Mississippi for conjugal visits, it underwent this kind of like surprising enlightenment transition to where there was a 1966 maybe study that was done on it. And in the notes on the study, like some criminologist or corrections official basically said, this is possibly one of the most enlightened programs in the entire corrections field in the entire country. Mississippi, what grew out of their racist conjugal visit program became something like genuinely enlightened, which is pretty interesting. Yeah. And we should note that in 1963 is when they were not bringing in sex workers. At that point, you had to be married and it had to be your spouse. And that's an important distinction. But for 45 years, it seems like they were bringing in every Sunday sex workers to, I guess, lay with yeah. To incentivize these guys. Yeah. Right. And so I think that's where the transition came, where it became enlightened is it went from an incentive to get them to work harder because Parchment was a for profit prison labor camp, which, by the way, if you're like, what is that? Go watch the Ava DuVernay documentary on the 13th Amendment, one of the most mind altering documentaries you will ever see. Really well done, but really kind of drives home the idea of prison labor is an extension of slavery. But that was what this was. This was Jim Crow slavery. It was legal slavery after slavery was abolished. And so the whole thing was to get these inmates to work harder. But then over time, they said, well, no, wait a minute, maybe this is actually, like good for society. Weirdly. It's going to keep these family ties between the inmates and the people they've been separated from. Just linked enough that when they go back out on the outside, they're not just going to go back to a life of crime, they're still going to have these relationships that they had before they went in. Yeah. And so, as everyone knows, as things go in Mississippi, they generally follow in the rest of the United States. And extended visitation is what they were calling it. Well, I guess they call it conjugal visits, but in the 60s is when it started to spread to more and more states around the United States. I think California and South Carolina had programs in the late sixty s. New York and Minnesota jumped on board in the think in the 80s. Some other states. New Mexico and Wyoming got on board. And then I guess we would call it the golden age of conjugal visits. In the early 90s, there were 17 states that allowed some sort of extended visitation. Yeah, so that was the peak. And one of the reasons the early 90s were the peak was because about the early eighty s, the United States said, you know what, this whole rehabilitation thing that kicked off in the 50s, this idea that prison was meant to rehabilitate people and turn them into better citizens, it didn't work. And we think it's all a bunch of hooey and we're going to abandon that and get tough on crime. And that's what happened throughout the we got super tough on crime, super conservative, about how we treat criminals and prisoners. And the idea became, if you were in prison, you're in there for a reason, and you should not have any kind of frills or moments of joy. You're supposed to be in there to be punished, maybe to reflect on what you did wrong, but really, ultimately, this is punishment, and we're not going to treat you like a human being any longer. You're a prisoner. It's a different kind of person. And part of that is taking away conjugal visits. Right? And that line of thinking, like you said, was a pretty big sea change. And now we don't have crime. Right. It worked. Newt Gingrich's plan worked. Oh, boy. I think we should take a break on Newt Gingrich, right? Sure. Let's all take a break on Newt Gingrich. Let's take a little break, and we'll be back right after this. All right, Chuck. So let's talk a little bit about what these things evolve to along the way, because if you're just sitting there like, okay, so prisoners can't have sex anymore, that's really not the end of the world to me. Well, prepare for your heart to bleed a little more than it is right now, because over time, these conjugal visits developed into order, like you said, called extended family visits or family reunion visits. And they involved not just spouses, but also kids. The parents of the inmate might come to visit, siblings might come to visit, and there was no sex involved. It was family time. That was the point of the whole thing, was to spend time with family. And if you read some of the accounts of the children of inmates who have memories of going to these extended family visits, these are like, the memories of their lifetime. These are some of their best childhood memories, ironically enough. Yeah. And the whole purpose here is primarily two fold, which is incentive. It's still an incentive to get inmates to follow the rules, because as you'll see, as we detail this stuff, you really have to follow the rules. Like, very few prisoners are even eligible for this kind of thing. Right. And then the other thing is just to foster that family tie. So once you get out, you don't have that cliche you see in the movie where you come home from prison and you have these strangers sitting in your house that are your children, and there's at least some small modicum of a relationship of some sort of a emotional tie with a parent and a child, or like you said, the parent of the inmate or spouses. They're still involved, obviously. So when they get out, the idea is that they have a support system there waiting on them, and not like, well, now I have this super awkward moment where I have to come in and get to know my teenage children, right? Or like, this is really hard on me. I think I'm going to go back to crime or go back to addiction or whatever. So the idea that there's this structure that remains in place and solid during their imprisonment, the thought is that that just helps them ease into normal society afterward. Yeah, we really need to drive that home because I think the way I said it, there might be people saying, well, so what if it's super awkward? You shouldn't have committed the crime. It's not that it can be so awkward and off putting that it can cause someone like you said to not go home and to not want to face their family that they don't know and all of a sudden they're alone out there. And as we'll see, we have statistics to back it up. Recidivism is a big problem, and this really helps. It's also a bonehead word. It is a bonehead word. The thing is, too, is also it's not necessarily even just awkward for them, but there's expectations that are on them when they come back home. They have people that they're accountable to, which helps that transition. Because you can imagine that the transition, that period immediately after prison life into normal society, I'm not sure if it's weeks or months, maybe longer. That is the most difficult part of getting back into society. And so to have a family and a home to go to, that just changes things. They make movies about it. They do. And Bugs Bunny cartoons. And we'll get to some of these stories, too, in a second. But here's how it works, depending on where you are, because it's different at every prison and every state has their own. And I think we should also point out that it's only state prisons where it's even allowed at all. Like, if you're in federal prison, there isn't anything like this from what I could find. Yeah, but they try to set it up. It depends on whether there's like a shack in the back or a trailer sometimes. I think they try to make them a little Homeier these days. And what they're looking to do is sort of recreate some sense of normalcy over the one to four days that you're allowed to be with your family. This one in Connecticut. MacDougall Walker Correctional Institution. I think it's the biggest prison in the New England area. They have a full on, like, two bedroom apartment with a kitchen, and they can bring in food and cook meals together and watch movies. I think they have like, stock DVDs and stuff like that. But I think you are allowed to even bring in everything's heavily inspected, of course, but you are allowed to bring in food to cook, like your favorite family meal. They're not just like, well, here's what you got from the prison pantry. Yeah, that's what I saw as well. And just I think that's partly an economical decision, too. Sure, because they also charge it can be a nominal fee, like in, I think, New york, maybe, or Washington, I think Washington. It's like $10 a visit or something like that. But every penny counts in some of the budget deficit prisons in the United States, so they do kind of count those pennies. But more to the point, the point of bringing in outside food is to create that sense of normalcy for the family. It's basically like a staycation on prison grounds, ideally, is what I got from the research I did. Yeah. And if the prisoner's favorite dessert is fingernail file cake, that's what they're getting. That can't be helped talk about it a movie trope. Has that ever happened in the history of the world? I don't know. We got to find out now that you just threw down the gauntlet like a fingernail file being snuck in a cake and that leading to an escape. I think it's probably never happened. We'll find out. That reminds me, though, I've been wanting to do an episode on The Three Stooges. That might be a twoparter. Prepare for no women to listen. It's so great. They're so good, man. Yeah. It's kind of a dude's thing, though. Maybe we'll change that with our episodes. There should have been a counterpart. Yeah, I wonder if there was. I'm sure they tried that out at some point during the middle. Well, I think the idea of a show with three women that are morons that just kind of abuse each other physically, probably not very realistic or believable. Not like the real stages and how realistic that was. Right, man. Seriously. I watch that sometimes. Still today. No, it's classic. Yes, it really is. And for a good reason. It's hilarious, but also just so well choreographed. And those dudes worked hard. No, I think we should totally do an episode on that. Okay, so while you've got this staycation going on with your family, with your children, with your wife or your husband, and you're having a good time, you're relaxing every 4 hours, depending on where you are. There's probably going to be a visit from a guard that says, hey, I got to search some stuff, because it's important to point out that this occurs on the prison grounds. It's part of prison. It's just a modified part of prison. So there's plenty of rules and restrictions that are meant to keep security tight, prevent contraband from being transferred from the visitors to the inmate, and to just kind of keep things on the up and up, basically. Yeah. For instance, you can't just waltz in there like if you've got a new sexy pinpal. And he said, Well, I want to get a visit from this person. Now you can't just waltz in there as a first timer and pop in and have a conjugal visit or even a family visit, whatever you want to call it. I mean, it depends on where you are again. But like in New York, you have to have been at least a visitor standard visitor three other times in the previous twelve months. So you have to be someone they know, someone who has proven to be a real connection in your life. You have to undergo health screening and this is everyone like kids, anyone that's going to stay in this apartment. You're going to get health screened, obviously for conjugal visits. You're going to get STD tested. Like you mentioned, it depends on where you are. Lots of searches. I don't know if I know California was every 4 hours, but I imagine they like to spring those on you as well. Yeah, I would guess so too. It will be back in 4 hours for the next one. I could kind of see like guards looking the other way or going kind of easy on these things. It just seems from every account that I've read, it seems like an overbearing mean guard is not the kind of guard they would put on this detail. It just doesn't seem like it fits this whole vibe. Because like you said, the people who are eligible for this are like the model of the model inmates. They've really worked for this. Yeah. So only state prisons, they are currently only allowed in seven states down from heyday in the early ninety s of seventeen and I guess they set it up. So you're highly incentivized to do other jobs and other programs in order to get these conjugal visits right, you have to maybe do you're involved in a school or a work based program, some kind of reentry program and you got to show that you've done that and you've been successful in that. Obviously the behavior like you can't have any dings on your violations in your prison stay at all. No, and certainly no recent ones. I get the impression that you could have in your past, but you probably couldn't have in the last month or six months or some set amount of time. And like you said, it needs to be part of this larger pattern of working toward being rehabilitated, like being in some sort of school or diploma program or some sort of work program. Something that basically combined with these family visits says, I'm thinking about how I'm going to behave on the outside and it's going to be good, I'm going to wow you. So that these extended family visits are kind of meant to support that and encourage that kind of thing too. Yeah. And again, depending on the state and the prison, what you're in there for is going to really matter. Obviously if you're convicted of a sex crime, domestic violence, any kind of violence against children, you're not even going to be eligible. And the eligibility is really low. In 2013 and this was the last year that they could in New Mexico, I think that they had conjugal visits. Only 2% of state prison inmates qualified in Mississippi that same year it was 9%. In New York, 4% in Washington. So the idea that you may be sold on TV by an angry politician, that all of these prisoners are just in there having the time of their lives, having sex, is just false. Right. But it's just so easy to fall for because people don't you have to look into this kind of stuff. And who's going to do that? Nobody. The weird thing is oh, yeah, us. I forgot about us. With an assist by Julia Layton. That's right. But the thing is, those percentages and the fact that there's only, would you say, seven states now left that allow anything at all. Wow. And they're under fire, as we'll see. But the idea that the United States is kind of slowly getting rid of its extended family visit system as part of prison life, that's weird as far as Western style democracies are concerned. Countries around the world, especially Western style democracies, but also other ones, allow for, if not extended family visits. At the very least, conjugal visits. So it's easier to point out the Western democracies that don't allow it than it is that allow it. The ones that stand out in particular are Japan, New Zealand and Ireland and the UK. They absolutely don't. New Zealand doesn't because they view it as too much of a security risk, and it's a huge political hot potato over there to even suggest that they should do it. And then Japan, apparently their prison system is just like in the Dark Ages. It's meant to penalize criminals. They can sit there and think about what they did. Apparently, Japan is under fire constantly by human rights organizations for using torture and stuff like that in their prisons. Yes, well, they're like real backwards when it comes to prison, for sure. But the idea is that it's part of a liberal democracy to have this kind of program as part of your prisons, at the very least, just to keep your prison population less violent. Supposedly, yeah. Countries around the world where they are I was about to say lax, but that's not true. I'm sure it's still very structured and organized, but more permissive. India, they see it as a right and not a privilege as a human being. Saudi Arabia allows a conjugal visit per wife per month. You know what that means? That means multiple wives equals multiple conjugal visits. That's right. Latin America, they are pretty generous with them. Brazil, the only requirement for visitors is good behavior. Sometimes that can mean weekly, you don't have to be married. They do allow sex workers in Brazil to come. In Canada, not surprisingly, they allow three day family visits every two months for most inmates. Where else? Germany, basically, it was sort of like anyone can get a conjugal visit up until about ten years ago. And this is, of course, the kind of thing you're going to see all over the news. There was an inmate, a rapist and murderer, who actually killed his girlfriend during a conjugal visit. So they said Nine ruined it for everybody. Yeah. Although I don't think that they got rid of it. I think that they just changed the restrictions a little more. Yeah. And that is a real outlier, obviously a terrible, sad, sad case, but I didn't see anything else or anything like that had ever happened. But see, that's the thing that gets people right in the hypothalamus or something, and all of a sudden they're like, get rid of it, ban it, and kill a few prisoners while you're at it for my satisfaction, because I need to calm down. Right. So Russia, Spain, France, Turkey, Qatar, Costa Rica, Mexico, Denmark, Australia and Israel all have programs that include, at the very least, conjugal visits, if not family visits. And like you said, Brazil and most of South America. But the US is not hanging in there very well. We're just kind of slowly but surely getting rid of these things little by little. And from what I can tell, we keep talking about a politician point this out. All it takes is one determined politician and a couple of legislative sessions, and they're probably going to get their wish. And that seems to be what's been happening around the United States. Yeah. It doesn't seem like there is enough people on the other side that really want to fight to keep it going. We've seen Juliusen in a couple of stories, one from Vice and one from Medium, where they talk to real prisoners about the programs. And this one woman, Bernadette Staubitz, I think she had two daughters in jail. In prison and was able to eventually spend time with those girls and said these fond memories, playing tag, cooking chili, having long emotional conversations into the night with her daughters that are now grown. These 36 hours visits were treasured. And she said, if it weren't for these trailer visits, I wouldn't be the woman that I am today. And that seems to be the resounding message any time you read these stories, is that this is what made the difference for me in doing my time, keeping sane, and then doing the right thing when I got out. Yeah. And if you want to just kind of get touched in the heart by some of these, like, read, 2.7 Million Kids Have Parents in Prison, they're Losing Their Right to Visit. That's a headline for a Nation magazine article by Sylvia A. Harvey, whose father was in prison. And she was the one I cited who said that some of her fondest childhood memories are of these extended family visits. And she interviews and profiles some other families who are kind of trying to keep their family together while the father or the mother is in prison, but are losing that because these extended visitations are being turned into just regular, standard visitations. What most people think, like the arrested Development, no touching kind of visit, that's the standard. That's what's called a standard visit. And they are not nearly satisfying because I think there's one thing we haven't really pointed out. Like. Yes. It's important to have these family connections. But the way that these family connections are maintained is that in a standard visit. Where. Say. It's like 30 minutes. Maybe an hour in a room with a bunch of other families and inmates. A bunch of corrections officers. Like. Standing right over you. You're not going to have the conversations that you would normally have. Not anything illegal or whatever. But just personal. Deeply personal stuff. And so to have one day or two days or three days together as a family, those conversations start to come up because in the standard visits, you got like an hour. You don't have time to bring up touchy stuff that could result in hard feelings because you know that there's not enough time to complete that cycle to smooth out the hard feelings. Right. That's one of the great benefits of these extended family visits, is you can have these tough conversations. You can argue, you can snipe, you can discipline your kids because you know you have enough time to kind of work through it and process it and then strengthen those family bonds on the other side of it. That's the vital importance of these kind of visits, and that's why they're so effective. Yeah, and I know our hearts are bleeding all over this episode. Fine. But I think you would have to have a zero heart to go beyond prison is for punishment. To prison should be punishment for your entire family. Right. That's a different thing. These are children that are suffering and that may go down the wrong path, because if not for stuff like this, there are a lot of other people involved that it would just help society as a whole if a little more empathy were involved. Yeah. And I think really kind of that points out one of the big arguments, which I think we should take a break and then we'll talk about the arguments against but one of the arguments against Chuck is that people worry that there's going to be children born to automatic single parents because of the conjugal visits. It's like, well, what about the kids whose parents are already in jail? And if you follow that ellipsis all the way to the end, the response is, well, those kids shouldn't have been born then if their parents are in jail. That's what they're kind of saying when they're saying, one of the reasons to cancel these programs because we don't want pregnancies to result. All right, well, let's take a break. We'll talk about that rehabilitation and punishment and then data and the lack of right after this. All right, so we brought it up in the prisons episode. We brought it up in this episode. There are a couple of ways to look at prison and confinement, which is, are. We trying to rehabilitate these people? Are we trying to make society better as a whole? Are we trying to just punish people as hard as possible and we really don't care if society is better as a whole. Right. Great synopsis, Chuck. Which side do you lie on? Well, here's the big reveal. So clearly on the side of extended family visits, but it's not even like, oh, I really get your point, I get the other side's point. Or I can see both sides. Not even like that. It seems to me, and Layton goes to great lengths to kind of try to be diplomatic about it, but it's still just like this doesn't hold water at all. The arguments against are basically just gut reactions. It's like the same thing as a lot of arson investigation. It's like, well, this feels a lot to me like arson put that person in prison for life and maybe on death row. That's the same kind of correctional criminal justice instinct that seems to be driving the cancelation of these. And I have a lot of problems with anything that deeply impacts families negatively based on instinct rather than data and science. I think you really need to go to the trouble of producing your argument against in these cases rather than just canceling them outright with very little problems from the public. Yes, because there's generally four arguments that are used against and to me, each of them have a lot of holes in them. Cost, morality, security and punishment. Cost. They do charge people. Those costs are offset some, but there's no like you said, give me the data. When you interview some of these people and some of these politicians that have said no, it's costing us a fortune, we're like, well, all right, how much is it costing? Show us. And they'll be like, well, we don't really have a spreadsheet on that, but I'm sure it's a loss. Yes, but literally say things like that like, well, it hits the budget, though. So there's one thing you can poke holes in. Morality. I think that one falls apart immediately because what is more moral than families being able to spend time with one another and strengthening a family bond? Or at least attempting to? But that's what I'm saying. They use that public image of what a conjugal visit is and the idea that any inmate can just have sex with anybody they want during these visits, and then they just don't explain what's actually being canceled. They just call them conjugal visits and then that's that right, because STD transmission was one sided by who was it? Mississippi State Rep. Richard Bennett. Yeah. And where's the data are STDs being spread through conjugal visits, they're not because there is no data. Right, but it's something very grabby on the news. To hear security is another argument, but show me that you can manage security. That's something you can actually control, whether it's maybe not a camera in the bedroom, but you can have cameras in the apartment. You can really watch them. You can come in every 2 hours and inspect things. You can actually control security and make it a secure environment. Yeah. And I also understand that the absence of evidence isn't proof, but I would guess that if anybody had been harmed, hurt, killed, maimed, abused during any of these one time, once in the history of these things in the United States, we would know all about it. And that would have been that that would have canceled everything. Just like in Germany. Exactly. It hasn't come up. The fact that we didn't run across it is pretty significant to me. I'm surprised they didn't lay it on Germany. I'm surprised it happened over there. Look, it's all Merkel's fault. New Mexico was a state that also had sort of the same and the reasoning is generally the same wherever you go, which was some kind of moral outrage in this case. There was Michael Guzman, who was a prisoner in New Mexico, that he was actually a convicted murderer. So I'm really surprised yes, same here. That he was even allowed. I'm not sure how that happened, but he conceived four children with different women, different wives in conjugal visits. So he was getting married to different women in prison and having kids. And that was sort of like the poster child in New Mexico for why they shouldn't do stuff like that. Right. Exactly. So that one guy is basically the one thing that American extended family visitation can hang its hat on for anybody who's looking to get rid of those things. But then the other part of the moral thing I said it earlier the idea that it's up to Department of Corrections officials or state representatives to decide whether a family of an incarcerated person, whether these parents want to have another kid or not, it has nothing to do with them. It's not up to these prison officials to decide that kind of family planning. And it's smacks of eugenics and racism to think that's something they talked about publicly. It's something they cite that we don't want people having kids even though they're married because the mom's going to be a single parent or the dad's going to be a single parent, and it's just not something we're interested in. That one really gets my goat. Yeah, the thing that gets my goat is just the lack of data in this gut reaction thing. The Department of Corrections in New Mexico said they didn't see an upside. And they told local media that after two years of research, we found that it did not affect recidivism rates. And they said, oh, well, can I see the details of the study? And they said, well, it was not so much a study. The literal quote was, we looked at individual inmates. There was no study. Oh, well, where's the report on it then? This is, well, we don't have one. Right. I basically just went through a couple of files before I came out here. You're a local paper. I'm blown away that you asked any follow up questions whatsoever, I think is what you're saying. But here's the thing is one side of this argument is not studied. There are no reports. There's very little research and data. The other side has a lot of data, actually, and we know that it was I'm trying to find who did the study that found Yale. Yeah, Yale did a study, and there was a 67% decrease in recidivism with programs like this installed. 67%? Yeah. The Minnesota Department of Corrections also did a study that basically backed that up too. And the thing is. If you talk to prison officials. Typically and like. The ones who actually work in the prisons and criminologists. Like people who actually have degrees in studying this kind of stuff. They say. No. This is actually a really good program. And it does have an impact on recidivism. Because while we're still compiling data on extended family visits. As it stands. We do know that the family is a really important factor in this transition from prison to society. And so anything that could strengthen that bond is a plus. The other thing we didn't really talk about was the cost. People point to the cost and cost savings and stuff. I think New Mexico, before they shut theirs down, it was $120,000 a year for this program. Washington State spends $86,000 a year. And both of those prison systems charged families to have these visitations. So the idea that they don't work and that they're expensive and that there's a moral component to them, there's basically no argument against, and then there's data in favor of the argument for these things, and yet they seem to be going the way of disco in the United States. Sadly, yes. You could just talk about regular visits. There was a study in 2011 that found that inmates who got just regular standard visits these are not conjugal. These are not extended or overnight family visits just visiting people in person while in prison were 13% less likely to return to prison than an inmate who received no visits. Very surprisingly too and controversially, there was a study that found that prisons in their correctional systems in states that never had any family visitation programs had four times more inmate on inmate sexual assault than prisons that don't, which apparently really flies in the face of common wisdom or common consensus on what the purpose of sexual assault in prison is, that everybody thinks it's power based. They're like, actually, there might be a sexual aspect to it as well that have been overlooked to this point. Yeah. Like sexual desires not being met. And you're right. That is contrary to everything we've ever heard about sexual assault in prison, I think. Yeah. And while it's kind of rich to point to Anecdotal data after just disassembling Anecdotal data. There is a lot of sentiment, including among Washington State's Department of Corrections, they have a brochure for their family visitation that basically says an isolated inmate is a dangerous inmate. So one of the sentiments that kind of was carried along for family visitation and visitation in general is this idea that it keeps prisoners in line in the prison, which improves security in the prison as well. Yeah, see, our episode or was that in the prison's episode? We did one on solitary. We did one on solitary and we did a prisons one too. Yeah, we've got a nice little robust and we're popular in prisons too. Yeah, we help prisoners learn to read sometimes. Yeah, they might be listening to this right now. Yes. Special shout out to all the prisoners listening to this. Stay up. If someone is listening to this with a family during their family visit, oh my gosh, I would really like to hear about that. I think that's some T shirts right there. Yeah, yeah, at the very least. So yeah, let us know and we'll send you some T shirts because that is one heck of a specific listen. Well, like you said, this is definitely going away, though, in a big way in the US. Down to seven states now. I mean, prison visits, I don't know if they're really trying to get rid of them. COVID has given them a big opportunity to do that because more and more prison visit policies or programs have revolved around like, Zoom meetings and virtual meetings and stuff like that. And with COVID, I could see it being used to be like, do we really want to bring like there's a lot of costs associated with just regular visits. We could just set up a computer room and have them go in there and have little Zoom meetings with their family. Yes, which I mean, is better than nothing, but if these extended family visits are the gold standard and then standard visits are the hohum standard virtual visits. I've done Zoom hangouts before, and they get old really fast. They do. But I tell you what, of course my heart is bleeding on this one, but do those like, everyday? Yeah. I wonder though, if there's just as many restrictions around those too, because I think you have to demonstrate that you're in good standing in your prison too. Yeah, probably. So that's it. Next time you hear somebody trying to cancel family extended family visitation in your state, maybe don't just say, yeah, serves them right. Like, think about it, maybe vote against it if you want to. If this episode touched you like an angel touched by an angel. You got anything else? Nothing? Well, since I said touch by an angel, of course, as usual, that means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this one short and Sweet Factoid from a Movie Crusher. I'm pretty sure aaron mysell is a movie crusher. Josh and Chuck. Good morning. Just listened to the episode on Francis Perkins. I'm guessing you guys have seen the movie Dirty Dancing. Well, Aaron, if you listen to our shorty on the disappearing lake disappearing lake? You know we have well, there's a part where Johnny asked Baby what her real name is, and I don't remember this in the movie, but she said her response was Frances after the first woman in the cabinet. So baby in the movie, Dirty Dancing was named after Francis Perkins. Right. Pretty cool. Amazing. Nobody puts Francis in the cabinet. Well, somebody did. Oh, wait. Yes. It didn't work. That's seriously, Aaron, that's one of the best facts I've ever heard in my entire life. The best movie trivia ever. Yeah. And very much on the down, though, I think. I bet most people who are dirty dancing heads did not catch that line and know what it meant. No, you have to know both of those things. There's probably a very small it might just be Aaron Misell. Yeah, that's two Aaron Misell listing her mails in like, a week or two. She's got to get some sort of trophy for that. Did I read another one from her? Yeah, she was the one who wrote in with the s y five k. Oh, really? Yeah. She may not be a movie crusher then. Maybe I'm just remembering from that. She probably is. I mean, there's a lot of crossover. Right? All right, well, if you want to let us know something so astounding that you get put on listener mail twice in like a week, we want to hear it. We're really ready for those kind of emails. Go ahead and send them 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 Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
How Makeup Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-makeup-works | Humans have been wearing makeup for a few thousand years now and yet, here in the US the chemicals used in them are still not understood and not really regulated. Delve into the history of makeup and the psychology and feminist theory around it. | Humans have been wearing makeup for a few thousand years now and yet, here in the US the chemicals used in them are still not understood and not really regulated. Delve into the history of makeup and the psychology and feminist theory around it. | Thu, 17 Mar 2016 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=17, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=77, tm_isdst=0) | 49655784 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry. And we wish all of you a happy, happy International Women's Day. Yeah, I'm just over here putting on my concealer. Little mascara. Create some smoky eyes. Very sexy. It's looking good, Chef. Thank you. Looking good. I wish I could unsee this. Pretty good. Did you know it's International Wednesday? I did. Well, today while we're recording not actually today, when this release. Right. We're going to miss it by a week or so. We're still going to be celebrating it, though, right? Exactly. Because we let it roll. And that way you say when you let a party go long. I never heard that. I just made it up. I don't go to parties. I don't either, apparently, because I don't know what you say when you want it to keep going. So, Chuck, we are talking friend, about makeup today. $60 billion cosmetic industry. Yeah. It's a 62.5. And that's up from 40 billion when this article that we're working off of was originally written. Which surprises me. Molly Edmonds in 2007 or eight, maybe 2008, I think. Yeah. I mean, it surprises me in one way. It doesn't, because big industries usually grow. Yeah, that's an enormous amount of growth. Yeah. But it seems like and we'll get to this later with some studies that make up is among the millennials is sort of falling out of fashion in some circles. Right. But we'll get to that. Okay. Cosmetics from the Greek Cosmetic. Is that right? Technique of dresser ornament or cosmos meaning ornament. I thought cosmos meant the universe. K-O-S-M-O-S-I don't know. That's cosmo Kramer got you. That's the etymology. I had not heard that before. That was the Greeks. That's what it says. The Greeks definitely did engage in ornamentation of their face through pigmentation, cosmetics. But they weren't the first, supposedly, as far back as we found it. Are the Egyptians? Sumerian before that, even, I think. Oh, is that right? Yes. I saw that men and women were lipstick and Sumerian. Men and women did. So this is pre Egyptian, then? Because the Egyptians went back pretty far. Yeah. Well, I think there's some debate there about who was first. Right. Apparently we're debating right now. I think sumer was pre. Okay. Egyptian. All right, I'm sure I'll get taken to task. No, not necessarily. I think you're probably right. But at any rate, at least a few thousand years ago yeah. There were people wearing lipstick and the Egyptians in particular were known for using kol. K-H-O-L-K-O-H-L. That's right. And that is basically like using very dark eyeshadow above and below the eye. What was the dude's name from Dead Calm? The killer. Billy Zane. Yeah, I think Billy Zayn and the mummy. Yeah. Basically any movie where they try to make white people look like Egyptian, which is a big thing now in the news. It says who whitewashing? Casting white people to play Egyptians. Right. It's all over the place. Every one of these stupid movies about these big 100 million dollar movies about Egypt are starring, like, British dudes. Well, I was on slopes yesterday, and I found that there is apparently a rumor that Cameron Diaz had been cast to play Maya Angelou in a biopic. And apparently people saw that. Seriously? Who saw that and was like, what? Yeah. And didn't automatically think, well, that's a hoax or a joke. Well, there are some people upset that Zoe who is it from Avatar, soldano Salvano because she's playing Nina Simone and they darkened her skin. And there are some people that are outraged by that, even. It's interesting. Yeah. So back to coal. It was specifically a mixture of copper and lead and ash and burnt almonds. They would mix up and smear on their eyes. Yeah. And what's interesting is it was supposedly kept away the evil eye. Right. That was the main reason they wore it, in addition to just looking awesome. Yeah. The stink eye. Just give me the stink eye. It doesn't matter because I'm wearing coal. That's right. But it also likely unbeknownst to the Egyptians at the time. It would have warded off bacteria because of some of the ingredients specifically led or killed you eventually. Yeah. And then it also would have deflected the sunlight from the desert. Yeah. So you're all set. Which is why ball players will put tar under their eyes right. To keep that reflection down. Tar on the baseball bat. It can be whatever. I'm sure they don't use real tar. Right. My dad, back in the day, for church softball, used to go out and get it from his car tire no. And put it under his eye. No. Yes. I thought it was pretty tough. Wow. Yeah. That is tough. Dirty church softball. The toughest fort. Ancient Greeks and Romans also painted their faces from ground up stones and minerals. And things were pretty much like that until the Middle Ages when people said, I don't want my face colored up, I want it white. Well, prior to that, prior to the Middle so early Middle Ages, the early medieval era, that women used hot tongs to curl their hair. They dyed their hair. They used vegetable pigments to redden their faces. So there was makeup use in Europe prior to the Middle Ages where you did use pigments to colorize yourself. Right. In much the same way that, like, the Romans and Greeks would have. Now, were these tawdry women? No. Okay. These are just average, ordinary women. So later on, it fell out of fashion. Unless you were, like, a prostitute. Right. And the reason why it fell out of fashion was because of income inequality. So if you were a woman who was among the poorer classes, you were a labor, and you likely had the labor out of doors, and in doing so, you would gain a tan. Sure. So a way to show that you were wealthy and of higher status was to accentuate your paleness. And they would use something called serous, which is vinegar. And lead is going to come up a lot in this. Disturbingly it still comes up sometimes, we'll find out. And that's the kind of grease paint, the cosmetic whitener that women used for centuries, actually, when very pale skin was in. Yeah. And Elizabeth I came along and she's like, look how pasty white I am. She's a perfect example of the serus use. Yeah. And there's a misnomer that she was bald by the time she was, like, 30. And that comes from the fact that she has a very large forehead in most of these portraits. Yeah, this is it was from the use of the lead that it made her hair fall out. I've heard that they plucked the hairline that far back on purpose. Well, there's a few theories. One is that they plucked because they wore wigs, and the wig would fit better. Another is that they just exaggerated it in paintings because a big forehead, a high forehead, was supposedly tied to intelligence. So hot. No, it's smart. Which is hot. Got you. Sure. And then the other theory is that the lead made it creep back. So dumb. But she was not bald. So I've been fighting that fight for years. Have you been? The Q e one wasn't bald. And finally, here on International Women's Day, you get to lay it down. This next part to me was super interesting for the dumb reason is that I didn't know a lot of these cosmetic companies were actually named for people. Yeah. Max Factor. Real guy was Maximilian von von Factor. Maximilian Factorowitz, really? Yes. And you've shortened it to Max Factor for obvious reasons. But I'm such a dummy. I thought it meant like the maximum Max Power factor or something. You could have I got you. The max factor was a dude. Sure. Yeah. Actually, you'll find that a lot of cosmetics that you use today were founded by dude. Estee Lauder was a lady. She was a lady. And actually, the founder of Maybelline was inspired by a sister, Mabel. Pretty neat. But yeah. There's the modern idea of cosmetics and the modern use of cosmetics in the idea that you have to or else you are making a statement or not a beautiful woman all comes about around the end of the 19th century, early 20th century, and it really comes kicking in in about 1920, thanks to the cinema. And specifically Max Factor himself, who originally provided wigs to the movies. Yeah. And previous to that, interestingly, the rise in makeup was tied to a couple of things. One, people getting their portrait, like their kind of singular portrait painted, so they want to look good for it. And then the fact that mirrors we did a great podcast on mirrors, didn't we? Yes, we did. Many moons ago. It was surprisingly difficult. It was the physics of a mirror is really mind bending. Some lead. The affordability of mirrors all of a sudden was a thing. Right. So those two things. And then the movie industry comes along. Well, and photography, too. Did you say photography? Well, portraitry, which could be, I guess, painting and photography. Right, yeah. So apparently, I guess you were just kind of figuring it out as you went along. Maybe when you did your make up for that one picture that was made of you, I guess. And then the movie the movies came along. And when the movies came along, obviously, it went from stage to screen. Yeah. Heavy makeup as a stage performance. Right. Because people had to be able to see you all the way in the back of the house, and you had to accentuate your facial expressions. But if you did that and did a close up, you looked like a clown. A clown. So they had to just basically reinvent makeup for the movies. And Max Factor was one of these people who are working to do that, and he said, you know what? Stars love this stuff. I've invented this grease paint. That's a foundation that makes the skin look so even and beautiful that the starlets who wear it are wearing it not just for work. They're also wearing it out on the red carpet. Yeah. People are going to go crazy for this. Max Factor started to market it and looked around and figured out what else he could invent. And he came up with the eyeliner and lip cloth as well. Yeah, huge breakthrough. And make up a tree. Right. A few years later, actually, around the same time, 1915, TL. Williams started maybelline after his sister Mabel, which we mentioned, because she came up with a way to make her eyelashes look better. She took petroleum jelly and coal dust and mashed it up together, painted it into her eyelashes and said, this stuff is bare to get out, but look at these lashes. I can't see. Maybe she's born with it. And around the same time, in the 1920s, nail care really took a leap forward, courtesy, in a weird way, of Henry Ford. Yeah, in a roundabout way. He had a very famous slogan that people who bought his Model T could have it in any color they want so long as they wanted black. And the reason that he chose black was because the black lacquer paint that he used dried faster than any of the other pigments. So black is what he went with because he wanted to pump out cars. Right. And he was doing a really good job pumping out cars. So to separate their companies from his, other guys started to look in how to come up with colors, because colors were in demand. People did want colors, and it didn't have any options back then. So they started investing in the research for new kinds of colors of fast drying lacquer paints, and it actually ended up saying they came up with some breakthroughs. And some people said, you know what? Forget the cars. Let's put this on fingernails. Yeah, let's paint fingernails with this nitrocellulose in all kinds of colors, a rainbow of colors. Have you ever seen yellow fingernails? Well, you're about to. Yellow. Not yellowed. Yellow. That ed. Makes a huge difference. Well, no, I thought yellow fingernails would look kind of they look cool, kicky and like a Swatch commercial, you know? Okay, then, Mr. Charles. Revson. Sound familiar? Revlon? I guess Revson didn't sound as good through Ellis Island or something. No, he co founded it with somebody else. Okay. He made nail polish super famous in the US. By combining matching nail polish to lipstick and putting a personality on it. Like, if you're a saucy lady, you might like this combo. Yes. It's actually a very well known advertising campaign called Fire and Ice. And like, on these Fire and Ice ads, there would be, like, a little questionnaire at the bottom of the ad, like, does gypsy music make you cry? Or are you the type of woman who would dye her hair without your husband's consent? You better be. And if you answered, yes, Ellis, then yes, you need this type of lipstick with the matching nail polish. It was a big deal, but Revlon was not the only game in town with lipstick, and it actually kicked off the lipstick wars, the famous lipstick wars. Yeah. There was a company called Hazel Bishop, and Hazel Bishop was an actual chemist who was making lipstick for women, and she had some good stuff. She came up with what's called Indelible lipstick. I think it had been around, but she really made some good formulations of Indelible, aka smudge proof lipstick. Yeah, you could do a little kissy face right, and not have it look cruddy. Sure. Bishop and Revlon are going at it back and forth. Cody, which had that very famous fragrance in the 70s, coty, C-O-T-Y. They came into the mix, too, and their big role that they played was, they told, Playtex, which had apparently a trademark on the word Living, that Revlon had a lipstick line called Living Lipstick Platex sued him, and Revlon had to abandon their entire line of this type of indelible lipstick. The whole thing ended, though, with Revlon coming out on top, because Revlon decided to sink a pretty decent amount of money into advertising on this new TV show called the $64,000 Question. Big show. Charles Revsn thought this movie or this show was going to be crap, apparently his word. And it turned out to be, like, just the hottest thing on TV. And Revlon was the only sponsor. That ultimately what ended the lipstick wars of the 1950. So is Hazel. I thought it was a single gunshot to the head, which isn't funny at all, but it didn't happen how it was. Okay. And then, of course, Estee Lauder comes along with her husband, Joseph Lauder. And they were great. She specifically was a great marketer. She was the first person to go set up shop in department stores and say, here, have some stuff for free. People went, what? Yeah, like, go use this stuff. What? And that's how I'll get you hooked on my clinical first one's on me restaurant. You yeah. And you go to any department store today and wander through the cosmetics. Yeah. They'll give you whatever you want for free. Yeah. You can walk out there looking like Bose of the Clown if you want. So estate Lauderd is big thing with skin care, right? Like skin. Sure. I mean, a lot of other stuff too, but yeah. By the cosmetics industry was established. Yeah. It wasn't going anywhere. Big money. It was going to do nothing but build up and up. Right. And the thing is, by about this time, the ingredients had all been kind of established. And so nowadays, if you look at makeup, you're going to see basically the same stuff. We'll talk about all that right after this break. How about that? Sounds great. So, Chuck, if you take a tube of lipstick and you crack it off, and you take another tube of lipstick from another company and crack it off and then throw it through a mass spectrometer, you're going to find the same stuff in there? In both of them? Basically, yeah. In most cosmetics, it's largely the same ingredients. Who wrote this? Molly Edmonds, our former colleague, original co host of Steph. Mom never told you that's, right. Molly, if you're listening, she's not listening. Hello. Foundation is usually got some moisturizing base with some oil and water or wax. You're going to have a filler that's going to make things smooth on your face. Then you're going to have some pigment like iron oxide. And that's going to you want to match your skin tone. So that's why they have all different varieties of pigment of moisturizing base. Right. That's with foundation. Right? Yeah. And then they'll add some other stuff here. There like if you have dry skin, you might find some hohoboa oil in the mesh spectrometer. Analysis, read out, print out. Sure. Eyeliners and guyliner. Sure. Which is the same thing. It's just used by different people. Right? Yeah. Like the Hollywood vampires, they use guy liners. Yes. Eyeliners. They consist of something called film formers and thickeners. Right? Yes. And then pigments in addition to that. So the FILMFormer is the actual makeup itself that contains the pigment. Again, usually some sort of iron oxide. Right? Yeah. Those come up a lot. Yes. Which is funny because I think that's also what they used originally back in the day in Egypt. So we've come a long way chemistry wise, but we're still using the same raw materials in a lot of cases. Yeah. These minerals. Yeah. And then you also have the thickener, which basically keeps the eyeliner on your eye and not just going off to the side. Yeah. And the same is basically true for eyeshadow. It's going to have that base ingredient, maybe talc or Cowlin clay. Like shaolin? Yes. But with a K instead of an S H. Cowan clay. And then a binder, of course, made out of zinc or magnesium, some sort of derivative of magnesium. Mascara. I mean, basically we're not going to go through all these. Oh, no, it's all basically the same stuff. Yeah. So you have a pigment, you have something that creates the base of the whole thing, whether it's some sort of wax or powder or cream, and then you have some sort of binder that keeps the thing in place and makes it difficult to come off. And with mascara in particular, it's very famous for having a waterproof version. Yeah. So you cry at your wedding and you don't look like a scary prom night girl. Sure. Right. So with mascara being waterproof, apparently, as long as it doesn't have water in it, it's likely going to be waterproof. Yeah. That'd be terribly ironic if it included water as an ingredient. Yeah. But apparently those are really tough to get off. So you don't want to wear a lot. Yeah. And you want to take them off though, or else your lashes will fall out. Supposedly. Conjecture. You want to take off your makeup every night, they say, for quality skin. That's what Stevie Nick said. Her secret was. I've heard that. I think I said that before. Not very sure, too, which is weird. So let's talk makeup safety, Chuck. That's actually a step in makeup safety. Yeah. This is a huge deal right now because the standards for makeup safety have not changed since 1938. No, the Food and Drug Administration was created, and when it was created, the cosmetics industry apparently did a really good job of lobbying the government to say, hey, imagine that, go regulate the food and the drugs. Sure will fall under your cute little umbrella, but just stay out of our business. We're going to self regulate. And since seriously, guys, it's 2016. Since 1938, the laws governing the regulation of cosmetics have not effectively changed in any real way, shape or form. Yes, but that could be changing very soon. This article from just this week. Here in March 2016, there is the Personal Care Product Safety Act Up Bills 1014, introduced last April, and his waiting hearings, introduced by Diane Feinstein of California and Susan Collins of Maine. It's a bipartisan bill, basically saying, hey, in Europe and the EU, they've banned 1001, 3000 hundred chemicals from personal care products for a real good reason. And we have only banned eleven. And something is wrong there. Banned eight. I think I'm restricted three. Yeah, I think they're all technically on the band list. Now we're using these same chemicals that are banned in the EU because they're not banned here. And the reason they're not banned is there's a huge distinction between Europe and the United States as far as chemicals are concerned. In Europe, the approach is a chemical is potentially harmful until it's proven otherwise. Right. And they treat them like that. And when they find out, they investigate these things, and when they find out that they are harmful, then they ban them. In the United States, a chemical is determined to be not harmful until it's proven otherwise, and it's exceedingly difficult to prove that something is actually harmful. We've been talking about things like parabens and phthalates for a very long time now, many years. And public sentiment blows up and the science behind it blows up. And everyone says, well, you can't point to a paraben and say, conclusively that it caused that tumor, despite the fact that when you dig around in that tumor, you're going to find parabens. Right. Or you can't say that parabens are harmful to kids, even though you can find parabens in placenta because it crossed over into the placenta, which means that it's being transferred from mother to child. Yes, you can't conclusively say that parabens cause cancer, but the evidence in support of that idea is so abundant that we really should be regulating these things. Still not. Yeah. There's a woman named Jessica Asav who's been battling this. She's on a crusade for the past ten years to get more oversight. And the name of this article is the average woman puts 515 synthetic chemicals on her body every day without knowing, and 60% of that is absorbed into the body. People make a big deal these days about what you eat, and people don't think a lot about what they put on their skin, the largest organ, and that gets into your body as well, apparently. There's a 2007 study, I didn't see who it was affiliated with, but a biochemist studied cosmetics and found that women absorb just under \u00a35 of chemicals a year through their cosmetics. Unbelievable. Yeah, it's unbelievable. And the stuff in the United States is basically unregulated. Oh, yeah. And her contention is, which is correct, is basically, we're all guinea pigs. What you do in the US is you can use these cosmetics until something bad happens, and then they take a look at it and they're responsible for self reporting this stuff. Right. But they don't have to self report it. That's one of the big distinctions of Feinstein's and Collins, Bill, is that it would require cosmetic companies to report incidents of death, disfigurement, or hospitalization. So right now you could put on some lipstick and end up in the hospital, and the Revlon could come and look into it and find, like, oh, God, it's because of this lipstick. They don't have to say a word about it legally. Right. And nothing happens to them because the FCA doesn't have any kind of teeth in this industry. Well, just a couple of weeks ago, johnson and Johnson was ordered to pay $72 million in damages for the death of a woman from ovarian cancer that was caused by using TAUK and baby powder. So what? The proposed bill would do a few things. One is going to require companies to report any adverse health effects within 15 days. And then they would review five risky product ingredients per year and ban them based on the findings. And this year, up for review, it would be Diazolina dental urea. Nice. Preservative found in lip balm. Deodorant may release formaldehyde lead, acetate. It's in hair dyes linked to neurological problems, formaldehyde, methylene glycol, carcinogen, and hair straighteners, including Brazilian blowouts, it said, which is a problem for me. propolin, cosmetics, preservative. And finally, Quaternium 15. It's another preservative. And new listeners may not know this. My wife Emily has her own natural body product company, and she has been up against this since she started because the FDA doesn't regulate using things like words like all natural or organic. So she has competitors out there selling soap and lotion that says all natural. And she's always saying, look at the ingredients on this. Right? Like, you can't even pronounce half of them. So she's having to self educate customers, like, on a daily basis on what all natural really means. Don't even use fragrance oils. This is really all natural. So she's been up against it for years. Right. So this is something that's very close to her heart. Oh, sure. And you can go to loveyourma.com here it is. If you want to support mom and dad, right. With all natural ingredients. Yeah. You were just like, Wait for it. Yeah, wait for it. But it is a big deal in our family because I think I went off on fragrances and maybe the Smell podcast. No, we did one on perfumes. Oh, yeah, perfumes. That's a good one, too. And it's just we don't use any of that stuff anymore. And it really stands out now. Like, if I smell a T shirt that's been washed and tied, it stinks to me. Yeah, I know what you mean. It just smells fake synthetic. But most people love that little squirt, a little fabrize on the clothes, sure. But you get used to it, I guess. And if you stand away from it for a while, when you're exposed to it again, it does seem cloying, for sure. But here's the deal, though. With small businesses, they sort of have mixed reactions to this bill because on the one hand, it would help them out because the big corporate giants that use all the synthetic chemicals will have to be under the pressure to like they don't even have to say where they make the stuff now. Right. But small businesses, it might hurt them because they're going to have to comply with all the stuff, which takes a lot of time and resources and aka money. Right. So it's sort of a double edged sword. Is that what they call it? Yeah, but the thing is, what the Collins Feinstein bill reflects is taking the onus of cosmetic safety from the individual user onto the manufacturer, which is the reverse of what it is now. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, right now, cosmetic safety tips include don't stab yourself in the eye with the mascara wand. Right. Because it might allow bacteria to seep into your cornea and you'll lose your eye, or something like that. Right. Rather than, don't use this mascara because it contains known carcinogens. Right. That we know are now carcinogens because FDA finally got around to actually studying chemicals to find out whether they're harmful or not. Yeah. We should do a show on whether cancer is a man made disease. There's a lot of speculation now. Some people think that there did not used to be cancer. Yeah. And it's all because of stuff we've created. Sure. And even if you don't believe that, at the very least, we have ramped it up. Yes, I definitely would agree with that. I don't know enough about it to say either way, and I'd love to get schooled from both sides, so yeah, let's agree with that. Is it time for another break? I think it is time for a break. We're pretty worked up about this whole FDA thing. I know. All right, we're going to come back and talk a little bit about the psychology of wearing makeup, which is pretty interesting if you are into natural stuff, all natural ingredients, that kind of thing. There's actually, like, lines of makeup, too, that you can look into that don't contain a lot of, like, added stuff. It's called mineral makeup, for the most part, which is just like naturally occurring minerals that are ground up. And there you go. No fragrances, that kind of stuff. And they're supposedly better for you. They don't last as well, apparently, but yeah, it's like, do you want the chemistry or do you want the shelf life? Right. Well, that's another thing. Emily battles the shelf life. Yeah, I'm sure that's something to deal with. And she doesn't make cosmetics either, to be fair. Soap and lotion and stuff like that. Yardstick of civilization doesn't count as a cosmetic, though. Some states are taking it into their own hands, notably California, of course. They passed in 2005 the Safe Cosmetics Act, which requires manufacturers to disclose ingredients that are on a watch list as being dangerous. Yes, they do that with not just cosmetics. If you could buy a frying pan and it'll be like, this frying pan contains something that we're not going to say that is known to cause cancer in humans. It's like, what? Which part? Like the teflon pan or whatever. Boy, man, I got good cookware for Christmas. Oh, yeah? What brand? All. Clad. Oh, yeah. AllClad is the way to go. Good stuff. I pulled all my Christmas money smart and threw in a little, and it makes a huge difference in how much I enjoy cooking. Yeah, and I mean, like, you can very easily say All Clad is too expensive. No. All clad is an investment. And if you take care of your All Clad stuff, you're going to have it for the rest of your life rather than having to buy new ones every few years. Agreed. All Clad. Maybe they'll send us something. Yeah. So we promised before the break to talk about the psychology of makeup. Which break? Just the one we did. Okay. And I think it's super interesting when you look at, like, beauty and the ideal of physical beauty and where that comes from and how it changes. You look at Elizabeth, I was like, you think? Yeah. High forehead and, like, I love it, man. She's a hot mama. No white tan. I'm sure someone out there is like, you're crazy, Elizabeth. I was hot. But that's another very big point, too. Is there a universal, ideal beauty? Well, scientists have looked at it, and one thing they've come up with that's been pretty universally accepted as symmetry is a very important thing. Sure. I saw a special one time on PBS when they took supposedly the most beautiful people in the world and split them down the middle and measured them out, and they are usually pretty symmetrical. I saw one site that suggested that faces follow the golden ratio. Like, perfectly beautiful, symmetrical faces follow that golden ratio. Pops up in nature all the time. Interesting. We should do one on the golden ratio. Totally. Okay, so here's the deal, though. Growing up, we did episodes on male and female puberty. Little boys and little girls have kind of similar faces until they reach puberty. Right. And then that's when things start happening. To distinguish this in general, a guy's nose will be bigger, more prominent brow and forehead. Women might have plumper lips and higher cheekbones. Right. And this is how we change, generally speaking, into men and women. Right. So one of the theories behind why women wear makeup is because they're trying to hyper accentuate their naturally distinguishing features. That makes right, exactly. So, like, making the eyes bigger, accentuating the eyes with, like, eyeshadow and eyeliner, making the lashes longer. Plumping the lips. Right. Which supposedly I've always heard, and I found it elsewhere in another house to force article about lipstick itself, that there's a theory that emulates a vagina. That applying lips and lipstick and lip gloss and all that emulates the vagina. So there's like a psychology behind that as well. And the whole point is here is the idea behind makeup then, is a woman showing off her fitness for mating to men, basically, which makes sense, evolutionarily speaking. That's the predominant theory behind makeup. That's right. Which, I mean, if you go talk to Max Factor. They're probably not going to say that it's all about beauty, but ultimately, it's supposedly intending to set off certain evolutionary cues in men who are seeking a mate. Right. A youthful appearance, again, is usually looked at as more attractive, probably because reproductive, you're able to reproduce as a younger person easily. That's right. Or more easily, allegedly. Second way feminism comes along in the that's when women were like, you know what? Take your bra off, grow that armpit hair out, and quit painting your face. So other men sisters, so men think you look good. Right. Fix yourself with makeup. The second wave feminism, and it was very much hip to the idea of what was really behind makeup. That theory that it's all about attracting or sexualizing yourself in order for men to find you more attractive. And they were saying, forget that. Forget men. Stop wearing makeup, sister. Yeah. You look good as yourself. We got to do one on feminism, too. Totally. And the thing is, it didn't take off, like, as sensible as that idea was, and timely as it was, it didn't take off like a rocket because a lot of women were like, yeah, that's a good no, I don't want to do that. I want to wear makeup. Well, yeah. And a lot of women are like, feminism is about me having a choice. That's third way to do what I want to do. Right? Yeah. Which is like, I want to wear makeup. It's art to me, like, the way I look. I like applying it, and I'm not doing it for a man. I like making myself look this way. There's a similar school of thought. It's like, yeah, I'm wearing lipstick to drive men crazy, and that gives me power. Sure. That's in and of itself, a type of feminism as well. So the idea that a woman should have a choice whether she wears makeup or not, be viewed as being a harlot or as being a turncoat to her gender, is, I think, the basis of this third wave feminism. That it's like, yeah, wear makeup if you want, don't wear it if you don't want, but don't force your beliefs on other people. There's a special place in hell for women who wear makeup. Right. And then, of course, younger girls. Like, when should you start wearing makeup? Like, this is, to me, an entirely separate conversation. Oh, absolutely. But does it sexualize a young girl by wearing makeup? Too young. And just physically speaking, if this stuff is dangerous in a carcinogenic way, like, what does it do to the skin of, like, a twelve year old? Yeah. And not to pick on the right. Although they definitely deserve to be picked on along with parabens. If you look at the medical literature about whether they're potentially harmful or not, they seem to have the most toxicity in pregnant women and in younger people. There you have it. So yes. If you are using makeup as a younger girl, then you potentially are being exposed to things like endocrine disruptors. That could be even more harmful because your body is still developing. They're going to have more of an effect on you. So, yeah, there's a number of reasons to say maybe white men. But hey, that's your choice. Yes. Agreed. Unless your parents say no. Yeah. It's a whole other issue, isn't it? I can't wait to face all those things. So let's talk about men and makeup. Really? A little bit. Well, there's a couple of different categories of men with makeup. Men wearing makeup. You and I had a TV show. Oh, man, I wore so much makeup. I didn't wear any makeup. I know. And Chuck, I wish I could go back and it's just been like, I'm a Chuck. And here's the deal. I didn't not wear makeup because I thought it was girly or anything. I didn't wear makeup because I sweat like a beast. Our stage was hot as Hades. And the thing is, you look totally fine, and then HD, I've seen you. I appreciate it. But makeup doesn't I remember our makeup artist being like, well, this will help with the sweat. And I'm like you don't understand. You had a hand fan, do you remember? Yeah, they had it like, right when I take any somebody put yeah. Fanny. That's right. In Chuck's hand. Yeah. Makeup won't there are some scenes, though, where I remember used to stop and be like, guys like, look at Chuck. He's got sweat pouring down his head. Like, we can't shoot. I remember that, too. But you're right. There are some scenes where I look very glossy, but there are many scenes where you look orange. Right. So I just didn't like it. I didn't want the chemicals on my face. I didn't like the way it stung my eyes because I sweat. And it just was like, no, it wasn't fun to take off at the end of the day. Oh. So anyway, that's my makeup story. My friend I'm not going to say his name he was a personal driver for Burt Reynolds on a movie here in Atlanta. Oh, yeah. And I was like, what does Burt Reynolds look like without his makeup? He went, what do you mean? He's like, he puts it on in his room that morning. So you don't know what Burt Reynolds looks like without makeup. And it was caked on. Right. If Burt Reynolds and Tim Kazarinsky are actually the same person, the other aspect of men and makeup is whether or not men well, A, if they should have any say in whether or not women wear makeup, but whether men like it, men have long tried to have a say in whether women wore makeup, and a lot of it, sadly, is like bullying yeah. Or accusations of fraud or which craft. Sorcery British Parliament had a law that said if you wear makeup. It was akin to witchcraft. They said, basically, you have a false face, so you can get an annulment. Gentlemen, once you wake up after your wedding night and your wife doesn't have make up on and you're frightened by her appearance, you can get an annulment because she tricked you with thinking that she was pretty with all her makeup. That's exactly right. Unbelievable. Yeah. And who was it? The poet Marshall. Roman poet Marshall. He wrote to a woman, apparently, who wore makeup and said, you are but a composition of lies. No man can say I love you, for you are not what he loves, and no one loves what you are. What a mean poem to write. Yes. It's like just shut up. Keep it to yourself. You have preference for a lady who doesn't wear makeup. Fine. Yeah. It's like today on the Internet where somebody's like, I don't like that TV show. These guys have to hear about it. It's like, no, just move along. Yeah. I'm not a big fan of makeup, but I don't care. Like, it's your choice. Emily doesn't wear makeup because she's lazy. I'm sure she'll love that. No, she'll be the first one to admit it. Okay. Every now and then, she'll doll herself up a very little bit when I'm coming over. Yeah. He's like, Josh is coming. Let me get out the smoky eyes. I know it drives them crazy when you wear it, Josh, but when she does, it's always like, well, you look like a different version of my wife. Sure. I'm not like but also just like, the way she looks normal. Yeah. There's definitely something to be said about how a woman looks without makeup. You mean wears much makeup, does she? No, not much at all. She frequently goes without it, too. And I understand that's not to ignore. There's a whole group of women out there around the world who are like, no, you wear makeup. Yeah. You put your face on. Exactly. That is frequently what it's called. And they just can't imagine not wearing makeup. Fine. Bully for you. Do what you want to do. It does seem like there's a big conversation that you can start up anytime if you want, especially on slate. Where are those women selling out the feminist movement still and that kind of thing. But yeah, I tend to agree with the idea of choice. Yeah, there's a big movement now among some of the celebrity women that's like, no, I want to be on the cover of this magazine without makeup. Like, I want to show my true self because I'm tired of this ideal that we've created in culture and pop culture, that we have to look a certain way. And one of the things I hate a lot of things about the Internet, but I think one of my things I hate worst is, look how ugly these celebrities look when they're grocery shopping. Right. Look at this lady without her makeup on. Right. I know. It's just awful, man. Or there was this movement called hashtag no makeup selfies that went around Twitter recently, last year, maybe, I think. And they raised something like ten, $12 million for cancer research. That's great. For general cancer research. Sure. That is great. But it was, like, daring. It was a daring, bold move to release a photo of yourself publicly without wearing makeup, which still suggests that it is basically a social expectation or social requirement. People expect you generally to wear makeup then, and to not wear it is like a bold act that one's willing to sacrifice oneself for in the name of generating money for cancer research. Yeah. And all in the name, in general, of submitting to the whims of what a man finds attractive. That's kind of at the base of it all. Yeah. But again, I don't think you can discount the idea that women themselves frequently find themselves more attractive when they have make up on, and there's no reason to discount that. Oh, man. All right, let's take the wasps nest off of our arms. I thought this is very fair. I thought it was pretty our old trusty saying, to each their own. Yeah. Which we frequently adopt and then abandon, depending on the topic. That's exactly right. If you want to know more about makeup, you can go to department store. Did you know the stuff in department stores are called Prestige Cosmetics? No. That's what they're called. What do you mean? Just the stuff they sell. Yeah, like the good stuff. They don't call it, like, high end or they call it prestige cosmetics. Yeah, man, it is expensive. Oh, we didn't talk. Did you see some of the weird stuff that they put in cosmetics? Yeah. You want to run through them real quick. There's a couple that stuck out to me, like Roguekill. All right, fill me in. So tallow. You render animal fat and you come up with tallow. And tallow is used in a lot of different moisturizers shampoos, that kind of stuff. And apparently it is legal to source your animal fat from everything from Zoos to Rogue Hill. And this stuff ends up in cosmetics. Weird. It is a little weird. Here's one. The TNS recovery complex by skin medica infant four skin this is one of Oprah's favorite things. And I looked into it because it's a big antiaging product, and I thought, they're not using infant foreskin. And they aren't in a way. What they did was 20 years ago, they used cells from a single foreskin grown in a lab that they still use the same thing now. But people act like they're, like, taking foreskin and grinding it up. Right. And Oprah is like, look under your chairs. There's a foreskin under there. This one sounds kind of gross at first, but then when you look into it, it's awesome. Snail ooze. Yeah, so snail ooze. They use moisturizers, and I imagine Prestige Moisturizers because it contains glycolic acid and elastin. And the reason that it contains is because the snail needs to heal its own cuts and bruises and stuff like that. And apparently it works in human skin as well. Yeah, pretty cool stuff. Yeah. I mean, if you're a vegan, you're probably not using a lot of these products because everything from lanolin to crushed beetles go into a lot of cosmetics, right? Vegans are like, I don't want animals in my products. Welllana, Lane is squeezing from sheep's wool, so technically you're fine. Don't tell a vegan that the wool industry is very oh, I see. Hotly got you debated. You got anything else? No. If you want to know more about makeup, go type that in the search bar@howstepworks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for this in your mail. This one I'm going to call using us to teach English in China. Oh, I like this one. And we're even going to play a little bit of this because it's so awesome. Hey guys have been listening to Stuff You Should Know for several years now. I used to listen to them every night before bed. It's very relaxing. And in recent months, I've been playing them for educational purposes. I teach at an international school in Shanghai, China, and your podcasts have helped me to teach English to my high school students. Recently, we had an assignment where the students had to create their own Stuff You Should Know podcast, and many of them love the project so much. They did an excellent job. Feel free to listen to some of these. You have inspired my Chinese students not only to listen to the show, but also to speak more English inside and outside the classroom. I'm so impressed with their language improvement. Thank you for that, and thank you for making my job so enjoyable and rewarding. Warmest regards. That's from Jason. And let's play a little snippet of these Chinese students doing stuff you should know. This episode is brought to you by only 16 RnB for two big fry chicken wings. Ken grandpa chicken. Welcome to the stuff you should know from housestuffworkcom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast, Cindy and Mona. Here a couple of stuff writers@housestepworks.com. Hey, how is your winter holiday? My winter holiday? You know, because of the spring festival, I wondering between different relatives for greeting. That's really boring. Boring and boring. And the most serious problem is, once the holiday is in, my waste must add about 1.5 kg. But I know you went wrong with your father. Right? Don't worry about that too much. That is awesome. Jason is doing God's work. You should know to teach things. It's cute, even though they're not little kids. Yeah. It's just cute to hear these Chinese students doing the stuff you should know. Yeah, I think it's awesome. Yeah. So hello to Jason's class. Hi, guys. Gal here in Shanghai. You said, right? Yeah. Thanks for listening and keep up the good work. And if you want to get in touch with us, you guys can tweet to us at s yskpodcast. You can join us on facebook. Comstuffyshow. You can send us an email to stuff, podcast us@howstepworks.com, and, as always, join us at home on the web stuffyouw.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howsteporks.com." | ||
How Casinos Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-casinos-work | Gambling predates the written word; dice made of bones have been discovered at prehistoric sites. Today, the concept of amassing a fortune in moments remains attractive. Join Josh and Chuck as they take a look at the games and the glitz of casinos. | Gambling predates the written word; dice made of bones have been discovered at prehistoric sites. Today, the concept of amassing a fortune in moments remains attractive. Join Josh and Chuck as they take a look at the games and the glitz of casinos. | Tue, 13 Sep 2011 14:51:24 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=13, tm_hour=14, tm_min=51, tm_sec=24, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=256, tm_isdst=0) | 40962993 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W. Chuckle bryant and this is stuff you should know. The podcast. Yes, it is. Chuck. Josh. How's it going? Great. I'm excited about this one. Really? How do you know my favorite casino or favorite scorches casino? We talked about that. No way. Is it really? I think I used to say it was a close second to goodfellas, but I believe this is edge. I watched it again the other day, man, and I love casino. The movie. Okay. I'll give it. It might edge goodfellas out. I can't believe you're saying that. But to each his own. We always say. To me, it's like flip a coin. That mean streets and good fellows, just like either of those three. They're all different. I've not seen Mean Streets. Should I? Yeah. That was the first one he did with the Neurons. Yeah. And Harvey Cattell. All right. Casinos. Casinos. Well, now, we've already talked about the movie, so are you still excited about this one? No. Okay, we get your favorite part out. I read that casino winnings for June in Las Vegas, Nevada, or in Nevada as a whole, were up 16% over last year. Yeah. That's good. Which is a good sign, because one of the things that are pretty much recession proof are stocks in vice. Well, vices basically, like liquor company stock, tobacco company stock, and gambling company stock. By gambling company, of course, I mean, like a casino or something like that. But with the recession of 2008, even those kind of stocks are taking a hit. It was that much of a bath. Wow. So in the midst of all this talk about, like, a double dip recession and the downgrade by Moody's to AAA plus for government bonds, the fact that the revenue in Nevada for gambling is up 16% is a good sign. Conversely, it's down like 8% in Atlantic City. But that's Atlantic City AC has struggled on and off over the years since, like, the beginning, right? Yeah. I mean, even Trump took a bath there. Yeah. Literally and figuratively. Yes. You've been to plenty of casinos, right. You spend most of your time there. Not true. But I've been to Vegas a bunch. Just living in La. You go more than oh, yeah. I'll bet your average Joe White yeah, because it's close. You can drive work jobs there, film jobs and stuff. I've been to Vegas a few times, and I think those are the only casinos I've ever been to. I hate it. We're ones in Vegas. I hate Vegas now. Do you? Yeah, man, I'm done. I like it. I like it if you go into Vegas with, like, a Vegas kind of mind set. Yeah, it's fun. I mean, I wouldn't ever spend, like, my yearly vacation there. Right. But, I mean, a few days in Vegas. That's pretty cool. I like it a couple of times. I'm not a big gambler, though, either, so I don't go there. And, like, there's not a chance that I'm going to come out of there like my life is ruined. So I love to gamble, but I don't do it. I do, too, but I'm not a big gamble. I can walk away at any time. Yeah, me, too. I just enjoy it, but I don't do it. So it's weird to say that I love gambling. What's your game? Blackjack sports book. I think I told you before on the show that I usually go into the sports book and throw down some bets, and depending how I do on those, I'll gamble with that money at the tables. Got you. Okay, I'm going to have to try that next time because I usually just walk up to the roulette table and go, here's some money. Oh, I lost. Here's a little more. I've never lost money faster in my life than at a roulette day. Yeah, it is pretty fast, but when it hits, it is thrilling. I'm sure it is. That's what they count on. Yeah. So, Chuck, you know, casinos. Well, gambling itself is pretty ancient. The Grabster who wrote this article and included Amani Python reference, did you catch it? I don't know if I did. He mentions the Italian Inquisition. Oh, very good. The noble people expected the Italian Inquisition pretty good. And we're never caught Campbelling, but there's been dice found in prehistoric sites. That's awesome. There's something called astergali, and they're carved knuckle bones that were the predecessors of dice. Yeah. They look kind of like molars. Yeah, a little bit. And then after that, we're actual primitive six sided dice. That's right. And so we've been gambling, we've been shooting crap, at least for eons a long time, at the very least for millennia. But casinos or places where you go to gamble didn't really come about until I think, about the 15th or 16th century. And Venice was actually the birthplace of the casino of the gambling hall. I love it. Yeah, it's Italian. Initially, there were these aristocrats in Italy would have these private parties at places called Ordotti and at the Odori, it was a private club for rich folks, but it was basically a gambling club because that's what went on there. Right. And this is where the Monty Python reference comes in, where it was illegal, you weren't allowed to gamble. But the aristocrats knew when to expect the Italian Inquisition. Yeah. And they didn't do a lot of inquiry, from what I understand, too. Right. But it was known that this is outlawed. But I guess the Fathers of Venice figured out that the people who were running the show there were making a ton of cash, right? Oh, yeah. And if they set up their own Riddo, they could make that cash themselves. So they did. They set up what was called the Ridoldo, the capital R. I love that. It was a four story gambling house where they took all these different games and just put them under one roof. It was a casino. It was the first casino, yeah. And they even did things like give you food and beverages and keep you happy and like you said, ran a variety of games. And the Grabster points out this is a big deal for a couple of reasons. A, it's government sanctioned gambling house for the first time and it's open to the general public. You can just go down to the throw down some cash. You don't have to be an aristocrat or a noble person. No. You just go ahead and lay your money down. That's right. And actually, the work casino is obviously Italian. Right. But that was different. So that was 1638 that Venice opened the Dodo. It didn't last forever. No. Eventually the tide of public moral opinion turned against it, which happens a lot to gambling. And the Riddo is shut down. So it's the Aristocrats went back to it again and went and started gambling again at what we're called casinos, which are small little clubs. Right? Yeah. That's what it means. The casino is a small little club. Yeah. And then they added gambling to it and then hence the name that we know and love today, the casino. Yeah. So the Doto was broken up into smaller casinos and they were pretty popular and flourished. Yeah. So that idea was exported from Italy or there were other places where it just kind of came up on its own. But Italy, for the most part is known as the birthplace of the casino. If France was big in France is known as the birthplace of most of the casino games that we play today. Yeah. Roulette means little wheel in French, baccarat means birth backer act. In French it means crystal. That's not true. And what else is there? Blackjack means 21. I believe in French. Oh, yeah. Wow. I didn't know that. So basically the French invented a lot of games because they love to gamble. They did. And so did the United States. Early on the 18 hundreds in the Wild West, there were gambling, river boats on the Mississippi, poker games and card games for money. And then kind of like with Prohibition, the moral conservatism kind of came on and stemmed the tide of gambling for a while up until the Hoover Dam in Nevada kind of really put it back on the map again to legalize gambling. There was a huge anti gambling wave in like 19, basically the first decade and a half of the 20th century. And it almost wiped out horse racing entirely. There were like 250 horse racing tracks in 1900 in the US. And it went down to 25 in 30 years. So that same wave basically broke up all gambling until, like you say, Nevada said you know what? We're going to buck the trend, because there's not a lot going on here in Nevada. But we do have a new dam. We're going to call it Hoover Dam eventually, but for now, let's call it Bowler Damage. Got into come and see. And it still do. Yes. To this day. It's a marvel of engineering. It's the pinnacle of humans contempt for nature. Oh, you want to flow as a river? No, we tell you when to flow. You're going to generate power for us. Exactly. So from the get go, Boulder Dam now, Hoover Dam was a tourist attraction, and Nevada said, why not get some money off of these pork pies from Iowa while they come? Let's let them gamble. Yeah. That's what happened. And gambling and casinos had already been started. Bugsy Siegel did not start that, but he and Myer Lansky, famous gangsters, did have a large hand in expanding the casino scene, famously with the Flamingo Hotel and Casino in 1946. Yes. That was a good movie, too. That's a great movie. Bugsy and today, I think this number is still right. 19 of the 25 largest hotels by room number are on the Las Vegas strip. The largest in the world. 25 largest in the world. Yeah. I can believe that. They're huge. And they're still gambling downtown, too. Fremont if you really want the real Las Vegas. Yeah. So that's how it started. They were downtown gambling houses, and then they figured out that you got to break some eggs to make an omelet. So they spent some money to make tons of money. Tons of omelets. Yeah. And they also in a very unusual kind of agreement, these early strip makers said, you know what? We're all going to go into this together. Sure. It's more competition, but if we're concentrated, we make this a destination. Not only is Nevada a destination for gambling, but this specific spot in Nevada is the destination for gambling. That's right. And it paid off like in Aces. Nice. Yes. And since we're on gangsters, the Mafia had a lot to do with the Las Vegas casino operation for a long time, until they eventually money kind of won out, and real estate developers had more money than the Mob. Yeah. Said, you know what? We need to clean this up and make it legit and buy you out, essentially. Yeah. As I understand it, Mafia doesn't have anything to do with it these days because it's just too big of a risk. Yeah. And their money is not needed for a while, they had the money, and they also had the willingness to one of the reasons the mob got into Vegas was because the rest of the country saw Vegas as SinCity. It's a place of ill repute. Gambling is sinful, and we're morally opposed to it. So I don't want my customers at my bank to withdraw their money so they can invest in your casino. But then myer landscape or so there are other ways of getting money. Right. He said, you know what? I've got no problem with this. Here's some money. The teamsters were heavily invested in Vegas. That's true. But then Trump was like, I got way more money than you guys. Yeah. And that's why. One reason. Vegas was Sin City for a long time, and you can still get into some trouble there. But since the 90s, it has become a much more of a family destination. It's starting to swing back the other way a little more. I hear they're trying to do that. Some casinos are opening up with, like, rules against kids. Oh, yes. Plenty of them. It's like, Get your kid out of here. But there's also a Casino Circus in Excalibur with nothing but kids. Treasure island. Yeah. All those places. Yeah. And we should say, Chuck, we just gave the history of Vegas in Vegas is obviously like the crown jewel of the gambling world around the world. Sure. But there's also other, like, just world class casinos like Monaco, monte Carlo City in Monaco, which is a principality built exclusively on gambling money in Las Vegas. Yes. There's. Macau is off the coast of Hong Kong. That's like, gambling paradise. Now, where else is there? Riverboat City. Reno Indian Reservations. Yeah. We didn't mean to neglect anybody, I guess, is what I'm saying. And that four story gambling house, the Riddo, that has translated very well. In Japan, they have things that are called Pachinko parlors, which are usually multi story outfits, where you just is it all Pachinko? The first floor is usually all Pachinko. Got you. And it's also like you can go in there and play all day and no one will know because you can't see through the cigarette smoke in there. It is crazy. I bet. Yes. They smoke a lot over there. So there's gambling all over the world. We're aware of that. Yeah. I got some stats, some gaming stats. In 2000, and 970 percent of US. Adults placed a wager of some kind to the tune of $900 billion at casinos, racetracks, lottery, and then, like, poker games and dog tracks and OTB places and stuff like that. Yeah, but I think of that gross gaming revenue was 80.5 billion, and about 57 billion of that was casino based, whether land or riverboat casinos. Well, 26 of that was from tribal casinos, and the other 30 was from just standard casinos. That's definitely up from when this article was written because it was 22.62 billion in 2005 for Native American casinos and 31.85 billion for everything else in the US. Well, yeah, that's significant. Yes. 41 states 41 states have casinos or allow casinos. Georgia is not one of them. No, but Georgia allows gambling in the form of lottery. Yes. And every video poker. Yeah, everything but Hawaii and Utah allow some form of wagering. Right. I wonder what Hawaii's deal is. I don't know. Utah makes sense. Yeah, totally. But Hawaii, I have no idea. What Hawaii? Maybe they're like, we don't need that. I'll find out. We're surfing. Eating spam. Right. Exactly. It's Spamcation. Sure. So, Chuck, why is there so much money in gambling? If it's all games of chance, why is there so much money in owning a casino? You know what, Josh? Why? Because every single game a casino offers has a statistical edge built in for the casino. Otherwise, that's how they make their dough. Is your fact. These are not everyone knows. I didn't know that. Sure. Well, it ranges from, I think about the lowest you can get is baccara at about 1.6%. It can go as low as, I think, 7.6% something. Yeah. Is the casino advantage all the way up to the suckers bet of all time, which is the slot machine, which gives the casino a 25% edge on average. And the reason it stops at 25% is because by law, most states say if you're going to have slots or video poke or whatever, since it's computer operated randomly and making air quotes, you have to set it so that 75% of the time they have a chance of winning. 25% of the time you're playing that you have no chance of winning. Yeah. And they'll change the slots. Some casinos will say, like, our slots pay out 80% or 90% to try and get you in there. But that is where the casino makes 70% of their revenue, is from slots, from slots, nickel slots, quarter slots, whatever. Whatever. Slots. Yeah. Are we talking about games? Yeah. Let's get into it. If you go to a casino, there's obviously going to be slots, and they are absolutely everywhere. I've never been a big slot guy. It's just over too fast. It's not too much to it. It is a little boring. I like blackjack. Blackjack is a lot of fun. I played blackjack in Paris, in Vegas, and it was like the middle of the day, and my brother in law and I were the only ones at the table. And I was like, hit me. And the guy hit me, and I was like, Hit me again. And the dealer went and just shook his head. I've had them do that, too. And I was like, okay, you don't want to hit. Yeah. And I'm sure the pit boss is like, he's got X number of times he can do that in a day or whatever. But I thought it was very nice. I ended up spending more money, I'm sure. Well, that's exactly why he did it. They want to keep your butt in that chair. And sometimes they might allow the dealer to say, like, are you certain, sir? Wait a minute. He didn't do it to be nice. He may have been being nice. He was definitely being nice. But yes, I'm sure. Maybe constructed. I don't know. I don't know how it works on the inside, but yeah, I was told not to. He said no when I told him. Right. And I came out a little bit on top, I think. So blackjack Josh, you got about a 2% house edge. Not bad as far as gambling goes. And if you play by the statistical strategy that they say you should play by, there are rules. Like if you follow this, then chances are you could win some money. But people, what happens is you get caught up. You like, hit when you shouldn't. You lay down more money to try and make up for what you've lost, and that's when they take you. Or you can count cards and you can count cards, which is legal. If you go to MIT, they'll teach you how to count cards. Right. Is that what that movie was about? Yeah, the MIT blackjack team, the movie 21. If you count cards and they figure out that you're counting cards, you're gone. I don't think they can break your hand, but you're out of the casino for sure. They can do a lot of things up until that point to make it harder, but I think if they verify that and they know that you're counting cards, I think they can't ask you to leave, even though it is not against the law. No, but a casino has rules against it. Exactly. Yeah. All right. So that's Blackjack got to get come closest to 21 without going over. Oh, yeah. Did we say that? Yeah. And we're not going to break down each of these games, so specifically no, each of these could have their own podcast. Yeah, exactly. They won't, but they could. So that's that slots, by the way. There are spam slots. Yeah. That's cool. Boogie Night slot. That's what we need. We need a stuff you should know. Slot machine. Well, there are all kinds of crazy themes. Book Nights, the Terminator. I realized how much we would have arrived if we had our own slot machine. That would be cool. We'd go broke playing them. I bet we could make that happen. I don't know about that. No? Okay. You got Boogie Nights. Yeah. Just all sorts of crazy themes. And recently it was in the news because they're Happy Days machines, and everyone but Fonzie and Ritchie sued because they're like, dude, we're not getting seen any money from these slot machines. That all my friends are telling me that our faces are on. That's what Happy Days sued for. I thought it was like DVD. No, it's all sorts of back payment that they say they are getting. But the slots is what tipped off the mom. Like, someone called it was like, oh, I saw you on a slot machine. He's like, really? So she banded together with Potsy? Yeah, everybody except Fonzie and Richie. Richie. Because they still have money. Yeah. That's an awful thing to say. I imagine that they didn't when I read that, I didn't know that it was slot machines that tipped them off, but I thought, I hope Ron Howard paid for their legal team. Yes. I think they just settled recently, actually. That's good. Yeah. Roulette, of course, one of my favorites. If you want to see your money disappear before your very eyes, go play some roulette. Yeah. So there's 36 spaces on a little wheel, numbers one through no, I'm sorry. There's 38 spaces, numbers one to 36 with a zero and a double zero. Right. Very simply put, the dealer spins the wheel. Black and red, too. Yeah. Well, you can bet on all sorts of things. There's a table where you can bet on it being laying on a black or red color. You can bet on the specific number and the color. I'm going to bet on 22, and it comes up and it pays off when it comes. And depending, I think it pays two to one if you correctly bet on red or black. And then it just gets more escalated from there. But the dealer spins the wheel and then a ball is dropped in and it spins around and bounces. And then whatever number color it lands on, if you bet on that, baby, you are rolling in it. But I think the reason I like it, it's such an elegant game. There's a wheel that spins and then you feel like you're in Monte Carlo. Very much so, yeah. I think that's why I like relax. House Edge is between five and 7%, even though it varies because there are so many different bets and payouts. Right. Craps. Craps I know almost nothing about. It's the most fun game in Vegas or at a casino, in my opinion, it's the most social game. You hear a lot of people having a lot of fun, and chances are it's coming from the crap section. Yeah. Because you're involved, you're throwing the dice. That has a lot to do with it. And my advice, if you want to play crap, it's really complicated with all the bets, but make it really easy and pick out, like, learn two or three little simple bets that you can make and just stick to those. Okay, that's good advice. That's my advice. Unless you're really good and you know all that stuff, then just go wild. Right. If you know all that stuff, it's probably not going to take our advice on craft. Kino josh is a big rip off. Well, it's like the inside the casino, there was a scandal. Some guy from Vegas who worked at the Nevada Gaming Commission, they use random number generators to run the keynote games. It's all computer operated. The thing is, there's no such thing as randomness with a computer. Like, it just doesn't exist. It's a computer. Right. It's a program. So this guy figured out basically the pattern that comes up, the underlying pattern to all of it. And he and a buddy went to Atlantic City and he stayed up in the room and watched the keynote play out. Basically. On their TV. And he called down to the guy and told him what to bet based on what numbers were about to come up. And this guy won so much that the security followed him up to the room and found the guy there. Found out he was from Vegas. And we're like, Why did you come to Atlantic City to play keynote? And that was that. That was in an article in Harper's. You know what happened to him? He got busted. I'm sure he doesn't any longer. Okay. Yeah. I don't know if Atlantic City has that kind of pull in Vegas, though, where they can rub you out. They don't dig a hole in the desert there. They just do the old cement shoes in the ocean. Yeah. Please. With the fishes. Toss you off the boardwalk. Yeah. But then you have to pay for the guy you just killed to the people in Vegas. Right? Yeah. Okay. You got Baccara, which you've talked about, and if you've never played it, it seems complicated, but it's really not. The object is to get close to nine instead of 21, but you only get two or three cards, and the total, if it's more than ten, you defer to the right hand number. So if you get a nine and a six, your hand isn't 15, your hand is five. If you get a nine and a six, your hand isn't 15, it's five. Where's the five come from? It's the digit on the right hand side. If your hand total is 13, your hand is really a three, nine, and a six. There's no five in there? No. A nine and a six total 15. Oh, I got you. So you add it up and then take the right hand digit of the double digit. Yes. Okay. Yeah. It's not easy, but it's sort of easy that I've never played, because, as pointed out in the article, it's usually high rollers away from the rest of the casino. And yeah. It's like you have to be wearing a tuck to get into the bachelor's part. Typically known as a big money game. Yeah. Why is because it's got the best or the least amount of statistical advantage. So if you've got a lot of money, you're probably smarter to be playing Pocket Rock. Yeah. And because of that low statistical advantage, a lot of times casinos say, hey, thanks for playing. You owe us 3% of everything you just want. Yes. I think background is one of those that takes it off the top, right? Is that right? I think so. I would imagine poker is like that as well. It's called a rake in poker. Yes. They essentially just what you're doing in poker is they're hosting the game, essentially and supplying you with a dealer for a fee. Right. So sometimes you're charged the rate will be based on how long you spend in there or how much you win, that kind of thing. Yeah, but poker is poker. That's right. And then there's video poker which is pretty close to slots that has laws that say you have to pay out X percentage of time, that kind of thing. Another sucker game if you ask me. Yes, they have those all over the place here in Atlanta, like in gas stations and stuff. Oh and interestingly, slots and video poker aren't monitored. They're just set up and you just go play. They don't have like cameras above each one like they do all the other games. Yeah. Well they don't have people watching the slots area. They're self managed, essentially. Yeah. So Chuck, let's talk about the casino experience, shall we? Well, they get you in there, they load you up on liquor while you're playing for free, which helps. They give you food comps sometimes like, hey sir, would you like two buffet tickets here and would I? They won't show any clocks. You won't find any big clocks or windows and casinos to this day, the whole thing is designed to basically, I guess, simulate eternal twilight, early evening, the nights just the lights are dim so young. And that is the weird thing when you can't tell and people gamble at all hours. That's why I was surprised that you'll go down at four in the morning and you can't tell the difference between that and noon sometimes. Yeah. A little creepy. It is very creepy. They do not pump in oxygen. No they don't. Apparently that would be extremely illegal, which makes sense. It's a felony. It's basically drugging people. But the whole premise of that was that you basically gave people a rush or it kept them awake so they would stay and not get tired. Contrary to that, like you said, people will often be comped food, drinks, rooms, kind of drunk. You might spend a little more but yes, if you are lucky enough to be comp the room and you're a slot person, you're probably a member of the slot club which you need to join when you check in. It usually doesn't cost anything but basically you have a card that tracks your play. Sure. And you don't want to be bashful about this. You don't want them to notice you. If you're looking to get copped you go ahead and let them know you're here to play. Yeah. And if you want to get coped and you're not a slap person you can just ask if you have a lot of money you want to spend and you're like, this is what I'm going to start doing this. You tell them you go to someone and say, hey, I need to get my play rated. And they will basically just put you on a list and say, okay, we'll start tracking and see what kind of money you're losing. Right. But as the Grabser points out, it is a sucker bet to spend. More than you normally would or just stay longer just to get comps. That's because you're going to spend more money in losses than you would just having gotten the room or gotten the buffet. Yeah. In Vegas is still cheaper, maybe than some places, but it's not like the old days where it was like a hotel room is $20 and the buffet is $595. It's a vacation destination now. They get you with the room charges now, too, or the shows. The shows. Awesome. The kids, they got stuff for the whole family now to keep everyone busy while mom and dad are giving away their money, their college fund. So, Chuck, security is kind of an issue, right? Yeah. There's the ubiquitous eye in the sky, which apparently they don't necessarily have over the slot areas. Yeah. Every other table has got a camera watching it, and the whole process of security is ground up. Right. The first defense, I guess, against cheating or fraud or theft is the dealer, him or herself, because they're really paying attention to the game, and they're going to see clear as day if you're palming cards or counting cards, whatever you're doing, they're trained to look out for that stuff. Right. And they know this game is literally their job, to play this game every day for hours on end, so they know if something's weird about it. Right. Yeah. And then above them, you got table managers and pit bosses watching out over an area. Right. And they're not just watching customers, they're watching the dealers and the managers. Sure. Everybody's watching everybody else. Yeah. That was a great part in Casino break down, the security. Yeah. Sorry. I had a moment there when he bust the country bumpkin who's got taken on the slots, and his country bumpkin uncle tried to get them reinstated, and DeNiro is like, I can't do it. Yeah, sure. You want to think about this? And he has that great line. He's like, what you people don't ever realize is that you're all just guests here. Yeah. And he's right, because he eventually left. The guy who got taken on the slots. His name was he used to host, like, a B movie, like Billy Bob something. Yeah, he was awesome. Yes. I can't remember. He was great, though. He was a pretty funny dude. I don't know what happened to him. He's around, I'm sure. Okay. And then above that, you have security who are monitoring everything on TV, right. Lots and lots of TVs, lots and lots of cameras. And they can train each one to look at whatever they want. Like, it's not just the tables, all the ins and outs, the exits, the bathroom not in the bathrooms. But these are all heavily policed by cameras. I don't know. I could see them monitoring the bathroom. I could see that, too, actually. Yeah. And then Oceans Eleven, if you remember one of the little tricks they used to get the cameras out of the way. It was Casey Affleck and James Conn's kid. What's his name? James Con's kid. They got in the argument and he let go of the balloons, and the balloons covered the camera long enough to get whatever they needed to get done. Done. Yeah. That was a great movie, too. The first one was really good, I think, and not the original. I mean, the first, soderberg right, okay. The original was awesome. Yeah. I can watch that, like, all day, every day. True. I like the redo as well, though. Okay. I thought it was glib. Really? Yeah. Matt was glib. I thought the whole thing was glib. So, Chuck, if you're a chump like me and you walk around casinos with your money in your hands right. Just kind of smiling at people, like, where do I put this? How do you stay on security's good side? Well, you're the casino expert. Here's a few tips. You don't want to touch any of the gaming equipment. Like, don't grab the roulette wheel and say, this feels neato. They say not to use two hands to do anything. Right. Like, always kind of keep one hand off the stuff, and it doesn't hurt to keep the other hand in sight, the hand you're not using on the table. Don't go up to a crafts table with one hand in your pocket and then lower the dice below the table, then blow on them and then throw them. And also, don't ever tickle the dealer. They don't like that. Yes, you can't hand your money to a dealer. Always leave your money on the table and don't expect them to cash anything out. They'll give you chips, but when you want your chips to turn back into money, the dealer is not going to help you, which we should mention. The reason they use chips is a, to keep track of things easier, and B, because you feel like, better losing $100 chip than you do $100 bill. Yeah, it's just like a debit card. That's right. There's so many things that you normally just wouldn't buy if you had to shell out cash for it. Yeah, but you totally get because it's debit card. Yeah. You can watch people play, but just watch. Don't go up to people at the table and start talking to them. Don't tickle other players. Don't tickle players. Don't touch your chips after you place the bet. It's final once you put it down. Don't reach across the table and knock over everyone else's chips. Ask for some help and don't, like, put your drink on the table. Although I've done that. People do that. They say not to do that, but I've done that. I don't think it's the end of the world. Agreed. Especially blackjack. There's no other place to put it. Usually there might be, like, a little thing right here a lot of times, just, what am I going to do? What am I going to do. Exactly. So, Chuck, we talked about riverboat gambling and Native American casinos. Yes. And both of those are fairly recent in origin. Really? About the early 1990s, late 80s. Right? Yeah. So Native American casinos, their existence can be traced back to one guy. He was the head of the Cavazon tribe from California, and his name is Arthur James Wellness. And basically he figured out a loophole in the way that Native American territory is treated. It is technically sovereign ground, right? Yes. But criminal law extends into the sovereign area. So if you murder somebody that you committed a crime, and the federal government has jurisdiction to investigate that crime. But if something is legal in that state where that territory is, then by extension, there's no crime that could possibly be committed. If that is carried out within the Native American territory, it becomes a matter of civil law. Civil law doesn't extend in the Native American territory. Right. Yeah. So basically they said, hey, if you can allow gambling in California and our reservations in California, even if it's just the lottery yeah. Then we can do that here however we want because it's a civil matter. Exactly. And as an aside related to that, if you fall and break your leg at a Native American casino, you're not going to be able to sue anybody. No redress for that. No redress. And riverboats. Josh, how that usually works is you go on a cruise, quote unquote, two hour cruise, but it's not so much a cruise because you don't go anywhere. The boat just stays there. And that's just your allotted time, 2 hours. And it is specific, and you can't just say, can I stay a little longer? No. They're probably like, no, but you can leave and then come back. Yeah. And a lot of times they'll have a loss limit, too. They'll be like, you can't lose over $500. Right. But apparently much the same way with the government in Venice. State legislatures have been like, well, we really come to depend on this riverboat gambling tax money. So you know what? Go crazy. Right? Go nuts. Stay on as long as you want to, lose as much as you like. We are rolling in it because of you. So, Chuck, I guess if a casino comes to your town, anybody who's ever seen that Simpsons episode knows that's a boon for the community. Right? Big business, dude, everyone's happy, everyone's making tons of money. Everybody's got jobs, money for free. Yes, exactly. Not true. So studies show that there's actually a negative economic impact on a local community by a casino. And it's pretty simple why most casinos play is carried out by locals who come into the casino and lose their money, not necessarily by tourists who wouldn't have come there otherwise and are having an economic impact that definitely accounts for a substantial portion. But when you take it all into account, the local economy actually loses money when a casino comes to town. That's right. Josh at least several studies have shown that. Yeah. And we'll get into gambling, maybe on a different show. But we should point out that the dark side of casinos is about 25% of their profits are generated from the 5% of addicted gamblers. Yes. 25% of their profits are coming from people who have gambling problems. Right. And probably most of those people live, like, down the street. Yeah. Maybe even work at casinos. Yeah. We should do one on gambling. There's so much more there. I don't want to breeze over that. Okay. So that's it for casinos, though. If you want to know how craps works, we have how craps works article. Yeah, we have articles on most of the games that we talked about in here. You can type any of those up, or you can find links to them within the casino article. You can just type casino. C-A-S-I-N-O. Yeah. Which means social club. It's a casino in the handy search bar@housetoforce.com, which means it's time for listener mail. Wow. What happened to you, your owner? Yeah, we got a little plug for audiobook we got to insert here. We have two audiobooks now. Yeah, but the most recent one is the one that we're plugging. Yes. Okay, so go ahead. It is the superstguide to happiness, and it features us and Josh's niece and interview subjects and different music and sound design, and it's about an hour and 17 minutes. Just goodness. Agreed. Even though it won't necessarily make you happy. Right. Well, how are people going to buy this? Go to itunes for 399 in the US. And it could be a little more if you're in Australia. Sorry, I'm told but they said I actually told them I owed them $3, and they said, I saw that. We're going to take you up on it. Yeah, I saw that. You need to be careful saying things like that. I know. So yeah, help support us. Buy it on itunes. Makes us look good. We don't get any of it. No, that's true. But it does make us look good. That's right. Yeah. And it makes us feel good, too. That's true. Yeah. So now it's time for listener mail. Josh this one I'm going to call kind of gross, but funny. Just listen to can you sweat colors, guys? That brought to mind a heroin question that my friends and I have been grappling with for years. Sit down and prepare yourself for this. Okay. Are you ready? Yes. Would you rather sweat ranch dressing or always smell like Chinese food and hear the clarifications? You would only sweat the ranch dressing in times that would normally cause you to sweat. The ranch dressing is consumable. The Chinese food smell is the general smell of a small Chinese food takeout joint. No amount of washing will make you not smell like Chinese food, nor will perfumes and colognes abolish the smell, they will simply complement it. Let me know, guys. PS. Follow me on Twitter. It would make me feel special. His name is Clayton N. So, Clayton, my answer is I would rather smell like Chinese food because I'm such a heavy sweater. The ranch thing would just be infinitely more embarrassing. I wish you'd sweat ranch and you could always explain away the Chinese food saying, oh, sorry, man, I just went and had Chinese food. But I can't explain ranch sweat. No, neither can medical science. My answer is neither. Although my friend Eddie loves ranch dressing so much, he might elect for that. He would just sweat over his pizza. Nice. If you have a question for us, unanswerable or otherwise, and you want to tweet it to us, we're always on Twitter. It's S-Y-S-K podcast tweet to that you can go like us on Facebook stuff. You should know that's facebook. Comstuffynow. And you can always send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast Stuff from the future. Join Housetofwork staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means 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 Kilgarriff and Georgia Hardstarkk, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more. Before you can listen to new episodes of My Favorite Murder one week early on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | ||
a6072af0-5462-11e8-b449-d7e3a6ce65c2 | The Max Headroom Incident | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-max-headroom-incident | In 1987, a very strange broadcast intrusion occurred in the city of Chicago. For just a couple of minutes, the odd TV character Max Headroom appeared onscreen in the middle of an episode of Dr. Who. He spoke in garbled tones, brandished a marital aid... | In 1987, a very strange broadcast intrusion occurred in the city of Chicago. For just a couple of minutes, the odd TV character Max Headroom appeared onscreen in the middle of an episode of Dr. Who. He spoke in garbled tones, brandished a marital aid... | Tue, 05 Jun 2018 13:34:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=5, tm_hour=13, tm_min=34, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=156, tm_isdst=0) | 46889663 | audio/mpeg | "Salt Lake City, Utah, and Phoenix, Arizona. We're coming to see you. Yes, we are. So come see us, why don't you? Yes, we put out the call to Salt Lake City and said, should we come there? And tickets are going gangbusters. You guys, who really responded, yeah, we thought you were just like, this is all just a joke. But no, it's turning out quite well. We're going to be there October 23 at the Grand Theater in Salt Lake City, and then the next night will be in Phoenix at the Van Buren. And we can't wait to see you guys, so please come out and see us. And if you want tickets, you can go to Sysklive.com for those. And Chuck and yes, to our friends down under, Melbourne. Boy, we are super psyched because you love us and you sold us out very quickly. So we have added a second show that I believe is actually an earlier show. Isn't that right? Yeah, it's a 530 show. I believe that Melbourne is the one that we added, and it's going to be cool. It's going to be like a sweet little matinee. Yeah. We call that happy hour in our country. Yeah, that's right. So make sure you guys bring a slab each that's right. In Perth and Brisbane. Step it up. Yeah, that's right. So if you want to come see us, go to SYSK live. Whether you're in the US, whether you're in Australia, whether you're in New Zealand, it doesn't matter. You can go to the same site and hang out with us. And there you go. See you guys soon. Welcome to stuff you should know. Josh. Edward. Thank you. I saw you over there with your earbuds today. You were working on this all day, weren't you? I watched season one, episode one. Oh, really? Info of Max Hedroom. The last ten minutes is still pending. Okay. But it's crazy. Like, Max Headroom himself doesn't show up until, like, 40 minutes into the first hour long episode, but when he does, it's dynamite. So what are we talking about? We're talking about Max headroom. That's right. A huge shout out at the beginning of this to Vice.com, specifically Motherboard. Specifically Alex Pasternak. Yeah. Who wrote the article on Motherboard. And we actually used to blog a little bit for them back in the day. Remember that? Yeah. I don't think they like to talk about that or acknowledge it publicly. I don't think so. Oh. I think it was mutually beneficial. I'll bet you can't find those on Motherboard anymore. I'm trying to remember. I'm sure they were, like I think I read one about driving a stick shift versus automatic or something weird. That's a big one. Yeah. We started out with an old fashioned recipe, I think. Yeah. That was you? They're like, let's do better than this guy. And we said, no. And then they said, we got our own people. Yeah. We'll let somebody come in and go straight up for you. Yeah. So that motherboard article was the basis. And from what I found, I mean, we used a lot of different sources on this, but this article entitled The Mystery of the Creepiest Television Hack is sort of the culmination. Like the cudagra of Max Headroom incident articles. Yeah. It actually really good job. Pasternak, like, very exhaustively investigated it and turned up new information, got a new understanding of it, and basically contributed to the mythos of it himself. So where to go? Pasternak right. And what we're talking about is if you don't know who Max Headroom at all is, we're about to set that up. Yeah. Let's talk about Max headroom. But if you were alive during the 1980s, then you probably know who Max Headroom is, because, weirdly, for a brief few years, it was kind of a big pop culture thing. About four years, by my calculation. Yeah. So starting in 1084, there was a movie called Max Headroom Colon. So, you know, it's an important movie 20 minutes in the future. Right. And it was a kind of a cyberpunk movie. Dystopian future. Very Terry Gilliam Brazilian. I haven't seen that one. But it was basically where the character of Max Eddie, was born. Right? Yeah. And I think it actually formed the basis for the TV show later in between the later TV show that you and I are more familiar with. And that movie Max, hedrum was a pop culture sensation. He was a pitchman for new cops. Oh, man. I went and watched an old ad. He was in an ad with Run DMC pitching new Coke. And I was like, doesn't get any more hate than this. But it was actually a pretty cool ad. Right? Did it say, here's a little story I need to tell about a new Coke on the scene that you love? So well, that was exactly word for word how the ad went. Yeah. Let's back up a little more. Right. Okay. Let's describe what Max bedroom is for the kids, because I guarantee that about 80% of our audience are like, what's, the 80s? What's New Coke? Who's run DMC? Well, that's probably not true. So what was Max headroom? He was billed as, like, the first virtual talk show host, right? Correct. Okay. Yeah. So he was played by a guy named Matt Fruer, who, out of Prosthetic makeup, had that look anyway. Very chiseled, square jawed. He was not bald, but had is he balding? Had very short. He had a receding hairline. Okay. But he kept it really short. So he kind of looks bald. Yeah. Here, this will explain it to all the kids at home. He was a colleague of Murphy Brown on the Murphy Brown television show. They're like, oh, that guy not the painter, the other one, the love interest. I don't think I knew that. I never watched Murphy Brown, though. Oh, man, I hope it was him. I'm pretty sure it was him. Well, he's been around. He's still acting today. Sure. But yes, he played the character of Max Headroom, and the TV show Max Headroom was actually pretty far ahead of its time. Tonally speaking. Yeah. So the whole premise of the TV show, his big last great gasp that was actually the most serious of all of it was where in the future, TV networks controlled the world and the station, the Network 23, that Matt Brewer's character, and later Max Headroom, who became his alter ego, worked for we're putting these things called blip Vertz out. Yeah. His character's name was Edison Carter at first. Right. And he was like an investigative journalist. Yeah. So he starts looking into these blipfirts, because the problem with blipfirts, they are 32nd ads compressed into 3 seconds, and it's meant to keep you from changing the channel. The problem is that everybody watched so much TV by this time, they didn't move around, which meant that all of the electricity generated by their nerve endings wasn't burned off, is how the show explained it. So when their brains were assaulted with these blip verts, they kind of short circuited, and all of that electricity that was just hanging around their bodies because they weren't moving at all during the day, made them explode. The network really like flip Vertz, and they didn't want to get rid of them, so they decided to instead get rid of Edison Carter. Yeah. And the TV advertising at the time, or advertising in general, sort of. Not only did TV rule the world, but the ads behind it was really the driving force. It sounds very familiar. It does. Everyone's like, I'd take a blip fort. Sure. Give me a three second ad on the podcast, guys. It'll blow you up. So what ended up happening was the character of Edison Carter, eventually, there was an incident, not the Max Headroom incident, where he was left in a coma in an episode, the first episode. Oh, yeah. The pilot, of course. And the last thing he sees before falling into a coma is a sign that said Max Headroom 2.3 meters. And so that's how he got the name Max Headroom. Right. It was in a parking garage, and it was basically saying, this is the overhead clearance is the way it's put in the United States. Yeah. Right. So that's the name. Max Headroom. Right. But he was an AI character. Right. So the evil TV network got a hold of him, uploaded his brain, and they originally did this with the intent of bringing Edison Carter, because, again, he was like their star reporter bringing him back in virtual forms. They created an artificial intelligence. Well, it was kind of glitchy and blippy, and it looked weird. So they threw it out while some pirate broadcasters got a hold of this database that Max hedrum lived on, and they started broadcasting with him. And Max Hedgehog was born. That's right. And you said Glitchy and Blippy. And that, kids, explains your intro when you went josh oh, yeah, I was doing my Max eDRAM impression. Thank you for explaining that. Yes. That bears Josh. He's okay, everybody. So that's what Max eDRAM did. It was jittery. It was Blippy, like you said. The background was this weird sort of horizontal and diagonal lined moving around things. And that was all part of this at the time, sort of futuristic look. He was also really sarcastic and really caddy, and he poked fun at censorship and he was just kind of like a cult hero. Just the character itself. Right. Yeah. The awesome thing about them is in the real world of 1000 1984, we didn't have any kind of computers that could generate a CGI host. So they actually used, like, prosthetics. There was a four hour process to put Matt Fur into the Max Headroom makeup. So it's the guy acting and they mess with the video a little bit. But it wasn't a CGI version of a guy. It was a guy acting like he was a CGI version of himself. Right. Which is why if, for instance, if Max Headroom, the character, were to appear on, say, David Letterman, which he did, it would be Letterman interviewing a TV screen, which is what they did. But it was actually Matt Fruer in another studio. He was probably just backstage. Backstage being broadcast. And it's really like, as a kid, I did not get all this. No, I just thought it was I didn't really know what it was because I'd never seen the show. I thought he was the coke guy. Right. I think I'd seen the show a little bit. I was like, this is way too grown up for me. But I think I just kind of took it on faith that he was computer generated or something like that. I didn't really think about it much, but now, as an adult, looking back, I'm like, that is brilliant and really difficult. And the fact that they did this and pulled it off as well as they did, it's a pretty amazing thing. Right. You can kind of understand how Max Headroom, with all that information, now became this kind of cult icon, especially among cyberpunks at the time, and what? Just keep saying cyberpunk. I'm not particularly well versed in what constitutes cyberpunk, but it's like pornography to a Supreme Court justice. Like, I know it when I see it, right? Sure. So if you watch the Mexico show, you're like, that's cyberpunk RoboCop is supposedly cyberpunk. Right. It's like a bleak technological future where people are controlled by almost down to their minds, by the government or some corporation or some amalgamation of the two. That's pretty cyberpunk. Right. So at the time, you had what are called geeks and nerds. But they are not really what you would call the geek or nerd today. Right. Somebody who wears, like, glasses that don't actually have prescription glass in them. Do people do that? Some people do. I did that in the fourth grade. Well, then you were a geek, apparently. No, I was a prep, and I wore those little tortoise, shell, round, preppy glasses because that was a cool look. It's one of my least proud moments, fashion wise. I actually bought fake glasses and more than around. Do you have photos of those? I'd really have to dig through some boxes. I think I speak for everyone when I say start digging. Dig. Yeah. It was not my proudest moment. Yes, I'd like to see that picture. At the time, people who were geeks and nerds, that whole culture was very much derided and pushed around. I mean, look at Revenge of the Nerds. Right? Exactly. They came out on top. I watched a little bit of that just the other night. This is probably the earliest celebration of nerd culture. It was not something that was, like, venerated or subscribed to by anyone who wasn't a genuine nerd or geek. And these were a very rarefied group of people who really knew what they were doing with computers at a time when almost no one else did. Yeah. Early adopters across the board. Very much so. Right. Maxedrum is kind of a cult hero to this guy. And that kind of sets up what happened on November 22 in a little town called Chicago, Illinois, the city of industry, the city of angels. City that doesn't ever sleep. Never. The Windy City. That's it. There you go. Of all time. The windy city of all time. Yeah. So that sets the stage. We know who the character of Max Hedge was then at are you sure? I set the stage? I think so. Did we set the stage fully here? It looks nice. All right, let's do it. So at 09:14 PM. On that November night in Chicago, four days before Thanksgiving yeah. Everyone is in that frame of mind. Right. Put yourself there. I think that helps a lot. It helped me, at least. Sure. Okay. Football seasons going on. Yes. As a matter of fact, just that very day, the Bears had beat the Lions. Yes. Which was a long time ago because the Bears won a football game. Wow. I know. The people in the Windy City of all time are not going to be happy with you for that. Windy city of all time. And there's a sportscaster on local channel nine, dan roan. Roan. And he was going over the highlights of that football game. Then all of a sudden, right in the middle, the broadcast signal goes right. It makes those noises. And then over at WGN, the control room, they were like, what's going on here? We have no idea what this is. I think the exact quote was, a girl. What? So what happened was eventually what they were doing at the time was and this is how we're not going to go into the weeds here on how broadcast signals work. But what they did back in the day was they broadcast microwave transmissions to antennas at the top of the tallest buildings of whatever city that they were in. For local TV. For local TV. Which is, I mean, there was cable at the time, but local TV still kind of ruled sort of in the late 80s. Right. So starting to segue to cable. Yeah, for sure. Cable is kind of a thing. But if you were a local TV station, you still have pretty big market share. For sure. Right. Especially WGN in Chicago. I mean, it's like Chicago station, right, absolutely. So I think you're saying is that in a studio, whatever they're recording or shooting or playing on their little video tapes, they're beaming that from the actual studio to a transmitter, say atop a very tall building, and then that just kind of bounces around to other transmitters and that's how everybody in Chicago gets their WGN signal. Right, right. So all of a sudden during the sports cast, it skips is out, and then all of a sudden you see a guy in a suit wearing a Max headroom mask and there was no audio. That was, I guess, the problem with this first intrusion. That was called a broadcast intrusion, but you couldn't hear anything. But I'm sure it was certainly distressing to a viewer to see this kind of weird thing happen, especially a viewer who wanted to know what the heck happened between the bears and the lions that day. Sure. And the whole thing lasted, I think, like 11 seconds or some very short amount of time. Yeah, this is a short one. Before the WGN engineers went and switched to the backup transmitter and I guess transmitted on a slightly different signal and brought the broadcast, the sports caster back on. And Dan Roan was like, if you're wondering what just happened, so am I right? There's a chuckle in between. I wasn't going to do my impression of it, but it's good. You should watch it. Like somebody just go look it up. Right. So federal investigators, the FCC, that is, was called in to investigate technically well, not technically, it's a crime to do so. And then just a few minutes later, they thought, well, this is probably coming from inside the building. And so that's the first place they started looking. They said the intrusion is coming from inside the building. Exactly. They didn't find anybody, though. I mean, as you'll see, after we explained further it would make sense that you would look in the building for something like this inside job. Apparently it was not an inside job, at least as far as the WGN engineers search was concerned. Right, that's right. So that was at 914 about 2 hours later, I think at 1115 on another channel in Chicago, WTTW, which was the PBS station, they were airing an episode of Doctor who called the horror on Fang Island Fang Rock. The horror of Fang Rock. You have to say it like that, though. The horror of Fang Rock. Thank you. And this is the Tom Baker doctor. Okay. That's the only one I recognized. Oh, really? He's 70s, right? Yeah. I'm no Doctor Who guy, so don't it looked like the 70s. What they cut in on looked pretty 70s. It didn't look 87. Who do you think it would be? 87? I'm guessing it was a rerun on PBS. That's what I think. All right, we'll find out. Oh, man, we are going to find out too, aren't we? Yeah. That would have been super easy to check. Yeah. At any rate, in the middle of this Doctor Who episode, it suddenly cuts out again. And now you've got what appears to be the full run of this Max headroom intrusion. Yes. Instead of 30 seconds, this one was a minute and 22 seconds. And right now, I would say if you are somewhere where you can pause and go to an online video carrier of your choosing and type in Maxedrone incident, spend the next minute and 22 seconds watching it, we'll wait and we'll wait. We'll just insert a minute and 22 seconds of silence here, how about this? Let's take a break. Okay. And then we'll come back, and then we'll talk about exactly what happened during that minute and 22 seconds. Okay, we're back. Did you watch it? Are you talking to me? No. Okay. I was looking at you. I'm guessing that people did watch, but a few people did. Smart ones did, because this is really tough to describe and we're going to try, but it's something you really have to see yourself. Yeah. In here. It's genuinely disturbing sitting in an office years later watching it, and I can imagine if I was at home, I would have probably been a little freaked out. You found it disturbing? Yeah, I found it hilarious in, like, a really juvenile way. Yes. It creeps me out. It was like watching David Burn on acid at a talking head show. That's what I think of when I saw that. All right, so let's describe the scene here. Okay, so you got Max headroom. Well, actually, a dude wearing a rubber mask. A rubber Halloween mask of Max headroom. Yes. And this is just genius to me. So you mentioned earlier about how the Max headroom had these kind of grid lines behind them at all times, and it kind of moved and adjusted, and they were different colors. To simulate that, these guys had, like a piece of corrugated metal, shiny metal, and I guess they had it attached somehow to something that rocked it back and forth, and somebody was clearly rocking it back and forth here or there, erratically. And it really does a good job. It gets the point across that it looks like the Maxodum TV show. Yeah. The back and the character. Yes. But again, I would say that this person was very clearly on acid. Well, I think what disturbs me I need to make it clear it is definitely funny and stupid. But what disturbs me is the sound of the voice, which is all garbled, really, like, on YouTube. It has subtitles, thankfully, because it's hard to make out. And a lot of times it just says, can't understand what he's saying or whatever, and the garble quality and just the random weirdness that's going on. It's not like it was creepier to me than if V for Vendetta dude hit a come on guy. Fox had to come on and said, we are coming into your thing to tell you this about this. Right. This was just so weird and all over the place. It was creepy to me. Yeah, I see what you mean. Like you're watching somebody nonsenseical, somebody's brain slightly damaged. Yeah. Temporarily touching. Somebody lose their mind. Right. Okay. Yeah. Totally get that. And here's what the guy did that would make you feel like he lost his mind. This is the weird thing to me. It's very targeted toward WGN, right? Almost so much so that some people would say, this is clearly somebody who had a grudge against WGN. He makes fun of the bowls sports caster. The guy who worked for WGN at the time, he makes reference to how he just made a masterpiece for the Greatest World's Newspaper Nerds, which was a messed up version of WGN's. Call letters stand for world's greatest newspaper. He wields a rubber penis. Yeah, that's one. Although it was great in almost every article, it was referred to as a marital aid. Did you see that? No, but I actually guessed it on Strickland's tech stuff, like, four years ago. And we covered this and I called it a marital aid. Did you? Okay. I wanted to keep it clean. Sure. I realized that saying the word penis is okay. Well, it's clinical. I mean, we did a puberty episode. Surely we have the chops to say penis. But marital aid is hilarious, especially in this context. Like this crazy dude on acid wearing a Max headroom mask has a marital aid. No, he doesn't. That's not what that is in that context. Yeah. And that's a new T shirt, by the way. We have the chops to say Peanuts. That's a band name. Let's go ahead and use some of the let's go ahead and say some of the direct quotes. Yeah. So he comes on and he goes, he's a freaking nerd. I think I'm better than Chuck Swirsky. Freaking liberal. That's a really good impression of it. And Chuck Swirsky was the bowls guy. Yeah. The sports announcer. And this is a time, too, when the bowls were this is the Jordan Pippin era. Still at the beginning of it, was it 87? I thought it was, like, in the middle of it. Was it the beginning? Pretty earlyish let's say I wish these days that I would have been more cognizant and more into basketball, like I am now. See, that's what I was the most into. It was Bird Jordan Nashville. I would like to watch some of those games. Yeah, it was good stuff because that's when the Hawks were good. Back then. Yeah, back then. Dominique. Hey, shout out to Kent. Bazmore. He listens to the show. No way. Yeah, he's a fan. How did you find that out? Twitter. Yeah. That's great. Yes. Man, I love Bayes. I know. How do you not love Bayes? He's awesome, man. He's bright ride right now. That's so cool. All right, so Chuck Swirsky's freaking liberal. He's wielding the rubber penis, the marital aid, the marital aide. He drops that. Then he picks up a new Coke. Well, you can't really tell if it's a Coke. Pepsi. Oh, was it? Okay, I couldn't really tell. He picks up a can, but he says, Catch the wave, which is the new Coke slogan. Right? Then he starts humming it's so random. Then he starts humming the theme song to the 60s show Clutch Cargo, which is weird in and of itself. Sure. That's the one where it's like animation, but for the mouths. It was just like a human mouth moving. That's disturbing. If you've seen Pulp Fiction with the scene where Bruce Willis was a kid and Christopher Walken comes in with the wristwatch scene that Clutch Cargo is playing on TV when he's watching it. Right. But it is weird looking. Right. So you would say, Why did you do the Clutch Cargo theme? Well, again, this is a WGN thing. And apparently that's where you saw it as a kid in Chicago. Okay. So he says, Also, your love is fading. I still see the X, which apparently is something from the last episode of Clutch Cargo. Yeah, that was the big X or something. And then he says, what you're talking about earlier? I just made a giant masterpiece for all the greatest world newspaper nerds. But he should have said world's greatest newspaper nerds. WGN. Right. Which you might find confusing, as I did, too. But apparently the Chicago Tribune Company owns WGN TV. So they call themselves World's Greatest Newspaper TV. Right. It's all coming together. IPSO facto. There you go. Then finally, toward the end, the camera cuts to a different angle. This one has the dude bent over with his bare butt hanging out. His face is now off screen, but he's holding the mask still out, like his head is in it, but it's not. There is a person I say woman, but I don't know. But a person in an Annie Oakley dress? Is that what it was? I didn't get that. Yeah, it looks like a prairie bonnet ensemble, but the bonnet kind of hides the face, so you don't know if it's a man or a woman. Okay. And they are spanking the bare butt with a fly swatter. Right. And he's worried about them coming to get him. They're coming to get me. And then he says, Come get me, and uses a bad word, B word. The B word. And then it goes back to Doctor Who. Yeah. Just like it came in, went out, and it's, like, gone. Can you imagine seeing that live? Well, the people who saw it live, the next thing they would have heard was the doctor saying something like, oh, he died of an electric shock. Must have died instantly. And everybody's just sitting there hanging open. Well, it was Doctor Who, too, so it was probably a bunch of Chicago nerds watching PBS. All right. My invitation was okay, but let's just play at least, like, a couple of lines from the real thing. Yeah. All right. So you did a pretty good impression, I think everyone can agree now, right? That's so strange. So this is an enormous thing, right? People were watching this and were a guest, a GOG. Some people probably thought it was funny, WGN reporting on it all over the place the next couple of days. Yeah, the newspapers had picked it up. Yeah. There's a compilation of WGN broadcast or it might even be more than just WGN of people in the street being interviewed. What do you think about this one guy? It's kind of like Hooligan throwing a brick through your window to get your attention. There's a little kid who's, like, very funny. The star of the news, though, was this one Doctor Who fan, this lady who is not at all amused by this, and I just want to play her little segment. Okay, yeah. Get annoyed. Some viewers. No, I just thought it would be just a slight mess up. But that in the middle of the tape. You're going to have to tape over it. I just think that's the funniest thing out of the whole thing. Well, another guy said he wanted to smash his TV. He was so angry. Yes. I didn't see that guy. I saw that in the Pasternak article. Funny. Yes, he was mad. So there was a lot of mixed reaction. But the voice from on high, that came from the FCC, who you said were called in pretty quickly. Yeah. They were like, this is no laughing matter. You might think it's funny. It's not very funny. Okay, it's kind of funny, but not really. And you can get $100,000 fine in a year in jail for this kind of thing, so stop doing it. But by this point, it was actually a federal offense. It was a felony. A felony offense. Wait, what was that? Dazed and Confused. Okay. I was like, Wait a minute, I know that from somewhere. So the FCC gets involved, and it's really interesting in this article, the FBI got involved, too. FBI was involved in Chicago PD. They were looking into it, apparently. The man. It has become obvious to me. That I say the word apparently a lot. Really? A lot. I was listening to an episode queueing an episode, and I was like, Stop saying apparently. Josh. Yeah. After ten years, I've started to notice some things about my own self. It's like a tick. I try to just avoid it. I try to, too. Normally I can, but man, it just came welling up into my awareness. Well, apparently, I'm going to have to get over it. At any rate, there were a lot of different agencies working on this, but the trail went cold pretty quick. And you remember how you said that the WGN engineers started looking around the station? I think what they were looking for was this. Somebody physically patching in to the transmission network, the cables wearing a Max Edward mask, and yeah. Either playing a video tape, which it seems pretty obvious it was pre taped. Yes, it was pre taped. Or doing something, like, in a studio. But they would have to physically patch into WGN's transmission network. Yeah. It's like when a car doesn't work and I open the hood thinking, I'm going to see a squirrel gnawing on a cable in two pieces now and freight at the end. Right. Now imagine that squirrel wearing a Max headroom mask and being on acid. Okay. With a merit laid. Yes. And at first, the FCC and the FBI and anybody who was in the know basically said this was a very sophisticated attack. It would have required some very expensive equipment, a lot of electricity. There's not a lot of ways that they could have done this. But later on in the Pasternak article and this is one of the ways Pasternak contributed to this whole thing he talked to one of the SEC investigators, and this guy basically did away with that whole viewpoint that had lasted for almost 30 years, that it had to have been somebody with $100,000 piece of equipment and $10,000 worth of electricity over the minute and a half. He was saying, no, you could probably have gotten the equipment needed for this new for ten grand at the time, or you could have probably bought it for use for just a fraction of that, and it would have taken very little electricity. It would have just taken some know how and good positioning. Really? Yeah. Basically, he was like, it could have been done with, like, the size of a direct TV dish today. Right. And all they would have had to do was get in a high enough location in between, like, literally, because they're beaming waves, they're beaming microwaves through the air. So he's like, all they had to do is get in between the original studio and that initial tower on top of the I think it was John Hancock building for WGN. Yeah, yeah. And have a stronger signal. Right. So even just like a slightly stronger signal. So you remember how WGN has their studio transmission shooting up to the John Hancock building and then that transmitter shoots it out to everybody else in Chicago. What I think you're saying is like, if somebody was on the roof of another nearby building and they just shoot a transmission, their own max headroom transmission at a stronger amplitude that's what it is, of the same frequency, you just overpower it, cancels out what WGN is doing, and instead it transmits your max headroom thing. And they would be closer to that broadcast tower, right? Ostensibly, yes. So that would mean that it required far less electricity than you would think or that they originally thought, and far less equipment, too. They also had a pretty good idea of where these people would have had to have done it because after they got shut out of WGM, they turned their attention to WTTW, the PBS station, and they hijacked their signal while WTTW shot their studio link to the Sears Tower. So this would have been somebody who was on a roof somewhere that had a clear view of the John Hancock building and the Sears Tower and could transmit to either one of them. But that's basically what they think happened. Yeah. And the guy you're talking about, Dr. Michael Marcus, who at the time was the Assistant Bureau Chief in the FCC's Field Operations Bureau, he was the lead investigator. And he said that the guy in Chicago that was sort of in charge wasn't super like he was used to traditional FCC investigations. He wasn't wanting to go knocking on doors to investigate some kind of weird, kind of maybe creepy criminal dudes. It may or may not have a marital aid in his apartment. Just smack them on the other side and then nobody was being hurt. No one got hurt. In the end, it was almost a victimless crime. So they didn't throw a ton of resources at it. They were kind of like, listen, if you want to go investigate this, that's great, you should. But we're not going to assign a team of twelve people to try and crack this case of a bunch of nerds who did a weird thing for a minute and 20 seconds. And I think the longer it went on and there was no more of these intrusions from these guys, the fewer and fewer resources they had to work with. And it just kind of fell to the wayside. But what's interesting is in the beginning they said it would take somebody with a very expensive piece of equipment, a lot of electricity, and a lot of knowhow. And today the only one of those that's remaining is a lot of knowhow. There wouldn't have been a lot of people running around Chicago who would have known how to do something like this. So it's kind of surprising, even with very few resources that no one has ever been really implicated in this one. Yeah, I don't think we said they still don't know who did this. It's an unsolved mystery. Like Dennis Farina and Robert Stack. Love this one. The FBI, for their take, started concentrating on the actual video. They had the technology at the time, which is kind of funny now to think about it, but they're the only ones who had the technology at the time to actually make enhanced frames of this videotape and print out pictures, enhance them. And they were kind of focused on this upper right hand quadrant, as they say, where the Annie Oakley was spanking with the fly swatter. I don't know why they're so into that, but they said, we're trying to get clues on the actual location of the people who made the tape, not necessarily where they broadcast it from, but where did they shoot this thing to begin with? There was very little to go on aside from that spinning corrugated metal. And that could have been literally anywhere, because it's a really tight shot. It really is. Yeah. And there was very little evidence given in the video. Yeah. I mean, it says that they were looking at industrial warehouses and things, but that could have been in an apartment, living room. I mean, it wasn't like the door was attached to anything. It was freely spinning back and forth. It didn't make sense. Not the best lead, right? No. So over time and again, this is weird, too. It's not so weird that the FCC or the FBI didn't find who did this if they weren't really looking very hard. What's really weird is that no one has been like, it was these guys. I was there. I know these dudes. It was these guys. Statute limitations is done. Like, who cares? Yeah. After 1993, these guys would have gotten off scot free because the statute of limitations for this one was five years. Right. I'm shocked that no one later said, hey, that was me. Right. I'm soy Bob. No one's done that. Right. Yeah. There was some very early forum, like, message board stuff. Took the form of bulletin board services, I think BBSs, really early geek culture. Like Matthew Broderick dialing something with his phone and then putting it on that weird little modem Commodore 64 thing. The modem to transmit the dial tone over the telephone system. Right. So that's like the level of technology that these people were dealing with. But they were communicating with each other over, like, this proto Internet, these bulletin board systems. And two days after this, a guy named the Chameleon posted basically what you and I said about how all it took was these guys to go up on a tall building and overwhelmed the WGN and the WTW studio links. And IPSO facto, I'm a big fan of that, by the way. This intrusion was successful, right? Yeah. Two days, not two years, not a year ago, two days after it, somebody was on there explaining how it went out. So somebody knew this. Right. But only two theories have really ever come to light as to who it was. One you can basically just throw right out, and the other one, it turns out to have been a dead end. Yeah. The first one that you're talking about that doesn't really hold water was and this was a rumor online for a while, it was a musician named Eric Fornier or Fornier. I had a friend in preschool, I think, named Fernier. Yeah, that's how it was spelled. F-O-U-R-N-I-E-R. Actually, I don't know how it's spelled. I couldn't spell back then. So this guy was in a band and he did this weird, super creepy YouTube series called Shay St. John. S-H-A-Y-E. Did you watch it? Oh, yeah, love it. Yeah, just the nude that you would love it here. Alley. Yes. But this is genuinely unsettling, too. I'm with you on that. So it kind of fit in that he was doing these weird things. He had this band, they were in Bloomington, Indiana, not too far from Chicago. The Blood Farmers. Yeah, the band was the blood farmers. And they did these weird music videos and they thought, this is the kind of guy that would have done that. And the thinking was that he went to go broadcast one of their weird music videos as a broadcast intrusion, but chickened out at the last minute because they would have been found. Sure. And then ended up just improvising. That part makes a little sense because it definitely seems improvised. It does. But it was also videotaped, remember? So that means he would have had two videotapes with him. What do you mean? So if he was going to play the music video and said, I can do that, he would have had to have brought this other video taken place out of the back of the water. The other thing is, apparently see, I just said apparently again, Alex Pasternak from Motherboard contacted some of Fernier's friends because Fernier died in 2010. But his friends are like, absolutely not. Even some of the Blood Farmers are like, it wasn't him. I know what you're saying. And yeah, he did the whole Shea St. John thing, but this was not him. It was not quite there. He didn't know what he was doing with he wouldn't know any broadcast stuff or video editing or anything like that. Yeah. So this other one to me seems pretty promising. So we flash forward to when did this actually happen? Was this like by the time Reddit to come around on Reddit? Yeah, I think it was about 25 years after so it would have been in 2007. Yeah. So there's this guy oh, no, 20, 12, 13. Okay, sorry. There was this guy named from Chicago named Bowie POG. Sure. P-O-A-G-I didn't have any friends with that last name when I was a kid. And he was one of the kids hanging around those BBSs in the 80s in Chicago. From the sounds of it, he was on the younger side. He was 13, and even as a 13 year old geek, was very much intimidated by the older geeks in that crowd. And so it wasn't boisterous. He was sort of like, hey, I'm kind of hanging out here and not saying much and don't notice me. I just want to ingratiate myself. You guys can get me drunk for laughs if you want. And at a party in 1987, he remembers, he described him as a small, peculiar man that he thought was about in his thirty s. And he had an older brother, they lived in Chicago. So Pogue is describing these two guys who are in the same scene with him, correct? Right, yeah. And they live with his girlfriend downtown, about 10 miles from downtown Chicago. And they had the know how they were super into computers early on, he said you went to their apartment and it was just like it looked like a computer hoarder mess of wires and computers and equipment. Like Neo's apartment? Yeah, why not? Or what was the other one he was in before? The Matrix? Johnny Pneumonik. Yes. Dylan Ted. Yeah. Johnny Mnemonica. That's cyberpunk. Yeah, right? Yes, it is. All right, you could probably make the case that The Matrix is as well. All right, sure. So he described him as a stocky guy with tinted lens glasses, in his early thirties, an odd dude, his brother. He said he described as just kind of normal, but he said that he didn't make the connection at the time. But at a party on November, about the same day, midday on November 22, he was at a gathering of these dudes at the brothers apartment, and he heard them say something about doing something big later that night. They went to Pizza Hut and he's like, what are you guys talking about? What's the big thing? And they said, hey, don't ask questions, but just watched Channel Eleven tonight, right. On that same day. And I don't know how he didn't put it together. That's the one thing that really strikes me as fishy. But he said that years later. Now when he looks at it, he's like, even with that mask on, I see the body, I see what's going on, I hear that, and it's that guy right to me. But 25 years later, he was there that day. They tell him to watch that night and he didn't put it together for 25 years. That, to me is the one fishy thing. Well, and he has been called out as fishy. Sure. I'm sure he knows that it's kind of fishy. Yeah. So the guy, the motherboard Pasternak, reached out and he said, can you still get in touch with these guys all these years later? He said he sent the messages via Facebook. I don't even know if they saw them. They didn't get back then in a last ditch effort. He sent them certified mail, he found out where they lived, never heard anything back, and he was like, hey, it's clear that these guys don't want to be talked to, right? So you want to take a break? Yeah, let's do it. Okay. So that's where it stands right now. Like, nobody knows who is behind it still to this day. Crazy. It is crazy. And as a result, this Mac Headroom hack has taken its place in, like, the pantheon of geek culture and of hacker culture, and rightfully so. It's legendary in its own way. That's right. You got anything else? I got nothing else on this one. Cool, man. Well, if you want to know more about Max Headroom, you should start by checking out this amazing motherboard article by Alex Pasternack. And since I said amazing, it's time for listener mail. Let me go with the almond. Brothers, eat a peach from Emojis. I don't know if this is true, but it's fun. Okay. I wanted to talk about when Josh talked about the Alman Brothers band factoid, because I think it's actually a cool factoid. Dwayne Alman was once asked by a reporter what he was going to do for the war effort in Vietnam, and his response was, I'm going to eat a peach for peace. Dwayne died not long after that album, and EDA Peach was released posthumously. So he contends, Jesse Gadette, that that is where the album title came from. And the EDA Peach was not eatafood he or she, I guess just it could go either way. Yeah. As always, keep up with good work. I'm currently brewing beer and listening. Tell me where to mail some bottles, okay. Or come pick them up in Salt Lake City. All right. We'll do both. Sounds like a challenge, right? They're too heavy. I can't pick them up. Thanks a lot, Jesse. I appreciate that. Even though I still think I'm right. If you want to contend that something one of us said was incorrect, we love that stuff. You can tweet to us at Joshua Clarke S-Y-S kpodcast or movie crush. You can hang out with us on Facebook. Comstuffyshonow. Chuck Bryant. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstepworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the Web STUFFYou Know.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. 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 actually new episodes. Early. Download the app today." | |
42128c7a-53a3-11e8-bdec-5b462552a0c0 | What Were the BONE WARS? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/what-were-the-bone-wars | A pair of old timey fossil hunters had a rootin’ tootin’ rivalry that spilled from academic journals into the American Wild West - where fossils were dynamited and employees turned double agent. Learn about the two-fisted origins of American paleontology. | A pair of old timey fossil hunters had a rootin’ tootin’ rivalry that spilled from academic journals into the American Wild West - where fossils were dynamited and employees turned double agent. Learn about the two-fisted origins of American paleontology. | Thu, 01 Aug 2019 15:46:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=1, tm_hour=15, tm_min=46, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=213, tm_isdst=0) | 51362244 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody, it's Josh and Chuck, and we're coming to see you guys. Some of you. Some cities. Just listen up. That's right, because we just did Chicago and Toronto and it went great. And I think our topic of beep went really well. Sure did. Everyone loved hearing about beep. That's right. So if you're in Boston, you can come see us on August 29 at the Wilbur portland, maine. Maine. At the State Theater on August 30. I can't wait. I'm going to Labor Day weekend. I'm going to stay the whole weekend. I'll be all over Maine. That's great, man. Where else? We're going to be in Orlando on October 9, and then on October 10, we're going to be in New Orleans, man. And then later on that month, we're doing a three night stand. The 23rd, 24th and 25th at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn. That's right. 25th is sold out, but you can still get tickets for the 23rd and 24th, and we will see you then. Check it out@sysklive.com. 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 e Chuck Bryant. And there's Jerry over there. And that was a limp laugh, Chuck. I've gotten way better laughs out of you. Are you a dinosaur? A little bit. I got a little dinosaur in me. Get a little neanderthal in me from 23 of me. Yeah. But despite my dinosaur heritage, I was never big time into dinosaurs as a kid. Were you? No, not like it's astounding Chuck. How similar we were as children. I know. The only difference is I didn't smoke when I was seven years old. 14. I was the bright old age of 14 smoking. So it wasn't like I don't know if it was the same with you. It's not like I had anything against dinosaurs or kids who like dinosaurs. I thought they were kind of cool. And I had some figurines here or there, but there wasn't anything like I was nerdy about in any way, shape or form. Yeah, I think there's a certain movie that really got kids into dinosaurs. The Lost World. No. Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Right. And that movie came out when I was older. Yeah, same here. I remember what year that was. I feel like I was in college, though I wouldn't say it was like 92 to 94. One of those years is what I would guess. But kids these days, and it's not just my kid, but I see lots of kids in her age group that are obsessed with dinosaurs. Yeah. And I think that's cool. What a cool thing to be obsessed with. It teaches you so much stuff about the deep past, about evolution, about walking lizard, bird creatures. There's a lot to learn from being interested in dinosaurs. That's a very cool thing to be interested in. About death and extinction. Sure. Rotting fossilization. Yeah. All the good stuff. Right. But the whole interest. Including the interest that was around when we were kids that just kind of passed us by. But definitely the interest in dinosaurs that gave rise to the idea of Michael Crichton even writing Jurassic Park and then Steven Spielberg even making it into a movie. That interest in dinosaurs in America. You can actually trace back to almost a specific winter in a specific place in the 19th century. The winter of 1877 in particular. And it was the result of a vicious, mean spirited, petty rivalry between two paleontologists that really kind of sparked America's interest in dinosaurs. Yeah. I mean, it feels very Tesla. Who's the other guy? What was his name? Marconi, maybe? Or Ferris Bueller. Yeah, it really reminded me of the Tesla Ferris Bueller rivalry. Ferris won that one fair in Square and the current wars, which, by the way, that movie is coming out. Have you seen the trailer about the current wars? No. Who plays who? You know, I can't remember now, but I saw it the other day and it looks pretty good. Nicholas Cage plays both roles. How great would that be? It would be pretty great. AC DC, right? That's 2 hours right there. Right? There's actually going to be a movie or there was going to be a movie about what we're about to talk about today. Did you know that? No. I kind of wondered, though. Yeah, it was scheduled for production. Steve Carell was going to play Cope, and James Gandalfini was going to play Marsh, and James Gandolfini died unexpectedly, and the production just got kiboshed. And they also found out that the title, The Bone Wars had already been taken by an adult pornography. Yes. We're so on the same page. We totally are. Children. No interest in Jurassic Park or any dinosaurs, but we think the names of porno films is hilarious. That's our big interest. So I thought it was funny. We commissioned this piece for the Grabster, and he's a big dinosaur guy, and he was somewhat shamed and he said it two or three times. I can't believe I didn't know about these guys. Yeah, we were like, it's okay, grabs her. It's all right. Yeah, but I feel like he learned something along the way and he starts out and I think it's a good thing for us to talk a little bit about just before these dudes, how paleontology came about. And that had, you know, I think since people just started stumbling upon bones, even by accident, before it was even a discipline, people were like, oh, man, look at that thing. I'm going to pick that up and take it with me. Right. I think they used to get classified also as mythological creatures or dead gods or something like that. But the first documented paleontological expedition in North America was carried out by none other than Lewis and Clark. Yes. Did you know that before? Did we mention that in the episode, do you think? I don't know, but I did know at some point from somewhere. Maybe it was the Ken Burns piece. But one of the things they did, I mean, they were logging everything, including bone deposits, but they spent like a week around Salt Lake Flats or Salt Lake Gully or Salt Lake Something, where there was a big old salt lake that used to attract dinosaurs and plasticine mammals from two different periods. Everybody put your emails away, and the bones that would collect there were really significant. So they spent a week, like, excavating there. But that was the first one. But that was even before the word paleontology was coined. Yeah, that was in the French journal Defizik. And there were a couple of people that proceeded, and in fact, one of whom went on to be sort of a mentor to Cope, but a guy named Edward Hitchcock and another guy named Joseph. Is it lighty or ledy? I think lady is what I've seen the most. Yeah, Leidy. And he's the one that went on to work with Cope later on, but just put a pin in this. But in 1858, pretty important find. Basically the only big dinosaur find on the East Coast were the fossilized bones of an herbivore named Hadrosaurus Folky in New Jersey. And it was a big deal because it was on the East Coast, and this is where this stuff was going on at the time. And you get a lot of footprints on the East Coast, but not a lot of fines like this. Yeah, it was an enormous fine. And Lighty was called in to help excavate it and put it together because he was America's first vertebrate paleontologist. He was the first guy and was really prolific and really good at what he did. And. Like you said. Would eventually become a mentor to one of the guys we should probably introduce now. Because Lighty was working in I think his first real burst of energy came in the early 1850s. And within about 15. Maybe 20 years. There were a pair of guys who would come along and just completely change the field of paleontology. It started out very normally, just another scientific field, very exciting, lots of discoveries to be made. Sure that's the point of all this, right, is that if you have a brand new scientific field, everything you come across is worth writing about, describing, you get to name everything. So it was a really exciting, dynamic time for the field of paleontology. But a field of science is the character of it, is based on its earliest practitioners. And Lighting was a very steady, normal scientist who is very reliable. So he kind of set paleontology up like that. But then along came a couple of guys who would form this rivalry, and they would change all of that. I don't think necessarily to this day, but there was a lot of sniping that used to go on in the field of paleontology. That was because of the tone that these guys set. Yeah. And both of them would end up basically bankrupt at the end of each of their lives because of all their efforts to outdo and undermine one another's work. Right, so we're talking about two dudes. One is Marsh and one is Cope. Othanille, I've never heard that name before. I think his parents made it up, maybe. O-T-H-N-I-E-L-O. Charles March, born on October 1831 in New York. And they didn't have a lot of money in his family. They were farmers. He would have been a farmer. And this kind of really changed his life. He had a very rich uncle named George Peabody who would go on to really kind of fund his education and early parts of his career later on. Hey, he just plucked him out of the farm field, basically, and said, and I have no idea why he did this, but he said, You, I like the look of you and your brain nephew for smart would be my guess. Was that it? Okay, well, I don't know how he demonstrated it, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. Like, how did his uncle say, yes, you're the one. Smarts are always evident. Okay, well, he plucked them out, sent him to boarding school, then sent him to Yale, and eventually sent him off to grad school in Germany. So Marsh we're just going to call him Marsh because his name is just too ugly and horrible to say out loud. He was basically set. He was fine. He had a benefactor and his extraordinarily wealthy philanthropist uncle. Yeah. So Cope, on the other hand, similarly had money, but his was like, in his family. He wasn't like, poor with a rich uncle. He had a wealthy family, very prominent family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was born in July 1840, and he went to all the I was going to say trappings, but I guess all the benefits of being born into money. He went to very nice expensive boarding school, and that wasn't so much up his alley. So he dropped out when he was 16. And because he had a rich dad, it allowed him a lot of opportunities that other people wouldn't have, including going to college later on, even though he never graduated high school. Yeah, well, it was definitely in part because of his dad. But also, this was a time in like, say, the 1850s, it was lax. But also, even if you wanted to go on and become like, get a PhD, american universities, they didn't offer many PhD programs in sciences. Right. So there was a whole something called gentlemen naturalists who were amateur, self taught scientists who just did the work. They knew what they were doing, they figured it out as they went along, and they actually developed some of these fields. And so he kind of subscribed to that school where the old school of gentleman naturalist, where you could go figure it out yourself without needing to go through the university. But he did that just on the cusp. Like, our parents generation was just on the cusp of the last group who could get away without knowing how to use email. He was, like, part of that last generation that could become a scientist without having to go through formal training at a university. Right. Like if you have a tweed suit with a stiff collar and a pencil and a pad and lots of time on your hands. Yeah. To Cope's credit, I think that really kind of demonstrates like he's like, no, I'm going to go learn from experience. Sure, he did. Yeah. He's knocking it. But he did get entree into places like the University of Pennsylvania or the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia because of his family's context. But I get the impression that he worked his way into those places. Once he got in, he was just loaf. He learned what he needed to learn. Yeah. I mean, because if there's one thing we're going to learn about copy over the next 30 minutes or so is he worked hard? Yes. He's my pick of the bone wars. He's who I put my money behind. Is he your guy? Yes. Interesting. Did we ever say his name? Edward Drinker Coe? Yeah. That's a weird middle name. It is. He was a drinker, literally. He really was. He was also a Quaker and a pacifist, too. That's right. So at college, at University of Pennsylvania, that's where he met Joseph Lied. He was one of his professors. So that just kind of kickstarted their relationship. During the Civil War, he went to Europe, the American Civil War, because he didn't want to go to war. He didn't want to go fight. He wanted to go dig up bones. Yeah. And he was a Quaker. Pacifist too. That's right. So he went to Germany, and in 1863, he met Marsh. And they really liked each other at first. They had a lot in common, obviously. And I get the feeling that in Germany in 1863, there were probably not a ton of Americans who were super interested in dinosaur hunting. And so they locked up, became really good pals. They came back to the US after the Civil War and friends, and we're both like, all right, we're going to go do our thing independently, but we're going to keep in touch. We're going to swap info early on here. And it was all very friendly at first. Right. And I think you can make a pretty good case that they probably cut their own palms and clasped hands and became blood brothers during the German meeting. Okay. Probably. So that's what we're going with, because they really did like each other, and things were going along just fine. Two kindred spirits with a common interest in paleontology and they may have continued on that way, although I sincerely doubt that that's the case, which means I just undermine my own statement. But after the Civil War, they both went back to the United States to start careers, their own careers. And Marsh Cope. I'm sorry. He had connected with Joseph LAIDY, who he had met through the University of Pennsylvania and the Academy of Natural Sciences. They work together there. He went off with Lighti to study bones that were found at Haddonfield in New Jersey, where Lighty found that first skeleton. Right. Yes. And so, being friends with Marsh, he naturally cope naturally extended an invitation. Hey, come visit me in the field. You got to see this place. It's amazing. There's fossils everywhere. You're going to love it. And so Marsh came out for a visit. And this is Mark One. In the turning point of their relationship, there were two distinct marks. Each of them point to one as the end of their friendship. This was the end of their friendship, starting with Cope. That's right. So both of these guys had privilege, like we've been talking about, for Marsh's part, his uncle, his rich uncle, donated 150 grand to Yale, basically to sort of get marched a job. They created the Peabody Museum of Natural History. And then they were like, well, hey, we need a professor to chair this new department, and so why not your nephew? And they said, Bully. That's a great idea. So it basically costs 150 grand to get Marsh this job is the chair of Department of Paleontology at this new Peabody Museum at Yale University. Right. And so they said, yes, we want to make you the first professor of Paleontology in America. And Marsh said, yes, that's a great idea. I like where you're going? Yale. I'm going to spend a lot of time here, I can tell. So that's Marsh setting off on his little trajectory, basically, and sconcing himself in Yale, right? That's right. Cope, remember, he was basically a high school dropout, and he had to kind of make his own way. He had trouble at first finding a position until he struck upon a place called Hammerford College. And he got a position as a professor of zoology there. And they said, well, you're a high school drop out, so we'll just give you an honorary Masters of Arts degree. Bing. Now you're a professor. Yeah. It's working out for both of these guys. Yes. Although Cope didn't really, like, haverford that much. He ends up quitting. And it actually kind of describes his personality a little bit, that, incident, that he would get a good job having kind of been carried into that position, and then says, this job is BS. I'm quitting. He was apparently prone to kind of a quick temper here or there. Yeah, I mean, Ed does make the point. It's kind of hard to piece together a personality from someone way back then. But by most accounts, Cope was a bit mercurial, a little more outgoing. Marsh was a little quieter and kind of known as a bit of a flake. But considering their backgrounds, it sort of makes sense where they ended up. They went about their work in very different ways. Marsh didn't publish his first paper until he was 30 years old. He was a lifelong bachelor, cope married when he was 25. And even the way they wrote, cope wrote these very sort of flowery descriptions of things, while Marsh was much more sort of rigid and sort of dry and scientific. Yeah. If you read Cope stuff, he's trying to set the scene for you. There's one paper where he was describing pterodactyls, and it's a scientific paper, so all you have to do is describe the bones and the measurements and extrapolate and that kind of stuff. But he's like painting the picture of what it must have been like on a cliffside by the ocean as a troop of these things were dangling by their claws. Yeah, it's super cool. It would definitely transport the reader there. And it was a little extra dollop of something that you didn't have to put on, but Cope definitely did put on, which is surprising that he put anything extra into his work because he published at an extraordinary pace, so much so that Marsh in particular was like, this man is obviously fraudulent, nobody can publish this much. Yeah, for sure. And we'll touch on that a bit later. The big difference in their earlier careers was when it came to religion, like you said earlier, Cope was a Quaker and was a religious man. Marsh was not he was not very into religion and he was fully down with evolution and natural selection in Darwin, whereas Cope kind of had to make it all fit within his religious beliefs. So it's not like he outright called Darwin a fraud or anything like that, but he worked in the actions of God into his theories and sort of made it all work according to his religious beliefs, which is, back then, a little bit different, but even back then, for a scientist, sort of an odd thing. Yeah, for sure. But he tried to rectify science and his religious belief, and the way that a lot of people did that back then was to subscribe to neolumarakism, which is this idea that changes in a population take place on the individual level. Like an example I saw was if you're a blacksmith and you use your arm a bunch to hammer, you're going to get a big old bulky arm, right? Well, when you have kids, you're going to pass that bulky arm that you developed in your lifetime off to them. And that's how evolution happens. And it's much more directed by God than what Darwin was saying, which is you're just born with a random mutation, and if that mutation happens to make it more likely for you to survive, to pass along your genes, then that mutation will get selected by nature, which basically has nothing to do with God. So there was a real struggle for Cope throughout his lifetime, rectifying the two, especially considering, Chuck, that the body of work that he produced really helped prove Darwin's point more than anything. Yes, for sure. When it comes to, like, where things went wrong, because they were still buddies up until this point, it seemingly looks like Marsh drew first blood. We mentioned that hadn't field dig earlier. So it's 1868. Cope has left his job at Habersford. He's not very happy there, so he leaves. He's really kind of feed on the ground, doing the work, publishing papers, which we'll see later at an alarming rate, and working with lady, who we talked about. And he invited Marsh because they're buddies. And he was like, dude, you got to come check this out. We found a legit dinosaur fossil on the east coast. Marsh was like, great, I'll go check it out. He loves what he sees and says, this is wonderful, friends. You're doing such great work here. Pat on the back. Then he sneaks back later on by himself yeah. And bribes the workers there Copes workers and Lighty's workers and says, hey, man, if you find any more good specimens, send them to this address. And here's a little dough for your effort. Can you believe that? Yes. I mean, just straight up sold them out. Right. So Marsh has just outed himself as a very warmy type of fellow, not to be trusted in the way that I thought there was a really great American experience episode called Dinosaur Wars that really kind of described it. Like, to Cope, he subscribed to that gentleman scholar type of mentality, which was, there's unwritten rules. I came and showed you my quarry, and you went behind my back to steal my fossils from my quarry. Not cool. That was cove's take. From Marcia's point of view, he was kind of from the business like American school to conquer at all costs. And he owed no allegiance, really to Cope in that sense, that he saw an opportunity and he took it. And that was Marsha's view of the whole thing. But to Cope, that was like, that was not very cool, and I'm going to remember that, but I'm still going to tentatively remain friends with you. All right, well, let's take a break, and we'll come back right after this and we'll talk about what Marsh always said was the reason they were no longer friends right after this. All right. So Marsh has really screwed his friend over. His back paid off, dudes, to send him stuff. But according to Marsh, he's like, that's not why we weren't friends anymore. That was not what really killed our friendship at all. Here's what happened. Later on that year, Cope published a paper establishing this new species, alas mosaris platerius. Nice. Thank you. March goes to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philly to check this thing out because they're still sort of friends at this point. Right. And Cope showing off his things like, look at this thing. I put this thing back together and look at the skeleton. It's amazing. And said, My friend, it appears you have fallen into the classic Paleontology trap and mounted the head on the butt. Yes. And this was a humiliating thing for Cope. Sure. So much so that he realized, oh, God, I just wrote a paper describing this thing with its head on the wrong end in the American Philosophical Society's journal and ran out and tried to buy as many of these copies as he could just to cover up his mistake and the way that Marsh put it later, because he ran around telling everybody he could about this gap. He was very glib about it. Oh, very. He just wanted to make sure that everybody knew that Cope had screwed up. Right. Whereas he characterized the story, he characterized himself in the story. Just having gently pointed this out, he basically said that Cope's vanity was wounded or his wounded vanity received a shock from which it has never recovered, basically saying, like, not only did he get it wrong, when I gently pointed this out, this guy just flipped out and he still hasn't forgiven me. So that's what happened to our friendship. Never mind the whole going behind his back thing at Haddonfield. This is really what happened. But the thing is, that story isn't even correct. It's just like a sliver of the fuller picture. Because the fuller picture involves Joseph Leide, who, again, remember, was working at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, where this skeleton was in the first place. That's right. So what apparently really happened is Marsh comes in and just says, oh, actually, the neck vertebrae is in the wrong position. That got everyone over there looking. And Lighty is the one who actually said, oh, no, you have the head in the wrong place where the tail is. And to fully paint a picture here, this wasn't like some huge big deal like mistakes. It was very early on in Paleontology, everyone was doing their best. There was a lot of trial and error going on, a lot of guesswork, and it wasn't like, oh, my gosh, it's not like someone today drawing the head of a bear mounted on his butt. They were doing the best they could, and it wasn't like some huge error. Right now, it is true, from what I understand, that Cope did run around trying to buy the copies of the American Philosophical Society journal that had the incorrect part in it, and he was humiliated, especially the fact that Marsh was involved. But it definitely wasn't Marsh running to the rescue to save Paleontology and Cope just being a voice. Overall, it was definitely an incorrect picture that Marsh painted. But regardless of how it's painted or what actually happened. That two pronged attack on the friendship, both of them perpetrated by Marsh, frankly, if you ask me, that ended their friendship, like their friendliness was basically out the door. There's some evidence that in the following couple of years, when they wrote to one another, they would kind of jokingly reference some of this stuff in the past, but even that eventually dried up, and they genuinely became better rivals, made all the more pronounced when the west was opened up by the Transcontinental railroad. Because all of a sudden, you had said earlier that the fossil fuels in the east, the conditions of climate and geology in the east, we're not conducive to preserving dinosaur bones. The exact opposite is true of the western United States. And when the west opened up, it was like, come on in, paleontology. The timing of the two is just astoundingly perfect. Yeah. I mean, we're talking about the Dakotas, Kansas, just bones everywhere and not even too hard to find a lot of times. Yeah. I mean, if you were a paleontologist and you headed west, if you had some protection, because despite all our efforts, it was still sort of a dangerous area for a white man from the east to be traveling around the Native American tribes there. And the Western tribes did not take kindly to a lot of it. No, because think about it, like, they went from wagon trains of settlers coming through periodically to train daily, moving people in and out. So it was a big deal to the Western tribes who were fighting back and pushing back against this encroachment and wave that was coming much more strongly than it had been before the railroad, too. Yeah, for sure. So from this point on, the guys took very sort of different I guess we're forced to take different approaches to their careers. Cope basically spent the rest of his life as a working paleontologist, like feet on the ground for the most part. He didn't work at a college. He didn't work at a museum until much later. He was not taken care of or funded by the government. So he paid for all he came from wealthy family, so he paid for most of the stuff himself, sold his farm, his family, Quaker Farm, and got a big fat inheritance and started going west and started amassing this big collection that was actually his, which was a really big deal because since no one was contributing to his financial burdens, he, I guess, technically owned this stuff. Right? He owned it fair in Square. I mean, he financed his own expeditions. He paid for the shipping and transportation of these things, which is another thing. The railroad helped that not only open the west, that helped ship enormous bones back east to the museums, but he was paying for this. So, yeah, his collection was his own. Marsh, on the other hand, being in Scottsdale, he. Was able to rely on Yale yale families, government contacts that Yale had to finance the expeditions that he went on. So in his mind, it was his collection. But technically, it really wasn't, because he hadn't financed any of it himself. It had all been financed by others. The thing about Marsh, though, Chuck, is that he was the first one to make it out west. And because he was the first one there, he basically considered the entire western United States his turf, and everyone else was encroaching on it, which is awfully rich if you can remember what he did to Cope back at Hadtenfield. And back then, there wasn't any kind of ownership on any fossils. But now that he's the first one out west, there is such a thing, and they all belong to him for sure. So Cope, when it comes to academics, they also were really different in how they approach things. We kind of teased earlier about how much Cope wrote and published, and, boy, it's astounding it seems like he published throughout his career about 1400 academic papers. In the 1870s, he was doing about 25 papers a year. And in one winter alone of 1879 and 1880, he published 76 papers. Very prolific, to the point where it was pretty easy for someone like Marsh to poke holes and kind of say that he was either copying people or plagiarizing people or just outright fraudulent, and that no one can write this much stuff. It also presented a problem in that coach. He was publishing so much that he had a hard time getting stuff published after a while because there weren't a ton of scientific journals, and they can't be like, Listen, man, we can't publish, like, ten things a month from you or a quarter, because we'll just call this thing the Cope Journal. And he said, that's a great idea. So in 1877, he bought the American Naturalist Journal for himself to publish all his own works, which ended up being a really I don't know about bad choice, but financially it is. What really put the biggest dent in his future fortunes was sinking a ton of his own money into this American Naturalist Journal. Oh, is that right? I thought it was the Silver mine. The journal set him up for it. Yeah, the silver mine was the last ditch effort to try and make a little bit of money, because he was almost broke by that point. But he does have this forum. Now, whether it was a good business opportunity or not, he has a forum to publish in. And like you're saying, he wrote just so many papers. Not only was it just too many for the journals to keep up with, there were also a lot of questions from these journals, like, wait a minute, if you're like, a deliberate, thoughtful scientist, you shouldn't be able to publish this much. And one of the problems of the Bone Wars, the rivalry between Cope and Marsh that really kind of got both of them to be the first to rush to name a species or make some new discovery so that the other one couldn't, is that there was a lot of sloppy work that came out of it. And when there's a lot of sloppy taxonomical work where the same species is getting different names from different people at the same time, that takes a lot to entangle. And apparently it took paleontology many decades to kind of undo some of the sloppy work that was kind of laid at the foundation of the field in the 1870s. Yeah, and especially at Cope's feet, because for his part, Marsh was very much more methodical, did not publish nearly as many papers. But along with that comes a lot more prestige. No one's going to talk about Marsh and say that he's publishing too much. He's doing sloppy work. So as a result, they were published in some really prestigious journals over the years, kind of almost exclusively. And he had, like you said, Yale behind him. So he would take students a lot of time to make them pay their own way, because this is all a very expensive endeavor. For the time, Cope was sort of creative in how he would fund some of this. Like, he would latch onto other Western expeditions that had nothing to do with paleontology. There was one called the Wheeler Survey, which was a mapping expedition that he was able to hook up with. So he would cut corners and say where he could. But with the power of Yale University behind him and these students who would pay their own way, marsh had a real advantage when it came to staking his claim out west. Right. And also, one of the first expeditions he went on was funded by the families of some Yale students. So it was some Yale students and Marsh basically playing cowboy out west. And I guess the first day, once they arrived out west where they were going to dig, buffalo Bill Cody shows up, basically kind of like as a guest star to appear and just delight and thrill the Yale boys, one of whom wrote about the whole expedition. And the whole thing got published in Harper's. So the whole thing kind of demonstrates that Marsh, as much as he's kind of seen as, like, this meek, deliberate scientist, was also really good at self promotion, too. Oh, for sure. He would wear a gun. I think he sort of fashioned himself as a Teddy Roosevelt type or maybe a Buffalo Bill type. And, yeah, he would toot his own horn, for sure. For his part, Cope, after his father passed away, spent less and less time out west in the actual field, more time in Philadelphia, and he would hire guys out. And in fact, Marsh would later go on to do a very similar thing where they would have their diggers out there excavating and then sending bones back to the East Coast where they could dig in and do their studying there. Right. And it's out west that the famous Bone Wars really started to take place. But like you were saying, neither Marsh nor Cope were there. But what was going on out west, all the dirty deeds and all that stuff were at the direction of behest of these two. So you want to take another break and then get into what the Bone Wars are really all about? Yeah. Okay. We'll be right back. All right. Chuck so the 1870s roll around the west has opened up from the Transcontinental railroad. It's giving up its fossils. It's just crazy how well preserved fossils are out there because of heat and dryness and wind erosion exposes them. And there was a part of that American Experience documentary where they showed a picture of this landscape that you could see from the train. And they said that some expedition was riding by and figured that they were riding by just a rock outcropping. And they realized there was just a field covered in dinosaur bones. It wasn't rock. There was bones. That's how many bones there were out west. So the west is starting to yield this stuff, and just one place would become, like, a treasure trove, and another place would become a treasure trove. And each of these places, some prospector would find a big bone, and the first thing they would think of was, I need to either get in touch with Cope or Marsh, because these guys are going to want to know about this, and they'll probably pay big bucks for it. And that's really once they stopped mounting their own expeditions, that's how they got most of their bonuses from amateurs getting in touch with them. Yeah. So this would open the door for these guys to really kind of get underhanded. They would hire guys away from each other. They would pay for information about the other person's digs and the bones that they were getting. They would outbid one another, and eventually, like I said, both of these guys would end up pretty much financially ruined in the end. There were reports of sabotage, of theft. There were reports of dynamite. The other persons like digs in their camps. Well, one thing I saw listen to this. Marsh ordered that if his men couldn't get bones out of, like, a find, like, they just couldn't get it out, he said, Smash them. Do not leave them, because I don't want Coke to possibly be able to get them himself. Not only that, but the bones that they would like smaller finds that they would dig up that they didn't think were as important, they would smash so the other person wouldn't have anything to do with them. Yeah. So they were smashing the fossils that they sought for science because of their rivalry. That's the insane degree that it reached. Yeah. And it's easy now. And I'm wondering how much they had to trump this up for a movie script, because it seems like some of this is exaggerated. I don't know if they found actual evidence that they would dynamite each other's camps. It seems like the most they would do is push dirt back onto things that they had dug up and not, again, they're lacking out there are doing this stuff right. And these guys, this is all kind of perpetrated by Marsh and Cope themselves. They would kind of trump up these stories in the press and things to kind of make the other one look bad. So while there were bone wars going on, I'm not sure it was quite as exciting as they're made out to be. Well, there weren't, like, shootouts or anything like that. But, I mean, just the fact that these two paleontologists are trying to sabotage one another's career is kind of hilarious in and of itself. Yeah, and it could have. The fact that these guys were driving each other, it's like, this is the lens we look at it through now. It's like, did this hurt the field of paleontology or help it? And you can kind of look at it from two angles on one hand. What if they would have worked together and pulled their resources? Maybe they could have found a lot more and gotten a lot more things straight that they didn't have to untangle later. Or maybe because they were so competitive and drove each other to work harder, maybe they were uncovering things because of that, because they uncovered a lot of stuff. Like, they were both super prolific together. I think between the two of them, they accounted for 126 new species of dinosaur. And that's just dinosaur. Yeah. And again, this is at a time where you could, like, stub your toe and look down and just discover a new species of dinosaur, because so little work had been done in the field. But they definitely did drive one another to work harder and faster and try to outdo one another. And one of the big benefits that the field saw that you can point to in retrospect, and even at the time, was that winter of 1877 that I was talking about. This is like winter in Wyoming. It's not a very welcoming climate. And yet both Marsh and Cope hired their prospectors, their bone diggers, to continue working through the winter rather than taking a break like you traditionally would. You dug in the summer, wrote papers in the winter. They said, no, keep going. This is just too the bones that are coming out of this place are too good, and I don't want my rival to be the one to take them all out. So both kept working through the winter, and out of that one winter, we got triceratops, we got a petosaurusaurus stegosaurus, all from that one winter of 1877. And if you can't look back and say, yes. These guys drove one another to this level of discovery. I don't know what you can say. I just throw my hands up in disgust otherwise. Does that make sense? Sure. Okay. I mean, as a paleontologist, you could literally just say, you know, the triceratops, I discovered it. Yeah. And that could be it. That could be your career right there, let alone the stegosaurus on top of the triceratops. Come on. Sure. And then apatosaurus. That may sound vaguely familiar, but here, let me drop one on you that you'll say, oh, you're ready, bronsaurus? Same thing, apparently. Yeah. I didn't even fully get I mean, this gets into the weeds with, like, serious paleontology pedantry and nerding out, but yeah, I see. Bronsaurus. Allow me to nerd out for just a second. The point of the appetisaurus bronsaurus being the same thing with different names is one of those things that's frequently laid at the feet of Marsh is saying, this was sloppy work on Marsh's part, and maybe if he hadn't been competing with Cope, he would have done better work. That's probably not the case, but he named the same species two different things because he thought they were two different species. And a later paleontologist about 2030 years later came along and said, I think this is the same thing since they were called the Patosaurus first. That's what we're going to call this from now on. And so, scientifically, bronze ore should have gone, I can't believe the way of the dinosaur, but somehow it got into the cultural zeitgeist, and everybody said, no, we like saying bronsaurus more. I blame The Simpsons or The Flintstones because of the bronzeaurus burger thing. Who knows if that's the case or not? But that was supposedly the bronze source and the appetizers are the same thing, and really you're supposed to call them apatosaurus. There you have it, folks. Nerding out. So in the 1880s this is after the big rush of the late 70s, things started to change a bit. So Marsh has got a couple of good jobs. He works at the US. Geological Survey and is the president of the National Academy of Sciences. But financially, they're not doing so great on either side because, like we said earlier, they'd spend a lot of their own money trying to outdo one another. Right. So Marsh is in a way, way better position than Cope. This is actually at a point when Cope is kind of against the ropes, but rather than both of them just kind of going their own way, the dinosaur wars have kind of ebbed a little bit, and they can just kind of go off and work as paleontologists for the rest of their life. Marsh decides to come after Cope and deal him the death blow. The moment Marsh had a position of power that he could use against Cope, he abused his position immediately. He was very high up at the USGS. And he used that connection to freeze Cope out of any chance of getting any kind of government funding for any further expeditions. So Cope was basically penniless sorry, Chuck, because he had invested in a silver mine that he used the rest of his money for. Basically the silver mine went bust, so he lost all of his money and now his greatest enemy in rival was in charge of the purse strings for government expeditions and had basically said, you're not getting a dime, Cope. So Cope was left with his collection and nothing else. That's bad enough. But then Marsh decided to take it one step further and he introduced some laws into the USGS. I guess bylaws that said, if a government program or agency has funded an expedition, any fossils collected from that expedition belong to the government. And he sent the USGS after Cope's collection. He tried to take Cope's collection. The only thing Cope had left, he didn't have his family anymore. He was living alone in like a tiny apartment surrounded by his collection. It was all he had left and Marsh tried to take it from him. And actually Marsh failed because Cope could prove that he had paid for most of it. That's right. And it was that collection that kind of funded the rest of his life. He would sell off parts of it here and there when he needed to make rent and stuff like that. He did get a job. In 1889, he was hired as professor of Zoology at the University of Pennsylvania. So that's good. At least he had a little bit of an income. And they were dead to each other at this point, though, spent a lifetime battling each other. Cope was just infuriated at the length Marsh would go. It was all just very petty at this point and neither one of them come out looking great because of a career of sort of backstabbing each other and they went to the press. In the end, I think it was Cope, he had taken these copious notes over his life about all the grievances he had against Marsh over the years. And he went to the New York Herald, they published an article about this, but it ended up just making both of them look bad. It made Marsh look bad because the things he did made Cope look kind of petty and angry about everything. And this is all kind of played out in public and the press. Right. And in this first article, when Cope went to the Harold, he accused not just Marsh of wrongdoing, but also the USGS of corruption. And that actually got the interest of Congress who started investigating and ended up cutting the USGS budget by like, half. So Marsh ended up losing his job and his position as head paleontologist at the USGS. And in a beautiful ironic twist, that law that he himself had inserted through the USGS that anybody whose collection had been financed by the US government could lose that collection meant that he actually lost his collection. The government came after his collection and took a substantial chunk of it for itself because it had financed so much of his expeditions. So it ended up turning him and biting him in his own rear, and he lost a lot of his collection, which really burned. So Cope died first. He died in 1897 at the age of 56, but not before he would issue a challenge to Marsh, which is, I'm leaving my body and my brain to science, and I bet you my brain is bigger than your brain. Marsh never took the bait. He died in 1889 of pneumonia at the age of 68, and by all accounts did not take part in this brain measuring competition, this posthumous competition in the grave, which I think is kind of funny, but that brain. I think Cope's brain is still under the ownership of the University of Pennsylvania today. It still wanders the halls at night. Amazing, ghostly brain. That's the surprise ending to this one. That's right. And I guess in the end, Marsh is credited with 80 species to Cope, 56, which is not bad. Plus, also Cope has that 1400 papers under his belt, too. A lot of papers. You got anything else about the Bone Wars? No. Well, that's it, everybody. I think there's a Drunk History episode about this. I never saw it, but it looks pretty good. I would recommend the American Experience episode on it and just go read up more on it because it's pretty interesting stuff. And since I said it a bunch of times just now, it's time for listener mail. All right, I'm going to call this Civil Air Patrol. This is from Jackson Chevalati. Can I ask you a question? Yes, sir. There was a big influx of Civil Air Patrol emails out of nowhere. Did you notice? I did not. Yeah, we got like a handful of them just out of the blue, and I didn't know if something happened or what, but I guess it's making the round somehow. Who knows? Maybe we're on the civil Air Patrol watch list. Web blog from Jackson. He says, I have been a listener for about seven years, since I was ten years old. Anyway, I'm a senior master sergeant in the Civil Air Patrol, and I've been in it for about two and a half years. I was really excited you guys finally did a podcast on us. Not a ton of people, even though we exist. Some say we are the Air Force's best kept secret. I don't know what that might have something on you guys, right? It is nice to get some publicity like that, though. You guys totally nailed it. Did an awesome job, like always being a cadet in the program. I'd like to hear more about that part, maybe give you a short stuff on it someday. Cadet life is more of a training life than an actually doing the stuff, like learning how to lead effectively and all that jazz. We also have a lot of mini boot camp things that we go to further our learning. Anyway, you did an outstanding job, and I would appreciate it if you could give a shout out to my squadron, the Green Mountain composite squadron. That's not bad. Not a bad name. Green Mountain Composite Squadron. Sounds like a wholesale furniture material. I was going to say it sounds like a sort of a modern bluegrass band. Oh, that's a good one, too. Yeah, like, there's a lot of synth involved. Sure. Okay. Synth and mandolin. Okay. And that was from Jackson. That's right, Jackson. Is he the front man for this bluegrass fan? Of course. All right. Well, thanks a lot for writing in, Jackson. Hopefully, we fulfilled all of your requests, and if we didn't, TS for you. If you want to get in touch with us like Jackson did, you can go on to stephysener.com and check out our social links. Or you can send us a good old fashioned email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to stuffpodcast at iheart. 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." | |
Do animals have a sixth sense? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/do-animals-have-a-sixth-sense | People have long believed that animals had mysterious powers of prediction. Do animals have a sixth sense? Is there any proof to back this belief up? Explore the fascinating subject of clairoyant animals in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. | People have long believed that animals had mysterious powers of prediction. Do animals have a sixth sense? Is there any proof to back this belief up? Explore the fascinating subject of clairoyant animals in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. | Thu, 21 May 2009 14:15:43 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=21, tm_hour=14, tm_min=15, tm_sec=43, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=141, tm_isdst=0) | 19958544 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from houseoffworkscom. Join Josh and Chuck, the guys who bring you stuff you should know as they take advantage trip around the world to help you get smarter in a topseyturvy economy. Check out the all new superstught guide to the economy from Housetopworks.com, available now exclusively on itunes. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. That's the sound of the police. I'm Josh Clark. Chuck Bryant is with me. Boogie Down Productions. Old school rap. That's right, Chuck. Nice one. Good call. Love it. Yeah. So how are you doing? I'm well, sir. Yeah. You? I'm doing really well, Chuck. Yes. Thank you for asking. Thanks. Do I look healthy? From the nose up. I've noticed that my face is becoming increasingly resemblant to a catcher's mitt. An old catchers mitt. And not a compass? No, like a very round catchers mitt. A perfectly round catches mint. How about that? Like one of those catchers myths from the early days. Maybe my full name could be Compass Head Catchers Mitt. It's a little cumbersome. So, Chuck, have you ever met a cat? I've got two cats. So you have? Oh, yeah. You've got the Whiz and LeBron there's. Pretty close, actually. I'm impressed. The wizard and LeBron. LeBron, okay. Yeah. I just added a b. Right. I would not name my cat after LeBron James. Currently killing the Atlanta Hawks. Yeah. He's good, though. And a good guy here. Yeah, sure. So, Chuck, have you ever met a cat that could predict death? No, but I love this story. It's a good one. You mean the story of Oscar? Yes. I remember when it happened. Oh, really? Yeah, I remember reading about it. I got to pay more attention. Yeah. My wife and I share these animal stories with each other. Got you. Okay. Like Christian the lion who was taken to Kenya in the 70s. Don't think there was not a tear or two shed in the Greed Brian household, especially the version of it that was put to Arrow Smith's. Yes. Don't want to miss a thing. Don't want to miss a thing. Yes, exactly. Nice, Chuck. Okay, well, back in 2007, the New England Journal of Medicine, which is not exactly known for its sensational journalism, published a story about a cat named Oscar. Yeah. And Oscar was a resident at a Rhode Island nursing home. Yeah. The Steerhouse Nursing and Rehab Center. And basically, he was just a normal cat aloof kind of was like, hey, you're old, and I'm staying away from you for the most part. Right. It is a home for people with advanced dementia, and I get the impression that it has a bit of a hospice vibe to it here or there. So Oscar, as I said, is generally aloof. Except when you're about to die. Right. All of a sudden, if you're laying in bed and Oscar comes over to you and sits down next to your bed and starts hanging out with you. You got a couple of hours left. Yeah. And Oscar is actually pretty good at predicting death. Yes. There's at least 25 cases where he accurately predicted the death of a person in the steer nursing home. Right. In Joshua's. There was a rumor there is a rumor on the Internet going around that Oscar met an untimely death, and there was a mysterious dented bedpan found near his lifeless cat body. Not so, because we just called we called the Steer nursing home to find out. It was kind of vague. There were a couple of reputable news sources eg, the Savannah Morning News that carried that story, but they all appeared to be the same. So Chuck and I, being the Internet solution that we are, just picked up the phone and did it the old fashioned way. And we called the nursing home, and Oscar is still alive and well and in the nursing home apparently predicting death as well. Right. Although she said that she was looking at Oscar. I wonder if she meant Oscar's stuffed body on the counter at the check in on that floor. How hilarious is that? Oscar would be murdered because patients didn't like him predicting their deaths anymore. So not true. Oscar is alive. And I must say, when I said my wife and I really love the story, we didn't see it as a macabre predictor of death kind of thing. Like Josh paying it. We saw it as a comforting thing that an animal provides, was trying to comfort these people. So that's the way I took it. Is it? Yeah. There are other theories. Okay. All right. So, Chuck, how could a cat possibly predict death? Right? They can smell it. Perhaps smelling is probably the likeliest answer. Yes. You know when you're sick, like when you have the flu, you don't smell quite right. You know what I mean? You smell sick. That's great. Like, your breath is messed up. There's some gunk coming out of your pores. When I was sick over the course of the last 80 podcasts, I was waking up with literally my eyelids pasted shut from gunk that was coming out. And don't think that didn't smell pal. You want to know more? No. Swine flu. I want to get back to the cat's smelling death. Okay. So smelling is a pretty obvious way, apparently, as people's organs begin to shut down or fail. There's the hypothesis that this would emit certain smells, right. Certain chemicals that humans cannot smell. What's that called when cell commits suicide? Sellicide auto license. Auto license, right. Rigor mortis, baby. I guess the sense is that as these cells begin to cannibalize themselves and break down and all their contents are released, it starts to emit a smell, and that might attract Oscar. Right? Right. But the cool thing is, as you said, it's not like he just goes in points like this one's next and then leaves. He hangs out until the person is dead and then he leaves. Yeah, that's what I took it that's a comforting part to me. Yeah. You wonder if you could get the cat to leave. Maybe you got a second chance or something. Not true at all. I wonder if people have ever tried to bargain with the cat. Like, dude, I'll totally get you more friskies if you just get out of here. Right. Or if one of the people in the home that didn't like one of the other people left a little trail of kibble yeah. Just to screw with their fellow patient nursing home hygiene. It makes you wonder, chuck, is it possible that oscar the cat is in fact the grim reaper? He is not, Josh. Okay. But that's just one example of what we're talking about, which is animals having a what, a $0.06. Well said, chuck. Thank you. We already decided that chuck was going to say six cents and not me, because I can't say six cents. Yeah. Thanks for the impression of each other. I have a speech impediment, it turns out. So should we talk about dogs next? Oh, yeah. One of the things that's fascinating about Oscars cats, they don't do that. They're not empathetic. They're not supposed to do that. Yes. They're not known for being empathetic. Dogs are right. Dogs tend to be very happy, loving creatures. Right. And so it would make more sense of oscar was a dog. Sure. Because dogs there's all kinds of anecdotal stories about dogs detecting cancer by smelling. It's not just anecdotal, my friend. Well, mr. Stack guy, I happen to have a study right here. You're killing me. I have a 2006 study right. And I have no idea where it's from, but it seems a little shaky to me. Quite. You it's from science daily pal. Okay. They don't print this anything. That's true. It was a 2006 study where they took 86 patients with cancer, 55 with lung cancer and 31 with breast cancer, and these were confirmed cancer cases. And then they used a control sample of 83 healthy people right. And they actually took breath samples from these people and sealed them in special tubes, and then they exposed them to these dogs. They had dogs sniff the different samples, and with 97% accuracy thank you. These dogs could pick out people with cancer. Really? Yeah. Wow. So clearly there's some smells that we humans aren't aware of, aren't cognizant of. Right. Because we like to smoke and eat cheeseburgers and things like that. Sure. That animals can sense, which would explain why you could detect cancer. And there's another study that showed that dogs could detect bladder cancer in urine. Yes. So there you have that one, too. Thank you. And that makes sense to me because animals certainly have different hearing capacities than we do. High pitched sounds like dog whistles. We can't hear. Humans typically hear between 20 and 20,000. Elephants, though, can hear between 16 and 12,000, and cattle can go all the way up to 40,000. So that's why when animals are said to predict weather and earthquakes and things like that, that and barometric pressure changes, they pick up on these things when humans don't. So it's not exactly that they have a six sense, but they use the five senses are more heightened than humans are. That's interesting that you say cattle can hear better than anybody else. Why is that? Well, because I was reading in this article, it mentions the 2004 tsunami and how there were so few animal carcasses found because so many animals acted strangely and basically headed to higher ground before the tsunami hit. The animal that they found the most of are cattle. So maybe they know. And just like I don't have a whole lot to live for, I'm just going to let death take me now. Or maybe they had a harder time getting out of there and heading to higher ground. I don't know. Yeah, that's just one theory. Okay, so Oscar may be in a league of his own by predicting death, but yes, there is tons of anecdotal evidence that animals, especially dogs, can sense illness. Right? Right. There was a Chihuahua that a woman in England owned who said that her dog detected breast cancer. I thought you're going to say Taco Bell. No, awful. It was I detected breast cancer three different times in her really? Which sucks. She had breast cancer three different times in her Chihuahua. You got breast cancer, hon. Interesting. And there was a person with a dalmatian, I don't know where he or she was from, but the dalmatian kept smelling this freckle on the owner's arm and it turned out cancer, skin cancer. Wow. Isn't that weird? I believe it, man. Why not? Like I always say, why not? I mean, what do we know as humans? I mean, who knows? Maybe animals can totally smell these things. Should we go to epilepsy? I think we should totally should. This is something that is a kind of controversial one of the great failings in my opinion of science is that if it can't readily explain something immediately, then it poopoos it. Yeah, but it's looking more and more like which is the scientific term for discredit, I think. Yeah. Poop. Poo. It is looking more and more like dogs can sense epilepsy. Now, I think one of the misleading things in these two articles, can animals predict death? And can a dog really predict the seizure? Is the use of the word predict. Right? There is no prediction. I was reading this awesome article on CNN and it was about a woman named Kalise Johnson, and she has epilepsy and cerebral palsy. Okay, so she has a seizure. She is in trouble, right? She's in a wheelchair and she has to wear a helmet all the time because of this. And she actually recently got a dog that is a seizure sensing dog. Right. Epilepsy, trained seizure. Alert dog. That's what it's called. Yeah. Now, there's all sorts of seizure response dogs. This is established fact. Right. Dogs can be trained to basically go get help, bring food or blanket some lay on top of their owners while they're having seizures to keep from any kind of further injury or anything like that. This is different, though. Totally different. Yes. Because that's a response. This is an alert. She has a dog that she got actually Chucked from up the street in Alfredta, Georgia. There's a group called Canine Assistance. Really? Yeah. And in the last few years, they've trained 100 seizure dogs. Wow. And actually, this is the cool part. Seizure dogs tend to be one of the more expensive dogs. Like ten grand. Really? 20 grand for a dog to train and keep it healthy and fed over its lifetime. Wow. Right. A lot of money. Yes. That's for the lifetime. Yes. Veterinary care, that kind of thing. Got you. That's way more than the average dog. Yeah. The cool thing about Canine Assistance is that the people who get their dogs get them for free. And they actually fly the dog's recipients out to Atlanta to hang out with the dog for two weeks. They pay for everything. They pay for airfare, lodging, food, the whole shebang. Awesome. And they actually also pay for the dog's veterinary and food bills for the rest of its life. Really? Yeah. That is a great organization. Say their name again. It's a canine assistance out of Alfredo, Georgia. They are doing some good in the world. But anyway, in this article, there are two funny. Well, one was terribly ironic, the other was kind of funny. A neurologist who is poopooing the concept that dogs can predict seizures. His name is Dr. Gregory Barclay. Barclay. Got you. You gave me this look and I was like, I'm missing something here. And I actually agree with him. He points out that the dogs can't predict seizures, but that it's actually responding to an earlier stage of the seizure right. Before the patient is aware that the seizures going on. Okay. Like eye movement or dilation. Eye dilation. Possibly a smell. Something that the patient's not aware of. Right. And the big problem with seizures is that if you're driving a car and you have a seizure so long right. I know that the ones who are good at this, the dogs are good at this can predict anywhere. Sometimes it's like 30 seconds, which is enough time to pull the car over. But this one lady said that she gets about a 30 to 45 minutes heads up yeah. From her dog. So did Ms. Johnson. She gets anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes. And this dog that she just got last year named Ben, he's actually her second. Here's the horribly ironic thing. She had another great seizure dog for twelve years named McKeever. Who actually helped her through her roughest time. She was having many more seizures, I think about ten a week, maybe. And it's actually gone down since then. But he was really working overtime. Right. She had him for twelve years until 2007, when he died after having his own seizure. Oh, boy. Isn't that awful? Yeah. This podcast officially became one that my wife will not listen to. I will steer her away from this. Yes. Dogs having seizures is kind of sad. That is sad. Yeah. But what an irony there. So it is possible for a dog again, we shouldn't use the word predictive seizure and they don't necessarily have to be trained. Right. Chuck, aren't some of them just household pets that are picking up on this just from living around people with epilepsy? Right. And I think they've also decided that it's not breed specific either. So I don't think they found any specific breed has been any better than the next. Right. Is that true? Yeah. No, I don't remember. I think the impression I have is that it's more exposure to epilepsy than anything else and looking for signs and cues. Right. And then the second stage is learning to not be afraid of what happens when the owner's eyes roll back and they start trembling. And then the alert, they all have the different ways of alerting. Some paw at them, some lick their hand, some walk around in circles or make close eye contact. So it's pretty cool. They have their different messages they'll send the owner. Yeah. You got anything else? No, I don't think so. Josh. I would like to say one of the things that I have read in researching this was that people. Since it's not proven and since it does work. If a dog can sense a seizure early on just from being around someone with epilepsy. I read over and over again that people are kind of warned from staying away from dog breeders or trainers that charge you like 20 grand for a dog. Especially with groups like canine assistants out there doing lots of good. Yes. And they can never guarantee, too, that's the other takeaway I had is that doctors say that this can be a good thing, but it's certainly not a fail safe and you should never rely on this as your only means of helping yourself out. But at the end, even if the dog's hitting 50%, still pretty good. And they also doctors say they do provide the companionship and all the other good things. Ultimately you have a dog. And how can you go wrong when you got a dog? Exactly. My dogs, the only thing they can predict is 500. Dinner time. Yeah. And so where am I? What does that leave me? Feeding the dogs, buddy. Yeah, feeding the dogs. It's their world and I'm just living in it. If you want to learn more about animals and their six senses, how is that $0.06 type in animals and predict in the search bar howstepworks.com. And that leaves us with only one possibility, the possibility that it is time for listener mail. It is josh, this is part two of Corn Syrup replies. Seriously, dude, I'm telling you, for some reason, corn brings out the smarts, okay? Because these people were awesome and it was not just fluff. Okay. Like so many fan mail. No, I'm just kidding. Wow. This is from Win in Los Angeles, and when says he wants to add a little bit about what we said about HSCs, he said he said it was very cheap and that's why it's used to such extent. True enough, but you did not mention, and we had a couple of people writing about this, is that the price of HSCs is kept artificially low by the policies of the US government. US government has placed a quota on sugar imports to the US. In order to protect the domestic sugar producers. In sugar's case, they're called tariff rate quotas. So that provides for a low tariff on certain quantity, which is a quota amount, and a higher tariff on any quantity above that level. So this creates an artificial shortage of sugar that drives up US prices and supports American sugar growers, but it also makes sugar a very expensive product. Just to give you an idea, last year the price per pound of sugar in the United States was about fifty five cents, and the world price was about $0.18. Wow. Isn't that amazing? God, I wish I lived in Portugal. Right? In contrast, Josh, HFCs runs about twenty five cents per pound. What? So it is no surprise that when President Reagan drastically lowered the quota for sugar in the 80s, driving up the domestic price way, way up the major soft drink maker switch from sugar to high fructose corn syrup. So there you have it. Thank you, Gipper. Yeah. If the sugar market in the US. Was unrestricted, there would be no economic incentive for anyone to use HFCs, and those quotas would be removed from the sugar market. That they would be removed is pretty much impossible now because there's too much money at stake. So we had other people writing about this and let's see what's going on. It's fascinating. Yeah. So. Thank you. Win in Los Angeles. You are super fan. An awesome field reporter will tell you, you know what, we should start saying what we're going to do in the future and let people tell us ahead of time. Then we can work it into the podcast and give them zero credit for it. That's true. Field reporters. We have field reporters. Yeah, I reporters. So if you want to, I report for us, or just say hi, or be like, what up, yo? Send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com and be sure to check out the Stuff You Should Know blog on the housetopworks.com homepage. 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441ffdf4-53a3-11e8-bdec-6b13f03e9af5 | At Long Last: Hawaiian Overthrow Episode | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/at-long-last-hawaiian-overthrow-episode | By longstanding listener request, we look at how Hawaii was basically stolen by the United States in the 19th century. Rather than reverse this bit of geopolitical fraud, the US ended up making Hawaii a state instead. | By longstanding listener request, we look at how Hawaii was basically stolen by the United States in the 19th century. Rather than reverse this bit of geopolitical fraud, the US ended up making Hawaii a state instead. | Thu, 24 Sep 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=24, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=268, tm_isdst=0) | 48684813 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w. Chuck. Brian over there. Aloha. And Jerry's out there somewhere. Aloha. And this is stuff you should know. Ha melakaliki laka. That's pronounced yeah, that's actually a little known fact. That's the Hawaiian way to say merry Christmas to you. I didn't know the story, by the way. It's pretty interesting. Yeah. I have to say, Chuck, before we get started, we have to give a huge shout out. Huge to a dude, I don't know his name, but he's on instagram people says that kanaka kai. Okay, well, maybe what's his name? Maybe so. Or it could be kai kanaka. Who knows? He calls himself the Hawaiian hillbilly. But every time we post an episode, he goes on and comments hawaiian overthrow episode, please. He's been doing it for like years. Yeah. So kanaka kai, this one is for you, man. Long last. And now he doesn't have to jump into the big woo. Right. So what I'm hoping, though, is that he's not like super well versed in this is just going to be inevitably disappointed. Hopefully it's just something he wants to know more about. So he's been asking for it for that one. Well, I'm glad he trolled us for years because this is a really interesting and not at all surprising story. No, it's not. And basically what we're talking about today is the overthrow of Hawaii. And it turns out that Hawaii one of the most beautiful state in the union. Probably the most beautiful state in the union. The state where you may and I got married, in fact. It depends on what you're into. Sure. If you're into tropical paradises, there's not much better. Somebody from Montana might be like, you can have it with these mountains. Although I could see Montana people going to Hawaii and being like, I've been so wrong all my life and these boots are really uncomfortable. Right. So it is a beautiful state. But if you go back not too very far, you will find that there's a lot of arguments you could make that it should not be a state in any way, shape or form. Yeah, and I'm curious about the current temperature of native Hawaiian people and how they feel about that now. Yeah, well, we'll get to that eventually. Do you know, I don't know about the temperature of the Hawaiian people, but I know about some proposals to help kind of reverse or undo some of the damage that we've done that's for the end. Well, I guess we should go back some many thousands of years and talk about the settling of the Hawaiian islands by the polynesian people about 1500 years ago, maybe a thousand years ago, somewhere in there. And for many, many hundreds of years, the control of Hawaii was by chiefs and then sub chiefs. And these chiefs claim that they were divine and origin. And they said, we have a set of very strict religious rules that we should follow called the Kapu. And that wasn't so popular over the years. Well, it depends. I mean, if you were born into that society and that was what you knew, that was just what you knew. But I get the impression that over the centuries some chiefs and sub chiefs enforced the Kapu more than others. One of the big bass of the Kapu laws is that there is a strict separation of men and women. And men were divine and women were profane. And they represented kind of like light and dark and you can't have one without the other, so they need each other. But also men were still definitely favorite in that respect. But then if you also go look through Hawaiian history, there are also plenty of female rulers as well. So it's really interesting. Kapu could probably get its own episode. And I'm sure now we know what Kanaka Kai will be commenting on all of this from now on. Exactly. Move it on. So they had their own, like, very strict social stratification and religious laws. For sure. Yeah. I think if Emily heard that, she would say, chuck is not divine, but I am profane. We're halfway there. Right. Non profane women rarely make history. So speaking of making history, this is where a man named James Cook enters the picture in the late seventeen hundred s. The very famous British explorer. He was the most notable, some people say the first European to visit Hawaii. Definitely the most notable because you could make an argument that the Spanish were there before him at some point. Yeah, they have maps that appear to be Hawaii from the 16th century. Yeah, the Japanese as well. But Cook was the first person to go as an Englishman, which was a big deal as a colonizer. And say, I'm charting this island or these islands, I'm going to name them the Sandwich Islands. Not a great name. No, because well, James Cook was well known for loving sandwiches. Sure. He was so crazy. Actually, it was named for the Earl of Sandwich. John Montague Sandwich. It's the very same Earl of Sandwich, though, that sandwiches are named for. So that guy was really he was an influencer. And Hawaii is known for their sandwiches. Yes. Poison. So Cook visits, he visits a few times and kind of did a lot of traveling while he was there. So he makes one visit and then just starts sort of exploring the islands around Hawaii. Eventually comes back kind of on that same trip and gets really aggressive at that point. Not a nice fellow trying to do sort of the colonizer thing here, let me make a deal with you. Let me trade something that isn't very valuable for something that is very valuable, which is to say your land. Right. And yeah, he was just basically doing the standard Euro explorer thing. Euro trash explorer exploitation. Trying to get everybody into craft work, that whole thing. Right. Yeah. Cook, I guess he overstepped his bounds, finally. And he was actually killed in a major battle after some of his men kidnapped a Hawaiian chief. Well, he did it personally, from what I saw. Is that right? Okay. I said by his own hand. Not a good move. Not a good move. Because one thing about the Hawaiian islands, they were ruled by those cheese and subcheets, like you said. But I get the impression that they were united largely when it came to the kidnapping of any Hawaiian chief by a European outsider. Yeah. Like, you can fight with your brother, but if someone else picks on your brother, then you got to join forces. Who would ever pick on Scott? Well, I was thinking of you and me, but sure, brothers. Like real brothers too, right? Well, and blood brothers. I still have that scar on my palm, actually. Mine was a squib. I faked it. I thought that tasted like a high fructose corn syrup. Yeah. You're like, Chuck is sweet blood. So sweet. Like Scott. So, yeah, cook kidnaps this guy. They did not respond very kindly to that. So they sent a faction down there to attack him in his boats. They were on the beach, and that's where he died. Faced down in shallow water. He was bonked on the head by one chief, I think. And then stabbed by that chief's kind of attendant. Right. So this is a huge battle momentous battle in the history of Hawaii. It was very important, not just because James Cook died, but because there was one of the, I guess, low level warriors there, or middle class warriors, I guess, by the name of Kamehamehameha. Fought quite bravely in that battle. And Kamehamehmea actually went on to become the first genuinely influential Hawaiian chief, maybe the most significant Hawaiian chief of all time. Because while he was there fighting the Europeans, he's like, man, these guns, they work really well and these Europeans are willing to sell them to you. And he figured out that if he could amass some European support and European weapons he could get all of Hawaii basically under himself. And that's what he said about doing over the course of a couple of decades. Yeah. Reading this stuff. This was the Grabster, right? That helped us with this one, it seems. I'm sorry. No, it was James. Missner. Oh, really? No. Do you remember James Missno would write this 1000 page epics about I think he wrote one on Hawaii. So, James Misher. Is this author? He writes these exhaustive historical fictions and one of them was Hawaii, but they would be, like, 1000 pages easily. And I was making a jokey comment on Grabster's research skills. Yeah. English major over here. Flew right over my head. And by the way, a little quick side note that I wanted to mention, I am speaking of epic tomes. I'm reading the Beatles biography from Bob Spitz. That's like 1000 pages. And one thing I wish we could have mentioned I know you hate The Beatles, but one thing I wish we could have mentioned in the pirate radio thing was Radio Luxembourg. There would have been no Beatles without them, because independently, Paul, George and John were all on their own listening to Radio Luxembourg, and that's what turned them on to music. Really? That's cool. Turn me on. Radio Luxembourg. Turn me on. Why? I did not see The Beatles making an appearance in this episode. So where are we now? Celebrous. Yeah. Camilla maya. Oh, I know. What I was going to say was a thread through this I found, is that back then, Hawaiians were largely under armed. In most cases. That's a big thing. And then also, just like with all other colonizations from outside European forces, disease basically paved the way for imperialism. Oh, sure. Where even if they were under armed and they didn't typically have standing militaries, I should say, the Hawaiians didn't even if they had, there was like a plague that came around in 18 three that killed off half of the population. They think it was yellow fever. Yeah. There was another measles outbreak about 50 years later that killed off another quarter of the population. So when you're dying off in numbers like this, how could you possibly defend yourself? Especially against people who have these superior weapons, like guns, germs and steel is Jared Diamond put it. Yeah, I mean, it's the same story as America and the native population here. It's like, hey, we're outsiders and we have guns, and here's some smallpox. Yeah. But God decreed that this should be our land because he killed all of you off with these smallpox. Right. Because you have no immunity. It's the same depressing story over and over again. It is. So when Kamehameha was ruling Hawaii, which was really, he was firmly entrenched by the almost turn of the century, late 17 hundreds, he was pushing, and so much of this boils down to money and class, and he was really pushing for trade with Europe. He wanted the elite landholders of Hawaii to kind of remain in that position. He was traditionally religious with the Kapu and supported that, but he was very much like, let's enrich ourselves as sort of the ruling class, for sure. And he was also very open to the idea of exploiting European influence to strengthen his kingdom. His house, I guess, is what it's called, he actually had two advisors, isaac Davis and John young Englishman and a Welshman, who were his closest advisers. And apparently I can't remember which one it was, but whenever they would part company, kamehamehme would just begin sobbing, because he just knew one day that he was going to leave, and he just loved them that much. Interesting. Yeah, it is very interesting. It's one of those things where we were raised as, like, Anglo Euro American boys in the Eastern seaboard of the United States, right. In the Midwest. So when you research history like this, it's just like Hawaiian chief did this and then this Hawaiian chief came along. But when you start to look into them as we're older, it's just always so fascinating to me just how complex and complicated history really is and just how boiled down typically is presented as yeah, totally. That's because, I don't know. I think teachers do as good a job as they can. But when we were in school, the history we were taught was pretty simplified. It is. There's also, like, a real advantage to dehumanizing the people that you've done wrong to over the centuries, especially when they live in a state of yours still. That's a good point. Yeah. So under his rule, he managed to sort of unify the kingdom of Hawaii. It wasn't like everyone was completely on board with what was going on, especially with the kapu and human sacrifice and some of that stuff that happened. No, but they did live under his rule, whether they liked it or not. He was a very strong king. Yeah. Because he had guns, finally, and people didn't. And so they couldn't rise up against him. But after he died is when things got really complicated because then you had Hawaiian landowners, you had white people that own land and then you had this third group, this really large working class, even though many were killed off. So a lot of people. And that really complicated the whole situation. And maybe we should take a break there. We should. All right, we'll take a break and we'll talk about what complicated that even more right after this. So, Chuck, we have this kind of like a brief sketch of what's going on here. We have a native group, the native Hawaiians, who live here. And they are autonomous in running their own show. But then the European explorers have showed up and they are trying to make headways in exploiting this area as best they can commercially for agriculture. At first it was sandalwood, and then it moved on to, I think, cattle and then finally, like, sugarcane. And then those European white landowners in Hawaii started bringing in tons and tons of migrant workers in basically like, slave labor conditions. So you have these three groups kind of coming together in Hawaii, only one of which was originally there. Yeah. And another thing came in, which was missionaries from Europe, protestant missionaries for the most part. And they did what missionaries do, which was say, hey, you should be Christian and not worship whatever Hawaiian God you worship. And this was a big deal because Hawaii had a long, rich tradition, a very sacred tradition of religion. And this was not that at all. But like they do, they were pretty forceful in making sure Christianity took hold among some of the people. And it became a pretty big deal in Hawaii by the sort of mid eighteen hundred s. Yeah, for sure. Just like with other places where the missionaries were kind of like the leading edge of the spear as far as imperialism goes. They just were the first to kind of brave this and bring Christianity and air, quote, civilization to the area. So after they started to make headway and started to change the culture, it allowed greater entree for more, like commercial interests who had nothing to do with religion. They were just coming to work the land kind of thing. Yes. 1840. This is when Kamehameha's grandson, Kamehameha III wrote the first real legit Hawaiian constitution. There would be many more to follow, don't worry. Right. This is just the first one. And this one basically kind of kicked Kapu law to the side, was a little more Christian, a little more Western, for lack of a better word, and basically said, all right, you can now vote over here. And this is kind of the first entree of what democracy would look like there. Yeah. I mean, it created a judicial branch of legislature. It sounded awfully familiar, really, as far as constitutions go, and it was a huge watershed moment because, like you said, it replaced Kapu with, like you said, Western style democracy, basically, or some version of it at the beginnings of it, I guess. Yeah. And it also would establish this framework, this foundation for people to point to and be like, oh, no, we want to go further and further toward the constitution, not back toward the old ways. So it was like a goalpost that was set there that could be pointed to as we don't want a monarch anymore, remember, we want this legislature and the judicial branch and all this stuff that Americans and Europeans are accustomed to working within. Yeah. And also money was a big complicating factor. Like we said, anytime money is introduced and there's very valuable land, it's going to get pretty gravy. And that's what happened when the white Europeans and Americans said, wow, this soil over here in the climate of year is great for growing stuff. And they don't have workers rights laws here, so we can really get cheap, cheap labor, if not, like you said, basically enslaved people essentially from Asia to work over here and not really paying much money, like bring them over under false pretense, say how great it is, how much money they are going to make, and then kind of build them back. It's sort of like signing a record contract and bill you back for all the expenses of getting over there and overcharging for their living quarters, which were terrible. But it's exploitation that we've seen time and time again, right? Yeah. It's still going on today. Basically, human trafficking is what they were doing. Yeah. So one thing about Kamehamehamea, the house of Kamehamehmea, when the first camea Maya, which is an awesomely fun word to say, and also just reminds me of Magnum Pi. Because that was the club that Rick managed, the Kamehamehameha Club. Oh, wow. Yeah, I remember that. Oh, man. So, anyway, I would just kill to be in 1983, hanging out at the bar, the beach bar in that club. But anyway, Kamehameha, despite there being, like, upheaval basically every time a successor died, he managed to establish a dynasty that lasted until the 1870s, I believe. And the problem was that there were no strong succession laws. So when a monarch died, in a few instances, there were these periods called interregnums, which is basically like, hey, you know, the government, it doesn't actually exist technically, right now. It's kind of a free for all while we figure out what comes next. We got to get this together and decide how to move forward. And in this case, they would have the legislature vote for the ruler. And this wasn't super popular. It led to rioting. Hawaiians were like, no, we kind of didn't mind the monarchy, and we need these succession laws to be kind of ingrained. I think that that's a real telling, revealing tell about how the Hawaiians felt, that they were like, no, forget the legislature. We just need better laws to say who succeeds who as far as the monarchs are concerned, because I think that's what they were used to and that's what they wanted. Yeah. But what this ended up doing was kind of there was a real divide here. When 1874, I think, was when Kalaka I practiced it a million times. I mean, I love these words. They're so much fun to say. Oh, yeah. Even though we're probably butchering them. No, I'm pretty sure it's Kaleika UA. All right. Kaleika UA was the new king voted on in 1874. And this was the first real wedge because he had this faction that supported Queen Emma and a real opposition party was in place. People were very divided at this point. Yes. Queen Emma was the wife of Kama Me IV, so she had a pretty valid claim on the throne, but the legislature said, no, Kalika is definitely our guy. He's now your king and your monarch. And he was an interesting cat, too. He was known as the Merry Monarch. He was a bit of a bomb. Vivant Hula had been banned by the big buzzkill missionaries for decades, like hula hoops or Hula dancing. I mean, hula dancing. Yeah. Kalika said, hey, it's my birthday. Let's bring Hula back. So he was kind of beloved for that. He played the ukulele, but he was also very corrupt. Like, he took $130,000 bribe from some Chinese businessmen who wanted an opium license. And very importantly, his whole jam was, little by little, the power of the monarch has been eroded to, well, now it's finally my turn, and I'm basically just a figurehead here. I want the power back. So I'm going to do that. And instead there was some white interests that had formed a group known as the Hawaiian League, and they were basically made up of landowners, businessmen, people who are all like, white, European and American people who said, we actually don't like that idea, and in fact, we're going to make you sign a new constitution into law, and you're going to do it basically at gunpoint. And it's going to be called the Bayonet Constitution. Historically speaking, yes. So the Hawaiian League, they had a bunch of different names. Initially, they were the missionary, not the missionary league. The Missionary what? The Missionary Party? Yeah, the Missionary. I thought that was too sexy. Right, so Missionary Party became the Hawaiian League eventually became the Reform Party because who doesn't like reform? And they eventually became because as we'll see, they pushed more and more toward annexation. And I don't know if it was they officially called the Annexation Party. Was that sort of like a I honestly don't know the way that they were introduced, I think. I don't know. Well, either way, what they did was they said, all right, we know that not many people, we are an underarmed society, so if we're going to do this, we're going to get the guns on our side. And that was where they got the support of the Hawaiian Rifles, which was a volunteer military unit, all white people. And like you said, in July of 1887, is when those Hawaiian Rifles got involved and said, sign this new constitution. They did. And so it basically said, you know how you thought you were a figurehead before? Now you are a genuine bona fide figurehead. Your power is completely at the pleasure of the legislature, which, by the way, is no longer appointed by you, but elected. And also further, by the way, we Europeans and Americans now have voting rights because you have to be a landowner and literate to vote. So not only do we have voting rights now to elect the legislature to basically do whatever we want, but we've also just excluded all of those migrant Asian laborers that we just brought over because they don't own any land and probably a lot of them can't read. So IPSO facto, you go place some Ukulele for a while. Kalika UA and thank you very much for Hawaii. Yeah, I mean, I got the impression that it was under the guise of, hey, democracy is great and voting is how things should go, but we're going to be the ones voting, by the way. Exactly, yeah, it definitely was presented like that. They were trying to liberalize the island, but ultimately it was for their own interests. When you really got down to Brass Tax, which is cockney rhyming slang for facts. So I didn't think that was going to show up either. So in 1891, that is when he died, the aforementioned Kala Kawa. Right? Kala. Kala Kawa, yes. And he was succeeded by someone, he chose his sister. How are you going to make me queen? Lily? Yeah, man. All right. I think that's right. Yeah. If Kalika UA had a problem with being a figurehead, lily UA Kalani was definitely opposed to the idea of just being like Queen Elizabeth or just showing up for state functions and that kind of thing. She considered herself the ruler of Hawaii. She was the monarch who was meant to succeed in Kaleika Fair in Square and had a real problem with this. But the problem was that within the four years that Kaleiko assigned the Bayonet Constitution, the doors have been thrown so far open for Western interests, business interests in Hawaii, that she basically faced an insurmountable challenge in undoing just the changes that had come in the last four years. It had been slowly creeping up over the decades. But from that Bayonet Constitution forward over those four years between then and when she took over, the changes were insurmountable, basically. Yeah. Married to an American, too, incidentally, it shows you just how intermarried American politics and European politics were with Hawaiian politics, literally. Yeah. And I don't think we mentioned, like, this whole time there are both American and British warships in Honolulu Harbor. Yeah. So they've been there the whole time, the military. And I didn't get the idea that they were active at that point. They were just there, kind of parked there. Yeah. I think just more to send a signal, but also to keep other interlopers out. I think the British and the Americans basically considered Hawaii theirs. Right. Unofficially, but moving toward officially, because when you said the door was thrown wide open and changed was afoot. It was the Hawaiian League that was really they had flirted with annexation a little bit, but by this point they were really and this is where they took on the name the Annexation Club. Like I mentioned earlier, they were really, really headed toward annexation, which is where we have to kind of go back over to America and talk about the Tariff Act of 1890 or the McKinley Tariff, which was basically a very protectionist thing. Hey, we need US. Goods to be an industry here, to be ramped up. So we're going to charge huge tariffs on goods imported into the US. And that meant Hawaiian goods. And landowners in Hawaii said, this is not good for us because this is going to make us raise prices. Sales are going to go down, our profits are going to go down. And while they were the Annexation Club was making hay about democracy being a good thing, it really kind of came down to money. Yeah, that's exactly right. And that McKinley Tariff really kind of forced everyone's hand because, like you said, Hawaii was a sovereign nation, and so there were tariffs on the importance. It didn't matter that they were American companies. This stuff was being produced in Hawaii. So when it came into America, there was a huge tax slapped on it. So they started saying, okay, we need to figure this out. Like, we need to get Hawaii annexed. So I get the impression that the Hawaiian League kind of went from there were some people in there that had been saying the whole time, annexation, annexation is definitely the way to go to where that was. The point of the Hawaiian League from that moment forward was getting annexed. Fortunately for them, Lily OOH Kalani, whose name just flips in and out of my capability to pronounce, she said, hey, you know what? I don't like all this. I don't like where this is going. I'm going to rewrite the constitution. I'm going to restore the power of the monarchy. And, you know, your legislature can go sit on it because I'm passing this by royal fiat, just by me decreeing that it's true. It's true. And when that came out, that news came out that she was planning on doing that, the Hawaiian League said it's go time. Yeah. And as far as the US. Goes, they didn't outright say they wanted to annex. It was kind of a tricky situation for them. They didn't want anyone else to get in there in front of them, of course, but they also didn't want to I feel like they didn't want to be too aggressive with it. Like, well, hey, if you're open to it, we'll talk about it, but we're not going to ask you to dance. Right. But it wasn't out of any respect or deference necessarily to Hawaii. No. It was because they didn't want to tick off the British. Yeah. So when Liliuokalani said that she was going to rewrite the constitution and this came out, the opposition was really strong, and she actually backed down and she announced, okay, I'm definitely not going to do it by royal fiat, but I'm going to do it through normal channels. And really kind of took any hostility out of the move. But it was too little too late as far as the Hawaiian League was concerned. And like I said, they decided it was go time. And Chuck, I say it's go time for us to go to commercial. Let's do it. All right, so it's go time in Hawaii. Queen Liliuokalani has drawn a line in the sand. White men in Hawaii were super worried all of a sudden. And so that Annexation Club that has now changed names four times, changed their names again and said, all right, now we're the Committee of Safety, and by committee of Safety, I mean we're going to lead a military coup, right. Which are typically very safe. Yes. So there was a move basically to collect arms, specifically to depose Liliuo Kalani. That was the point that this group had. I guess if it wasn't, like, overt, basically everyone knew about it. So much so that a loyalist to Lili Kelani, his name was Charles B. Wilson. Yeah, he was a loyalist, which we should say. So his name sounds pretty American. Sure. And that's for good reason, because he was American. And if you go back a couple of monarchs, you will start to see, like, Germans and Americans and British people in their cabinets, like, as, like, foreign minister or secretary of Finance, just like it's just some normal thing. That's how entrenched everything was. So Charles B. Wilson was to Liliu Kalani, the Marshall of Hawaii, which, as Ed Put is kind of like the head of the FBI and the head of the Department of Defense all rolled into one. But he was in charge of the national Police, basically, and he found out about this plot, and he wanted the plotters arrested for treason. Yeah, he called it out and said, Arrest the committee, or whatever they're calling themselves today. And the American members of the Cabinet said, no, we're not going to do that because this could break out in violence. So let's all chill out. That all changed on January 17 when there was a shooting. A native Hawaiian policeman was shot trying to prevent delivery of some weapons to the Annexation Club. He didn't die, but he was shot. And there wasn't, like, a lot of I mean, James Cook obviously died pretty in a grizzly way, but there wasn't a lot of actual violence and bloodshed that was riding and stuff over the years. But I get the feeling that this shooting was kind of a big thing at the time. It was. I mean, it was the only shooting in the entire overthrow of Hawaii in this entire coup, which makes it significant. But I get the same impression that you had that Hawaiian society was generally rather peaceful, and so to shoot somebody was a very big deal. So much so that the cop got $200 for his wounds collected by the local community, which is pretty nice. Pretty good scratch back then. Yeah. I didn't look it up on Westgate. Oh, we should have. Yeah. So the Committee of Safety goes to we mentioned the warships in the harbor. They go to the USS Boston that's parked there and go to Captain Wilts and say, hey, you know what? They are American citizens on the island there. You guys are having a good time, just kind of hanging out, playing cards. But there's property that's in danger. There's American citizens that are in danger, and there are armed troops, like, we need you guys and your guns to come on the island. And he went, well, all right, come on, guys, let's go. And they all put down their cards, and 162 soldiers went ashore. And that was sort of the real turning point as far as an actual American military presence in their supposedly defending property and American citizens from danger. But it really ratcheted things up as far as conflict goes. Well, yeah. And particularly for Liliu Kalani. To her, she saw american troops coming ashore, establishing a fort, like, a couple of hundred yards away from the Imperial Palace, and basically creating a presence on native sovereign Hawaiian land. And this was at the same time that the Committee for Safety had run up on the steps of the Capitol building, read a proclamation that the Queen had been overthrown, that the monarchy didn't exist any longer, and that she had been deposed, and that they were now in charge. And combine that from her point of view with the presence of American troops, she's like, okay, I guess the Americans just overthrew me. She didn't know who was working with who. She just knew there were armed troops. She didn't really have any kind of standing army or anything like that. So she made a very wise and, in my opinion, very noble decision to say, you know what? I will surrender for the moment, because I want to avoid any unnecessary bloodshed. Like, anybody who fights for me is going to get wasted by these American Marines, and I don't want to see that happen. So I will surrender, but I'm not surrendering my position to the provisional government. I'll surrender to the United States of America temporarily until they can restore my position, because this is BS. Yeah. And in her statement, we don't read the whole thing, but at the end, she essentially says, I'm doing this for now, until which time I will be reinstated as the authority, at which point, everyone just kind of padded her on the head and said, that's adorable. Do you think that's actually going to happen? She said, PSBs. And I don't think we mentioned this new provisional government said, all right, we have a president now, and his name is Sanford Dole, if that name sounds familiar. Sandford's brother James founded the Dole Fruit Company in Hawaii in 1899, so really no surprise how that worked out, right? Let's just recap real quick. Okay? So there was a group of American and European white business interests, landowners, businessmen, who, overthrew, like, during a little melee after a cop was shot, ran up onto the capital steps, read a proclamation that they were in charge. John Stevens, who we hadn't mentioned, he was the American minister to Hawaii. He was very much in on this and in league with the Hawaiian League, and he said, I, as official representative of the United States, officially recognize you, the provisional government, as the true government of Hawaii. I no longer recognize the monarch. And that was it. All of a sudden, this island kingdom of Hawaii that had been around for a thousand or more years and had been organized since for a couple of hundred years or 100 or more years just didn't exist anymore. Proof because an American minister recognized a group of other Americans, he just said, we claim this place basically as our own. Yeah. And they said, we're voting for this stuff. Now. Dole is president. Like, I said, but the royalists are boycotting the elections. So the annexation party, which eventually became the American Union Party, they just were winning the elections because it was no contest, basically. Yeah. I mean, it's a problem. You're in such a pickle with that. I reject that these elections are even valid on their face. But then if they just keep holding these elections and other people keep recognizing them as valid, then you're sol it was a really sticky, terrible situation for the native Hawaiians in their monarch. Yeah. So Dole and the gang are firmly entrenched at this point, and this is when they can really start to go after annexation. So over in America, you have Grover Cleveland in office and he's like, wait a minute, this all sounds very hinky and illegal. So I'm going to send an envoy, James Blunt, to Hawaii. You put together a report and report back to me and let me know what's going on. Blunt went over, put together his report, and he said, yeah, it was super illegal, what happened? And so Cleveland said, all right, Queen, if you want, we'll send troops in there to overthrow the republic and put you back in position of queen. But what you have to do is you got to offer amnesty to that committee of safety. That overthrew. You kind of using our soldiers to begin with. And she probably had whip flash at this point, but she was like, no, I'm not going to do that. And actually those guys should be beheaded if I'm really being completely honest. And so Cleveland kind of slunk down and said, all right, well, I guess we're not going to do that then. Yeah. He said, headings are going to be tough to get past Congress. So I guess we don't have anything to say here, but you have to kind of hand it to Lily that she stuck to her principles. She could have been restored in the monarch, maybe even back to the prefigurehead version of the monarchy. And she said, no, I'm cutting their heads off if you put me back as queen. Yes. At the same time, the US. Congress gets involved. They said, you know what, we're the ones who investigate people, so let's send over our guy John Tyler Morgan. And Morgan went over in his report, said, you know what? This was not some illegal coup. This was just Hawaii being Hawaii. This is their politics. This is how they do things. We didn't really do anything wrong. No blood on our hands. It's Hawaii. This is what they do. No big deal. So the congress is like, good enough for us. By this time, also, Cleveland had been replaced by who is Cleveland's successor? McKinley. Oh, okay. So the McKinley tariff came before all this? Came after all this. No, I got the idea that maybe it was as a senator or something. Okay. I might be completely wrong, though. No, but that would make way more sense. But the point is that McKinley was much more in favor of annexation than Cleveland was. And so the United States officially annexed Hawaii as a territory in 1898. And this was exactly what all of those American and European landowners wanted because especially in America, no longer were they subject to these high tariffs for the imported goods, because Hawaii was in annex territory. But Chuck, they also were in a state, which means that they weren't subject to US laws like immigration, which meant that they could continue up their human trafficking, which meant that in annexed territory, their profit margins were as wide as they've ever been. Basically. Yeah, they were terrible in reality, but those were the golden years if you're a plantation owner in Hawaii because you're basically just making money hand over fist with no oversight. Right. And by the way, I just looked up real quick. McKinley was a House representative when that terrific came out. Not a computer. Got it. Thank you. That was a really great intro correction. We usually don't do this. So when did statehood come on the scene? Because Hawaii didn't become a state until 1959, which was not that long ago now, and it was a full 60 plus years after it was annexed. Is that because they were just fat cats and they were loving it? That's exactly right. The powerful interests who basically ran the legislature said, hey, we really like Chuck said, we're making money hand over fist. And somebody said, who's? Chuck. Give it a couple of decades, you'll see it's going to knock your socks off. But they had no desire to be a state because then that meant that the immigration laws will be imposed and they'd have to follow a lot more social and cultural mores that America had established and it was going to be a bad gym for them. The other thing was here at home, and it was just straight up like racist xenophobia. Yeah. I don't know if we said to put a pin in it, but we were talking about all these migrant workers who had kids and stuff, and those kids were born, eventually became a nonwhite majority in Hawaii, and they were like, you know what, if we make this place a state? He said, Actually, these migrant workers are going to gain real voting power and they have a nonwhite majority, and we really don't want those people in our Congress. In Congress, that was basically the reason that kept Hawaii from being a state until 1959. People didn't want people of Asian or native Hawaiian descent in DC. And Congress, I guess. Isn't that nuts? Yeah. So it took until March 18, 1959 to finally become a state, and then it took until 1993 for Congress to pass an apology bill. And this is hysterical and it's so believable, but it points out that it was disputed because they were literally arguing about either the Blunt Report or the Morgan report being more accurate, like, 100 years later. Yeah. Can you do? Clinton apologizing. What do I have to apologize for? That was great. So that bill actually said that Hawaii, or the native Hawaiians, quote, never directly relinquished it to the US. Their claims to their inherent sovereignty, the US. Said in 1993, in so many words, the United States stole Hawaii. Hawaii is a state because we took it basically back in the 1880s. Pretty great story. It is. So you were asking about the pulse of Hawaii today. There's a bill that was introduced in 2000 by Senator Daniel K. Akaka, and he's since retired, I believe. But the Acacia bill is still around, and it basically would extend sovereignty to Native Hawaiians in virtually the same way that Native American tribes in the continental US. Have their own tribal nations, they have their own governments that make decisions for them, and they have their own laws and all that, and it's just never been passed. I don't think there's quite enough support for it or what the hold up is, but it's still languishing right now. I haven't been I got to go at some point. Oh, dude. I would like to live there one day. Yeah, the place for you and you need to retire. It's amazing. And maybe I'll meet up with Kanaka Kai, the Hawaiian hillbilly, while we're there. I think with your Magnum obsession, you were destined to just while away with a coconut with a straw in it in your hand. Who. Do I have to kill you to refill this coconut? I used to be somebody. How do you think I got this? Rainbow helicopter. That's right. Oh, man. I've been to the Magnum house before. You method me. Does not surprise me. Oh, it's neat. Well, you got anything else about the overture of Hawaii? No. Well, if you want to know more about the overthrow of Hawaii, there's a lot more out there. It's a pretty interesting story. And Hawaiian culture is pretty interesting, too, now that we dug into it. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this anvils, by the way. This is from Nolan. Nolan did not point this out, but we heard from many people who said that the Smithy was not the blacksmith, but the place. Their workshop is called the Smithy. Smithy. Like, if that's the blacksmith. Yeah, that's what I thought. I think they're the Smith. Okay, not the Smith. That's Morrisy and Johnny Martin company. That's right. Hey, guys. Love the episode on blacksmithing. I've been to blacksmith since I was 19. When I bought my first anvil, I started listening stuff you should know during grad school, and my anvil was sadly packed away. I had no time to use it, but thankfully it isn't on the shelf any longer, and I found myself sitting next to it while listening to your episode. Seems silly, but these things have a real personality to them. They're like old friends. I met mine close to a decade ago and it's a 10 1628 pound Peter Wright. Wow. That means something to Smithy's. I was impressed by the Peter Wright. Yeah, he's a legendary anvilist smithy. So one thing on the show I thought I'd mention is about envelopes. Josh said you want to attach the anvil to a stump to disperse the hammer strike to the earth completely. Right. Which is partially correct, but missed one beautiful thing about a good anvil, which is it's rebound an anvil's quality can be measured by the rebound. This is how much force pushes back at you when you strike, because this is a good anvil. I'm sorry? Because of this, a good anvil hits back when you strike it. And a good blacksmith uses this to effectively forged both sides of a workplace at the same time. I also saw somebody else write in to say that it helps you in swinging a ten pound hammer. Like working the rebound to your advantage, too. Totally. He said you can tell if you have a good anvil by the rebound by dropping a ball bearing on it, or lightly dropping a hammerhead and seeing how high it bounces. A dead anvil will have no bounce and only gives a soft thud. A good angle bounces back a lot and leaves a ringing in the air. And this is actually where the phrase has a nice ring to it comes from. Oh, really? How about that? I love that stuff. Love it. It was a blacksmithing phrase. So great job, guys, as always. Keep it up. Always love tuning into these shows. Can't wait to hear more. And that is Nolan. Thanks, Nolan. You really quenched our thirst for etymology. Big time. Appreciate Nolan. Appreciate everybody. All of the Smiths who wrote in to let us know all the stuff we got wrong, but also say, hey, you generally got it right in ferriers. We heard from Farriers. Yeah, tons of failures out there. So we appreciate all of you and we're fascinated by the work you do. Agreed. If you want to get in touch with us, you can send us an email, send it off to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is production of iheartradios How Stuff Works. For more details, podcast My Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-01-17-sysk-artificial-sweeteners.mp3 | Are Artificial Sweeteners Really Bad For You? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/are-artificial-sweeteners-really-bad-for-you | Artificial sweeteners have gotten a bad rap in the press for as long as they’ve been in use. But is it just the result of a fear of science or do artificial sweeteners cause real harm? A mounting body of studies is starting to paint a pretty grim picture. | Artificial sweeteners have gotten a bad rap in the press for as long as they’ve been in use. But is it just the result of a fear of science or do artificial sweeteners cause real harm? A mounting body of studies is starting to paint a pretty grim picture. | Tue, 17 Jan 2017 08:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=17, tm_hour=8, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=17, tm_isdst=0) | 53974092 | audio/mpeg | "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, all 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 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 Geographic. America the Beautiful. From the award winning producers of Planet Earth, Frozen Planet, and the Disney Nature films, america the Beautiful takes viewers on a tour of the most spectacular and visually arresting regions of our great nation. All these and more streaming this month on Disney Plus. 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 there's Jerry. The three Musketeers together again after so long, so many weeks of holidays and time off and rest and relaxation. Back at it again. Which makes this stuff you should know. That's right. Hard to come back for you. No, I think it was just long enough and everything was just satisfying enough that I'm ready. I'm glad to be back. Yeah. How about you? You're one of those weirdos. It's like, oh, I need to work. Right. Exactly. My skin falls off. I've always said I would be a great lottery winner. Oh, yeah. Or retiree. Yes, lottery winner is better. It's the same thing. It's a retiree. It doesn't have to sweat it. Right. Exactly. Which is nice. Man, I just should tell people that we were discussing with Jerry the word dulcet as far as your voice. Yes, dulce tones. You didn't know the definition. I looked it up. Yes. It said sweet and soothing, but then in parentheses, it says, often used ironically. I don't know what that is. It's a back ended compliment, I guess. Jerry, were you using it ironically? Actually, she didn't even nod. She's just sort of moving her face around. Her skin falls off, too, when she doesn't work. That's weird. So sweet and newGOOD is what you said. No, that's Almond Joyce. That's right. No Mars bars. Bars. Almond Joyce coconut. Sweet and soothing. Okay, I'll take that. I still prefer Muppet. Tenor. It's the greatest of all time. It's very eye opening for me. Oh, that was an article about us. Muppety center. Good stuff. So, Chuck yes. I know that you're a health conscious dude. At the very least, you're conscious of healthiness. Exactly right. I have two, and for a very long time, I made the switch, and one of the things that I learned was one of the easiest ways you can lose weight very quickly is to just cut sodas out of your diet. Yes. See, my problem is I don't even drink sodas, right? So there's a whole step right there that's removed from you. It's fine. I mean, that's good, but in a way, right? But I mean, there's just no low hanging fruit, as it were, right. As far as using corporate BuzzFeed goes, unless you count gallons of booze, that's not low hanging, my friend. That's the top of the tree that's last top shelf. So when you stop drinking soda, the pounds just fall off. It's insane. But you still want soda, right? The craving is still there. And the soda industry knew this, and they said, hey, we don't want to lose a bunch of revenue. Let's start making diet sodas. Right. And apparently originally they made them almost exclusively for people with diabetes. Around the post World War Two era, you could find diet sodas with basically an inscription or something like that, like it was inscribed on everything. It would say something like, for people who must watch their sugar allotment, or something like that. Right? Yeah. And then as the soda industry was like, oh, wait, we can really make weight loss an issue here, and help promote weight loss by saying, for people who wish to watch their sugar intake. Right. And just that little tiny switch changed everything. And like, the diet soda industry was born. So be passive aggressive, nudge in the right direction. Pretty much like, hey, don't you think you should be washing your sugar intake chubs? Yeah, that's what's between the lines. So we've got these awesome diet sodas that are sweetened with artificial sweeteners, but of course, nothing can possibly just be just good or just great, because apparently we're starting to learn huge, massive problems with artificial sweeteners as well. Problems so much that they may be worse than sugar, it turns out, in a lot of cases. Yeah. I mean, when have we found and replaced something natural with something synthetic and have it be nothing but like, a win win? I'm sure there's something, but it seems like there's always some kind of downside. I guess maybe like a robotic arm is better than a real arm. It depends on the arm that it replaces. It could be. So you're saving up for your robotic arm transplant? Sure. All right. I'm tired of being weak on my right side. So you can crush those Coke Zero cans exactly. With more vigor. Oh, well, I'm not drinking anything any longer. After researching this, I'm like, yeah, I'm done with diet soda altogether. Oh, wow. Really? Yeah. Wow. Like, through not a phase or anything like that. I'm sure over the course of my life, I will have a giant, like, Coke Zero at a movie or something like that, but I'm generally just totally done with it. What are you going to constantly be drinking, then? Well, to be honest, I'd already kind of started. I was drinking mineral water a lot more. Okay. And I found that once you just kind of switch over, the water, which used to just be disgusting, is actually kind of refreshing, like, just regular old filtered water with ice. It's so funny because my history has always been heavy on the water. Sure. I know. Totally ahead of the game, it turns out, well, by accident, but I've always loved the water. That's just how your taste has always run. Well, I was just raised on it. I've said it before, like, milk and water, we just didn't have a lot of sodas in the house, and it just never really grabbed hold of me in that way. Right. But mixing milk and water, that's good. Yes. Then you have fat free milk. Yeah, pretty much. At least. Thin milk? No, drink whole milk. I'm all about it. So I'm off of the diet sodas forever. Wow. Well, that's good for you. It is good. But if I want to brush my teeth or use mouthwash, use soda or take certain vitamins or something like that, I'm still running the risk of encountering artificial sweeteners because they're everywhere now. Yeah. Well, let's back up a bit, then. That was a nice old school intro, by the way. Thank you. That's what you get after you take a nice Christmas break. You've been rehearsing that one for weeks. Yeah. You woke up Christmas morning and you mean just like, shut up. I'm like, no, I got to practice. All right. Well, we're talking about artificial sweeteners, but what we're really talking about at its essence is sweet, the sensation of sweetness. Yeah. And if you go back and listen to our, I think, pretty good episode on taste from many years ago, we break it down pretty well as far as the receptors on our tongue. So we don't really need to rehatch that. But did you go back and listen to it? Does it really hold up? Yeah, it's not bad for an older one. I mean, we get to the point there's not as much shenanigans. A lot of people prefer those. Yeah, we've added a lot of filler over the years. That's okay. But the level of sweetness that we taste, it's going to depend those receptors on our tongue, and they interact with those molecules, and they have to fit. The shape has to fit. It's that weird thing that nobody really knows is going on on their tongue. That strange interaction is happening. Yeah. I remember from the taste episode, like, one of the theories is that the whole thing is happening on the quantum level, if I remember correctly. Yeah. So how much sweetness you're going to taste, the level of sweet is going to depend on your own receptors and how they're binding to that sweet sensation. So these artificial sweeteners, what they do is they found a way to elicit that same response as we get from sugar. Right. And basically, that's it. Some of them are. I mean, obviously, they're generally a lower calorie version of sugar, although we'll get to some that aren't later. And the reasons for that is some of them, they're all different, but some of them are so sweet, like hundreds and even thousands of times sweeter than sugar that they just need to use tiny, tiny bits of it. So it's basically no calorie. Other times, we don't even synthesize and absorb it and metabolize it. So that makes it no calorie. Yeah. You get the taste, but then it just comes out of your pea or your poop. So no calories. Exactly. I thought that was pretty interesting because I never really stopped and thought about why those things are no or low calories. Yeah, me neither. Makes perfect sense. Yeah. The idea that something is so sweet, you need to use so little of it that you subvert the calorie system. It's like you can't even count that low that many decimal places beneath one calorie. And the weird thing is to me is when you look at the histories of some of these artificial sweeteners and it's a little scary a lot of them were discovered by accident from these dumb scientists who were trying to discover something else or work on something else. They're like, oh, let me look my finger and get a piece of paper, or Let me smoke a cigarette and not wash my hands. And they're like, oh, my hand tastes sweet. Yes. And really, it drives home two things that chemists aren't really fixed on their survival. They have low survival skills. Yeah. And then two, that these artificial sweeteners are, in most cases, extraordinarily. They're synthetic compounds. Like Saccharin is a derivative of coltar that was accidentally discovered when they were trying to find a new die. Yeah. And then I believe Aspartame was a non starter ulcer drug. Yeah. And the dude was literally picking up paper and looked his finger and said, how LSD. That was an accident, too. It was. Are no scientists washing their hands anymore? No, apparently. At least, not the chemists. Wow. Yeah, I guess so. Chemistry. I don't want to throw all of science under the solar. It's just the chemists who don't care where they would live or die. So, anyway, Saccharin, which is one of the first or I guess, the first artificial sweetener way back in 1879, that was a scientist who did not wash his hands before dinner and noticed it tasted sweet and said, I think I have a new discovery on my hands. Yeah. Literally on my hands and on my tongue. And boy, sweet. Yes. And it's funny to think of that. Yeah. There's a lot of chemicals and compounds out there that we may have no clue actually tastes sweet because we just haven't accidentally run across them yet. Because everyone is washing their hands now. Yeah. And plus, also, sugar has just such great PR that you tend to think that it has the market cornered on the sweet sensation. But no, it's just one of many things that elicit that. Yes. And the reason why there's a lot of artificial sweeteners we're only going to go over a handful in detail, but the reason there are a couple of reasons. One is just good old fashioned competition, of course. And another is you can't use them all in the same way. Like, some hold up under baking, some don't, some you can just dust in a throat lozenge. And another might be good in a cake batter. So it kind of depends on its use as to some are good and ice cream and others aren't. Yeah, but you hit it on the head, though, too. I mean, there is a lot of competition. Like, Aspertame is owned by Monsanto now, and anytime those guys get in on something, that means it's automatically big business. So there's a lot of money to be made. And one of the reasons why also that it is such a big business, because it's very frequently much cheaper to produce this stuff, these artificial sweeteners, than it is to process sugar. Right? Right. So say it takes like $0.08 worth of sugar to sweeten two liter of Coke. It might take $0.03 worth of Aspartame to sweeten Coke Zero. And if you're making millions upon millions of two liters of the stuff a year, that adds up pretty quick. And in fact, there was actually a British company, I didn't see which one it was, but it was found that their orange drink, which was not being marketed as diet or sugar free or anything, was basically made up of artificial sweeteners. I didn't look it up, I just ran across it somewhere. It was orange, like soda in Great Britain. Oh, in Great Britain. Okay. Call it shade, call it shame aid. Well, the reason I ask is because my one weakness is like, once a month I'll get the old fan of orange. Yes, the Nazi drink. So I'm okay with that. Shaming me. Yeah, well, so these things are pretty controversial. Literally, since the first ones came around, people started, like, with anything that's new and synthetic. There is going to be a certain segment of people like, this is great. In another segment, they're like, well, I don't know about this. Let's look and see what's going on in your body. And what if it's not so good for you? And how do we know, right? People are concerned with health. Yeah, that's easier way to say it in public health. Yeah. Yeah. It does kind of seem to be like chuck we're at this point in history where there is a lot of this stuff out there. I think I saw a 2016 article. It said there's like 3500 products in the US. Using at least one of the five approved artificial sweeteners by the FDA. There's tons of products out there and not enough medical literature to really strongly show one way or the other that. Yeah. These things actually are pretty safe. And like. All these fears are just a general public distrust of science and change and unnaturalness. And we don't also have anything to show the other way. Too. That. No. Actually these things are pretty unsafe because it seems like every study that you find has a contradictory study with just completely opposite finding. Yeah, it's pretty frustrating. Yeah. They're canceling each other out. It is frustrating. It does seem, though, that at least based on the reporting that I'm seeing or have seen in research, it seems like a body of medical literature is mounting that showing that this stuff is pretty problematic, actually. Yeah. If you just throw science out the window and start perusing the Internet, which everyone should do. Right. At least once a day. If you go on websites, though, and Internet forums and look around, people will blame just about any disease you can think of. On Aspartame is a big one that's getting a lot of the heat. But all kinds of artificial sweeteners, Ms, brain tumors, dizziness, Alzheimer's, all kinds of problems. People are saying, well, this didn't start happening until I started eating or drinking this, which contained this, right? Yeah, it's anecdotal extremely anecdotal. And like you said, when you look at the real studies and we're going to get to some of these, and of course, some are mounted by the very company selling them. And I had a thing on Facebook last week about these company back studies and whether or not we should even listen to them. And most people chimed in that were in the biz and said, you know what? It doesn't mean it's junk science. A lot of these studies wouldn't even be done if it wasn't for these companies funding them. But I still raise an eyebrow anytime I see, like, no Coca Cola debunks study that says it's bad for you with their own study. I'm not even a big cynic. And you just have to sort of wonder if that's complete BS or not. Yeah, well, the FDA, for its part, if you go to their website on their Q and A, as far as them defending the things that they've approved, well, I'll just read it. It says all consumer complaints related to the sweetener have been investigated as thoroughly as possible by federal authorities for more than five years, in part under FDA's arms system or Arm system, adverse Reaction Monitoring system. In addition, scientific and that's where people can submit their own beefs, basically, right? Yeah. And say like, hey, I'm dizzy, I just drank a tab. Yes, exactly. In addition, scientific studies conducted during Aspartame's pre approval phase failed to show that it causes any adverse reaction in adults or children, individuals who have concerns about possible adverse reactions to Aspartame or other substances to contact their physician, basically, hey, if you're not feeling good, maybe it's on you. Yeah. Why don't you stop being so metabolically weird? Go to your yard. Yeah. And since you brought up the FDA, there's a lot of concerns about just how much oversight they're bringing to the table. And from there's, this Washington Post article I found, it sounds like that too, man like, not much at all. There's this separate track. It's basically like an expedited track that a company who's looking for FDA approval for their food item can submit. And rather than so, ideally, there's this FDA review process where the FDA says, let us see your studies. We're going to do some research. We might do some testing ourselves. It's going to take forever. You're going to lose a bunch of money while you're sitting there waiting to go to market. But we will know pretty conclusively that it's safe for humans to use, although even that's not necessarily true. But that's like, the ideal situation that will get maybe close to, yes, this is safe for humans. Well, they've basically done away with that and created this fast track program where you can submit for generally regarded as safe status. Yeah, that was 1997 is when everything kind of big sea change there. Yeah. And they did it because business was like, guys, you're taking so long. This is so slow. This process is killing us. It's costing us so much cash. We want to go to market faster. Well, we don't have enough people, right? What do we do? So instead of hiring more people, they just made it easier for the companies to get this stuff passed. And the way that they did that was the FDA said, how about this? You guys go study the medical literature, write a review of what you find, and we'll read your review, and then we'll give you approval. So you don't need to submit your data anymore. Just give us your findings, your findings in a summary, and that should speed things up. And it did in a big, big way. And it proved the FDA was so toothless that apparently now a lot of companies are releasing food additives into the food supply without even talking to the FDA about it. It said in this article that one of the deputy commissioners for food at the FDA, he said, we simply do not have the information to vouch for the safety of many of these chemicals. The FDA is like, oh, well, there's a new food additive out there. I hope it goes well for everybody. Yeah. I don't know if in the FDA's defense, but what they said initially was the reason we did this is we thought that people were doing this anyway and just introducing new chemicals without submitting for approval at all. He said, So maybe if we streamline this process, they'll at least do that. And that just hasn't worked out how they hoped. No, it's like Citizens United ruling. Oh, yeah. All right, well, let's take a break. I'm angry now. Sorry, I need to go smash. We'll be back right after that. Only 45% of high school students feel they are prepared for college or careers. Stride career prep is helping change that. Stride Career Prep lets students take charge of their education and their future. By combining real world skills training and traditional academics, students can earn college credit while in high school or get the training needed to land a job right after graduation. Stride Career Prep prepares your team for indemand careers in business, tech, health, science, criminal justice and more. Students can take courses developed by industry professionals, prepare for certifications, get 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. 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. OK, we're back. Chuck, you feeling better? Yeah. That Ming vase, man, that was like an original. Yeah, well, that was real. It's a goner now. That's going to come out of Jerry's pay once you get some super glue. That Brady Bunch episode. Mom always said, don't play ball in the house. Did they break something? Yes, they broke a vase playing basketball in the house and they tried to glue it back together. And then Mrs. Brady used it for some flowers and a bunch of leaks. That's so dumb. I love those. What are you doing? Playing basketball inside of you, and it's dumb. Just horseplate rough housing the use. I mean, they're outside was a studio set with astroturf. Like it's always perfect weather. Yeah, and that one little quarter driveway. Yeah, I bet. It would be so disappointing if you could go see a recreation of that set today. Yeah, it's like I sat at the Cheers bar once. The real. Not the one in Boston, but where they shot the TV show. Okay. And it's just everything's just always smaller, including Rio Porlin. She's tiny. She's like, in my beer mug. Yeah, I was going to say the one in Boston. It's like nothing like this set, so I thought that's where you're going. I didn't realize you've been on the actual set. Yeah, that's when I did my famous extra stint on Dear John, and Cheers was next door. Okay, I don't know the story. Yeah, with my brother. He worked on Deer. John and I went out to visit him and he got me on as an extra. I played a busboy in a restaurant scene. Did you really? Yes. I'd love to get a copy of that, actually, and post it. Yeah, I want to see that. It was pretty good. Yes. That was my first encounter, like, real encounter with the film business. And I was like, this is a weird thing to do. This is the life for me. I'm going to play Bus Boys all my life, and one day I'm going to have a short live failure of a TV show myself. All right, so where were we? We were talking about a TV show. Oh, no, we were talking about coming back from the break. And I wanted to mention you said earlier that when we first introduced, that sometimes this stuff does more harm. And this one Purdue University study I thought was really interesting because it found that eating and drinking sugar free stuff with diet drinks mainly can actually mess with your body's ability to naturally count calories because it just messes up what the body recognizes as real sweet and real calories, which can make you fatter. Right. Yeah. Apparently there's been a number of studies, including, like, really good longitudinal studies like the San Antonio Heart Study, that have found that high levels of diet soda intake are correlated with obesity, meaning everything else equal. The person who drinks more diet soda is likelier to be obese, which makes zero sense. It's pretty confounding. Right. The whole reason, or one of the big reasons people drink diet soda is so they can lose weight, but it turns out that they're actually more likely to be obese and I should say compared to people who don't drink diet soda. Not compared to people who drink non diet soda. Right. That's not to say, like, yeah, a Diet Coke drinker is more likely to be obese than a Coke drinker. It's a Diet Coke drinker is more likely to be obese than somebody who just drinks water. Right. And this produced study really gives some insight to that. Basically, our body tells us how many calories we need to take in, and part of that is based on how sweet something is. So once we start drinking and ingesting these artificial sweeteners, it just goofs everything up. It basically says that our body doesn't associate sweetness with higher calories anymore. Yeah, right. Because with something like artificial sweetened soda, right. When you eat food, your body has a couple of pathways that it rewards you for saying, hey, good job, you ate food. I'm going to make it so that you want to eat food again. And one is the Gustatory pathway, or Gustatory component, which is like the taste, the smell, the sensation that you get from eating good food or something sweet and delicious. And that just activates your limbic system like crazy. Your reward pathway goes nuts, right? Yeah. But when you eat stuff, you also have the second component, which is where you're satiated, the feeling that you get that great pleasant feeling of being like, nice and pleasantly full from eating, right? Yeah. And that counters that goosebury excitement. So normally when you eat food, you get the excitement from the taste of it, and then ultimately, you'll also get the nice, pleasant feeling from being full from it. Not so with an artificial sweetened soda. Instead, you get the excitement. Your sugar rush is going off, but you're never going to get full. And since we're nothing but junkies as far as our brains are wired, we're just going to keep drinking more and more and more because that sugar center is going off and we're never getting full. So it's never counteracted. We just always crave more and more and more. Yeah. And of course, like you said, these studies, there's always an opposite one, that it was debunked as flawed by the National Soft Drink Association. Yeah. They didn't try. They just said wrong. But that produced study is not the only study. There have been plenty of other studies that have looked into this and have found the same thing. That our bodies are being tricked, that we're no longer associating sweet foods with high calorie foods, and that it's leading to eating more high calorie food. So that if you eat something that actually is sweet and has calories, you're going to eat more of it than you would have before because your brain is not used to saying, I've got enough calories from this, I can stop eating it now. Right, playing tricks on your body. Yeah. And plus, also apparently with these things that are 300, 507,000 times sweeter than sugar, which is what our body is used to is some form of sugar, the sensation of sweetness is amplified. And so it kind of mutes sweetness and other things like fruit or any other complex tastes, like in vegetables. So we end up just craving more and more sweet stuff because everything else tastes terrible compared to this ultra sweet stuff that we're eating and drinking. And if you stop drinking like soda or diet soda or whatever, stop eating junk food for even just like a week or so, when you go back to it, it's amazing how sweet that stuff actually is. I bet it's like a smack in the face. Yeah. But you realize, like, wow, I've really been used to this for a while because I don't remember. It tasting this sweet. Yeah. And my headaches are now gone because I'm drinking this again. Well, and the other thing too, and I know we covered a little bit of this in the high fructose corn syrup, but part of the problem is the ubiquity of this stuff, I think. Which one was it? Was it aspartame? Aspartame is in 6000. More than 6000 products? Yeah, like soft drinks, of course. Gum puddings, dessert mixes, gelatin, frozen desserts fillings, yogurts. And of course, people just dump it right into their coffee, too. Sure. And it's purest form, but unless you're really a stickler about looking at food labels, you're getting way more than the maximum recommended levels that you should be ingesting into stuff. Because it might be like I said, I got a sore throat, so I took the cough drop and now I'm showing a gum, now I'm using toothpaste and it's all over the place. Right, exactly. And that's another part of the problem where even if the FDA is doing its job and does all this research and looks at the medical literature, they may say, okay, this stuff is safe at this level. This is the maximum recommended amount that a person should have and still be within the safe zone per day. So don't put more than this in your soda. Okay, great. Go forth and prosper. And then that soda becomes a success and other people start using that sweetener. And then it's like you said, with aspartame, it's everywhere. So that the people are getting that amount just from that soda with aspartame that they're drinking, but they're also getting it from all these other places. And the levels rise very quickly. Yeah. And some folks get I mean, there's a definite soft drink addiction problem, even with the diet sodas. I've known people who literally drank like a couple of two liters a day of this stuff. Sure, yeah. Like, just constantly drinking soda all day long from the moment they get up to the moment they go to bed. Right. So it's no big deal. Exactly. And there's actually a study that I came across. I didn't see where the study was from, but it was mentioned on this Harvard Health blog. It was a rat study where rats were given the choice between oral saccharine and intravenous cocaine after they've been acclimated to both. And they tended to choose the saccharine. Wow, that's crazy. Yeah, slightly. Did they go round and round? They did. Sorry. They're probably like, I've heard about that cocaine. I'm not doing that. But I will do the saccharin. By the way, there's an audio interview on YouTube with the drummer from the band Rat. That's like an hour and 20 minutes long. Try and get through 15 or 20 minutes of it. But the way I saw it is someone said this is the Donald Trump of 80s hair metal. Was it a contemporary, like, today? Yeah, he basically has a new group that does rap songs. And I think he's just the drummer that's the original member and just goes off for like an hour and a half about how great they are and about how that's the real stuff and how they sound better than the original Rat ever sounded. And it's really something like, I've never heard someone who is more full of themselves than this dude. Wow. It was hysterical. It was really wonderful. How many songs could they possibly play? Do they just play round and round? Like twelve or 13 times at a show? Yeah, I've had a few hits. All I remember is round and round. Yeah, I'll think on it wonder though. I'll bet you're thinking of Cinderella or Docking. No, I think Docking had more hits than Rat. No, they had lay it down. Remember that one? No. Can you sing it? Sure you do. Lay it down right now and then they had Wanted Man, no, that's fine. And then you're in love. No. And Wakel Jr. They had, I would say, four genuine sort of hits. I really honestly, I remember Round and Round, and that's it. Well, they were a little bit poor your time, too. Round and Round was a pretty good song, though. It was a great song. We should just end the show, actually. Let's take a break and then we're going to come back and talk specifically about some of these sweeteners. Does that sound good? It sounds sweet. Only 45% of high school students feel they are prepared for college or careers. Stride career prep is helping change that. Stride Career Prep lets students take charge of their education and their future. By combining real world skills training and traditional academics, students can earn college credit while in high school or get the training needed to land a job right after graduation. Stride Career Prep prepares your team for indemand careers in business, tech, health, science, criminal justice and more. Students can take courses developed by industry professionals, prepare for certifications, get handson, experience network, and most importantly, gain the confidence they need to succeed. Stride Career Prep is backed by over 20 plus years of experience in online learning and education. Take charge at K twelve. Compodcast that's K twelve.com podcast, and start taking charge of your future today. These days, you use your personal info to do just about everything, especially when you're online. And guess what? 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. Stuff you should know. I can't believe you don't remember your in love. Well, you're not singing it, so how could I possibly remember it? And lay it down. Those were two big, big hits. I mean, I'm telling you, like, I was paying a lot of attention to 80s hair metal when it was out. I bet you'd probably be like, oh, I know that song. All right. Remember Striper, the Christian hair metal band? I saw Striper in concert, my friend. Did you? The fabulous Fox Theater in Atlanta. Did you really? I did. Awesome. They had more than one hit, didn't they? Yeah, I was way into that in my early youth group days. Striper, they rocked about as tough as you could get. I don't know about that, but they definitely rocked for sure. I don't know about that. Well, they definitely wore a lot of spandex. Their drummer played sideways. That was his big trick. They set it up completely sideways on the stage. He's not actually playing sideways then. No, he's playing straight ahead. He just has a drum kit sideways. That was the gimmick, huh? Yeah. Baton religion, pretty good. All right, so let's talk about saccharin. It's actually the Latin word for sugar, and that was the one we said earlier, which is the OG discovered by two chemist named Johns and Hopkins. Well, two guys claimed it. One was definitely in the lab because he was the one who licked his well, he ate a bread roll, I guess. Oh, really? That was sweet. And he was like, I don't think this is supposed to be sweet, and came to realize it was the coal tar that was on his fingers. Wow. Yeah. I thought you meant it was sitting in a little pool of culture and he didn't notice it. That's weird. He was warming it up on the Bunsom burner. So, yeah, an accidental discovery. And it is 300 times sweeter than sugar. And this is one of the ones that is no calorie because it is not metabolized by the body at all. No. And it is very famous. Well, famous, but the drink tab, the soft drink tab, it was very famous for being sweetened in a big way by saccharin. Right. Which means that from the I think maybe there was a warning label on Tab that said, quote, use of this product may be hazardous to your health. This product contains saccharin, which has been determined to cause cancer and laboratory animals. You remember that warning label on there? Oh, yeah. And you can also still find I mean, it's not like it went away. That is what Sweet and low is. And if you drink fountain, diet Coke or Pepsi, pepsi, you're going to have saccharin in there. And Emily was big on the fountain. Diet Coke. She was like, it's just not the same for McCann. And I called because of sacren. She went, what, she's offense now too, though? Yeah, that'll do it. But what's weird so I read this really great post on Today I Found Out, which is an excellent website, by the way. Yeah, it's a good one. And they wrote about the discovering saccharin and then the controversy, the health controversies of sacrament. And the case they make is that it's basically the victim of bad science reporting and public fear, basically, and that if you're a rodent yes. You should not be drinking Tab. Right. Because there was discovery of bladder cancer and other types of cancer, but specifically bladder cancer in a lab rat that were being fed saccharine. And I guess before they figured out exactly why, the media went and extrapolated it onto people. And so in the public's mind, it became, saccharin will give you bladder cancer. And then by the time they went and researched what was going on there's, like the specific parts of rat urine were combining with the saccharin to form these things called micro crystals in the bladder, which is tearing up the bladder lining so frequently that as the cells were regenerating, the potential for them to grow out of control and become tumors was increased. And so the lab rats were getting bladder cancer. The thing is, the lab rats urine is not the same as humans urine. No. And so we just don't get bladder cancer from Tab, apparently, or from saccharin. Well, yeah, and one of the things, I mean, I never really knew this how they exactly tested. I figured because it was a rat, they would just give them like a few drops or something because they're tiny, but they apparently dose these lab mice and rats with lots of these additives, large doses. And apparently that's to compensate for the fact that they don't use a lot of mice and rats, which I don't follow the logic there. There isn't any. Okay. And then they follow it up with, wow, that seems to have really gotten on top of you. How about some intravenous cocaine to percula? Well, they also said that large doses compensate for possibilities that rodents may be less sensitive to it. Yeah, but I've also read elsewhere that the stuff that the tests they're conducting, at least on humans, too, are not real world tests. It's like, oh, you just drank a twelve ounce Diet Coke and now we're going to base all of our medical recommendations on the impact it has on your body. Right. They're not taking into account, like you said, the guy who drinks two liters or 212 packs of Diet Coca day for 2030 years. Right, exactly. And this stuff is generally just too new for us to have any studies on long term effects of them. So we really just don't know. Yeah. I don't want to foster paranoia. Fear. Yeah, paranoia. Yeah, fear. Paranoia. But the jury is still out as far as I'm concerned. Agreed. For its part, though, saccharin was removed from the NIH's list of carcinogens, and they did remove that warning label in the late 90s, like you said. Yeah. And I should say, I'm not specifically talking about saccharin. I'm talking about artificial sweeteners in general. Yeah, totally. The jury is still out, but on the aspartame, that's one of the big targets these days, equal Nutrite. And Nutritaste are the brand names that it's sold under. And this is a derivative of a couple of amino acids, aspartic acid and phenyl. Laline. Laline, yeah. This has been around since 1965, and this was a chemist named Jim Schlatter, a part of a company which is now Pfizer, and he was the one that was licking his finger to pick up paper and studying an anti ulcer drugs. I went, hey, that tastes 180 times sweeter than sugar to me. Right. And so that's what it's used for. Oh, yeah. Well, I don't think they treat ulcers with it anymore or no, but the weird thing about aspartame is more in how it's broken down in the body, I think. Yeah. Because it is metabolized. Yeah. And this just blew my mind. I had no idea that something like that could break down into methanol in your body. Yeah. Wood alcohol weird. I mean, that's one of three things. The Spartac acid and then phenylaline and methanol is what it breaks down into. That's just crazy. Right. And so if you do not have this disorder called PKU or fennel ketoneuria, it's the wood alcohol you have to pay attention to. But if you have PKU, then you've got a big problem with the phenylalanine because you're missing an enzyme that breaks that down, and it can build up in your brain and create brain damage in you. So people who have PKU or Fennel ketoneuria can't have aspartame at all because of that. But for people who do not have PKU, you still have to worry about the methanol, though. That would alcohol, if I remember correctly, isn't that the stuff that the US. Government used to poison the illicit alcohol supply with? And a bunch of people went blind and died back in Prohibition number, but that sounds right. I think it was wood alcohol, and it's just so toxic. And normally when we consume something that has wood alcohol in it, it's in the presence of ethanol and it's absorbed differently. The ethanol kind of, like, neutralizes it a little bit, but in aspartame, it's breaking down into methanol without the presence of ethanol. And so we're absorbing this toxic component just straight up. Yeah. 10% of aspartame is absorbed as methanol, and the EPA says there's a recommended limit of 7.8 mg per day of methanol. And drinking one liter of an aspartame sweetened beverage contains 56 milligrams of methanol. Well, is that saying 56 milligrams of absorbed methanol or 56 milligrams of aspartame? I don't know. I think that means methanol. That's how I took it. Yeah. So eight times the recommended amount in one liter of an aspartame sweetened beverage. That's not good. Well, and like you were saying how the ethanol counterbalances? It's the same as the amino acids. They're naturally part of our diet, but usually when we consume it there, it's counterbalanced by other amino acids. And in the case of aspartame, it doesn't have those. So it's just consuming it on its own. Right. So you're getting it in very high doses. Basically, yeah. And there's been at least one study that has linked different types of cancers in female rats to aspartame consumption. Right. But again, no official studies show any official problems. Well, none that the FDA is pointing to. That was Europe. They're overprotective. Yes, but this is one of the ones, too, that arms program where you can call in and report things. I think it accounts for 75% of all complaints there. Like, I'm dizzy, I got headaches, I got seizures, got fatigue. It's killing me. It's killing me. Doc, you got to do something. What's next? Culose sucralose. Like Splendor. Right. So sucralose Splenda's marketed or it was marketed with the kind of slogan made from sugar. So it tastes like sugar. Right. And apparently they got sued by the sugar industry because I guess people thought that Splenda was natural. I think there was some sort of poll that found that 57% of people thought that Splendor was a natural artificial sweetener. And it's not. It's actually you take a sugar molecule, and then you take out three of the hydroxyl groups, hydrogen and oxygen groups, and you replace those with chlorine. This is always a good move. Yeah. That's no longer sugar. No, that's not sugar anymore. It's not natural either. So what you have is sucralose, and sucralose is 600 times sweeter than sugar, and it's not metabolized by the body. Right. So it's calorie free, but there have been studies that have found that it might not be metabolized by the body, but it's absorbed by the body. It's been found in the blood immediately after drinking a can of sucralose sweetened soda. And it's also been found in breast milk, too, from others who have drank sucralose sweetened drinks. Yeah. And sucralose is one of those you're going to find because it holds up to heat. So you're going to find it in a lot of baked goods or, like, processed baked goods or in I was about to call them kits. What are they called? The Easy Baked Oven. No, when you go to make a cake and you get the stuff mix. Yeah, the mix. Not a kit. I like kit, though. That's a good one. Yeah. I need a cake kit. Go to the hardware store. I don't know what you mean, pal. Look, it's been a long day. Please leave me alone. But Splenda is one of the biggest, probably heaviest used sweetener. Just going to call it over the counter sweetener. But when you just use it for sweetener alone, to sweeten your tea or your coffee or whatever yeah, you see a lot of Splendor because it has that little green leaf on it. Splendid. I thought Splendid was the yellow one. Oh, Stevie is the one with the green leaf. Yeah, that's right. You're right. Yeah. Stevie actually is natural. It comes from a plant. Okay. Alright. I feel much better about the green leaf. Yes. Sucraloser. Splendid sugar with chlorine. Oh, yeah, splendid. That yellow packet. That's right, yeah. Sweet and low is pink. Yes. Stevie's got the green leaf. I used to dump that Sweet and Low in my iced tea when I was a kid because I knew no better. Did you really? Wow. Well, because you put sugar and cold iced tea, it does nothing but just go to the bottom. I know, it's absolutely frustrating. And then I was like, oh, wait a minute, I'm from Georgia, I need to be drinking sweetened tea. Which is why they're brewing it. They dump in a full \u00a31 bag of sugar. So much like they say down here, that the straw is supposed to stand straight up in the tea. And that's how you know when you have enough sugar in your sweet tea. Yeah, I don't drink sweet tea much anymore, but boy, I love it. Yeah, I do too. It's really good. So Super Low, for its worth, isn't as controversial in the public sphere as aspartame is. But there was a report, the FDA in 1998 that said it's approved, but it did cause minor genetic damage and mouth cells, but it was minor and weekly mutagenetic may cause like, cancer. And like you've said, weren't they sued by the sugar industry? Didn't you say that? Yeah, I don't know what the outcome was. I haven't heard that slogan in a while. So I'll bet the sugar industry won. Yeah. Now it's just Splenda. You know the deal. Yeah. You know, we used to say, just think hard, Google it. And then finally we have sugar alcohols, which I wasn't super familiar with actually I am, because up until this week chewed a lot of sugar free gum and a lot of it is sweetened with sugar alcohols, which is where you take a sugar and you add a hydrogen atom to it. Right. So there's stuff like sorbidol yeah, I even practiced that one. Therapy. Yes. Thank you. Had a little trouble with it. But they don't have calories because they're not typically absorbed by the body. Although some actually do have just about as many calories as sugar. So you do have to kind of watch it. But sugar alcohols typically are used less for weight loss and more for your blood sugar control. Like among people with diabetes. Okay. Because it might have the calories, but it doesn't have the glycemic load that sugar does, and even some artificial sweeteners do, but they taste really good. They're about as close to sugar as you can possibly get and still have fewer calories or whatever. The problem with them is that they're like butterfish escrow. Yeah. They caused the anal leakage. Yeah. I'm going to bring that up every chance I get. You know, I think we have our first great band name of 2017, too. Not anal leakage, but glycemic load. Anal Leakage. No one wants to hear that. No, it's like Diarrhea Planet. Oh, yeah. Didn't they tweet back to us? Poop knife? Is that what it was you were telling Diarrhea Planet to change what I mean? Yeah, they tweeted never, never. Who are you? Yeah, so that laxative effect, if you have a daily dose of 50 grams of the sorbitol or 20 grams of the mental, it has to be labeled that it has a laxative effect. Yeah, but the center for Science in the Public Interest says, no, only 10 grams of sorbidol can make you poop your pants. So maybe you guys should lower it for that warning. And the FDA said, look, man, we're taking a nap away. They're like, what? Can we just have people on the verge of pooping their pants? But not quite right? Oh, dear. Yeah, I saw an alternative to all this. Oh, what? Real sugar. That is one alternative. And the thing is, the upshot of all this is, well, maybe sugar is not so bad. Refined sugar is pretty bad for you, and so is like high fructose corn syrup. But there are plenty of natural forms of sugar, too, like unrefined raw, demerrera sugar or honey. There's a lot of places you can get sweetness that aren't necessarily bad for you. Sure. Right. But then if you're super hip with the science too, you might be in favor of what are called sweet tasting proteins. These are actually pretty cutting edge from what I've seen. There's seven that have been identified so far. All of them come from plants that grow in the rainforest. And they are proteins. They're not carbohydrates. They're actual proteins. Like so. They can they're yeah, the Paraguayan sweet chicken. Paraguayan sweetbird? Yeah. So they're not going to raise your glycemic index like your blood sugar. They're not going to lead to weight gain. They're just proteins. And apparently some of them are quite sweet, and they're looking into using those. They're looking for an alternative to the artificial sweeteners, which are the alternatives to sugar, so they can decimate the rainforest in yet another way. Well, hopefully this will help them protect the rainforest. No, this is where our sweet comes from. Got. Cutting it down. Okay. Keep your fingers crossed. They're crossed. Okay. That's all I got. That's all I got. So that's artificial sweeteners, everybody. If you want to know more about those, you can take those words in the search bar@housetepworks.com. And the noise will appear. And since I said no, it's time for listener. Ma'am. I'm going to call this warmed my heart over the holidays. Scotch? Hey. Yeah, that too. Hi, Josh and Chuck. I'm Grace and I'm 17 years old and the oldest of three sisters. Lily, 15, Rose Ten. Great names. We started listening to your podcast in 2009 when our parents split up and we moved a state away from our dad as a tradition. Now we always listen to a podcast of yours to this very day when we are traveling between the two states with our dad. It's been such a fun way to pass the time during road trips. Your podcasts have been the source of so many interesting conversations in such a wonderful way to bring our family together over the years. For instance, all three of us girls vividly remember the Vulture episode for no apparent reason and found the haunted house episode oddly cool. Lily, who was the 15 year old, she enjoys the Halloween story episodes. Rose Ten thinks it's funny when you guys get off track. God bless you, Rose. And I really like to annoy my friends with all the useless facts that I now know. We are such hardcore fans that we even had marathons of your TV series. Wow. And we have literally been a fan of you guys since you started. Thanks for being a part of our childhood. Love the Harvey family. That's fantastic email. That was great. And they sent a picture of dad behind the wheel driving with it looks like Grace up front and Lily and Rose in the back. And they were all just smiling and they just had this lovely aura about them. Thanks to us. Yes. No thanks to Vulture episode. Anyway, I love the Harvey family. Now they're tops on my list. Yeah. Thanks a lot, Harvey family, for writing, and we appreciate that big time. And the old man Harvey, you're doing the right thing, sir. Yes. Keep both hands on the wheel. That's right. If you want to get in touch with us, like the Harvey's did, to let us know how much of a role we've played in your life, we love hearing that kind of stuff. You can tweet to us. I'm at Josh Clark, and we're also at SYSK podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com. Stuff you should know. You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook at Charleswchuckbryant. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstafworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun is shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon. Music. My favorite murder from exactly right media. My favorite murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarif and Georgia Hardstarks, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You know you're the best pet mom. When you growl back during play time, give epic belly rubs and feed them Halo holistic made with responsibly sourced ingredients, plus probiotics for digestive health. Find us at chewy amazonandhalopeets.com." | |
5ce79d70-6a20-11ea-abcd-e7e4193a155b | SYSK Distraction Playlist: Was there a real King Arthur? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-distraction-playlist-was-there-a-real-king-ar | 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. And while many of the details of his life and adventures, from the Lady of the Lake to Merlin the Magician, seem fictional some archaeologists believe that Arthur -- and much of his life -- was real. | 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. And while many of the details of his life and adventures, from the Lady of the Lake to Merlin the Magician, seem fictional some archaeologists believe that Arthur -- and much of his life -- was real. | Fri, 20 Mar 2020 11:30:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=20, tm_hour=11, tm_min=30, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=4, tm_yday=80, tm_isdst=0) | 40866148 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from howstuffworkscom? Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles. Debbie, Chuck Bryant. Jerry waved. Everybody quiet. Jerry. That's stuff you should know. Oh, yeah, that's us. That is us. The legend. It was impossible for me to research this without only thinking of two things. Two movies, five owned. No, I 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 did 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 Showtime 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 comedy. Yeah, I could see that. You should check out a cabbler. It actually holds up pretty well. And it's somewhat notable for having a couple of early appearances by actors that went on to be much bigger. 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 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 Camelott. 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. Yes. 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 nights who say knee. It has the black knight who merely has a flesh wound. Yeah. It has everything. It has singing, dancing. Yeah. The 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'll 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 Utah Pendragon 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 accident. And in this case, what was accident 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 Pliny the Elder. Thank God for Pliny, or else we might not even know the Celts 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 are 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. 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 ground 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 is 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're 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. 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. Right. But you're smiling because you like that name. All I can think of is, I am off the son of Utopian dragon. 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 a stone and only the rightful king, meaning only the line of Uther Pendragon yeah, I'm not going to say anything, will 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. Yes. Then 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 does. Not the ruler, Brit, 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. This is a bitch and 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. And I guess apples were super magical to the Celts, but Avalon itself is almost an otherworldly after life 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. I know it probably wasn't apple and Eden, but it's all in. I wonder southern Baptist 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. Or the apple in the 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 create the core every time 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 like, okay, sorry to get sidetracked by the history of the apple. No, I think you do raise a really interesting point, Chuck. 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, so 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 him restore peace. Okay, so he built Camelot in anticipation of restoring piece. 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 Guinevere'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. Phoenix caliber. 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. It represents the piece that he brought with these nights. Okay. Then he meets Gwen of here, 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. Mordra 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 better beer is like, I could use Excalibur. Yeah. He throws Excalibur to the lake, and his 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 followed that version. Okay. 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 is 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. Hey, 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 Celts, 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 the 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 may be 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 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 was a written poem shows you that made their way in this area in the Celt are just telling stories, looking their wounds and telling stories, still not writing stuff down. They're like, Are you familiar with mistleta? Yeah. Do you know about knocking on wood? Look at you utilizing all your information. Some other references in literature. The Historia Brittonum History of Britain, Ad. 800 and the analysis 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, like, 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, and he was a priest who wrote Historia Regum Britannia, the History Of British Kings and the 1100s. But he based his stuff on the Historia Brittonum, but it just became really popular. Right. So he kind of base it on the other thing. Some people even say you plagiarize. 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 is not 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. So he started neighbor places, he started contemporizing things. Like 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, crete in 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 and 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 pro 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 about yeah. Like, silvery 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 Vulgate Cycle. Yeah. And those ones focus a little more on Lancelot and the Chivalrous knights and all that. Yeah. And the Grail, too. Yeah. With Galahad. Yeah. They said that Joseph of Aramathea, in the Bible, he was the one who gave Jesus his tomb after Jesus was crucified and brought back. And he said no, he didn't say that, but they said Joseph Hermethea brought the Grail to Britain. But then Galahad, Shirlenslot'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? And the Pure and Chase goes to the castle. There's 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. Yeah. And it was tough. It was sort of like a bit of a modernized Middle English. Yeah. 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. Okay. Surely he cleaned them up. Well, yeah, 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. And 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 Volgate cycle. Yeah, 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 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 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, yes. In the sword in 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. This came out about the same time. I know, but I was probably so obsessed. 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 are real or these places are real. So let's get to that after this message break. Okay, buddy, so what's the deal? Was there a Camelot? Was there an Arthur? Were these nights real dudes? Probably. Well, 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. 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'll be some larvae emailing. Right. That is not nearly the same. Sir, let me explain to you the difference between a cleric and 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 Merdin Wilt, and another one was named Emeritwoldig. Yeah, that's a tough one. W-L-E-D-I-G. So there's two vowels in both of those names combined. Right. 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, Merton. 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, he suffered from some sort of PTSD and went and fled into the jungle. Well, not the jungle, because this is a 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 Britannier, he wrote that it was Cornwall at Tintingale Castle, and they actually found a stone there in the with an inscription that said, descendant of Arthur, father of the descendant of Cole. And Monmouth, actually, the writer of that history book names 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 1100s, many hundreds of years later, after Arthur was supposedly living. Right. And the author of this article accuses Joffrey of basically using Tidajill 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 Tinder 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, tim 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 knights of the Round Table there. But Winchester Castle was built in the 11th century and they carbondated the table to 1340 and said it was probably painted during the 1500s under King Henry VII, because everyone was way into chivalry in 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 fort that's in somerset. That's mentioned in here, too. That one. If anything was Camelot, it would have been that place. Oh, yeah. Is that Deleting? 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 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. Yeah. And it was just like a prime castle in the area that he would have been in. So if there was a Camelot, 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 music whistle there, my TV tells me. And here's the deal. There was the Glastonbury Tour, which is sort of, I guess, for that area. That's 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. It's described in Latin, and it says it's King Arthur and Guinevier. 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. These silly people. Yeah, so I guess there's a difference. And they knew. So that was quashed. Or are you about to debust that? Debusting. 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 12th 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. Yeah. 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 that it wasn't truly their final resting place. Yes. At the very least, there were a pair of six century graves there with bones. No bones. Where did 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. Alright. 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. Yeah. I like old things and it's hard to get anything super old in the country. 1600s, maybe 1500s, 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 Yuumi. Was the Coliseum. Yeah, me too. Everywhere else, we're like, 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? Yes. 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 Trevy Fountain there. That was something else. That one kind of took my breath away. Yeah. We should start a travel show. I think we just did. And finally, maybe some of these knights were real dudes. Serbedavier, 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 Betrayant, member of the Royal House of FindU, 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 Mabinogen. 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 Ambroscis 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 Allen Wilson since 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. 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. Yes. Could be short for Arthur, 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 nutshell pass. I don't remember the spitting. Yes. 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 list 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 or 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. 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 syskpodcast, you can join us on Facebook. Comstepyshow, you can send us an email to stuff podcast@discovery.com, and you can join us at our super dope home on the web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseoffworks.com. With over 1000 titles to choose from, Audible.com is a leading provider of downloadable digital audiobooks and spoken word entertainment. Go to audiblepodcast. Comnostuff knowstuff to get a free audiobook download of your choice when you sign up today. Hey everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer school's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my favorite Murder in Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today." | |
Josh N Chuck's Hallowe'en Spooky Scarefest | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/josh-n-chucks-halloween-spooky-scarefest | Each year, Chuck and Josh read a couple of scary stories and this year they have a pair of truly frightful tales about a haunted bog and a terrifying spider exhibit. | Each year, Chuck and Josh read a couple of scary stories and this year they have a pair of truly frightful tales about a haunted bog and a terrifying spider exhibit. | Thu, 29 Oct 2015 14:11:41 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=29, tm_hour=14, tm_min=11, tm_sec=41, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=302, tm_isdst=0) | 50324051 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetoportscom. Hey, welcome to the Halloween podcast. I'm Josh de Gaulle. Clark. That's right there's chuck The Phantom Bryant and Jerry the Ghoulish Phantom Wraith. Jerry didn't like being called a race. No. I think she doesn't know what it means. No, I know. I think this tradition is so great and fun now. I think so, too. That we are beginning to live alongside the Simpsons treehouse of horror. It's that venerated, huh? I think so. I think listeners really look forward to this. Well, not on that level of, like, fame, but I think fans of The Simpsons look forward to that each year, just as our fans look forward to Halloween episode each year. That's what I'm saying. I got you. It's one of my favorites. Obviously, both of us, christmas and Halloween are probably two phase of the year, right? Am I speaking for you? Yeah, but you're speaking correctly. All right. I can live with that. Those are the two that we know we're going to be good. All the rest of them, it's like hit or miss. Yeah. For the unknown. Unaddorned. Unaddorned. Uninitiated. unindoctrinated. unindoctrinated. Unexposed. Unexposed. What we do here is we read a scary story for Halloween, and Jerry gussy it all up with special effects. It's amazing. Like this. That was amazing. How about that? Wow, that's creepy. I'm scared right now. And last year, we started a tradition where we are reading two shorter stories. And that's what we're doing again this year. Yeah. Because I think what happened is, well, remember we had a Halloween horror fiction contest. Wow. Yeah. That was great. That's pretty cool. Yeah. But we started the whole thing out with was it the tomb, I think, was the first one. And then we did berenice. Yeah. Then the horror fiction contest, I think. And then I don't know how many of this is. Yeah. We'll have to figure it out. Yeah. Because we'll have to title it whatever. Annual Halloween Spooktacular. Yes. Which is a different thing that we did once on our very short live web video series. What was it called? Webcast. Webcast. It's so ancient already that we can live webcast. So you picked out this first one and I picked out the second one. Well, first hold on. I want to give a plug to our buddy The Grabster, okay. Because he hooked us up. All right, so I don't know if you know this or not, but The Grabster knows what he's talking about when it comes to horror movies. Yeah. And we tweeted to him and said, hey, man, can you give us a list of your favorite horror movies of all time? Yeah. And The Grabster said, oh, are you going to read them? No. But he said, yes, let me give me a night, and I will put it together. And by goodness, if he didn't put it on his personal site, robot Viking.com, the post is some of my favorite horror movies, and he just went to town. What's his number? One, it's not listed. Suspiria? No, he doesn't have them in order. Okay, but Rawhead Rex is on there. Ponte Pool, Triangle, Return of Living Dead three, and he justifies these I need to see Ponte Pool because our buddy Joe Garden is long raved about the merits of Ponte Pool. I've never seen it either. It's one of those ones. I think it's up on Netflix, too. All right, so you picked this first one. You want to just set it up? Yeah. So this is the moon bog. It's Hyphenated two words by our friend Howard Phillips Lovecraft, who is still one of my favorite writers of all time. Yeah, even though you can just go on and on about him personally or his writing style or some of the devices he used, rather than describing something, just saying it was indescribable or unnamable. I still love the guy for some reason. And this one is one of his more interesting, imaginative ones. Sure, it has nothing to do with the Cthulhu mythos or anything like that. It's just pretty cool. It's a neat little weirdo, ancient, haunting story. Yeah, it's about an Irish American who doesn't follow the advice of the local townspeople. Let's just say that no. All right, are you ready? You want me to start? Yeah. Without further ado, the Moon bog by HP. Lovecraft. Somewhere to what remote and fearsome region? I know not. Dennis Barry has gone. I was with him the last night. He lived among men and heard his screams when the thing came to him. But all the peasants and police and CountyMeath could never find him or the others, though they searched long and far. And now I shudder when I hear the frogs piping in swamps or see the moon in lonely places. I had known Dennis Barry well in America, where he had grown rich and had congratulated him when he bought back the old castle by the bog at sleepy Kilderi. It was from Kildery that his father had come, and it was there that he wished to enjoy his wealth among ancestral scenes. Men of his blood had once ruled over Kildary and built and dwelt in the castle. But those days were very remote, so that for generations the castle had been empty and decaying. After he went to Ireland, Barry wrote me often and told me how under his care the gray castle was rising tower by tower to its ancient splendor, how the ivy was climbing slowly over the restored walls as it had climbed so many centuries ago, and how the peasants blessed him for bringing back the old days with his gold from over the sea. But in time there came troubles, and the peasants ceased to bless him and fled away instead as from a doom. And then he sent a letter and asked me to visit him, for he was lonely in the castle with no one to speak to save the new servants and laborers he had brought from the north. The bog was the cause of all these troubles, as Barry told me the night I came to the castle. I had reached Kildery in the summer sunset as the gold of the sky lighted the green of the hills and groves and the blue of the bog or on a far islet a strange old ruin glistened spectrally. That sunset was very beautiful but the peasants at Ballylo had warned me against it and said that Kildary had become accursed so that I almost shuddered to see the high turrets of the castle gilded with fire. Barry's motor had met me at the valley low station for Kildary is off the railway. The villagers had shunned the car and the driver from the north but had whispered to me with pale faces when they saw I was going to Kildary. And that night, after our reunion barry told me why the peasants had gone from Kildary. Because Dennis Barry was to drain the great bog. For all his love of Ireland, america had not left him untouched and he hated the beautiful wasted space where Pete might be cut and the land opened up. The legends and superstitions of Kildary did not move him and he laughed when the peasants first refused to help and then cursed him and went away to Ballylo with their few belongings. As they saw his determination in their place he sent for laborers from the north and when the servants left, he replaced them likewise. But it was lonely among strangers so Barry had asked me to come. All right. So we got this guy Dennis who cut his old fixer up her family castle. You made some mula back in the States went over to Ireland to fix it up brought in some, I guess people from Scotland to help. Friends from the north, maybe. Yeah, sure. I took it to be greenline for some reason. Oh, interesting. And everyone in the village, he wants to get rid of that bog and drain it. And then I put in a tennis court. He's like, we could build train tracks there or something. And everyone in the village is going, oh, big mistake. I'm out of here. So his buddy comes to visit him and that's where we are. When I heard the fears which had driven the people from Kildery I laughed as loudly as my friend had laughed. But these fears were the vagus, wildest and most absurd character. They had to do with some preposterous legend of the bog and of a grim guardian spirit that dwelt in the strange old and ruin on the far eyelid I had seen in the sunset there were tales of dancing lights in the dark of the moon and of chill winds when the night was warm of wraiths and white hovering over the waters. But foremost among the weird fancies and alone in its absolute unanimity was that of the curse awaiting him. Who should dare to touch or drain the vast reddish morass? Don't drain the bog. There were secrets, said the peasants, which must not be uncovered. Secrets that had lain hidden since the plague came to the children of Parthalon in the fabulous years beyond history. In the Book of Invaders it is told that the sons of the Greeks were all buried at Talaq Nice. But old men in Kilderie said one city was overlooked, saved by its patron moon goddess said that only the wooded hills buried it when the men of Nimed swept down from Satya in their 30 ships. Such were the idle tales which had made the villagers leave Kildary and when I heard them I did not wonder what dennis Barry had refused to listen. He had, however, a great interest in antiquities and proposed to explore the bog thoroughly when it was drained the white ruins on the island he had often visited. But though their age was plainly great and their contour very little like that of most ruins in Ireland there were two dilapidated to tell the days of their glory. Now the work of drainage was ready to begin and the laborers from the north were soon to strip the forbidden bog of its green moss and red heather and kill the tiny shelf paved streamlets and quiet blue pools fringed with brushes. After Barry had told me these things I was very drowsy for the travels of the day had been wearying and my hosted talked late into the night. A man servant shooed me into my room which was in a remote tower overlooking the village and the plane at the edge of the bog and the bog itself, so that I could see from my windows in the moonlight the silent roofs from which the peasants had fled which now sheltered the laborers from the north and to the parish church with his antique spire. And far out across the brooding bog the remote olden ruin on the islet gleaming white and spectral. Just as I dropped to sleep I fancied I heard faint sounds from the distance. Sounds that were wild and half musical and stirred me with a weird excitement which colored my dreams. But when I awaked the next morning I felt it had all been a dream. But the visions I had seen were more wonderful than any sound of wild pipes in the night. Influenced by the legends that Barry had related my mind had been slumber hovered around a stately city in a green valley where marble streets and statues, villas and temples, carvings and inscriptions all spoke in certain tones the glory that was Greece. When I told the stream to bury we both laughed. But I laughed the louder because he was perplexed about his laborers from the north. For the 6th time they had all overslept, waking very slowly and dazedly and acting as if they had not rested, although they were known to have gone early to bed the night before. The Scottish laborers are getting drunk. They're oversleeping, they're over sleeping, they're slacking off. And this guy's having visions, huh? Yeah. And the whole thing is there's legend that under the bog there's a stone city that was covered over with this bog. Ancient Greece. Yeah. There was an ancient Greek city in Ireland and that if you dig up the bog, it's going to be a big trouble because the city is supernatural, say the least. Tell me this is getting good. You ready again? Yes. Are you ready, listener? Yes. Okay. That morning and afternoon I wandered alone through the sun gilded village and talk now and then with idle laborers. Barry was busy with the final plans for beginning his work of drainage. The laborers were not as happy as they might have been, for most of them seemed uneasy over some dream which they had had yet which they tried in vain to remember. I told them of my dream, but they were not interested until I spoke of the weird sounds I thought I had heard. Then they looked oddly at me and said that they seem to remember weird sounds, too. In the evening, Barry dined with me and announced that he would begin the drainage in two days. I was glad, for although I disliked to see the moss and the heather and the little streams and lakes depart, I had a growing wish to discern the ancient secrets the deep matted peat might hide. And that night my dreams of piping flutes and marble parasites came to a sudden and disquieting end. For upon the city in the valley I saw pestilence descend and then a frightful avalanche of wooded slopes that covered the dead bodies in the streets and left unburied only the temple of Artemis on the high peak where the aged moon priestess Clais lay cold and silent with a crown of ivory on her silver head. I have said that I awake suddenly in an alarm. For some time I could not tell whether I was waking or sleeping, for the sounds of flutes still rang shrilly in my ears. But when I saw on the floor the icy moonbeams and the outlines of a lattice Gothic window, I decided I must be awake and in the castle at Kildery. Then I heard a clock from some remote landing below strike the hour of two, and I knew I was awake. Yet still there came that monotonous piping from afar wild, weird airs that made me think of some dance of fawns on distant mails. It would not let me sleep, and in patience I sprang up and paced the floor. Only by chance did I go to the north window and look out upon the silent village in the plain at the edge of the bog. I had no wish to gaze abroad, for I wanted to sleep. But the flutes tormented me and I had to see or do something. How could I have suspected the thing I was to behold? There in the moonlight that flooded the spacious plane was a spectacle which no mortal, having seen it, could ever forget. To the sound of reedy pipes that echoed over the bog, there glided silently and eerily a mixed throng of swaying figures, reeling through such a revel as the Sicilians may have danced to demeter in the old days. Under the harvest mood beside Cyan, the wide plain, the golden moonlight, the shadowy moving forms, and above all, the shrill, monotonous piping produced an effect which almost paralyzed me. Yet I noted amidst my fear that half of these tireless mechanical dancers were the laborers whom I had thought asleep, whilst the other half were strange airy beings and white half indeterminate in nature, but suggesting pale wistful niads from the haunted fountains of the bog. I do not know how long I gazed at the sight from the lonely turret window before I dropped suddenly in a dreamless swoon out of which the high sun of morning aroused me. Things are getting real creeps, fiddle. Yeah. So he's like seeing these weird, ghostly zombie laborers and white creatures. He needs to lay off the opium. Do they have opium in Ireland? Sure. Are you kidding me? He needs to lay off all right, here we go. My first impulse on awakening was to communicate all my fears and observations to Dennis Barry. But as I saw the sunlight glowing through the lattice east window, I became sure that there was no reality in what I thought I had seen. I am given to strange fantasms, yet am never weak enough to believe in them. So on this occasion, contented myself with questioning the laborers who slept very late and recalled nothing of the previous night save misty dreams of shrill sounds. This matter of the spectral piping harassed me greatly, and I wondered if the crickets of autumn had come before their time to vex the night and haunt the visions of men. Later in the day, I watched Barry in the window, poring over his plans for the great work which was to begin on the morrow. For the first time felt a touch of the same kind of fear that had driven the peasants away. For some unknown reason, I dreaded the thought of disturbing the ancient bog and its sunless secrets, and pictured terrible sights lying black under the unmeasured depth of age old Pete. That these secrets should be brought to light seems injudicious, and I began to wish for an excuse to leave the castle in the village. I went so far as to talk casually to Barry on the subject, but did not dare continue after he gave his resounding laugh. So I was silent when the sun set fulgently over the far hills in kildri blaze, all red and gold in the flame that seemed to portent. So he brought it up to his buddy and he kind of got made fun of, I think. Right. Whether the events of that night were of reality or illusion I shall never ascertain certainly they transcend anything we dream of in nature and the universe. Yet in no formal fashion can I explain those disappearances which were known to all men. After it was over, I retired, eerie and full of dread, and for a long time could not sleep in the uncanny silence of the tower. It was very dark, for although the sky was clear, the moon was now well in. The wane would not rise till the small hours. I thought as I lay there of Dennis Barry and of what would befall that bog when the day came and found myself almost frantic with an impulse to rush out into the night, take Barry's car and drive madly to Balloche out of the menace lands. But before my fears could crystallize into action, I'd fallen asleep and gazed in dreams upon the city in the valley, cold and dead under a shroud of hideous shadow. Probably it was the shrill piping that awakened me. Yet that piping was not what I noticed first. When I opened my eyes, I was lying with my back to the east window overlooking the bog where the waning moon would rise and therefore expected to see light cast on the opposite wall before me. But I had not looked for such a sight as now appeared. Light indeed glowed on the panels ahead, but it was not any light that the moon gives. Terrible and piercing was the shaft of ruddy refulgence that streamed through the gothic window, and the whole chamber was brilliant with a splendor, intense and unearthly. My immediate actions were peculiar for such a situation, but it only entails that a man does the dramatic and foreseen thing. Instead of looking out across the bog toward the source of the new light, I kept my eyes from the window in panicked fear and clumsily drew on my clothing with some dazed idea of escape. I remember seizing my revolver and hat, but before it was over I had lost them both without firing the one or donning the other. After a time, the fascination of the red radiance overcame my fright and I crept to the east window and looked out whilst the maddening incessant piping wind and reverberated through the castle and over all of the village. Over the bog was a deluge of flaring light, scarlet and sinister and pouring from the strange old ruin on the far islet. The aspect of that ruin I cannot describe. I must have been mad, for it seemed to rise majestic and undecaed, splendid and column censured, the flame reflecting marble of its intabulature piercing the sky like the apex of the temple on a mountaintop. Flute shrieked and drums began to beat. And as I watched in awe and terror, I thought I saw a dark sultan form silhouetted grotesquely against the vision of marvel and of forgens. The effect was titanic, altogether unthinkable and I might have stared indefinitely had not the sound of the piping seemed to grow stronger. At my left, trembling with the terror oddly mixed with ecstasy, I crossed the circular room to the north window from which I could see the village and the plane at the edge of the bog. There my eyes dilated again with a wild wonder as great as if I had not just turned from the scene beyond the pale of nature. For on the ghastly red litten plane was moving a procession of beings in such manner as none ever saw before, save in nightmares. That is not a parade of fun happening outside his window, is it? All right, this is scary. It's just getting pretty bad. Half gliding, half floating in the air, the white clad bog wraiths were slowly retreating toward the still waters in the island ruin in fantastic formations suggesting some ancient and solemn ceremonial dance. Their waving, translucent arms, guided by the detestable piping of those unseen flutes, beckoned an uncanny rhythm to a throng of lurching laborers who followed doglike with blind, brainless floundering steps as if dragged by a clumsy but resistless demon will. As the niads neared the bog without altering their course, a new line of stumbling stragglers zigzagged drunkenly out of the castle. From some door far below my window groped sightlessly across the courtyard and through the intervening bit of village and joined the floundering column of laborers on the plain. Despite their distance below me, I at once knew they were the servants brought from the north, where I recognized the ugly and unwieldy form of the cook whose very absurdness had now become unutterably tragic. The flutes piped horribly, and again I heard the beating of the drums from the direction of the island ruin. Then, silently and gracefully, the niads reached the water and melted one by one into the ancient bog, while the line of followers, never checking their speed, splashed awkwardly after them and vanished makes a tiny vortex of unwholesome bubbles which I could barely see in the scarlet light. And as the last pathetic straggler, the fat cook sank heavily out of sight in that sullen pool, the flutes in the drums grew silent and the blinding red rays from the ruins snapped instantaneously out leaving the village of doom, lone and desolate and the wan beams of a new risen moon. So basically this guy is looking outside and everybody is following some race and into the bog? That's right. And there's some mad piping and drumming going on and this guy is basically losing it. Yes. I get the sense that it's getting louder and more intense. You're going to take us home? I'm taking us home. Are you ready? Let's do it. My condition was now one of indescribable chaos. Not knowing whether I was mad or sane, sleeping or waking, I was saved only by a merciful numbness. I believe I did ridiculous things. Such as offering prayers to Artemis, Latona, Demeter, Persephone and Pluton. All that I recall of a classic youth came to my lips as the horrors of the situation roused my deepest superstitions. I felt that I had witnessed the death of a whole village and knew I was alone in the castle with Dennis Barry whose boldness had brought down a doom. As I thought of him, new terrors convulsed me and I fell to the floor, not fainting but physically helpless. Then I felt the icy blast from the east window where the moon had risen and began to hear the shrieks in the castle far below me. Soon those shrieks had attained a magnitude and quality which cannot be written up and which make me faint. As I think of them, all I can say is that they came from something I had known as a friend. At some time during the shocking period the cold wind and the screaming must have roused me for my next impression is of racing madly through inky rooms and corridors and out across the courtyard into the hideous night. They found me at dawn, wandering mindlessly near Ballo. But what enhanced me was utterly not of any of the horrors I had seen or heard before. What I muttered about as I came slowly out of the shadows was a pair of fantastic incidents which occurred in my flight. Incidents of no significance yet which haunt me unceasingly when I am alone in certain marshy places or in the moonlight. As I fled from that cursed castle along the bogs edge I heard a new sound common yet unlike any I had heard before at Kildery. The stagnant waters, lately quite devoid of animal life now teemed with a hoard of slimy, enormous frogs which piped shrilly and incessantly and turned strangely out of keeping with their size. They glistened bloated in green and the moonbeams and seemed to gaze up at the font of light. I followed the gaze of one very fat and ugly fog and saw the second of the things which drove my senses away stretching directly from the strange old ruin on the far islet to the waning moon. My eyes seemed to trace a beam of faint, quivering radiance having no reflection in the waters of the bog and upward along that pallid path my fevered fancy pictured a thin shadow slowly writhing a vague, contorted shadow struggling as if drawn by unseen demons. Crazed as I was, I saw in that awful shadow of monstrous resemblance a nauseous, unbelievable caricature a blasphemous effigy of him who had been Dennis Barry, the end man he can paint a picture, can he? Knows what he's doing. Boy, that is good stuff. He used the word eldritch in this once and he still knocked it out of the park. Yeah, and he did a good job of describing things instead of just saying it cannot be described. Very creepy. Well done, sir. Well done, sir. So part one is over. So let's take a break and come back and read story number two for Halloween Spooktacular 2015. Chuck, I just want to point out, did you notice the awesome Halloween jingle made for us specifically by our composer friend, John Bigin? Pretty awesome. Agreed. Really helps set the mood. Yeah. Thanks a lot, John. And Jerry didn't have to do it. She's delighted about way to go, Jerry. All right. The second story is actually contemporary, which is unusual for us, but I emailed the author because you can just do that these days, right? And he said, yeah, read it. That's great. That's pretty nice of him. So his name is Peter De Niverville. It's a great name. And the story is called The Petting Zoo. And I liked it because it tied in with our spiders episode. And it is quite creepy. It's super creepy. And we're going to actually have a character voice because we have to do voices in this one. I was wondering if you're going to want to do that. Yeah, man. You're going to play Johnson? I'll play the old man. Johnson, yeah, sure. I got that. And we're going to have our video ninja for stuff. Mom never told you, annie, who was an actor, to do The Old Lady. Oh, nice. Okay. To do Old Man I can't remember his name. The Old Man's wife. Oh, yes. Yeah. So we need to thank Annie for that. Thanks, Annie. Here we go with the petting zoo. At first, Johnson thought it was a joke. Speeding down the country road, the crude sign was only a blur. But it was that one word. Slowing down, he swung the car onto the paved shoulder. In the rearview mirror, he could see it clearly. The sign was tacked to a stick that was stuck in the ground just beyond the paved shoulder. Shifting the car into reverse, johnson jammed the accelerator down. The tires squealed and loose gravel flew as he tore back up the road. Screeching to a halt, Johnson stared at the faded handwriting. Ellsworth famous Spider Petting Zoo. 5 miles next right. Spiders fascinated Johnson. One summer, when he was eight, a large golden black spider had taken up residence underneath the shingles by the back door. Every morning, Johnson would gather up ants in a jar from a nest in the scrubby woods behind his house. One by one, he would drop the wriggling insects into the web. With lightning speed, the spider would spring from her hiding place and race toward the victim, sinking her fangs into the ant. She would retreat, waiting for the poison to take effect. When the ant slowly stopped struggling, she would climb back down and delicately wrap her prey in a white shroud. This continued until one day his mother caught him. What a cruel little boy you are, she scolded between clenched teeth as she pummeled his backside. He could. Still feel the shame of being spanked. Years later. In a rare moment of remorse, Johnson wondered what it was like for the aunt trapped, helpless, waiting for the spider to return. Did they know fear and horror? Or was that something only humans experienced? The insect brain was too small, he told himself, or so he hoped. 5 miles, thought Johnson. This side trip might only add another half hour or so to his journey. He would still have time, once he got to his motel, to have a shower. The dinner meeting with a buyer from the supermarket chain wasn't until 06:00, and it was only four. Now coasting forward, Johnson scanned the road, looking for the turn off. About 100 yards ahead, he saw a lane that intersected with the highway. Flicking on his turn signal, he shot a quick glance at his watch. If I don't find it in 15 minutes, he promised himself, I'll turn back. Accelerating smoothly, he turned onto a well paved secondary road with deep ditches on either side. Punching the buttons on the CD player, he stretched his arms, settling back into the soft leather seat as the throbbing beat of the music filled his car, his mood lightened an unexpected adventure in an otherwise boring day. Johnson hated his job. Endless meetings with bad food and balding buyers, too many drinks and too many hangovers. He was packing on the pounds, too. I have to get back to the gym, he reminded himself. The only redeeming feature of his job was that he was good at it. Top sales rep for the last three years. I should have been an actor, he told himself. Instead, I'm selling toilet paper and tampons to these turkeys. As the needle on the speedometer crept higher and higher, the neatly kept fields and freshly painted houses became a blur. Mile after mile slipped by, Johnson felt that he and the car had become one, soaring like a hawk on a summer breeze. But his mood soon soured. The condition of the road deteriorated. Asphalt gave way to chip seal, which gave way to gravel and finally ended up his dirt. Johnson jumped on the brakes when a huge pothole emerged in the center of the road. Cursing the delay, checked his watch again. It was almost five. The long drive down the country road had doled his sense of time. I better turn around, he cautioned himself as he studied the road ahead, looking for a safe place to make a uturn. He saw it an old farmhouse sipped back from the road. If it hadn't been for the pothole, he would have missed it completely. By the mailbox, a freshly painted sign read Ellsworth's Famous Spider Petting Zoo open year round. All visitors welcome. This must be the place, he concluded, carefully turning up the heavily redid lane. Johnson wondered what he would find. Perhaps one of the locals? Playing a joke on the tourist, he mused. Tall grass slapped at the bottom of the car and rusted barbed wire clung to rotted posts that ran alongside the lane. In the untilled fields, scrubby bushes had sprung up like mushrooms. Johnson tried to imagine what the farm looked like in better days, but it was impossible. When he reached the top of the hill, the farmhouse looked even more decrepit. Blistered paint hung from the wooden shingles and there was a disturbing SAG in the middle of the roof. But once had been. The side garden was now occupied by tall thistles in a mass of tangled timbers indicating the former site of the main barn. Except for the glass still being intact in the windows, the house looked abandoned. Where is everybody? Thought Johnson. In response to his question, an old woman dressed in a black skirt and a woolen sweater stepped out the side door. It's never a good sign, by the way. She was gnarled and withered like the lone apple tree that stood in the yard. Johnson guessed she must have been at least 70, maybe even 80 years old. What do you want? She spat. Turning off the radio and rolling down the car window, he replied, is this the petting zoo? That's what the sign says, don't it. Ignoring her rudeness, Johnson continued are you open? I'll get Jake. He out back chopping wood. He watched as she shuffled down a dirt path and disappeared around the corner of the house. Charming, thought Johnson. Opening the car door, he stepped out. Despite the poverty, the farm had a certain rustic appeal which reminded him of the house that he grew up in in the country. But there was something odd, something missing. Where are the flies? Thought Johnson. On most farms, the little buzz of the black swarms was constant, but here there was none. Except for the moaning of the wind, it was quiet. Perhaps it was the lack of animals, he thought, or maybe it was the stiff breeze at the top of the hill that kept them at bay. Glancing at his watch, he frowned. It was after 05:00. If he did not get back on the road soon, he would be late for his appointment. Either that or skip a shower. After driving all day, Johnson did not want to skip the soothing ritual. Taking one last look around, he reached for the handle of the car door. Just then, the old woman reappeared and behind her an even more wisened up old man wearing faded blue overalls and a nicotine stained undershirt. Stopping at the corner of the house, the old man spat out a long jet of chewing tobacco onto the ground. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he paused momentarily to study. Johnson, speaking to the old woman, he said in a low tone, thought I heard a car come up. Wants to see your spiders, she said before she turned away and went back to the farmhouse, letting the screen door slam behind her. You want to see my spiders, young fella? Sure, if you're open. How much? Looking over Johnson's luxury car, he scratched his ruddy face and said, $50.50. It's ridiculous. Shrugging his shoulders, the old man said, Take it or leave it, I got work to do. Then he spat out another long jet of chewing tobacco and turn to go. So this guy, he's a sales chimp? Yeah, he's the part I was born to play. Apparently he's nailing it. He's traveling in his luxury car. He's a spider dude because he's to torture ants in a spider web as well. Right. Now that he has super powers, but still doing by a radioactive spider? No, but he's made the big mistake of going to see this redneck spider farm. Yeah, doesn't sound like it's. Sitting, chewing tobacco are you talking to a stranger? Indicates the presence of a redneck. Yeah, so does the overalls. Yeah, all right, so back to the petting zoo. I can't leave now after coming all this way, thought Johnson. Taking another quick glance at his watch, he said irritably, all right, but this better be good. See, that sounds just like me. It does. The old man smirked and licked his lips as Johnson whipped out a crisp $50 bill from his wallet. Johnson did not like the old man's greedy look and hastily shoved his wallet back in his pants pocket. Thanks, said the old man, sarcastically snatching the bill from Johnson's hand. Looking over carefully, he folded it up neatly, stuck it in his pocket and said, Follow me. The old man led Johnson down an overgrown path to a shed at the back of the farmhouse. Inside, the dim glow of fluorescent tubes highlighted the dozen plywood shelves that ran along the walls. In contrast to the rest of the farm, the shed was neat, almost antiseptic in appearance. Sitting on each shelf was a glass terrarium filled with twigs and rocks. In the case closest to Johnson, a small garden spider was spinning a web in the corner. That's an orb spider, said the old man. I know, said Johnson, annoyed by the interruption. You know spiders? A bit, replied Johnson. I used to study them when I was a kid. I bet you're the type that like to feed them. Yeah. Catch bugs, drop them in, see what happens. Fine, ain't it? Suddenly, Johnson was uncomfortable. How did he guess my secret? He wondered. Johnson felt the warm rush of blood to his neck and ears as he started to blush. No need to be ashamed, young fella. All kids do it. It's natural. Trying to change the topic, johnson asked, You've been at this long keeping spiders? Yeah, I've been at it a while. Most folks are scared of spiders. Not me. Me and spiders get along really good. Johnson turned back to watch a large black spider in another case sucking up the half digested slurry of its latest victim. Trying to be polite, Johnson asked, but you don't get many visitors here, being so far from the highway. Don't need them, said the old man. This is just a sideline. Pausing for effect, he added, A breeder. Johnson looked puzzled. For the college. Explain the old man. They use them for research. Does it pay well? Good enough. They don't know squat about spiders, said the old man, spinning on the floor. Johnson looked down and saw that a streak of a sticky black tobacco had splashed on his shoes. I've been doing research on my own, he said the old man proudly. Spiders are just like any other critter. Cows, horses, dogs they're all the same breed. The best with the best, and you get the best or the old man's voice trailed off as he started to laugh. There was something about his tone that made Johnson uneasy. You want to see the prize winner? Johnson looked around. Oh, she ain't here. I keep her in the barn. She kind of makes these critters nervous. I can't say she blames them. You won't see her the way the old man said it. The question sounded more like a challenge. Johnson hesitated. He wanted to say no, but he could not let the old man see that he was afraid. Sure, answered Johnson. What could it be? He asked himself. A tarantula? With the old man in front, they went down a lesser used path to a small barn. Behind a stand of trees that made it invisible. From the farmhouse, a shiny new lock on a rusted has yielded to the old man's key. I don't like kids messing with me stuff. The ancient wooden door swung open. Inside it was pitch black. Johnson hesitated. What was it that made him apprehensive? His mouth felt dry and he tried to swallow. Go on in, tom the old man as he shoved Johnson through the door. Stumbling on a raised sill, Johnson fell to one knee, ripping his pants. Damn it. He cursed. It's a light switch ahead of you, the old man reassured him. Just pull the string. The stench of moldy hay made Johnson gag. Where is it? The spider. He called out. She's in the back. You can't miss her. Where's the light? Right in front of you. Can't you see it? Mocked the old man. Johnson stretched out his hand. At first he could not feel anything. Then slowly, groping the air in, he caught hold of it. Johnson's heart leapt in relief. But there was something strange. The line didn't feel like a string. It was sticky, like pulling the line. Johnson knew he had made a mistake. Something rustled in the rafters above him, and bits of straw floated down. Johnson bolted for the opening. Enjoy yourself, tackled the old man as he slammed the door and locked it out. Let me out. Shouted Johnson, pounding on the door. Let me out. You all buzzard. But it was no use. The dried out wooden door was like iron. Pausing to catch his breath, his fist throbbing, johnson looked around slowly. His eyes grew accustomed to the dark. What appeared to be a black chasm was in fact the side entrance to the barn. There must be another way out, he thought. But where? In the gloom he could see that beyond the entryway there was a large open space and beyond that, a boarded up window through which thin shafts of sunlight streamed. Great. All I have to do is cross the barn, pull off one or two of those boards and climb out, thought Johnson. Then I'll show that old man $50. He'll wish I'd never stopped. Then he heard another rustle overhead and straw floated down. Who is it? Who's there? He called out. I'll bet it's that old man, thought Johnson. He thinks he's going to scare me. Sure, you just keep that up, old man, Johnson called out again. Let's see how much laughing you do when I bash your face in again. This is totally me. Oh, yeah. But first I've got to get to that window. Be careful, he cautioned himself. This farm must be full of junk. Don't want to fall down and get hurt. Despite the heat in the barn, he shivered, licking the sweat off his upper lip. Johnson slowly picked his way across the wide wooden plank barn floor, being careful not to trip. Shadows of old machinery and tools loomed around him. A leather harness that hung from the wall looked like a hangman's noose. There was a peculiar smell, too. It reminded him of a package of chicken that he once left in the trunk of his car on a hot summer day. It was the sickly sweet scent of rotten meat. Oh, gross, muttered Johnson. There's a dead animal in here. In less than a minute he had crossed the barn and was standing in front of the boarded up window. Blocking his exit were three boards, nailed haphazardly into the frame. Either the old man was too weak or too lazy to drive them all the way in, concluded Johnson. I can probably pull them off with my bare hands. He smiled triumphantly. All right, so Johnson's been locked in the barn. Smells like chicken. Smells like rotting chicken. There's a leather harness hanging from the wall. So I think I'd be glad at this point that the old man left, at least. Yeah, I would think there would be some sort of Deliverance like thing going on here. Yeah, I mean he shoved him, he got ripped his jeans. Sure, that was hostile. It was very hostile. All right, here we go. The first board was half rotted and fell apart in his hands. Light streamed in as it came away from the frame. Then he shifted his attention to the second one, the board in the middle. If he could get this one off, he could easily climb out. But this board wouldn't be so easy. It was like the old door of the barn dried out in toughest steel. Gripping the board with both hands, he began pulling. The nail squealed in protest and the board started to move. Only a little bit further, grunted Johnson. The thought of throttling old man excited him. Just a bit further. Another half inch. He could almost feel his fingers closing around the old man's scrawny neck, the eyes bulging, the tongue sticking out. Another half inch. Then it stopped. Desperately, Johnson yanked at the board, but it would not yield. I need more leverage, he said to himself and out loud, balancing on 1ft, he braced his other against the window frame, started pulling again. The muscles in his forearms and back bulged, strained against the board. Sweat rolled down his forehead and into his eyes. Come on, he pleaded with the wood. Come on. In his frustration, Johnson did not hear the soft tap tap tap on the floor behind him. Tap, tap, tap. Like a blind man with his cane, tap, tap, tap and it was too late. It struck. The force of the attack rammed him facing the burst against the wall, knocking the wind out of them. Warm blood trickled from his nose and ran down his cheek. What was that? Turning around slowly, he could see in the light from the window. His attacker was crouched inside an empty stall along the opposite wall, the legs tense, ready to spring. It was a spider, no doubt one of the old man's experiments. But this was no ordinary spider. It was huge, about the size of a pit bull, with legs that extended out three or 4ft on either side. Its eyes stared coldly at him. Johnson did a quick tally of his injuries. Except for his bloody nose, he was unharmed. Perhaps the large size of the creature made it difficult for it to mountain attack, he conjectured. Possibly it did not even recognize him as prey. I'm sure that's it. Spiders normally eat moss and insects, he reminded himself, not human beings. When he was a kid, Johnson liked to throw twigs into a web just to see the spider's reaction. Invariably, after pouncing on the object, the spider would pluck it out of the web, turn it over and drop it on the ground. Johnson hoped the spider would show the same lack of interest. From its vantage point at the other end of the barn, the creature seemed puzzled, unsure of itself. Spiders are cautious, he told himself. It's waiting for me to make the next move. Although every fiber in his body screamed to run, his brain told him to stay still. The spider was too big and too fast to outrun. You need a weapon, he told himself quickly. Looking about, he saw the rotten board from the window lying at his feet. It was about 2ft long, with a jagged point at one end. It will have to do. Slowly, he bent down to pick it up. The spider crouched low like a sprinter, ready to strike again. Johnson froze, his fingers only inches from the board. Easy, girl, he whispered softly. Easy. The spider relaxed, but not completely. Deliberately, it began to move forward. Johnson was amazed by the creature's grace. Like a ballerina tiptoeing in from the darkened wings of a theater, there was a marvel of beauty and design. The body, covered by fine gray hair, had the look of velvet, while the eight legs that extended from the thorax provided speed and balance. As it approached Johnson, the spider carefully extended one fore leg toward him. Johnson quickly knocked it away with his hands. The creature stopped and cocked its plate sized head to one side. The eight eyes looked like black fists. Then the leg came forward again. At the tip, Johnson could see the spike like claw for catching prey. It touched his left shoulder. Through his jacket, he could feel a sharp point digging into his skin. Jonathan winced and stepped backwards to the wall. But there was no place to go. Slowly, the other fore leg came forward. Johnson recoiled, trying to ward off the attack with his free arm. But the creature was too strong. It brushed his arm aside as if there were a piece of lint and planted a second claw into his other shoulder. Johnson cried out, Help. Then the spider reared up on a tin leg, forcing Johnson to his knee. For a brief moment, he and the creature looked into each other's eyes. It was almost like love. Then he saw the six inch fangs that extended from the head. Drops of venom gleamed in the half light. He watched in fascination as the cruel daggers arched high over him. Then he screamed as they plunged deeply into his chest. Instantly, white hot pain ripped through his body. Then it was gone. The spider had retreated back to the skull. Johnson knew that he had only a minute or two before the poison paralyzed him. This is it, he said to himself. My only chance. Ignoring his wounds, Johnson turned back to the window. Grabbing at the board, he yanked and pulled to no avail. Already the venom was having its effect. His hands were numb and his arms felt like lead. Gasping for air, he threw himself at the boards again and again. But it was no use. He was beaten. Great sob shook his body as he slumped to the floor. This can't be happening to me. He protested. It's ridiculous. It is ridiculous. Right? He's detected by a spider size of a pit bull. I would find that hard to believe. Well, that's why you're playing, Johnson. Thanks. Looking back at the spider, he could see that it's still not move. What is she waiting for? He wondered. Why didn't she finish me off? He soon had his answer. Shimmering like a great overcoat, there was something on the spider's back. It moved and undulated like a small wave flowing back and forth. Then a piece of the wave, pulled away and dropped to the floor was another spider, only a lot smaller, about the size of a rat. Johnson recalled that some spiders carry their young in their backs. Horrified, he realized that he had stumbled into their nursery and it was feeding them. Another one dropped to the floor and then another. Soon there was a long line of spiders slowly crawling towards him. Through fading eyesight, he saw the first one reach his foot. Tentatively, his fore leg probed the air until it bound his leg and added it. It was light and delicate, like the touch of a child. Johnson opened his mouth to scream. The last thing Johnson saw before he lost consciousness was a spider tearing a piece of flesh from the back of his hand. Curtains for Johnson. Yeah, no more lines for me, baby. Spiders the size of rats. I know. That's really awful. Back at the farmhouse, the old man picked up the whiskey bottle from the kitchen table poured himself another drink and plopped down on the ancient recliner. How long it takes Jake. Ask the old woman. Not long, he grunted. They ain't. It since Sunday. Get a better sign? A chat? More folks? No, the sign is okay. Anyway, we don't need a crowd, said the old man, taking a long, hard swallow. What are you going to do with his car? She asked, standing at the window, admiring the now ownerless vehicle. I hear young Dougal needs one for running moonshine. Willing to pay good price, too, said the old man. Won't he ask questions? Wondered the old woman, pouring a drink and easing herself down onto a dusty couch. Now he don't care snicker the old man. I'll talk to him tomorrow. Meanwhile, pass me that remote. Let's see what's on the TV. Boom. It all comes down. The whole thing was an indictment and American addiction to television. Right. And America's propensity to shun farm people and to grow giant spiders. That's right, man. Everything was represented. It was basically like mom apple pie and baseball team. That's right. All right. That's a good one. Good job, Johnson. Good job, Peter. I don't know what his old man's name is. No, Peter the author. The guy actually wrote. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Great job. And thanks to Annie for providing the counterpart to Cletus the Slack. John Yoke. Thanks to you for your redneck, man. My spirited redneck. Yeah. All right. You got anything else? I think that's pretty great. I do have one thing else. All right. Happy Halloween, everybody. Happy Halloween. We'll see you next time. Next year. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit Howtofworks.com." | ||
a6cdcbe2-5462-11e8-b449-e7aca0b74e30 | How the Navajo Code Talkers Worked | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-navajo-code-talkers-worked | In WWII the US Marines devised an unbreakable code-within-a-code made from Navajo, one of the most linguistically difficult languages in the world. A handful of Navajos sent messages on the frontlines in a language they’d been forbidden to speak as school kids. | In WWII the US Marines devised an unbreakable code-within-a-code made from Navajo, one of the most linguistically difficult languages in the world. A handful of Navajos sent messages on the frontlines in a language they’d been forbidden to speak as school kids. | Tue, 27 Nov 2018 14:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=27, tm_hour=14, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=331, tm_isdst=0) | 43134309 | 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, Bryan over there. And there's Jerry. So this is stuff you should know. This is going to be a good one. This is a grabster joint. Did you want to talk about soup first? Are you kidding? Yeah, I was kidding. Oh, I thought you were serious. I know it was bad soup, but it wasn't that bad. Yeah, I mean, right before we started recording, this is how awesome things are around here. We were talking about how bad your French onion soup was. How do you mess up French onions? Yeah, that's what I was wondering. And you said, say that. I want to talk about this. And I thought you were serious. Yeah, I was kidding. And here we are. I was kidding. Yeah, and then we were talking about the soup. Anyway, how do you mess up French on these soups? Like beef broth, salt, onions, cheese, bread. Yeah, they put too much in it. Melt it in a Crock pot. Yes. The onions they use were way too sweet. I think they use, like, Vidalia onions dipped in sugar. It was just not good. Yeah, not good. We shouldn't call them out? No. Publicly. No, that would be pretty mean. Sure. They just don't know what they're doing with soup. It's fine. But they're a soup restaurant. There are a lot of soup restaurants. Yeah, I guess there are. Do you remember that dumb one? I think they're out of business now. Let us surprise you. There's nothing dumb about Let us surprise you, buddy. Soup and salad. I love that thing. That's out of business, right? Yeah. There's something called sweet tomatoes. That's basically the same. Oh, I think I've heard of that. Yes. Hey, I like a good soup and salad joint. Yeah. So what was wrong with lettuce surprise you? I don't know. I don't like cutesy names. Unless it's on The Simpsons, and I think the T's were made of carrots. Yeah, for sure. Well, that leads us right in to the Navajoko talker. Exactly. Quite. Well, we should stay right out of the gate. That like you just said, we're talking about Navajo Code talkers. There were plenty of other code talkers from other Native American tribes. Yes. This episode is mostly about the Navajo Code Talkers because there were so many of them and so much is known about the codes that they made. But we'll also mention other tribes as well. Yes, and straight up respect to all of them. For sure. It always kind of stinks when one thing gets all the glory, when there were many factions of that thing. Right, but I think that's better than just naming this episode, like how Code Talkers work, but only talking about the Navajo Code Talkers. Agreed. I think we covered everything. Right? Agreed. So if you have ever seen or familiar with a movie called Wind talkers. Have you seen it? I didn't see it, but I did look it up today, and it is widely regarded as not only a garbage movie, but a real disservice to do a movie about the Navajo Code Talkers. But it's really a movie about Nic Cage, right. Directed by John Woo. Yeah. It's a violent war movie that happened to be structured around a really interesting historical plot. Right. Like, let's take this really amazing story from history and let's morph it into a story about a white soldier. It's like Dirty Dancing to Havana Nights. Basically. It's funny. It is. Yeah. So Wind Talkers, I do not endorse that film. I do not either. And neither of us have seen it. And we still don't endorse that phone. No, I just need to see the reviews on that one. But the point of it was that there was a Native American I don't know if he's in Navajo or not in that movie, because, again, haven't seen it. Yeah, but who was charged with speaking his native tongue to someone else on the other end of the line at the front lines of battle in the Pacific theater during World War II to transmit messages in code, in an unbreakable code. And that actually happened. Like. That part of the story happened. And it was true that there were in World War II Native Americans. In large part Navajo. Who were speaking to one another in Navajo. Like on Guadal Canal or in the Marianas or the Marshall Islands or Okinawa. Who are there at all of these major massive battles in the Pacific theater between the United States and Japan that actually eventually led to this island hopping process. Led to the atomic bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the Mariana. Yeah. Codes. So well, complex, to our Dumb Ears, to the Navajo, they were just like, this is just our language. True. But even if you're a linguist, you're like, this is an extraordinarily difficult language. Yeah. But so complex that it confounded the Japanese, who were really good at busting codes, and they were like, I don't know what's going on here. Yeah, right. Yeah. I've never heard anything like this. Which was a huge reversal because prior to the institution of Navajo Code Talkers in late 1942, the Japanese had our goat with our coded transmissions because, number one, there were a number of Japanese people who had been educated in the US. In between world War I and world War II and had gone back to Japan prior to world War II. And they were totally fluent in English, so they could speak English, like up, down, and sideways. Plus, on top of that, they were really good at breaking our codes, so they knew basically everything we were going to do every step of the way. So the Navajo Cokers coming into the Pacific Theater reversed our fortunes. It's not an overstatement to say that they basically helped the US take the Pacific from Japan, not single handedly, but through their code. Yeah, for sure. All right, so let's talk about the Navajo in general. To begin with, Native American tribe that inhabited the American Southeast, or what? Now, we know it as the American Southwest. Right. Back then it was known as the Southeast. Yeah, exactly. You're like, what? This isn't the coast. American Southwest. Right. I wish everyone could see, because Josh literally just pointed in the other direction. I wonder if you pointed west. You pointed that way. Is that west? I don't even know. Hold on. No, that's north. Okay. The American south. North, right. The original peoples, they believe from Asia, maybe. Ironically, in the end, when you see how the story goes and settled in the Southwest around 1400, C e. In the 1600, a lot of things change. The next few hundred years, they were warring with the Spanish. They were warring with other Native American tribes. And then that was all kind of leading up to the 1800s, when the United States popped up and said, hey, here's what we're going to do. We're going to wreck your economy. We're going to destroy your crops and livestock and poison your wells and kill all your buffalo and put you on reservations and march you to New Mexico, where your new home will be and what will be known as the Long Walk. Yeah. It was basically their trail of tears. Yeah, exactly. It was just right out of the westward expansion playbook. And so the Navajo found themselves when was that? It was 1857, I think. Yeah. It's important for a lot of reasons, but the men who ended up being the Navajo Code Talkers in World War II, their grandparents were these people that were forced to go on the Long Walk. It wasn't hundreds and hundreds of years later. Right. Like direct descendants that ended up fighting for the United States. Yes. And this is not like, hey, do you mind moving over here? It was very much like the Trail of Tears. It was movement 300 miles to a reservation against their will at the barrel of a gun. Yeah, I don't want to go. Okay, I'll shoot you. Yes, exactly. There were reports of the injured, of the tired. People who fell behind were just shot by the US. Inventory. There was at least one family that reported that their pregnant daughter, they were forced away from her. She was kept behind, and they heard her being shot as well. It was just a violation, an atrocity done to the Navajo like it was done to so many other Native American groups. And by the 19th century, basically 1857, on, the Navajo lived exclusively on reservations in the Southwest. Yeah. And starting in about the 1870s, the US government said, here's what we're going to do. You have to assimilate into American society. We want you to forget your culture as you knew it. You can't speak your native language anymore. We're going to round up your kids and send them to American boarding schools, teach them to read and write in English only, and you're going to be punished and forbidden from speaking your native tongue. From singing in your native tongue. Yes, you will be beaten if we catch you speaking Navajo to one another. And I think you just said they would kidnap children, take them to these schools, just like they did with the Aboriginal tribes in Australia, just like they did with the First Americans or the First Nations in Canada. And it was just not only have we taken your land, not only have we forced you to live in this one area that no one else wants to live in, we want to destroy your culture. Now we're going after your culture. We just don't want to obliterate you guys completely. We'll let you live, but under these conditions, and we're going to murder your culture. And so not only were these code talkers the grandchildren or the grandsons of the people who went on the long walk, they were the very people who went to these Indian schools and were beaten for speaking Navajo. And then about 1942, the United States military, specifically the Marine, showed up and said, hey, we'd love for you to come speak Navajo officially for the United States government. Would you mind doing that? Yeah. And this was after World War I. It went on in World War I, actually, World War II got all the press, and the Navajo, of course, did more than anyone else, like you said. But in World War I in 1918, there was a captain from the 142nd Infantry Regiment who heard two chocolate soldiers speaking in their native tongue, right. And was like, man, we're getting hammered with the Germans and the French cracking our codes. So I think that this language could be of use to us because it's really complex. Germans have no idea what's going on with your language, and I think we could put you to use. And so the very first code talkers, I think, were these track talk code talkers in World War I. Yeah. Well, we were fighting with the French, and we were talking to the French, but the Germans spoke French and English, and we're using regular telephone lines in World War One, I guess. Sure. They just had them tapped, so they were just eavesdropping, and we might as well have been speaking German for as well as they were translating these coded transmissions. Now all of a sudden, they're like, what is this? We've never heard this language before, ever. It's just a couple of chocolate guys talking to one another. But it was, for Germany, an unbreakable code, at least as long as World War One was going on. Yeah. And I don't think this early World War One code was so much a code as, like, you're saying, we're just going to put a chocolate on one end and a chocolate on the other end of the line. That's it. And they'll just relay the messages that we tell them to, and they're native tongue. And the Germans were like, nine. Right. The only word I could think of. Whole gun. That was well worth it. That would come years later. So it wasn't just members of the Chocolate Tribe who were code talkers in World War I. Also, the Comanche played a role, the Fox, which is also known as the oh, man, I had it. Have you ever heard of the Fox Tribe? From, I believe, Mississippi? I don't think so. You don't? There was also the comanche. They played a big role, and some other tribes did as well. But we're talking a handful of people in the capacity like you were saying, it's like, just say this in your native language to this other guy who speaks your native language, and he'll tell the guy on the other end what you just said in English. Yeah, and here's the rub. It is rich with irony throughout this whole story, but here's the rub in World War One is that Native Americans weren't even granted citizenship until 1000, 924. So the World War One code talkers were not even American citizens, yet they were doing this, and they were not even recognized by the United States and acknowledged and thanked until 2008. Right. 2000 and 810 years ago. France even recognized them in, I think 19 80. 89. Yeah. 89. Did you say that? No. Okay, so France recognized them first, and it took another 20 years before the US. Recognized them officially. Unbelievable. It is unbelievable. But the problem with World War I is it worked. But we became friendly with Germany in between World War I and World War II, and Germany said, we're going to hedge our bets here. We're going to send some people to the United States to learn Native American languages and culture so that if we ever go to war with the United States again, we'll have their number. And they did. Apparently, there were plenty of well, I don't know if plenty is the right word, but there were Germans who spoke Cherokee, Comanche, chalk, crazy. So much so that some of the American commanders in World War II were like, we can't use Native American language because there's Germans who know this already. They were compromised, basically, between World War One and World War II. You want to take a break? Oh, yes. All right, let's take a break, and we're going to come back and talk about the dawn of World War Two and a man named Philip Johnston. All right. So right before World War II, there was a training exercise going on with soldiers from Michigan and Wisconsin, and there were Native American soldiers involved, and there was a man, and they were testing out these coded transmissions. They were like we did in World War One. Let's try it again. There was a man there named Philip Johnston who was a white man, but he actually grew up on a Navajo reservation. I think he just read an article about this, actually. Oh, really? Yeah. He wasn't in the army at this time, right? Because they brought him in like he was way too old. Way too old. But around this time, I think he was about 50 years old. Yeah, but so old he had the benefit of growing up on a Navajo reservation, considered himself in Navajo, spoke their language, followed World War I, and said, I want to make a comeback, and I want to go back and fight in World War II and start up this crack team of Navajo code talkers. It was his idea, and they said he went into the office of whatever higher up general he needed to, spoke to Navajo and said, this worked once, why can't it work twice? And they was like, Bye, George, I think you're on to something. Well, they said, we'll give you a chance to demonstrate this. So apparently in Los Angeles, he recruited four Navajo men who I guess he was friendly with, because, like you said, he considered himself Navajo. His parents were missionaries, and apparently he spoke Navajo so well that at age nine, he served as the official translator for a Navajo delegation that had gone to Washington, DC. To lobby for better treatment and rights for the Navajo Nation. Which is amazing, because, as you'll learn, because there were other white people who spoke Navajo that tried to be coders, and none of them made the cut because he's such a hard language. Right. So this guy must have just had an ear for it, too, and was raised with it. But he said, I know you guys are trying to make a code. I've got this language, I've got these four guys from Los Angeles with me. Just give them a shot. And so they gave them a shot at, I think, Camp Elliott, and they took the four Navajo guys, broke them into pairs, put them in separate rooms, and said, here, say this in Navajo. Say this English phrase. The eagle lands at midnight. Will say, all right, that'll be and tell your buddies and see what they say. They transmitted the eagle lands at midnight, or whatever it was over the phone in Navajo. The guys in the other room took it in Navajo, translated it back into English in, like, a minute. And the guys at Campbell Yet were pretty impressed by this. They said, we're going to bring in some German and Japanese people to listen, right? And they're like, do you guys get that? I have no idea. They said nine and whatever the Japanese word is for no. Do you know that Niet n yet? Oh, really? No. That sounds a lot like Russia. What is the Japanese word for now they say no. So infrequently I was about to say, you know why you don't know that? Because all you say is yes when you go there. Yeah, sure. I'll take more. Yes, more, please. They just bang my bowl on the table. So yeah, they actually didn't do that. I'm kidding, of course. But they said, this is great. And the trick was not only was it basically impossible to crack, but like you're saying, it was super fast, way faster than machine codes. Right. So that's a huge advantage that this offered was you're using Navajo speakers to send a coded message prior to this. And in addition to this, you would use basically machines that used algorithms to encode and decode a message. And it could take hours. If you're trying to send a desperate message on a front line battle in the Pacific Theater, you don't have hours for that thing to get across. So the idea that you could do the same thing in minutes in a code that you were just positive the Japanese would have no idea what to do with, that was a huge advantage, for sure. Yeah. And like the grabster pointed out, it was taking a long time with the code machines that the Germans and Japanese were cracking anyway. Right. So this is the solution. There was like, no downside to it. All right, so like we said, Philip Johnson was far too old because he was a World War One veteran. They gave him a special commission, said, you're now a staff sergeant in the Marines. Again, I don't know if he's a Marine or in the army initially. Do you know? I don't know. But at any rate, he was in the Marines this time, and they said, you're going to lead the Code Talker project, go out and recruit. So he went to reservations, recruited young men, and between 304 hundred of these young men became Code Talkers. He recruited more than that, but a lot of them failed out for various reasons. Like they still to go through boot camp and all that stuff. So you still have to be a soldier on top of it. Although it was a kind of a truncated version of boot camp because they had to get them in there quick. They needed them so badly. They're like, okay, yeah, you're fine. We need to take you to code school, basically. Yeah, but the whole thing started with 30. They originally recruited 30 Navajo speakers. One of them dropped out. So there were 29 original Navajo Code Talkers, and they were put to work initially creating the code, because very importantly, the Navajo Code Talkers not only spoke to one another in Navajo, which is incomprehensible to basically anybody living it, listening to it, who doesn't speak it, they would use code words in Navajo. So what they created was a code within a code, and it was as unbreakable as any codes ever been come up that anyone's ever come up with you and I can't speak navajo. I'm rusty. I think we should play just a little bit of Navajo. All right? And then I'll translate. So what you just heard in Navajo was, this is from the parable of the prodigal son of this is from the movie When Talkers. What you just heard was not long after that, the younger son got together all he had set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wildliving, something everybody does from time to time. But that was what you just heard in Navajo, and it's so foreign sounding for a reason. Like, it's a really difficult language in that the same vowel can have four different types of intonation and four different meanings. So one word can have four different meanings based on whether you go up or you speak through your nose or whatever, but you're saying the same word, you're just intoning it differently, and that just changes the meaning dramatically. That was one reason why it was so impenetrable. Yeah. And like you said, they memorized 500 code words, three different versions of the alphabet, and went to war. I used the word irony. That sort of undersells it, what was going on and why these men would sign up for something like this. And Ed points out, like, you can't get into the head of them or explain every person's motivation, for sure, because it was all different. But through interviews, what sort of stood out was that even though the United States had stomped them down into near oblivion, they still had a tie to that land, and that was their land. And regardless of what had gone on in the past, the Germans and the Japanese were invaders. They were a threat to their holy land. They were still a common enemy between the United States and the Navajo. Yeah. I mean, it says so much about their people that they could just put all the other stuff aside in the genocide and the long walk and the Trail of Tears and say, well, this is still my land, even though I'm on a reservation and I want to help protect it. Right. Amazing. Yeah. Some of them were joined up because they subscribe to the Navajo warrior culture. The Navajo definitely had their own warrior culture, although that wasn't, like, necessarily the central focus of their culture. Right. Others were like, oh, man, you're going to get me off of this reservation, and I'm going to go travel the world. I've never even been on a bus before. Let's go. Yes. Some of them were like, I like the GI bill you're talking about. Others were drafted, didn't want to go, but they were still drafted, and they went to paint it any other way is to make it, like to give it the wind talker treatment. That's not the stuff you should know way. There were as many different people I think there were 421 Navajo code talkers who ended up serving in World war Two. I'm sure there were 421 different reasons for why they went, yeah, that's just the way it is. They're people. We're talking about people here. Short day late. So let's talk a little bit about this code within a code. Here's one example. So troops moving forward to the lake is what the grabstrum came up with. And they wouldn't just get on the horn with their Navajo counterpart on the other end and say, troops moving forward to the lake in Navajo, they would substitute in different words. Sometimes they would spell out some words one letter at a time with that letter being represented by a word like the first letter in the word that they say. There were rules for the code, but the person on the other end, they were so in sync with one another that they didn't necessarily look at a chart and say, well, this means this, and this means this. They were just able to converse rather organically within this code. Within the code. Right. And they all knew that code that was like, this means this, and this means this. But from the research, it seems like they were able to shift and, like you said, make it organic on the fly. And they knew what one another was saying. Kind of threw out the playbook a little bit, I imagine, in certain circumstances. And I'm sure the American, the generals and the people in charge were just like, just do it, man. Just do your thing. Or they were like, I have no idea what you just said. They had no idea they threw out the playbook. A lot of times they had to do that because there weren't equivalents of certain words. Like, they didn't have words for bombardment and shell casing and things like that, because they didn't have those things in their culture. So they had to make up things that they would be able to understand both ways. So there is an alphabet, right? Three alphabet. Three. Yes, that's right. So there were three different words for every letter of the alphabet. It's amazing. Okay. But there's something that is really easy to look past that we really have to think, this is one of the reasons why this is so unbreakable. If you wanted to use the letter I, well, you would say the Navajo word for ice. Right, okay. But the Navajo word for ice, it doesn't begin with the letter I. They probably didn't have a word for ice, though. That's funny. Well, no, the weird thing is that they did. They did? Yes. They have ice. It was their most closely related to a native Alaskan tongue. Why they think so natural ice. It's like evidence. It's linguistic evidence. They came across the Bering Land Bridge. Got you. So, yeah, they also have a word for shark, which is like that doesn't make any sense either. If they're from Arizona, basically in New Mexico. Land shark. That's what I thought. Yeah, they're like Chevy Cha, but they have one for salmon, copperhead salmon. And that's delicious. A lot of those in New Mexico, but yeah, it is delicious. But the point is, the Navajo word for ice doesn't necessarily begin with I. So even if you knew Navajo, you wouldn't necessarily know that this is the word for the letter I. And then to confounded even more, if there's three different words for the letter I, even if you're spelling, like, what's the word with multiple is, hurry up and give me one quick elicit. Yes. Okay. If you're spelling illicit out, you could use two different words for I, and that cuts down on letter or in this case, code word repetition, which is one of the easiest ways to break a code. Look for repetition and pair those up with the letters that are used most frequently in English. So if you're using three different code words for a single letter, you can mix it up while you're spelling it out. So cool. Makes it even more impenetrable. Yeah. Like, this is just such a gorgeous code. Yeah, they used imagery a lot of times, which makes it kind of strangely lyrical, like a dive bomber was a chicken hawk, a submarine was an iron fish. And then they also use, you know, you heard of cockney rhyming slang, which is cheese. We could do a podcast on that, that'd be kind of cool. Okay, I won't even get into that. But it basically makes compound words in an English sound like a word in the message. So the examples that Grabster got was like the word secured. They would say the Navajo word for sheep, cured or dispatched became dog is patch in Navajo, though. Right. So even if you knew Navajo and you heard dog is patch, you wouldn't know that that meant dispatch. Right. And if you didn't know Navajo, you wouldn't be able to hear and be like, oh, that rhymes with dispatch. That's what they said. It doesn't sound like anything you've ever heard before in your life. Yeah, and like you said, they were so familiar with it and comfortable with it that they would switch it up on the fly again. Technically, they would do something to alert the person. There was like a system in place to say, like, now we're going to use this version. But they didn't even need to do that, really. Right. That just seemed like a formality, it sounds like. Yeah. And I think one of the reasons why they were so able to shift like that. Because these guys who were raised in the Indian schools. They had to speak to one another in Navajo. Like Surreptitiously. So they had to be able to shift on the fly. Not just between Nuance and Navajo. Which is a very Nuanced language to begin with. But also between Navajo and English. Depending on who is coming their way. Right. It's my impression that from the treatment. In Indian school. It would have made it easier for them to understand what somebody was saying when they broke the rules of the language. Really quickly, they'd be able to follow and then chuck. There's one other thing that made this code even more beautiful. It wasn't written down in 1942. There was no book, no document, no text that you could get and teach yourself Navajo. You couldn't get it? No. And like you said, even some white kids that were raised out on trading posts and spoke Navajo their whole life, they washed out of the Cotter program. They had basically a success rate. Non Navajo had a success rate of basically zero in the Code Talker program for Navajo code. Yeah. It was just that hard and that nuanced. Amazing. All right, let's take another break. Yeah, I'm pretty jazzed up here. Yeah. All right. And we'll come back and talk about how this really affected the war right after this. All right. So like we said, at this point in the war, when they were brought in the Navajo Code Talkers, the fighting in Europe was dwindling, and the Pacific Theater is where things were really happening. And so the first action for the actual Navajo Code Talkers were a Guadal canal. I hope we didn't paint a picture that they're sitting in offices talking to one another in an air conditioned office on telephones and just sending orders to, like, go bomb this place on Saturday. A lot of times, these men are on the front lines and relaying positions and what it's like on the ground and what's going on. It wasn't just directives to go do this. They were relaying important information, like live in the moment on the front lines. Right. And to add to this, there was confusion a lot of times, even among American soldiers. Like, to an American soldier, 50ft away, a Navajo Code Talker might look like a Japanese person. Were these, like, the very dumbest soldiers of all? I don't know, man. I mean, it's on record that there was friendly fire because of this, so they were actually fired on. I saw that they had guns pointed at them at some point and would be, like, marched over to be interrogated. It was such that they felt like they needed to assign them personal guards, which was Frigging nic Cage. And that's what that movie was about, is that he was a white soldier assigned to guard one of the Navajo Code Talkers because they were being mistaken for Japanese soldiers. Right. But he was also secretly ordered to kill that Code Talker rather than let them fall into the hands of the Japanese. Yes. I wonder if that's a thing or if that was wholly created for that movie. I don't know. I don't know. I could see it go both ways. Yeah. And I don't know how smart the soldiers were, and confusing. Right. I don't think it happened very often, and I think all that has to happen is two or three times, and all of a sudden, it's like part of the legend, you know? Yeah, maybe so. But it did happen. It happened from time to time. There was a guy named, I think, George McCabe, who was a Navajo coal who was taken prisoner by a fellow American yeah. Because he was standing in a chow line on the beach at Guadalcanal waiting to get food. And the guy was like, you look Japanese. That's exactly what he did. Pointed a gun at them and said, you're coming with me. And I'm sure it was like, Sorry, but no. William McCabe. I'm sorry. If you look at a picture of a Navajo code talker, you look at a picture of a Japanese person, I don't see the resemblance. You should have been on the front lines, my friend. I would have been like, Dude, what are you doing? Yeah. The language itself and again, this is kind of funny, because the language sounds nothing like Japanese, but sometimes US. Radio operators would jam the frequency. I guess the grabster said that because they mistook it for Japanese, I imagine they just heard a foreign language and just jammed it. Right. I don't know if they necessarily thought it sounded like Japanese. It sounds like its own thing, for sure. Yeah. Maybe they had no idea what Japanese or Navajo even sounded like. It was just like, it ain't English. Maybe they were under orders for, like, yeah, if it's not English, jam it. Yeah, possibly. I could see that. So, like we said, the speed was one of the real keys and just how quickly they could get these messages delivered. And it allowed them to hear a'great quote from Philip Johnston, who started the program. He said, during the first 48 hours and visit Iwo Jima, he said, while we were landing and consolidating our shore positions, I had six Navajo radio nets operating around the clock. In that period alone, they sent and received more than 800 messages without an error in 48 hours. Man 800 messages. No mistakes. No mistakes. That's amazing. And they're relaying these messages again in minutes, and each of them would have taken hours to decode without the Navajo code talkers. There was another quote from a guy named Major Howard Connor, who is on Iwo Jima as well, in the signal core. And he said, paraphrasing here that the marines would not have taken Iwo Jima had it not been for the Navajo cotalkers the entire operation. Iwo Jima, the very famous, like, flag raising statue. Iwojima yeah. Basically a turning point in the Pacific. The entire operation was done in Navajo. That was what was spoken over the radios for the entire operation. It's amazing. It really is. I mean, if you think about how many American lives were saved by that, it was just such a direct contribution to the war. Iwojima that was huge. That's all you can say, yeah, this deserves its own movie treatment. Like, sort of like hidden figures, like these minority voices who really had this huge impact that never got their due. And with the Navajo Code Talkers, they came back to the after the war, and it was classified what went on until 1968. Apparently. They may have done this in Vietnam and Korea, although I don't think anyone totally knows that for sure. That seems to be rumor. Yeah, but they did not you would think like, oh, and after 1968, they were just put on a pedestal and praised all throughout the United States. That is not true. They were basically sent back to the reservations with what awaited them there, which was poverty and hardship and alcoholism and disenfranchisement. And some of them were lucky enough to bootstrap up from military, I imagine. I think ones that stayed in the military afterward made a career out of it, tended to do better than ones that went back right after the war. Some of them were able to get into college. Some of them tried to buy houses on the reservation through the GI bill, which was very much their right as veterans after World War II. But through a fluke of treaties that put them on the reservation, they didn't actually own the land. The land that they owned was held in trust, so they couldn't show the bank actually own this land, or the guy I'm trying to buy this land from owns the land. So the GI bill was useless for a lot of them, which is a big black eye. It was just basically par for the course, for how most of them were treated afterward. Yeah, I mean, just right back on the reservation, it was just the usual reservation life again. There was a reunion at the Fourth Marine Division in 71. Nixon awarded them a Certificate of thanks and a light punch in the arm. Some old Tricky Dicky 2 august 14 was declared national Code Talker Day. That was for all code talkers. Yeah, not just Navajo Code Talkers, but those original 29 were given a Congressional Gold Medal in 2000 and 2014. On June 4, the final original Code Talker navajo Code Talker chester Nez passed away. And just look up a picture of Chester Nez and easy that sweet face, and he's got the veterans hat on that says Navajo Code Talker on it. Oh, I love those hats. Pretty amazing. The award ceremony. So they were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in 2000, the original 29. But when they actually presented the award in 2001, by that time, there are only four of them left alive. And that's a big criticism, too, that it was like, you could probably done this a little sooner while they were alive still. Yeah, it might have taken 60 something years to sort of get that ceremony in order. Right. They wanted to get everything just right. But that was amazing. And yeah. Hopefully somebody will make a movie about it that's not mostly about Nick Cage's character, the white guy. If you want to know more about Code Talkers, you can search them on the Internet, and there's some fascinating stuff out there. Oh, and Chuck, if you want to know more about Navajo Code Talkers and you happen to ever be in Kayenta, Arizona, there's a Burger King there, and it has basically a Navajo Code Talker museum. Oh, cool. Which is basically a display case, but it counts. It qualifies as a mini museum. Sure, grab a Whopper, learn something. Yeah. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this Easy Bake Oven. Follow up from Oregon. So, guys, just listen to Easy Bake Ovens. I've always been a big believer in kids playing with whatever toys they want. As a kid, I spent a great deal of time playing in the dirt with my brothers, making roads and parking lots for our Hot Wheels. Flash forward 20 years. My son wanted me to take him to the toy store to spend some six birthday money. 6th birthday money. You got it. I followed him as he perused the remote control cars, various action figures, and he disappeared around the corner. And before I could get to the other aisle to find him, he came tromping back holding an Easy Bake Oven. He asked me if he had enough money to buy it, and he did. Awesome. This 119 99 is about $20. As we walked to the counter, asked him if he wanted me to carry it for him, put it in a cart, because the box was about as big as he was and he insisted on carrying it himself. Although I've always encouraged him to play with what he wants, I was surprised that he wanted to carry it himself. His dad was not always so open minded. Boys playing with what he called girl toys and probably still isn't. We are no longer together, needless to say. Anyway, we pay for the oven and my son carries it to the car. He won't let me put it in the trunk or even in the seat next to him. He held it on his lap the whole way home. Stories just adorbs in every way. I love it. While we were driving, he examined the box and made a rump sound. Asked him what was wrong, and he said he was mad and asked him why. He said the box is pink and there's only a girl on it, but boys like to cook too. Mom told him I agree, so I guess you could say he has always been woke. He made many treats with his oven over the years. And I even have a photo of him somewhere wearing his grandma's frilly cooking apron with a big smile on his face. That is from Davina Mbary in Portland, Oregon. Another Mbary? Is there another one? Yeah. Really? Yes. We never really figured out how to say that last name, but within the last month or two there was an Embari. Weird. I wonder if it was her. Thanks a lot, Devina. Yeah, maybe. I think the other one was with the E. That's with an I. Okay. Yeah. Got you. I will figure it out one day. Yeah, if you're an Embarrass or whatever you want to get in touch with us, you can join us on Social. Just go to stuffiestionnow.com and find all the links there or send us all an email to stuffpodcast@housetepworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetepworks.com. Hey everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. 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." | |
How Chaos Theory Changed the Universe | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-chaos-theory-changed-the-universe | Since the age of Descartes, science has put all of its eggs in the basket of determinism, the idea that with accurate enough measurements any aspect of the universe could be predicted. But the universe, it turns out, is not so tidy. | Since the age of Descartes, science has put all of its eggs in the basket of determinism, the idea that with accurate enough measurements any aspect of the universe could be predicted. But the universe, it turns out, is not so tidy. | Tue, 19 Jul 2016 16:15:22 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=19, tm_hour=16, tm_min=15, tm_sec=22, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=201, tm_isdst=0) | 52894077 | audio/mpeg | "This episode of Stuff You Should Know is sponsored by Squarespace. Whether you need a landing page, a beautiful gallery, a professional blog or an online store, it's all possible with the Squarespace website. Go to squarespace.com and set your website upon heart. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W, Chuck Bryant. And there's Jerry over there. So this is stuff you should know. The podcast about chaos theory. Have you ever seen Event Horizon? I did. Not bad. Great movie. Are you crazy? I didn't think it was great. Oh, so imaginative. I thought it was okay. It was like a lovecraftian thing in our space. I loved it. It was all right. I love crafted it. Yeah, I liked it. That's what I think of when I think of chaos. There's that one part where they kind of give you, like, a glimpse behind the dimension that this action is taking place in to see the chaos underneath. I should check that out again. Yeah. I think about Jurassic Park and Jeff goldlim as the creep. Dr. Malcolm explaining chaos in the little auto driving SUV or whatever that was. Right? Yeah. That's why it was called in the script, the auto driving SUV scene. Yeah. And you know what? I actually rewatched that scene and it confirmed two things. One is that he actually did a pretty decent job for a Hollywood movie. A very rudimentary explanation of chaos. Yeah. You watched it for this? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Just that scene. And then it also confirmed of what a creep that character was. Yeah. If you watch that scene, he's all gross and flirty with her right in front of her ex. But he's talking to her. I didn't notice this at first. He just, like, touches her hair out of nowhere, for no reason. Really? He's just talking to her. And he just, like, grabs her hair and touches it. And I'm like, what a creep. I know. If you look closely, you can see the hormones emerging through his chest hair. Yeah. scroty. And I love Jeff Goldblum. It's not a reflection on him. He was basically doing Jeff Goldblum. Well, that's what he yeah, sure, he's Jeff Goldblum, but I don't think that's how in the manner in which he speaks. But I don't think he's a creep, do you? Wow. I've got nothing against Jeff Goldblum. Okay. I think he's doing jeff Goldblum. It was also a sign of the times, like, if that movie were made today what was her name in the movie? Ellie Sattler, I think. Yeah. Doctor Satler would be like, it's very inappropriate to stroke my hair. Don't touch me. Right. But this was the 90s freewheeling. No, it was 90s. It was the early mid ninety s, I think. 92, 93, 94. The book came out in 1990. And in the book, Ian Malcolm, who's a creep chaotician. Right. He goes into even more depth about chaos. That was the first time I ever heard of chaos theory was from Jurassic Park. Yeah, me too, probably. And it was really misleading. I think the entire term chaos is very misleading as far as the general public goes from what I researched for this article. Well, yeah, I mean, you hear the word chaos as an English speaker, and you think frenetic and crazy, out of control. Yes. And that's not what it means in terms of science like this. Right. What it means, I guess we can say upfront, is basically the idea that complex systems do not behave in very neat ways that we can easily grasp, understand, and measure. Right. And not even simple systems don't sometimes it doesn't always have to be complex, but I want to give a shout out in addition to our own article, too, when it comes to stuff like this. The brain breaking stuff, for me, man, this is a brain breaker. You know how I always go to, like, blank blank for kids? Because it always helps if there's a dinosaur mascot on the page. It's a sure thing. We can understand it. But the best explanation for all this stuff that I found on the Internet was from a website called Abarim, A-B-A-R-I-M publications, which turns out to be a website about biblical patterns. And sandwiched in the middle there is a really great, easy to understand series of pages on chaos there. Nice. So I was like, Man, I get it now in a rudimentary way. Right. Yeah. I think even a lot of people who deal with systems that display chaotic behavior, which I guess is to say, basically, all systems eventually, under the right conditions, don't necessarily understand chaos. Yeah. And they define a complex system specifically. It doesn't mean just like, oh, it's complex. I mean, it is. Right. But specifically, they define it in a way that helped me understand it's. A system that has so much motion, so many elements that are in motion moving parts yeah. That it takes, like, a computer to calculate all the possibilities of what that could look like five minutes from now, ten years from now. Right. So before computers came around, before the quantum mechanical revolution, it's a lot more basic. It was like, what comes up must come down, stuff like that. Let's talk about that chuckle. Because when you're talking about chaos theory, it helps to understand how it revolutionized the universe by getting a clear picture of how we understood the universe leading up to the discovery of chaos. Right, yeah. So prior to the scientific revolution, everybody was like, oh, well, it's God. The Earth is at the center of the universe, and God is spinning everything around like a top. Right. Yeah. It was all a theistic explanation. Then the scientific revolution happens, and people start applying things like math and making mathematical discoveries and figuring out that their order, they're finding order and patterns and predictability the universe? If you can apply mathematics to it. Yes. Specifically if you can apply mathematics to the starting point. Right. So if you can figure out how a system works, mathematically speaking right? Yes. You can go in and plug in whatever coordinates you want to and watch it go. You can predict what the outcome is going to be and what this is. That it's based on what at the time was a totally revolutionary idea initially. I think Descartes was the first one to kind of say, cause and effect is a pretty big part of our universe. Right? Yeah. It was sort of like where this is 1600s, where early science met philosophy. Right. They kind of complemented one another as far as something that we're talking about, determinism. Right. So that was kind of the seeds of determinism was the scientific revolution and like you said, where philosophy and science came together in the form of Descartes. Right. And then Newton came along and we did a whole episode on him. Yeah. January of this year. That was a good one. It was really good. I think he said in that episode that there's possibly no scientist has changed the world more than Newton has. Maybe he's got legs. People shouted out others in email, but I'll just say he's near the top for sure with some other people. The cream. Yeah. So Newton came along and Newton said that was his name. Isaac The Cream Newton. Anytime he dumped to be like, cream, yeah, you just got creamed. Oh, I thought he was a boxer. He's a basketball player. He was much more well known as a boxer, but he definitely could dunk as a bee baller. Yeah. So man, that threw me off a little bit. That's right. The cream. Yeah, the cream comes along and he basically says, watch this, dude. This cause and effect thing you're talking about, I can express it in quantifiable terms, and it comes up with all these great laws and basically sets the stage, the foundation for science for the next three centuries or so. Yeah. These laws that were so rock solid and powerful that scientists kind of got ahead of themselves a little and said, we're done with Newton's laws. We can predict everything if we have a good enough beginning, accurate value to plug into his equations. And I think it was a little hubris and a little just excitement about like, well, we figured it all out. Right. You could take Newton's laws and if you had accurate enough measurements, you could predict what the outcome would be of that system that you plugged those measurements into using the formula. Right. And at the time, a lot of this was like planetary like, well, we know that these planets are here and they're moving and they're orbiting. So if we know these things, we can plug it into an equation and we can figure out what it's going to be like in 100 years. Exactly. The basis of determinism is what we just said, that if you have accurate measurements, you can take those measurements and use them to predict how a system is going to change over time using differential equations, right? Yeah. So this is what Newton comes along and figures out, that you can describe the universe in these mathematical terms using differential equations. And like you said, there was a tremendous amount of hubris. And I think you said there was some hubris. I think there was a tremendous amount of hubris where science basically said, we've mastered the universe, we uncovered the blueprint of the universe, and now we understand everything. It's just a matter now of getting our scientific measurements more, more and and more exact. Because, again, the hallmark of determinism is that if you have exact measurements, you can predict an outcome accurately, like the pool queue example or the pool table example. Right, right. So if you've got a pool table, let's say you're playing some nine ball, right? You have that beautiful little diamond set up. You got your cue ball. You put that cue ball, and you crack it with the cue. And if you are super accurate with your initial measurements, you should be able to mathematically plot out via angles where the balls will end up. Right, exactly. Like, you can say, this is what the table will look like after the break. If you know the force, the angle, all those little variables, temperature, if there's wind in the room, like the felt on the table, like everything, the more specific you are, the more accurate your end result will be. Right. And then one of the other hallmarks of determinism is that if you take those exact same initial conditions and do them again, the pool table will look exactly the same after the break. Yeah. Which is pretty much impossible for, like, a human to do with their hands. Sure. But the idea at the time of science is that if you could build a perfect machine that could recreate these conditions, it will happen the same way every time. Right? Yeah. They had hubris. But you could understand it when literally in 1846, two people predicted Neptune would exist yeah. Within months of that would exist, but does exist. Right. And this is not by looking up in the sky like they did it with math. Right. And they were right. Yeah. So imagine in 1846, when that happens, they're like, yeah, we've got the math down, so we're pretty much allknowing well, plus also, for the most part, not just with Neptune. They were finding that this stuff really panned out. It held true for everything from the investigation into electricity to new chemical reactions and understanding those and the scientific revolution laid the basis for the industrial revolution and just the change that came out of the world like that. It is understandable how science kind of was like, we got it all figured out. Well, and like you said, even Galileo was smart enough to know there's uncertainty in these measurements. Like, the precision is key. So they spent what does the article say? A lot of the 19th and 20th century just trying to build better instrumentation to get more and more smaller and smaller and more precise measurements. Right. That was, like, basically the goal of it. Right? Yeah. Which was the right direction. That's, like, exactly what they should have been doing. Yeah. The problem is, like you said, galileo knew that there was some sort of there are going to be some flaws and measurement that we just didn't have those great scientific instruments yet. Right. Yeah. It's called the uncertainty principle. Okay. Perhaps accuracy. Right. But the idea is that if you have a good enough instruments, you can overcome that, and that the more you shrink the error in measuring the initial conditions, the more you're going to shrink the error in the outcome. It'd be proportionate. Right. They were correct. The thing is, they were also aware, but ignoring in a lot of ways, some outstanding problems. Specifically something called the in body problem. Yeah. You know what? I'm so excited about this. I need to take a break. I think that's a good idea. I need to go check out my in body in the bathroom. Okay. And we'll be back. All right, Chuck, we're back. So there's some issues right, with determinism. There's some weird problems out there that are saying, like, hey, pay attention to me, because I'm not sure determinism works. Right. And one is the end body problem. Yeah. How this came about was an 1885. There was King Oscar, number two of Sweden and Norway. Yeah. Don't want to leave out Norway. Both he said, you know what? Let's offer a prize to anyone who can prove the stability of the solar system, something that has been stable for a long time before that. And a lot of the most brilliant minds on planet Earth got together and tried to do this with mathematical proofs, and no one could do it. And then a dude named Honorary you got to help me there with that last Poncare. Say the whole thing. Henry Poncare. Very nice. He was French, believe it or not, and he was a mathematician. And he said, you know what? I'm not going to look at this big picture of all the planets in the sun and all their orbits. You'd have to be a fool to try that. Sure. He said, I'm going to shrink this down like we talked about shrinking that initial value. Right. And that initial condition, he shrunk it down. He said, I'm going to look at just a couple of bodies orbiting one another with a common center of gravity, and I'm going to look at this. And this was called the in body problem. Yeah. Which was smart to do, because the more variables you factor into a non linear equation like that, just the harder it's going to be. He shrunk it down. So the end body problem has to do with three or more celestial bodies orbiting one another. So I'll just start with three. Yeah. Smart. And what he found from doing his equations for this King Oscar the Sequel prize was that shrinking the initial conditions measurement or rate of error right. Yeah. Did not really shrink the error in the outcome, which flies in the face of determinism. What he found was that just very minute differences in the initial conditions fed into a system produced wildly different outcomes after a fairly short time. Yeah. Let me just round off the mass of this planet at the 8th decimal point. Right. And who cares? Who cares at that point? Yeah. Just round that one to a two, and that would throw everything off at a pretty high rate. And he said, Wait a minute, I think this contest is impossibly. Right. He said there is no way to prove the stability of the solar system because he just uncovered the idea that it's impossible for us to predict the rate of change among celestial bodies. Yeah. It's such a complex system. There are far too many variables that it's impossible to start with something so minute to get the equation or whatever the sum that you want at the end. Right. Not a sum, I guess, but the result. Not only that. And this is what really undermined determinism. Was that he figured out that you would have to have an infinitely precise measurement. Which even if you built a perfect machine that could take the infinitely perfect machine that could take a measurement of the movement of a celestial body around another. It's literally impossible to get an infinitely precise measurement. Which means that we could never predict out to a certain degree. The movement of the celestial bodies. He was saying, like, no, you can't build a machine that gets measurements enough that we can overcome this. Determinism is wrong. You can't just say we have the understanding to predict everything. There's a lot of stuff out there that we're not able to predict. And he uncovered it trying to figure out this end body problem. Yeah. And King Oscar the Sequel said, you win. Bring me another rack of lamb, and here's your prize. And he won by proving that it was impossible, which is pretty interesting. And then utterly and completely changed not just math, but our understanding of the universe. And our understanding of our understanding of the universe, which is even more kind of Earth shaking. Yeah. He discovered dynamical instability or chaos, and they didn't have supercomputers at the time. So it would be a little while, about 70 years at MIT, until we could actually kind of feed these things into machines capable of plotting these things out in a way that we could see. Right. Which is really incredible. So there is this dude 70 years later named Edward Lawrence, or Lawrence. Yeah. Well, first of all, we should set the stage. The reason this guy, he was a meteorologist and scientist. Those are not the same thing. He's a scientist who dabbled in meteorology. Right. He was a mathematician. Yeah. But he was really into meteorology because there was a weird juxtaposition at the time where we were sending people into outer space, but we couldn't predict the weather. Yeah. And it was definitely a blot on the field of meteorology. People were like, do you guys know what you're doing? Yeah. And meteorologists are like, you have no idea how hard this is. Yeah. We can predict it a couple of days out, but after that, it's totally unpredictable. It drives us mad. And it wasn't just their reputations that were at stake. People were losing their lives because of it. Right. Yeah. In 1962, there were two notorious storms, one on the East Coast and one on the west. The Ash Wednesday storm in the east and the big blow on the west that killed a lot of people, cost hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. Right. And people were like, we need to be able to see these things coming a little more because it's a problem. And meteorologists were like, Why don't you do it, then? So they thought the key was these big supercomputers. Remember the supercomputers, when they came out, the big rooms full of hardware? It was amazing. And they were finally able to do these incredible calculations that we could never do before. I know. They were able to crunch 64 bytes a second. Yeah. We had the abacus and then the supercomputer. There's nothing in between. I looked up the computer that Lawrence was working with, the Whopper a Royal McBee. What was the whopper board games? Was it called? The Whopper. Yeah. WOPR. Right. I can't believe they called it that. The guy just nicknamed it Joshua. No. Joshua was the software. Falcon was the old man who designed all this stuff, and his son was Joshua. And that was the password to get into. Oh, that was the password. Yeah. I guess I was too young to understand what a password was. Yeah. Okay. There weren't passwords at the time. No, they shouted it at the computer and they're like, okay, access granted. Yeah, that movie holds up. Does it really? Oh, totally. You have to check it out. Yeah. Still very fun. Young Ali. Shitty boy. I had a crush on her from that movie. She was great. Yeah. What else is she in recently? Wasn't she in something? Well, she kind of went away for a while and then had her big comeback with the indie movie High Art. But that was a while ago. Has she been in anything else recently? Sure, I think I saw something recently, and I didn't realize that was her. Oh, really? She looks familiar. I was like, oh, that's Alice sheeti. I don't know. All right, I could look it up, but I won't. It doesn't matter anyway. I still crush on her. So The Royal McBee was not quite The Whopper you could actually sit down at it. The Royal McBee? That's the name of it. That sounds like a hamburger, too. It was by the Royal Typewriter Company, and they got into computers for a second, and this is the kind of computer that Lawrence is working with. And it was a huge deal. Like you were saying, Abacus supercomputer. But it was still pretty dumb as far as what we have today is concerned. But it was enough that Lauren's in his ilk were like, finally we can start running models and actually predict the weather. He started doing just that. He did. So he started off with a computational model of twelve meteorological. Meteorological. I liked how you said it. Calculations, which is very basic because they're infinite meteorological calculations, probably depending wrong again. No, it sounds like you're about to say it wrong and then you pull it out at the last second, maybe. It's really impressive. So that's very basic. But if you wanted to start out with something attainable right. So we narrowed it down to twelve conditions. Basically twelve calculations that had temperature, wind speed, pressure, stuff like that. Started forecasting weather. And then he said, you know what would be great? If you could see this. So I'm going to spit it into my wonder machine. The Whopper. The Royal MCV. The Royal MCV. And I'm going to get a print out so you can visualize what this looks like. Right. So things were going well, and he had this print out, and everyone was amazed because these calculations never seemed to repeat themselves. He was making word art. You remember that? That was the first thing anybody did on a computer was to make word art. Like a butterfly or something. Right. You would print out. Yeah. I never could do that. I couldn't either. Like, you have to be able to visualize things spatially. You have to have the right kind of brain for that. Right. Or you have to be following a guidebook that tells you how to do it. True. Have you ever seen me, you and everyone we know? Yes. I love that movie. That's a great movie. Those little kids in there, they were doing that. Yeah. The forever back and forth poop. Well, I haven't seen that since it came out. It's been a while. Oh, you got to see it again. Great movie. Good movie. Ally, sheedy's not in it. It's Miranda July. Right. And she, like, wrote and directed, too. Right? She did a great job. It's one of those rare movies where there's just the right amount of whimsy because whimsy so easily overpowers everything else and becomes like yeah, this is, like, the most perfectly balanced amount of whimsy I've ever seen in a movie. Yeah. If there's too much whimsy. Terrible. Garden State. I just want to punch it in the face. Terrible. Although I like Garden State, but I haven't seen it since it came out. It hasn't aged well. Yeah. When you look at it now, it's just so cutesy and whimsical. It's like, come on, boy, we're getting to a lot of movies today. Oh, yeah, we're stalling. We haven't even talked about butterfly effect yet, which is coming. It is. I'm dreading it. That's why I'm stalling. All right, so where were we? He was running his calculations, printing out his values so people could see it, and then he got a little lazy one day in 1961. This output he noticed was interesting, so he said, I'm going to repeat this calculation, see it again, but I'm going to save time. I'm just going to kind of pick up in the middle and I'm not going to input as many numbers, but I'm still using the same values because I'm not going out to six decimal points. So the printout he had went to three decimal points. Yeah. So he was working from the printout and didn't take into account that the computer accepted six decimal points. He was just putting in three correct. And expecting that the outcome would be the same. Right. Yes. But the outcome was way different. Right. And he went, whoa, whoa. What? Yeah, he's like, what's going on here? It was a big deal. I mean, someone would have come up with this eventually. Probably. Yeah. But sort of accidentally came upon it. It's neat that this guy did this, because it changed his career, I think he went from emphasis on meteorology to emphasis on chaos math to study scientists. Basically, the guy got an attractor named after him, you know what I mean? Yeah, well, let's get to that. So Lorenz starts looking at this and he's like, wait a minute, this is weird. This is worth investigating. And like, what was his name? Pon Carre. Yeah. He said, I need fewer variables. So I'm not going to try to predict whether with these twelve differential equations that you have to take into account. I'm just going to take one aspect of whether called the rolling convection current and I'm going to see how I can write it down in formula form. So rolling convection current, Chuck, is where, you know how the wind is created, where air at the surface is heated and starts to rise and suddenly cool air from higher above comes in to fill that vacuum that's left. And that creates a rolling vertically based convection current. Yeah. Okay. I would describe it as oven. Oven, boiling water, cup of coffee. Sure. Wherever there's a temperature differential based on a vertical alignment, you're going to have a rolling convection current. Okay. Yeah. It sounds complex, but he just picked out one thing, basically one condition. Right. And this is the one he picked out. But had you seen my hands moving listeners, you would be like, oh, yeah, I know. He made little rolly motions. So he's like, okay, I can figure this out. So he comes up with three formula that kind of describe a rolling convection current and he starts trying to figure out how to describe this rolling convection current. Right? Correct. And so, like I said, he got these three formula which were basically three variables that he calculated over time. And he plugged them in and he found three variables that changed over time. And he found that after a certain point when you graph these things out and since they're three, you graph them out on a three dimensional graph. So x y and z Again, he wanted to just be able to visualize this because it's easier for people to understand. He's a very visual guy. Totally. All of a sudden, it made this crazy graph. That where the line, as it progressed forward through time, went all over the place. It went from this axis to another access to the other access, and it would spend some time over here and then it would suddenly loop over to the other one and it followed no rhyme or reason. It never retraced its path. And it was describing how a convection current changes over time. Right. Yeah. And Lorenza looking at this, he was expecting these three things to equalize and eventually form a line because that's what determinism says. Things are going to fall into a certain amount of equilibrium and just even out over time. That is not what he found. No. And what he discovered was what Poncari discovered, which was that some systems, even relatively simple systems, exhibit very complex, unpredictable behavior, which you could call chaos. Yeah. And when you say things were going all over, like, if you look at the graph, it's not just lines going in straight lines bouncing all over the place randomly. There was an order to it, but the lines were not on top of one another. Like, let's say you draw a figure eight with your pencil and then you continue drawing that figure eight. It's going to slip outside those curves every time. Unless you're a robot. Sure. And that's what it ended up looking like. Yeah. It never retraced the same path twice, ever. It had a lot of really surprising properties. And at the time it just felt completely outside the understanding of science. Right? Yes. Luckily, this happened to Lauren, who was curious enough to be like, what is going on here? And again, he sat down and started to do the math and thinking about this and especially how it applied to the weather. Right, yeah. And he came up with something very famous. Yes. The butterfly effect. Yes. A, this thing kind of looked like butterfly wings a little bit, and B, when he went to present his findings, he basically had the notion he's like, I'm going to wow these people in the. Crowd in 1972. It's a conference that I'm going to, and I'm going to say something like, the seagull flaps the swings and it starts a small turbulence that can affect weather on the other side of the world, right? The small little thing will just grow and grow and snowball and affect things. And he had a colleague who was like, seagull wings, that's nice. And he said, how about this? And this is the title they ended up with, predictability Colon. Does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas? And everyone was like, whoa, whoa, mine's blown. Yeah. Should we take a break? Yes. All right, we'll be right back. All right, so the Lauren's attractor is that picture that he ended up with, right? That car, the Lauren's Attractor. And this biblical pattern website that I found described attractors and strange attractors in a way that even dumb old me could understand. What you got? So if I may, he says, all right, here's the cycle of chaos. He said, Actually, I don't know who wrote this woman. Could have been a small child, could have been Noah of undetermined gender. I have no idea. Gender neutral. Narrator they said, he's right. Think about a town that has 10,000 people living in it. To make that town work, you got to have like a gas station, a grocery store, a library, whatever you need to sustain that town. Okay, so all these things are built, everyone's happy, you have equilibrium. He said, so that's great. Then let's say someone comes and builds a factory on the outskirts of that town and there's going to be 10,000 more people living there, right? And they don't go to church maybe. So did I say church? They needed a church. No. Okay, I was just assuming this is equilibrium. No, but you just have more people. So you need another gas station, another grocery store, let's say. So they build all these things and then you reach equilibrium again. It's maintained because you build all these other systems up. I see that equilibrium is called an attractor. Okay? So then he said it said the royal. He said, all right, now let's say instead of that factory being built and you had those original 10,000, let's say 3000 of those people just up and leave one day, okay? And the grocery store guys says, well, there's only 7000 people here. We need 8000 people living here to make a profit. So I'm shutting down this grocery store. Then all of a sudden you have demand for groceries. So things go on for a little while and someone comes in and say, hey, this town needs a grocery store. They build a grocery store they can't sustain. They shut down. Someone else comes along because of demand. And it is this search for equilibrium. Well, you reach equilibrium here and there as the store opens. Periods of stability. Periods of stability. And that dynamic equilibrium is called a strange attractor. So an attractor is the state which the system settles on. Strange attractor is the trajectory on which it never settles down, but tries to reach the equilibrium with periods of stability. Does that make sense? That Bible based explanation was dynamite. I understand it better than I did before, and I understood it okay before. That's great. Surely can add yeah. Now you're going to add to it? No, that's it. No, I mean, yeah. And a tractor is where if you grab something and eventually it reaches equilibrium, it's a regular tractor, if it never reaches equilibrium, is constantly trying to it has periods of stability. Strange attractor. I can't top that. All right. Grocery store, small town. That was great. So Lorenzo strange attractor was named Lorenz attractor named after him. Big deal. They weren't using the word chaos yet. No, but he published that paper about butterfly wings, right? Yeah, the Butterfly Effect. And it coupled with his picture, the picture of a strange attractor, which is almost the aside from fractals, almost the emblem or the logo for chaos theory, the Lord detractors. It got attention off the bat. It wasn't like Poncare's findings, where he got neglected for 70 years. Almost immediately, everybody was talking about this. Because. Again. What Lorenzo had uncovered. Which is the same thing that Pon Cara had uncovered. Is that determinism is possibly based on an illusion that the universe isn't stable. That the universe isn't predictable. And that what we are seeing is stable and predictable are these little periods. Windows of stability that are found in strange attractor graphs. That that's what we think the order of the universe is. But that is actually the abnormal aspect of the universe. And that instability, unpredictability, as far as we're concerned, is the actual state of affairs in nature. And I think, as far as we're concerned, is a really important point, too, Chuck, because it doesn't mean that nature is unstable and chaotic. It means that our picture of what we understand as order doesn't jibe with how the universe actually functions. It's just our understanding of it. Yeah. And we're just so anthropocentric that we see it as chaos and disorder and something to be feared right. When really it's just complexity that we don't have the capability of predicting after a certain degree. Yeah, I think that makes me feel a little better, because when you read stuff like this, you start to feel like while the Earth could just throw us all off of its face at any moment, because it starts spinning so fast that gravity becomes undone. And I know that's not right, by the way, I've always loved that kind of science that shows we don't know anything. Like Robert Hume, who I know, I understand, was a philosopher, but he was a philosopher scientist. Sure. His whole jam was like, cause and effect is an illusion. It's just an assumption. Like that. If you drop a pencil, it will always fall down an illusion. And this is pre gravity, understanding gravity. But he makes a good point, gravity, when everyone's just floating around yeah. Going, this pencil got me wacky. But the point was that a lot of our assumptions or a lot of stuff that we take as law are actually based on assumptions that are made from observations over time, and that we're just making predictions that cause and effect is an illusion. I love that guy. This definitely supports that idea. For sure. Sorry. I'm excited about chaos theory. Can you believe it? Well, I mean, I like that I'm able to understand it in enough of a rudimentary way that I can talk about it at a dinner party. Well, thank your Bible website. Well, once you take the formulas out for people like us, we're like, oh, okay, we can understand chaos. Yeah. Then when somebody says, good, do a differential equation, you just like a what a different equation. Right. All right, so earlier I said that chaos had not been used, the word chaos to describe all this junk. Right. And that didn't happen until later on. Well, actually about ten years. Yeah. But it was kind of at the same time this other stuff was going on with Lorenz. Yeah. Late 60s, early 70s, there was a guy named Steven Smell Fields metal recipients, so, you know, he's good at math, and he described something that we now know as the smell horseshoe. And it goes a little something like this. All right? Take a piece of dough, like bread dough, okay. And you smash it out into a big flat rectangle. Can do. So you're looking at that thing and you're like, boy, I hope this makes some good bread. This is going to be so good. So then you just put a little rosemary on it. Yeah. Maybe soil sea salt. Yeah. And then lick it before you bake it so you know it's yours. No one else can have it. So you have that flat rectangle of dough, you roll it up into a tube, and then you smash that down kind of flat, and then you bend that down to where it eventually looks like a horseshoe. Okay? So now you take that horseshoe, you take another rectangle of dough, and you throw that horseshoe onto that, and then you do the same thing. The snail horseshoe basically says you cannot predict where the two points of that horseshoe will end up. Yeah, you can roll it a million times and it will end up in a million different places. Totally random. Different places too. Totally random. You never know. It's like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get. You have to say it. And that became known. You have to say it. Oh, what? Imitate force counts? Sure. And I can't do that. That's fine. He's not in my repertoire. That's fine. Although I did see that again, part of it recently. Does it hold up? Well, I mean, take out 40 minutes of it and it would have been a better movie. Like all of that coincidence stuff that oh, I love that. And he also did that Smile T shirt. It was just too much. Like, he really hammered it too much. I liked it. That was the basis of the movie. I know, but see it again and I guarantee you, like, an hour and a half into it, you'll be like, I get it. Zamickets you know, it was a good Tom Hanks movie that was overlooked. Road to Perdition. Yeah, not bad. This is a good one. Great. Sam Mendez. Oh, man, that guy is awesome. Yeah. Oh, what is he going to do? He might do something. He did the James bought he did Skyfall. Yeah, I know. He's going to do that last one. That wasn't so great. He's got a potential project coming up, and he would be amazing for it. I don't remember what it was. Did you see Revolutionary Road? Yes. God, it was just like yeah. You want to jump off a bridge to see that movie? It was, like, every five minutes during that movie. That was hardcore. It is. He did that one, too. Yeah. And don't see that if you're engaged to be married or thinking about it. Yeah. Or if you're blue already. Yeah. Just take a really good mood and be like, I'm sick of being in a good mood. Sit down and watch Revolutionary Road. Yeah. Watch Joe versus the Volcano instead. Great movie. Where was I? Smell Horseshoe is what that's called. And he was the first person to actually use the word chaos. Oh, he was? I think so. No. York was. Tom Yorke's. Dad. Yeah, you're right. He wasn't the first person. You're correct. But Smells Horseshoe illustrates a really good point. Chuck. Is it tom York's? Dad. No. Okay. No, but they're both British. Sure. Yorkies actually one's Australian. So those two points. Which started out right by each other and then ended up in two totally different places. That applies not just to bread dough. But also to things like water molecules that are right next to each other at some point. And then a month later. They're in two different oceans. Even though you would assume that they would go through all the same motions and everything. Oh, sure. But they're not. There's so many different variables with things like ocean currents that two water molecules that were once side by side end up in totally random different places. And that's part of chaos. It's basically chaos personified or chaos molecule. Fide. So we mentioned York. Where I was going with that was there was an Australian named Robert May, and he was a population biologist, so he was using math to model how animal populations would change over time, giving certain starting conditions. So he started using these equations, differential equations, and he came up with a formula known as the logistic difference equation that basically enabled him to predict these animal populations pretty well. Yeah, it was working pretty well for a while, but he noticed something really, really weird. Right? Yeah. He had this formula. The logistic difference equation is the name of it. Sure. Okay. So we had that formula, and he figured out that if you took R, which in this case was the reproductive rate of an animal population, and you pushed it past three, the number three. So that meant that the average animal in this population of animals had three offspring in his lifetime or in a season, whatever. If you push the past three, all of a sudden the number of the population would diverge. Yeah. If you pushed it equal to three, actually, or more right. It would divert, which is weird, because a population of animals can't be two different numbers. Like that herd of antelope. There's not 30, but there's also 45 of them at the same time. That's called a superposition, and that has to do with quantum states, not herds of antelope. That was kind of weird. And then he found if you pushed it a little further, if you made the reproductive rate like 3.57 or something like that, I think it was a different number. But you just tweaked it a little bit, not even to four. We're talking, like, millions of a degree. All of a sudden, it would turn into four. So there'd be four different numbers. That was the animal population, and then we turn into 16. And then all of a sudden, after a certain point, it would turn into chaos. Yes. The number would be everything at once all over the place. It's totally random numbers that it oscillated between. Yeah. But in all that chaos, there would be periods of stability. Right. You push it a little further, and all of a sudden, it would just go to two again. Yeah. But beyond that, it didn't go back to the original two numbers. It went to another two. So if you looked at it on a graph, it went lying all before you even got to the number four of the reproductive rate. Yeah. And he was working with Mr. York because he was a little confounded. So he was a mathematician buddy of his, James York, from the University of Maryland. So they worked together on this, and in 1975, they co authored a paper called period three Implies Chaos. And man, finally somebody said the word. I kept thinking it was all these other people. Yeah. And this paper where they first debuted, the name Chaos, they based it tom Yorkstead based it on Edward Lawrence's paper. He was like, you know what? I have a feeling this has something to do with the Lawrence attractor. So that provided chaos to the world, and it was basically the third time a scientist had said, we don't understand the universe. Like we think we do. And determinism is based on an illusion, don't you get it, of order in a really chaotic universe. And this established chaos. It took off like a rocket in the as you know from Jurassic Park, chaos is everything. Everybody's like, chaos. This is totally awesome. It's the new frontier of science. And then it just went away. And a lot of people said, well, it was a little overhyped. But I think more than anything, and I think this is kind of the current understanding of chaos, because it didn't actually go away. It became a deeper and deeper field, as you'll see people mistook what chaos meant. It wasn't the new type of science. It was a new understanding of the universe. It was saying, like, yes, you can still use Newtonian physics. Yeah. Like, don't throw everything out the window. No, you can still try and predict weather and still try and build more accurate instruments and get decent results, but you can't, with absolute perfection, 100% predict complex systems like determinism. The ultimate goal of determinism is false. It can never be done because we can't have an infinitely precise measurement for every variable or any variable. Therefore we can't predict these outcomes. Right. So you would expect science to be like, what's the point? What's the point of anything? No, not science. Well, some chaos people have said, no, this is great, this is good. We'll take the universe as it is, rather than trying to force it into our pretty little equation and saying, like, if the ocean temperature is this at this time of year, and the fish population is this at that time, then this is how many offspring this fish population is going to have. Yeah. Say, okay, here is the fish population, here is the ocean temperature, here are all these other variables. Let's feed it into a model and see what happens. Not, this is going to happen. What happens instead? And this is kind of the understanding of chaos theory now. It's taking raw data, as much data as you can possibly get your hands on. As precise data as you could possibly get your hands on. Yeah. And just feeding it into a model and seeing what patterns emerge rather than making assumptions, it's saying, what's the outcome? What comes out of this model? Yeah. And that's why when you see things like 50 years ago, they predicted this animal would be extinct, and it's not. Well, it's because the variations were too complex. Right. They tried to predict. And that's why, if you look at a ten day forecast, you, sir, are a fool. Well, ten days from now, it says it's going to rain in the afternoon. Come on. But if you took enough variables for weather for, like, a city and fed it into a model of the weather for that city, you could find a time when it was similar to what it is now, and you'll you could conceivably make some assumptions based on that. You can say, oh, actually, we can predict a little further out than we think. But it's based on this theory, this understanding of chaos, of unpredictability, of not just not forcing nature into our formulas, but putting data into a model and seeing what comes out of it. Yeah. And then at the end of that, you learn, like, when that animal is not extinct like you thought it would be, you go back and look at the original thing, and you have a more accurate picture of how the data could have been off slightly. This one value. Right? And then you have more buffalo than you think. Yeah, sure. You got buffaloed by chaos. And we're not even getting into fractals. It's a whole other thing. And we did a whole other podcast in June 2012 about fractals and mandelbrot. Yeah, and go listen to that one and hear me clinging to the edge of a cliff. Yes, cliff man. We should end this. But first I want to say there is a really interesting article. It's pretty understandable, on Quantum magazine about a guy named George Sugihara, and he is a Chaos Theory dude who's got a whole lab and is applying it to real life. So it's a really good picture of Chaos Theory in action. Go check it out. Okay. If you want to know more about Chaos Theory, I hope your brain's not broken. Yeah, go take some LSD fractal. Don't do that. You can type those words into how stuff works in the search bar. Any of those fractals LSD chaos. It'll bring up some good stuff. And since I said good stuff, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this rare shout out. Get requests all the time. I bet I know which one this is. Really? Yeah. Dude and his girlfriend. Yeah. No, so far, so good. Hey, guys, just wanted to say I think you're doing a wonderful job with the show to the state. My first time listening was during my first deployment. Yeah, when I listened to your list on famous and influential films, I was hooked. After that, since I came back stateside, I spent many hours driving to and fro see my girlfriend to my barracks, and I can happily say that they've been made all the more enjoyable by listening to you guys. That's great. Even my girlfriend Rachel has warmed up to you, dudes, which was a pleasant shock to me. She has told me repeatedly that she cannot listen to audiobooks because, quote, hearing people talk on the radio gives me a headache. Anyway, I hope you guys continue to make awesome podcasts as I'm headed out on my next appointment. And if you could give a shout out to Rachel, I'm sure it would make her feel a little better that I got the pleasant people on the podcast to reaffirm how much I love her. That is John. Rachel. Hang in there, John. Be safe and thanks for listening. Yeah, man. Thank you. That's a great email. I love that one. Glad we don't give you a headache, Rachel. Yeah, for real. She listened to this song cheap, I thought, yeah, everybody's going to get a headache from this one. I came to hate the sound of my own voice on this one. You'll be all right. If you want to get in touch with us, you can hang out with us on Twitter at Syscape podcast. Same goes for Instagram. You can hang out with us on Facebook. Comstyshow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast athousepworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the Web, stuffyouystoe.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetepworks.com." | ||
(Approximately) 10 Things That Vanished Mysteriously | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/approximately-10-things-that-vanished-mysteriously | Sometimes things - like dentures, airplanes or even people - go missing. And when they never turn up again they become enduring, and engrossing, mysteries. | Sometimes things - like dentures, airplanes or even people - go missing. And when they never turn up again they become enduring, and engrossing, mysteries. | Thu, 25 Feb 2016 05:09:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=25, tm_hour=5, tm_min=9, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=56, tm_isdst=0) | 51516081 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun shining, the daylight's longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, my Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, my Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilguera and Georgia Hard Stark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. 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 all access. You'll love it. Don't be basic, be extra. Start your free 30 day trial of iHeartRadio AllAccess. Now. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W, Chuck, Bryant, and there's Jerry over there. So this is stuff you should know. The podcast. Wait a minute. Jerry's not there all of a sudden? She's vanished without a trace? No, she's right there. It's just a miso dust lingering in her where she wants that. Do you eat a lot of miso? It seems like she's eating miso soup a lot, but she probably just did that once, and I extrapolated that over the years. She's eating Indian food right now. I know. Our tiny little studio smells like we need a spice kitchen. Yeah. You know what that is? It's a kitchen full of spice. No, it's a second kitchen for cooking really stinky food. I didn't know that. Yeah, I want a spice kitchen so I can cook my rich game meats that Emily can't stand to smell. What's your favorite game meat? I'm just kidding. I don't like game meats. What do you like? The stinky. Oh, I mean, dude, if I cook bacon or country ham or steak josh Clark steak, it stinks up the house for two days. She's just like, oh, my God, I like that animal in here. You need to get, like, good air purifier. Air filter works wonders. Well, we don't have a stove hood yet either, which is that's probably the biggest rub. Yes. And I think depending on the stovehood, I think some are just kind of like but there's ones out there that are really good. Yeah, I bet those are the expensive ones. Yeah, but I'll bet you can find a good one that's at a lower price point. Maybe. Or maybe I could just hire a guy that got a window right behind the stove to just sit. A little short guy to sit in the window with some fireplace bellows. They'd be good. Or one of those people who, like, fan things with palm frond. Yeah, maybe that's cheaper. Yeah. I don't know. For the life of your stove. Probably not. Weirdest start ever. So, Chuck, you remember when David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear? I remember it happening. I didn't watch it. Didn't watch it? No. I've never been a big fan of his magic work. Even as a kid? No, not into it. Well, I guess you would have been about 15 at the time. I could see you being like, this is dumb. Yeah. So you were eleven. It was the coolest thing ever. I was like, there's no way he's going to be able to do this. Oh, my gosh, he did it. What is that even? I feel like, if I remember correctly, he put up basically a curtain around the Statue of Liberty and painted it, and the Statue of Liberty wasn't there. I'm sure it's all smoke and mirrors. Well, of course. You mean it was a real magic? Well, I don't think so. I'm pretty sure it was a dark arch. I don't think so. I don't think Satan was involved. It was too patriotic for that. You know what I mean? Sure. But anyway, my point is to the super lame intro is that David Copperfield brought the Statue of Liberty back. It didn't disappear forever, it just disappeared temporarily. It's amazing, but there are some things, mostly people and some stocks that do just disappear forever, that have disappeared forever and who's, like mysterious disappearances, are still unsolved. Yes. To this day, it's pretty good. Do you lose a lot of socks? No. Yummy does her laundry. She keeps tabs on the socks. Well, they make little tabs that you clip on to keep your socks together when you go in. And I've also seen there's this one company that tried to sell socks as Three Socks. So you always had a backup, a superfluous sock. Genius. I don't know if it took off like it should have, could have, who knows? The person who invented it, they know exactly. Believe me, they wake up every day and they're like, Three Socks is a great idea. So let's talk about some of these things that have disappeared without a trace. Yes. This is one of our famous top tens. It'll be, what, six to eight, something like that? Long yeah. Solomon Northrop number one. Have you seen twelve Years of Slave yet, man? Bill no. It's sitting on my DVR, staring me in the face. I go home today and watch it daring me to be sad and watch it. You just got to get it over with. There's a certain amount of catharsis to it. It's not just going to bring you down to the depth of depression and leave you there, necessarily. Yeah. I've been ticking off the really sad ones at a rate of about two per year. I just watched Beast of the Southern Wild, like, a few months ago. I haven't seen that one. That's a good one. Is it good? Yes, very tough movie, but yeah, long story short, I need to watch Twelve Years of Slave. Okay. I'm shamed I didn't mean to shame you. I'm just saying, it's like, the third time I've been shaming you. It's a good movie. So Solomon Northrop, he was the man who wrote the memoir on which the movie was based because it's a true story right. About his life. Yes. And he was born free, an African American in 1841, went well, it says here, was lured from his home in New York to Washington, DC. And then kidnapped, forced into slavery in Louisiana. Yeah. He was lured by being basically hired as a musician. And when he went to DC. He was kidnapped and sold into slavery. And, man, it just gets worse from there whether, like, you should come down and play the 930 Club, basically. Yeah. He's like, Great, let's do it. And they're like, oh, there is no 930 Club. There's just horrific slavery on a plantation in Louisiana. Wow. So he actually spoiler alert for those of you like Chuck who haven't seen the movie. He is basically rescued from slavery. Okay. He figures out a way to basically pass a message along, and the people who know and can confirm that he was born of Freeman, come and get them, which is pretty great. Yeah. And at the very end of the movie, in it, it says basically, like, the circumstances and date and whereabouts of Solomon Northrop's death are unknown. Okay. So they just finish it with, like, a they do a graphic. Yes. But basically it's almost like an off handed thing. You don't think anything about it. Right. But it turns out he disappeared. Right. It was mysterious. Yeah. People don't know where he went. He went back to the north and ended up working in the Underground Railroad. There's some rumors that he became a spy for the Union during the Civil War. That's good. And at some point, he wrote Twelve Years a Slave and he went on a book tour and abolitionist book tour. And he never came home from it. Yeah. And 1863 was about the last time that there were any records of his existence. And there are a bunch of different theories out there of what might have happened to him. One, that while he was a spy, he was captured and killed. Right. One is that he was kidnapped again and sold into slavery. But I think I read that a lot of people discount that because he was kind of too old to be valuable at that point as a worker. Yes. Or maybe well, we know he encountered some financial difficulties, so maybe he just assumed a new identity and kind of skipped down. Right. There's also one that's, like the saddest, but also probably the most realistic, that he died in a place where they didn't know who he was and they weren't inclined to properly bury him. So he just led a regular life and died unknown. Yeah. Or like he got run over by a horse or something on a book tour. And no one knew who he was. They just thought he was, like, some African American. Yeah. Interesting. Or maybe even a slave. And they buried him in on Mark grave. Like a pauper's grave. Yeah. Very sad. It is. All right, well, that's the first one. I think Jimmy Hoffa is a great way to follow that up. Who Jimmy Hoffa? Famous Teamster boss. I was reading a little bit about his huge beef with Bobby Kennedy. Oh, yeah. They hated each other. Yeah, they didn't like each other. I mean hated each other. Like, apparently Jimmy Hoffa shoved Bobby Kennedy at a restaurant once because he felt like he snubbed them. Wow. Yeah. Jimmy Hoffa didn't like that kind of thing. Bobby Kennedy, he wrote a book called The Enemy Within, and it was about, like, the mob. And I'm not sure if Hoffa was named in it or not, but it was basically like all of his friends. Bobby Kennedy wrote a book about it, and he sent a copy of it to Jimmy Hoffa. And he wrote a little inscription that said, to Jimmy, I wanted to make sure you got a copy of this from me so you wouldn't have to use pension funds to buy one. Zing. Indeed. And he said, have him killed. And finally, Bobby Kennedy finally got his mitts on Jimmy Hoffa and sent him to prison for a little while. But Hoffa was a huge contributor to Nixon's campaigns against the Kennedy. And so when Nixon became president, he'd pardon Hoffa. That's right. He was pardoned. And then on July 30, 975, just four years later, he went for a meeting at the Macas Red Fox restaurant that's a great name in Bloomfield, Michigan, outside of Detroit. Suburban Detroit. And he was never seen again. Never seen again. Disappeared. No bones, nobody. No nothing. And there's been tons of theories and suppositions and rumors about what became of them. Right. Yeah. Supposedly, he was there to meet a couple of Mafia bosses, anthony Giacolon and Anthony Provizano, which was Fat Tony and fat Tony. No. Tony jack and Tony pro. What are their nicknames? And they denied later that they had a meeting scheduled, and they ended up actually having an album, because I read that and I was like, well, duh. He goes to meet with two Mafia guys and disappears. Right. But supposedly they had an alibi. They're mothers. Yeah, exactly. And they were not there. They were at church. Yes. With their mothers. There was a truck, like a semi truck pulling into the parking lot and almost hit or got hit by this car pulling out a Mercury. And he said he looked in and he saw Hoffa in the backseat with another guy with what looked like a rifle under a blanket in between them. Oh, yeah. I mean, the Mafia killed Jimmy Hoffa. Yeah. There's virtually no dispute over that it's just what happened to his body. Exactly. So, some people said that he was buried under the old Giant Stadium in New Jersey. Is that the middle ends, or is the new one at the metal land? No, the new 1 may be there, too, but the old one was definitely there. Okay. Didn't happen. Did they ever dig up the field and look? No, I think the mythbusters actually went there with some equipment that could detect whether or not is there anything those guys couldn't do? I don't know, get along off the air? Yeah, I guess so. We can also verify that a couple of weeks before he disappeared, hundreds of millions of dollars were missing from the pension fund. Again, no secret that the Mafia probably hadn't done it, right. But where's the body, right? And I think 2014, a guy named Tony ZERELLI, another Tony, he wrote a book. His book was called Hoffa Found, and in it, he detailed how Hoffa's body was buried under some concrete slabs in a barn in upstate Michigan. I thought you were going to say it was a pop up book. And at the end, he just pops up right here's. Hoffa. You got me with that one. Good. And apparently, the FBI read this book and they went and dug up the field and didn't find anything. Yeah, there are quite a few locations in suburban Detroit that they've done some digging over the years, all yielding nothing. And there are other rumors he was fed to alligators in Florida. Quite possible. That'd be a good way to get rid of a body. Run through a wood chipper was another one. Yeah. All fargo. Yeah, I think they will never find him. I think I also read that one supposedly reputable Mafia source said, yeah, we killed them and we buried him in a shallow grave nearby. And we were supposed to move it, but we never did. So he's just not too far from the restaurant. They're like dummy. We never thought about that place, but I don't think they'll ever get anything. It's one of those enduring mysteries that is lazy or too lazy to move a body to a better location. Right. Just leave them in the shallow grave. All right. Should we take a break? Yeah, why not? All right, we will come back and talk about more disappearing acts. I love this. What if you were a global bank who wanted to supercharge your audit system, so you tap IBM to UNSILO your data, and with the help of AI, start crunching a year's worth of transactions against thousands of compliance controls. Now you're making smarter decisions, faster operating costs are lower, and everyone from your auditors to your bankers feels like a million bucks. Let's create smarter ways of putting your data to work. IBM. Let's create. Learn more@ibm.com. Hey, everybody. If you want a great quality website, you want to do it yourself with no must and no fuss, then there's nowhere else to look than Squarespace. That's right. Squarespace has every single thing that you need to put together an awesome website. Everything from growing and engaging your audience with email campaigns, collecting donations for your cause through Apple, Pay, Stripe, Venmo, PayPal. Plus, you can also make your website optimized for mobile, which is great for your user on the go. That's right. And if you're into selling stuff, squarespace is everything to sell anything. They have all the tools you need to get your business off the ground. They have ecommerce templates, inventory management, really simple checkout process, and secure payment. So whatever you want to sell, you can sell it on Squarespace. Yes. Don't just take our word for it. Head to squarespace. Comssk and start your free trial today. And then when you're ready to launch, use our offer codessysk, and you'll get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's Squarespace. Comsysk. Squarespace. One of these Chuck we should at least give a shout out to is the three guys who escaped Alcatraz. Oh, yeah. And if you guys are interested in that, go listen to our entire episode on Alcatraz, where I believe we talked about this in depth. I hope so. I'm pretty sure we did, because if not, people are going to be like, or just go watch the great Clint Eastwood movie escape from Alcatraz, because it's pretty darn accurate to the real story. Sure. So we're going to breeze by that one. We can talk about it if you want. I'm endlessly fascinated by it. When we were in San Francisco for our most recent tour for Sketchfest, actually, did you go? No, I ran down to the bay and looked out across it. I was like, I couldn't swim. That no problem. I wanted to go, but you got to get reservations far in advance. Sure. I've never been to Alcatraz. I want to go. Yes. I was like, Let me call and get tickets. And they were like, we've been sold out for weeks. I'd also like to go take a tour of Eastern State Penitentiary, one of those old crazy asylums. I would love to do that. It'd be pretty cool. All right, well, yeah, let's talk about it. Why not Alcatraz? Yeah. Okay. 1962, Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers, Johnny and Clarence, they were bank robbers. Frank Morris is sort of a lifelong crook. That was Clint Eastwood. Yeah. Very super intelligent guy who had escaped from several prisons. And finally they said, you know what? We're going to put you in Alcatraz, because it's inescapable. It's like the Titanic of prison. You saw what happened with that. So they devised a brilliant plan over the course of several months, along with a guy named Alan West, who sadly was left behind. He wouldn't wake up. No, he couldn't fit through. He couldn't get his little vent open. What they did was they carved out a vent over the course of months with, like, these little homemade chisels. He ate too much bread pudding in the meantime, maybe. Jeez. I mean, the guys tried they were trying to kick it out from the other side, and eventually they were like, we got to go do. Yeah. So the plan was, over the course of months, to carve out this space, to get out, work their way through the guts of the prison to the roof, slide down some drain pipes, and then swim away with homemade life vests made out of raincoats that they'd collected and glued together. But didn't they run into, like, some construction or something like that? Just totally threw their plan off, and they had to improvise and go around, and it just was exponentially harder than they thought it was going to be getting out. I believe it. But they made life rats out of raincoats that they sewed together to inflate. Well, I glued them together. Yeah. That's awesome. It is awesome. And they also made bodies well, heads, at least, right? Yeah. Paper mache heads to lay in their bunks. They look like paper machete heads in the light, but when you're walking around at night and it's just sort of tucked into a pillow under some blankies sure. With real human hair from the barber shop, it fooled the guards. Real human hair? Yeah, real human art. Don't they have those on display in Alcatraz still? Oh, I'm sure they do. And here's a neat little fact that I didn't know until my friend Stacey told me. They didn't have cold water in Alcatraz because they didn't want you to be able to acclimate yourself to the frigid bay waters over time. So all the water was warm. Wow. Luxurious. The bay water is about 50 deg. That's like an omni. It is. And they don't know. I mean, the FBI and everyone says, no, they died for sure. The FBI says that about everybody they can't catch. No, they did. There's no way. Just don't bring it up again. Right. Just shut up. They don't think they could have survived the swim. The original plan was to go to Angel Island, go to the opposite side of the island, and then swim to Marin or Marin, I guess, open a coffee shop. I guess so. Immediately, right. When they crossed in Marin County, they were imbued with wealth. I don't know if they made it or not. Apparently, a couple of weeks later, there was a freighter ship that saw a body floating. They didn't report it until October, though. They went from July to October and then said, oh, by the way, we saw body floating that looked like he was wearing prison denims. Right. They finally got to that on their to do list. They're like, oh, yeah, report dead body. Well, it's a freightership. They didn't care. Their laws. Their allegiance is to the sea, not to man on land. And they also found a few pieces of other evidence. They found a life vest with teeth marks near the valve and human teeth marks. Yeah. Human teeth marks? Yeah. Not barracuda. Teeth marks is in someone who was probably holding it in their teeth, trying to blow it up while they were swimming. Where would they have gotten a life vest? I don't know. I think it was one of the homemade ones. Oh, got you. Well, so, I mean, that doesn't mean anything. They could have ditched. That's what I say. The fact that the body was unidentifiable. Yeah. And they never resurfaced. The plan was to rob a store on Angel Island and get clothing. And there were never any robberies that's kind of talked about. That's a little telling. Although they could have been like, I'm too cold to rob anything. Let's just go to Marin and hug. Yes. So who knows? Pretty neat. Pretty neat indeed. When was that? 1962. Yeah. Cool. I think we'll never know. Just like the rest of these unexplained, mysterious disappearances. Should we move on to the Candy Aris? Yeah. Helen Brock. I can't remember where I saw something. I saw, I guess, a documentary on this case. It's amazing. Oh, yeah. It's an amazing true crime cold case, helen Brock's mysterious disappearance. And this our own article gets a little bit wrong, but let's talk about it. Okay? So Helen Brock was the heiress to the Brock Candy fortune because her husband, Frank Brock, was a co founder of the company. And when he died, he left his wife, Helen, I think, basically everything. And she was a very wealthy woman. And she liked to do things like go to the Mayo Clinic to get her annual physical, like Mr. Burns. Although she was nothing like Mr. Burns. From what I understand. She was a very lovable, conscientious, cool person. Okay. But she's very wealthy, so why not go to the Mayo Clinic? That's what I do. Back in 1977, she went to the Mayo Clinic and got a workout. And the last reliable person to see her alive was a woman who was working at the Mayo Clinic gift shop where Mrs. Brock stopped to get a gift for her niece. Yeah. A Mayo Clinic snow globe. Exactly right. And shotglass. Right. I transmitted your license plate. Yeah. What else? Anything else? Spoon. Spoon? Mayo Clinic spoon. People collect those. Single Mayo Clinic sock Puppet. Yeah. Big seller. So she said to the lady, I'm in a hurry. My house, man, is waiting. Houseman was one Jack Matt, and she was never seen again. Matt had dropped her off, obviously, for the outbound flight to Minneapolis. And then he said, no, man, she came back, I picked her up, and then she spent four days, didn't call anyone. But she was here at home, even though there's no evidence to corroborate this. Right. And then he said he dropped her off again at the airport. He had to go to Florida. Right. Where she had a condo. Correct. And it was when she didn't show up in Florida, as planned, that people started noticing she was missing and they called her house and Matlock answered. And two different people gave varying stories about where she was. Did he say? Matla residence. Brock residence. So here's a couple of pinky details. Matt, I think, was the guy. I disagree. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, the people on the original flight, like the flight crew said now, she was never on this plane to begin with. Oh, from the Mayo Clinic back to Chicago. Yeah. Okay, so that stands out as super hinky. Well, he wasn't there then. He was going to pick her up in Chicago. He wouldn't have been in Minneapolis. So if she wasn't on the flight from Minneapolis to Chicago, he wouldn't have had anything to do with that? Seemingly. But why would he say that he picked her up if she didn't arrive? I'm not saying he didn't know what happened, but I don't think he was the one that killed her. Sorry. Just go. Well, he was found out later to have cash 13 grand and checks with the Ford's signature from it wasn't his handwriting and it wasn't hers. That's right. But he's clearly working with someone, so that's where I'm going here. Okay. And her brother, Charles Vorge and Matt Luck, actually burned her diaries after she died. And there's super weird. Well, her brother's explanation was that she was into automatic writing, which is basically where you get a piece of paper and a pen and peyote. Super Victorian, right? Yeah. And you say, oh, spirit, speak through me. Oh, excellent airbag. Let's see what you got. Right. And you just start the spirits. Move your hand. And her brother said she would not have wanted people to see this stuff, so we just burned it. It's like the Ouija writing, right? It's exactly like that, except with a pen. Interesting. So they were just embarrassed and didn't want that to get out. That's what he said. Well, I mean, it's not a crime to destroy your papers. A lot of people made the case that Mark Twain should have destroyed his papers rather than allowing them to be published postumously. I thought you were going to say Mark Twain got rid of her, but that's impossible because it is impossible. You imagine Twain in the think it would have been much the same. Yeah. Whimsical Musings. Yeah. With a Searsucker suit, sharp wit. Yeah. He would have been Tom Wolfe. So there's another guy named Richard Bailey who was a vacuum salesman. Apparently. He was sort of like dirty, rotten scoundrels. He would swindle old ladies out of their dough. I think it was more like American Gigoloe. Well, no, I don't think he was Jiggle owing. I think he was yeah. I thought it just had to do with horses and horse racing. That was his entree. Like, invest in this thoroughbred, give me your dough. But also come and lie down with me. This isn't a sock in my jeans. That's a jiggle of things to say. Okay. So he was eventually pinched for fraud and racketeering, finished a prison, and people thought that he had a role in her disappearance, but he said, no, I didn't. And the judge said, you know what? I think you did. And he said, who cares what you think, judge? Well, the judge said, Well, I'll tell you why you should care, because I'm giving you a 30 year sentence because I suspect that you had something to do with Mrs. Brock's disappearance and likely death. So you think it was him? I do. Although he wrote a book that said he loved her. Yes, he was a jiggler, just a gigolo, but he fell in love with her and his love was sincere and real. And he said that he was going to give the proceeds from his book to her favorite charity, which is an animal welfare charity, and she had her own foundation that she endowed upon her death. She was declared dead seven years later in 1984. Just because what they do when you don't turn up for seven years and people think you're dead. And her endowment basically went toward almost exclusively animal welfare. Well, he had already stolen all of her money when he killed her. Right? Well, that was the thing. So we sold her some bum race horses for 300 grand and they later sold for $1. That's how bad off these racehorses were. He said, buy Limpy Joe. He's a great investment. And they think that he had her whacked because she was going to blow the whistle on them. Interesting. Yeah, that's the theory. All right. And I mean, he's in prison for it right now. He's not in prison for her murder. Although the judge just said, yeah, I gave you a stiff sentence because I think you killed her. Kind of like when OJ. Was sent to prison for armed robbery. Yeah. And kidnapping and all these other things. I think it's the exact same thing. Are you watching the OJ? Show right now? No, I'm waiting until it's done and then I'll start. Is it good liking it? Terrible. Oh, really? Well, terribly awesome. Okay, cool. Yeah, I like that. However, I think I'm bailing on it because after a few episodes, the novelty of it being terribly awesome kind of wore off. Got you. And I'm like I just don't know if I have time to watch something that's good, bad, or bad. I think you don't like it. Too short. I like it, though. You never know. I'll try it for sure. It's bad casting. Cuba gooding Jr. Is he not a good O. J. Well, he's too nice. He's small. Like, he doesn't look like a football player. Got you. Even though he played with Jerry Maguire. Yeah, he did. He played a wide receiver, though, OJ. What was he? He's a running. Back, was he? Yeah. You got to be a little stockier than that. Bigger. And, boy, Malcolm Jamal Warner is AC, and he is way over the top. Is he really? Yeah, but it's worth it for just to watch Travolta. That's something else. He plays Robert Shapiro, right? Oh, does he? I can't wait to see this now, man. Yeah, you should definitely check out. I'm psyched. The first one, at least. Well, since we're so psyched, we should take another break. What do you think? Let's do it. Okay. 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. Hey, everybody. If you want a great quality website, you want to do it yourself with no must and no fuss. Then there's nowhere else to look. In Squarespace. That's right. Squarespace has every single thing that you need to put together an awesome website. Everything from growing and engaging your audience with email campaigns, collecting donations for your cause through Apple, Pay, Stripe, Venmo, PayPal. Plus, you can also make your website optimized for mobile, which is great for your user on the go. That's right. And if you're into selling stuff, square space is everything to sell anything. They have all the tools you need to get your business off the ground. They have ecommerce templates, inventory management, really simple checkout process, and secure payment. So whatever you want to sell, you can sell it on Squarespace. Yeah. Don't just take our word for it. Head to squarespace. comSK, and start your free trial today. And then when you're ready to launch, use our offer code, S YSK, and you'll get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace. Comssysk. How about a quick one? George Washington's teeth. Yeah. Here today, gone tomorrow. Yeah. So they were in a storage room at the Smithsonian. They were on loan since 1965 from the University of Maryland Dental School. Right? Yeah. Washington had terrible teeth like me. That was his cross to bear in his life. Right. Yeah. By the time he was inaugurated, he only had one tooth remaining. So he very famously had full dentures in his mouth. Right. And the providence of those dentures is up for debate. They're clearly not wooden teeth. No, that's an old wise sale. But there's things like ivory, gold yeah. Real human tea. Real human tea. That's where the debate comes up, because some people are like, these were forcibly taken from his slaves, and other people are like, they might be slave teeth, but he probably bought them. If you really look at his character, over the course of his lifetime, he most likely wouldn't have had his slaves teeth forcibly extracted. He probably would have compensated for it. Yeah. If you look at contemporary ads at the time, that was a common practice to buy teeth from people who are willing to give them up. Although I'm quite sure that somewhere in the US. Dentures were made out of forcibly extracted slavery, which is, like, one of the most horrific things I've ever heard of. So in the end, Washington ended up having four well, probably more than four, but there are four existing sets left on display, and one of which was at the Smithsonian until they disappeared from a storage room where only employees had access. Double locked storage. Yeah. It very much seems like an inside job. Almost invariably. Yeah. But it gets a little more interesting because half of them showed back up. Yeah. The lower half, I think. I believe it was the lower half. Yeah. Like, a year later, they just suddenly reappeared out of nowhere. And they think that rather than sell these on the market to somebody like Steven Spielberg or something, they melted them down for their gold, which is terrible. Sure. Yeah. I'd rather have some rich jerk have the full set and just know that they're out there still. Right. Then have them melted down for gold. Right. They're like, you can get that anywhere. Yeah. That would be very sad indeed. And to this day, they still don't know where the top set remains missing. Yeah. It might be someone's wedding ring right now. Wouldn't that be weird? That would be really weird. Yeah. Flight 19. Are we moving on? Yeah, I love this one. We covered this one a little bit in the Bermuda Triangle episode. Yeah. I remember not liking that episode for some reason. I don't know. It was basically like, look at all this hokum. Yeah. Yeah. We spent the whole time explaining why that it's not a real thing. Okay, well, maybe I did like it then. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because it's not a real thing. No, it's not. There's not some mysterious there has been a lot of weird disappearances in that area. That's indisputed. Indisputable. Don't even try. Flight 19 and December 1945, there were five planes TBM Avengers, which were torpedo bombers. They took off from Fort Lauderdale on a training mission. Supposed to be a couple of hours. Don't go more than 150 miles, guys, and just come on back and we'll have some hot soup waiting on you. Right. Or maybe it's Fort Lauderdale. Some gazpacho. Yeah. Or Cuban black bean soup, maybe. Yum. Yeah. But they never came back. No, they didn't. Back in Fort Lauderdale. I think of the Fort Lauderdale Hollywood Airport, which is what it is now. Back then it was like Fort Lauderdale. Right. Yeah. They were waiting anxiously for them, and they never came back. Although they did get a radio transmission from the guy who was the trainer. Yeah, the flight leader. He said, Both my compasses are out for some reason, and we are in big trouble. We have no idea where we are. And they went back and forth with the tower for a while, trying to figure out where they were. And they changed courses a few times, and then that was the last anybody heard of them. Yeah. So they sent a plane after them, a Mariner aircraft with 13 men aboard. So they already lost 14, I believe, from these other flights. Okay. Five planes. And then they sent another plane. Right. Sent another plane. That one didn't come back. We need a triangle. Well, that one is no big mystery. They attributed that to an explosion. So they think it actually exploded. Well, what made it explode? Aliens. But it didn't mysteriously disappear. Okay. The other ones definitely did mysteriously disappear. And most people thought that they just went further and further out into the Atlantic, that at one point they were over the Bahamas or Bermuda, which they mistook for the Florida Keys. Right. Which is not the same thing. No, it's not. And if you use that mistakenly as your bearings, you're going to be in big trouble. And if they ended up just running out of fuel and crashed in the Atlantic but in the last year or two, a couple of independent searchers who had this same theory independently came together and said, you know what there was in 1989, a Broward County Sheriff's Department helicopter spotted the wreckage of one of these planes, a TBM Avenger, in the Everglades next to Jimmy Hoffa's body. Right. Interesting. And they said it was so far off from where they thought Flight 19 had been that it couldn't have been one of them. Then they went back and looked at the records, and they were like, well, the only missing Avenger planes are from Flight 19, so it has to be one of them, basically. And they found an aircraft carrier off of Daytona, had tracked six unidentified planes that night turning into the Florida mainland. So they think rather than going out to sea, they turned inland and didn't realize they were inland because the weather was so bad. They were way off course. Right. And at least one of them crashed in the Everglades. Wow. Yeah. The only thing I knew about this previous to this research was the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Oh, really? They showed up in that? Yeah. Remember, there was I never saw the whole thing. Oh, man. It still holds up. Really? Yeah. Like, really? Spielberg knows what he's doing. Yes. And the special effects even still look pretty decent considering how long ago it was they found the plains in the desert. And the idea was that the aliens had gotten a hold of the guys because at the end of the movie, the big mothership lands and they lower the thing. George Clinton comes out not George Clinton, but all these people come out and people abducted over the years. Right. And the crews of Flight 19 came out still the same age as when they disappeared in their flight uniforms. Nice. And they were like, wow, that was weird. They're like, what a night. And then they went, oh, my God, it's Richard Dreyfus. I love Jaws. Yeah, they didn't say that. Did you see Mato? I watched a little bit of it. Was that any good? Did you watch it? It didn't catch my attention. Yeah, I did watch Jaws again the other night for the 80th time. Sure. That'll be great 100 years from now. And I can watch it every single time I get right back into it. Yeah. Amazing. Mary Celeste. I thought we'd cover this, but we haven't. No. This isn't super mysterious to me. What do you think happened? Well, here's the backstory in case there's anyone on Earth that doesn't know about the Ghost ship. It was in 1872. In December, there was a British vessel about 400 miles east of the Azaus Islands, 1000 miles west of Portugal. And they saw the ship, the Mary Celeste, and they went, oh, my God, look at that ship. We know that ship. Let's go over to it and say hello. But there was nobody on board now, and they knew that it shouldn't be where it was and that there was something up because the crew that spotted it would you pronounce the E and the I'd pronounce that the Degradia. Oh, nice. Okay. But it's a British vessel, so that's probably wrong. Okay. But still, they could have it named like that. So the de Grazia said, well, Mary Celeste left eight days ahead of us. It should be, like, all the way to Genoa basically by now, and it shouldn't be there. When they left, there was no one on board. But there wasn't any obvious reason for there to be no one on board. It was ghost ship, which is awesome in and of itself. I mean, it is fairly mysterious because here's some of the facts. There were 1701 barrels of industrial alcohol on board. Only nine were empty. Because there was one theory that the crew got drunk and they're industrial alcohol and had a mutiny. Right. Apparently, that doesn't hold up. It's not a likely story. Now, they think the nine barrels, they were made of a different kind of oak than all the others. And it was a leaky oak. Right. So they say it probably just leaked out. Sure. What else? Food and water. They had plenty of it still on board. Six months worth left on board. Yeah. And I think a woman named Mary Thurgood created a documentary about this and really investigated it. And these are mostly her findings, and they're pretty recent. But one of the big weird mysteries is that the lifeboat was gone. Right. Kind of weird. I think it's because they got on it and left. There was a pump disassembled and there's a little bit of water. But upon inspection, the Degradia found, like, now this thing is totally seaworthy, she can make it all the way to Genoa and we'll even tow her. And they towed her to Portugal, I believe. Right, yeah. But here's the thing. Apparently the hall where the flooding was, was so crowded that the captain, Benjamin Spooner Briggs, couldn't get down there, so he didn't know how much water. Right. So one of the theories is that he thought they'd taken on way more water than they had, and his family was on board, including his little two year old daughter. Right. And he said, no, let's just get the heck out of here. I'm not taking any chances. Which is a big chance that didn't pay off in and of itself. Yeah, but the abandoned ship is the last resort. Sure you don't just say, oh, I think we might be in trouble, let's get on out of here? On the One Life boat for all of us. Yes. And in the middle of the Atlantic. You're not going to do that. What do you think happened? I think that's what happened. I think that he thought they had taken way more water. He had his family aboard, they had just been through a bad storm, and he saw the mainland with his own eyeballs and said, this is our chance, let's not screw around here. I don't want to sink with mainland in sight. But the thing is, the mainland wasn't in sight. The Azores are, like, in the middle of nowhere. They're like, halfway between Europe and North America. Well, that's where they found it eventually. But supposedly he saw the mainland. I think so. And that's why I think that he just said, all right, it's time to go. So there's long been a suspicion that the crew of the De Gracia were the ones who did away with the crew of the mayor last yeah. When they go ship? When we found it. Right. So the reason they would have done this is because under maritime law, if you find a ship that's insured, the insurer has to pay you a salvage fee insured amount. Which they did. Yeah, they did. But they only got one 6th of the insured amount, which suggests that the British maritime Admirality Court believed that they were crooked, that they'd done something to the mary Celeste. We shall never know. No. Unsolved mystery. Yes. In fact, I was going to say we should do an episode on that in full, but I think maybe we should just refer people to stuff you missed in history class, because they did a great episode on that. Yes. Mary Celeste. So we got one more, Chuck. All right, this might be my favorite one of all. I had never heard of this pro basketball player who disappeared without a trace. I had neither. His name is John Brisker. Right. That's right. He's from Detroit, and he went to the University of Toledo, actually. And the thing is, while he was at UT, apparently he'd had a racially harmonious upbringing in Detroit and got to Toledo and experienced racism first hand. Interesting. And grew up fairly bitter from it. He had a reputation of having a short fuse after that point, which he didn't have before growing up. Yeah. He went on to play pro ball with the Aba, the Pittsburgh Condors, and then eventually made his way to Seattle with the SuperSonics. And he was good, too, with the Condors. Over three years, he averaged 26 points a game. Yeah. First year it was 21. The second and third year, it was about 30 points a game for the year. Yes. That's amazing. Even for the Aba. Sure. I'm not knocking the aba. They were great, actually. Was there an Atlanta team in the Aba? No, it was always NBA. Where did Atlanta get its team from? Why do I want to say Milwaukee? That was the Braves. Yeah. Jeez, I can't remember. And the thrusters were the flames. Right? Well, no, we had the Flames and they just went away. And then we created the Thrashers. The Flames went out. They went out. No, the stuff the Thresholds went to Canada or something. Yeah, they went to a different city. Got. You don't have hockey in Atlanta. I think we've learned our lesson. There's a lot of transplants, but apparently not enough. Yeah. So back to Brisker. He eventually played for the Sonics, and after that he said, I'm going to open a restaurant that failed. And then in 1978, he said, you know what? I'm going to Africa and I'm going to open an import export business. Yeah, but he wasn't just going to Africa. He went to Africa under the invitation of the Ugandan dictator, EDI Amin, who loved basketball. Loved basketball. And I guess I'd heard of John Brisker. And John Brisker said, sure, man, let's hang out. Kind of like Rodman with Kim Jong UN. Yeah. And he went and hung out with Ed. I mean, definitely. And I guess about six weeks after he made it to Uganda, he placed a call to his girlfriend and the mother of one of his children, Melvis diane Williamson. Right. Yeah. And he said, hey, baby, we are going to get back together. I'm going to have you guys come over here soon. I'm just laying the foundation. It's all good. I'll see you guys. I'll call you in a little bit. And that was the last anybody ever heard from him. Yes. And there are many theories on this. One is, well, Amin figures in a couple of ways. One is that maybe he ran afoul of Amin and was killed by he and his soldiers. The other is that he was killed by anti Amin revolutionaries because he was pals with Amin, and he was there when the Amin regime was toppled in 1978. That's when he was there. And another one that I don't think is true at all is that he eventually made his way to Jonestown and was part of the Jim Jones Suicide Massacre of 900 people. That one actually has more legs than it appears at first. He had a great aunt who was there who tried to get him and other family members to come join her in Jonestown. All right, so we'll give that a try. So it's not just totally random, but it probably didn't happen. I think they can't find any real evidence that that happened. His brother Ralph said up until he was declared dead in I think his brother Ralph held the idea that his brother just assumed another identity to get away from debt because he had, like, 20 grand in taxes just from that restaurant alone. Yeah. That needs to be a viable option in life. Just like your identity. Yeah. In fact, did we ever do a show on that? Yeah. Okay. That was a long time ago. That one might need a dusting off. I think the answer now is no, you can't. Yeah, exactly. Is that it, sir? I think that's it. Man unsolved mysteries that may stay unsolved forever. We're Robert Stack. Thank you for joining us. Wait. I'll be Dennis Farena. You be Robert Stack. Brushed his soul. Both their souls. Dennis Frieda is dead now. Yeah, it stinks. He's one of my favorites. Yes, he was good. Remember Crime Story? 80s Vegas show? Yeah, I don't think I ever saw that. Good one. But he's Midnight Run, one of my all time favorite comedies. He figures heavily into that. And out of Sight, a great movie from Steven Soderberg, George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. Philippez, fantastic movie. He's in that, too. I like him as a law and order man myself. Right. He's a former, like, real cop. I think I could totally see that. Well, if you want to know more about Dennis Farena, type that name into the search bar. HowStuffWorks.com. And since I said search bar is time for listener mail oh, no, my friend. It is time for administrative detail. I can hear the drumming bass kicking in right about now. That's right. So this is when we thank people for their lovely gestures of kindness by sending us neat things, oftentimes handmade. Yeah, for sure, man. So, you're ready to get started? Yeah. I'll go ahead and start with our pals Liz and Jen. A Little Bit sweet. They consistently send us candy every year from their homemade they're shopping Brooklyn, New York. It's all delicious. We've talked about them for years, and they are genuine pals now, and just great ladies and support. Little bit sweets is all I've got to say. Yes. L-I-D-D-A-D-I-T sweets. Correct. You will love it. Let's see. I want to thank Eddie Pray Livingston, who gave me at our Atlanta show as we were leaving the stage, she handed me a book. And the book was a copy of Paper Moon. That's right. Actually addie pray the movie that Paper Moon is based on. If you'll notice, she has the same name as the title character. That's because her grandfather, Joe David Brown, wrote the book. Pretty amazing. Yeah. So thank you very much for that. I can't wait to read it because that is famously one of, if not your favorite movies, right? It is tied with the shining. Oh, wow. Talk about two different movies. I love that movie. Burning Hand. Leather Goods sent us these awesome leather notebook cases. Very cool. They hold like a mini moles. Yeah, they have all kinds of cool products. I would highly advise you check that out. Douglas Gibson sent us a copy of Tales of the Fifth Grade Night, the kids book that he wrote, which is awesome. Thank you. Uncle John's, Bathroom Reader. As always. They have sent us stuff over the years. When they found out that Josh was a big fan yeah. They were delighted. And now we have a kinship with one another. Yes, we do. And remember, Gordon, one of the founders of Uncle John's the Bathroom Readers Institute. That's right. Was on our Barbie episode. That's right. Where we got into a shouting match at some point. Let's see. Kurt Schroeder from the Origami Brain Injury Rehab Center in Mason, Michigan, sent us some cool puzzles and books that are awesome and mind bending. Thank you for those, Jeff. Thank you for the tick combs. The patent pending tick combs. Well, by now, this is so long ago, the patent's probably been granted. Yeah. So if you have a dog, you can go to Tickcomb.com and they are pretty awesome. And they are 3D printed, even. Yeah. Alex Belonya sent us the Joy of Christmas CDs. His CD of him singing Christmas standards. Thank you very much for that, Alex. I love Christmas music. Sarah at the Beijing Normal University, not the Abnormal University in Beijing, the much more highly reputable normal one. She sent us this beautiful stuff. You should know. Paper cuts and the charms, right? Yes. Very nice. Tyler Murphy for not just the North Dakota wine, but tons of other things. Great gifts over the years. And also steady, unflagging support for us through emails and thoughts and tweets, all that stuff. Thanks a lot more. That was a great fighting a good fight by being a public school teacher. Yeah, that's right. Daniel from Techniflow for the Soundstill series. Necklaces. Yeah, they're awesome. Yeah, they're really cool. You can find those at Technifflow. That is Techni flowdesign.com. Or just go to Etsy where you can find all this stuff, usually. Yeah. Talia, send us a postcard from Canada. Lisa Harris sent us some banana candy. Thanks, guys. We got another postcard. An invitation, actually, from Emily Crawford to Stan Hewitt Hall in Akron, Ohio. And Stan Hewitt is a very famous place in Akron. It's sort of like their biltmore house. Oh, yeah. And it's gorgeous. And sadly, Emily's parents moved down here, so I'm not going to Akron much anymore. Well, we could still go for Stan Huart Hall, right? Reed Wilson of Reed Wilsonsign, which you can find at Reed Wilson Designsigncom. Send us some really awesome doormats and coasters. Oh, yeah, the good stuff, man. Go check it out. Reedwilsondesign.com. He's got a lot of really cool ideas. Abby sent us a letter and a drawing, and she wrote in to let us know how to pronounce basalt correctly. Am I saying it right? I don't remember. I think we said basalt. Basalt. And I think it's Basalt. Yeah. And happy birthday, Abby. Good luck in high school. Yes, for both of us. Alan. Barrington Hughes sent us Reaper sauce from Pucker butt based on our chili pepper episode. I have not gone anywhere near it. I tasted it and it burned a hole clean through my tongue. So if you're into the really hot stuff and you think you have what it takes, I dare you to give it a shot. Oh, yeah. Okay, whitley, thank you for the pencil colored arts. Really cool. And we're guessing that it's Darwin and McCarthy. That's our best guess. Okay. And I think we're right. Dawson's Hot sauce from Hamilton, Ontario, canada sent us some really great hot sauces. My favorite was the garlic and jalapeno. That was good stuff. Carol Chan. Thank you for the rat race. Millionaire, I guess. Written by your husband, Michael Hong. And also the three knitted rats. Yes. Who doesn't love a knitted rat? No one. That's why she included them. Agreed. And then Robin and Erin sent us the St. Louis Arch postcard. Thanks for that guy. Alison McDougal, thank you for the CDs of your husband's one man band. Who also doesn't love a one man band. You can listen to that@mcdougallmusic.com with two L's and just MC, not M-A-C. Yes, of course. It's a traditional spelling. I think that's it, man. I think we're essentially caught up on administrative details. So, guys, for now, we need more stuff. Thanks, as always, to everyone who's kind enough to take the time. Oh, hey, thanks to Nate today at H and F Burger downstairs for copying my lunch. That's very nice. I went down there to eat a meal and he comes by and goes, charles W, Chuck Bryant. And I went, I know what that means. Here's another subpoena. But he's the GM at home, and Finch, their restaurant group, and I went to leave and they were like, no, it's on. Nice. Did he send you a burger for me? No, but I would advise you going down there and just like just kind of scan around the counter, raining your neck around. Stand under the TV with me on it. Right? Yeah. Thanks, Nate. He didn't even know we were in this building. Oh, yeah. Listen more closely, Nate. Yeah, that's what I said we talk about it basically all the time. He won't even hear this. If you want to get in touch with us, you can just send us high. You don't have to send us anything. You can say hi, but not to say hi, because it's been done. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffyshenow. You can send us an email to stuff podcast@howstepworks.com. And in the meantime, you can hang out with us at our homeownerwebstiesnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. 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.com." | ||
4416dc9c-53a3-11e8-bdec-9766e278e704 | Origami: Folding Goodness | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/origami-folding-goodness | Origami is an amazing art that consists of making folds in paper to create something beautiful. Learn all about it today. | Origami is an amazing art that consists of making folds in paper to create something beautiful. Learn all about it today. | Tue, 15 Sep 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=15, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=259, tm_isdst=0) | 45282192 | audio/mpeg | "Hello, everybody. We have a book coming out. It's called Stuff You Should Know colon an Incomplete Compendium of Mostly Interesting Things. And you can preorder it now. That's right. It would mean a lot if you supported this book. You're gonna love it. It's really great. It looks great, it smells great. Eight. It reads great. And how about this? Why don't you support indiebook stores by going to Indybound.org? Or even better, why don't you support black owned businesses? Because we set up a little link bit Lee Syskblm, and order a book from those fine folks, why don't you? That's right. So stuff you should know colon, an Incomplete Companion of Mostly Interesting Things is coming soon to change your life forever. For the better. 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 right there and Jerry's other somewhere. And stuff. You should know the fold and tuck edition. So Jerry's in her office now. I'm in the stuff you should know. Studio. That's right. I'm in Florida. You're at your home studio or a home studio. Right. You got like eight of them. Which room is closest to me, baby? I'll just go in there. Where we're recording from today. Man. And now Jerry is like a ghost haunting the computer in here, recording it remotely. Right. Amazing. What's that? Yeah, she's like a ghost. You said it best. She just texted me two minutes in and said, your levels are good. That's great. Go back to sleep. Chairs sounds about right. So I was talking to Jerry earlier, and she just reminded me we're talking to origami today. She just reminded me that on my first trip to Japan, I brought her back a paper origami crane and that she still has it. And I was thinking about that trip, Chuck, because on that trip, you took me to Japan. Remember when you guys liked each other, you and Jerry? Yeah, we still do. It's that crane that's keeping us friends. That's right. But on that trip, one of the places you and you took me was Hiroshima, right? Sure. And it is one of the neatest places ever been. I know I've talked about it before, but one of the things that you'll see there are just mounds and mounds of origami cranes. Like cranes. Like the bird, basically, the quintessential origami model. Not like building cranes. This is not what they're folding. You never can't tell these days. Bob the Builder had a pretty good run for a while there, so it could have been that's true. But apparently one of the reasons you see those cranes is because there was a little girl from Hiroshima named Sadako Sasaki. Oh, man. The story. Yeah, I know. It's very sad. So she was, I think, two, when the US. Dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, and she was exposed to radiation at that tender young age and developed leukemia, and she died at age twelve. But before she died, she started this project of folding 1000 paper cranes in origami, which was kind of a long standing thing that was associated with like, good luck or honor or dignity. And hers was that there's another one that if you complete 1000 cranes, you have a wish. And so this little girl, Sidako Sasaki, her wish was for world peace, but she died before she could complete the cranes, 1000 cranes. And that is upsetting. But to end it on a more heartwarming note, her classmates got together and folded the remaining cranes in her honor and they were buried with her, which is at least a slightly uplifting ending. Right. So when you go to Hiroshima today at this peace memorial that they've built, like a whole section of the city where the bomb went off, has just been turned into this anti nuclear, anti war peace memorial. There's just tons of cranes that were created by schoolchildren, kind of in honor of Sadako Sasaki, and for this wish for world peace. And if you stepped out of the studio and followed me into the living room, you would see 1000 paper cranes that you folded just for me too. You know, who here at work has done that? Who? Yes, you. Which one of your colleagues do you think would do this? I don't know, man. I honestly don't know. There's so many varied, complex, rich people that we work with that I can't even begin to guess. I'm going to hazard a guess and say Ben. I could see Ben doing that. What about the other Ben? Probably not. Okay. Pam Peacock. Okay. Yeah, makes sense. Our graphic designer, who is an artist, obviously. And I asked Pam actually if I could read her Facebook post when she completed it because I think this is instructive on and you tell me whether it jibes with Yumi's experience. Okay. Because it sort of is instructive on the art of origami. And it's more than just folding paper, it is meditative and it can be relaxing and healing and all those things. So Pam posted a photo of the final project and said, this is what 1000 origami cranes looks like in a pile of my coffee table tonight. I met the goal on August 2, 2018, to fold 1000 cranes within one year's time. There were several reasons I wanted to take on the challenge. The meditative quality of folding origami, to practice dexterity and fine motor skills. The fun and making a flat piece of paper into something dimensional and new, to make a whole bunch of something. There's a certain satisfaction in that. But the biggest reason was to cultivate more discipline within myself. To commit to a long term, ongoing project and see it through to completion is a big deal for me. And she goes on to say she has a pretty long history about getting pumped up, about a project and then abandoned it. And she found with two months left, she only had I'm sorry, she had 500 left to go. Ten months? Well, I think she just took some time off. Sure. Well, yeah, that's how you're supposed to do it. You're not supposed to just sit there and do it in one fell swoop, but kind of misses a bunch of the point. Yeah. She said that she went several months without it, realized she had a couple of months and the clock was ticking. And she said, I made the decision to recommit and push myself instead of letting it go, like so many other things. I know I'll still struggle with those issues, but as an exercise growth, I feel like I've leveled up a bit and continue applying these strength and skills to my art, personal and professional lives. Very nice. And she's like, and check out my finger muscles. That too ripped. Yeah. Yummy's middle name is Sticktoitiveness. So I don't think she benefited in that sense, but there's definitely, like, a meditative aspect to it. When she was doing it for me, it was like I thought it was very sweet. And then the more I learned about it, the sweeter I realized how it was. I mean, to do that for somebody is pretty cool. And to do it for yourself, too, like Pam did, is pretty neat as well. I think it was also for Yummy. Yeah, probably. Yeah. I'm sure she got a tremendous amount out of it, too, but it was one of those things where she just kind of work on it when she felt like it. There wasn't any rush or anything like that. So it did have a kind of a meditative thing for her, for sure. I used to think Stick to it was a weird middle name, but when I saw it written down, like, in the context of her name, it just I don't know. It looks great. You're like, I've been pronouncing that, Alice all these years. That was so weird. So Pam said something that I saw other people mention, too, about Origami, is that it's transformative, like, she's taking a piece of paper and transforming it into something. And there's this really amazing so there's a definite Zen quality to Origami paper folding. Right? And there's a documentary out there called between the Folds, and it's, of course, a PBS documentary, but it has this kind of Zen vibe to it, too. It's really mellow and low key, but some of the stuff they're talking about and showing in there is just nuts. And I'll talk about it from time to time, but there's this one guy in there named Michael A. Fosse, and he describes Origami as a metamorphic type of art where with painting, you're adding paint. So it's an additive kind of art with sculpting from, like, marble. It's a subtractive art with paper folding. And origami you're taking the same thing and it's the same thing that is the finished product. You're not adding to it or subtracting to it's still just a piece of paper, but you're transforming it into something else. And that is kind of the essence of Origami itself. Yeah, this one was one that I was so sure that we had done it before because it's just smacks of stuff you should know. We'd love to cover Japanese topics, first of all. But I don't know, it just felt like, surely we've done this. And I had to look. I looked probably five different ways just to make sure that we hadn't done it. What kind of smart way would we title this? Well, that's what I thought that was. My fear was that it would be like, called Folding Madness or something stupid like that. Did you search folding madness? No, I just made that up. What if that's the one that we already released? It did seem really familiar, but I think I'm probably just thinking about Bonsai, maybe, which I think is similar in a way, and not just because they're both Japanese disciplines. But I feel like the meditative quality and the care and the precision and the spiritual aspect, I think they have a lot of overlap there. One of the big differences, though, is that Origami doesn't involve plant torture like Bonsai does. Well, in Bonsai, there's no paper torture involved. That's true. That's true. So when we talk about Origami, we're actually talking about this, that is technically a subset of this larger thing that actually grew out of Origami and ended up forming this kind of umbrella art form called paper folding, appropriately enough. But Origami, everybody kind of associates that with Japan. And the weird thing is, when we talk about Origami, which, by the way, we haven't really said it, but it's taking usually one sheet of paper and folding it in certain ways so that it becomes some other representation of something else or a shape or something other than that. But the point of Origami is that this shape or this new representation of, like, an animal or a person or something, it's all made just by a single sheet of paper. Typically unfolding that paper. That's the whole key. Yes. And one of the other keys is that you're not glowing things, you're not cutting things. It's really just folding. And it can be very basic. I tried my hand at it today just to make some very basic things. And I definitely get the meditative aspects, although I was just doing it to try and do something sort of quickly for work and not in the style that you would normally do Origami. Sure. I could see how if you applied that at your house, put on some good music, maybe turn the lights down a little bit, shut the door, keep your family far, far away and your animals far, far away. So I could see how it could accomplish that goal for me, I might start doing it some. I hadn't thought about keeping the family far, far away because you mean when she was folding that 1000 cranes, I'd be like, what number are you on now? What number are you on now? Every time she folded a new one. Yes. She probably was just an autopilot. What you doing over there? Is this a crane too? Are you making another crane? Yeah, that would drive me nuts. Yeah. So we should probably go over a few of the terms. The term itself, origami they say, comes from oru, which means the fold. Pretty smart. And then kami, which is paper. So orukami apparently was the original term for it. And it kind of, I guess, just became origami, which as far as I could see, it's not actually a word, it's kind of an offshoot of oru and kami. Yeah. And if you go to you can make origami out of anything. They talk about sticky notes and just copy paper. But you can actually buy kami kami online. If you want to go into an art store these days, it might not be so easy to go into a store, but that's what it might be called. There are other kinds of paper that we'll talk about later, but paper is what you need if you want to be a paper folder. You don't need a bunch of other stuff, which is very loy art form. It's super cool in that way. And what you end up with is called a model. I guess you could call it an art piece or something if you're a little highflutin. But they're really just called models. Yes. Any finished origami product is called the model. So this article says you need two things for origami. You need a sheet of paper and some imagination. But I would beg to differ. You don't even need imagination because there's so many what are called origami designs out there that are basically step by step illustrations of the different folds you need to make. So if you want to, say, make an origami donkey, as long as you have the paper in one of these designs, you don't have to have any imagination whatsoever. Yeah, and when I was first reading this too, I thought, well, you need paper and fingers. But I realized that was quite ableist, actually, because there's actually a style of origami from a British man named John Smith in the late 70s called pure land, or pure origami that is very basic and was created in part so people who had some sort of physical impairment could still realize the joy and the meditative qualities of folding paper. I saw that too. That was the one that appeals to me the most, because it's so simple. Yeah, same here. Also, Chuck, did you know that the world's greatest archer was born with no arms? I think we talked about that, right? I don't know. George thing. No, no, definitely not? No, because I just saw it this past Sunday, so it's not possible. We did. You just had a memory from the future. Pretty impressive. I'm in the Christopher Nolan movie. I can't wait. But I have to say, man, I am very disappointed to see movies starting to come out on the trailer saying, only in theaters. I didn't realize we were at that point again yet. Well, I mean, his new movie Tenant, it was one of the big ones back in the early spring when they were like, he's going to put it out in theaters. Even if he has to bump it a month or two. He's not going to do an at home thing. He's not going to wait until next year. And I think they're doing, like, pretty big time spacing and stuff. But I ain't going to a movie theater new, and it's one of my favorite places to go. I know. Like we talked about the other day in Sneezing, how it's just so great to go see a movie in the middle of the day. Yeah. Can you imagine seeing a movie now and you hear someone sneeze? I would be out of there so fast, I just start crying on the way to the movie theater. I would not be at all comfortable about that right now. Actually, I think we should probably take a break. We've been yammering for 15 minutes. No, we made it through the first two paragraphs. So we'll come back after this and we'll talk about paper. Very key to origami right after this. All right. I teased paper. You did? Paper doesn't like to be teased. Paper did not like that. I thought about you earlier, by the way. Sidebar. I was watching some old Mitch Hedburgh stuff, and I immediately was like, oh, man, Josh would love these. Somebody wrote in to say, you guys, have you heard about was it based on a listener mail? No, I don't know how I think it was just in my feed on my Facebook page, and I don't know what popped up. It was so good. His joke about the belt and the belt loops, I don't know about that one. What is it? The belt is holding up the pants, but the belt loops hold up the belt. Who's the real hero here? That guy was priceless. So good paper is what you're going to need if you want to practice. Origami and China invented paper in about 105 Ad. But it was a luxury item. They weren't so much into folding it or at least into artwork. They might have folded letters, or maybe they just scrolled. At that point, I thought that they folded stuff into, like, gold paper, gold nuggets, and then set them on fire as offering to ancestors. So maybe proto origami yeah, definitely proto. But in the 6th century, buddhist monks introduced paper to Japan. It was pretty rare and expensive here as well, and was used for special occasions and stuff like that. But as paper got a little more ubiquitous, then they decided that they could start folding it in interesting ways. And it wasn't a waste. Right. And it was affordable, I guess. Yeah, as it became more affordable, folding became a lot more widespread. And as it became more widespread, people started doing kind of interesting things with it, like you're saying, at first it was just kind of reserved for special occasions, like weddings or there's one called the Slide. No shite. S-H-I-D-E-I was thinking of sharde, and it's like a zigzag pattern that they use to kind of denote religious places or altars or something like that. And then somebody said, well wait, you can make a frog out of this. Check this out. And I think Origami kind of took off. And that's how it stayed, at least in Japan for several centuries, where they knew how to make a kite, they knew how to make a box, they knew how to make cranes. Cranes were huge. Sure. And in fact, one of the first books on Origami was called Folding 1000 Cranes. Let's see, samba, zuru, orikata 1000 Crane Folding. So that was a big deal already, all the way back in the 18th century. But finally in the, I believe the 19th 37, there was a guy whose name was Akira Yoshizawa. And you cannot talk about origami or paper folding, or paper or folding or Japan or shoes without mentioning Akira Yoshizawa. This guy was he single handedly took what it was a centuries old school children's craft by this time, by the 1930s, rolled around that had been static for centuries, and said, I'm going to turn this into an art form. And he did, yeah, big time. And by this point it was widely referred to as origami. I think in the late 1700s, it was still called Orikata, and that was from that book, about 1000 cranes. But by this time it was Origami. And he was a laborer for most of his life and he was a hobbyist as far as origami went. But he started writing out these diagrams and basically sort of these how tos. And if you've ever looked at an origami book or something online, if you don't know how to do it, these very simple depending on the ultimate model that you want to end up with these diagrams that you can just follow along these lines and fold and just kind of copy what you're seeing. And he was the first person to do this and eventually published these in the 1950s in books. And it was a really big deal. It was already a popular thing in Japan previous to that. It was actually in Spain and some other parts of Europe, thanks to the Silk Road. But it really sort of popularized it worldwide, I think after his book. Yeah, well, even before then, I think there was a magazine that celebrated the new year by commissioning him to do, like, the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac in origami. They put it on their cover, and so you can imagine, for Japan, everything that had to do with origami was like, look at this kite that our kid made, and now it's hanging on our refrigerator to the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac. And these things actually look kind of like a monkey, and the fox looks amazing. And what this guy did is completely blew everybody away. And very shortly after that, he devised that system, started having exhibitions around the world, and became, like, this revered master of origami, like the first true origami artist, the one who said, you can make an art form out of this. And he decided to live like this kind of poverty I don't want to say poverty stricken, but poverty adjacent. Poverty adjacent life. Very nice. Chuck where he supported himself selling soup door to door. He sold something called sukhadani, which is like a kind of a seaweed condiment that you put on rice. He sold that door to door, and he just made enough money to support his habit of origami. That's what all he wanted to do. But what's amazing about him is he was like, the preeminent origami artist for decades. He made at least 50,000 different models, and he just look him up right now. Akira Yoshizawa and he never sold a single one of them. He would lend him out for exhibitions. He would give them his gifts, but he never made a dime off of his origami. Yeah, and he's one of those that his reputation reached a point where he literally could have gotten rich selling his models in the end. Oh, yeah, for sure. But he just wasn't about that. I love it. Very cool. I was, like, very origami esque. Oh, yeah, totally. He's like, I'm not going to sell this stuff. No, that's not the point. They're like, what about ten grand for that rhinoceros? Meet me in the back room. Some of those animals, I mean, not just from him, but when you look up, you know, kind of the most amazing origami. And there are a lot of animals we'll talk about that, but it's really just astounding it is astounding one of the ways that he was able to take origami from a kite. And I know I keep going back to a kite, but one of the base forms, kind of where it was at, taking it from a kite to, like he very famously made this gorilla. I think it's a gorilla that you almost always see in the background behind them. It's either a gorilla or tyrannosaurus rex. I thought you'd be like, yeah, it's either a gorilla or a car. Right? But when he makes something, you know exactly what it is. But one of the things about his particular kind of art was that it wasn't like every single details captured people have taken it to that paper folders have gotten to the point where it's like that guy, Michael La Foss created a huge, easily two foot alligator, which is almost several meters, at least by my estimation, out of a single piece of paper. And it has all of, like, the scaly armor involved. There's a lot of detail. That's not what Yoshizawa was into. His was much more expressive and almost impressionistic, but you knew exactly what it was when you looked at it. And he was able to do this through a technique that he created called wet folding. Yeah. And wet folding is how you can round things out. You're obviously wetting the paper and that's how dampening at least you don't want to get it too wet. And you can manipulate it a little more and you can round things out and make it look a little more like a sculpture. But I really liked his style. It wasn't me, too. Because it didn't seem like, boy, I'm out to wow you and impress you with just something that's so detailed it'll blow your mind. They were detailed, but it wasn't like that other guy that you were talking about, michael Lafosse. Yeah. Which is they're both great, but it just seemed a little more intuitive and organic in terms of what Yoshi Zawa was doing. I think his technique screams, oh, you like, that not for sale. Yeah. Get out of my kitchen. Why were you here in the first place? Exactly. They're like, I work for Time magazine, but help yourself to some soup that I sell door to door. Exactly. So I guess we should talk about if someone's listening to this interest has been piqued and wants to know how to fold them. We should teach people, I think. Chuck. Yeah. Well, we'll tell you the basics, at least. There are many, many, many types of folds. But you mentioned the kite base or the kite fold, and I said that's one of the basics. And it is you can oftentimes start from a base, which is just sort of your starting shape that's your point, where you start and then get more detail from there. And there is the kite base, the fish base, the bird bass, and the frog base. And those are listed in order of difficulty, from easy to hard. There's a really great site called Paper Kauai. It's spelled like Hawaii, but with a K. It means cute in Japanese. And the person who runs that site has made a huge depository of resources and instructional videos and diagrams and everything you could possibly want. But she says that there's twelve bases, or at least she instructs you on making twelve bases. So it gets even richer than those four. Yeah, I mean, I got the picture that was the four most basic original bases, and I was probably sure that there were more. There's some types of models that tend to pop up more often than others. And animals are frequently created. And like I was saying, it's not necessarily like you're going for ultra realism. It'd be impossible to make it ultra real because I don't know if we said this yet, you're not supposed to use scissors or glue or tape or anything like that. Some people still use scissors every once in a while, but definitely you don't use glue or tape. That's not what's holding these together. These models are held entirely from different types of folds that you learn from doing origami. It's not just fold this direction, fold that direction, there's like reverse folds, there's syncs. There's all sorts of different interesting stuff you can do to make the paper take a certain shape that you want it to and then also to hold itself in shape permanently from that point on. That's right. And there are a lot of ways that you can go about it. I would imagine that Yuumi probably did it on like a coffee table or something maybe. Oh no. But you should do it in her lap. Okay. She can do it in the air. Yes. When you're at that point, then you're pretty skilled as an origami artist. If you are just using your hands and you're not putting it on anything hard, then that's pretty skilled. But I would say a beginner should probably use a desk or something. Oh yeah. With a little help. Maybe a clipboard if you want to do it in your lap. Sometimes people will use paper clips to help really get a nice fine crease in there. Yeah, I got the impression that that's allowed. Yeah. I mean, anything's allowed. Come on. Anytime you're talking about something that Japanese people do, they're not going to go in there and start screaming at you right. To do it. Right. You may be at risk of dishonoring your ancestors, but nobody's going to judge you personally for it. Yeah, but I would imagine a paper clip too might help. If you don't have fingernails, if you're a finger nail biter and you just have just stubby nubs like I used to, then you should maybe get a little paper clip out that might help you along. I've also seen like a wooden letter opener kind of thing. I've seen people use that to make a really tight crease or to poke a fold into another fold, that kind of thing. What? Nothing. Did I accidentally get sexy or something? A couple of times. That's all right though, just keep moving along. Nothing to see here. We should talk to you about a few of the different categories of origami. There are many categories that you can focus on if you want to kind of drill down into a specific discipline. One is called modular origami. And that is when you have and I would encourage people, obviously not if you're driving, but to kind of look up pictures and follow along with a lot of these because it. Really drives at home. And it's also beautiful to look at. Right. But modular is when you use different sheets of paper, but you're generally kind of making the same shape and then bringing those together to form some larger piece from those same shapes. Very beautiful. It really is. And with modular, Chuck, that's one of the few types of paper folding or origami that uses more than one sheet. Right. What's mind blowing about origami is when you're looking at just about any type aside from modular, despite what it looks like, it's probably just one sheet of paper. Yeah, it's just amazing. Some of the stuff that people are making is just ridiculously amazing. You got action origami, which are kind of fun because these little guys can move sometimes. Obviously, it's going to take human manipulation. They don't just move on their own. Like you can't make a wind up toy or anything like that, but you can flap a bird wing sometimes. A bird's wing. Or you might be able to make a frog that jumps. Yeah. Or remember the Origami fortune teller? That little folded thing that you could learn who you're going to marry or that kind of thing? Yeah. What was that called? The Origami fortune teller from what I saw. I mean, we didn't call it that. Elementary school? No, I could not find it. I could not find the name of it. I know what you're talking about. What was it? Yeah, those are always fun. There's something called Mash Mansion. Apartment shack house. But I don't think that involves paper origami but it's a similar game. Yeah. Janet Varney plays that with her guests at the end of her JV Club episodes, the Match Game. Sure. A lot of fun. So that's different from the Origami fortune teller. Yeah, it has nothing to do with paper. Yeah. You always end up married to Rob Lowe somehow, if you're lucky. Well, that's called the fantasy game. Let's see, what else can you do with origami? Chuck, people make origami out of dollar bills. Yeah, I see those. I used to get those occasionally. If ever you work at a cash job like I worked at a convenience store, you're going to get some wiseacre that pays for cigarettes with a couple of cranes. Some Wise acre people make them out of sticky notes. Like Post It notes is what most people call them. From what I saw, it basically just ends up being pikachu every time. Oh, yeah. Because it's yellow and small jewelry. If you can make jewelry origami, I think you can certainly buy that kind of thing on Etsy. And then one of the other styles that you see or schools is Tessellations. I don't know if it's a school in and of itself, but it's kind of like modular origami where it yields like kind of repeating 3D patterns, but it's typically made from just one sheet folded in just not so intricate ways. I saw in a 3D hydrangea pattern on this little sheet that the person in the picture is holding. It covers about the top half of their hand, but there's, I think, at least a dozen little hydrangeas folded into it and repeating rows. Amazing. And then when you step back and you think that is one sheet of paper, somebody figured out how to fold perfectly. Because there's one thing that they don't tell you about origami that you figure out pretty quickly on your own. If you don't make the right folds in the right order, you just screwed up. Like it's never going to look quite right. Yes. It's hard to undo a good crease. I think that's where scissors come in sometimes. Yeah. You know what I didn't do for this, which I usually do, I'm surprised I'll do it later, is watch a good YouTube of someone doing something pretty complex. Check out Paper Kauai. She's good. And it's also easy to follow, too. Yeah. Does she get super detailed and stuff, or is it a little more basic? Both. It's basically everything you want. And then there's also, like, a lot of instructional well, she teaches you basic shapes. I don't think she gets into, like, modular, actually. It's not true. She does have modular stuff on there. She does it all, basically. But she's also got a lot of stuff where, like, if you want to make a little gift box to put your gift in, she's got instructionals on how to do that. So practical stuff as well. So you can put origami in an origami box as a gift. You could that's pretty mind blowing. It's amazing. What's neat, though, is all of her videos are set to Led Zeppelin, so that adds, like, an extra layer. Is it really? No. Okay. Man. I was like, that'd be amazing. Especially if it was just really out of whack with what she was making, too. It would be great. Yeah. I was just thinking maybe I can't think of it now. Come from the land of the ice and snow. What's, that? Immigrant song? Yeah. But none of the folding is keeping up with it. The songs have to start over and over again. Of course, if you're a fan of Blade Runner, you remember that has a nice origami motif reoccurring motif in there with Edward James Almonds'character. I have no idea what you're talking about. You've seen Blade Runner? Yeah, and I know the character, but what is that? Oh, does he keep making origami stuff? And he leaves it behind? That's right. Okay. And it plays a key role, sort of, at the end of the movie. I don't remember that. Yeah. That's a great movie, though. Sure. Did you see the second one? Well, I've seen all the versions of the first one and of course, yes, I saw the second one. I thought the second one was really great. Yeah, it was very good. I loved it. And there's nothing that Ryan Gosling can't do. I know, right? I saw him in a hotel lobby once and I just wanted to kiss his handsome face. Did you? No, I should have. Do you remember when we went to Upfront once when we had our show on Science Channel? We looked over and there's Fred Armison and we waved like we were peers and he waved back like, I don't know who you are, but, hey, good to see you for the first time ever. The other funny thing, I don't know if you remember this on that trip was and for people that know the Upfront is where if you have a TV show or something coming out the next year or quarter is it yearly? Yeah, you gather at a place and all the press is there and you kind of just tell everyone what you're doing and they hopefully write about it. But we saw Michael Douglas and Matt Damon past us walking down the sidewalk and I was like, what are those guys doing together? And, like, little did I know what was coming. Man, that was such a good movie. It was awesome. I'd like to see that again soon, actually. Yeah, if you get a free trial to HBO on Amazon Prime. I think it's on there right now. Oh, man, I got to see that. Such a good movie. Let's see. Technical origami, I think, is where we left off. Yeah. Because we already talked about Pure Land, right? Yeah. And this technical origami, from what I could gather. Is this just the worksheets that you get sort of the how to or is it an actual style? It's kind of both. So I think the thing about the style is that the worksheets, the diagrams are not step by step. It is a picture of the paper with every fold in it. But it's like if you went through the whole process of making this incredibly detailed, very technically precise origami shape and then unfolded it but left all the creases in there and then took a picture of that, that's what the diagram is. But that doesn't say which one to do first. No, which I find very unnerving because that means that there are people out there who can look at that and tell how to do it just by looking at it. It's amazing. And so in that documentary between the Folds this is made back in 2008. I think. But they really kind of documented this tension between this push toward more and more technical origami and paper folding that's just pushing the limits and the boundaries of. Like. What can you possibly do that started to use. Like. CAD and other computer programs to plot out what folds you needed to make and what order to make these really technical ones. And then on the other side of that, pulling the other direction, are the artists who are just like, I just listen to my hands and my imagination and come up with these new folds. And there's this one French artist who makes masks and kind of almost Tolkien esque from a 70s illustrated version of Lord of the Rings, maybe like witches and wizards and things like that. And it's very free form and flowing. And they're like, when you get too technical, you lose, like, the emotion. You lose the art side of it. And then this one guy made the case. His name is Long. I can't remember his first name, but he's just an amazing technical guy. And he said, no, these technical people are figuring this out. They're making studies of stuff that you could eventually incorporate into larger art. So it's good to have both. Yes. I don't think there's the wrong way. I'm pretty sure his name is David Long. Check him out. He's just up to some amazing stuff. All right, well, let's take another break, and we're going to come back and finish up with a little bit on the kind of paper you might want to get if you want to try this out. Ready for this? Hey, Chuck, I looked, and we did not ever do an episode on paper unless we named it in a smart alec way. Too what you're writing on? We did toilet paper. Do you want to do one paper? Sure. Yeah, I think that'd be interesting. Totally. We did one on grass. We can do one on paper. Oh, absolutely. And paper, like we said, is what you want to buy. If you want to start practicing origami and kami or koi paper is if you want to step it up from just copy paper or something like that. And you go to an art supply store, this is a good place to start. It is designed for origami and paper folding. It is very crisp, very thin, holds its shape really well, very easy to fold. And it's pretty robust. Like, after you fold it, it stays pretty strong. Yeah. If you go to a stationary store and you look for origami paper, that's probably what you're going to get. Is that committee paper? Yeah. I might have a nice pattern on it usually square, and you can get it in different sizes from, like, sticky note size to granddaddy size. Yeah. There's also another kind of paper called washi that is this it's, like, thicker, obviously hand made. It might still have some of the grains from the pulp still mashed into it, and it is much harder to fold and keep, like, a tight crease in. But it's much better for you when you're doing, like, wet folding technique, which is where you I don't know if we ever said you dampen the paper. You don't get it wet, but you dampen it so that it folds more than creases, and then it'll hold that shape as it dries. Too yeah. And it said in the article, which, by the way, came from housetofworks.com, our old website that it's very costly. And I looked it up and I saw some and it seems to me like you can't like, if you want washi, it's coming from Japan. I saw some stuff on Amazon that they called washi paper, but it is not washy. Yeah, it's more wishy than washy. Sorry, dad. And it was $50 for a roll. That was 16 inches by 32ft, though, which is okay. Like, $50 is a lot of money for paper, but 32ft, that's a lot of paper. Sure. That's nothing to see. That's a pretty good price on washi. That's what I thought. You just turned into granddad. Yes. Pushed up my glasses as I said that. What about the foil? That's another thing that I thought was Kami, but there are two different things. Yes, it's often called Japanese foil. It's just paper with a foil backing on one side, and the foil comes in different colors, so it can really make your origami paper cream pop. Yeah. And you can bake cookies on it when you're done. And you said something earlier about how kami might have, like, a pattern on one side or one color on one side and one color on another side that actually fools a lot of people into thinking that they're looking at an Origami model that's made for more than one type of paper. Sure. But it's actually just two sided paper that's just still one sheet. Just remember this. When you're inevitably going and looking at pictures of Origami today, most of that is just one big or small sheet of paper. And the other cool thing here at the end, which I think we should mention, and this is very, very neat, is it is art and it is a hobby and it is Zenlike, but it has practical applications in the world at large. Like, when you think about manufacturing things that need to be folded into a small space, where better to look than an Origami master to say, like, hey, how would you fold this airbag into this thing? Or this solar array? How can we make this large thing small, even if only for packaging? And yoshiza was like, I've died. Leave me alone. I've given up. Origami years ago. Didn't I tell you I hated money? Right, but what about $10,000? Is that the magic number for him? I guess so. Everybody's got a price. He's been yoshizawa. Indoorgami is great for the classroom, for younger kids to help teach geometry and stuff like that. Really good stuff. I got one more sweet yummy story with Origami. Her dad is in the hospital, has been for a while, and he was in ICU for a little while. And thanks to COVID, we couldn't visit and we couldn't even send flowers. Like, they were super on lockdown, trying to keep everything out. So she folded some paper flowers and sent them to him. And he had them on his bedside with him, which he said he credit 100% for helping him get well. That's amazing. And they allowed that, huh? They did. No flowers, but paper flowers is okay. Interesting. Yeah. Hold it by human hands. Exactly. Very clean human hands, I can assure you. Sure. I mean, I'm glad they allowed it. That's great. So, by the way, Bob, we are wishing you here. You should know a good and healthy recovery, and we'll see you home soon. Absolutely. Thanks, Chuck. If you guys want to know more about origami you can start looking it up. Get yourself some paper. That's another thing we said that I think we should point out. You don't have to have kami or washi or foil or anything like that. You can use copy paper to start if you want. Whatever's handy. Just go ahead and have some fun with it. That's the point. Have some fun. And since I said have some fun, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this sexy Sneeze. I remember when we talked a little bit at the end of the Sneezing episode about Sneezes being linked to orgasms and sexual pleasure and arousal. Yes. Well, we heard from Darcy about that. She said, hey, guys, I'm an avid listener, been listening to all of your episodes, and this is the first time I've ever thought I really should send them an email about this. I'm trying to keep it family friendly. But in your discussion during Sneezing was sneezing when becoming sexually aroused. In my case, my nose becomes very runny. And I often do the my nose is running sniff thing during amorous activities. I don't always end up sneezing, but I can tell you that there's a direct link in my body from my nose to other areas. And she said the uncensored version is, I know it's been a good time when my nose starts running. Anyway, I just wanted to share my experience, keep on finding stuff to talk about now keep listening. And that is from Darcy. And she did say I could read this and just use her first name. Thanks a lot, Darcy. That's very brave of you. You're not even in an Internet chat room and you're admitted that's. Right? Way to go. Interesting stuff. It really is. If you want to be like Darcy and write in something interesting about yourself, we want to hear it. You can send it off to Stuffpodcasts@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." | |
How Shark Attacks Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-shark-attacks-work | A shark attack is a terrifying experience for the victim -- but are sharks really man-eating monsters with a taste for human flesh? Join Josh and Chuck as they ask why sharks attack, how attacks occur and which sharks are most likely to attack someone. | A shark attack is a terrifying experience for the victim -- but are sharks really man-eating monsters with a taste for human flesh? Join Josh and Chuck as they ask why sharks attack, how attacks occur and which sharks are most likely to attack someone. | Thu, 09 Aug 2012 21:24:19 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=9, tm_hour=21, tm_min=24, tm_sec=19, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=222, tm_isdst=0) | 37532808 | 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. 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Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, as Charles W, Chuck Bryant, and this is stuff you should know. That's right. A Shark Week edition. Shark Week edition. Happy Shark Week, Chuck. Happy Shark Week. In honor of Shark Week, I got you a little present. Wow. Yeah. What is that? It's the Jabberjaw DVD Box. That's awesome. Thank you. Yeah, I was going to get you speed buggy. If I am correct, then this should be coming out the Thursday before Shark Week. Oh, good timing. Yeah. So Shark Week actually starts in three days on Sunday. I'm so embarrassed that I give you a present early. That's okay. Okay. We like to open on Christmas Eve here. Are you doing okay? You're feeling good? Yeah. I thought that we wouldn't be able to find anything here to do on sharks, but we never really covered specifically shark attacks. Yeah, I think it's high time we did because I think that thanks to a increasingly enlightened populace, sharks are losing a lot of the bad rap they had for many years. Since 1975. Yeah. And I feel like we're here to kind of help hasten that along a little bit and strike fear into your heart. Well, yeah, it depends. This is going to be kind of a roller coaster ride because this article is a roller coaster ride. We're talking about how shark attacks work. Right? And we should say first and foremost, right off the bat, that you can make a pretty good case. Almost all shark attacks are cases of mistaken identity. Yeah, I don't know if this is a real stat, but Gary Atkinson, who is a diver, says 90% or more are just big mistakes. 90% or more usually indicates not a real stat. Probably not, but I bet it's pretty high because especially when it's contained in a book that has an exclamation point in the title. Sharks don't like people that we're not fatty enough for them. They don't seek us out, they don't like the way we taste. And when they bite us, they probably think we are a big turtle or a sea lion. Yeah, that's what's going on. And when you look at the photo, was it bioluminescence we talked about looking up from the ocean? Yeah, it occurred to me, too. And you see the silhouette, a dude on a surfboard or a lady on a surfboard looks an awful lot like a sea turtle or sea line. Yeah. If you're interested, go to houseuffworks.com and type in how shark attacks work. And on the first page, there's a pretty cool little illustration of how a surfer looks like a sea turtle or a sea lion. Yeah, I wouldn't know what the spinning image the point is by looks you may look like a sea lion. Once the shark figures out that you're not, however, it's probably going to leave you alone. The great white, we should say yes, but of course it may be too late at that point. In between those two points, the shark is going to bite you, probably. Yeah, especially if it's a great white. That's pretty much the number one reason for shark attacks, like we said, is you are confused for another food source. And if it is a great white and you are bitten, it'll probably leave you alone and not come back. Right. And depending on the severity of that first bite, that test bite, as they call it, which a, could be, I think, your food, or b, apparently there's a food chain of sharks even they will like bite another shark to say, dude, get away from me. And I know I didn't hurt you that bad because you're a shark, right. But if you're human, all of a sudden your mid section is missing. That's another explanation for shark attacks. Aggression. If they are just kind of messing around with one another when they do it to you, that hurts. Confusion, aggression, hunger is another one, too. And if you're like, say a spear fisherman and you're just laying waste to a school of fish right, like that. And the fish are flapping around, they're bleeding. You have two huge stimulus. There's a stimuli. Yeah, man, this whole bailout just screwed me up, man. That the sharks can pick up. They are specially designed if you believe in intelligent designed to pick up blood in the water. Yeah, and they can smell that stuff for miles, dude, for miles. And I couldn't find any actual real stat on that. I think I've seen another one of those shark stats, though, which are always a little hinky, which is like they can smell blood, like a drop of blood for 5 miles or something like that. But they can smell some blood. They can smell some blood. Yeah. The other way that they're being attracted is the fish flapping around actually generates electrical impulses, and the shark have an organ called the ampulee of Lorenzini, you should say this, Chuck. Ampulee of Lorenzini. Yes. Which is basically a series of tubes that connect the exterior of the skin with electricity or electrical sensing cells. That basically it's another way of sharks detecting movement. Prey. Yes. On the snout. So when you have a bunch of fish dying, it's going to attract the shark. And if you're standing in the middle of it, the shark's not really going to care what you look like or what you're doing. It's just so worked up, it's going to bite you. Yeah. And confused, maybe. Yeah. What I learned from the shark club don't want to confuse a shark. No. And you don't want to be standing in the middle of their prey, like a big mass of their prey. And also, too, I know we pointed this out before, I think, how to defend yourself, but the ampelia, Lorenzo Senior kind of botched that one. It's in the snout. So that's why they tell you to, like, try and head butt or punch the shark in the mouth. Can you imagine taking a sock right to the electrical cells? I can't imagine delivering that punch. Like having the wherewithal to be like, oh, I'm supposed to punch you now I'm missing an arm. I think you might surprise yourself. You just react. If you have a healthy ego, then you'd probably put in such heart. I don't. You can't say that you just haven't been put in any lifethreatening situations yet. Okay. Yet. 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, hold on. There's another good explanation for why sharks attack. Why? Defense. Oh, they feel threatened. Yeah. By humans. Oh. Divers that tug on the nurse shark. Yes. The nurse shark is a big one that likes to attack when somebody pulls on its tail. Yeah. Why people do this, I don't know. But apparently the nurse shark is kind of funny in that it sort of will be still at the bottom of the ocean. Where's the wig in the old nurse's cat, if you're like. I got to push that thing around. Exactly. But apparently there are some divers who will tug on their tail because they think it's just some harmless game, and then they find out that because the nurse shark is generous with its bite. That's right. So because of jerks like that pulling on nurse shark tails, there is a division in the statistics of shark attacks. Provoked and unprovoked jerks and what the heck happened? Or stupid people and what the heck happened? Why do you provoke a shark? So let's talk about what goes down with the shark attack. Okay, here's the fair warning part. We've just been climbing a hill. Now we're about to go down the hill on our roller coaster ride. Okay. Yeah. This is when you have fear. Should I read the Jaws thing? If you want. I might as well. Okay. All right. This is Quint from Jaws. The thing about a shark is he's got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eyes. When he comes at you, he doesn't even seem to be living until he bites you, and those black eyes roll over white. Thank you. You're the rich little of this podcast. That was not a good quint, but it is in my top ten. Used to be in my top five all time movies. Yeah. What knocked it out? I don't know. Just over the years, things build up. Jaws falls behind a little bit. Yeah. What knocked it out of there? I don't know specifically what knocked it out. I'm sorry, but Jaw Circus was one of them. Was it? No. Every time this movie is on, I will watch it, and I do not get sick of it. It's one of my favorites. So here's where we scared the crap out of you, because usually you will learn that you are being attacked by a shark by getting run into by a car, is what some people have said. It feels like. It depends. Again, it depends on the shark. So we should point out the three most deadly sharks are great whites, tigers, and bull sharks. Bull sharks. I mean, if you get hit by what feels like a truck, it's probably a bull shark. If all of a sudden you're missing an arm, it was probably a great white or possibly a tiger. But it seems like bulls and tigers are the ones that bump you first. And the great white takes the test bite. Yeah. And bulls are known, too, for being one of the more aggressive as far as, like, usually a shark will bite you and then kind of leave you. Right. Then the bullshark is one of the only ones that will come back repeatedly. Or if someone's trying to save you, they might attack them. They'll hang around a little more than I'm comfortable with. One of the other big problems with the bull shark is that they attack in shallow water. So if you see a bull shark, just run. So what's going on here with the test bite? Well, it could be a test bite b. When they feed on, like, a sea lion, they don't just go in there and feed on it like a frenzy until it's all gone. They bite it and then let it bleed to death. And then once the animal is dead, then they'll go in and chow down. Yeah. So pretty frightening if you're a person. It is. So you're saying that it's like getting hit by a truck. Let's say it's a bullet shark attack. That's a quote from Don Shalman, who was pregnant as a lifeguard when she was attacked in Florida. In she survived because she wrote a book about it. Another person who wrote a book, I believe, is surfer Kenny dude. D-O-U-D-T-D. Sure. And he was doing a surfing thing in 1979 in Oregon. I didn't know you surfed Oregon. Yeah, sure. Surf Oregon. Well, I mean, you got to have the wetsuits. It's cold out there, man. I'll bet, but it's cold in Southern California, too. Sure. Pacific. It's pretty cold. Anyway, Kenny Dute was surfing, and all of a sudden, he was a shark. This is probably a great white, because all of a sudden, he was in the jaws of a shark. Right. And it had him and his surfboard in its bite. And the surfboard probably saved his life. Yeah, because that shark was originally trying to because he couldn't get that full bite down. He was apparently very determined, and he kept trying and trying for about 20 seconds. By Duke estimate, stute was totally out of the water. He was pulled under the water, and the shark couldn't get them under because, again, the surfboard. So he lived another day. He lived to see another day. Although he said that the doctor who fixed him up stopped counting his stitches when he reached 500, which is a pretty patient doctor, but also kind of lazy. Like, how do you get there and just be like, oh, you know what? Forget it. Yeah, he took them all out at about 250 because he forgot where he was and started over. And this is the guy that said he heard his ribs breaking, right? Yeah, man. All right. You have to remember, people, roller coaster. This is extremely rare. Chuck, we talked about how, like, the great white feeds bite, leave you to bleed to death, come back and feed on you. Yes. We talked about the bull shark. It hits and then circles, hits you again, circles. Then eventually it's going to bite you. And like you said, it'll attack somebody coming to try to rescue you. Yeah. The tiger shark is one of the deadliest ones, especially out in the deep sea. Apparently they like to pick off the weak and the wounded, and they'll circle for a while and then they'll bump and then they'll bite. And there's this very famous story of the USS Indianapolis that was sunk in the Pacific in 1945. The story Quent tells oh, yeah. He was one of the dudes. Okay. His character, not Robert Shaw. Right. Oh, man. That would have been some serious would that be method or character? I don't even know. Real life? Yeah, I guess it's not even acting. No. So in 1945, the Indianapolis, thanking 1000 crew members, survived the sinking. But by the time the rescuers showed up a few days later, there were only 317 men left. Thanks to shark attacks. Yeah. And these tigers were just circling them, according to Quint story, which is pretty accurate. Just like you'd be talking to a guy and all of a sudden he's gone and you're just waiting. And it didn't get called in because it wasn't that they were delivering the bomb. All right. Yeah. Is that right? They were delivering the bomb, which is why it was such a top secret operation. And because it was top secret, it didn't get called in and reported missing for like a couple of days even. Wow. So it was pretty scary stuff all over. So that means that there's an undettonated a nuclear bomb at the bottom of the Pacific. Actually, I don't know that part, I would guess. I mean, if they were delivering it and it was sunk, I'll have to look into that, maybe. I don't think Steven Spielberg made that up. I think that's real. It's definitely in the movie, though. Steven Spielberg is not known for making things up. What? There's, like, aliens? ETS. So you did say something kind of important here about finally, tiger sharks out in the deep sea are a little more dangerous. Most people get attacked closer to shore, and that doesn't mean you should be afraid because close to shore is dangerous. It's just because that's where the people are. Yes. So most people don't swim out in the middle of the deep blue ocean. Yeah. This guy wouldn't. No. Well, that's part of the point. So back down another hill. It's a little bit scary now because we're going to talk about what happens during the shark attack or what the shark attack does to your person. Well, one surgeon who operated on a teenage surfer in Australia said that when her leg was lopped off, he distributed guillotine. Like, so it can be very swift in the case of a limb and very clean and all of a sudden there's just no arm there anymore. \u00a340,000 of pressure per square inch with his teeth the size of a shot glass. Yeah. If you listen to Richard Dryface. That's what he says in the movie. I know. Okay. Have you ever seen Joce? Sure I have. Okay. I don't know if it was ever in my top ten. It's like up there for sure. It's such a great movie, but I can recognize when you say things like quint and size of a shotgun shot glass. Okay. Cooper and all that stuff. Do you remember what Roy what's his name? Schider. Yeah. What his character was? Chief Brody. Okay. Very nice. Adrian Brody. No, not Adrian Brody. So if you don't lose a limb, you're probably going to get like a large piece of your flesh removed, like from your thigh, from your mid section or something like that. Yeah. Usually if you're getting attacked by a good size great white, it's going to get you in your mid section, like you said. Yeah. And you may end up like a guy named Rodney Fox who was a spear fisherman who was attacked near Adelaide, Australia. And basically he was bitten from shoulder to hip and a lot of them was missing after that. Have you seen pictures of that guy? Yeah, I did when I researched the shark stuff a couple of years ago. It's like a shark bite missing from them. Yeah. Like a little crescent new and out of the side of them. I don't know if little is the right word. Well, yes, that little. Yeah. That's a pretty startling time life photo. I think you're probably going to die by bleeding to death because you're going to be suffering from massive amounts of blood loss at this point. And by the time you get into shore and get someone there to help you, it may be too late. Yeah. So having someone on shore that can stop the blood is like, really key to your survival. Yes. And there's a kid who was attacked off Cape sandblasts in 2005 who was saved because a doctor and a nurse happened to be on shore on vacation. Wow. And they stopped the bleeding by putting pressure on his leg, which I assume was where the shark bit him. Yeah. But if you're in cold water, you actually have something in your favor and that the cold water is going to slow down your physical processes, including your blood loss, so you won't waste as much time in the trip to shore. Right. So I guess the Pacific Ocean would be a little better in Oregon. Surf, Oregon. Yeah. And then another thing, you're going to run into his infection because you just got bitten by a shark and you rolled around on the beach and people were touching you. They're teenagers and lifeguards and stuff like that, and they're all dirty and you might get an infection from it. I know that seems like it would be the least of your worries. But can you imagine, though, like, surviving the shark pipe and then dying from an infection from it? I imagine that, especially in this day and age, very sad. Okay, so we talked about the three deadliest types of sharks, the tiger, the bull, and the great white. Why are they so deadly? Well, there's a reason. And they're actually like they kind of fly in the face of the idea that they're deadly because they want to kill you and your whole family, and they would come into your house at night if they could, which is the prevalent view of sharks there was at least until about five years ago. But these things are extremely widespread. You can find them all over the world. They're big enough so that a human, which is a pretty good sized animal itself, ourselves, can look like prey, which is something they're interested in. They're powerful enough so that initial test bite can kill you, even though the shark was like, oh, this is gross, like a little reef shark. You're going to have a little bit of troubles, but you could probably get over that. I think the worst thing that can happen to you underwater, besides losing your life is one of those little fish swimming into your urethra. What? Yeah, that happens. Yeah. What? Yes. All right, I'll show you later, man. Really? Yeah, man. I believe the Amazon. What does it do? Exactly what I just said. But I mean, after that feeds once it's in there. Feeds. Yeah. Good Lord. To be terrified of. Yeah. The other factor that makes those three the deadliest sharks is that they're at the top of the food chain, which means that they're not afraid of humans. Yeah. If it knows you're a human, it's not going to be like, oh, God, a human. It'll be like, you know what? I'm feeling a little hinky today. So those are why those three are the most dangerous. But like we said, hammerheads, makos, nurse sharks, reef sharks, black tips, they can all bite when threatened or by mistake. It happens. I remember when we swam in the Georgia Aquarium, hammerhead sharks were in there. Yeah. And I wasn't super worried because people do this all the time. But it's still at one point, I did look down and see that hammerhead shark 10ft from me and think, all right, well, there's a shark, and this is as close as I've ever been to one, and it is so weird looking. Actually, not as close as I saw one in a wave one time when I was in the ocean. A neighborhood? No, just a shark, like, jetting through a wave that was crashing over me, and he just flew by the silhouette. The wave is like nature's aquarium. Yeah. And I told the guy the lifeguard, I was like, dude, I just saw a shark, like, really close to me. He said, how big was it? About 3ft long. What was he doing? So he sort of just surfing through the wave. He's like, yeah, it's fine. He's like, we see him out here all the time. And he was probably saying it's fine because the shark was probably long gone by the time he talked to the lifeguard. That's a good point. They don't like to stay in one place for very long. And there's even a school of thought that multiple shark attacks in a location are not the result of a single shark. They are pretty much coincidence or there's something that's going on around there that we're not aware of that's attracting sharks. Right. But it's not just one shark, a rogue shark. And it just made air quotes, which may or may not exist. Yes, they have a couple of shark myths in this article. And the human I desire human flesh rogue shark. They can't prove that that is not the case, but they certainly think that's definitely not the case. They can't say there are no rogue sharks anywhere, but it's not like it is in the movies where there's like this one shark named Jaws, and he just loves people and he loves hanging out in the same spot and just feeding on folks because they're kicking off. Idiots keep coming out here. Why wouldn't I? But they do do weird things like go way out of their range, like as far north as New England or way upriver to Chicago. Yeah, that's crazy. And they said if a shark was sick or injured, you might could get some pretty unpredictable behaviors. Yeah, that's true. With a cow. You don't want to be around a sick or injured cow. That's just sad. It's a big animal. It could do damage to you. That's true. So, shark attacks, like we said, there are statistics. And actually the University of Florida is the keeper of shark attack statistics. Oh, yeah. Which is just like boo. I know. But there's between 30 and 50 unprovoked attacks every year. Worldwide. Worldwide. The United States, most typically in Florida, has the most so Florida is the shark attack capital of the world. But even still, we're talking about 37 a year, maybe. And that's at the top end. Ten to 37. And millions and millions of people go to these beaches. But these statistics show that shark attacks are increasing. And it's because of what you're just saying. Millions and millions of people go to these beaches and more people are going to the beaches. So they don't think that sharks are getting any more aggressive. There's just more people out in the ocean. Yeah. Makes sense. It does make sense. And this is kind of supported in a certain way by if you look at San Francisco, right? Yeah. There's tons of sea lions. There's sea lion habitats in San Francisco, which means there's tons of great white sharks in San Francisco. But there's not a tremendous amount of shark attacks in San Francisco because people stay away from the sea lions. Yeah. And I don't think San Francisco Bay is like not a lot of people are swimming in that on a regular basis. That's true too. That's the other way you can look at it, be like, well, nobody's getting in there, so how can there be shark attacks? Plus people in San Francisco just smarter than most people. But that raises a pretty good point if you ask me. Like when you look at shark statistics, when you hear about a shark attack in the media, just by nature it's sensational. And the author of this article, The Grabster, took pains to point out that there's this thing that happens when something sensational is reported in the media. It seems to be much more prevalent than it actually is. What that's called? An availability heuristic. And that is basically surmising that something is prevalent around or exists just based on limited available data rather than all of the facts. Right. So a pretty good example is like this idea that you are more likely to be struck by lightning to be attacked by a shark. But the thing is, if you are anywhere where a thunderstorm is, you can be struck by lightning, but you have to go to the ocean to be attacked by a shark. So it's a terrible comparison. It is like my grandmother went to the ocean for the first time when she was in her eighty s. The probability of her dying from a shark attack was zero. Exactly. She never touched the water. But had your grandmother read a newspaper report about a shark attack, she probably felt like that was a threat to her, even though she had a zero chance of being attacked by a shark. Or if my grandmother was a surfer in Florida, a, that would have been pretty cool, and B, her chances of a shark attack would be much greater than like, dying from a coconut hitting your head, which apparently does not happen. Yeah, go ahead and spill the beans there. Well, that's another shark myth. That one of the media reports. Shark attack frequency is often compared to death by coconuts dropping from trees. I've heard that. Everyone's heard that, right? I had not heard that one. Oh, you haven't heard that? No, I think they knew it was so asinine they didn't try that out on me. Okay. But apparently there is out of all reports of coconut injuries, there's never been a coconut fatality. And there's been maybe a couple of reported coconut injuries not a year, like ever. Yeah. So this whole statistic about coconut deaths is totally made up. Urban legend. Totally urban legend. But the point is that, yes, there are sharks out there. Most likely they're not going to attack you. But if you are in the ocean where sharks are, your chances of being attacked are increased. So just take some precautions. If you are. A salt life person. Salt life person. Plus, we should also point out that even if you do get attacked, chances are you're going to live, like, how many fatalities out of the what was it? Out of the 30 to 50 unprovoked tax each year, ten are fatal. That's statistics. Five to ten, statistically speaking, to five to ten worldwide a year. People die from shark attacks. Yeah, that's way low. And another way to point this out, too, about how there's lies damn lies and statistics is that most shark attacks take place in shore, within 100 yards of shore. Like you were saying, it's because it's where everybody is. Sure. Like, if everybody swam 200 yards offshore, maybe there'd be more sugar tax, maybe there'd be fewer. We don't really know because this is all very limited data. Well, yeah, they're really hard to study in the wild. Like, as much as we know about sharks, there's a lot we don't know. Right. Hey, everyone, when you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office? And you could be using Stamps.com. Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses. Because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need, right. From your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial, plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. All right, so we tell people how to not get bitten by a shark? Yes, we should. They recommend the experts don't swim at dawn or dusk. They feed more. And the water might be a little harder to tell what you are during the dimly lit hours. Right. For the same reason you shouldn't swim in murky water. Yeah, and don't just stay out of murky water. That's my advice. Really? Because there's a lot of murky water out there. Yes, but why do you want to get in it when there's nice, clean, clear water? Not all of us have the time or the money to go to, like, sugar beaches, Chuck. Okay. Don't swim with open cuts. And some people say even administrating women probably shouldn't swim in the ocean. Yes, that might be taking a little too far, but avoid sandbars and seamounts and drop offs, because this is where you're going to find a lot of wildlife, marine wildlife, which might mean there might be sharks nearby. It definitely means there are sharks. Don't wear contrasting colors. Yeah, this can confuse a shark. And a confused shark is not good to be around. Not just contrasting, but really bright ones, too. That's beachware, man. I know. I remember when we were training to scuba dive, my sister and my dad and I, the guy was talking about how sharks love really bright colors and it's almost impossible to find like a black bathing suit, right? They call it yummy yellow. Yellow is called yummy yellow because apparently sharks like that one more than others. I'm looking for some taupe swim trunks. Can you help me out here? Some drab, olive green, really short ones. Don't wear shiny jewelry. You shouldn't have your jewelry in the ocean anyway. Sure, if you ask me. But that reflection might look alluring to a shark. You never know. Yes, which is why you want to swim in murky water. That's a good point. Don't swim with a bunch of sea lions and seals. Pretty brainless right there, don't you think? Yeah, totally. I'm surprised that was even on the list. Don't thrash around. I think even in the movie Jaws, they talk about how that kind of thrashing and splashing that you get on the 4 July might attract sharks. So don't listen to thrash middle in the water. Don't think you're safe just because you're like knee deep in water. Yeah, those bull sharks like shallow water and they're aggressive. So, yeah, just be terrified in shallow water, too. And finally, if you're fishing while in the ocean, standing up to your waist, don't have your bait and a little sack tied to your waist floating there next to you. That's a bad idea. You want to keep your bait out of the water. You want to keep it and I would imagine some sort of drip proof container so that there's not blood just dripping into the water. Right by the water. Yeah. And even if you're taking those precautions, you don't want to stay in the same place for too long. Yeah, I would fish from the beach. That wasn't the last one. The last bit of advice is don't swim when there are sharks in the water. Yeah. Because you can see them sometimes. And if you do see them, don't go swimming. That's what I would do, too. But if you are ever in a shark attack, fight back. People who punch the shark in the old ampulee or bite the shark or headbutt the shark or do anything they can to beat the shark up have been successful in chasing sharks off, especially. I get the impression great whites are kind of waters grabs are called them wimps. Yeah. They don't like to fight back, or I guess they don't like to get punched in pulia and sini. Yeah. So I guess since we mentioned Jaws. A few times. We should finish up with the famous Jaws effect. As it's known. Which was a big deal in the book first. And then the movie about A. People being scared of the ocean for the first time. And B. These rich jerks all of a sudden going out with high tech equipment and killing as many sharks as they can. Right. Just so they can have a big jaw to hang on their wall. They had like, old trophy tournaments called monster fishing, I think is what it was called, where you just catch and kill as many sharks as you could. And they still have these tournaments. They're all like, catch and release now. But before there, it was unfettered sharks ladder directly because of Jaws. Yeah, and so much so that I think Peter Benchley even expressed regret later on that something he wrote led to the slaughter of these innocent animals. He actually became a conservationist, did he? Yeah. I'm not surprised. I wonder what Spielberg thinks about all that. I don't know. But you did find this article written by a marine biologist who said, yes, this is true, jaws did have this terrible effect, but it also had a really positive effect in that it totally opened people's eyes to sharks, period. And even the ensuing slaughter that came afterwards woke the shark community. People who were studying sharks up and said, whoa, whoa, we don't know enough about these animals for everybody to just be running around killing them. We need more funding. So funding went into it because there was public interest. And there's a whole generation of shark biologists that were inspired to become shark biologists thanks to Matt Hooper. Yeah, and this guy himself said that he wanted to be Matt Hooper, the only guy in Jaws that was really smart and really knew a lot about what he was doing. Like, Brody obviously was a sympathetic character, but he didn't brody, he didn't even like being in the water. But Hooper comes along and with his shot glasses and his beard and all this high tech equipment, the shark you go in the cage goes in the water. Yeah, sharks in the water. So great. Plus, he looks so cool with his rolled up jeans and his blue kids. Yeah. Go Matt Hooper. If you want to learn more about sharks, we have a ton of stuff on this site. You can type sharks into the handychurchbar@households.com. Don't forget to type in how sharks work. And on the page zero, it'll bring up that cool image that shows what you look like to a shark when you're in search for it. You look like a sea turtle. Yeah, I said search barter, though. You did. That means it's time for the mail. That's right. Josh, I'm going to call this, but what do you know? We have French listeners. Oh, yeah. I'm going to read one and then I'll read off the names of the other Frenchies who wrote in, because we mentioned in a recent show that we never get email from French listeners. I do. And we got emails from French people, and then we got angry emails from people saying, whoa, they're supposed to learn English just so they can listen to your show? Yeah. And I was like, damn, it's not what I meant. Everybody take a chill pill. All right? Everybody's listening to draft metal. Yesterday, I was heading back home after work. I listened to one of the latest episodes about Lemon Quarter. I guess it's the musketeers in French. Yeah. I was joined listening, and all of a sudden, out of the blue, you mentioned that you wondered if there were any French fans. Voila. Which means here I am. Sorry. Me voila. My name is Sylvain and I'm a French fan. My brother Pierre. Eve. Yeah. Y-V-E-S like E st. Lawrence. Wow. Thank you. It is a surprise we don't have workplace listening to that beautiful accent of you. We first listened to the Zombie podcast a couple of years ago in the city of Leon, and he and I were simply amazed by this awesome technique of yours to spread knowledge through legitimate data while still having fun. Sure. It's kind of our show. That's what we do. We have told many friends to listen to your brilliant podcast, and they did, as far as I know. Pierre, who now lives in Paris or Perry, make sure to check out every new one that comes out. As for me, I first moved to New York a year ago as an exchange student and recently moved to Minneapolis after graduating and got married to my lovely wife Jill. The old Paris to New York to Minneapolis. Transition. Exactly. He met Jill in France, but he points out that Jill is American. I had the privilege of introducing her to your podcast, and we've been following you guys ever since. Anyways, thank you guys for all the hints to French things throughout your podcast. It's delightful to hear you try and pronounce these difficult French names, but you are doing fantastic. I never thought that I would actually write in, but it would be a privilege if you read this out loud. Wow. Privilege. That's right. The prince of how to talk to us. I know, man. In short, Josh and Chuck, you are great. You made my transition to living in the US a new and different country much easier. Avec tu la fiction de monkula to you with all the affection of the world. Really? Did you look this up? No, that was from Sylvain. Pest Villa. And we also heard from Sophie and EMM, dean and Eve and Pauline. Nice. And some were French Canadians, some were from France, living in America, and I think a couple of them were from France proper, like, living there, and they just know English, and I think we're pretty good. Awesome. Thanks for listening, guys. Thanks to everybody for listening. But right now, thanks especially to all of you, Freddie, for listening to us. Viva la fros. Yeah. Nicely done. Let's see if you want to send some sort of information to Chuck and I. It can be information about anything. Secret information, public information, a recipe for something flat out lies. No. Okay, if they're good, only whoppers and homediggers accepted. You can tweet to us at syskat. Seriously, what are you doing? Go follow us. It's awesome. Agreed. Facebook is awesome. Facebook.com stuffyhall. Yes. And before you give our email address, we finally want to encourage you to go check out Shark Week. Oh, nice. Chuck company guy. Yeah, that's why we did this. Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, they've all got some good stuff going on. Yeah. Even our beloved Science Shark Weekend. Yeah, let's see. Yes. Okay. Well, then you can email us too, right at stuffpodcast@discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you? 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. 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4801be0e-3381-11e8-b81e-7b09f66f7011 | Project Azorian: The CIA's Super 70s Mission To Steal A Sunken Soviet Sub | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/project-azorian-the-cias-super-70s-mission-to-stea | In 1974 the CIA undertook one of its most brazen operations – secretly raising a sunken Soviet submarine lost in the middle of the Pacific Ocean right under the noses of the Russian Navy. With the help of billionaire recluse Howard Hughes, obviously. | In 1974 the CIA undertook one of its most brazen operations – secretly raising a sunken Soviet submarine lost in the middle of the Pacific Ocean right under the noses of the Russian Navy. With the help of billionaire recluse Howard Hughes, obviously. | Thu, 05 Apr 2018 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=5, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=95, tm_isdst=0) | 48751720 | audio/mpeg | "Binge. Listen this and all your artist stations, plus any song from our library of millions of songs all ad free. Get your free 30 day trial of iHeartRadio AllAccess. You'll love it. Don't be basic, be extra. Start your free 30 day trial of iHeartRadio AllAccess. Now. Welcome to stuff you should know from howstoughforkworkscom hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. There's our ghost podcaster producer who's invisible. Jerry's past. Yeah, actually the ghost of Jerry's present. Jerry is not dead, everybody. That just sounded weird. It did. We're keeping Jerry around. Yes. She's just out this week. Yes. There you go. So it's just us, Chuck. Just a couple of boys batching. It just some good old boys never meaning no harm. No, something been in trouble with the loss since the day we were born. I don't think there was something something before then. Is there something something been in trouble? Yes. Right now. I don't know. We'll go we'll look it up. You know, it's funny. There's a great and we might have talked about this years ago, but there's a great website called Atlanta Time Machine where you can go back and look at old pictures of Atlanta and compare them to new pictures and all that stuff. And they have some movie specific pictures now and they have The Dukes of Hazard Pilot shoot photos, which was they eventually moved it out in the country. But like most of The Dukes of Hazard Pilot, all those car chases were in, like, mid town. Atlanta. Really isn't that crazy. But it was the original Bow and Luke wow who sang the theme song. Is it Walkthrough? Waylon Jennings. Wasn't he the narrator? It was Waylon Jennings. What was that first thing you said? Walk tosh. What does that mean? That's his nickname. Really? Waktash. Wayland Jennings. I never heard that. Wow. It is. I love Welan Jennings. Yeah, he's great. Apparently he and Johnny Cash were roommates and highway men way back in the day. Yes, both of them were on drugs, but other people didn't know that. So they both used to be on drugs, but not tell each other about it. Oh, really? And I guess they came out later that they were like, you were on drugs and so was I. I used to keep my drugs in the air conditioner. And Johnny Keshe is like, that's why the air conditioner never worked. And Whaling Jones was like, I used to keep mine in the TV. And Johnny caches. Whoever worked yeah, their TV never worked and their AC never worked because that's where they stashed their drugs without the other one knowing it. What did the drugs do to the TV and the air conditioner? I got them pretty wasted. What a weird start. Yeah, it is a little weird start. Especially because what we're talking about has nothing to do with drugs, Johnny Cash or Wayland Jennings or air conditioners or TV really? No, it has to do with the CIA submarines. The USSR. Yeah. Cold War. Yeah. And Howard Hughese, among other things. And Henry Kissinger. Are you hissing him? Interesting. He's still alive, too. Maybe. You'll hear this. I've never seen you hiss before. I know. It's kind of threatening. Is it? Yeah. I do have really sharp canines. Yeah, you should totally hits more often. I should. And I should sharpen these things. I should file them down. People do that. I know, but surely that has to hurt, right? To file them down? Yeah. No. How does it not? Don't you have nerves? No, they don't hit the nerves. They just I guess you're right. Yeah. I might do that. In the meantime, let's talk about something. Well, let's go back to the beginning. Okay. Okay. The 8th. I'm not exactly sure when, because look. The first part of my page ripped. Oh, man. Does it say when in 1968? It does? You want to guess? I feel like I'm holding the keys. May of 1968. Close. March. It was pre. Summer of barely. Oh, yeah. Everybody's just getting started. It's the summer of foreplay. Yeah, everyone's getting lubed up. Right. So March of 1968 in the northwestern Pacific, as far as the United States is concerned, which would be between, say, Hawaii and some far out islands in Alaska and whatever else is out there. There's not a lot out there. Apparently, Hawaii is the most remote island chain in the world. Did you know that? No. There's no island chain that's further away from other land than Hawaii. Even, like when you look at the globe, those teeny tiny islands, from what I understand. All right, so say Hawaiians, at least. Yeah. Anyway, basically, out in the middle of nowhere in the northwest Pacific, there was a Soviet sub. It was a Golf two. Golf Two Soviet submarine. Yeah. They called it the Cabriolet for a little while. But those were the subs with the rag top. Yeah, those didn't work out. This golf. Two sub was called the K 129. Surely it had an actual name, right? No, I think they called them the K. Whatever. All right, well, the K 129 was on a routine patrol mission. These are the Soviets. They weren't glib about what's called this one the Hannah Montana. Exactly right. So it was just the K 129. All business. Which actually is kind of reassuring because it was a nuclear submarine. Sure. It had not only a nuclear missile like a nuclear missile you could come up to the surface and shoot onto, say, the United States. Sure. It also had nuclear torpedoes, which I had no idea were a thing. Oh, really? A nuclear torpedo is kind of overkill, don't you think? No, not if you're underwater and you want to shoot a nuclear bomb at somebody. Well, okay, then. That really fits the bill. Well, it turns out that some of these nuclear tipped torpedoes detonated and there wasn't a full nuclear detonation, obviously, but it was enough to blow a hole in the submarine and I think kick off some other detonations in some of the other nuclear torpedoes. And the upshot of all this was that the entire 98 person crew and the Soviet submarine in the middle of the Cold War, 1968, sunk about 1600 miles or 1500 miles northwest of Hawaii and hit the bottom at 16,000ft more than 3 miles down. Yes. And so kicks off the story of Project Azurean and the Global Explorer. Yeah. So what happens, of course, is the Soviets go looking for this thing. They spend a couple of months, pretty massive search, couldn't find it. The US. Is kind of laughing and saying they haven't found their own sub yet. Right. Maybe we should go out there and take a look, because we could probably get some intel, maybe salvage a nuclear warhead for ourselves. Spray paint a smiley face that says something like, right back at you. That's a good one. Throw it their way. And in August of 1968, just quite a few months later, they actually found it. The United States of America located this thing. Yeah. So this is the official story. Here's the thing that I figured out from researching this story. You can also go ahead and assume that all of this is fabricated and that there's actually other stuff that was actually going on. Yeah. This is the story that has been handed this actually may be the story that covers up an assassination in Brazil or something like that. That could be the whole reason this story exists, because we're talking about a covert operation in the by the CIA. Okay, so just take everything with the grain of salt. Yeah. But the story as it was reported, and as far as the CIA has ever admitted, was that the Air Force and the Navy both had listening devices throughout the Pacific. And somebody at some point said, well, wait a minute. Why don't we get these two together and see if there's any data, any sounds that were picked up from the sub exploding, and see if we can pinpoint it basically triangulate with only two data points, which is, I guess, straight line, right? Yeah, that is what it would be called. But supposedly they did it and they found where the sub was. And like you said, the US. Was laughing because they were watching the Soviets look in all the wrong places, nowhere near it. And then after a couple of months, the Soviets called off the search, and it was quite obvious to the Americans that the Soviets had no idea where the sub was, which made us think, maybe we should check this thing out. Maybe we can go get it. Yeah. So we have two choices. We can call them and let them know where it is, or we can go get it ourselves. And this is the height of the Cold war. Yeah. So they weren't about to go with choice one. No. So option two came upon the table and we got our own sub called the Halibut. So we had fun names. The Halibut dropped a camera down there on a sled and took a bunch of pictures of this thing, verified it's down there, it's intact. I don't know for sure if we can go get it, but we should try because if we can get this thing, not only do we have potentially information on how these warheads are being built by them, but we might also be able to bust their codes with this cryptographic equipment they have down there. And so let's launch a project. And we love naming things, so let's name it Project Azurean. Yeah. I guess that's the name of a person from the Azores, maybe. I have no idea where they'd come up with these names. God love them, who knows? But Project is Orion was the name of this idea to go see if we can get this stuff right. Yeah. Which means, of course, we're not going to go out there next week and start looking like there's a long process that has to be undertaken before we can even figure out if we can do this right. So they actually did get together like a working group, a top secret working group of engineers and nautical engineers, any kind of engineer you can think of, and said, how would you do this? There's a submarine, a 500 ton submarine, 300ft long. That's a thing in and of itself. The big tub like that would be hard to pick up off land. Sure. But it's not on land, it's under water. It's 16,500ft under the surface of the Pacific Ocean in the middle of nowhere. About as in the middle of nowhere as you can get. And how could we do this? How could we possibly pick this up? Wait, before you answer, you engineers, the Soviets can have no idea what we're doing because they will probably think any ship that they thought was going after this I love this stuff more than most stuff in the world. Yeah. Like when there's this incredibly challenging, almost insurmountable task, right, and people get a lot of smart people together and say, let's start brainstorming, and if this is even possible. Right. I just think it's really cool. And I bet these people, the engineers are like, oh my God, this is a dream to come up and try and solve this problem. Plus the CIA said that they are holding my family hostage, so I better get to work. So they decided the only way we can try this is by doing this. It's going to involve three large vessels. One is a recovery ship that basically has a chamber with a bottom that could open and close. Like that ship in the abyss. Yeah. The moon pool. In fact, I bet James Cameron totally glamoured this. Totally. For his own needs. It would have a docking leg system that basically turned it into an underwater on the ocean floor platform that I did not get. I think just basically it goes down there instead of like hovering in place, turns into a building. But I don't understand. I didn't understand how but yes, that is the understanding. Well, I had four legs, but that's crazy. That means that I had four three mile long legs. That doesn't make much sense, does it? You know what I mean? I need to see a picture. I've seen pictures of it. I still don't know what they're talking about with the lakes. Yeah, well, I don't know then. But that's one, that's the ship that they sail out there to undertake the whole mission. Right? Yeah. There's two others that they have to come up with, too. That's right. Captured vehicle. So that had a grab a on it. Yeah. Like one of those banana clips that girls used to wear in the 90s. Yeah, but for a 2500 ton submarine. Yes. And it wasn't just like, hey, use a little grabber like that banana clip. It was specifically designed to attach to the submarine. Right. It was the glove, the one thing it was designed to do. That's correct. So that's step two. If you have one of these things and you're loading it onto a massive ship, I think a 700 foot ship is what they came up with. 618 foot long ship. Many meters long. So many meters somebody is going to say, what is that? Well, the Soviets would, yes, because they're flying over the US with their spy satellites ever since Sputnik got up there. So they're going to want to know what that is. The Soviet analysts are going to point this out. So if you have this big long ship that sticks out like a sore thumb because what are you doing with that thing? What are you also doing with this big grabber? How do you get around the grabber part, at least, Chuck? Oh, the grabber, yeah. Well, you must be talking about the barge. So this is pretty amazing. This thing had a retractable sunroof, basically. And the whole reason this thing was here was to hide everything. Right? Right. So they built the grabber vehicle, the vehicle number two inside the barge. Yes. But like you said, the barge had a sunroof. The thing about the barge was it was also designed to be submersible. So what they did was they built a barge that they built the grabber inside of. Floated the barge out to this huge 618 foot ship. Ship number one. Submerged it underneath the ship. Opened up the sunroof on the barge. Opened up the moon pool on the big ship. And raised the grabber vehicle into the 618 foot ship so that the Soviets never even knew the grabber vehicle existed. They never saw it. It just didn't exist. And they had to build all this stuff from scratch. Right. It wasn't just like they had a grabber laying around that fitted Soviet sub. Precisely. Or this barge that could become invisible file accounts. Basically, this is what this working group came up with. These are the things you need to do this. Yes. And the CIA said, who can we possibly get? Who in the world? Well, Howard Hughes. Yes, Mr. Howard Hughes. Specifically the summer or summer corporation. And that was a part of the Hughes tool company. And they said, Go build this thing at 36,000 tons, 618ft, like you said. Right. And they called it the Hughes Glomar Explorer because Global Marine was the company that operated it. And that's just an abbreviation of Global Marine. I did not know until a couple of days ago. Yeah. It's sort of a disappointing end to what Global meant. Yes. Because it sounds kind of like space AG. It definitely does. Like, wow, look at the healthy glow from radiation exposure on that thing. Glamor Glamor has got a great glow. And here's the other cool thing, because there would still be a big behemoth ship out there in the ocean, in the Pacific, and the Russians would wonder what was going on. So they said, here's the deal. Actually, it happened to sink in an area of the Pacific where there are a lot of manganese, really valuable manganese, nodules underwater. So we'll just concoct this story that said Howard Hughes built this thing. You know how crazy he is to go out there and try and mine the ocean's depths to get even richer. And people actually bought that. The press even bought it. They went to the trouble of saying, this is actually a really good cover story because there was manganese deposits in the area. They checked out. The idea of deep sea mining was very new. So there was the idea that this would be a good idea, but no one had tried to undertake it yet. So the Soviets couldn't have been like, that's not a deep sea mining ship. No one knew what a deep sea mining ship looked like yet. Yeah. Plus, it was very Hughesy and things to do. Exactly. Right. He was extremely wealthy, so he had the kind of money to just undertake deep sea mining and be the first one. But he also operated in strict secrecy, and the press used to watch his operations and projects from the outside and just make guesses about it and create rumors. But it didn't matter because it was all just conjecture and rumors. Right. Yeah. So it was a perfect cover story. And then add on to the top that Hughes was already in bed with the US government in a number of ways, but including making spy satellites in highly classified top secret projects, they couldn't have come up with a better person to helm the actual carrying out of the project. Should we take a break? Yeah. Only 45% of high school students feel they are prepared for college or careers. Stride career prep is helping change that. Stride Career Prep lets students take charge of their education and their future. By combining real world skills training and traditional academics, students can earn college credit while in high school or get the training needed to land a job right after graduation. Stride Career Prep prepares your team for in demand careers in business, tech, health, science, criminal justice and more. Students can take courses developed by industry professionals, prepare for certifications, get hands on experience, network, and most importantly, gain the confidence they need to succeed. Stride Career Prep is backed by over 20 plus years of experience in online learning and education. Take charge at K twelve. Compodcast. That's K Twelve. Compodcast. And start taking charge of your future today. All right, so this took a while. It was like years had passed between the sub syncing and then actually saying, all right, I think we have a plan to do this and we can get this done. And by the time that came around, they said, wait a minute, should we go take another look at this thing? Is it still intact? Should we bother? Is this still relevant? Is it an asset? Or is it just some rusty old hunk of metal at the bottom of the ocean? It's a basically like a museum thing now. Yeah, and we're not into Russian museums now, let's be honest, not for this kind of money. So they did form another committee. We're great at that. And they did take another look and they said, you know what? Let's go down there, guys, because even though these missiles, the SSN Five missiles, are no longer like their big threat, they do have the SSN Eight. Maybe we could glean some technology and how these things operate. And there's still that cryptographic equipment down there which would be a good asset for our intelligence, right? So they said, okay, we're going to do it. Come on, guys, let's do it. There was another thing, too. There's this great IO Nine article on this very project, and the author found some publication of memos about Project Azure. And one of the things was that they were saying, like, yes, it's still worth it, intelligence wise and everything. But more to the point, we're locked in the punch here. Like, the US. Can't afford to seem wishy washy to its contractors. That's crazy. So we need to do this regardless. Yeah, that's kind of nutty when you think about it. That the risk of pissing off Howard Hughes, I guess, was too great. Right. And it sort of makes sense in a way, because if he was a big time contractor for them to get that relationship going. But yeah, there's not that many top secret contractors that you know you can trust and you don't want to take them off. Right. Very interesting, though. Are we saying pissed off now? Sure. Is that a thing. I guess so. It made an appearance in the last episode, too. Did I say that? No. The listener mail guy. Peter, about Vaping, I'm pissed off, if you can't tell. Wow. I'm not sure, but I appreciate you drawing attention to it. Well, I guess we'll find out if Jerry bleeps all this out or if we get booted out of the 6th grade classes around the world. Yes. Kids, what you should say is ticked off. Ticked off. And you really shouldn't say that. You should say that. I'm going to use my words and let you know that what you just said bothered me. Oh, is that what you're supposed to say? Yeah. Speak like an adult. So how adults speak, I say pissed off. Here's the other side note, and this will come into play later, is that there was another memo that said, you know what? There are bodies down there, and according to the Geneva Convention, 1949, there's a proper way that you handle even enemies remains. And we're going to abide by that, and we're going to take all the stuff we need to make sure that we can do that in a respectful way because this will eventually probably come out. And at least maybe that'll be a slight goodwill gesture to the Russians that say, hey, we were very respectful of your dead semen. Right. So they outfitted yeah, the Hughes Glow Mar, the HGE with, I think, a capacity to handle 100 bodies, which is kind of funny. If you were a sailor engineer on the Hughes Global Explorer. Might have made you a little nervous considering there were 98 sailors on the sub that you were going to get. So they made room for two more. Two more dead guys. Don't think that was by accident either. Yeah, they didn't just round up to a nice even hundred cadaver coolers. I'm sure they're like, yeah, two people will probably die on this mission. That's right. So there's another memo from, I think the 19th, 74, June 3, and it basically said, hey, all this stuff's ready. The ship's ready. The grabber cloth vehicle is ready. The barge is even ready. Everything's ready. Let's do this. Are we going to do it or not? They estimated a 40% chance of success, which they were, like, over the moon about yeah, they were over the moon pool about this, which is interesting. But I guess when it's something that tough to accomplish and that innovative and bleeding edge nice. Apparently 40% wasn't too bad. No, not at all. And that was, like, of 100% success. A 40% chance of 100% success. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, sure. So the project is approved June 5, 1974. And just a few days later, on June 15, the ship departed the Hughes Glow martin, I believe, the port of Los Angeles. Yeah. And another wrinkle that will come up a little bit later is because this was so covert, they couldn't surround it by battleships or have F 16s? Well, they probably didn't have, I don't know when the F 16 came about. I think maybe like the 60s or something. I'm sorry to all the aviators. I'm sure we're way off, but whatever fighter jets they had at the time, they couldn't draw attention to themselves by being protective like that. It would be really weird if there was a Naval or Air Force escort for a manganese ship. Right? Yeah. This is a pretty I want to read this. So this is pretty great, this quote from the CIA to kind of just drive it home of what a task was before them. Someone in the CIA said this. Imagine standing atop the Empire State Building with an eight foot wide grappling hook on a one inch diameter steel rope. Your task is to lower the hook to the street below, snag a compact car full of gold, and lift the car back to the top of the building. And on top of that, the job has to be done without anyone noticing. And that essentially describes what happened there. Right. That's what they were doing when they shipped out. That was the task ahead of them, right? Yes. And add to this that it keeps getting worse. Well, yeah, but the Soviets were still surveilling everything, right. So remember, they couldn't have a US. Navy escort on the deep sea mining ship. That just looked really weird. But that's not to say the Soviets didn't send their Navy out to see what was up. So for the first two weeks after the Hughes Glamor Explorer made it to its destination and started working, there were Soviet ships surveilling them basically 24 hours a day for the first 14 days. Yeah. So these guys are actually undertaking raising a Soviet sub within sight of Soviet naval ships watching them. And the Soviet they were really nervous at this point. They didn't know if the Soviet Navy was going to try to board the Global Explorer just to be like, what are you guys doing? You're making us nervous. And apparently one of the CIA officers on board was like, we need to stack some crates on our helicopter landing pad to prevent them from landing. And there was a I don't know exactly what alert status it was on, but maybe high alert, which was there's a chance the Soviets are going to board. There's sensitive materials on board. The team that's in charge of destroying those sensitive materials, you guys are on alert. The people charged with defending the team, you guys are on alert. But we're not going to give you guns yet because we haven't reached that point. This is the tension. What were they supposed to do? Like karate chop, I think. Karate chop. Wow. It was like, you can karate them, but don't shoot them. They're probably going to shoot you, but just deflect the bullets with your karate chops. So they're out on the ocean. It's a very complicated mission, to say the least. So you've got your ocean currents at work. You have to maintain your position through those. That's hard enough. Then you had to lower this capture vehicle by doing this adding 60 foot pieces of steel pipe one at a time, connecting to each other, 60ft at a time, 3 miles down, right. To lower that recovery vehicle down to the sub. And then when it gets down there, it has to be just in the right position to straddle over that submarine, get that grabber out, attach it to the hull, and then reverse that whole process by now towing a freaking submarine yes. By taking 160 foot length pipe off at a time until you're raising the sub like that. You know, what I need to see to understand this fully is, remember the beginning of Titanic when James Cameron did that terrible obvious recreation of what happened to Sync? The Titanic was at the very beginning when Bill Paxton was in modern days, and they were out searching for the jewel of the sea. And he says, well, that guy with the beard, the nerd, fat, bearded guy that's in every movie to explain what's going on. And he said, here's how the Titanic sunk. And it did the little recreation on the screen and showed exactly how it happened just so everyone would know. That's what I need to see. Yeah. Oh, of this. I need a chubby, bearded guy to explain to me visually that's not me or Ellen Page or Inception. You want to be Inceptioned. Yeah. No, I know what you mean. The problem is, there are so many holes in the story. I need a picture book. But everybody accepts that there are holes in the story because it's a covert CIA operation that will probably never fully be explained. Although there have been interviews with people who are on the ship. They could probably tell you, we'll look them up after this. Yeah. And at the very end of that whole process of bringing this thing up, then it's not like they get it up kind of close enough to the ship, and they're like, all right, it's 30ft below us. We'll just glide in from here. Then they had to suck it on board and stow it in the docking well successfully. Can you imagine getting it to where it's right below them and then it breaks free? I'd be so nervous. And that's kind of almost what happened that's close to what happened. So, remember, the Soviet Navy is circling them, and they're lowering this claw down to the sub. But also like, we're not doing anything over here. No guns. Right. So they reached the sub and start doing the submersible claw thing. And at that time, the Soviet Navy two, three times are like, See you later. And they left for good. And so the global explorer starts raising the sub. They get it. I have no idea how. They know they've gotten it, but they've got the sub. I don't know how they directed this thing over the sub. I don't understand either. I'm totally with you, but as far as the story is concerned, the claw got the sub and they started raising it and they got it over the course of a few days, a mile up. And then all of a sudden that's an extremely incredible accomplishment. I know. Imagine trying to sleep while this thing is slowly being pulled 60ft at the yes. You would not you'd not be able to. But there was an engineer who was on the ship who later recounted in an interview that there was something that felt like about a ten second long earthquake on the ship. And he said you knew something bad had happened. Yeah. And this was right after he said, it's going great, everybody. We can't lose now. That first mile is the trickiest. Yeah, I guess. Was it an earthquake? No, it was the sub breaking up in the subversive claw. Oh, okay. I thought that caused it to break up. No, he said it felt like an earthquake. That's how big of an energetic release it was. So the sub breaks apart. I guess it had been down there so long that it just wasn't viable as a single solid piece of metal anymore. Here's what I think happened. Based on some other stuff, like later memos, they said that they needed to redesign the claw yeah. The banana clip, so that it wasn't as brittle and that it was brittle. I think the claw broke up and some of the sub was able to fall out. Some remained held into the grabber. But most of the sub this is a 300 ft sub, about 260ft of it broke off and fell back a mile down to the ocean floor. So I thought you meant that the grabber should have had did anybody think to put felt on this grabber right. Or rubber tips on the end of the claws? No, they didn't. I know. So most of the sub, including all the stuff the CIA was after yeah, all the good stuff, the code books, the con tower, they're like, we have the galley. Right. They ate well, I guess that's okay. I love borscht. So it is a silver lining. Yeah. They only got, what, 10% of this thing? Yes. Which was the four of the sub. The four of the subs stayed in the grabber claw and they were able to bring it the rest of the way up and salvage it, which included the nuclear torpedoes. Unfortunately for the CIA and everybody aboard, the nuclear torpedoes were of course something that had detonated. So they all suffered from some plutonium exposure as well. Yeah. So their exposure was consistent with the fact that there was, in fact nuclear materials, right? Yeah. That they had been exposed to these nuclear torpedoes. They didn't get their hands on the nuclear missile they were after. Right. Basically none of the prize that they were looking for, they got their hands on. But one thing they did find on their hands all of a sudden were the bodies of six Soviet submariners. Yes, they're submariners. How do you say it? I think submariner. Okay. But we'll get taken to task and told the right way. Well, we said both. I can't get it wrong when you say it both ways. So, like we said, they could hold 100 bodies, so they could certainly hold six. And then I guess 94 other guys on board worried. I would guess so. And they had copies of Soviet burial manuals. American burial manuals. They had the ceremony. Did you watch the video of this? I did. Well, some of it they conduct they filmed it in color. And I love how is it you who wrote this part? Yeah. I love how you put it bizarre and inexplicably futuristic video. Yeah, it looks weird. It does look like a George Orwellian transmission from the future. But if the future was in the 1980s and it was being written in the 1920s right. The reason why I put my finger on it, finally, it's men wearing matching coveralls and hard hats, disposing of bodies, and the video quality is just weird. Just perfectly weird. Yeah. Just go check it out, I guess. CIA project. Azorian burial at sea, I think, would probably bring it up on YouTube. And eventually this film was turned over to Boris Yeltsin. Somebody still loves you, Boris Yeltsin, in 1992 by CIA director Robert Gates at that time, yeah. Should we take another break? Yeah, I think we're going. All right. We're going to wrap up this whole mess in just a minute. Only 45% of high school students feel they are prepared for college or careers. Stride career prep is helping change that. Stride Career Prep lets students take charge of their education and their future. By combining real world skills training and traditional academics, students can earn college credit while in high school or get the training needed to land a job right after graduation. Stride Career Prep prepares your team for in demand careers in business, tech, health, science, criminal justice, and more. Students can take courses developed by industry professionals, prepare for certifications, get hands on experience, network, and most importantly, gain the confidence they need to succeed. Stride Career Prep is backed by over 20 plus years of experience in online learning and education. Take charge at K. Twelvecom podcast. That's K twelve.com podcast. And start taking charge of your future today. So they found it once they got part of it, should they go again? That was the big question, right? And there was a lot of discussion. The CIA, for its part, was like, I don't know if there's anything left of that sub. Like, it's the right. We lucked out that it was intact to begin with after a series of explosions. Yeah, we're pretty sure that the stuff that fell a mile back down to the sea floor probably broke up. I'm suspicious of that. But that was the CIA's position regardless. Kissinger and the rest of the Nixon administration were like, how can we do this again? The thing is, right around the same time Nixon resigned and all of a sudden everybody who'd been high flying and free wheeling and overthrowing governments and all that were suddenly like, nothing. We're not doing anything. There's no operations going on whatsoever. So the idea of a second project being undertaken was pretty doubtful for a number of reasons. Yeah, and one of the other big reasons was this whole cryptographic equipment and the codes probably weren't even relevant by that point. Yeah. And so they didn't think they were basically like, there's so little upside to this at this point that Kissinger I think he even finally relented, right? Yeah, I think so. It's not worth it. What I found was interesting was that later interview by an admiral said even if you found the code books and you found the communications equipment and figured out the arrangement of the burst transmitters and circuits and all that stuff, all you'd be able to do is break the codes for a 24 hours period. But that would have been the case no matter if they got in the whole suburb. That's true at any point. It was already years later when they first went down. Right. So I guess you probably would still be a pretty big treasure trove intelligence wise. Just get a one day snapshot of Soviet submarine operations. That probably be worth it. But maybe it was more about those warheads, though. I think that was definitely part of it, too. But they said there's probably not a good chance we're going to do this. The other problem was this by this time journalist named Steamore Hirsch, who's written some of the deepest expose on the US government ever written. He wrote about the Milai massacre. He didn't write or he wrote a few stories on the Frank Olson case that Wormwood was based on. Seymour Hurst was in that toward the end he's written a bunch of stuff. He had this story down cold. He had everything for well over a year before it finally broke. And the CIA director went to hearsch and said, please don't say anything about this. Please sit on the story, please sit on the story. And behind Hershe's back, or right from under him, the story ended up breaking in the most bizarre, suspicious way it possibly could have. Yeah, well and even before that, a very famous term came about because of this. There was a rolling stonewater named Harriet Anne Philippe and she flat out asked the CIA to reveal its existence. And that's where the phrase we can neither confirm nor deny its existence came into play, which is now known as the global response. If you've ever heard that that's where it comes from. Which is a great little cherry on top, I think. I think so, too. Even though this isn't the end. No, it's not. It gets even weirder, to tell you the truth. Yeah. So Harriet and Philippi was asking about Project Azorium because there is a cryptic, weird, little short news blurb in the Los Angeles Times that was basically about some gossip and rumor that was circulating at the LAPD. And among cops in La. There was a rumor that the Hughes Corporation had cooperated and carried out a project to retrieve a lost Soviet sub with the CIA. Weren't any other details about that. They said it was in the Atlantic Ocean. There were a lot of problems with this story, but for the first time ever, it started to see the light of day. And the whole reason that that was in there, Chuck, was just the weirdest thing that I think the weirdest part of this story and the most suspicious yeah. The fact that all this came together in this way is pretty remarkable. So the Hughes Summit Corporation that we talked about, they were broken into. Their HQ was broken into in Los Angeles. They got cash, they got boxes of documents, including a memo describing this secret project to the CIA. And no one knew for sure whether or not they had this document or not. Right. The thieves. Yes. Until a few months later. There was this, I guess, sort of deep throat intermediary person that called up and said, hey, we have possession of a lot of these stolen papers. They didn't say, we have the CIA document about Project Azurian, but they say, We've got boxes full of stuff. We've got binders full of women. Right. And we'll take a half a million bucks to return this to you. Right. And so there's a couple of points that need to be mentioned. This is the fourth or fifth break in of a Hughes office in the last four or five months. And what they think. They think the Vegas mob and the St. Louis mob was involved, but they don't know who they were working for. Were they working for the government? Were they working for Howard Hughes? Who are they working for? But they were very clearly after some specific papers. They think what they were after was definitive evidence that Howard Hughes owned a number of high level politicians in the United States and that they actually found it. There was a Senate report that was repressed at the last minute. So they do think that they found evidence of just high corruption, but that they didn't know that they had this CIA document in their possession until the CIA accidentally tipped them off. Yeah. So the CIA tells the FBI about this police report that the La. Cops supposedly have. Right. And this is being offered up for sale and for money. And it might have this project as orient information. The FBI then tells the La. Police about this because they didn't know about this memo. They just knew that they had this box full. They were being offered to exchange this box full of documents for a lot of cash. They didn't know what was inside of it. Apparently, people had it, didn't know what was inside of it. So the La. Police told this dude who tried to broker the deal and CIA that's how the CIA found out about it. Right. I think the CIA was surveilling the LAPD. I probably as a matter of course and found out about the LAPD being contacted. Right. Like you said, the CIA contacts the FBI. The FBI contacts the LAPD. And the LAPD says to the intermediary, hey, do you happen to have a document that shows the Hughes corporation trying to retrieve a Soviet sub for the CIA? You thumb through the boxes and let me know if you see the word Azurean. And the intermediary says, BRB. Yes. And the next thing you know, the La. Times is starting to report on it. Yeah. February 7, 1975, la. Times article us reported after Russ sub, short for Russian. Sure. I guess they just had one of that big font. Right. They couldn't get Russian in there. According to reports circulating among local law enforcement officers, howard Hughes had contracted with the CIA to raise a sunken Russian nuclear submarine from the Atlantic ocean. Not true. It was the pacific. Right. And again, just a lot of holes in this. However it was now out there. So there's a dude named Jack Anderson, I believe, who had a nationally syndicated radio show, and he was the first to really mentioned this thing, and he said he was going to get to the bottom of it and reveal some more stuff about it. And by this time, once he did that, all of the reporters who were sitting on stories about it, all bets were off, including Seymour Hirsch. And so, mysteriously, the day after Jack Anderson mentions it, there's front page, in depth stories about project desiree, which they incorrectly called project Jennifer on newspapers around the country. And the cat was out of the bag, as they say. I'm Jack Anderson. And that's the last word. That's good stuff. Sounds like that's the kind of show he would add. Yeah, he's got his fedora with scoop, like in the bill. Yeah. I'm kind of curious about why project or why Jennifer was the name of the compartment. Okay. It sounds like some sexist thing to me. If you ask me. I think it was just maybe like a hurricane that was up for usage. Okay. But the compartment, it's kind of like all communications, all memos, all everything that has to do with this project goes into this compartment. And somebody thought the compartment name Jennifer was the name of the project, so they messed that up. Yes. But they got just about everything else. Right. And so by the time that this story comes out, the US is like, well, the Soviets are about to unleash hell on Earth. Diplomatically, maybe militarily. This is going to be really bad. And the US. Braced itself for response and out of Moscow. Crickets. Yeah. And for very good reasons, all of which kind of tie back to embarrassment. Three things. Mainly, they would have to admit that they lost a sub, which would be embarrassing. They would have to admit that they couldn't find it and the US. Could find it super embarrassing. And then they had to admit that we were following them out there on the ocean and saw them doing something. But we turned around and went home. We went peepee. Super triple embarrassment. So they said, Niet, we're not doing it. I think it's interesting. I've seen a bunch of stories lately about the Cold War where we knew something that the Soviets knew, but no one could admit it out loud. So there was a lot of sitting back and like, all right, are they going to say something? Are they going to say something? All right. They're not saying anything. No. So despite that, despite this assessment that the Soviets weren't going to publicly acknowledge this, and the United States certainly didn't publicly acknowledge it either, despite that, it was clear that the Soviets also weren't going to be like, sure, go ahead, try to get the rest of the sub. They were worried that if they did go back out, the Soviets would maybe sink whatever ship tried to go out there. Yeah. The Soviets had a military presence, a naval presence around the site the whole time from that moment on. Once the story broke, fool me once, and they said, that's it. It's done. So for all we know, they went back and managed to sneak it out from under the Soviets. Who knows? For all we know, this never happened. And that all of this is actually a cover story for that break in of the Hughes Corporation. That's what I think. Yeah. Or for all we know, this is all gospel truth. Maybe it's sitting next to a spaceship in Area 51 deep within the Earth in a bunker. It very well could be. Chuck, don't be so naive. In the end, in today's money, it costs about $3 billion. And here's the kind of fun ending, is that Global Explorer. Remember the barge? It was eventually retrofitted to be a regular deep sea drilling barge. No, the whole ship. Oh, I thought just the barge was no, the whole ship was. So it was finally sold only eight years ago to a private company for $15 million. Yeah. I think for scrap all the secrets therein. I know. Can you believe it? But they actually, finally did do deep sea mining. And then get this, howard Hughes got a free deep sea mining ship out of it because the government paid him to build it. That guy that guy. Well, if you want to know more about Project Azorian, you should probably go back in time and join the CIA. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. Oh, and shout out to the great IO Nine article that time the CIA and Howard Hughes tried to steal a Soviet submarine by Mark Strauss. That was a great source. So, too, with Seymour Hershey's 1975 New York Times article on the whole thing where he mistakenly called it Project Jennifer. And there are a bunch of other sources, too. And we'll go ahead and shout out Pinto Madness again. Why not? Because why not? All right. Listener mail. Yes. I'm going to call this really great thing that you should think about throwing a few bucks to. Hey, guys. I want to preface this by saying I'm not looking for a shout out. It's always a good way to get a shout out. Yeah. I run a charity trivia night every year in honor of my late wife that passed away from brain cancer a few days after we got married in the hospital. The event benefits Grace Giving a 501 C. Three we started for brain cancer research donations, mainly for our trivia event. We created the event three years ago, and now in year three, we sold out our 300 person event in roughly three minutes. That's awesome. With 170 people on the wait list. So I just want to publicize this event. That's me talking, Chuck. I should do it in voices. That way people would know. Do this guy's voice, like really high pitch. No, I'm not going to do that to Mike. Mike is a really good guy. We've been emailing back and forth. So it is April 14 this year in Chicago. Can you even get tickets to this thing? Well, I think it's sold out. But you can donate, huh? Yeah, I did say, can people at least donate? Because this is such a great thing. And even if you've got like, $5, it's what this family has been through and what they're doing now, it's pretty amazing. So I want to say thanks for helping me out these last few years. Love the podcast. I really enjoyed the PR live show that you put out, by the way. And by the way, my roommate is Emma Cleary, the football player who wrote in about CTE. Oh, wow. Remember that? Man alive. So, wait, these two roommates have both made stuff you should know that your male. Yes. That's really something. How about that? Some sort of trifecta. So if you have it in your heart to throw a few bucks toward Grace Giving, we couldn't encourage you to do so. You can go to facebook. Comgracegiving 24. Great. Or just go Google that stuff on the Internet. And that is from Grace and Mike. Thanks a lot, guys. I think what you're doing is fantastic. Yeah, keep it going there in Chicago. Yeah. And if you want to let us know about something great that we would want to publicize. You can get in touch with us via Twitter at siskpodcast. I'm at Joshua Clark chucks at moviecrush. We're on Facebook. Comsteffyshootknow and Chucks on facebookcom. Charlesw chuck Bryant. You can send us an email to stuffpodcastohousefworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseopeworks.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'll access new episodes early. Download the app today." | |
3ff2f524-5461-11e8-b6d0-275a0e983de4 | Selects: How Free Speech Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-how-free-speech-works | Freedom of speech and the press are values vital to American democracy. But the First Amendment doesn't really define free speech, and plenty of expressions are restricted. Learn all about the ins and outs of this cherished right in this classic episode. | Freedom of speech and the press are values vital to American democracy. But the First Amendment doesn't really define free speech, and plenty of expressions are restricted. Learn all about the ins and outs of this cherished right in this classic episode. | Sat, 18 Sep 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=18, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=261, tm_isdst=0) | 62528865 | 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 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. Happy Saturday. Good morning. I hope you've had your breakfast cereal, and I hope you have had your cartoons, and I hope you're ready to learn about free speech. Yeah, that being thrown around a lot these days. Free speech. Free speech. But free speech actually means something specific. It's not just you can say anything you want anytime you want and without any repercussions at all. That's not free speech. We're here to tell you what it really is in the episode from February 28, 2017, how Free Speech Works. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry. The papers have been shuffled. They're plumb and true. It's time for stuff you should know. The podcast. You know, it's not plumbing. True my gut. Anything in my house yes, all of my house had those gross, cheap, hollow core doors. No, they're not doors. I mean, they function as doors. If there's air in your door, then it's not a door. So one by one, I've been replacing them with wood solid doors. And I went and did that for our bedroom, and, man, oh, man, was it frustrating. Oh, hanging them because they didn't want to hang. It's the worst. Like nothing straight. Yeah, like, oh, that looks good. And then it goes to shut, and it's like, whack. Well, I'm sure it was straight 100 years ago, and then over time, the house settled in, and now it's doing its own thing, so I had to shave the door in so many places, it looks like a Doctor Seuss door. Oh, cool. You should plant one of those weird Dr. Seuss palm trees in your yard to really complete it. It's called marijuana. So I'm glad you just said marijuana, Chuck, because you have every right to say the word marijuana in this country. It's a free country. You can say the name of a plant people do say and have long said. This is a free country. I can say whatever I want. Free speech is one of the basic hallmarks of what makes America a free country? Freedom of speech. But America is not the only country that enshrines the freedom of speech protection in its charter. Yeah. There are varying degrees of it in many countries. Right. In some countries, there's not very much. In other countries. There's a lot. In the US is arguably one of the leaders, although some people point to Europe's and we'll talk about those later, but some people point to Europe's free speech protections and say, those people know what they're doing. Right. In the US, if you look at free speech, you go to the Bill of Rights, typically. It's a great place to start, bill, great guy. And you will find in the First Amendment of the Constitution, which is the first part of the Bill of Rights, it says in there specifically, that Congress will make no law. Right. Abridging the freedom of speech. It's as simple as that. It doesn't say, unless speech says this, unless somebody says that, unless you really don't like the guy. It's absolute. It's an absolute protection of freedom of speech. Yeah. And that goes on. I think it's pertinent to mention abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or the right of the people to peaceably to assemble, founding Father JFK and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. I'm sorry, that wrong. That was Ted Kennedy. We're all very important. Sure they are. Yeah. Right to assemble. It's a pretty important one. Oh, yeah. And because we had just left the country on independence from Britain, who at the time was like, no, we very much want to squash any dissenting opinions about the Crown. Exactly. And people were getting thrown in jail for that kind of stuff. In the colonies, they were trying to quash a rebellion. And that's a pretty important part of it. If you're a monarchy, an absolute monarchy that wants to keep the rebels in check, you just say you can't say certain things, and if you do, we're going to throw you in jail. It has a freezing effect. Yeah. Or their weird punishments. Like when they said, Stick a sock in it, they went, yeah, okay. And they went, no, really? Stick a sock in it by law for eight months, Governor, and tape it shut. Sure. With my dirty sock in your mouth. My dirty 18th century sock. Yeah. My wool sock from my wet boots. Quickly, though, I think we should point out that as we were going through this, I realized you could have an entire podcast called The Ins and Outs of Free Speech. Yeah. Like a series. A whole show. You have a whole show about it, not just an episode. So this is an overview, as we do, that is going to pick and talk about various court cases over the years, rulings and writings of judges that are pertinent. But, man, it's deep and wide. Yeah, it is. Especially considering that, again, when you go to the Bill of Rights. It just says Congress can't pass any laws that abridge the freedom of speech. Era. They're like, Why does he keep writing era? And Chuck, not only though was it this retaliation reaction to the British monarchy, it was also a big part of Enlightenment thinking as well. The protection of freedom of speech is a huge aspect of the Enlightenment, and obviously the United States was founded during the Enlightenment, and as part of the Enlightenment, it was an Enlightenment experiment. Right. Yeah. Like, we don't want to restrict thought or expression. Right. And some might say that if Britain hadn't been so intent on squashing dissenting opinion, then we might not have been so, Enlightenment aside, so heck bent on ensuring those rights. So maybe it all worked out for the best. Yeah, I think so. And Britain came around. Right. You can still get that sock thrown in your mouth, can you? I don't know, man. It's on the book still. I just don't know if they do it anymore. Is it? The socks are much nicer now, though. That's right. They're all happy socks. So since you have this very broad protection of freedom of speech right? Yeah. Then there's nothing more to be said about it. Anybody can say anything they want. Not quite true. It isn't true. Yeah. Because we have three branches of government here in the US. We do, yeah. It turns out. I thought that was just one. You got the executive branch, which is the one I think you're thinking. Then you have the legislative branch, congress. Okay. Which is actually separate. And then you have the third branch, the judicial branch. Yes. They are equal and important branch. And with the congressional legislative branch, they pass laws. People go out and break laws. Sure. People get convicted, people appeal their convictions. And in some cases, those convictions and the laws are questionable enough or interesting enough that it will eventually make it to a high enough court that the court will rule on whether or not that law holds up to any constitutional standard. Over time, freedom of speech has been shaped and expanded and paired away by the courts here in the United States. Yeah. Maybe more so than any other kind of segment of law. Or maybe not. But I'm going to just as a complete armchair attorney, I'm going to say that perhaps free speech has been challenged more and whittled down and defined more than maybe any other aspect of law. Yeah. Because one of the big things that the courts did with freedom of speech was to really expand the definition of speech. Yeah. It's not just words that come out of your mouth or even right. No. Like, it can be a T shirt that says, F the Police, or it could say, yes, hug the police. Sure. Somebody might find that offensive. Who knows? Thank you for coming to my rescue this time. It could be a billboard. It could be a pamphlet you hand out. It could be an act, symbolic act. Flag burning. That was a big one. Remember that in the 80s? Absolutely. Or refusing to say the Pledge for Allegiance. That was in the, I think, World War II. Yeah. Which is actually now protected because free speech can also mean the freedom to not speech. Yeah. Because up until, I think, 1943, when the Supreme Court ruled on it, kids were being forced to say the pledge whether they wanted to or not, and the Supreme Court said, no, we think freedom of speech is really freedom of expression, and if you don't feel like saying the pledge, you're free to express yourself in that way. Yes. And as you'll find throughout the show, we'll kind of probably say this over and over. Freedom of speech doesn't have a lot to do with something you might find offensive or repugnant generally. The US. Decided on protecting that right. Regardless of whether or not you're offended or you think it's awful. And that's kind of what makes America great in a lot of ways, is, you know what? Who are we to decide what to legislate morality, essentially? And we'll get into all this with obscenity and all that stuff and pornography. But even when it comes to, like, I don't want to say the pledge because of this reason. Right. The courts have said, you know what? You're right. This is America, and we may not like it, but that's right. Yeah. And the whole reason behind this, too. It's easy to just take it for granted, especially if you were raised in the United States, that you have that right. Who cares what the basis of it is? You can say basically whatever you want. But when you really dig into why the founders sought to protect this and why it's been upheld and defended so much over the years, is because the idea is that if you are free to speak your mind without fear of being put in jail or killed or beaten by a mob, that you are going to introduce new ideas to the marketplace of ideas. And through this, you're going to have an exchange with other people. And a lot of times it's going to be contentious and it's going to be ugly, but over time, things can evolve and get better and change for the better through this exchange of ideas. And to ensure that the engine of cultural evolution continues unabated, you have to have the free exchange of ideas. And to have the free exchange of ideas, you have to have protection of free speech. Yeah. Because if not, you have the government being the one saying, well, no, here are all the ideas. Right. Exactly. And don't worry about having any of your own. These are the ones. Yeah. And in a lot of cases, those things can come across as really great idea. Sure. Here in the US. Up until I think the mid 50s or early sixty s there were laws on the books where it said, you can't speak ill of groups. Like, you can't say anything about Jewish people or Muslim people or any group. You can't say these things. Hate speech was not protected. Right. It was called group libel. And that actually sounds pretty good in a lot of senses. Like, yeah, we shouldn't be talking trash about entire groups of people because it can lead to problems. But that same prohibition on speech came to be exploited by white Southerners who were in power in the 50s, who said, Martin Luther King, he's trying to incite violent social change with his radical ideas. Somebody needs to put a duct tape over that guy's mouth. Right. Stick a sock in it. He doesn't have the freedom to say this. And actually, our right to say hateful things about other people was a direct result in the United States of the civil rights movement being protected by the courts against white Southerners who sought to squash their speech. Yeah. So hate speech is due in part to Dr. Martin Luther King and trying to advance civil rights in a weird turn of events. Yeah, it really was. And in Europe, and we'll talk about this a little more, like you said, some people say they have nailed it. They don't protect hate speech. And you can't deny the Holocaust publicly, and you can't say Jewish people XYZ or this group of people are like this, right. Some people say that's kind of right on the money. We have taken a different tack here in the US. Right. And Europe does that because they have a pretty recent example of what can happen if you do have freedom of speech, and that totalitarian government can hijack that freedom of speech and use it as propaganda to incite hatred amongst an entire population, or even, as this one author put it, to prepare them for extermination. Just basically saying, like, hey, everybody, get those guys. They're the reasons you don't have jobs. They're the rapists. They're the people who are going to kill you and steal your family's wealth and wellbeing, so get rid of them. Turn on them. And that's the whole point of saying, nobody can incite hatred through speech in these European democracies because the state has done it before. Yeah. And we all see what happened there, right? Should we take a break? I feel like that's a good intro. Sure. Broad, allencompassing, passionate, all encompassingly. All right, well, we'll come back here in a minute and get down to the nitty gritty of some of these court cases. Okay. Hey, everyone, when you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office, then? You could be using stamps.com. Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need right from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer, no special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a 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, friend. So if you want to go back a little bit to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Son of Sherlock, one of the famous justices of the United States in a lot of ways, but very specifically because everyone has sort of heard the old thing that you can't yell fire in a movie theater and say, that's free speech, because that will in the 1919 case, Shink, the United States, Charles Schink was arrested for distributing material, basically, that said, hey, the US. Draft. Military draft is BS. Don't do it. Fight against it. Right? And they said, you know what? That's espionage, actually. And that went all the way to Supreme Court. And they did not protect that right, because in the words of Oliver Wild Homes, they said, did the words create a clear and present danger that they will bring about substantive evils congress has a right to prevent? Right. And that's sort of in line and later on in that same ruling is talking about yelling fire in a theater as an example. You can't do that because that'll incite panic and people will get stomped. Right. And in this case, this kind of set the precedent for or the tone for all free speech cases to follow. It's weighing the individual right versus the public good. Yes. Or in this case, the individual right versus creating some problem or evil, as he put it, that Congress has a right and an interest to prevent yes. A danger to the country. Right. In this case, really what they were saying was they were suppressing criticism of a government program, the draft. But Homes was fine with that. But within a year, I think he saw his test. Does it present a clear and present danger being used in a way to squash descent when a bunch of anarchists who are just generally advocating the overthrow of the government rather than needing to do this on this date, at this time, they were convicted under the test that Homes created. So he took what was called the great dissent and actually dissented against his own former test and said, no, it has to present a clear and present danger. Present meaning, like it's about to happen or, you know, the time that it's going to happen, and it's a clear danger, like this is what's going to happen. Because this person said that. Right. So that ultimately became the format for what we'll talk about in a little bit, which is inciting violence. Yeah. And that's not to say that the ruling there, like you said, was about a clear and present danger, not necessarily the fact that Charles Shank was against the war, because we have a long history in this country of being able to be a wartime dissenter and talk about it and be protected. During the Vietnam War, there was a man who had he went to an La courthouse and he had a jacket that said, F the Draft, but it was really spelled out. It's so ironic that we're censoring ourselves in this one, but it's a family show at the draft, and they, as you will always see here, these people are, like you said, usually arrested, convicted. And then that's when they're well, maybe hippies. You never know. And then that's when the courts take it up and potentially either protect or don't protect the speech. Right. In this case, the court said, no, you're within your right. Because someone could see your jacket and then not look at it. Right. And that's a good point. Like, you can just look away from the guy's jacket. Right. You can also not take the pamphlet that the guy is handing you. You can also not rent a movie that you find offensive. You can also turn the TV station. You can also turn the radio down. You can also not go to the website. You can turn our podcast off to me. Well, you shouldn't, but you could. To me, the alternative of not receiving some speech that you find offensive, like being able to get away from it, that, to me, is the ultimate test for whether speech should be restricted or not. And since you can, in virtually any situation, get away from speech, except maybe Skyriding, we should probably really regulate Skyriding pretty toughly. You can look down on the ground. I guess you could. Yeah. So as long as you can get away from it, or more to the point, shield your children from it, I don't think it should be I don't see any reason for it to be entailed for Skyriding. You would have to argue in court that it is such a delight to children that they can't help but look right. Like, you would have to physically restrain them right. And put blinders on them. Exactly. And that's unreasonable, your Honor. Right. You could write a curse word and then do a drawing of Barney, and that would satisfy that. Is Barney still a thing? I think Barney will always be a thing. I don't know. So over the years have been, like we said, a lot of court cases that have kind of whittled away and defined. Not whittled away, molded and shaped. Yeah. So Marvin Omar ran an adult book business, and what he did was he sent out mailers. He liked to send out a mailer, and these mailers would show up at houses where my kids might read it or someone easily offended might read it or not so easily offended might read it. And there was a mom who this was her adult son. Yeah, it was a mom and her grown son, who is the manager of, I guess, the family restaurant. Is he childlike? Maybe his eyes are burning. I don't know. Maybe his mom just treated him like a kid. Who knows? But they said, you know what? This guy shouldn't be mailing these randomly to just whoever. We certainly don't want it, so we're going to call and complain. Yes. And Marvin Miller ended up getting arrested for obscenity. Sure. And this is a huge this turned out to be a huge case. Yeah. It went all the way to the Supreme Court. And yes, it was what you call a what do you call that landmark watershed. Watershed, yeah. Can't think of it. I was like, we did a podcast on it recently. It's an Indigo Girl song. That's right. It was a watershed case. Miller v. California. And I'm going to say v. Instead of versus. I think we talked about that before, right? Sure. It makes you sound more legalesey. Yeah. And everyone likes being legalesey. Like I said, the Supreme Court heard the case, and they found that his speech did not qualify for protection. But here's the hitch. They didn't rule on the obscenity. They ruled that, hey, we were protecting kids, and you can't just mail this stuff to a house. Right. Because kids live in houses. And so it was inappropriate content for children. And what it did as well is it specified a test for defining obscenity, which boy, over the years, this has been a really tough thing, and it seems like over the years, the courts roundly don't want any part of that. No. If there's one thing too that as far as restricting free speech goes that drives me up the wall, it's obscenity. The court should not have anything to do with obscenity, and mostly they don't want it. Right. There's a great quote from Hugo Black, who, as of this podcast, has become my favorite Supreme Court justice of all time. He said in Michigan versus State of New York. I wish once more to express my this is my Hugo Black, by the way. I wish once more to express my objections to saddling this court with the irksome in an inevitably unpopular and unwholesome task of finally deciding by a case by case, site by site, personal judgment of the members of this court what pornography, whatever that means, is too hardcore for people to see or read. Yeah. Basically, they were tired of sitting in court and looking at pictures of obesity and at the very end and ruling on this stuff. Right. What about this one? What about this one? The thing is, they were looking at pulp books. Like, Michigan was a guy who had a publishing house of pulp books that showed, like, BDSM or lesbianism or masturbation or whatever on the cover. He's like, this is actually pretty nice. Right. They're like, It's a perk of the job, but we shouldn't have to do it anyway. Yeah. And so the idea that the court is ruling what is obscene and what is not is it's legislating morality. Just clearly it's legislating morality, and I don't think the court has any right to that at all. But they have they have a long tradition of it, and over time, they've actually come to protect pornography with the exception of child pornography, which you're not really going to be hard pressed to find anybody who argues for freedom of speech as far as child pornography goes. Sure. And then obscenity, which came out of this three pronged test to determine what's obscene, came out of that. Miller the California case. And it says this it says that if the average person using contemporary community standards can look at something and says that this arouses the perian interest yeah. Meaning sexy time. Yeah. That's prong one. And you have to satisfy all three of them. Is this patently offensive sexual content? Yeah. Or patently. Either one. I say patently. And I got that from Mr. Burns. Oh, well, I say patently, like Mr. Burns does. Yeah. And then the final one is a big one. Whether the work taken as a whole lack serious literary, artistic, or potentially political or scientific value. Right. That's subjective. Extremely subjective. It literally says if it's artistic right. Who says what's art and what's not? Yeah. And very famously, Justice Potter Stewart, the very, very famous line when asking about obscenity or pornography said, I know it when I see it. Right. But they have long said one of them said, we may be trying to define the indefinable. Yeah. It is indefinable. Sure. You ask 100 people what pornography is, and you'll get 100 different answers. And so, as a result, some courts have said, yeah, this community, these jurors decided that this is obscene. So people go to jail for depicting sexual acts or something like that, that some jurors in that town found distasteful. Yeah. And America has long had a very puritanical hang up with sex and nudity violence. Bring it on. But nude bodies? Shame. Shame. Cover that up. I think that's probably my issue with it, too, is we're super. Like, we'll expose kids to violence, extreme violence at a very young age. But sexuality, hey, you wait until your parents are dead. Yeah. You understand. Wonders for the therapy industry, though. Sure. It's true. Hold on. Check. There's one other thing. The other problem I have with defining obscenity is that there's no national standard. The courts even said it would be impossible to come up with a national standard. So if Miller had been tried in a community of swingers who are, like, into that stuff, he probably would have gotten off. Yeah, right. Yeah. But because he was tried in a community that decided that, no, this is obscene, it was deemed obscene, whereas in another community, it may not have been deemed obscene, that's no test. Well, yeah. And that became a big deal at one point because they basically the law said that community standards are like, you can't have a national standard because what someone thinks in Scoke, Illinois, is not in Sin City, Las Vegas, they have an entirely different definition of obscenity and pornography. Right. And they're right. Yeah, I guess they are. Right. Which is why, to me, it's one or the other. Either get rid of anything that could possibly be considered obscene, or you allow it all. So obscenity. It's obscene. It is. Well, we'll get more into obscenity, too. But there are a lot of other facets of free speech that you might not really think about. In 2013, there was a case, Bland v. Roberts, where there were these two dudes that work for a sheriff's department. Sheriffs are elected. They were running for office, and they were fired for commenting and liking on an opponent's Facebook page. Yeah. Which this gets into in the digital age and the Internet age, a whole different slew of questions to be answered. And they appealed that case and won actually yeah. Bland v. Roberts. As a result, Facebook likes are considered protected free speech under the First Amendment now. Yeah, but ironically well, maybe not ironically, but Facebook and social media in general, you can also I mean, it's at their discretion whether or not they take something down. And you can't say, well, it's free speech. And that's like, no, this is our private room, essentially, is our home. Right. And inside a private home, you can tell someone to shut up. Private home, private companies, social media platform. Like, if you show up to work in a f the police shirt, they can fire you or tell you to change it. And if you say, no, this is my free speech, they'll go, no, this is my business. This is not a free speech zone. Like the Mall, remember? Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's right. Poor Victor gruan. And here's the thing, too, and this isn't really a section in our notes, but you're riffing. I get kind of riffing here. I get kind of bugged these days with I think a lot of people have the notion that freedom of speech means also freedom from consequence. And those are two different things. Like freedom of speech means that you are not going to be well, you might even be arrested and convicted, but eventually it will be overturned. You'll be vindicated. But if a business or a comedian or a TV. Show does something that people find offensive or provocateur YouTube. Yeah. And someone wants to pick at them and shut them down or boycott them, and they cry, free speech. It's like you said that you got away with it. You're not in jail. Doesn't mean there won't be consequences. Well, yeah, the right to protest is enshrined in the same amendment, free speech. But I think I hear a lot. It seems like more and more these days where people whine about the consequences of their own free speech, and that's not enshrined in the Constitution. They're very likely will be consequences. Right. People will hate you. Maybe. But it's like you said, though, it's there to protect the unpopular opinion. There's this guy who's an expert on free speech at Penn State, I believe. He said we have a First Amendment to protect unpopular expression or the minority viewpoint because we don't need a Constitution to protect what the majority thinks. The majority takes care of itself. It's a good point. It's the people who everybody else hates and what they have to say that is protected by the Constitution. Yeah. And Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman, in a very unharvard, law like way, said, if your feelings are hurt, then that's your problem. Snowflake. You didn't say Harvard like JFK Harvard. He didn't say snowflake. I was kidding. No, but what he was pointing out was basically the sentiment behind free speech in the United States that as long as you are not physically harming somebody, like emotional harm is whatever, it's not even going to register. Well, although that one article you sent, that Oped there was the guy that argued that emotional harm was worse than physical harm. Right. And had a longer lasting impact. Yeah. So there are two sides to every argument there. Well, that's one of the reasons why Europe has said no hate speech. It's harmful. Yeah. Like, even if it isn't physically harmful, it's emotionally it's an intellectually harmful. It's not good. All right, so we've dabbled in obscenity and we'll talk a little bit more about it. But one of the other things that you can have insulting speech, but there's something called fighting words that is not protected, and it can be difficult to determine. And again, over the years, the courts have tried to do so. But in 1969, there was kind of a landmark case, brandenburg v. Ohio, where Clarence Brandenburg was at a clan rally in Ohio and said, we're not a revengent organization, but if our president, our Congress, our Supreme Court continues to suppress the white Caucasian race, please. It's possible that there might have to be some revengeance taken. So they should have jailed him for grammar. Right. Revengeance is, of course, not a real word, and neither is revengent, although I think it's in a video game now. Someone said no. Yes. Revengeance, too. I don't think it's called revenge. Two parentheses. S-I-C. Right. What does that stand for? Again. Sick. I can't remember. Like that's so sick. They got it wrong, right? I don't know. I think we would know this. Yeah. Somebody else send it in. People tend to write it after the stuff we write. We don't usually use it ourselves. Yes. It's funny, though. I have this thing, just the weird, quirky things that everyone sort of does in their head in life. Whenever I see Sic written in an article, I always try and think of what word either they got wrong or were replacing in the article to make more sense. Well, no, they use it to because if it's a misspelling or if it's not a word, it's basically the writer or the editor saying, this guy got it wrong, not me. Yeah, but I'm not thinking of a different what is it when they that's just when they put it in brackets and they put, like, there or something like that. The person lets it out sick. Also goes in brackets, but it's basically saying, I'm aware that this is misspelled. Yeah. To show what dummy this guy is, I think I do it in both cases. Like, if it's a made up word, I'll try and think of what they meant. Or, like, the other one where there's just a parentheses and they just basically add something to make it more sense. Right. I try and think of what did they say to begin with? It's a weird thing. No, I know what you mean. In my head right now, I have for your eyes only. Oh, I thought you go away. You're trying to figure out what I'm thinking. The brain does some terrible stuff. I have that in my head now, too. Because you came in singing it for your eyes only. Why do you make any sense? It doesn't. I haven't heard the song in decades. A week long earworm from a song you haven't heard in decades. Was it in a dream? I don't think so. You're dreaming about she and Easton again. That was a good movie, though. Is it Connery one on it? No, that was Roger Moore. Are you sure? Yeah. You're sure? I think it was Sean Connery's last one. Yeah. All right. I may be right. Here to the map for that one. All right. Getting back to Brandenburg, the clan member who didn't know how to talk right? He didn't talk good. He was arrested for advocating violence, and he won. Supreme Court decided in his favor. And thus began the long history of the United States saying, you know what? The clan wants to have a rally out in the public town square, and they apply for their permit. You got to let them do it. But again, actually, the clans hate speech being protected was lumped together and came out of the civil rights movement's freedom of speech being protected as well, because they were like, well, hey, man, Stokely Carmichael says that we got to take control from the whiteys, rise up and take control. That's hate speech. And the Supreme Court says, you know what? You're right and that's protected. Right. So is what the clan saying. Or Illinois Nazis in Skokie. Right. Second time Skokie's made an appearance in this episode. Yes. Why not a third? How about a third? The usual suspects. That was coming anyway. I think what you're saying is, as a result, hate speech has a decades long tradition of being protected at any and all costs, unless you are using it to incite violence. And that ties in to that original prohibition on free speech that Oliver Wendell Holmes came up with, that it presents a clear and present danger. So rather than using that specifically to incite violence, you basically have to be saying, it's not enough to say, like, we black people need to rise up and take control of the United States, and if it has to be violent, it has to be violent, but we can't live like this anymore. Right? Yeah. If Stokely Carmichael is saying something like that, or Malcolm X is saying something like that, that is protected speech. Even though it makes a lot of people or it made a lot of people uneasy to hear that kind of thing, and they said, hey, they're trying to start a race war, it's still protected speech. On the other hand, if you said or Stokely Carmichael said, everybody needs to go get their shotguns and we're all going to meet here on Tuesday and we're going to take the streets Tuesday afternoon, that would not be protected because he would be directly inciting violent. Yeah. What are the two things that violence has to be likely and it has to the advocacy for violence has to be directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action. Right. And then it has to be likely to incite or produce such action. So it has to be happening at some point that you can point to next Tuesday something that's not vague or indefinable, like, we should do this in the future if we're not granted greater rights. So it has to be something specific and it has to be likely to produce that effect. Right. So if somebody is a great order and the people they're telling to get their shotguns, all own shotguns at home, that would probably make it likely. And then a few years after that case, another one, hessev, Indiana, from 1973, defended imminent a little further, and it said, an advocacy of illegal action at some indefinite future time, that's protected. Right. So likely and imminent. Yes. Interesting. All right, well, let's take a likely and imminent break and we'll talk more, even more about obscenity after this. Hey, everyone, when you're running a small business, every second counts and you can't afford to waste a single moment, so why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office? And you could be using stamps.com. Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses. Because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and ups shipping services you need right from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary. And you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS rates and 86% off Ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. All right. So did you see the movie Carnal Knowledge? I didn't. I thought for some reason I was like body Heat's. Not that old, but I thought the movie was wouldn't that a sexy one. Body heat was quite sexy. I never saw that one. Very good movie. Was it Kathleen Turner? Kathleen Turner. That is correct. Okay. Romancing. The stone. Kathleen Turner. Or friends? Kathleen Turner. Romancing. The stones. Kathleen Turner It doesn't matter. Either way, she's a delight. Body Heat, Kathleen Turner. Never thought it's good. Very steamy. That was playing diploma, right? I think so. Yeah, I think so, too. She's also the star of one of my favorite all time movies, which is the War of the roses. Man, that is a great movie. I can watch that movie a thousand times and not get sick of it. That's a good one. Alright, so Carnal Knowledge was the Mike Nichols film with Jack Nicholson, Candice Bergen and Art Garfunkel, of all people. What is Art Garfunkel doing in there? He sings in a falsetto throughout. It's very nice. Lines are in sing song. No, he acted in it. He was good. Was he good? Yeah, it was a great movie. Was he like? Paul Simon good. Well, he's acted too, here and there. A really good movie, though. I mean, like I said, it was Mike Nichols. It was not like porn. Right. But it was just a very frank movie about sex and relationships. Like, Nicholson plays sort of what you would think kind of a womanizer. And Art Garfunkel is a more tender and not as big of a womanizer. Okay. Trying to decide how to put all this tender. And it kind of just follows them in three points of their life from college to middle age and their sexual exploits. Anyway, it sounds kind of boring. Just a really good movie. Is it? Yeah. And very famously in I think it might have started in 73, and right here in Albany, Georgia, there was a theater manager that was arrested for showing that movie in his theater. Oh, is that where this case comes from. Yeah. And he was arrested and convicted of distributing obscene material. It's Jenkins v. Georgia, right? Jenkins v. Georgia was a court case, and of course, the Supreme Court ruled that Cardinal Knowledge was not obscene. And I think in the ruling they said, It's Mike Nichols, for God's sake. Right. He's like, what are you thinking, precious treasure? Well, they said, that basically your opposition to the state of Georgia making us so proud is that there's nudity in it. Yeah, like, a lot of nudity. They were like, that's not enough. It's not patently offensive, sexually explicit material that has no artistic value. Yes. It fails the Miller test is what it's called. Yeah, I guess it would fail the Miller test because if you pass the Miller test, it would be obscene. Right. It's a weird way to look at it, I guess, here in the modern age, like I said, with the Internet, that opened up a whole host of issues of free speech, and notably the Child Online Protection Act, Copa. Yeah. That was a big deal. Very big deal. Copa was legislation that was introduced to protect kids from online smart. Right. But on the other hand, freedom of speech advocates said, no, this is the start of regulating the Internet. The Internet is a free, open Wild West, and it should not be regulated, so don't try to regulate it. And again, everybody said, except for child pornography. And the person talking said, yeah, except, of course, child pornography. You don't be stupid. Well, Copen never actually went into effect. It went through three rounds of litigation over the years. And basically one of the big things that the Court would say back was, there are protections that parents can put in to restrict their kids from this stuff, and that's enough. Yeah, that's a huge thing. Like, the court really tends to not like government overreach and tends to restrict it whenever it comes about. Right? Yeah. And this was really tricky because what they were trying to do was apply federal law to community standards for a global product. Right. And that's just talk about complicated law. That's tricky. It's very tricky. Yeah. So the court struck it down in part because they thought it was overly broad. They said that what the government was considering offensive material would not pass the Miller test, so that was overly broad. And then they also said, yeah, there's alternatives like parental controls that are widely available, can solve the problem that the government is looking to solve, which is restrict kids from pornography, but without restricting anyone else's individual liberty. Right. So they said, See you around, Copa. And Justice Stephen Breyer wrote, in a concurring opinion this is a good quote, too, to read. The statute is adopting the community standards of every locality in the United States would provide the most puritan of communities with a heckler's veto affecting the rest of the nation. Right. Basically saying what many have said was, this is an impossible task, so don't even try. I wish they'd take that idea with obscenity as well. Well, and here's the other thing. When they struck down coping, this is another really good quote, and this one from US. District Judge Lowell Reed Jr. Not Lou Reed, but Lowell Reed. Lou Reed said, Take a walk on the wild side. Lowell said, Maybe after a nap. Laurel said and this kind of sums up for me, I think he said, Perhaps we do the minors of this country harm the First Amendment protections, which they will, with age, inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection. Right. So basically, like, in trying to protect these kids, we have restricted their free speech when they become adults. Very interesting. Yeah, it's true. You know, do you go with obscenity? I'm great with it. The courts have also kind of shaped freedom of speech, or protected freedom of speech by saying, yes, certain types of speech are not protected. Obscenity, child pornography, fighting words. Fighting words. And then liable is another one. But one of the ways they further protect it, even when they're restricting it, is to say not everything that you say is liable is actually liable prints, though, right. I think it more has to do with SLANDER's words. Oh, is that what it is? Yeah. Okay, so with libel laws and I would guess slander falls under the same laws, right? No, but with libel laws, it's really difficult to prove libel. Right. Because the person printing the libel information, which is basically you're defaming someone's character. Yeah. And that's a really old, longstanding prohibition. I think even back in ancient Greece, they had a certain amount of freedom of speech in Athens, classical Athens. But even that was restricted as far as talking trash about someone's character. Right. So that's a really old idea that you shouldn't put fake stuff about someone's character reputation out there. And if you do, then they have recourse. But to prove that that person said something libelous, they have to have had malice of forethought. They had to have known that what they were printing was wrong or untrue. Yeah. That's the key. It has to be untrue. You can express an opinion about somebody sure. And say someone is a big poopy pants, but you can't say someone's big poopy pants who did X, Y, and Z if that isn't true. Right, exactly. Yeah. And so it's really tough to prove liable. Right. So it is unprotected speech, but it's also protected in that it's not very broad, it's very narrow. And then part and parcel with that is satire and parody are also very much protected in the United States, thankfully. And we have Larry Flint, Hushler publisher, to thank for that. Yes. People versus Larry Flint is a very good job of spelling out that case. But very famously, he went to war with the Reverend Jerry Falwell because he had a cartoon in his Hustler magazine that was an unflattering sexual depiction of Jerry Falwell. No, it was a fake Campari ad. It was a spoof Campari ad. But it was a cartoon, though. No, not the one I saw. Oh, really? I saw like a I'm sure he had drawn I'm sure he had that too. Yeah. But what the court case was it was like a Campari ad and there was like a Campari ad campaign where people talked about the first time they had campari or whatever. And Jerry Falwell was he and his mother got drunk on Campari and had sex in the outhouse. And that was actually how he lost his virginity. Jerry Falwell didn't like that. No, of course not. So he sued Larry Flint. And Larry Flint won that case. It went all the way up to the Supreme Court. Yes. There was a 1988 case and they said, no, this is parody. This is satire. It's protected. If any reasonable person sees it and would know that it's not true, it's protected. And Larry Flynn said no reasonable person would see this. Right. Perfect. Yours is better than mine. That was good. Oh, yeah. Was that a good one? Yeah. He sounded like Woody Harrelson doing Larry Flint. Which is right on the money. In my head, I sound like a muppet tenor doing Woody Harrelson doing Larry Flynt. Great movie. The muppets people versus Larry Flint. It was a great movie. Yeah. Anyway, thankfully, satire is protected here in the US. Because we have a long, rich history of political cartoons and rich satire that can really make a difference. Like, you see what's going on with Saturday Night Live right now. Right. It's like they've had a long, long tradition of political satire. And most times that opening bit they do is political in nature. And it's nothing new. They've been doing it forever. It's true. So I don't know. I just think it's poking at that and The Onion and some of the great satirical publications. That goes down a bad road. Agreed. So, Chuck, one of the things that's coming up now that we're connected globally is this idea that what we talked about in the beginning the US. Has very broad free speech protections. Some other countries don't. There's like the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Right. Yeah. Some of that has some free speech protection in it. Not everybody signed on to it. And a lot of people think there will never be any way to protect freedom of speech worldwide. Right. Normally up to, say, the 90s, that wasn't that big of an issue. Unless, like, Salman Rushdie published a book or something like that. Yeah. Because each country had its own standards and what was said in one country typically stayed in that country even if it was offensive to another country. Right. Sure. The two didn't collide. Now that the Internet's here, what's said in one country can be carried immediately to another country and the offense can be taken. And this went out of hypotheticals and into the real world back in 2012 when a guy named Nakula, Basali Nakula, released a 14 minutes video called the Innocence of Muslims. Do you remember that? I don't. It was extremely incendiary. If you were a Muslim, you were going to be offended by this because it basically said the prophet Muhammad was a fraud. It had him as a Flander, a womanizer, I think a pedophile. Wow. And the people who were in it were scared to death because of the reaction. There were riots around the world. Once it was translated into Arabic and released, what did they think was going to happen? I don't know. I don't remember if the person was a provocateur on purpose or if they were their real beliefs on Islam. Regardless, they were Egyptian American, so the video was protected even though elsewhere in the world, they were literally rioting in the streets and people were dying because this video existed, they were so upset by it. But in the US. TS and as far as I know, it's still up on YouTube. Right? Right. Because it's protected by free speech. Well, that's a great example of should the US. Have the freedom of speech that is going to cause harm in another country now that those two countries are connected via the Internet? Right. There's no easy answer to that. That was basically a rhetorical question at this point. But it's one that I think is going to have to be decided more and more. And what goes to the heart of it is blasphemy in this case. Yeah. Blasphemy specifically means insulting God or any religious or holy person or thing. It means different things in different religions. Sure. It's actually still illegal in some states in the US. I thought the last one was struck down in 2007. Oh, was it? Okay, well, maybe up until 2007. Yes. Had laws until 2007. That's right. Again, 2007. Yeah. But the last conviction for blasphemy in the US. Was in 1928. So these were laws that were sort of on the books that no one did much about. Well, there's a dude in Little Rock, Arkansas, and he was an antireligious atheist. This was the 1928 one. Yeah. White supremacist who had an office. And in the office, there was a sign out front, I guess it was a storefront office, and it said, evolution is true. The Bible is a lie. God is a ghost. And he got arrested and convicted for blasphemy. Again, this is 1928, and there were blasphemy laws on the books until 2007. That's crazy. Yeah, it is. It's really surprising to think that the United States ever had blasphemy laws, but they were fairly recent. Yeah. And when it comes to religion, like, the United States protects Westboro Baptist Church and they say you can go out and you can have offensive messages on signs at military funerals, if you want, because this is the United States, and we allow that. Yeah. And so I think that kind of brings up that one oped you're talking about from The Atlantic, that free speech isn't free. What's the title of it? Yeah. What's? The guy who wrote its name? Garrett Epps wrote it. Yeah. And he makes really great he didn't even make a case. He just kind of presented both sides well. And what he did was here was the quote, and I think you're right on the money with that summation, because he said repressing speech has cost, but so does allowing it. And the only mature way to judge the system is to look at both sides of the ledger. Right. It really kind of says it all. Yes. And he's basically saying, like, it's not enough to say freedom of speech exists because we have free speech in the US. America is a free country. You have to examine why, and you have to defend it, or else it's just a privilege. And privileges are always subject to attack, but actual freedom should be defensible. And so he says we need to defend it, especially based on another op ed that he was actually talking about by a law professor from Fordham, Faye Rosenbaum said, no, there are actual harms to speech. Yeah. It does cause emotional harm that can, in some cases, exceed physical harm. It can be longer lasting. It can have a greater impact on more people at once. So why do we allow hate speech in the United States? And Garrett? EPS doesn't have the answer. He just examines the whole question, I think. Really? Well, yeah, I thought it was interesting. He makes the point that the same laws that allow for strides of civil rights and feminism and gay rights groups over the years are the same laws that protect the people that have done them such harm over the years. Right. And like you said, you got to look at both sides of the ledger. It might cause harm, and there is a cost to it, but ultimately the freedom well, in my opinion at least, outweighs those harm. So there's this guy named Jonathan Rauch who Garrett Ups quotes, but he wrote another op ed that I read, and his idea of why freedom of speech, including hate speech, is important is because he says that if you suppress speech, you're suppressing thoughts. Right. So if you suppress hate speech, it's still going to be there. It's still going to be boiling under the surface. People are still going to quietly, subtly trade in it. But you can't refute it. If you allow hate speech, it can be refuted loudly, publicly, and then from that. And he makes the case that this is why gays in America have made such strides over the last few years, because of the vicious homophobia that was publicly hurled at them, that they stood up and said, you know, what? This isn't true. You know what? We deserve this, right? You know what? We're not pedophiles. You know what? We should be able to adopt everything, shut down all this stuff systematically. And America was watching this back and forth and gave people one public sentiment just through logic. He was saying, if you didn't allow that hate speech in the first place, there wouldn't have been that position to address that hate speech and prove it wrong. Yeah, because you can't suppress hateful ideology. It's going to exist. Sure. So allow the speech so it can be publicly refuted and just SmackDown. Yeah, I think that's probably the best explanation for freedom of speech I've ever heard. Good. Way to close too, man. Thanks a lot, Jonathan Roash, you got anything else? No, I don't, but a little tease. Before listener mail, we're going to have a couple of very intriguing follow ups to recent questions. Okay. All right. Well, if you want to know more about free speech to start talking. And since I said that, it's time for whatever Tucks got up his sleeve. Yeah. Before I read the listener mail, two things. On a recent show, we asked about our old buddy Sarah, the amazing fan, and then our old buddy Sam. The Summer of Sam. Right. Weirdly enough, we come into the office and Sam's parents dropped off a letter to us. Sam wants to be an intern here. So he's around. He's in college doing great and wants to intern and wrote us a letter and we're going to try and get him in here. Oh, yeah. And he wouldn't be our intern specifically. It'd be for how stuff works. Right. But we're going to burn a lot of currency to make sure he gets his job. Yeah. I hope it happens. It'd be great. It was good to hear from him. It sounds like college is going great. Yeah, his resume was stacked, buddy. Nice, Sam. And the other thing is, I don't know if you saw this because I did the Facebook, but Catherine Mary Stewart oh, yeah. Of Night of the Comet played the older sister Reggie and was also in the Last Starfighter and Weekend at Bernie's. Weekend at Bernie's. And was sort of the darling in the still. An actor today does theater work and stuff and movies and TV and radio. She does it all. She got in touch with us. She listened to the mall's podcast, posted on Facebook that we shouted her out, and also her hometown, Edmonton Mall. And I was just knocked out and told her to email us. She emailed. I think she lives in New York. And I said, hey, listen, next time we do a show at the Bellhouse, I want to act out Weekend at burnishers. Yeah, I'll play the dead guy and you and Josh can just puppet me around. I was like, Come and bring your family. We'd love to guest list you. Maybe you can hop. Up on stage and we can chitchat for a minute. Nice. I took the liberty of doing that. That was very nice. You're like, no, she can't get on the stage, right? We have to edit that part out. I just thought that was very cool. Yes, very cool. Thanks for writing in. Catherine Mary Stewart. Yes. And boy, she's found the fountain of youth. She looks exactly the same. Oh, yeah? Yes. And Sam, too. He looks exactly the same. He's like 20. Looked like he did when he was 17. Well, thanks, dudes. We haven't even done listener mail yet. No. So listener mail. I'm just going to read it. It's called? Would you rather? I feel bad for Jerry. She's not going to know where to put the listener mail time in. That's all right. Hey, guys. Just finishing listening to Soylent and thought I had a surefire argument starter for you guys. Josh's rant about the pros and cons of cooking and sharing meals. I don't rant reinforce my position on the subject. I'd like to know what you think about it. Here's how you play. Would you rather and it's not the sexy one. Okay. You get to forego one thing that humans need to do in order to live, either eating, sleeping, or breathing. You can do the thing that you choose to forgo, of course. You just don't need to in order to live. And you remain neutral in terms of pleasure or discomfort caused by the lack of the necessity. So you don't feel hungry, you don't feel sleepy, you don't feel asphyxiated. Seems like it dropped out to me. So he wants to know, what would we rather do without? Mine is easy. I would easily not breathe. Yeah, breathing. It's like a phone, no brainer phone head question. It would say, like, I don't want to eat. I get a lot out of breathing. I'd have trouble getting that one out. Well, Andrew said he wouldn't eat. That's the answer to that question. He said, I would always forego eating because of the money it takes to feed myself and the waking hours I would save. Yeah. I mean, that's the two things with food, time and money. Yes, but you get so much pleasure of it breathing. Sure, it's free, but who cares? Especially if you're not going to die from not breathing. In this situation, this weird fantasy world of his, I say anyone who chooses and this is Andrew talking I say anyone who chooses to forgo sleep as a dummy. Sure. Because not only are you not saving on food, you have to entertain yourself for an additional five to 8 hours a day. The argument there, though, is you could get more done. Sure. Sometimes I do wish that you had to sleep sometimes. I also enjoy sleep, too, he says. Plus, I could eat socially every now and then under these terms if I wanted to. Right. But who would just take a nap if you don't feel refreshed afterward. Yeah, I would. I love to sleep. And then the non breathers are just like, deep sea diving and exploring volcanoes and stuff, I guess. Oh. What do you think about that, Perk? Yeah. You just go swimming all the way to the bottom forever. Yeah. So it's clearly breathing is the answer. It's not even a subjective question at this point. No, we've proven it. Yeah. All right. Keep up the good work. That's from Andrew. Thanks, Andrew. You keep working, too. Nice. I just want to say you're a sucker for not eating, though. Yeah. If you want to try to stump us but fail at it like Andrew did, you can tweet to us at xyskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com. STUFFYou Should Know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@housetepworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web. Stuffychnow.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. You know you're the best pet mom. When you growl back during playtime, give epic belly rubs and feed them halo holistic made with responsibly sourced ingredients, plus probiotics. For digestive health, find us at Chewy, Amazon and Halo pets.com.com." | |
How the Wow! Signal Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-wow-signal-works | In 1977, Ohio State astronomers discovered a radio transmission from space that was 30 times louder than the cosmic background noise. Since then every explanation of what it was has fallen short and the Wow! Signal remains possible evidence of alien life. | In 1977, Ohio State astronomers discovered a radio transmission from space that was 30 times louder than the cosmic background noise. Since then every explanation of what it was has fallen short and the Wow! Signal remains possible evidence of alien life. | Tue, 09 Jun 2015 14:13:20 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=9, tm_hour=14, tm_min=13, tm_sec=20, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=160, tm_isdst=0) | 31883675 | 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. So it's stuff you should know. Wow. First of all, I think we should go ahead and apologize to eight Stuff You Should Know fans. There are more than that who have already heard this. Yeah. We went to the World Science Festival we were invited to the World Science Festival in New York City. And we want to give a little special shout out to Ben and the Ace Hotel for putting us up while we were there. Yeah, we did a live podcast, short form in Washington Square Park on a Sunday afternoon. It was kind of a neat thing. Yeah. I hate everybody who came out to see us. We appreciated the support. Yeah. Actually, I thought I knew everyone by name. There were actual stuff you should know. Fans. Yeah. I was going to apologize to them directly. There were some people who clearly were not familiar with us, and we're just minds blown walking around glazed look in their face. They look kind of defeated. I was like, oh, you like stuff you should know now. Yeah. I had a couple of people come up and be like, what do you guys do? This is neat. And I said, well, you just saw a short version of it, my friend. Yes. If you want a lot more side stories and anecdotes, then tune into the long version. Yeah, we had 20 minutes. We had a 20 minutes. Boy, we had to get down to business. And we did, too. It's not bad. We didn't talk about tire stores or anything like that. We just talked about the wow signal. Yeah. I think this is fascinating stuff, because this is something that even the most hardened skeptic hasn't been able to fully debunk. Yeah, that's a good point. It's pretty neat that they're upset. Probably. So we should say that. We keep saying the wow signal. And Chuck's talking about skeptics and everything. There is evidence of a potential transmission from an alien civilization here on Earth. And it's been here on Earth printed out, sitting in the Ohio State University archives since the 19th 70s. Yeah. And potential is the key word there. I think that's where most skeptics head will pop off. Right, but you got to say potential. And I did. Yeah. I don't want anybody's head to pop off. The thing is, like you said, Chuck, no skeptic has been able to say, here's your explanation, dumb dumb. And they've tried. There have been plenty of explanations, but every single one has been systematically addressed and reduced to rubble, basically. Yeah. So the whole thing finds its roots, like I said, back in the 70s. But it actually goes further back than that. There's been a lot of talk starting in the 20th century over aliens chatter. Are we the only life out there? Are there other people on other planets? And if so, can we communicate with them? And astronomers started crunching the numbers and doing the math and said, we basically have two things we can do here. We can try to go visit aliens and look for them in the flesh. Yeah. Expensive. Expensive and potentially impossible. Yes. It's like looking for a needle in a haystack. Yeah. But also, the closest planet to us is, like, a few hundred light years away, I believe. 400 plus. Right. Which means that it would take 400 something years traveling at the speed of light to reach that planet, so we couldn't go find them. Instead, we decided that we would try to listen out to see if anybody was releasing any transmissions out there and find traces of alien civilizations that way. Yeah. And did we do a show on SETI? No, not sure. We've talked about it before. All right. The Search for Esther. I don't remember when it came in. We definitely have talked about it before. Now that you say that, I think one of our south by Southwest or Comiccons might have had something to do with oh, yeah, the UFOs, maybe. So SETI the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. It's not a single organization, although there is the SETI Institute now since the early 1980s. But SETI is a bunch of different groups that they're not tinfoil hat wearing crackpots who are bound to determine to find if there's life out there. But they're open minded folks that say, if there isn't life out there, let's get ahead of the game here and listen out for them and see if they're trying to say something to us. Right. They're basically people who say there's just too many stars out there that have planets and that are potentially habitable to life. It boggles their mind to think that we are the only living being. Sure. And they're scientists. Right. And to the scientists, the much more logical conclusion is that we're one of many civilizations out there, and so they have dedicated their astronomical talents to searching for that. Yes. And this all started happening in the early 1970s in earnest. I think it actually started in the 60s in earnest. But with the Big Year, it was in the 70s. Their study program. That's right. The Ohio State University Radio Observatory. I love that you laugh every time they have something called the Big Year or had something called the Big Ear. Yes. They needed a golf course, though. Yes, they did. So they got rid of the Big Ear. Even worse than that, the Big Ear Radio Telescope, Ohio State was demolished not to build a golf course, but to expand an existing golf course. We need another nine holes. Right. We need another clubhouse. Well, I think the Big Ear has seen its best days by that point, so don't feel bad for the Big Year. I still feel bad for the Big Year. All right, so 1973, the big Year starts scanning, listening for stuff out in outer space. Hence the name. Hence the name. And what would happen is because it would print stuff out on a matrix printer and student assistant would take that print out of what it was listening to and take it to another volunteer, teachers, professors. And they would just basically look at all these numbers page by page by page. If you've ever seen the wow signal, it's just numbers one, twos, maybe a three here, there. Yeah. It's the level of background noise and space. Exactly. So a one is a Blip, a radio transmission that was one time the intensity of the normal background noise in space on a particular frequency. Right? Yeah. One is nothing like there's one all over the place all the time. There's one's, twos, and threes. Yeah. Very common stuff. And so these poor astronomers who are donating their time to the bigger telescope were basically they were analyzing this stuff with their eyes. Yes. There wasn't like a computer program they spit it into. No, they looked at this computer printout sheet after sheet after sheet. Right. So they would look at a whole night scan of deep space from a radio telescope, again with their eyes going over sheets and sheets of computer paper, dot matrix printer paper. And that's what this guy named Jerry Amon, who is an astronomer at Ohio State, was doing on August 18, 1977. He was looking over some stuff from three days before. Yeah. And so he's scanning all the stuff and there's ones, twos, and threes. And he's watching Love American style on TV and eating his TV dinner. And he's bored out of his mind American style, and he's bored out of his skull. And then well, here's another important thing to point out because it was also 77 at this point. They didn't have double digit print outs. No, it just went one through nine and then started with the letter A-B-C-D as ten, 1112 and so on. Right? Exactly. So he's reading this stuff and he sees six EQ, UJ, five, which means the transmission at its peak of you peaked at 30 times louder than anything they had ever seen before than the normal background noise. And he circled it and put wow exclamation point on the paper. And that's why it's the wow. Signal. Exactly. And this is a big deal. I mean, like in this whole huge ream of dot matrix paper filled with ones and twos and maybe a three here and there, there's a you standing in the middle of the string. It started at six, which was high. Yeah. I mean, six alone would be like, whoa, this is kind of significant. This thing went up to you. And like you said, he circled it and wrote wow. Next to it and became the wow. Signal. And almost immediately, they started investigating this thing. Sure. And there are a lot of details to the wow signal that make it even more impressive than just the fact that it peaked at you, started at six and ended at five and peaked at you. There's a lot of different aspects to the wow signal that make people say, what in the name of God is this? Yes. And we will start getting those details right after this break. So, Chuck yes. We were talking about how the wow signal looks on matrix paper is six EQ UJ five. And that means that at its peak, it goes from six times the normal background noise all the way up to 30 times and then back down to five times the normal background noise yeah. Over what we know. Over 72 seconds. Yes. Which is very significant, it turns out. So the bigger telescope we should say a little bit more about it was a Krause telescope. It was built in the it didn't move eavesdropped on the electromagnetic radio spectrum coming from outer space. Eavesdropped on it. But it used the rotation of the Earth to move it. Yeah. It didn't pan its little big ear back and forth. It wasn't a show off. No, it just stayed fixed. The rotation of the Earth very slowly would pick up a new patch of Earth at the rate of the Earth spin right in the sky. At the rate of the Earth spin right. So it's just pointing out there in deep space. And as the Earth rotates, it would move the big ears field of reception, I guess. Sure. Across any given point in the sky over a 72 2nd period. And it just so happens that the six EQ UJ five wow signal transmission was 72 seconds. Which suggests something very important here, Chuck. It suggests that the wow signal came from a fixed point in the sky that was staying in one place, and the Big Year just swept past it over the course of its normal 72 seconds. Yeah. And I liken it too. Like, if you're driving through the desert listening to your radio, your signal, the further you are from that radio transmitter or that radio station is going to be pretty faint. And then as you get closer and have that direct signal, it's going to peak, and then as you drive further past it, it's going to get more faint again. Yeah. And that's what shape that this while signal took. It took the shape of a pyramid. If you graph it out, and I believe that's the Doppler effect, because I always hear the Doppler effect being explained by how an ambulance siren sounds far away and then gets louder as it gets closer and then it gets weaker the further way you get. Yeah. Well, it also changes pitch, though. Isn't that the doppler effect? I think so. It's not just loudness, it's like if you're in England, did you change pitch just then? Yeah. You didn't hear any difference? No. You didn't hear it go down in volume. You didn't hear it go down in tone? No. Wow. Did you really? Are you tone deaf? I don't think so. It would explain a lot as far as karaoke goes. Do you sing karaoke? Did you recently? Yeah. What did you sing? I got some songs here. There you can't tell us one of them. Is that too revealing? No. Let me think of one of my karaoke songs. My big move is always under pressure, and someone's always like, oh, I'll do it with you. I'll do the Bowie part. I'm like, I do both parts. I recently sang. I have a tiger. Oh, yeah. There you go. I have a big problem, though, with my karaoke stuff. A lot of the songs that I pick are just slightly out of the key that I can comfortably achieve. Well, if you're picking 80s rock, then yeah, but you would think I had a tiger that the guy's not singing that high pitch, although I know he hits that high note, and I knew that. But from the start, that guy starts out, like, a little higher than I can go. So it's not necessarily a treat for everyone around me when I'm singing karaoke because I accidentally every once in a while I have a night where, like, every song I pick is right in my wheelhouse and I'm nailing them. But for the most part, I worry a little bit, I guess. I think the key to karaoke is to get your songs that you know you can do and kind of stick to those. Well, I'm not like a pro. Well, of course, like, I did Foreigners Cold as Ice one time by accident, because the song I wanted to do, I think under Pressure, someone had done and they were calling me, I was like, oh, well, I guess I'll just do this and the Carry. A good guy in Philadelphia said, well, I hope you have a vice for your testicles. But he didn't say testicles. Oh, he did. Why? And then I remembered how high that song was. It is it was a disaster. The tiger is not that far off. Yeah. I should give a plug here to Siggold's request room. Oh, yeah. If you're in New York City, you should go to SIG Gold's Request Room. It's on is that one of those private karaoke do 26? It's not private. It's just a piano karaoke bar. Okay. Yeah. Not private room. No. Okay. But it's a back room with, like, a heavy curtain, so there's a sense that it's private, but it's not private. You just show up but it's live. It's a guy playing piano instead of a backing track. Yeah, it's a guy named Joe McGinty. Nice. He's a very good, talented musician. He's actually a friend of Yumi and he used to play for the psychedelic first. Holy cow. And now he's one of the owners of Siggold's Request Room. Man, that place is going to blow up now. I hope so. It should. It's a lot of fun. Yeah. All right. Boy, that was a good segue. Or not segway, because that leads to nothing. No, it leads to how do we get on that Doppler effect? Yeah, exactly. So let's talk about SETI again. Let's bring this all back home. Or the different settings around the world decided at one point that, like you said, a good way to find transmission might be to listen out for it. And if we're going to listen, what would be the most likely radio station that they would transmit? Yes. And of course, it's not a radio station. I say that as a joke, but that wasn't the first thing they thought of. If you say, okay, we can't go to distant planets to start searching for aliens, it's just too far away, we would all die on the way there, right? Yes. We're having to wait for them to come down and play a moog at Devil's Tower. Exactly. Instead, we're going to look for traces of them. How can we find but listening wasn't immediately the thing. They started thinking, like, in different ways I got you. That you could find evidence of alien civilizations. And finally, what they settled on was, if you're an alien civilization, you are probably familiar with the electromagnetic spectrum. So let's start looking there. And they started looking at the electromagnetic spectrum to see maybe where you would find some sort of evidence of alien civilization. And they thought, how about the radio band? Yeah. There were a couple of physicists from Cornell in the 60s, philip Morrison and Joseph Piccone, who reckoned that they're going to find a common language they're going to broadcast on what's, like, the most common language of the universe. I'm sort of being fun here with, like, saying it's a radio station and it's a line, but hydrogen is the most abundant common element in the universe. Right. And there is a hydrogen line, a hydrogen frequency. So they figured this may be a good place to start listening. Yeah. And hydrogen protons flip. They change spin pretty much all the time. Right. And as they flip and change their spin, they emit a little bit, just a tiny teensy bit of electromagnetic radiation, like a little glow. Right. And the frequency of the emission is at 1420 MHz. Since hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and hydrogen is flipping all the time, it's also emitting this radiation all the time, which makes 1420 most common frequency on the entire electromagnetic spectrum. All hydrogen, all the time. And again, these city researchers philip Morris. I know it's philip Morrison. I was just making a joke. Sure. A tobacco joke. Yeah. They have their hands in everything. Since these guys said they would probably transmit somewhere in the radio spectrum, and they would probably be familiar with radio spectrums and electromagnetism, they would also probably know, just like we just figured out that the most common frequency in the entire universe, no matter where you are, is 1420 MHz. So maybe this would be a really good place to listen out for alien radio transmissions. That's right. And the wow signal was broadcast at right in the middle of the hydrogen line, right on the most common frequency in the entire universe. We found in 1977, a radio transmission that was 30 times stronger than the normal background noise on that frequency. That's right. And that made scientists go, Holy cow. Or wow. Indeed. That even made skeptics go, what's this all about? Exactly the shape of it, like we talked about, the pyramid shape is exactly what you would expect. So that made everyone sit up and go, all right, well, there's also that. And then the Sharpness I know is the third big reason that it just doesn't fit in. Right. Or it does fit in as an alien transmission. So there are tons of very powerful bursts here. There's radio transmissions like quasars emit radio transmissions and satellites. Well, there's a lot of natural ones. I mean, the natural ones are very messy. They get spread across the band, the electromagnetic band. So if you got like a burst from a quasar or something like that, you found it through the big ear. It's going to turn up on, say, like, channel 14 20, 14 30, 14 40. It's going to spill over across the band. They're very messy. One of the things that really makes the wow signal so significant is that it was tuned. Basically, it appears to have been tuned because it came through only on the 1420 frequency. That's right. It didn't spill over. And the big ear was listening to 50 channels. So imagine, like, your radio is tuned, or you have 50 radios tuned to 14 00, 14 10, 14 20, 14 30, and so on, right up to 14, whatever that goes to 50 channels out. The wow signal only came through on the 1420 frequency right then. So you've got the Sharpness, you've got the fact that it was right in the middle of the hydrogen line, you have that pyramid shape, and everyone is wondering what the heck is going on. And right after this message, we will talk about a few reasons why it may not be an alien transmission. All right? So we've made a bit of a case that there's something hinky that happened on August 18, 1977, right? Yeah, I think so. Pretty strong case. Sure. Of course, when you make a case like this, like they say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Basically, what we've ended up with is this is some evidence, so you can't make, like, a full claim that, hey, this is definitely an alien trying to get in touch with us, because all we have is that 72 2nd burst. We haven't been able to find it since then. And we've looked or listened. Right. And just attending an unexplained radio signal doesn't. I mean, it's not like the signal said, hey, we're broadcasting to you live from Kepler 43 B. Right. We'll be seeing you guys in 21 50 Ad. Right. When we come down and take over your planet. It can be a bad day for you. Yeah. So like you said, that it's not in and of itself a proven alien signal, but there are a lot of really unexplainable things that support the idea that that's potentially possible. There are a lot of people who have tried to put out explanations to the contrary. Right. For one, they have gone back and listened to that same patch of sky over and over again more than 100 times, and no one's ever picked up the wow signal again. Yeah. And I have sure it would be nice to go back to that same patch of sky and hear it again, but if it takes a lot of energy to beam a signal like that from deep space, it may have been a one off. Yeah. Or some people have theorized that maybe if you were an alien civilization, it takes so much power to broadcast in every direction, you might use more of a lighthouse sweeping method, and so it wouldn't be at that fixed point. It's just out there moving across the sky. Right. And it just so happens that the big ear and this lighthouse radio beacon cross one another at just the same time. Yeah. At just the right time. Yeah. That is a pretty good counter explanation or counter argument to that one. Sure. Another one was that it was some sort of transmission from Earth projected and reflected off of, like, a piece of space debris. There's a lot of junk out in space. Yeah. You've seen gravity. I've seen gravity. There's a lot of space junk out there, and it can reflect radio signals. Right. But there's some real problems with that explanation as well. Yeah. Because I believe that from Earth, we don't transmit on the hydrogen line. Correct. Right. It's protected. Like, you're not allowed to transmit on that because people are listening out for aliens on that line. So no bounce back. No. So even if you do have one jerk whose sole purpose in life is to mess with steady scientists by beaming radio signals at 1420 MHz so that they'll get beam back into space, even if there was somebody transmitting and it supposedly bounced off a space junk, there's still problems with that explanation, too. Chiefly, the space junk would have to be moving in the same direction at the exact same rate as Earth in order to give the illusion that it was coming from a fixed point in outer space. Because, remember, it would have to be even more mind boggling perfect than that. It would have to be moving at a rate that allowed the Earth to pass by it over the course of 72 seconds. Right. It couldn't just be moving at the same rate or else the biggest signal. Exactly. So apparently, Jerry Ayman was a skeptic of his own wow signal. And even he was like, the space debris thing, it's just the probability of everything lining up like that is just so small that I hereby dismissed that. That's what he said. He did. And here's the thing. A few years later, I think, in 1980, they actually developed the capability for this Big Year and then other radio telescopes to move on their own. So, in other words, if it would have locked on to that signal, it could have locked on and then counteracted the rotation of the Earth and really listen to see how long that thing lasted. Yeah, because we have no idea how long it lasted. We know it lasted at least 72 seconds. Right. But no more than 24 hours, because it wasn't there the day before and it wasn't there the day after when the Big Year went through and swept past the same patch of sky. Right. They went over the data, believe me. Yes, they did. And like we said, they started listening for it. Specifically the Very Large Array, the VLA in the mid ninety s. And that is that in New Mexico, I think. Yeah, new Mexico. Okay. That has the power of 27 separate radio antennas 100 times more sensitive than the Big Year. And they specifically this guy named Robert Gray, an amateur astronomer, went looking for it, pointed it towards SAGITTARIUS, which is sort of the rough direction that the wow. Signal came from. And again, he's like, I haven't heard anything since then. No, that's another point that a lot of people say it was nothing. Is that that point out in deep space, out in the sky? There's nothing there, right. There's no planet. There's no star. There's no nothing. So what is some seemingly artificial radio transmission being broadcast from when there's nothing but space out there? Pretty weird. It is very weird. But again, every argument that's been made has been you can make a counter argument to an irrational reasonable one. So are we saying that this was an alien transmission? Not necessarily, but it is still potentially a reasonable explanation given the evidence that the wow. Signal presents. Yeah. I think the way I like looking at it is what Jerry Ayman said sometime in the 80s. He says, the best way I can think of it is that it was a tug on the cosmic fishing line. It doesn't prove that you have a fish on the line, but it does suggest that if you keep your line in the water at that spot, you may get a fish. So I don't know necessarily about that spot, but it was something that we can't quite explain. Yeah. And, you know, keep the Very Large Array going. Like, keep listening, keep watching the skis. I mean, sky. You got anything else? No. Did we miss anything? Oh, man. We could go on about SETI and all that stuff for days. Maybe we will someday. I think the official skeptics line is that what did they finally say? They like it. The Skeptics Club. Yeah, the Skeptics Club. They said. Oh, an interstellar radio source of unknown origin is the official line of the Skeptics Club. Yeah. A big shrug of the shoulders essentially. Got you. Yeah. So who knows? Six EQ, UJ five. Pretty remarkable. I bet somebody has that tattooed on them somewhere. Yeah, totally. Like on the back of their neck. I bet Jerry Aman, like, spit his coffee all over the paper, too. Did a big spit take. Yeah, classic Aimon. Totally. He's like the Jerry Lewis of astronomers. Yeah. If you want to know more about Jerry Lewis or the wow signal or anything like that, you can type some words like six Equj, five in the search bar at How Stuff Works.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this Purpose of Life. We got a lot of great responses from does the body replace itself? When you went into that really nice philosophical sidebar on why are we here? Right. I thought it was interesting. Thanks. Hey, guys. Just finished my four month binge of all 700 plus episodes of Stuff You Should Know, you wanted to write in about does the body replace itself? Towards the end, you discuss the purpose of life and why there can't be just a one or a few species if the purpose of life is to cycle carbon, et cetera. Speaking as a geologist, biologist, the Earth doesn't need life for anything. The planet would be just fine with no life and no carbon cycling. It would just look quite a bit different. Talking about the purpose of life like this is an easy and common fallacy that implies some need that's being filled. Life's purpose, if you want to call it that, is simply to replicate itself. That is, at some point there was a molecule able to replicate itself as it did that some copies were better at replicating than others, and so on and so on. Over time, it became more effective to be encased in a membrane than to use DNA, then to use DNA instead of RNA and so on and so on. Everything alive today shares the history of ancestors that replicated and passed on their genes successfully. Life doesn't need to live or die or eat or breathe or swim or fly or photosynthesize or procreate or think or love, but it does those things because they help it effectively copy and pass on the genes. This is the fundamental purpose of life. And now some may think it's cynical or heartless. I find it beautiful and truly awesome. And that is Danny in Seattle. Thanks a lot, Danny. Seattle. All the atheist and agnostics out there, I just posted a thing. They have like 7% more agnostics and atheists. Than the rest of the country. Really? 7%? That's pretty significant. Yeah, and 20% less identifies Christian than the rest of the country. So there's a bunch of Godless freaks. Well, thanks, Danny, for tossing your opinion in about the purpose of life. Or the purposelessness of life. If you want to chime in on this whole thing, we can keep it going. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook. Comsteffyshow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstepworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyoushoreknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseoffworks.com. Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this 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." | ||
How Pepper Spray Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-pepper-spray-works | Lt. John Pike of the Davis, Calif., police department brought the wrath of the Internet on himself when he casually doused peaceful protestors with pepper spray. Find out what was in the can in this eye-watering episode of Stuff You Should Know. | Lt. John Pike of the Davis, Calif., police department brought the wrath of the Internet on himself when he casually doused peaceful protestors with pepper spray. Find out what was in the can in this eye-watering episode of Stuff You Should Know. | Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:52:02 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=20, tm_hour=17, tm_min=52, tm_sec=2, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=354, tm_isdst=0) | 33629905 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopforcecom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles. Www chuck Bryant. Don't spray me, bro. Yeah, I forgot about that guy. Don't chase me, bro. Florida. I know, man. Leave it to a gator. Who was it that was speaking at that? I don't remember. Was it Al Gore? I don't remember. I don't remember the politician who was Al Gore. Kids got rowdy and they taste and don't taste me, bro. Yeah, that was fun. It was a fun meme for a little while. So speaking of memes, Chuck, crazy that you brought that up. Yes. Have you seen the casual pepper spray cop meme? Yeah, I have seen it. I think that the University of California Davis cop who famously sprayed these very docile, peaceful students. It was awful to watch, but this meme is hysterical. Yeah, I think yeah, well, they keep taking them and inserting them into famous pictures, photographs and paintings and things like that. My favorite one I've seen so far is he spring Julie Andrews in the field from The Sound of Music. Yeah, I saw that one. There's a whole tumbler. I think it's just pepper Spray Cop is what it's called. By the time this comes out, that will already be old, I think. I think it's pretty much there now. I had a pretty short run, but it's a pretty good example of how, you know, if you do something in the age of the Internet that the general populace doesn't like, they're going to get you for it. And they got this guy. Lieutenant John Pike of the Davis Police Department. Right? Yeah. And apparently anonymous published his home address, his cell phone number, his email, his email address, all this stuff. That's not cool. I thought the home address was maybe a bit too far, but anyway, this guy, this Pepper Spray Cop, just everything about it has been extremely controversial. And actually, the guy who helped weaponize pepper spray for the FBI, Comrade Loadman, he basically said, quote, I have never seen such an inappropriate and improper use of chemical agents. Basically, the ACLU is saying that you can't do this, dude. You can't just pepper spray people who are sitting quietly and peacefully and nonthreateningly. It's supposed to be for cops. It's supposed to be if someone is threatening you physically or resisting arrest in some way physically. Right. And in that sense, pepper spray is extremely effective. One of the reasons why is it trigger. It doesn't depend on a sensation of pain. It circumvents your pain center and just elicits a completely physical, non cerebral response. So whether you're on PCP or totally drunk or psychotic or whatever the case may be, and you're in some sort of state where you can't experience pain, this stuff is still going to incapacitate you. If you can experience pain, it's going to incapacitate you, and it's going to be extremely painful. I think what was so startling about pike was that how casual it was in the video, it looked like he was spraying weed be gone on his yard. Yeah, I think that's what got everybody. Yeah, that and the fact that everybody was just sitting docile and quietly. It was horrifying. Did you see what Megan Kelly said on Fox News? Yes, I did. She dismissed pepper spray after this incident as, quote, a food product. Essentially, she's right in some ways. I mean, it's definitely derived from food. You can say that pepper spray is a natural. It's made from natural. I'd like to see her get sprayed in the face, though, and see if she still said that. Yeah, it's a food product. I would take McDonald's cheeseburger spray to the face any day of the week. Oh, yeah. Pepper spray, not so much. You want to talk about this? This is one of our rare, timely, topical ones. Well, yeah, because it's being used all over the place. I mean, UC Davis got such a lot of coverage because it was so casual and heinous but they're using pepper spray all over the place with this Occupy Wall Street movement all over the place. And the problem is, you're not supposed to be doing that. Even though it is considered a non lethal weapon, even though it supposedly wears off after four to 6 hours. You're not supposed to spray peaceful demonstrators, Willynilly, who are exercising their Second Amendment first Amendment right to assemble. Yeah, second or first, it's all of them. All right, let's talk about pepper spray. We know the active ingredient in pepper spray because it's also one of the active ingredients in peppers, chili peppers, and cayenne. It's Oliverasin capsicum, or OC as they like to call it. Yeah, I wrote the article on bear spray on the site. Oh, you did? This is the same stuff. Same stuff. Basically, it just shoots farther for obvious reasons, because you want to stop a bear 30ft away and not 5ft away. Right. But the OC is a natural oil found in a lot of peppers, a lot of different types of peppers. And OC has a compound called capsaicin, and that is what is responsible for that burning sensation. Even though it's colorless, odorless, flavorless, that's the burn you're going to feel when that seed actually the pepper itself, but especially the seed hits your tongue. It is the seed, isn't it? Yeah. And capsaicin itself is colorless and odorless and flavorless, but it's extremely potent. Very. So 1 pure capsaicin can cause blistering on your skin. That's substantial. That's pretty serious stuff. So it's a natural compound. It's also a blistering agent. I think people are like people like Megan Kelly who say, well, it's just a food product. That's natural. Right. It can still cause blisters on your skin. So with pepper spray, basically, pepper spray is capsaicin mixed with, say, water, oil, well, OC is oil already. Okay. But it can also be mixed with an oil based or water based solution. Then you put it in a canister with a propellant that helps shoot it, and you aerosolize the whole thing. You pressurize it? Is that a word? It is now. I like it. You pressurize it. So then when you press a button and everything's depressurized, it goes shooting out and sticks to the face of some protester or a man on PCP. In the case of the article I sent you from the New York Times, it had a lovely picture of an 84 year old woman at Occupy Wall Street that was pepper sprayed in the face and it looked pretty awful. I can't remember her name, but she's like a lifelong protester and lifelong activist. Really? And yeah, she got sprayed in Seattle. Right. I bet she had it more than once then. Yeah, she's like, take more than pepper spray to stop me. So there's three basic patterns that you can spray this liquid pepper out of your little dispenser. It can be the stream, and chances are if you have one of the little tiny caps, not capsule size, but like the little canister in your purse, then it's probably going to be the little stream that you see coming out. Yeah, close range, right in the eyes is where you want to put it. But I mean, it packs a punch. Yeah, it's super concentrated. Yeah, big time. It's just tough to hit your target. Yeah. So that's almost like right up on top of you. Right. The mist is a fine mist, obviously. Liquid is sprayed out and it's going to cover a larger area, make it much easier to hit your target. And then the fog is similar to a miss, but it's even wider. And it looks like pike was using like the hip from the hip canister. A big one, a big one missed and or fog. And there's also another one that's not mentioned. There's foam. And foam has the what's the deal there? Foam has the added advantage of not blowing back in your face, which is a kind of a problem if you ever are spraying somebody with upper spray like an assailant. Just know where the wind is and get the upwind. Do you watch Cops? No, I watch it occasionally for fun. I think I mentioned that before because it makes me feel better about myself. Yeah, you have. I saw one the other day with this guy, like he wouldn't come out of this really dense shrub. So the cops went in there after him and then another one sprayed the heavy fog one, and all these cops came out and they were like, we got them, we got them. But they couldn't see anything. It's like, man, you guys did that in the wrong order, my friend. And it wasn't funny. Of course I don't want to see cops pepper sprayed, so I'm not making fun of that, but it was pretty funny at the time. You're going to get about one to 60 bursts in your little thing in your purse. It's about four and a half inches long if you have the little personal dispenser. Yes. Which basically is just the canister, the trigger button. And if you're smart, you bought the kind that has a safety mechanism. Yeah. You don't want that going off in your purse. No, you don't. And actually a pretty good thing to do is to look to the left or the right of the pepper spray you're buying at the hardware store and get the Medicated White, specially formulated for treating pepper spray. Do they sell those right next to them? They tend to, yes. Nice. So if you have some in your person you're carrying that, you probably want to keep these Medicated wipes, too, just in case of an accident. That would stink. Yes. I saw the history of pepper spray, not the spray, but people have actually been using hot peppers as defense and as torture devices for thousands and thousands of years. Apparently, the Japanese geisha would stick these peppers in there, like, slice them up and stick them in their kimonos. Yeah. So if any guy got a little too rough, just put it in his fat face. With pepper in his fat face. Yeah, that would do it. And the Maya actually hadn't. They were well aware and well versed with hot peppers living in Central America, of course. And so anytime they were in a fight or a battle, they would light a bunch of them on fire and the smoke would carry to the other army and make them die. Never thought about that. Make them want to die. Do you cook with peppers? Sometimes. I actually made a New Year's resolution this year that I'm going to be able to eat hotter stuff in 2012 because I am a total wuss. I'm pretty big wolf myself. I've gotten better at it over the years. Yeah, but a Jalapeno can take me out. Yeah, but some of that stuff is so hot, it's not like a pleasurable eating experience any longer. For me, at least. No. There's also a lot of people who feel the exact opposite. For some reason, they really like peppers. Like there's this place in San Antonio called Chunky Burger, I believe. I like it already. They have a burger with it's called the Four Horsemen, and you have to preorder it. And it has habanero. It has three kinds of peppers that you've heard of, and then it has a fourth pepper called the Ghost Pepper. Yeah, the ghost pepper is called boot Jokia. It's from northern India. Bangladesh area. And it is the world's hottest pepper, hottest natural pepper. And there are plenty of videos actually on YouTube of people eating these things. And then like, the reaction that lasts an hour, like just agony for an hour. But in this cheeseburger. It has the ghost pepper. Well, and when they've made it before, people who are not eating the Ghostburger but just happened to be in the restaurant when this thing was being prepared, have had to be carted off in ambulances before because they were in the same building as the stuff when it was seared. The Ghost chili made an appearance on Top Chef last week, actually did. Really? Yeah, they're doing Texas this year. And so one of the challenges was they had all these peppers laid out, and they had their Scofield heat units, which we'll talk about here in a second, as to how hot they were. And you got to choose your pepper, and each one had a different amount of money attached to it that you would win if you won the challenge. And only one dude attempted to cook with the Ghost pepper, and he actually won the challenge. Did he really? Yeah. Nice. But I got one for you. And I guess it's not natural, but the Guinness record is the Scorpion, the Trinidad Scorpion, specifically the scorpion Butcht, named for Butch Taylor. So I guess this hot sauce guy has made his own pepper somehow, and it registers 1.4 million on the Schofield. He's like Luther Burbank Chart. And to put that in the comparison, if you've ever had a habanero, which is generally known as really hot, that's only 350,000. Right. So that's crazy. Ghost Chili is about a million. And this transit scorpion is 1.4%. And then pepper spray. That is so hot, man, that is so scary. Yeah. Pepper spray is rated between 500,005 million Scofield units. So this ghost pepper or the Scorpion pepper, gets up to 1.5 million. There's pepper spray out there that's up to 5 million Scofield heat units. And Scofield heat units are named after an American chemist from the 1910s named Wilbur Scofield. And he came up with a very ingenious idea of how to classify the heat associated with pepper capsaicin. He diluted it in sugar syrup and then would feed it to human test subjects. And the Scoffill heat units say, like 9000 or 500,000. That's the number of times it has to be diluted before it becomes undetectable by humans. That's right. And that's the old school method. Right. And it worked pretty well. But it is subjective because it's going by a single person's taste buds. Right. And although I did see, when he tested them, they could only taste one, and that was it. So he didn't say, like, try these eight peppers. Let's try this pepper 200,000 times. Yeah, it was like one pepper per session. Nowadays, they have something a little more advanced, it's a little more accurate within 5%. And it's called high performance liquid chromatography. And I'm not exactly sure how that works, but it works well, it's not subjective, I imagine. Yeah, and like I said, it's within 5%, so they can tell. And I don't know if they still displayed in Schofield units or not? I think they do. Do they? And basically they take like the capsaicin, or they take a pepper and just lay it on like a protozoa or an amoeba and see how long it takes to dissolve it. Yeah, that's unsubjective. When I cook with peppers, I d seed and I wear gloves and a painting respirator. Very smart because I inhale that stuff. And these aren't even the super hot ones. Yeah, I just can't take it, man. Or if I rub my eyes or my nose or any part of your body was bad because what peppers do with this peppers, the capsaicin in a pepper infiltrates your mucous membranes especially effectively and especially the mucus membranes that are sensitive to heat or cold. So your nose, your throat, your mouth, your eyes and this is after you cut it open or after you weaponize it? Yeah, but if you just take like a jalapeno and rub it on your skin, you're not going to get much for reaction. No, because like you said, the most is found in the seeds, or at the very least inside. But like we said, the weaponized pepper spray with a sculpture heat unit of between 500,005 million. If sprayed into these mucous membranes of your area, it's going to have a predictable effect on you and it's going to be horrific and terrible for a while. For you. Yes. What it's going to do, you're going to feel burning sensation in your face, your eyes, your nose and your mouth, maybe even your throat. That's going to last anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour. Your eyes are going to become really irritated. They might swell shut, might temporarily blind you, which is a great thing if you're being attacked or if a cop is being assaulted because it's meant to disable the person. Like it took me a second. That was weird syntax. Was it what you want to do? You're trying to disable someone long enough to either arrest them or to get the heck out of there. You're just being assaulted on the street. And I have a canister of pepper spray and it says it's not immediate. In this article, it says the effects are immediate. It says the effects are not immediate. So spray and run and make an X at the Is. Oh, really? Yeah, I'd make it. Zoroz. You carry this over canister and run. Is this in your car? Yeah. Really interesting. You don't mess with me, dude. If you see me in the Volvo, you don't want to mess with me. I got one of those collapsible batons. Do you really? Yeah, man, those are scary. I don't keep it in my car, though. You can brain somebody with that. I know. I keep it by my bed, though. It's a good thinking. Take out my knee. I like the pepper spray better, though. I should get some of that. You totally should. I buy it for emily, of course. What are you trying to say? Hey, if I'm not carrying a classical baton, I'm less than a man to you? No, I think you should get a baseball bat with nails driven through the end of it, like New York. Okay. All right. You're not less than a man if you use pepper spray. I know. I'm very comfortable with myself and my masculinity. Good. Your throat, Josh, might even swell. Shut. It's not going to choke you to death? It depends. Well, it could, I guess. Yeah. And if you're allergic to anything in there, if you got, like, heart trouble, that's how I can choke you. It could be fatal. Yes. There's plenty of instances of people who are allergic to capsaicin being sprayed with pepper spray and going into anaphylaxis, which is basically a whole body allergic reaction. And one of the key stars of this reaction is that your airways close and you die. You suffocate. Yeah. It says here, though, that they've never proven that it was the sole cause of death in any case. Absolutely untrue. Yeah, that's what I thought. They've proven that, right. Yeah. People with asthma are particularly plagued when they are sprayed with pepper spray. Sure. But the ACLU did just this one study of California in 1992, I believe it's 92, it became legal for cops to use pepper spray, and then in 94 in California, and then in 94, it became legal for the general public to carry it. So they say you did this study of pepper spray in California from 1993 to 1995 among cops and found that cops were using it statewide, basically are spraying people 24 times a day during this period all over the whole state. They found that one out of about 600 sprays resulted in the death of the person wow. From sprays. Right. And about 26 people total during that time died from being pepper sprayed. Really? Yeah. So potentially lethal. Oh, yeah, definitely. The thing is, for the average person, though no. Your nose is going to burn, your eyes are going to burn. You're going to become temporarily blind. Like you said, your throat will swell some, so it will be kind of difficult to breathe, but that might last five to 15 minutes. The problem with pepper spray, other than the fact that it's just being used like it's flower lately, is that there are people out there who can die from its use, and you don't know who's allergic to capsize. And they might not even know, like an 84 year old woman in Seattle, for instance. Great example. If she hadn't built up her hardcore immunity to it over the years of protesting, she might have died. She would have been in trouble. So let's say you get sprayed, and we're not giving advice to criminals here, but let's say you're a good guy and you're peacefully sitting on the sidewalk and a cop comes by and sprays you in the face. Yeah. It's oil, you got to remember. So while it may feel great to splash your face with water for a minute, it's not going to do anything in the long run. And why oil and water don't mix? My mane. Why? Well, because one is a polar molecule made of polar molecules and one is made of non polar. The water is polar, meaning that, say, if you're looking at a water molecule, on one side, there's going to be some electrons and one side is going to be protons. Positive and negative oils are nonpolar, meaning their electrons are distributed evenly all around. So that's why they don't mix, which is like you said, water is going to feel good for a second, but it's not going to do anything to get the oil in the oily capsaicin off of your face, which is what you want to do. Yeah. You don't want to touch the area on your face where you've been sprayed because it's going to get all over your hands. Except chuck except to get your if you're wearing contacts, just jam your fingers into your eyes and get those out as far as you can and just throw them away. Well, I don't imagine you wouldn't want to reuse those. No. But in this one survival guide I saw, it basically said, don't keep them. I never thought about that. I guess if you wear glasses, you might be at an advantage. Yeah. If you had on your Sunny, especially if you wear like, wrap around Oakley's or something that you wear on the back of your neck indoors in like, restaurants or something. So what you're saying is if you're a tremendous cheese ball, then you're fine. Okay. But you're probably the one spraying the protesters if you wear Oakley's. Like that is the thing. There are some dudes out there like what it says in here to blink rapidly. I think you probably have no choice but to do that. But let's say you're not and you're just going with your eyes open. Blink rapidly because you want to tear up as fast as possible. Help flush whatever's in there out. Use hand soap or no tier shampoo, dish soap, any kind of soap. I saw a ratio of 25% dawn 75%. Water is a good way to get the oil off of your face. I would just squirt dawn all over my face. I wouldn't be like, measuring anything. And like you said, medical wipes, those are what the ents carry when the cops spray the people and they're like, I can't see. Right. So if you got these wipes, it's a good idea. Yeah. And if you're going to go out and buy pepper spray for use as self defense or for fun, you are going to want to be familiar with the laws of your state and our country. Yeah, it varies a lot. Yeah. Well, if you live in Canada and Belgium, tough luck for you. You can't own pepper spray unless you're a member of law enforcement or the military. Canadians are so peaceful, though. They really are. They don't need pepper spray. All right. Stay away from the Belgians, though, I'm telling you. Well, it depends. Are you talking about the Flanders side or the French side? Belgium is actually very nice. I've been there. Really? Yeah. My uncle lives there. Got you. So when I traveled to Europe, I stayed with him for a couple of days. Very nice. Got you. Hong Kong. You need a permit. Different states have different laws on, like, how big of a canister you can use, whether or not you can carry it on yourself. How old do you have to be? How old you have to be? What percentage of what? OC. Yeah. Of capsaicin. Yeah. So imagine if they sell it in your state, though, it would comply, right? Yeah. Not necessarily, most likely, but check into it. Get on the web and look at your local government or law enforcement or just ask a cop. Yeah. And then you want to replace it every three years. Yeah. Mine is updated, actually. You want to replace it? Emily's is if you love your wife, Chuck, you want to go replace that for Emily? Yeah, that would be bad if she X someone's face and they were like, what? Nothing but aerosol got me wet. Yeah. No, I'm really mad. And what kind of prices are we talking? I don't know. $7, $20, if you have to ask. You know what I mean? Yeah. Or if $20 is too much for you to spend on your personal protection, then good luck, right? But, hey, in this economy, 99% can't afford good tear gas. In that case, and do like the Geisha did and go, just purchase a ghost chili and keep it in your pocket. By the way, the difference between tear gas and pepper spray, I will explain right here. Let's hear. Tear gas is manmade chemicals. Pepper spray is derived from peppers. Boom. Yeah. That's it. And we explain why oil and water don't mix. So this is a bonus. There you have it. Bonus cast. So if you want to know more about pepper spray, if you want to know more about protests, riots, what have you, we got all this stuff on the site. Zillow rights. Yeah. Great one, Chuck. Good one. You can just type any of those words in the handy search bar@howstephors.com, and that will bring up some really great content, including this article, how Pepper Spray Works. And that's it. It's time for listener man surprise, surprise. Hold your horses, Joshua. Okay, they're old. We have to talk about our contest. They have marketing has cooked up a contest for us. If you want to come here and meet us and dine with us, lunch with us. Yeah. You can do that. Yeah. Not only you get a trip to our fair city of Atlanta. That's right. You get transportation to and from the airport to a hotel that you get to stay at for two nights. That's right. I don't think it's a flea bag, either. No. You get a tour of the office. You get to hang out with us for lunch that day. That should take about 20 minutes, right? We're going to take you out that's included. Right. One of us is going to put it on our card. If that's not in the rules, I'm picking up lunch, right? Oh, wow. That's nice. Talking to me. And then in addition to all that, you get $100 American Express gift card. That's if you're the grand prize winner. There's also, like, a referral winner, too, right? That's right. Here's a particulars it runs through the end of the year. You can enter by going to HowStuffWorks.com Facebook page. Not stuff you should know howstep works.com, and you got to like it. And then you can enter there. It's pretty obvious. Going to announce the winners the week of January 1. If you refer someone to enter and they win, then you win a Kindle Fire. Right. And it's really easy to refer. Basically, you have to go onto Facebook. You fill in your first, your last name and your email address, and then you enter you entered into the contest, and then it gives you the option if you want to tweet it out or change it to your Facebook status message. Sure. And then if anybody clicks that link and they end up winning, then you get the Kindle. Got it. I'd rather win the Kindle by I'm totally with you than lunch with us. You can. But anyway, so I guess best of luck to everybody, right? Best of luck. We'll see you at, I don't know, some fancy schmancy lunch place of our choosing. It'll be around here, probably. Okay. Can we get back to it? I'd like to. Great. You're the one who stopped us. We got some big feedback on the Air Force One podcast, like from insiders from Military Dudes. I got one that I was not even allowed to read on the air because the lady, first of all, sent it from her email address from her husband because he didn't want to be associated. She said, can I read this if it's anonymous? No. So, unfortunately, we can't get to that, but if you help me with those two, I will read the third. All right. Do you want to read the third in the middle, and I'll read the first and the last or what? Yes. So, Chuck, here's one from Brandon in Pittsburgh, PA. So Brandon says, I was listening to your podcast on Air Force One and heard you guys were a bit stumped and why the 747 couldn't fly above 45,000ft. I felt like we got that. It disintegrates totally once it reaches the ceiling back. Right. Not true. I'll save you most of the aeronautics engineering lingo and say quite simply, the. Air above 45,000ft is too thin to support the weight of the aircraft. Getting an aircraft to fly is all about moving air over the wings. A 747 is not capable of going fast enough through the thin air to create enough lift. So to answer your question, the 747 will not fall apart or lose its life support capabilities. Oxygen. It simply just can't go any higher than that. Pretty cool. That was Brandon in Pittsburgh. Thank you, Brandon. All right, this one is unknown, and I don't know if it was intentionally unknown or not. I can't remember, but if you wrote this email, thank you and I'm sorry that didn't get your name. Guys. I used to work as a ramp agent in airport in Ireland, where Air Force One would frequently stop to refuel. I held security clearance to service the plane and had the privilege of doing so on four or five occasions. First, a small correction from the podcast. The Marine one helicopter is not a Chinook. It is either a Sea King or a Blackhawk, depending on the location. Where did you get it was a Chinook? I thought the one with two propellers or two front and back. Yeah, I thought that was a chin. Dual rotor. Are you sure? Well, we got a lot of corrections on that. Okay. All right, so that's what he says first. Oh, sorry. The Black Hawk can be disassembled to fit inside the C 17 cargo plane that accompanies Air Force One, which we got that wrong, but I think you're going to take care of that. Now for the fun details. When the aircraft is on the ground, a camera deploys from underneath the plane between the main landing gear and offers a panoramic view of all ground activity. There are also static pinhole cameras located at regular intervals along both sides of the main fuselage and in the nose landing gear. These are only noticeable if you're standing beside one of them. Once I try to count them all, but quickly lost count. That's how many there are. Wow. The same is true for the large number of antenna communication, aerials, et cetera, which runs the full length at the top of the aircraft. Next, some security details. Okay. When the President is making a multi country trip, there will be identical cars, limos and Secret Service attachments, etc. Simultaneously positioned at each location. This ensures everything is in place at every destination. When the airplane is at any foreign airport, a hard telephone line is run from the main terminal to the plane in the event of any wireless connectivity issues. And whenever both Air Force One and its twin sister are both on the ground, they always park opposite each other, tail to tail, so both can taxi and take off immediately without any interference at a moment's notice. Very nice. Pretty cool. And then you're going to bring it home here, so check. I'm bringing it home with one from bill M-U-A SF. Retired. Charleston, South Carolina. Oh, I was in the Air Force. Really? He was a mechanic. Did not know that. I am a retired US. Air Force lobe master who flew as a crew member on C during many presidential support missions. During the Air Force One podcast, you mentioned the President's limos being carried by C 141s. Well, that was once a true statement. It hasn't been that way for a number of years. So we need to go update the vehicle. The C 141 fleet has been decommissioned and sent to the boneyard. The C 17 is the main airlifter used to carry the limos communication package, marine helicopters, not Chinook, and myriad of other stuff and personnel used at the President's destination. I missed my military days and Sam missions were certainly a highlight of my career as I accrued over 85,000 flying hours during 21 years. So this guy, he knows what he's talking about. And what was his name? It's Bill M from Charleston, South Carolina. Yeah, and I want to point out Bill also had a number of very nice things to say about the show. But since it was so long with the listener mail today, I cut a lot of that out. But thank you very much, Bill. It was very kind of you. Thanks, Bill. Thanks, Brandon. Thanks, unknown or Richmond. Okay, wait, chuck, if you'll indulge me before we go, I want to give a special Christmas shout out for one of our younger listeners, Casey, who is twelve. She is a friend's niece, and she's very sweet. She's a big fan, and she is bribing us, and we're going to totally go for it. She has asked us if we'll wish her brother Lincoln a Merry Christmas for her. She's given us five options. That varies from a crocheted scarf to what my vote goes for, and I hope you'll agree, a batch of homemade, uniquely decorated sugar cookies. Sure. Do you want to go with that one? Yeah. Okay. So we're going to take option one, Casey, and in exchange for those uniquely decorated sugar cookies, we're going to say, Lincoln, your sister Casey wishes you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Wait, happy Birthday. Right now? It's a bonus. I thought it was a birthday. She's just that sweet has nothing to do with birthday. She's just working her networks to get some favors. Fair enough. Yeah. So Merry Christmas, Lincoln. Merry Christmas, Casey. Merry Christmas to all of you. And yeah, we'll be back with the Christmas special next, right? Yes. In the meantime, if you want to get in touch with us, you can Twitter to us, tweet to us, S-Y-S-K podcast. You can join us on Facebook, facebook. Comsteffystoe. And you can send us a good oldfashioned, oldtimey Christmas themed email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our home page. The House of Forks iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on itunes. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon Music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today." | ||
bca729d2-361e-11ea-822e-177a16fd1719 | Short Stuff: 666 | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-666 | Today, Chuck and Josh dive into that scary number...666. | Today, Chuck and Josh dive into that scary number...666. | Wed, 01 Apr 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=1, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=92, tm_isdst=0) | 12387506 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck Hale. Satan. This is Short Stuff. You're Josh, I'm Chuck. And that's Bruce Dickinson standing right over there for some reason. Yeah. There's a 0% chance of Iron Maiden not making an appearance in this. You got to yeah. I don't know if it's their best album. Power Slave is probably their best album, but that's pretty far up there. Although simmer down, everybody. There's really no such thing as a bad Iron Maiden album. I wasn't that into them. I need to give them a shot. Yeah. They age really well. It's just really well done music. They're almost the Prague band of metal. Of metal. Interesting. They're just so ridiculously talented, every single one of them. So, yeah, it's good stuff. I highly advise you to get back into it. Okay, I will. And what we're talking about today is the number 666. And our old pal Dave Rus put this together for housestepworks.com. And one of the first things he says is his article is like, would you buy a car with a license by ending in and dude, my pickup truck has on the license. No, it doesn't. Oh, yeah. We talked about it a while ago when it came in. Well, I'm delighted. I hit my head since then, so I've forgotten that is a while ago. Wow. It's great. You need to get like some sort of graphics on the side or whatever, like Devil Mobile or something like that. Maybe it will. So the answer to that question from Dave Them for you is yes. There's a lot of people who wouldn't who would not. It's mostly God fearing people who believe that there is a book in the Bible. Well, they don't believe it like there actually is a book in the Bible, but in this book of Revelations, I think, chapter three, verse 18 says this here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for the number is that of a man and his number is yeah. So if you've ever seen the movie, I mean, this has been in plenty of movies, but the movie The Omen is the most famous movie to make use of this because young Damien and it's still one of the great moments in movie history when they're searching through his hair on his head and they see that it's clearly tattooed but tattooed by God, I guess. Sure. Yeah. By the Holy Ghost. Yeah. It's pretty scary. It is. That is a good scene. That's a good movie, too. But yes, the whole thing is this number. What this Bible verse is saying is basically Satan the beast has a number so that you can recognize them. When you see this number, you can recognize that this is Satan or an agent of Satan or somebody who is going to kill you if you don't worship him, who is the converse of God, who is in opposition to God and is the opposite of everything right and good. And so here me, the writer of Revelations is going to make you wise to this and just look out for six. Six. Six. And to those of us alive today, we have no idea what that means. Like, how are you going to say somebody as a number? But back in the first century Ce. Among Greek speakers, this is a very common form of word play that they would have immediately recognized. And they think that back in the day, anybody reading the Book of Revelations around the first century of this millennium before this one, they would know exactly who the beast was and who this was talking about. Yeah, because there weren't numbers like we think of them in Greece at the time in Greek. The Arabic nobles came around hundreds of years later. So in Greece, each letter of the Greek alphabet and in Hebrew actually had a numeric value. So there was this thing that we're going to talk about after a message break here in a minute called ice fee. Yeah. ISO sephy. I added an S in there. Keep going. Illuminati. Good job. It's in there somewhere. I'm guessing it's got to be that's right? And that means in Greek, equal in numeric value. And that was a way in the first century, basically, where you could it was sort of like not Morse code, but a numerical those games kids play when you send like, a numeric code to someone and then they have to translate the code by what letter it represents to get the final I guess in Christmas story, it was, what, drink your Ovalteen. Be sure to drink your Ovalteen. The crummy commercial. Yeah. So bad. Yes. But it wasn't like you didn't need a secret decoder ring. Everyone walking around speaking Greek knew that alpha was interchangeable with one, beta was two, pi was 80, which is weird because I thought Pi was 3.14, et cetera. Si is 700, for example. And so if you added together letters, you could come up with a number for that word or that name. So you could say that a name had a number and that's what this is talking about. That's right. So that's the set up. And we'll talk a little bit more about ISOP Sethi right after this. Okay, Chuck, so just exactly like, say if your name was spelled alpha beta, pi PSI, your number would be 783. You could also take 783 and figure out whose name that meant. Way harder to do in transverse. But if there's some famous people that maybe you suspect that the author is talking about, you could say, oh, well, does that equal 783? Or in this case, 666? And there's one guy in particular who the writers of Revelations would have very much focused on as potentially the beast, an agent of Satan who would want to mark you with his number so that you couldn't buy or sell anything without that mark or, again, who would kill you if you didn't worship him. And that particular guy was named Nero. Yeah. So there was a pretty famous isa Cephe I keep adding an S in there. Isaacy, you got to put your word butcher apron on. Well, it is a weird word. I-S-O-P-S-E-P-H-Y. But there was a very famous one early on that was it goes a little something like this. A calculation new. Colon nero, his mother slew. So in this case, Nero equals 1005, which has the same value of the phrase his mother's slew. So basically that's like, oh, my God, Nero killed his mom. Yeah, that's the thing about the ice upset fees having equal value is that if one word had a numeric value, and that's the same as, say, another word or another phrase, that meant that there was some mystical metaphysical connection between those two. So the people who were like, yeah, Nero is terrible. He probably murders mother. The fact that his mother slew and Nero had the same numeric value of 1005, that was just proof positive. You didn't need to look any further. Give me my crystal ball and my birkenstocks. Right. So you might be saying to yourself, wait a minute. You guys said Nero was 1005, but you also said that some people believe that they were referring to Nero as the six six six. You got to rejigger this a little bit. In that case, you have to use the full name caesar Nero in Greek. That translated into Hebrew. Hebrew is does it say Hebrew? I love it, dude. That's a much more modern version of that word. He's my hero, bro. N-R-W-N-Q-S-R which is Neron keysar. And then that adds up to some people say, okay, all right, sure, why not? The thing is, there's a big objection to that one that I ran across, and that is that Revelations was written in Greek for Greek speakers who may not have actually known that you were supposed to transliterate this into Hebrew and may not have been familiar with Hebrew and not known how to do it. That doesn't necessarily mean, oh, no, this is wrong. Like, if you're encoding a message, having an extra step involving another language is definitely not against the rules. But from what I can understand, this is much more widespread and normal. A pursuit or diversion, this kind of ice up Cephe it is hard to say, isn't it? It is. Then this would be like, that's an extra big step compared to what they normally did. Like, there's graffiti that they found in the ancient world that uses ice hop fees. Yes. Like, hey, you know who I'm into 786, right? So some lady in town would be like, oh, I'm seven, eight, six. Yeah. So some people say, I don't know about that translating into Hebrew. And then it making sense of I don't know about that one. Seems like a bit of a reach, but I don't know enough about it. I do think it's interesting, though, that the idea that they were using this coded language, possibly in the Bible. Yeah, I guess it sounds like it was all the rage back then. So you like that? It's the hot thing. Yeah, it was. It was very hot. So some people would say, okay, this is way off. It wasn't Nero. Because, by the way, the other thing about Nero really kind of dates revelations, you know what I mean? Like it's meant to be kind of a timeless classic. And a lot of people are like, well, the beast hasn't even been born yet, and everyone knows that the barcode is the mark of the beast. So the idea that it's just Nero who has zero effect on our world today, it doesn't play very well. That interpretation other people have interpreted as meaning that it's not talking about a specific person, which is tough to get around because the translations, all of them that I saw is that it's a number of a man. A man? Not man, meaning like, humankind. It's like a human number, which is, I think, exactly how Iron Maiden's guy puts it on number of the beast. But it's the number of a man, like a specific man. But if you throw that a out and you just take it like it's a human number, is what it means, then this interpretation is saying that it's actually pointing out that Satan is a cheap imitation, a cheap parody of God and the grace of God. And so this is what you're looking out for. This is a different interpretation. Well, one thing I know, if man is five and the devil is six and God is seven, then this monkey has gone to heaven. That's right, man. Why's our words have never been spoken. Agreed. Love that song. So, yeah, that's the point, is that the symbolic number of God is seven and Satan's is six. So it's like Satan is a cheap imitation of God, so don't fall for his jam. That's right. So there you have it. It's either narrow or it's just saying that Satan is a cheap imitation of God. However you slice it, it's a really good Iron Maiden album. Okay, agreed. That's it for short stuff. Everybody go out and read about this on how stuff works if you want. And definitely go listen to some Iron Maiden. It'll do you good. Short stuff is apt. Stuff you should know is production of Iheartradios stuff works. For more podcasts to My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
4234c31c-53a3-11e8-bdec-4381472d6f5e | The Rubik's Cube Episode | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-rubiks-cube-episode | Rubik's Cubes. Ronald Reagan. Jerry Falwell. Just Say No. One of these things was awesome. Take a guess and hop on board the 80s train. | Rubik's Cubes. Ronald Reagan. Jerry Falwell. Just Say No. One of these things was awesome. Take a guess and hop on board the 80s train. | Thu, 29 Aug 2019 13:16:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=29, tm_hour=13, tm_min=16, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=241, tm_isdst=0) | 46666054 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, friends. You know, dating is a journey with ups and downs, for sure, but all the effort is worth it when you meet someone special, right? And when you decide it's time to find a meaningful relationship, eharmony is here for you. Eharmony is passionate about creating real love for all, rooted it in compatibility. Eharmony's process reveals truths about yourself, like, I don't know what you want in a relationship. And it helps you connect with a uniquely compatible partner who is right for you. Don't believe it? See for yourself. So start for free today, because every 14 minutes, someone finds love on Eharmony. This July, don't miss an entire summer of surprises on Disney Plus with Disney's High School Musical, the Musical, the Series season three Zombies, three Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and the one wonderful summer of Mickey Mouse. Plus new episodes of Marvel Studios, ms. Marvel and National Geographics. America the Beautiful. From the award winning producers of Planet Earth, Frozen Planet and the Disney nature films, america the Beautiful takes viewers on a tour of the most spectacular and visually arresting regions of our great nation. All these and more streaming this month on Disney Plus. Welcome to Stuff you should Know, 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 Jerry's over there. And we're cubing it up with Rubik the Cube. Did you see that cartoon? Rubik the Amazing Cube? Did you come across that? No. Okay. I feel like we are well within our rights as far as fair use goes, since we are talking about this, to at least play the highly disturbing but also strangely cute voice of Rubik the Amazing Cube. Can I play this real quick? Sure. Okay. My name is Rubik. That is it. Wow. It is awfully unusual, especially when you see this cube. They just basically took it. Do you remember the goblin face on maximum overdrive on the front of that semi? Sort of. It's kind of like a cuter version of that that they put onto a Rubik's Cube, put some feed on it and then gave it superpowers. That's Rubik the Amazing Cube. Wow. Before we go any further, Chuck, I just want to give a shout out for my Chicago show. May I? Yes. I'm doing a solo endoftheworld live show in Chicago on September 12 at Lincoln Hall, and if you want tickets, go to lhst.com. Okay, so back to rubik. Chuck. Yeah. It was kind of hard to believe that it took until 2014 for this thing to be granted National Toy Hall of Fame inductee status. It seems like it would have been much sooner than that because they have sold hundreds and hundreds of millions of Rubik's Cube since 1980. I had one. I still have one. I could do it at one point. Oh, really? Yeah, I could do it in a couple of minutes. Wow. Chuck, I'm impressed. I had no idea. Yeah, I can still do one side and, like, the top row surrounding that side on all sides, and that's where I completely forget. Oh, I see. So you couldn't do it in a couple of minutes now? You just have you could in the past, yes, when I was nine. Okay, well, I'm impressed. I've never been able to solve a Rubik's Cube. I've never been sucked in enough to really spend a significant amount of time. But I was playing with my niece's Rubik's Cube the other day, studying for this, and I was like, yeah, I could see how somebody would become obsessed with this kind of thing. For sure. Yeah, it was fine. And to call it all the rage is an understatement. It was one of the most popular toys of all time. Invented in 1974 by a math enthusiast in Hungary, an architect professor named Arno Rubik. Appropriately enough, they named him after the cube. That's right. And if you don't know what we're talking about, it seems weird to describe a Rubik's Cube, but we'll probably be taking the task if we do not, I would say, just come out from under the rock that you've been living under. But we may have some young listeners who don't even know what this thing is, this piece of 80s ephemera, even though it's not a femura, because they're still pretty popular. Yes. But it is a cube made up of 26 little mini cubes called cubies, which is kind of a cute little name, I think. So not as cute as Rubik the Amazing Cube, but yeah, little cubies. And they are in a three inch by three inch by three inch. Well, that's not quite true. A three by three by three grid, eventually creating a cube that measures 2.25 inches or 5.7 side. Right. And so what, there's six cube faces because it's a cube and each face has a different color. There's orange, blue, green, yellow, white, and red. And when you mix these things up, it's just a jumble or riot of different colors like you've never seen your life. But the point is to move these cubies around through the 18 different ways you can move any given cube so that all of the colors are lined up, all the colored cubies are all the same on each face. And it sounds easy. Friends, it is not easy, not at all. Maybe for some people it's easy, but for the rest of us normal folk, us normies, it is not easy in any way, shape or form. No, it is not. And in fact, they even suggest that you read about how to solve the Rubik's Cube. It is the very rare individual that can literally just figure it out without any help at all. That's really tough to do. So it's not like you're not a cheat. If you look at how to solve the Rubik's Cube and then memorize these patterns, and practice them. That's sort of the point. Right? Yeah. Like, go look it up. It's fine. No one will get mad at you for that. Yeah, because it's no fun to never solve a puzzle. Well, that's why I think I've never gotten sucked in. I was like, there's no way I'm going to possibly stumble across this. And I just don't think like this. My spatial reasoning is terrible. I'm not great at math. I'm colorblind. Everything just looks white. Not the toy for you. No, it's really not. I can't discern squares from circles. It's just I'm off. So originally the Rubik's Cube was called the Magic Cube, and it was invented, like you said, by Erna Rubik, who was Hungarian. So it was originally called the Beaver kotzka, which is magic cube in the Hungarian. And kotka means butthead. I believe. It does. The Magic Butt Head is what it was originally. The Beavish and Butthead. Right. Nice, man. It's like, Where's he going with this? After all these years? It's great. No, I didn't. But I was like, I'm going with this. We'll go with this. It's Chuck. I trust him. And I paid off too. So Mr. Rubik got his Hungarian patent on the mechanical design of this in Hungary, only for a while, and it did pretty well in Hungary, but that's kind of where it stayed. Because of the politics of the time and the fact that it was Hungary, it was not super easy to get an American patent or to bring it over and market it here in the west. So it was pretty much a Hungarian local sensation for its early, probably first year. Yeah. He had, like, a Hungarian toy manufacturer make like 10,000 of them, but he wasn't happy with them, so we cut the runoff at 50. So there were 50 of these things floating around Budapest and maybe Hungary in general. And it was just total serendipity that there was a guy named TBOR Laxi. And I'm quite sure that's not exactly how you say his last name, but that's how it's spelled. It's probably like, Lucia or something like that. But TBOR. I just love that name. It's a great name. He was an entrepreneur who had left Hungary and moved to Austria, so he had really developed a taste for capitalism. Well, he happened to be visiting back home in Budapest when he was at a restaurant, and he noticed a waiter playing with the Beaver Kotzka, the Magic Cube, and he said, you there? What is that? And he said, well, it's the beaver. How about I sell it to you for a dollar? And I believe he bought that for a dollar, played around with it for a minute, and was like, this could be big. So he found out who invented it, and he scheduled a meeting with Erin Rubik. Yeah. And he would say later on that earned rubik had a lot to do with why he decided to get into business with them. Here's his quote. He said, When Rubik first walked into the room, I felt like giving him some money. He looked like a beggar. He was terribly dressed. You got to remember, this guy is a professor, so they're not known for their sharp attire. Right. He was terribly dressed and he had a cheap Hungarian cigarette hanging out of his mouth. But I knew I had a genius on my hands, and I told him we could sell millions. Yes, he was right. Oh, man, was he ever right. He understated. It actually TBOR. I'm just going to call him T Bore. He took this magic cube and he started going to toy fairs, and I think he struck out at a few of them. But he really hit it out of the park at the Nuremberg toy Fair when he met a toy expert who had connections with Ideal Toy Company. You remember Ideal back in the day? I think I do, for sure. I'm pretty sure they made that what was the daredevil's name? Evil. I think they made the evil Kaneville stunt bike. You know what's funny is they make those now for other, like, an incredibles stunt bike with plastic girl. Oh, really? It's the same exact function. We have one in our house and you load it up and crank it, and there she goes. Is it the exact same mold? They just put, like, different paint on it or something like that? Because I love knockoff toys, man. It's slightly different in its design, but it's clearly like the same exact toy. Do you remember that gallery of knockoff toys I made back when we used to blog? Those are great. I think it's still up somewhere on our stuff. You should know. Remember how excited we would get about gallery page views? Yes. We'd be like, Holy cow, we're up to 70 and it's only been up for a week and a half. So funny. So at the Nuremberg toy Fair, TBOR runs into the guy from Ideal and they end up purchasing it. They purchased the rights to this, the global rights, and they basically sign up to create a million Rubik's Cubes. Yeah. Also, we should say at this toy fair, he did a pretty smart thing. Instead of, like, buying a booth, he just came and worked the floor with Rubik's Cubes and got this ground buzz going by walking around and giving these things to people. And that's genius for something like this. That's the perfect way to pique someone's curiosity, is not to have some flashy spinning, giant Rubik's Cube, is to actually get it in the hands of people walking around the floor. Right. Especially if you say I'm TBOR. Let's party. I bet you want to call it T bor's cube. It's a pretty good name. He probably did, although he was smart, because remember, originally it was called the Magic Cube. At some point, if it wasn't TBOR, it was Ideal who said, we're going to rename this the Rubik's Cube. And I'm sure Aarono Rubik was like, oh, wow. Okay. I guess if you insist. I wonder if he was into it or not, or if he pushed for it, or if he was like, I'm not really into that, but if you think it'll sell cubes, that's what I'm guessing he probably did. I don't think he was going to stand in the way of it, but he was not, like, vying for it by any means. That's my impression, but I'm just totally making that up. But I have the same impression, which means that if you put our two impressions together, it equals facts. So Ideal sells 100 million Rubik's Cubes. In the first two years, they just signed up to sell 1 million. They sold 100 million in two years? Yeah. I mean, I'm sure they had problems keeping up with production. Some of the accolades in 80 and 81, it won the UK's Toy the Year Award two years running. In 82, there were five books about solving it on the New York Times bestseller list, one of which I owned. I owned the classic the Simple Solution to the Rubik's Cube by James G. Norris. He was a chemistry student at Stanford. And get this, dude, this book was the number one best selling book of 1009, period. He sold 6.7 million books, and it is still the fastest selling book in the history of bantam books. Is that right? Can you believe that? Out of all the books that year, that was the number one? I can, because that really kind of underscores just how nuts, not just America the world went for Rubik's Cube. That the number one selling book was a book about solving the toy. That was it, yeah. They had sold 500 million of them by the time 1986 rolled around. So talking about the books, though, for another second, at one point, the number one, two and four positions on the New York Times bestseller list were all Rubik's Cube solution books. Three was probably Stephen King or something. Probably. And one of those books was written by a twelve year old named Patrick Bossert called You Can Do the Cube, which is pretty adorable if you think about it. And Christian Slater made a movie called Gleaming the Cube, one of my all time favorites, which had nothing to do with Rubik's Cubes, as it turns out. Oh, it's about skateboarding. That's right. So there's just a craze going on around the world. Like everyone is into the Rubik's Cube. Everyone's buying one. I've seen anywhere from 350,000,000. The highest I've seen is 600 million. They sold a ton of these things. Hundreds and hundreds of millions of them. Those were the official ones, too. There were plenty of knock offs. Sure. There were books on the New York Times bestseller list about this. It was featured in Time Scientific American, New Scientist. There was a paper that was printed in the New England Journal of Medicine that talked about Cuba's thumb, which is a real thing, it's a type of tendinitis in your thumb that you get in your nondominant hand because that's the hand that you use to stabilize the Rubik's Cube. And so the edge of the cube pressing into the heel of your thumb where it meets the rest of your thumb, that could create tendonitis. For people who are staying up for days on end just playing with this thing, trying to beat this puzzle, there's a craze like no other. I say we take a break, okay? And we come back and we talk about Mr. Rubik. Or maybe he's a doctor. I'm going to call him Doctor Rubik and how he created the mechanics of this puzzle. 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. 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IBM, let's create learn more@ibm.com. All right, so supposedly Dr. Rubic, surely he's a doctor. Let's call him Professor Rubik because he was definitely an architecture professor and a math genius. Surely, though, I'm with you, he's got to be a doctor. All right. Professor Dr. Rubik supposedly was not even trying to create this puzzle in 74 when he first started out. As legend has it, he was trying to create a mathematical model for 3D design class, which makes sense, considering his job. Other people say no, he was just really kind of guy that like to tinker. He was fascinated by geometry and shapes, and he was trying to just solve a problem of mechanics in three dimensions. But according to the Toy Hall of Fame, he was very much trying to invent a puzzle. And that may just be folklore. Yeah, he knew what he wanted. He wanted to make this three x three cube that was made up of smaller cubes that could all interact and twist around. He had the idea for the Rubik's cube, which was step one, but step two was a doozy and that was figuring out how to invent a mechanical solution to make this thing work the way he wanted it to. And apparently there was a pretty good article on mental floss by a guy named Noah Davis who recounted that one day Rubik was walking down the Danube alongside the Danube in Budapest and looked down and noticed that there was just a pile of nice polished, rounded river rocks and thought, I've got it. I've been thinking about a cube. Everything's got to be a cube. But what if I added a sphere to the mix too? And that these things rotated around a sphere that would give the freedom of motion that I need to make this thing work. And that was the solution to the puzzle, as it were. Yeah, I mean, if you're like me and probably lots of other kids in the early eighty s, you took your Rubik's cube apart at some point, did you? I never saw one and watched a video on this. Yeah, I got a screwdriver out in pretty short order and pop those things apart and it's kind of cool when you take all those cubies out, you get down to the center and those three axes and each one is tipped with two opposing center cubies. It's kind of cool looking and then it makes sense how all these things fit together and how it works. Yeah. Another way to think about it is just think about like a sphere, a ball, and then you've got six arms sticking out at right angles from it so that it forms a three dimensional plus side plus sign. And at the end of each one of these arms is a cube, a colored cube, and that's the skeleton of the thing. And then what Aarono Rubik figured out was that's all that needed to be attached to the center, you could make the other cubes attached to those face cubes, those center cubes, cubies, cubies. You could make some cubies attached to those cubies and then other cubies attached to the other cubies and then they will all kind of rotate around each other, but they're all really rotating on three different axes coming out of that sphere. This guy has gotten like if he started a craze and is kind of viewed as this great inventor for the toy, like math, physics, architecture in a number of different fields, mechanical engineering for sure. Yeah, he's viewed as just a god in some senses for cracking this problem and creating this three dimensional structure that actually works in reality that people can learn and study from. That's right. So he's figured out the mechanics of it all, but it's still not a puzzle yet until he applies these colors. That's what makes it a puzzle, because, like we said at the beginning, the idea is you have all the colors on each side matching one another. He applies these colored stickers all over, mixes and twists it up a little bit, and he's like, I've invented the cube. And he's like, Wait a minute, I don't know how to solve the puzzle. So he actually had built this thing, stickered it up and looked at it, I imagine, with some level of accomplishment, and then realized that the hardest thing to do in this whole process still lay in front of him, which was because there were no books out at this point, he invented it, so he had to figure out how to solve his own puzzle. And it took him a while. It took him a month, from what I thought. Yeah. And I imagine he worked on this pretty much non stop to figure this thing out. He did. And he would, like, write down the different moves, combination of moves, which now they're called algorithms. Sure. It's just types of moves that if you do them in a specific sequence, will solve a specific jumbled rubik's Cube, right? That's right. So he wrote them down, he kind of kept track of it and that was like the first time anyone had kind of applied analysis to this. But it would not be the last, obviously, is the New York Times bestseller shows. But the reason why it's so difficult to solve a Rubik's Cube just by happenstance is that just the sheer number of possible configurations of the cube, right. Each face has nine cubies and there are six faces, so there's 54 cubies, but they all relate to one another. And so if you move one, that's one configuration, if you move it another direction, that's another configuration, and so on and so on with these 54 cubies. Chuck, are you ready for this? Yes. The possible number of configurations is 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possible configurations of a Rubik's Cube. Amazing. And one of them one is the right one, where all six faces are all the same colored cubies, just one. So just doing it accidentally, your chances are one in about 43 trillion that you're going to stumble upon that right. Combination. That's right. Which is pretty amazing, don't you think? Yes. And by the way, I think I said in there 54, there's 20 cubes. I believe there are 54 faces. Yeah. I mean, that's the deal. Each cubby has three sides or two sides, right. Depending on if it's a corner or an edge, or one if it's in the center. Right. So it's kind of confusing. But nine times six. So nine squares or nine different colored squares times six faces is 54, I think. Yeah. 54 faces, 20 something cute, right? This is how good at math we are, man. It's really because it's so funny because it's such a simple little thing, but once you start really breaking it down, you're like, we could make this super confusing if we tried hard, for sure. But what people have figured out is that you may have, like, a one and 43 quintillion chance of stumbling across the right configuration by accident. But what people have figured out is that there are combination of moves, like front right, up twice, and then down. That's an algorithm. And if you apply that to a certain kind of scrambled a certain configuration of a scrambled Rubik's Cube, it will bring it back to solved. And so people have spent a lot of time developing algorithms, and that's what Aarono Rubik was originally doing when he was like, oh, if I do this and this, it will make it solved. And he wrote that down. That's what's called an algorithm. Yeah. And I remember in the book, each book had their own little shorthand, I guess. But I remember the one that I had, it definitely had the algorithms all spelled out with shorthand for what each move was called. So it would sort of look like a math problem made out of letters, right? Like, I saw U for up and D for down, which makes a lot of sense. But then also, you can move something to the right. You can twist one of the rows of cubes to the right, but you can also twist it to the left, too. So I saw an Apostrophe after L. Apostrophe would be counterclockwise left, and then you can add a number, too, so you do that twice, which is really 180 degree counterclockwise turn. So interesting. It really is kind of interesting. At first. When I first went over this article, the first time, just taking it in, I was like, oh, this is pretty neat. But the Rubik's Cube I found has many layers to it, and you can really keep going deeply into it. Well, beyond just playing with the cube and trying to solve it, there's a lot of math involved. There's a lot of physics and mechanics involved. You can get as sucked into it as you like, buddy. Just try not to go insane like Aaron Rubik did. He did that when he set the building on fire full of Rubik's Cubes. It's interesting, though, how big of a hit this became. It flew in the face of a lot of rules of the toy industry in that it didn't make sounds. It didn't have interchangeable parts. It didn't have things that you could sell along with it, like clothing, I guess. You could dress your little Rubik's Cube, but then you have a special relationship with it, I guess. So you could dress it up and be like, I'm Ruby. It didn't have batteries. It was never like, well, I guess it appeared on a TV show. Was that a TV show? Yeah, it was a Saturday morning cartoon that came on right before Pacman, which was honestly one of the all time great cartoons ever. Yeah, it wasn't marketable, though, like you would think a toy would be. The reason that it appealed and endured is because it is a real challenge and you get a real sense of reward once you've done it right. And that really hooks people. It really does hook people. And again, there's no shame in going and looking up algorithms to solve Rubik's Cubes, like, just processes. And in fact, if you start doing any kind of research on Rubik's Cubes, you'll find that there are actually specific methods of attack that people suggest for beginners to start with. There's one called the White Cross Method Classic, which entails eating a handful of White Cross gas station speed. Just staying up. Staying up for four days until you get done. No, it's actually you start with the edge pieces, and then you move to the corner pieces, putting them all in place, and then you go on from there, starting with the white face of the cube. That's right. And this toy was a big hit anyway, but it is endured not because of stocking stuffers or nostalgia, but it has endured all these years later because of competition. Yeah. So let's take a break now and we'll talk about speed cubing right after this. 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. 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What if you were a major transit system with billions of passengers taking millions of trips every year? You aren't about to let any cyber attacks slow you down. So you partner with IBM to build a security architecture to keep your data network and applications protected. Now you can tackle threats so they don't bring you to a grinding halt and everyone's going places, including you. Let's create cybersecurity that keeps your business on track. IBM let's create learn more@ibm.com. Okay, so the Rubik's Cube comes out in the world basically in 1980. And the very next year, countries around the world were holding national championships for solving Rubik's Cubes as fast as you possibly could. It's called speed Cubing. Yes. And then a year after that, they all got together, all the champions of the countries, for the very first Rubik's Cube World Championship in Budapest, which is kind of cool. And that's what has kept people going for so long, because people are still trying to beat these records. I saw a kid and it's kind of hard to tell what the top times because they list the top times in these competitions. But I saw a kid on YouTube do it in like 6 seconds or four or 5 seconds. I saw one do it in 3.47. Yeah. I don't know how it's officially judged, though. There's a timer, and there's one of those mats that you keep your hands on. But why does it say that those aren't world records then? I don't know that's what I saw was the world record was in 2018, and it was 3.47 seconds by Yu Shang do sorry, of China. See, I've seen other things listed. I just don't know if the bodies aren't speaking to one another or what. Maybe that was a non championship time sanctioned event, or even maybe it was a qualifier or something like that. So it doesn't count as the world record unless you get whatever time is done at the world championship. That's considered the world record. Who knows? It's crazy to see how fast these kids and it's usually kids that win, I guess, with their little nimble fingers and brain sponges. It's crazy how fast they're doing. It doesn't look real. It looks like some sort of weird fake video. Yeah. And here's the other thing, too. I'm glad you mentioned brain sponges, because it is like an intellectual pursuit. Like, from the beginning of this toys released in 1980, they went a different route. Like, you're saying, it doesn't require batteries, it doesn't make a noise or anything like that. So they went a different route in advertising it and said, this is an intelligent in game. Like, sure, Isaac Newton discovered gravity, but could he solve a Rubik's Cube? So they really kind of play that up. And it's true, because these kids who are solving or people who are solving Rubik's Cubes super fast, it's not just like luck or their fingers are just moving for them. They have memorized hundreds, if not thousands of these algorithms and have gotten to the point where they can look at a cube and figure out which algorithm is going to solve it the fastest. And then when the time starts, they can also move their fingers really quick. And that's how they're getting these amazing times. It's not just speed and dexterity. It's also knowing what algorithm is going to work best. Yeah, for sure. It died out pretty quickly. Like most fad toys, once you sell a lot of these, you don't need another one unless you break yours or something. So it's kind of one of those things, which is, again, why it flew in the face of the toy industry, because they couldn't sell ancillary products alongside it. But it died out pretty quickly. And the championship in 1982 was the last one for about 20 years until the Internet comes along. And all of a sudden, there are people posting faster times than ever before than 20 years earlier. And in 2003 in Canada, there was a speedcuber named Dan Gosby who organized a competition in Toronto. And this is where they're getting it down to like, 20 seconds. And they have different categories, like blindfolded, fewest moves, one handed feet, feet, feet. Dude, last year, someone did it in 23 seconds by foot, which was about the quickest time by hand at the first competition. Yes. And it took them longer to figure out that they had solved it than it did to actually solve it, because they had to use a stick to turn the Rubik's Cube over because they had used their feet to solve it. And I think when you participate, it didn't pay off as well as I thought it would. All right, you get 15 seconds to look at the cube over. They are all started like, the cubes are all started the same with, like, a computer generated random 25 move scramble. Just fair. You get that 15 seconds, you check it out, you set it on your mat, and then you go and it's just like I said, it's amazing to see these things done in sub 4 seconds. Yeah. Because their hands actually do kind of blur. Like, you can't really follow where their hands are at any given time. They barely touch the Rubik's Cube. And to be fair, they're using specialized speed cubes. They're not just using off the shelf Rubik's Cubes. Yeah, we'll talk about those. Well, sure, yeah. So people go to the trouble of getting a speed cube. It's like you can get a good one, from what I understand, for about 70, $75. And these things are literally well oiled machines that are just super fast. Some of them use magnets so that you can tell when they're snapped into place. And they move a lot more easily and quickly. You can just look at it and be like, that's a high end Rubik's Cube right there. Yeah. Like, you can pay to get your cube serviced and checked out at speed cube shop. So someone will take it apart, a technician, and they will look at each of those little cubies for defects. And has it got a little bump here that will slow it down. They'll smooth that out. Like you said, sometimes they use magnets. And one of the reasons for the magnets is it creates that snap when a turn is completed, because if you want to move these things really fast. You don't want it to be even if it's an 8th of an inch out of whack, you're not going to be able to turn it the other way. So you want it to snap and lock into place. It's just amazing how engineered these things have become in the Speed Cubing competitions. Right. Well, I mean, just to keep up, you got to get yourself a speed cube. If you showed up, like, to an actual competition with just a regular Rubik's Cube, I don't know if you'd be laughed out of the place, but they would certainly feel bad for you. You know what they should do is because I remember them loosening up really well and getting faster just because you played with it more. Instead of giving everyone Speed Cubes and trying to get this ultra Red Bull record, which they sponsor the events now, by the way, they should give everyone out of the package, make it as hard as possible. I agree. I think that there would be some preteens who are really high strung that would cry if they were confronted with that challenge. If they have to put their speed cube down. Yeah. They'd be like, this is not fair. No one prepared me in my life for this. I did mention Red Bull because it was kind of controversial. For many years, the Rubik's World Championships were co hosted by the World Cube Association with the support of the brand. But then, clearly some money changed hands. A couple of years ago, there was the Red Bull Rubik's Cube world championship. Red Bull got involved, the brand Rubik got involved, which means there was money changing hands. You're really fascinated with that money changing hands, aren't you? Well, I mean, sure, because I think everyone saw it as for what it was, which was all of a sudden, there's a corporate sponsor attached to it. Yeah, and that is, like, a pretty important point because there was already a World Championship, and it was like a grassroots organization that had grown up since 2003 and they were doing really well. And then all of a sudden, 15 years later, red Bull comes along attached to the Rubik's brand, and it's like, out of the way, nerds. This is the real one. And so apparently there was a lot of controversy, like you were saying, but now they kind of coexist. And the Red Bull Rubix sponsored one, changed their name from World Championship to World Cup so that they don't step on each other's feet at all. But if you think about it, that's a pretty big win for this grassroots World Cubing Association to be able to keep their original name and not have to change their name. For sure. Hats off to them. Hats off, indeed. So one of the things that I said about the Rubik's Cube, Chuck, is that it's got a lot of layers to it. There's a lot of surprising math involved specifically is a kind of algebra called group theory. And one of the things that has long kind of fascinated mathematicians is that there is somewhere in there a number of moves. There's an algorithm that has or there's a number of moves associated with any number of algorithms. And I'm making this way harder than it actually is, where it represents the maximum number of moves you would need to use to solve any configuration, any of the 43 quintillion configurations of a Rubik's Cube. And some people figured out that this number must exist, and, brother, they got obsessed with it. From 1981 to 2010, some people almost set a building full of Rubik's Cubes on fire. Yeah. I mean, they really researched this stuff to the point where, like, computer scientists are looking into this. There was a guy named Thomas Rakiki who got the upper limit down to 22 moves. And this is like Google is helping him out with the processing power. Yeah. So they call it God's algorithm. In the case of Rubik's Cube, they got down to 20 is where they landed. Right? Yeah. But God's algorithm can be used for any puzzle, really. And why do they call it God's algorithm? It's how God would solve the puzzle. So from what I saw, as God's number is the maximum number of moves that God would require to solve any configuration of the puzzle. Right. It got a little confusing in this article because it's a bit of a brain trick. It's like the fewest moves, but it's a maximum number of moves. Right, exactly. It's hard to wrap your mind around. And then there's actually fewer moves for other algorithms. So I saw God's number is actually probably more like somewhere between 19 and 20. But because there are algorithms out there that have to be done in no less than 20 moves, that's still God's number. And there's also the Devil's number I saw, too, which is the number of moves in an algorithm that it would take to go through all 43 plus quintillion configurations before you solve it, which I think that's a pretty good name for that one. Yeah. Now, that's the one that they're on the trail of now. But they're done at 20, right? They are, but I think it's interesting that we're not entirely certain. It's not like, okay, this has been proven. It's done. The reason why they arrived at 20 is because they actually built an algorithm to try to solve these algorithms. They taught an AI basically how to play Rubik's Cube. Or they said, here's a Rubik's Cube. Go teach yourself. And then they had it play just some mind numbing number of different Rubik's Cubes hands trying to solve it. And it kept coming up with 20. And so it came up with 20 enough times that they're like, well, our computer God has told us that 20 is God's numbers. So there you have it. But it wasn't proven, it wasn't solved. It was just like, this thing is so smart that we're just going to go with 20. So someone is still working on it then? Probably, I guess. But I think I get the impression that they have moved on to the devil's number. So as you would imagine with the toy of this caliber, there were bound to be other people saying they invented it and patent battles would ensue. And of course this was the case with the Rubik's Cube in 1977 when Rubik got his Hungarian patent for the magic cube, there was another inventor named Larry Nichols who had already patented something very similar in the US. Isn't that amazing? Yeah. This is a 1972 but his was for a two x two x two cube, not a three x three x three. Still same concept. Sure. And at first he was like, this is hilarious, I had the same idea and now it's become a national craze. It's kind of satisfying. And somebody said, do you have any idea how much money you are losing out on right now? You should sue. He said, oh my gosh, you're right, I should sue. And I get the impression that either the company he worked for or the company he sold the patent to really led the charge in suing for this patent infringement. But he had a pretty good case. He had invented it and patented it years before. It was just the number of cubes involved was smaller. Yeah, I mean there was another guy too, a guy named Frank Fox, I think in 74. He actually did the three x three by three, but he let his patent lapse whereas Nichols did not. And those people like you were talking about that actually owned Nicholas patent were called Molecule and Research Corporation. That sounds scary. Yeah. And litigious. Yeah, they do. So I want to point out though, it's definitely worth saying outright, there is no evidence, and I don't think anyone's ever leveled an accusation that Erin Rubik stole this idea. It was just arrived at independently and he was working behind the Iron Curtain at the time too. So the chances of any exposure are pretty low. It was just some people kind of came up with the same idea at the same time. And Erin Rubix is the one that hit that's right. In 1984, a federal district court ruled in favor of molecula. But then in 86, an appeals court overturned that, saying only that two x two x two Rubik's cube because they started making different variations. They made a smaller one that they said in French. In fact, I remember now, I had a little guy on a car key for a short time. Oh yeah, I remember that if I'm not mistaken. But then in 1089, another appeals court upheld the previous appeals court decision. I should say I read an article by that guy Nichols who had the original patent and they were like I think they were suing for, like, 50 million or something. And were you satisfied with the outcome? He said yeah, I was satisfied. He's like, I got enough to put both of my kids through Harvard, so I'm pretty happy with that. He invented this thing that he was able to send his kid through Harvard with. Yeah, that's always interesting when someone wins something like that. But it wasn't, like, stolen from him, right? It was just he had the patent first, and they agreed. You know what's even crazier that makes that story just absolutely insane? He had approached Ideal Toys with them, and they had not bought it. And then they went on years later to buy the Rubic version. Yeah, they put out a bunch of different they made big ones like the tiny ones I just talked about. I remember I had a snake. I did, too. And I had no idea what to do with that. I just played with it like it was a snake. I did the same thing. Yes. I just twisted around stuff. I still don't know what you were supposed to do with that thing. I think eventually the snake would be put together in some sort of a three dimensional octagon or something, if I remember. Or hexagon yeah, I was way off, but yeah, I didn't know. I didn't even try to learn. I just kind of played with it. I taught mine to drink water. Mine drinks from a cup. That was very rough. Wiggle. Arnold Rubik is still alive and well. He lives in Hungary, still teaches architecture, I imagine. Has a boatload of money, so he's founded some multiple foundations for inventors. It's very cool. Yeah, he has a boatload of money. So much so that his success story is considered by some to have been the thing that opened the gates to capitalism in Hungary. Amazing. They also made him the president of the Hungarian Engineering Academy. And he still, I think, shows up once in a while to the World Championships and maybe the World Cup. I don't know. He doesn't seem like a very controversial type. No, seems like a good guy. And if you really want to go crazy if you've solved a ton of Rubik's Cubes but this has kind of made you nostalgic to try something harder. They make a 13 x 13 x 13 Rubik's Cube. Oh, wow. And there's something else called the Skube Skewb, and I don't even know what you're supposed to do with it. It's like the snake times a trillion to me. Right. And there's also a movie called Cube, which is like saw with math. Oh, I saw that. Yeah. It has nothing to do with Rubik's Cubes. And there's The Pursuit of Happiness, where Will Smith gets a job as a stockbroker because somebody sees him solve a Rubik's Cube in something like two minutes or less. And apparently while he was promoting that movie, he solved one in less than a minute himself in real life. You mean the movie? The Pursuit of Half wynnus yeah. Did they explain that in the movie? I'm sure I never saw it. I just always called it halfliness. Did you ever see that one where he was super depressed and his colleagues at work, like, just gaslight them into thinking he's being visited by angels? No, I didn't. Did you see the one where he went he was from West Philadelphia and he went to live with his rich relatives. Yeah, I did, as a matter of fact. He dressed very colorfully. He was, I think, in Belair. I think it was Santa Barbara. You're right. Okay, well, if you want to know more about Will Smith, you can type his name into the search bar@housetofworks.com. And since I said Will Smith, it's time for listener mail. I've got a coconut tree. Correction. Okay. Hey, guys, correction on something said during the episode The Cult of the Coconut when you guys talked about the culpa V riska. First of all, it's not pronounced that way. It is pronounced kalpavrushka. We were way off. All right. She says Vrushka or V Rushka, depending on transliteration. Simply means tree in Sanskrit. Okay. Also always mispronounced by people in the west, by the way. Oh, well, I don't feel that bad. Yeah, exactly. Correct pronunciation is sound screwed. Now she's saying Sanskrit is always mispronounced. I see. So it's Sanskrut soundscrut that sounds like a French person, as best I can convey, is what she says. Wow. Okay. Yeah. I've always said Sanskrit. This person is really into words, though, and very smart. Second, the coconut tree is just one of the trees considered a how do you pronounce it again? There you go. You nailed it. Not because it is all you need to survive, though, but because every single part of the coconut tree is useful to humans. The bark, the leaves, the fibers, and, of course, the coconuts in their entirety. This concept is tied closely with why Indians culturally revere certain animals, eg. Cow and plants and trees, eg, banyan and coconut. Okay, I've noticed on the podcast how you too often go out of your way to correctly pronounce words or names in foreign languages like German, which is something I appreciate as a bicultural pencilingual individual. Perhaps you could expand your efforts to include not just Western languages, but Eastern languages, too. After all, Saul scrut belongs to the same language group as German. If you think about it, I think it would be true to the spirit of your show, guys. Keep up the good work. And that is from Ruta. R-U-T-A did Ruda say did she sign off with later lemos? No. Thanks a lot, Ruda. Yeah, it's not like we're like, oh, we'll only go to the trouble of pronouncing something in German or French. Which, by the way, we don't very often. And we thought we were pronouncing it correctly in the Eastern languages. So sorry, Ruda. I didn't know it was Sanskrit. I had no idea. Not just us, Chuck. A million people just learned that. Yes, close to a million. I agree. Well, thanks a lot again, Ruda. And if you want to get in touch with us, like Ruda did, you can go to Stuffyousohno.com and check out our social links. Or you can send us a good old fashioned email to Stuffpodcast@iheartradio.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 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. There's a perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. You know you're the best pet mom when you growl back during playtime, get epic belly rubs and feed them halo holistic made with responsibly sourced ingredients, plus probiotics for digestive health. Find us at chewy amazonandalopets.com." | |
What are Japanese stragglers? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/what-are-japanese-stragglers | During World War II, Japanese soldiers adopted a version of the samurai code of honor. Fiercely commited to this ideology, some continued to fight even after the war ended. Learn more about these "stragglers" in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. | During World War II, Japanese soldiers adopted a version of the samurai code of honor. Fiercely commited to this ideology, some continued to fight even after the war ended. Learn more about these "stragglers" in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. | Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:32:54 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=11, tm_hour=14, tm_min=32, tm_sec=54, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=223, tm_isdst=0) | 28853057 | 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. Guess who's with me? Chuckers Bryant. I wonder how you would spell that out, actually, if I changed my name to that a lot of GS. Or you could just use punctuation marks, like exclamation points. That's true. In January II. Right. I wouldn't want to be confused with a comic strip first word, though, which is also random. Punctuations. Yes, it is. Is it random? Well, I don't know. I don't think each one signifies a letter, does it? I've driven myself mad trying to find a pattern. There's one in there somewhere, right? Yeah. I'm like the guy from Pie. Yeah. So, Chuck, do you know much about World War II? Josh, I'm not the hugest history buff when it comes to the wars, but I know a little bit about the Great One. The Great War? The big one. I think they're both called the Great Wars. Oh, really? No, I think the first war was called The Great War, and the second one was The War to end all wars. Who knows? Let's leave it to the listeners to correct us. Oh, boy. Did you know that during World War II, toward the end, although no one realized it was toward the end yet, everything was still hot and heavy. Japan's air Force was actually starting to SAG quite a bit. Which, if you have an air force and you're a nation yeah. The last time you want your air fleet to start showing its age is in the middle of a major war. And if you have an air force and you're not a nation, then that's pretty damn cool. It is pretty cool. You are a real threat. Yes. And a rich, rich man. I would say probably a woman. I mean, think about it. Bill Gates could probably a massive private army. He probably has one. Probably. He can. You're right. Josh. The deal was Japan's air Force was old. Really? Yeah. Their fleet was old. Not the pilots, but the planes themselves were old, somewhat outdated. May have been old pilots, too. And they couldn't keep up with the newer technology that America had to offer. No. So they came up with a very radical idea. Actually, more to the point, vice Admiral Onishi Takadiro came up with an idea. I don't want to call it a good idea because it sent people to their deaths. It was a good idea, though. Well, it worked, at least. So what he decided to do was to take these aging planes and strap 550 pound bombs to them and then aim them right into aircraft carriers and destroyers and basically anything that you want to blowing up. Right. And use them as flying bombs. Essentially talk these pilots into going down. Right. That was the problem. They use pilots. Right. It's called a kamikaze, which means divine wind. Yes, that's good. Let's say that together again. Divine wind. Nice. That's right. Which is probably the coolest name for suicide I've heard of so far, except for hari kari, which is gut cut in slang in Japanese. Is it really? Yeah. Didn't know that. Yeah. So, anyway, we have suicide bombers today. Right. Chuck which I have to tell you, I can't wrap my mind around that I've yet to encounter an ideology or dogma that I can point to and be like, yes, I would kill myself for that. Right. Not even The Simpsons? No, not anymore. Maybe during season seven. Okay. Yeah, but that's a long time ago. Yeah, but you can explain and I've actually read a study before that kind of explains how suicide bombing works or why suicide bombers do what they do. It has nothing to do with religiousity oh, really? No. I can't remember who did the study, but they did a survey of people who and they defined religiousness or adherence to the Muslim religion as how often you prayed every day on a daily basis. And they found that when you factor that in, that being equal, the real thread that showed support for suicide bombing or an aversion to suicide bombing was how often you attended mosque. Really? So it seems to be more of a social than a religious thing. Interesting suicide bombing. Right. But still, you can explain it by it has that kind of structured framework of religion right. With the kamikaze pilots that had to do more with a perverted version of the code of honor. Because the question, how do you talk a man into getting into a plane and flying himself to his death? Well, I think you talk them into it by saying that your reward lies in the afterlife. In the case of religion, or in this case with, I guess, what your family name? The honor of your family name. Yeah. What it was was there an 18th century code of the samurai called Bushido? Yes. And what is that? Way of the Warrior. Yes, way of the Warrior, right. Okay. So you've got Bushido, and it's this huge code of conduct that includes everything from and it was created in feudal Japan, and it involves everything from there's, like a tenant that you don't hire an incompetent person or put them in a position of power just because they've been loyal to you for X number of years. In this somewhere. This code of conduct is basically it says that self sacrifice is very important. Right. And honor comes from death. Sure. Humiliation comes from surrender, right? Yes. Disgrace if you surrender. And that's where the how did you pronounce it? I always said harry carrie. Harry. Carrie has got cute. Harry Carrie. Yeah. My girlfriend's had Japanese dude, I have a walking crib sheet next to me. Similar concept in that death brings honor. Right. But that's just part of it. Exactly. So there's all this other it's basically like how to live as a samurai. Right. And the samurai were noble warriors. They were definitely in Japan. They're still revered, and they have been for centuries. Right? Sure. So when the Japanese government took this one facet of Bushido, that death honor comes from death and humiliation comes from surrender, they took it and kind of pounded it into their military's head. Right. It was kind of a twisted form of it. Some historians would call it an outright perversion of the Bushido. Right. But it worked. And that's how they got cosy pilots to have a real impact. I think their debut at the battle for the Gulf of late, they took out the USS St. Louis with 144 men on board. And that was the first time. By the time the Battle of Okinawa came around, I think in 1044, 300 planes outfitted with 550 pound bombs wow. Were just coming out of the sky. And what do you do? Because think about it, Chuck, you've told me this before, right. That if you are prepared to die, you are an indestructible enemy. If you're prepared to give your own life, that's part of war is like you're hoping to make it out of the battle, sir. If you don't assume you're going to make it out of the battle, you're the most dangerous person on the planet. Yes. And if you can line up and I imagine once they started doing this and signing soldiers up pilots, that became a little easier to get the next guy in line, because you certainly didn't want to back down if your copilot was all gung ho. I'll bet with the first round of pilots, vice Admiral Tuckejuro was like, Holy, they actually did it. He's like, It was going to be easy. Yeah. Let's line them up. So they tied it to the samurai, and what is cooler, probably more honorable to World War II pilot in Japan than to be tied to the ancient samurai. Sure. Yeah. It was like a resurgence of it. Absolutely. Plus, also, the samurai had hands down the coolest armor of any group of warriors in history. Agreed. Yes. Even Tom Cruise looked cool as a samurai, which is really saying that says a whole lot. All five and a half feet of them, right? Yeah. I think you're being generous. So the perversion of Bushido was also extended to the rest of the military too. Right. It wasn't just the kamikaze pilots, which is why I think 5% of the Japanese military surrendered during World War II. Not much. 5%. I think in the Pacific, the Japanese used to flood islands with tens of thousands of soldiers. I can't remember which island it was, but there was one. It may have been Saipan, it may have been Guam. I can't remember. There were 20,000 Japanese soldiers on there, and only 10% surrendered well, on that one battle, so the rest were mostly killed. That's just how they fought, that was the only thing you could do. Yes. Because it's going to surrender. You're forced to kill them. Right. So in a lot of these battles, actually, you didn't have to get killed. You could also hide. Right, right. And a lot of these islands, these islands became key toward the end of World War II because the United States figured, hey, Midway and the Philippines and Guam would be great places to stage attacks on Japan, and Japan thought, hey, these are great islands to stage attacks on us. So they became kind of the focal point. Whoever owned these islands had great sway over the outcome of the war. Right. And it switched hands here, there. The Philippines were really a key island in world war II in the pacific theater. So the Japanese had it for a while, and then the Allies did their own flooding with Marines who took the Philippines from the Japanese. And while the Japanese controlled the Philippines, they set up their own puppet regime. Yeah. Not a kind regime. No, not towards the Filipinos. So the Filipinos, they're kind of rubbing their hands in anticipation when the Allies liberated the island, because they started search parties and rooted out any hiding Japanese soldiers and just butchered them, I think up to 80 a day for a while. Right. After poisonous snakes. Isn't that what they called them? Yeah, that's what somebody was quoted as. Right. And these islands were lousy with mountainous regions and jungles. So some of these holdouts, or stragglers, as we call them, could route down and kind of disappear. Yeah. And a lot of them did. And actually, interestingly enough, a lot of these Japanese stragglers are hold up, kept holding out, or straggling, depending on the verb you want to use after the war ended right. And refused to come down. Right. There's some really famous cases of Japanese holdouts. Yeah. Well, some are a little like, more heartwarming than others, definitely. There was one man who apparently was charged with securing an island off the coast of eastern Russia. So it said, Defend this island. So he did so until 1958, long time after the war was over. And the nice end of his story is that he settled into Ukraine. He got used to things over there and started a new family and just kind of like, all right, well, this is my life now. It's kind of nice over here. It was nice for his new family. Not so much for his old family. Do you have an old family? I don't know. Probably. Yeah. That is about as happy as the straggler stories go. From there, it goes into cannibalism cannibalism one there was one group. They were actually I think some of them were civilians, but I think it was 20 men, something like that. So 29 men and a woman. We talked about this off the air, about this woman, what it must have been like to be the only woman among 30. Her first name was Kazako, and apparently she used to decide that she liked one man as a boyfriend, and then we get tired of him and liked another man. Sure. These people were living making wine out of coconut milk, hunting and fishing. Right. They had their own clothes. They found, I think, a b 29 super fortress crashed nearby on this mountain that they were living on. So they pillaged it and used, like, the rifle springs as fish hooks. And they were doing pretty good, living like family, Robinson style. Right. For, like, six years. Right. And the woman, actually, when she transferred her affections, people would mysteriously vanish. So apparently there was a lot of infighting. I think six or seven of the eleven deaths that were caused that were attributed to the group itself were through violence. One guy turned up with 13 stab wounds, and then at least four other guys who the woman had dated disappeared while fishing. Dated? Sure. That's what you call it when it's, like, love straggling style. Yeah, I like that. Yeah. Just checking out a movie. Right? Well, they were finally convinced to come out in. Yeah. Which wasn't so bad. But there is a whopper there's another guy let's talk about what was his name? Nicole. You want to talk about him? Yeah, I think we should do this dramatically. Let's lead up. Pay it forward. Yeah. All right. I think that's right. For sure. Yeah. Pay it forward. Play it out. Pay it out. Yes. Wait for it. Pay it forward. Showichi Yokoi. He was a soldier, a fellow holdout who was discovered fishing on a river bank in Guam wearing burlap pants and a tree bark shirt. Right. Clearly a survivor. A John Rambo, if you will. No, he wasn't much of a rambo. That's true. Wait for a rainbow. He's coming up. When Yokoi got back, he basically I don't know if he admitted it or what, but I thought the war was still going on, and this is 1072. I don't think I even said that yet. Holy cow. This is I was one year old I was negative four, crawling around Stone Mountain, Georgia, and this guy was still holding out, and he was found fishing and kind of said, famously, I'm ashamed that I've returned alive. When he finally came back, he would have left, but he knew the war was over, I think. But he said that he was forced to stay because of shame. He did not want to return as a surrender. Oh, you're right. Yeah. And he was kind of met with national shame here. There everybody is like, hey, glad you made it, but it wouldn't be the worst thing. Exactly. Right. In contrast to your coy? Was the baddest dude in World War II. Probably. As a matter of fact, I invite our listeners to email us any single individual who can top the man we're about to talk about. In badness. Okay, I agree. And Josh will personally email you back and debate you on that choice. I don't know about that, but this is the rainbow, Chuck. There can't be too many people who exceed this guy. We're talking about? Lieutenant Hiro Onoda, right? Bad dude. Right. So if you're koi was just kind of hanging out, fishing and ashamed of himself, Onatta was doing the exact opposite. He was staging raids on villages in the Philippines and murdering cows and stealing stuff out of freezers and four fellow holdouts. Correct. Let's start at the beginning. How did you get there? He was on what island, Chuck? He was on the island of Lubang. I love it when you say that, Chuck. My pronunciation is stellar here. He was unaware actually the war was over. He was a case that did not know. No. He and I think four other guys end up on Lou Bang. He was 23 at the time when they landed. And lie bang is a Filipino island. Yes. It had an Allied presence at the time, but this was prior to the Allies just flooding the Philippines with Marines and taking it from the Japanese. Right. But I get the impression that Liu Bang was kind of no man's name because he and his foreman cracked commando team were tasked with going and sabotaging everything they could on Libang. Right. And they did. They did. They blew stuff up. I think they did something to one of the ports and the piers and things like that. And basically they're just saboteur commandos while they were there, though, that Allied invasion happened, and these guys had to skedaddle, and they did into the jungle and became gorillas. They did not stop fighting. They did not fish along the river banks and get found by somebody who anybody wanted to talk to him. No. These guys continued carrying out the war? Yes. All five of them, until 1950, when one of them surrendered. In 1950? Yeah. And then he turned around and said he wrote a message exactly. That said, hey, guys, I've been treated very well. The war is actually over. Has been for five years. He texted them. Right. He's like, Lol. VTW wore over. Lol. Come home for sushi meal. Lol. Exactly, I think is what the first message said. And they didn't buy it. No, they didn't. And then they blanketed the jungle with these messages. They made copies, dropped them from the planes, and evidently they even played over loudspeakers into the jungle. Hey, war over. Right. Well, there was a contingent of Japanese diplomats that went and used loudspeakers to say, hey, dude, we're from Japan. We're for real. The war is over. For, like, six years. It's been over right now. Lieutenant Onatta did not buy this. He and his guys just didn't buy it. They figured it was Allied tricks trying to get them out. I can respect that. But it also shows that back in Japan, everybody was aware that this was going on in the bank. There was a Japanese commando team that was still fighting World War II several years after it was over. Right. And the Japanese loved this. Yeah. In a very reserved way, sure. But one by one, this guy started to go down. Right? Yeah. Two of them. He became separated from the remaining two, evidently, and then both of those hold outs were killed. So now he's by himself. Right. And he's still fighting this war, still holding out. Like I said, when they wanted me, they go and murder a cow and I guess field dress it and take the meat back into the jungle. Murder a cow? Villagers retreated as spies and were shot at. They would get into firefights with the local Filipino police. Right. And this is not verified, but I read that they actually staged a raid on a local police station. This was back when there was more than just lieutenant. One of them, they raided a police station and got into a firefight to steal ammunition and guns. Unreal. Okay. So time goes flash through the entire decade of the 60s. Dude, go through that and go midway into the so here we are. It's 1974. I'm three years old. A full decade before Ghostbusters. Correct? Yeah. Unfortunately. Andoda excuse me, is still hunkered down and fighting by himself. By himself. When a Japanese student who has heard of this legend goes and seeks him out. Right. A guy. A Japanese dropout, apparently. Noorio, Suzuki. He was kind of a wandering, drifter guy. Yeah, he was called Drop out. What better person to go talk someone into quitting? So he nice check. He leaves Japan and tells his friends he's going to look for Lieutenant Onatta, a panda and the Abominable Snowman, in that order. And they're like, okay, all right, dude, leave your rent check. Yeah. So this guy was not leaving rent check. He was the hippie rob of Japan. Exactly. So he goes to Lubang. The first thing he did was go to Lubang to look for Lieutenant Onatta, who by this time, this is 1974, everyone in Japan is still aware that this guy's killing people left and right. He's carrying on the war right. In his fifty s at this point. Got to be. Yeah. Yeah. He was 23, 28 years later. Wow. Yeah. So he's still fighting and everyone's aware of it. And so I guess Suzuki is kind of like going to make a name for himself as being the one who gets this guy to come out. Right. And he actually meets Onata in the jungle and they become friends. Crazy. Yeah. This needs to be made into a film. I can't believe it hasn't already. Onata even wrote a memoir. Really? Yeah, it was a bestseller, as far as I know. Memorials of a Geisha. That was different. Okay. That was an entirely different story. Although some resemblance. No, that was different, too. Foiled. So, Suzuki actually meets Onata, and they become friends, right? Yeah. And he kind of tells them, hey, man, the war has been over for a long, long time. You missed the 60s. You missed Woodstock. Disco is on the horizon. He's like, but ghostbusters is coming in a decade. Yeah. And here's the problem. Here's the problem. This is where the story starts to get sad. You get the impression at this point that lieutenant lieutenant is aware that the war is probably over. Yeah. But he says that he can't stop fighting until his commanding officer tells him to surrender. You couldn't tell he was originally given orders not to kill himself. He was under no circumstances allowed to take his own life, and he wasn't to stop until they came and got him. And so Suzuki was like, all right, let me see what I can do. Goes back to Japan, finds this guy's, former commanding officer who's now aged, stooped over bookseller and selling little gremlins in a back alley as part of the Marshall plan. Japan didn't even have an army anymore. There's no standing army in Japan. They're not allowed to have one. Right. But this nice book seller decides to come along to Liu bank, and Suzuki takes him to meet Onatta, and the guy officially orders Onada to surrender. Right. Puts on his arms, and so, after a second, apparently, it really sinks in. And Onada is hit with the fact that he's just spent 29 more than half of his life 29 years of his life fighting a war needlessly. Needlessly and killing people needlessly killing 30 people and wounding 100 others and God knows how many cows. Right. So he felt bad all of a sudden. Yeah, he felt like a fully felt bad. But he did come back as a national hero. Japan didn't quite know what to do with them because, again, they're trying to move past this. They stood and still stand accused of a lot of atrocities during World War II, and they've been trying to distance themselves ever since of their role in World War II because they were definitely the losers. They had two atomic bombs dropped on them, which is arguably the worst thing any group of humans ever done to another group of humans. But at the same time, they lost another hanging out with the victors. They want to be friends with everybody, so they're distancing themselves from that, and all of a sudden, bam. Here comes this guy that exemplifies everything that the Japanese imperial military was about during World War II, but they still treated him like a hero. Andy was pardoned by Ferdinand Marcos, husband of Amelia Marcos, who famously had millions and trillions of shoes. You remember the Marcos in the Philippines? The irony is rich in this one. Yeah, because, odd, it didn't have any shoes yet. No shoes. But when he was found, he had his rifle, 500 rounds of ammunition, and a couple of hand grenades on him. Really? Wow. It's a good thing to hang on to that stuff. He's in the early shape. Of course, it was old weaponry at that point. No. Was in pristine shapes, though. Oh, really? Oh, cool. Guy like that takes care of his gun, I can tell you. Yeah. You know what he said? Sadly, yeah. You close your article with it's very poignant, I thought. Thanks, Chuck. When he was talking about his dead comrades, who he lost years and years earlier, he said, wouldn't it have been better if I died with them? You can imagine, man. That's kind of a waste of life. So people have heard stories of these holdouts and Japanese soldiers being found. I know it's. Supposedly they found some eighty s and then the few years ago, but we haven't found that. Those were substantiated. Now, Chuck and I figured out a long time ago that if you are doing research and you find a sensational story and in it, it says, but they're still trying to figure out whether or not it's for real, and then there's no follow up whatsoever. Then it was a hoax or it wasn't real. And also, Chuck, did you want to mention Japanese stragglers in pop culture? Yeah, I think we need to. We'd be remiss if we did not mention Gilligan's Island, which occurred to me while I was reading an article, is like, wait a minute, man. I remember a Gilligan's Island episode with this. And sure enough, there was an episode called sorry, so Sorry, My Island now, which is not the least bit racist. I sent you the clip. Also racist was in true Hollywood form. They hired an Italian man to play a Japanese soldier, threw some thick glasses on him, told him to squint and talk funny. What do you think? I don't exactly. And if you think we're being jerks ourselves, you should look it up on YouTube. That's actually a kind portrayal of what this guy said. Yeah, his name was Vito Scotty, and he played on the same show a season later. Played a Russian Mad scientist. I remember that one. Casting Gilligan Island. They weren't reaching too far. Yeah. And a $6 million man, Steve Austin, was held captive by Japanese holdout in one episode of the six months. I mean, you got to think about it. When Onana came back to Japan, that was huge. It doesn't get bigger than that, right? That's like world news. Big part. Pretty cool. So that's that, eh? Yes. You can read this article, which is pretty much a rehash of what Chuck and I just said. But you wrote it.com. I did write it. I like this one a lot. Yes, you should be proud of it. Yeah, that's in the handy search bar. Just type Japanese holdouts or something like that. Sure. Yeah. And since I just said handy search bar, that means chuck, it's time for the listener mail. Josh, I'm going to just call this funny email from Natalie, who definitely does not want to kill her husband. That's what I'm going to call it. Oh, is this the pat on the back? We didn't even know it. No, this is different. Hello, Chuck and Josh. Or Charles and Joshua, if we're going formal. We're not. I love your podcast. I've been a big fan for a while, and I have an idea for a show. Can someone truly be framed for murder? Interesting, don't you think, Josh? Interesting? Yeah. Okay. We know that many have tried and failed, but has there ever been an attempt that was successful? I know if it was successful, we wouldn't really know. So that's my first thing that I was going to say right back, because we wouldn't know. Yes. Let me explain why I asked this before. You think I'm trying to accomplish as an act, my husband Paul had two separate freak accidents within the last seven months. The first one was when he was taking some items up to the attic, and the spring loaded mechanism came loose and sprang up and hit him in the shoulder. Ow. Luckily, it didn't hit him in the head and he was just badly bruised. Yes, it probably would have killed him if it hit him in the head. Perhaps the second he'd aimed a little more closely. The second accident was when he dropped a floor tile on his head. Yes, a floor tile. He was cleaning his workshop garage and had put some floor tiles up on a shelf, then moved a ladder, and one of the tiles came right down on top of his noggin. While he was building the shelves, he had bruised his hands and cut his fingers so it appeared that he had defensive ones. He said that he could totally set me up if he had another accident and came up dead, because all of the marks all over them and all the shows that we have recorded in our TiVo would indicate that I did it. I love all the crime shows. CSI. NCIS. CSI is fine. They're all liars. And that is from Natalie. And Natalie. One thing that I think you've missed in all this is, typically, when you frame someone for murder, you commit a murder and you try and blame someone else. You do not get murdered and set someone up to have police think that they killed you. Right. Well, maybe her husband hates her gut and is willing to die for that. Sure, maybe he's a holdout. Maybe. Or a suicide bomber. So I think Natalie kind of was a little confused here. When you frame someone for murder, it's typically not something you do for your own murder. Agreed. Chuck, sounds like your husband Paul is a bit of a klutz, and I don't think the cops would buy that story. Well, if you're looking for Chuck and I to serve as your alibi, just go ahead and. Send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffwork.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Want more Housetofworks? Check out our blog on the Housetopworks.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. 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http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2009/1232567748455hsw-sysk-moonshine.mp3 | How Moonshine Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-moonshine-works | Moonshiners brew illegal alcohol, usually a liquor from corn. In the United States, this practice led to some surprising outcomes -- including the deveopment of NASCAR. Tune in to learn more about moonshine and racing in this HowStuffWorks podcast. | Moonshiners brew illegal alcohol, usually a liquor from corn. In the United States, this practice led to some surprising outcomes -- including the deveopment of NASCAR. Tune in to learn more about moonshine and racing in this HowStuffWorks podcast. | Thu, 22 Jan 2009 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=22, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=22, tm_isdst=0) | 23693835 | 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 Chuck Bryant right there. Okay. This is stuff you should know. Chuck, put your cool guy hat back on. There you go. Chuck is wearing one of those new Zats'it's, the newest thing, the flat cap. They're in style. He's coming on up. Up next is floor Link mink coat. I can totally right think sure. Yeah. Because who wants red pain or blood thrown all over them when they walk down the street? Chuck, or have an anecdote for you? I don't want to know. All right, well, I need to come up with another segue then. No, go ahead. Okay. So back before we knew each other, years and years ago, I had a whole group of friends, good friends. My dad was there, both of my brothers in law were there. And one of my great all time friends, Tom, she actually writes for this site for years. Yes. Good friend. He came down from Tennessee. He was living in Johnson City, Tennessee, at the time. And Tom brought with him to the party a pint of moonshine. Oh, yeah. Just perfectly crystal clear moonshine. Rot gut. No, believe me, whoever made this knew exactly what they were doing. There was a peach in the bottom, even. Oh, nice. And one of my friends, who was probably the youngest one at the party, kind of a little punk at the time yeah, just jokingly. Grabbed the moon try and walked over to my dad, who was in his sixty s at the time right. And said, hey, Mao, you want to do some shots? And my dad grabbed the pint and it just went from there. Those two drank the whole thing. And my dad managed a 21 year old kid shot for shot of moonshine, man. And it gets better. And then after they were finished, my dad ate the peach. Wow. My dad ate the peach. And I imagine that thing really had soaked up quite a bit of beef. It really my dad has no recollection of this event, but it's kind of become, around my family, this kind of badge of honor, he ate a peach, that kind of thing. So anytime somebody does something like really cool or tough or unexpected, he ate the peach. Sure. So that was my segue into how moonshine was that's good? I like that. Yeah. Have you ever tasted moonshine? Oh, yeah, I've drank it before. I actually lived in Johnson City for a little while. I knew some people that lived there as well. And I got to tell you, man, it is appalachia. Like around I actually lived outside, kind of up on a mountain around the corner from people who lived in school buses with chimneys coming out. I'm not kidding. Wow. On Rome Mountain. And there are tons of stills still around like you can get moonshine from anybody up there. And the people, they all know what they're doing. They're not doing it for profit or anything like that. These are guys who are, like, in the home brewing. Sure. But imagine if you're in home brewing and your grandfather taught you how to do it, that kind of thing, like they know exactly. Takes a bunch of pride in it, and then you just kind of get it from a friend or something. And it's actually really cheap. It's like $10 for a court or something like that. Yeah. I've never paid for I've had it quite a few times, too, at various parties. Someone like you said will just show up out of nowhere with a jar or a mason jar. And I always kind of befriend that person because I'd love to taste the moonshine. It's really tough to stomach, but there's something about the corn whiskey. Yeah. But I think right now is the point that we should say that it's illegal very. In any form. Yeah. We do not encourage anyone to go out and build their own still, even though we're going to tell you how to. Yeah. And this is also based on an article you can find on how stuff works.com in the recipe section. If that doesn't tell you something, I don't know what that says about us. Yeah, well, we have recipes for moonshine on our site. That's what it says. All right. So, Chuck, let's talk about moonshine a little bit. Where should we start? Well, I think we should travel back in time a bit to Great Britain, to the UK. Oh, yeah. Great thinking. Right. The word moonshine actually comes from England, originally. The term started from a verb, moonshining, which was referred to any job that you did late at night, like the midnight shift, was moonshining. Right. And it eventually just kind of morphed into making illegal booze because they did it at night, under cover of the night. Well, not only did they make it, they also ran it, which is a different word. Bootlegging. Right. It was smuggled at night. Right. And that, if you want to know I do. From the word there is they would stick it in their high boots, the bottles in there. The riding boots. Right, yeah, the riding boots, yeah. That's how they smuggle it. So bootleggers, I really choked that out there. This is during colonial times, right? Yeah. Okay, so these are distinct words like a moonshiner and a bootlegger may be one of the same, but it depends on the activity they're engaged in at any given time. Right. So the moonshiner actually makes the stuff, the bootlegger smuggles it. And there's a third one actually, too, a rum runner, which is by sea. Correct. It's a bootlegger who smuggles by sea. Yeah. It's all very like yes. This wonderful hazy past of smuggling ships and riding horses with boots filled with whiskey. Right. Yeah. Very cool. Let's try not to romanticize it. Yes, you're right. I think though, I'm going to set you up here because I know this is your favorite part of this whole podcast. In the 1940s and 50s in the United States, they started doing this by car. Started filling up their trunk full of moonshine and bootlegging, high speed chases and go. And actually these people would tinker with their cars. You got these kind of backwoods mechanics who learned to take like a Ford V eight and turn it into this supercharged turbo boosted, wonderfully suspended car that could outrun any cop in the Georgia mountains. Think of the Dukes of Hazard, that kind of thing. And these guys actually kind of became gearheads. Right. And they started challenging one another to races. And out of that came NASCAR. NASCAR is directly descended from bootlegging. Yes. And actually the first guy love this, I love this fact. The first guy to win an official NASCAR race, his name was Glenn Dunaway, and he won the first official race on December 12, 1948 in Daytona, Florida. Right. He won the race but was disqualified because it's a stock car racing. You're not supposed to have a modified and he had an illegal wedge for handling. Right. So he was disqualified, but he actually won the first race. The reason he had the wedge was because he used that car to smuggle a bunch of whiskey the week earlier. Right. In North Carolina. Same car. Yes. I know. That's your fat. You should just end it right now. It doesn't get any better than that. I'm going to go to sleep. Can you take the rest of it? Yeah, take it from me. Okay. So yeah, you talked about run running, which is by sea and bootlegging. I'm sorry. Moonshine is made of corn. Generally in the US. It's almost exclusively made of corn. But it can be made of any grain, right? Correct. Or fruit. True. Anything that has starches in it. Right. But it's generally in the US. You hear it referred to as corn whiskey. So you need corn meal, sugar, yeast and water. Every alcoholic beverage I think, needs yeast. Is that true? I know. Beer does really put me on the spot here. I know someone's going to tell us, I've got something for you. Part of the process of making whiskey involves the same process as you use to make beer, right? Right. That's fermentation. Exactly. And technically, apparently among the distilleries, the word that they use for the fermented alcohol before it's distilled is beer. So apparently any alcohol that goes through a fermentation process is technically called beer. I did not know that the wine would technically be beer. Right. Isn't that weird? Yeah. Okay. But that's just step one. The fermentation process is basically just adding yeast to whatever grain there is, and the yeast goes to town on it. They're very simple plants, actually. They ingest this stuff and as a byproduct. They put out carbon dioxide and alcohol. Right. And what that stuff is called is mash. Yes. So this fermented stuff is called mash. And you take the mash and now we get into the distilling process. Right. Well, then you heat it up to about 172 degrees Fahrenheit. And wood, coal, you can use anything. Basically, you can use steam to heat it up. Sure. Now they use propane. I understand. Sure. Because you figure and what happens is, from there, the alcohol evaporates, pressure builds up, and the alcohol steam is forced through an arm, which is a cap arm, which is a pipe that leads out of the top of the stove. Right. So you have this evaporation going on, and then it goes into what they call a thump keg. Right. And it's so named because it catches sometimes some of this mash comes along with the alcohol vapor. And when it comes into this hollow cage and hits the bottom, it makes a thumping sound. Exactly. So this thump cage is intended to further separate the mash from the alcohol vapor. Right. Can you imagine, like, inhaling alcohol vapor? What would that do to you? I don't know. It's probably not very good. No. Okay, so we're in the thump cave now. Can you hear us? Right. Can you hear us? We are sour mash. Mash. Nice. So, okay, Chuck, what's going on in here? Well, in the sump keg, like you said, there are bits of mash drop inside of here where we are, and then it re evaporates the alcohol and filters out the match. Because you don't want the match. What you want is a clear liquid. All right, so if we go out of the thumb keg and where are we now? Up and out of the sump keg. And now we travel into the worm as steam. Yes. This is the most fun part of the ride because the worm is actually basically just a pipe that coils around. Right. So if we were actually able to go through it, it would probably be kind of like a fun water slide. Yeah. And this worm, actually, this coiled pipe, actually is just going through cold water, which cools the alcohol from its gaseous state back into its liquid state. And guess where that arm comes out. Well, it comes out eventually into a little jar or whatever you want to put it in. And then you bottle it right from there. Right. And it's a Mason jar, because many times, I don't know if it's tradition or not, but they put it in Mason. I've never seen anything but a Mason jar. Yes, me too. Maybe a ball jar. That's about it. Right. And what happens is now you've got a clear liquid. And that brings us to the difference between moonshine and regular whiskey. That you would get that's brown or light colored is the aging process. Moonshine is not aged, and that's why it remains clear your Jack Daniels that you love. That is the same thing for a little while, but then it's aged for years in the oak barrels. Charred oak barrels. Yeah. And I looked into the charring part. The reason they char the inside of the oak barrels, they're actually caramelizing the starches. Interesting. Which makes it sweeter. Right. So this is part of the bourbon making process. The bourbon actually absorbs the sugars more, which gives it a sweeter taste and mellows it even further. Right. But it also gives it its brown color. Right. Because moonshine is known for they call the kick. And both of us can attest it is a very harsh tasting whiskey. Yeah, it really is. It definitely has a kick. And it tastes like nothing else that you've had. No, it tastes like God pulling your throat out. You kind of see a white light, and there's just like a sudden blinding flash of pain. And that's the kick. Wow. That's a great way to describe it. No, I wouldn't have thought of that. It's good. It's also very potent. I think moonshine usually is in the neighborhood of 120 to 150 proof, which is a lot. Yeah, it's a lot because what is it, 80 proof or 90 proof? 150 proof would be 75% alcohol. Right. But your average bottle of bourbon is 90 proof, correct? Yeah. 80 or 90. Yeah, because Wild Turkeys, they have a special 100, so yeah, true. Probably 80. Josh, if I didn't know any better, I'd say that you imbibe with an alcoholic beverage from Done. Just pay attention. Okay. That's all good. So they make the moonshine. And one of the problems with moonshine I guess we need to talk about the downside is that it can be dangerous if someone doesn't know what they're doing. Yeah. Here's the big problem. This is why all of you shouldn't run out and make your own still, as Chuck said earlier, because it's illegal. That's number one, it is illegal. One of the reasons it's illegal is because it's so thoroughly unsafe. So, I mean, like, when you make beer or wine at home, which you can legally, because you're making it in small batches, but number two, it's not nearly as dangerous. Whenever you make any kind of alcohol, you have a risk of there being impurities in your batch. Right. Yeah. And these impurities can be dangerous in beer or wine, but it's much less likely when compared to spirits like whiskey. And these impurities are called the congeners. Right. And what those are, it's just a catchall name for any impurity that's a complex compound, like a polyphenol or histamine, those things that give you allergic reactions. These can easily end up in your batch. And this is why people often die from drinking moon Chinese, not just from alcohol poisoning or anything like that. It's these impurities get in there and wreak havoc on your body. Yes. I would say not as much anymore. I mean, not that it's a huge business or anything, but during prohibition, I know there were a lot of people that were dying because it was in such demand, because it was alcohol illegal, that they were mixing it too fast, and operations sped up, and they actually sometimes purposely put impurities in there, give it that kick. Like, bleach was often found in moonshine during prohibition. Right. It's funny we mentioned it's called mash. It always reminds me of the TV show Mash, one of my favorite shows growing up, because they had their still in the what was the name of the swamp? Yeah. In their tent. Yeah. They had gin distillery, didn't they? Well, they called it gin, but it's looking back now. This is before I ever had moonshine when I watched Mash. But it was probably just corn whiskey. I doubt if they were able to make, like, a nice gin. I always took it as gin. No, I bet it was moonshine. I don't know, man. They were sipping it like it was jin. All right, Alan Alda needs to get in touch with us. Yes, please. Or the guy who played BJ or Trapper or any of them, really. Just no radar. No radar. I was about to say thank you. Do not call us so, Chuckino, moonshine has actually a really long history with the US. It's so much so it's so ingrained that it's had this kind of symbiotic effect on our cultural legacy. True. When you start looking into moonshine, like NASCAR being coming out of moonshine right. Or the term bootlegger that's used world Round came from the United States and are smuggling. Right. But when you really start to look into the history of moonshine and how it helps shape America, we used to be a nation of crazy gunsling, nut jobs. We used to be wild, especially, like, in the 19th century bootleggers. Used to the whole reason bootlegging was ever around in the US. Was because basically, right after we formed our nation, our second government, the one we have now, the constitutional government, they started imposing taxes on liquor. And everybody had just said, well, wait a minute. We just got out from under the thumb of a king who used to taxes. We're not paying any taxes. And they didn't know. They didn't. And actually, they would attack revenuers tax collectors. They would tar and feather them, which it sounds kind of funny now because we're sort of moved from it. There was actually apparently an extremely excruciating process. You had hot tar port on you. Yeah, it's not and then the feathers were probably nothing but a relief. Right. But you're walking around and imagine trying to get cool tar off your skin. Nothing. Yeah. So I imagine being targeted feather wasn't that much fun. But even beyond that, they actually formed an armed uprising called the whiskey rebellion. Yeah. And that was Washington's first big wow. Right. Like, president. Holy crap. I'm president and they just took over Pittsburgh. And it was like people from a lot of states, there were thousands of them, they were armed and they were mad. They did not want to pay money or taxes on the liquor they were producing. Right. And it was actually the first use of a presidential pardon to overturn conviction was from the Whiskey Rebellion. Did not know that. It is true. So what GW did, which is George Washington, of course, he got together a militia of about 13,000 dudes and he basically quelled and dispersed the mob, captured its leaders, and it was, like you said, forever known as a Whiskey Rebellion, but nothing was actually resolved. The government and bootleggers, they go side by side, and every once in a while, usually when war funding is needed, the government attacks bootlegging to try to increase its tax revenues. So basically the federal government went its way and bootleggers went their way, and they maintained the status quo. Basically, we kept having bootlegging. No one really had a problem with it until the clan got involved. Right. And any American notes that in the United States, you can do whatever you want as long as you're not hurting anybody and you're not affiliated with the clan. Right. Everybody hates the clan here. The Ku Klux Klan. I think it's something that people, maybe some of our Norwegian or Dutch listeners might not understand. Right. Americans hate the client. We do. And this actually kind of led to this outlaw view of bootleggers that we have now. They were getting into shootouts and killing IRS auditors and collectors and intimidating families and locals even to know, like, where it still was. Well, bootleggers joined forces and made the mistake, the big mistake of joining up with the clan. Right. That's what I mean. So that turned the tide of public opinion. All of a sudden, bootleggers aren't just so harmless anymore. They're in with the clan. Right. So that actually gave the temperance movement even more of a foothold. The temperance movement is my worst nightmare. Basically, there's no alcohol produced or imported into the United States. Imagine the entire country dry. This is the point of the temperance movement. And they weren't just crackpots. They had identified alcohol as an agent of moral decay, social decay. Right. It was a problem. And this is before rehab too. Oh, yeah. Rather than having alcoholics go dry out or take care of their problem, their addiction, they said, we have a social responsibility to not tempt our alcoholics. Right. We have to put them above the rest of us because the rest of us are an alcoholic, so we don't need a drink. So let's just get rid of alcohol together so our alcoholic can be good people. Yeah. Bad idea. Yeah. Well, it actually happened. They finally got Prohibition pushed through in 1920. The Day the Earth Stood Still. And it lasted from 1920 to 1934. And it actually turned out to be the greatest thing that ever happened, to bootlegging. Yeah. Because all of a sudden, people there's one thing that they learned from Prohibition is you can try and take away the alcohol, but the people want it, and they're going to get it, and I would liken it to the war on drugs. Yeah. It's the exact same thing anytime you prohibit anything, number one, it gives it kind of a forbidden feel. Sure. Which makes it all the more desirable. But, I mean, think about how many people wouldn't or don't drink now just because it's there. Right. How many more would if you simply couldn't and yeah. If Prohibition proved anything, it's that when there's a will, organized crime finds a way. Sure. So we've got speakeasies, we've got gangland murders, we've got moonshine that's being put out, it's being overproduced and watered down with bleach added. And then all of a sudden, Prohibition goes away. Yes. And almost at the same time. So does moon shining. Almost entirely. Well, drastically reduced. Sure. Well, a big comeback. But it made a comeback, as we talked about later on with the whole NASCAR thing. And then in the they thought it was sort of a problem again, but they didn't really do a lot about it. Like, there's very few court cases about it. Yeah. Unless it has to do with I think they'll tie like money laundering. Yeah. Now they're using money laundering laws, which are way worse than moon shining. Being convicted of moon shining. Right. And with that, moon shining is becoming a dying art. Right. But they still do it. And then in the 19th, 70s, they made it legal to make your own wine and beer with home brewed enthusiasts. Can't make your own wishes. You still can't make your own I mean, you can, but it's illegal. Say it one more time, Chuck. It's illegal. I'm kind of surprised, actually, if they allow home brewing, maybe because it's more dangerous, is the reason. That's the impression I have. It's strictly because it's more dangerous. Because I don't think they levy taxes any higher on beer or wine than they do on liquor, do they? I don't know. I'm sure we'll have someone write in and tell them. I'm quite sure, too. Well, you can find out even more about how moonshine works by typing that in to our handy search bar, howstepworks.com it'll bring up a fine article written by our colleague Ed grabanowski the grabster. Yes, indeed. And, Chuck, I believe you have some listener mail. Yes, listener mail time. Okay, Josh, I do have an email, and I will file this under exceptional fan mail because it's one of my favorites. It's from our old friend Molly in Manchester, Connecticut. Hi, Molly. Hey, Molly. And Molly may not be hearing this right away, though, and this is the reason why. Molly writes in that she loves the podcast, and she is actually going to West Africa to serve in the Peace Corps for two years, which is a great thing to do. Yes, it is. We're very proud of Molly for that. And she sold that. There isn't much hope of having a continuous wireless Internet in her mud hut, so she says she gets a thrill from listening to our cast, and so she's actually going to save them up for a period of many months. And so when she gets to Africa in the Peace Corps, she can listen to them one after the other on her little iPad and she says, I know it seems a little extreme. I don't think so, Mary. I think it's a great idea, seriously. And I think that the hours and hours of new stuff I should know to listen to when I'm feeling in the need of intelligent, humorous banter might be worth the sacrifice. So I've actually correspondent with Molly a couple of times by email, wished her luck and told her to send us some updates from the Psy and let us know how things are going. Yeah. Good luck, Molly. So that's exceptional fan mail today. Well, if you want to send us some fan mail, no matter whether you're in the Peace Corps or just some working schlub, we don't care. We make no judgments. We love all of you. We're working schlubs. Exactly. You can send that to stuffpodcast@howtofworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you?" | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-05-23-sysk-head-transplants-final.mp3 | Is a head transplant really a thing? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/is-a-head-transplant-really-a-thing | "Head transplant" is a bit of a misnomer, because it's more like a body transplant. But either way, the idea is that one human will wake up from surgery with a decidedly different look. Is it possible? Probably not. But there are a couple of surgeons who | "Head transplant" is a bit of a misnomer, because it's more like a body transplant. But either way, the idea is that one human will wake up from surgery with a decidedly different look. Is it possible? Probably not. But there are a couple of surgeons who | Tue, 23 May 2017 14:03:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=23, tm_hour=14, tm_min=3, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=143, tm_isdst=0) | 41892136 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry. There's stuffy schnau in the Stuff You Should Know about, something that has nothing to do with the sun. Are you relieved? Yes. Are you suffering post traumatic podcast disorder? A little bit, yeah. But overall, I'm feeling good about this. Okay. About this one coming up. Yeah. Finish strong. Yeah. What did Jerry say? Always do the suck one first. Yeah. Well, so far, so good. Yeah. It just remains to be seen whether this one's great, but I don't see how it could be worse than the Aurora one. Well, this one about human head transplant. After I picked it, I thought, gee, should we even be covering this? Well, if you read opinion pieces about this potential head transplant surgery, which we'll get to, a lot of people are saying, like, this is bad. This is junk science, this is dangerous medicine, and you shouldn't even be talking about this stuff. Right. But then I read an article in The Atlantic, and it's The Atlantic, and I was like, you know what? If they're covering this, then we should cover it, too. And people probably said the same thing about kidney transplants and heart transplants and skin grafts. Oh, yeah, for sure. But I think the big difference with this is and I think this is what the medical and bioethical community has a problem with. There's this one maverick, possibly lunatic scientist surgeon who is plowing ahead with this surgery with the rest of the medical field worldwide, basically saying, stop, you can't do this. We're not there yet. And he's saying, no, we're there. I've even got somebody who's willing to do this. We're going to give it a shot. Well, yes and no. A lot of that is in this Atlantic article really kind of spells everything out. A lot of that is bravado out of this dude. Right. And there is probably no way that he's going to do this in December of this year, like he said. He is. Yeah. He said that he is going to go ahead with the surgery, at least officially, is what he's saying, in December of 2017. That's not going to happen. Specifically, he's going to do it with a Russian computer engineer named Valerie Spiritinov. That may not happen with him. Sparring off has something called Wordneg Hoffman disease, which is spinal muscular dystrophy. And has he backed out now because he seemed pretty GungHo and everything? I saw no, he's gung ho, but he is on record of saying, like, I don't want to be a part of an expensive euthanasia, whatever procedure. Yeah, well, that makes sense. I mean, the whole reason he wants to do this is to get better, to improve his lot. He's wheelchair bound, and his muscles are withering away, and he's 30 and he wants to be mobile again. He's 31 now, but yeah, I would imagine he's 30. Yeah. He doesn't want to do this just to die. Right. What we're talking about I guess we should just go ahead if people are severely confused, it's called a human head transplant, but what it really is is a human body transplant, because what you're doing is you're taking a person, in this case, this Russian gentleman who has a fully functioning brain, and from the neck up is fine, but his body is wasting away. And when they get to the point where they can do the surgery, they're going to get a body from a very recently deceased person, or soon to be deceased person. Yeah. They would just need to be brain dead. Yeah, exactly. And move the heads, which would in turn give what's his name? Valerie. A new body. Yes, exactly. Which is radical of a thing, as you could ever imagine. There is no more radical medical procedure, as we currently understand right now, than this. No chance. Not even close. And it's not like they're even swapping. The donors head just gets thrown away in a bucket. Yeah. I guess for a little chuck to find. Yeah, I didn't think about that. But you don't put it back on. No, there's no point in it. So this head transplant, or body transplant, depending on your perspective, the whole idea, obviously, it's kind of an old idea, like it goes back to Frankenstein, and you can make a case that Frankenstein is based on even earlier stuff, like creating a gollum from clay, that kind of stuff. But the idea is not new. But the idea that it could actually be done is fairly new. This surgeon who's planning on carrying it out, Dr. Sergio Canavero, he published an article in 2013 and said, here's how I plan to do this, and we'll get to that in a minute. But in the article that he wrote, the journal article he wrote, laying out how the surgery could be done, one of the first things he does is cite similar surgeries that were carried out on animals. Yeah. Which we've covered these before in past episodes. I think one of them was a top ten list, like awful medical procedures or something. Yeah. I can't remember. But this one case specifically that stands out was 1954. There was a Russian doctor named Vladimir Demikov, and he very famously grafted the head and fore legs of one dog onto another dog, and apparently both of the heads could smell and hear and see and swallow and scream and lived. I think he did this a few times. And the biggest success was one of these dogs live for 29 days. Right. Which is actually, from what I'm seeing, that's a very long time. Yeah. And this is at a time in the what do you say? 50, 419, 54. Yeah. This is a time when the only successful transplants that have been carried out in humans were bone blood vessels, and corneas. They'd never done a major organ transplant yet. And this guy is getting dogs with grafted heads, two heads to live for 29 days. So it's a big deal. But even still, and I'm sure at the time, people were like, that's pretty tasteless when looking back historically, like, why don't do that stuff? I wish that had never happened. What were you doing? And apparently Demikov's ultimate goal was to just basically get transplants down and create a bank of organs, an organ bank, to where if you need a transplant, you could get any transplant you need at any time. Transplants would just be so routine. And he saw this as a means to an end learning techniques, because apparently grafting dogs together would help you with that. Right. Which, I mean, it makes a case. Yeah. He wasn't a mad scientist. He was trying to advance medicine. Right. So in 1970, I noticed there just been really big gaps in a lot of this stuff for good reason, I guess. But right here in the United States, there was a recess monkey in Cleveland, and one doctor, Robert White, performed a head transplant. And the monkeys survived neurologically for 36 hours, but actually connected the spinal cord. No. And that's the biggest hurdle right now. Yeah, it was and still is, Dr. White. I mean, still, this is pretty significant. He transplanted ahead from one monkey to another and managed to connect the major veins and arteries and managed to resuscitate the monkey. And it lived for a few days, but apparently it was just an awful thing. Even at the time. One of the scientists that was there who's actually become Dr. Canavero, the surgeon who wants to do the human head transplant, this other guy has become one of his greatest and most outspoken public critics. He was there at the time when this experiment in 1070 was carried out, and he said, this is a terrible thing to do, even to a monkey. He said, we tried to feed it. The first time we fed it, the food spilled out of its trache onto the floor. Yeah. Good Lord. It was just an awful thing. And this guy is really beating the drum to stop Doctor Canavero from carrying this out because he was there saying he saw the monkey experiments. But Canavero is saying, you can say that all you want. All the food could have spelled out on the floor. It doesn't matter because it was successful. The monkey was revived for three days. But everybody agrees they didn't connect the spinal column. And that's the big hurdle. That's one of the biggest unknowns with the actual head transplant. Yeah. And more recently in the past couple of years, in fact, I think just last year, there's a surgeon who's actually partnered up with the Italian doctor named Xiaoping Ren, and he's a surgeon in Harbin, China, who has successfully done this on mice. Yeah. He's also partnered with another researcher at Kungkuk University in Soul, Korea, South Korea, who's also carrying some stuff out on mice and conoviro, is basically using these studies to say, hey, this is possible. But apparently the scientific community is saying these are not necessarily good studies. Well, and Dr. Ran in China, for what I gather, he's the one that's saying, like, let's just slow our role here and do this. If we ever try to do it, do it when we really think we can. Like, I've done a monkey, I've done some mice. We're not ready to do a human yet. So let's just not talk about Valerie in December of 2017, and please stop doing Ted Talks and going on news programs and just shut up for a little while. That doesn't sound like that's in Sergio Canavero's DNA. No. He is very brash, sort of they said in this article, he says bread instead of money. Like, hey, if I can't raise the money, I'll go to someone like Zuckerberg and get the bread to do this. It says here in the Atlantic article, he says, Canavero tends to make blowhard statements that denigrate his critics like this. I'm into jujitsu. He told me. So I have the martial arts mind that you need to tackle all the morons that come with idiotic questions. He's not doing himself any favors. Yeah, I don't think he sees it like that. From what I'm seeing, where I get all my news, the Daily Mail I saw a Daily Mail article on him and his procedure, and it has a photo shoot of him wearing scrubs with a man's head on a platter. Doctors don't do that. They don't do photo shoots like that. They are not trying to court controversy. Like, yes, if you're a surgeon, like, you have some part of your fiber, is pretty cocky and arrogant, maybe even have a God complex, I think it's kind of required, typically, with that field, that profession. Right. This guy is exponentially beyond anything that's even high end for a normal surgeon. As far as egotism and blow hardness goes, most of them don't boast about jiujitsu publicly. No. In fact, most scientists and doctors, most don't like him at all. This is one quote he glibly glides past major problems with his human centipede level medical horror show. His plan is insane, like, James Bond villain insane and will amount to an elaborate act of slow torture and murder. So I think he's partially, obviously, really like that as a dude, but they don't have the money it takes. They don't have the bread, like, $100 million to do this. And I think he thinks all this media attention is what is going to get him the bread to carry out this operation. You're going to call it bread from now on. Just through the show, did you see $100 million? The most I saw was 13 million. Oh. I mean, I've seen it all over the place. That's the thing I've seen, it takes anywhere from 30 doctors to 100 doctors to assist in this, which is one of the other big problems, is getting up to 100 legit doctors that will do this. Right. This guy is like, walking clickbait. Yeah. So let's take a break, man, and then we'll come back and we'll tell all the grizzly details of his plan. All right, Chuck. So back in 2013, this Sergio Conovro hit the scene in a journal. What's the journal called? Surgical Neurology International. It's an open source journal. Yeah. He's no quack. We should point out he's been published a lot, and he's a legit surgeon. Right. Like, he obviously knows what he's talking about. It's just the gamble that he's taking is so obviously stacked against him that I think most people would say you would have to be insane to actually do it, or so reckless and indifferent to the fate of your patient that you shouldn't be practicing medicine in the first place. Yeah. Because almost 100% of the doctors that they've talked to said, this will end in this man's death. Yes. Think about this. They're working on rats. Rats have the best outcome of any animal so far, and they have, like, 30% to 50% survival rate among rats. But even that just means that 30% to 50% survived no more than one day after having their head transplanted. They died from the surgery one way or another. It's just that survival rate meant that they were managed to be revived after the surgery. It doesn't mean that they went on to live a healthy life and bounce their grandchildren on their knee. They died within a day. Yeah. There's no way that it wouldn't kill a human being. Yeah. I mean, even if the guys survived, the likelihood of him being like, well, I got my new body now is, like, 0%. Watch me bench this. Canavero said he has a 90% chance of living a regular life, and Dr. Wren in China saying, no, he doesn't. Quit saying that. Right. Yeah. This guy is he's exactly the kind of surgeon for this age, isn't he? Yeah, he really is, actually. 90% chance to have a normal life. Where did you get that? Well, it just sounds good. Yeah. He fits with the times. So, back in 2013, in that journal, surgical Neurology International, canavero published basically a step by step outline of how the surgery would go down. And it's not super in depth. It's basically an overview, but it hits most of the salient points, and he's basically gone and taken different surgeries and assembled them into this one massive surgery that would be a head transplant from one donor to the next or one donor to the recipient. Yeah. And I think even doctors say this isn't like, he's not crazy. Like, when you look at it, it all kind of makes sense. They're just saying, like, it's not going to work. Right. That makes sense. Yeah. Totally. And the big stumbling block is going to be the spinal cord, because basically everything else, all these other surgeries that he's cobbling together are proven surgeries. Like they can be done. It's that connecting the spinal cord that's the biggest obstacle during the surgery. All right. Should we go through this thing? Right. So the first thing you do is you need two surgery teams, obviously, because you have two bodies in there in the same operating theater. Yeah. There's got to be a very quick I think they said the heads have to be or the head has to be reattached in, like, under an hour to have any chance. Right. But the spinal columns have to be reattached within less than two minutes, but you have an hour for the whole procedure from the moment the heads are cut off. So the first step, Chuck, is you remember how we had we did an episode on therapeutic hypothermia. So they plan to use therapeutic hypothermia where they cool the head of the recipient down to, like, 50 degrees, which normally it's 98.6 degrees. And at that temperature, metabolism slows tremendously. So since you have fewer processes going on in the cells, you have less of a need for oxygen, which is good because you're cutting the head off of the body, and oxygen can be hard to come by. So by cooling the head down to, I think, 54 degrees Fahrenheit, which is, I believe, ten degrees Celsius, the metabolism slows down enough that you're buying yourself that hour. Remember, there's an hour time limit. That's because you've cooled down the head, slowing the metabolism, and that gives you that hour to carry out the surgery. So you're cooling the head on the recipient, and then you're cooling the spinal column to the same temperature on the donor. Right. So everyone's gotten cooled down to that point. The recipient is going to be lying down at first, and then later during the surgery, and then during recovery and everything, he's going to be in a seated position because I guess that just makes sense with gravity. You'd want to be seated. Didn't that make sense? I think it makes the surgery easier for the surgeons, too. Well, but during recovery, too, they're not going to lay him back down. I don't think I'll ever be allowed to lay down again. Maybe not. So they make the incisions at each neck. They expose the arteries, the spine, the jugular veins. Obviously, they're going to clamp everything off. They color code all the muscles, which sounds funny, but it's actually pretty smart. I guess just like wires in a circuit would be color coded. They want everything hooked back up to the right thing. So they're color coding muscles and they leave this final cord for the last thing. Yeah, this is a very tricky part here. This is where everybody's like, okay, you're crazy if you try this. But Dr. Canavero says if you cut the spines the spinal columns of each of the donor and the recipient with a sharp enough blade and you make a surgical cut, you should be able to promote regeneration of those nerves that you're cutting when you reattach them. That if the cut is precise enough, the damage that's normally associated with a surgical severe spinal sever from some sort of trauma or injury, you won't have all the attendant, like, scarification and inflammation that you would from that if you're doing it with surgical precision. That's a big thing that he's saying. Yeah. That's one of the biggest stumbling blocks to getting these nerves to reconnect is the second they're cut, they're going to start to form scar tissue, which makes it much harder to reattach. So in the case of these mice in China, they use a $1,000 scalpel with a diamond blade so thin that it's transparent. Wow. And so this is too small, obviously, for this procedure, but they're going to get a scaffold like that big enough to work on a human. Right. So actually, we'll just say a lot of the things that people object to with this. But what kind of arrow is saying is that with this cut, when you take the spines are we at the head yet? Have we moved the head? Well, yeah, we've cut the head. And people should rest easy knowing they're not just picking the head up. Apparently, it's going to be transferred on a specially built crane with Velcro straps. And the crane is actually kind of clever, too, because it can just hold it aloft above the donor body. Right. So that allows for the surgeons to connect everything again in comfort without having to get into any weird positions or whatever with the floating head staring at them. Yeah, the floating head hanging over the seated headless body. Oh, man. This is the point that we're at right now. So one of the first things they'll do well, the first thing that they're doing, because remember, you have less than two minutes between when you cut the spinal column and when you reattach it. Yeah. So the first thing they're going to do is attach the spinal column in the recipient's head and the spinal column in the donor's body, and they're going to put this stuff in that apparently is made of magic. It's called Peg polyethylene glycol glue. It's a medical surgical glue that supposedly works some wonders on the body. Yeah. It is like magic. And I don't understand how it works. I'm not going to pretend on this show, but in China with these mice, before they did the transplant, they would literally just take the splade and they would sever the spinal cord of this poor little mouse, and then they would take it, apparently, it looks like watered down Scotch, and it's like an amber fluid. And they would take a drop of it, drop it on that little spinal column, stitch the mouse up, and then the mouse would walk again. Yeah. That's something that they were reporting from, those that these mice had their spinal columns totally severed and then reattached glued together with polyethylene glycol and yeah. Within what, like three weeks, I think, or a couple of weeks, the mice were walking again. This one was two days. It was the dog that took three weeks. Yeah. And it said the mouse did not walk perfectly. It's back legs lurched at times, but compared to a control mouse yeah. The control mouse couldn't walk. It would just pull the back legs behind itself. So this polyethylene glycol, right, apparently what it does is it's hydrophilic, and it attracts fat to it. So it'll go and you squirt some into, like, the incision or the gap between the two spinal columns. And allegedly what it will do is attract these damaged cells and basically fuse them together. They fuse together and regenerate basically into cells. That's one thing it does. And then there's this peg that's kind of enhanced, I guess, that these researchers at Rice University are coming up with. They call it Texas peg that has graphene nanospirals in it, and those serve as basically a structure for the cells to grow along. And the whole point of using peg here, aside from the fact that it can help cells repair and regenerate, is that when canavero cuts the spinal column, he will have severed these nerves and axons the white matter that transmit electricity through the body from the brain and vice versa. And they need to reattach. And if they don't touch one another, they're going to grow past one another, and the electrical transmission will never be able to take place. He's saying if you use peg and then these Texas researchers are saying if you used Texas peg, these nano structures will provide a structure for the neurons or the actons to grow along, and they will reconnect and regrow, and the person should be able to have electrical transmission through their nerves again on the spinal column. This is the most controversial point so far. Yeah. And they're also going to have electrical panels on hand because apparently burst of electricity can help reestablish that communication when you've severed the spinal cord. So you want to take a break right now yes. And come back and finish up with this gruesome operation right after this. All right, so we have now put the Crazy Glue, Texas style in place. Everything is reattached, all the color coded muscles and nerves and arteries and veins. Like they've taken great care. They finally sewed the head on, and then they're not just going to say good luck with recovery. They're actually going to induce a medical coma with this gentleman, whether it ends up being the Russian or somebody else. Because he's got a fatal disease, he may not make it. If this keeps getting delayed, I don't think we mentioned that he's not just like, I don't want to live my life like this. He shouldn't have lived this long. Got you. I didn't realize he was that bad off. Yes. I think only 10% of people with his condition make it into adulthood. Wow. And doctors are all like, you're on borrowed time as it is. You should have gotten a head transplant years ago. Exactly. So they're actually going to induce a medical coma. I don't know for how long did it say? I saw like three weeks is what he was roughly estimating, just to keep everything just to get everything growing back together as calmly as possible. That while preventing movement, too. Yeah, like the possibility of movement. He's just not moving for three weeks, which, I mean, hello, bed sores, am I right? Although I guess it's probably the least of your worries when you've just gotten a head transplant. Yeah, I think so. I believe that's it. So they're going to be inducing a medical coma, and then they'll be passing electrical charges through the spinal column to try to induce axon regrowth and repair this whole time. And then after three weeks, he'll get up, do a cartwheel and run right out of the hospital. No, after three weeks, maybe he'll open his eyes and move his mouth. That would be a success to a certain degree. What they're really going to be looking for is anything below the neck moving. If he wiggles his fingers or his toes, that is a breakthrough like we've never had in medicine before. Yeah. But even if that happens, that would be just the beginning of a very long road of not only physiological rehab, but psychological rehab. Yeah. Apparently the psychological impact a lot of people are worried about. When Canavero wrote the initial article in 2013 in that same journal, a couple of other Italian surgeons wrote into the editors and said, there are a lot of things wrong with this ethically, even just put aside all of the questions surgically ethically, this guy's not taking these things into account. One of the things they pointed out was that insanity would be a likely outcome from a head or body transplant because we form our sense of ourselves cognitively, in large part through our body. So if you suddenly have a different body, you basically wake up to you overnight to a big fat body. Identity crisis or identity crisis in general. Yeah. They've seen this act out in hand transplants, and that's really you can't see your liver or kidney or your heart or cornea and stuff like that, but I'm sure it's still you still think about, oh, sure, the fact that your kidney is from somewhere else, but you don't have to see it all the time. Yeah, exactly. So just that reminder of a hand, much less an entire body, is going to be emotionally and psychologically challenging, to say the least. Right. There are some other questions that this definitely raises as well. For example, if you wanted to change your gender, would this be an acceptable surgery? I tend to say yes on that one. I can change your entire body? Yeah. Instead of just parts of your body? Yeah, that makes sense. All at once. Bam. Done. What about someone who what if this works and someone was super rich and just wanted a different body? Like, I want to be eight inches taller and muscular, so let's do this. Here's a million dollars. I would have an issue with that for one reason, and that would be that you have just taken the body of a potential organ donor that could have saved multiple lives of people who needed those organs. You took them because you wanted to be eight inches taller. Other than that, yeah, that's a pretty big one. I don't even want to qualify it with saying other than that, I have no problem with it, because that's such a huge problem, it disqualifies in my eyes here's. The good news, though, is that he doesn't have to get 100% of these cells to remain intact. There are studies out there, like legit studies, that say your motor function, your basic motor function, can be preserved if you just get 20% of those cells to remain intact. So the Atlantic says if he failed to fuse every four or five, he could fail on every I'm sorry, four of every five nerve cells, and it still might succeed in there. Right. Well, the thing is, Canavero's whole thing is anytime somebody raises an objection to it, he's like, Peg. Peg polyethylene glycol will handle it. And it does seem to work some pretty amazing miracles. But it's not just some cure all magic stuff that just fixes everything. It remains to be seen. And what's kind of fishy is some of the recent papers on peg and what an amazing miracle compound it is are edited by Canavero himself. So the guy who's saying, no, it's this miracle substance you should read about it is the one who's editing the stuff that he's telling you to go read about. Yeah, I don't even think we mentioned just like an organ can be rejected, it could reject the body outright from the beginning, which would be a catastrophic failure that would kill you if your body rejects your head. Yeah. Well, I'm just glad he's hooked up with Dr. Rin, at least, because before they had made contact, he was plowing full steam ahead and still wants to. But he wasn't trying it on mice and monkeys. He hooked up with someone who was like, oh, well, you're doing the real work. Let's get together on this. So his idea was that he would have to practice on cadavers. That's a good idea. Yeah, he'd need to practice on cadavers. But apparently that would come after practicing on animals. And apparently, according to bioethicists, he would be hard pressed to get approval even to carry out an experiment like this on animals. These. Days, the most medical ethics boards would be like, no, this is unnecessary. This is not. You shouldn't be doing this, so don't do that. At least in the United States, I should say, well, he's never going to do this here. He would almost certainly have to do this in China. They have a lot more latitude. I saw there's a hospital in Vietnam. It's like, US, us, we'll do it. Oh, really? Because they probably can get funding and press. Yeah, I would imagine. I know they went to the Russians because this gentleman is Russian, and he thought they could get the government to chip in, and they said no. And so now he is literally trying to raise money by selling things. Raise bread. He's trying to raise bread by selling mugs and keychains and stuff. This is not a lie. With his head on, like, these muscular bodies and stuff. Wow. So I did see, I finally found it. It said between ten and $100 million, which is pretty big latitude there. It's pretty easy to point at canavearo and be like, here, what's your deal, man? Yeah, but it makes it easy to look past the patient spiritanov's situation. I'm sure he wants this to work so bad. Sure, it's heartbreaking. So much so that, like he said, he doesn't want to just be an expensive euthanasia procedure. But he also said, I'm headed toward death here soon. Like, why not? Yeah, I saw one other thing. You got anything else? I got nothing else. I saw that. Another objection to this by the medical community would be that it could conceivably raise the yuck factor. That's what they call it among organ donation, just among the general public. And this yoke factor, I checked it out because it was in scare quotes. It's a real thing, and it's basically the general public's discussed toward bio, augmentation, weird surgeries, odd transplants. This body transplant or head transplant falls right into that weird yuck factor, almost like the uncanny valley. And I read this article about it, and apparently there's a debate going on on whether humans have an inner wisdom of what is good or bad or acceptable. And when our yuck factor is activated, it's actually an inner wisdom that's saying, that's not okay, don't do that. And this author was arguing that that's not true, that it's actually what is called folk biology, that humans are kind of pre wired to have an idea of what's natural and what's normal, and we're just simply grossed out when we're faced with something that challenges that normalcy, but it doesn't mean that it's right or wrong. There's a debate over which one is correct, folk biology or the inner wisdom. Wow, that's interesting. It is pretty interesting. Well, we did an entire show in 2010, I think January, or maybe it was June. It started with a J, and it wasn't July. I wrote it down, but I just threw it away anyway. How organ donation works. Yeah, check that out. That was a good one. And the therapeutic hypothermia one, check that out too. Yeah. Well, if you want to know more about this head transplant operation, you can type those words in the search bar, how Stuff Works. And it will bring up a great article. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this what should I call this one? I'm going to call this anniversary of the Podcast. Hey, guys. My name is JP and I'm a business administration major at Christopher Newport University, currently studying at the University of Glasgow going into my senior year writing on my 21st birthday, which is also the fourth anniversary that I began following the podcast, my little brother introduced me to Sisk and I immediately binged roughly 300 episodes. Not sure how many people write in saying this, but I can probably say listen to every single one. And yes, I know the episode in context of Hippie Rob's emergence. We haven't talked about him in a long time now. He's been long gone. He seems like he would be like an assistant to the surgeon. You know, I don't think that would be a good idea. Oh, no, it's a bad idea. And I don't mean a medical assistant. I mean, like, he'd do the jujitsu on the idiot question, maybe, but it'd just be some clumsy roundhouse kick that was just like, six inches off the ground. The past four years have been some of the most influential on my life as a whole. And your podcast has played a huge part in how I'm matured as an adult through Chuck soft spoken tone and Josh's optimistic demeanor. How about that? As well as Jerry's elite producing abilities, the podcast has made me look forward to Tuesdays. Something I never thought was possible. I guess he doesn't listen to Thursdays. Optimistic? Yeah, optimistic demeanor. That's you never would have called that one. Aside from how much I enjoy that maybe has us confused. Maybe because you have a soft spoken tone. Yes, I do. Aside from how much I enjoy the podcast, you really shaped how I think things through, as well as my perspective on many issues. People often forget that some matters have multiple sides to them and that a full opinion should be developed from all the facts. I figured today was the most fitting to write in, given how much the show means to me. Continue to look forward to Tuesdays and Thursdays. Oh, there you go. And I'm anxiously waiting for the release of your next live tour schedule. Please come to DC. I think we are at some point, right? Yeah, sure. I've even gone as far as debating whether to get a tattoo of the iconic stuff you should know microphone, but not your mom would approve of it. John. I'm going to say don't do that. I don't know, John. Maybe do it. Don't do it. I have high hopes that you'll do. You're optimistic demeanor. Anyways, keep doing what you're doing, guys. I'll be cheering from the sideline as you continue towards your goal of world domination. Cheers from Scotland. John patrick bethe. Oh, wow. That was a nice little touch at the end. Thank you. And everybody in Glasgow, chuck and I know it's Glasgow, but we like saying Glasgow. It rolls off the tongue more. Did I say gal? Yeah. Who is that? John Patrick Vitori. That's right. Thanks a lot, John. We appreciate it. I say go for the tattoo, but probably shouldn't listen to me. I say don't. You should probably listen to Chuck. If you want to know more about oh, man, something is wrong with me today, dude. If you want to get in touch with me and Chuck like John did, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast or Joshamclark, you can hang out with us on facebook. Comsteffyshnnowswuckbright. You can send us an email at stuffpodcast@houseworks.com. And as always, join us at home on the web stuffyheno.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuckworks.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 hairstylist Ash Kelly, this charttopping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | |
How Bail Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-bail-works | Bail is a centuries-old practice that allows defendants in criminal cases to be released from jail until their trial convenes. Learn more about the origins of bail and modern bail practices in this episode. | Bail is a centuries-old practice that allows defendants in criminal cases to be released from jail until their trial convenes. Learn more about the origins of bail and modern bail practices in this episode. | Tue, 23 Feb 2010 18:20:44 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=23, tm_hour=18, tm_min=20, tm_sec=44, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=54, tm_isdst=0) | 23657543 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. Hello. And this is stuff you should know. Yes. Right. Indeed. So, Chuck, how are you doing? I'm good. And well. Yourself? That's enough, Banner. Okay. Chuck, you know that I've been arrested a couple of times. I do know that. And I have not, as you know. And you're very fortunate. It's not a pleasant experience. I'm sure you get booked. Yes. Right. They fingerprint you. Sure. They make fun of how fat you look. They take all the things out of your pockets yeah. And keep them not forever. No, they give them back. They carefully catalog everything except any $100 bills you have on you. Do you have a mug shot? I do. And actually, when they took my mug shot, I was smiling, and they thought it was funny, so they blew it out full size and hung it on the processing center wall. Really? Yeah. Now, do you actually have that? They don't give you a copy? I do. Really? Yeah, I asked for a copy. You should find it somewhere. Yeah. You should see if you're famous enough to get on the smoking gun. Yeah. The smoking gun. Yeah. I'm not who. Yeah. There is a mug shot out there, so if anything ever happens to us, then it'll surface, I'm sure. Yeah. But I'm here to tell you that you can get out of jail if your bail is set, like, $5,000. Okay. And all you have is $500. Not a bad deal. No. Especially if you have a friend who's willing to come lend you $500 to get out. Yeah, sure, but how would you do that, Chuck? What kind of sense does that make? If your bail, the amount that's required to release you from jail until your court date is $5,000, how can you get out for $500? Well, I would think that that's some sort of security type of deposit, kind of yeah. Or security deposit. Yeah, maybe. Are we talking about bail? We're talking about bond, buddy. Okay. Yeah. I just wanted to officially introduce the bail show. Yeah. We're doing a two parter here, right? Yes. This is brought to our attention by listener Steve, who saw a little NPR thing on bail, and Josh happened to hear the same one, right? Yeah. And found it very interesting. Right? Yeah. It was a three part series on NPR from Laura Sullivan, who really got to the heart of the matter and kind of exposed a pretty serious racket that's going on here in the United States that unfairly burdened the poor. Well, we'll get to that, but we want to cover bail first, and then part two of the series will be Bounty Hunters. Right. So when we don't talk about that dog jerk in this podcast, don't send us an email. Wait two days and you'll hear all about them. Yeah. Okay. So like I said, Chuck, bail is basically money that you exchange to the court in return for your freedom after you're arrested. Right? Yeah. How this all start? Well, frankly, it started a long time ago, Chuck. It started in the 13th century, I believe, the UK. Okay. We weren't around back then. No, we weren't. But it started in the UK in the 13th century, where assurity is somebody who assures your bond your bail right. Was actually a person rather than money. Well, it used to be a person, is that what you're saying? Yeah. And they would actually hang in your place if you skip bail. Yeah. Wow. So, I mean, somebody really had to love you to stand in as you're surety your bail. I bet that didn't happen a lot back then. I wouldn't that would be my guess, yeah. I mean, maybe if the person who was arrested was like a quadruple amputee sure. Then I'm sure you could find somebody who is a surety. But other than that, I don't know that I would have put myself up. Right, and so then habeas corpus comes along in the 17th century, right? Yes. And that basically established terms for bail. And then the Bill of Rights in England there shortly thereafter talked about excessive bail and kind of set some more parameters on what you could do. Right. Yeah. Habeas corpus. Remember we did that podcast on that? Indeed. Kind of huge, but yeah. That created the idea of bail for money, or money as bail. And then in the United States, we adopted a lot of the English common law that had to do with bail and jailing and all that, and we came up with the Judiciary act of what, 1789. Yes. And what I found most interesting is that sucker stayed in effect and fairly unchanged till 1966. Yeah. It's a long time. It is. But, I mean, it's pretty basic stuff. If you are arrested and you're not a threat to the community, you should be able to post bail because people like their money. Sure. And you want your money back. That's the whole point of the thing. If you're saying, here's $5,000, I'll be back from my court date, because you are going to give me that $5,000 back. Right. So, yes, it did remain unchanged until 1966, although it was put into the 8th Amendment that people would be granted bail and that bail would not be excessive. And that's the same one that contains the cute little provision about no cruel or unusual punishment. Right. So 66, it changed some, and then in 1984, it changed again. And what we ended up with was some loopholes were closed that allowed dangerous people to go free, more limits were imposed on judges, and they basically made it to where non violent criminals were the ones most apt to get bail. And if you were a violent criminal, your bail was probably pretty large or denied. Right. And originally, if you were accused of a capital crime where you could get the death penalty, you couldn't have bail. And I'm pretty sure that still remains in effect. There's a lot of places, especially huge metropolitan areas like, say, Los Angeles, that have bail schedules. There's just so many people coming in and out of the doors, they're like, oh, perjury. Well, then that's a $5,000 bail. They just literally look it up on their chart. Right. Follow their little finger across. Right. Until they get to kidnapped with intent to rape. Right. And then what was that one, actually? $1 million. Sure. In La. It should be pretty high. I would think so. Right. Chuck, let's say someone is caught kidnapping and they have some sort of malicious intent and associated with it, and their bail set at one dollars. They have a million dollars, say they have an Amex black card. Right. For them, they can slap that puppy down and pay what's called a cash bail. Yes. Many places, I bet that they would rack up on Sky Miles, a bad criminal who gets caught a lot sure. With the black Amex card. But they do. Some places do accept checks and credit cards or just good old fashioned greenbacks. Right. But let's say that you have a million dollars or your bail is a million dollars, but you can only come up with 100 grand in cash, right? Yes. Who are you going to call? Not ghostbusters a bail bondsman. Josh or a Baler. Right. It's another name. Yes. You remember in Athens, they were like bail bond T shirts and they give you like a 10% discount if you were wearing it? I can't remember. I mean, that they were literally it was an institution in Athens. I can't believe I can't remember that. I don't either. They have Matchbooks and all the bars. Yes. They're very famous, actually. Did you ever have one of those? Did they help you out or was that in Athens? It wasn't in Athens. Arrested. No more questions. Okay, I'll let you off on this one. So, Chuck, when you call a bail bondsman, what they're going to put up as a Surety bond remember we talked about surety. Is somebody who says, I will cover this person's bail. Yeah. And that's basically the bail bondsman. And they are backed by an insurance company, a very special insurance company. Obviously, they don't have just a regular state farm policy. Right. And they are now on the hook for you appearing in court. And they have to pay that huge sum of money if you don't show. Right. So they'll take a 10% premium. Sure. Well, yeah, that's why they do it. And that's on top of everything else, right? Yeah. And then they'll put up the money, or they'll say actually, they don't put up the money. They say, I will put up the money. Like you said, I'm on the hook now. Right. But they'll also take some collateral, maybe like a title to your parents'house or the title to your car, some jewelry or whatever. They will also, Josh, get friends and family involved to help chip in. So that way if they're kind of on the line, they think the person will show up for court. Right. Yeah. You're kind of indebted to your parents for bailing you out and putting their house up. You don't want your poor parents to lose their house. Right, exactly. We'll get some more on that, right? Yeah. Okay. You can also do released on citation, where the cop just basically a traffic ticket is a release on citation bail. That's my favorite kind of bail. Is it? Sure. My favorite is the time where they're like, you know what? I'm not even going to give you this ticket. Go ahead. Just be careful, son. Yeah, exactly. That's my favorite there's. Released on recognizance. Sure. That you are. Yes. That's when you actually are booked and arrested, but the crime is probably not so severe and definitely not violent. And they'll say, we trust that you'll show up. You're not a flight risk. Right. Don't worry about paying anything. And then we talked about how your parents can give their house title as collateral to a bounty hunter. You can actually do that to a bail basement. Sorry. Yes, you can do that in some states with the jail directly through a property bond on the spot. Yeah. The court places a lean in the amount of the bail against, say, your house or your land or whatever, and if you skip, then they can foreclose on it and actually sell it to get their money back. Wow. Yeah. So if you have, like you said, the $500 if your bail was $50,000, would you give that $500 to the bail bondsman? Is that how that works? Yeah. What they do is, let's say usually they charge 10% premium. Right. That's just their fee. Right. That's just their fee. Because it's 10%, usually of the bail, people assume that what you're doing is you've just carved out 10% and then you don't owe them anymore. Not true. No. This is 10% on top of the bail. So if it's $50,000, the 10% will be $5,000. And that's just the money they took for saying, I'll cover you. Yeah. It's basically loan interest. Exactly. Very quick and urgent loan. Right? Yeah. And it is. It's a loan. They're loaning you your freedom, basically, Chuck, dealing with bail bondsman is the most common way to get out of jail. Yes. People can't come up with five grand bail, but they can usually come up with $500 premium. Sure. That's the whole deal. And we'll get into that later about the poor. But not very many people can afford their bail. Right. Even if they're rich fat cats, they will often set the bail. I just saw the record was last october. Did you see that the guy's name? He was the head of the Galleon Group, and they were apparently did some insider trading. Raj roger Atnum, and he set the record in October $100 million bail. Wow. Bernie Maedoff is only 10 million, if that tells you. Wow. So he had 20 mil to put down as his, I guess, deposit. Yeah. And the judge said, all right, you can hang out. And the Bell Bondsman was like, yes, because that's pure profit to him. Pure profit. And when you're dealing with the bail bondsman, there are some things you want to look for. I mean, they're business people. They deal with some of the senior quarters of society. Right. Yeah. But it's a real business, and the documents are very real, as well. At the very least, you want to be aware of what you're signing in most cases, and you definitely want to read it, as well. Yeah. You can't really negotiate it. No. You're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. But you have to be aware of what you're signing when you sign the bail bond contract, because it is an extremely powerful and pretty much airtight contract. We'll get to exactly all it entails in the bounty hunter episode, but this isn't like, hey, I'll come back for court. That's not all that thing says. No, you're signing away certain rights. And that's a big one. That's the teaser for Thursday show. Yeah. So, Chuck, you also want to make sure that a bail bondsman that you're dealing with will be responsive to questions from your family, easily contact cell phone, that kind of thing. And if you get the impression that your bail bondsman is not going to be there for you, then you want to move along and find another one that you feel more comfortable with. Every town is lousy with bail bondsman because every town is lousy. Well, not every town, but many towns are lousy with crime. Sure. And then one leads to the other. So, Josh, the other thing you should do if you go to hire bail bondsman is, like, if you were hiring any personal contractor, look at their ID, make sure they're registered or licensed if they have to be. I think you have to be licensed in every state now. Right. If it's legal. Yeah. There are states where it's not legal. Will get to that in a second. Okay. So check out their creds. Ask for detailed explanations of any kind of fees in addition to the 10%. You don't want to get a bill at the end that says you had to pay for this and this as well. Right. So just make sure it's on the level. And like you said, make sure that they communicate with you regularly. Right. If you aren't comfortable with who you're talking to yeah. Again, just move along. Unless you're in a state, one of four states in the union that just do not allow a commercial bail bond market whatsoever. And where's that? Wisconsin, Oregon, Illinois, and Kentucky all have laws on the books that outlaw commercial bail bonding. Wisconsin does it in a roundabout way, which says that no. Surety. Remember, the person that gets you out yes. Can be compensated for being a surety. And, well, that's how they make their money into the bail bond market. So there's that. And then, say, like, Kentucky expressly outlaws the bail bond industry. Wow. Yeah. So in those states, you have to put up your own money or a property bond or something like that. I imagine they probably have higher rates of being released on your own recognizance. Yeah, maybe not. Or maybe you're just sold in Kentucky. Well, if you're poor, Chuck, you're sol in the United States. Very true. We were talking about the NPR report by Laura Sullivan. Yeah. I got to say, I think everybody should go read this. It really exposed a racket in the US between the criminal court system and bail bondsman. Yeah. They used Broward County, florida is a really great example because they had a situation down there where they were kind of a situation that's all over the country, jails are full tax dollars are like people are paying tons of money to keep these people 9 billion a year in the US. $115 a day is what it costs to jail someone, at least in Broward County, per inmate. That's, like, not the worst hotel in the world. No. And there are alternatives, specifically pretrial programs. Yes. And that is when they release people with sometimes it's GPS or ankle monitoring systems. Sometimes you just have to call in or text when they're home and stay within a certain radius of their home. And it was a huge success. Right. And then it dried up. All funding for it dried up except for just the tiniest amount. Right. Why? Because of bribes? Well, not bribes we should COA here, because bail bondsman rallied together and hired a lobbyist, and they wrote a bunch of checks to the Broward County commissioners. Yeah, the commissioners and the mayor as well. Right. And actually, Chuck, the mayor of the commissioners, the head of the Board of Commissioners, four days before this vote on pretrial funding, got 15 checks totaling five grand from local bail bondsmann. Well, there was a campaign got you. Yeah. And Pretrial, it costs about $2 a day, where you said that keeping someone in jail cost 115 a day. Yeah. They were able to shut down a $20 million wing of their jail. That was that popular and successful program. But the problem is, because it was popular and successful, there were people who normally would have gone to a bail bondsman to get out of jail who are just getting out through the pretrial program. So, like you said, they got a lobbyist who's actually also a lobbyist for the Board of Commissioners and got the whole thing shut down, basically. Unbelievable. Like a few people who are still in the program, but it's not nearly what it used to be, even though it was a success. So there's one way that bail bondsmen are manipulating the system. In another part of that NPR report, people in Lubbock, Texas, were profiled, and these people, their bonds would have been like $75 because they had like $750 bail. But these are very poor people that can't come up with $75. Wow. They don't have anybody to borrow it from. So they're rotting in jail for months. One guy stole $40 worth of blankets because it was cold in the station wagon one night, and he's been in jail for four months to thousands and thousands of dollars. Thousands of dollars. And the reason is these bail bondsmen are saying this is a cutthroat industry and we can't afford to let anybody who would potentially be a customer slip through. So that means that people who can't afford to be a customer don't have the option of pre trial because it was shut down. So they get to stay in jail at the taxpayer expense to benefit only the bail bond industry. And, you know, I'm all for capitalism and someone earning a buck. I'm not anti bail bondsman, not at the expense of someone's freedom. Well, and the fact that if you're talking about the bail bondsman, maybe a few of them shutting down or costing the taxpayers billions of dollars, it's a no brainer. No, it isn't. But again, powerful lobby, as Laura Anderson points out, most indigent inmates don't have a lobby. Well, yeah, and I think she said 50% of people in jail are the only reason they're in jails, because they can't afford bail. That's, at least in Broward County. Yeah. So billions of dollars in taxpayer money, months and months of freedom for inmates or incarceration for inmates. Sure. And the bail bond industry is thriving, right? Yes. There is another way that they are thriving, actually, Chuck. They don't pay up when people run. Yeah. What do you mean? So as part of a kind of a punishment, in most states, if you're a bail bondsman and somebody skips, you are supposed to automatically pay that, say, $5,000. They don't pay for no. So they keep the premium, a 10% premium. And then sometimes they will in most cases, they negotiate. Really? With the county. Yeah. About 5% of the actual bail is what they end up paying. So that means that they got a 10% premium. All right. They made 5% of that for doing nothing. Right. That's it. They don't have to pay out any money. They're insured anyway, though. So even when they do have to pay out, they're not really paying out. Right, right. I'm sure their insurance premiums are sky high, but I'm sure we're going to hear from a bail bondsman. Right? I would like to, actually. Well, Chuck, let's go on to the next episode. Two days from now. Well, I have a quick question. Okay. Because my favorite all time movie comedy is Midnight Run. Really? Oh, yeah. Robert De Niro and Charles garden. Sure. And it's probably the best bounty hunter movie ever made. In that movie, the bounty hunter Joey Pants hired I'm sorry, the bail bondsman hired two bounty hunters to cover the same case, and that's where a lot of the comedy comes from. The great John Ashton opposite De Niro. Is that true? Can that happen? It depends. Yeah. Really? Sure. You can have freelance bounty hunters running your cases. Well, I thought it said in the article that they try to keep ethical boundary set because it's no good. Right, but you can okay, depending. Caused a lot of problems in the movie. Have you ever seen Dead Man? Yeah. Caused a lot of problems in that movie, too. Yeah, good point. Specifically, one Smushed Head. Yes. I love that movie. I do too. It took me probably five or six times of seeing it before I realized it's actually a dark comedy. There's some funny parts for sure. No, watch it like that. Like the whole thing is a dark comedy from beginning to end it's. Great soundtrack too, by the way. Yeah, I had that. The great Neil Young. I'm not a big Neil Young fan, but I even like that song well, because he doesn't sing, so here we go. Yeah. Okay. Well, Chuck, that's it for bail right now, right? Yeah, it'll come up here there when we talk about bounty hunters in two days. But in the meantime what is it time for listener mail? It is. Josh. Josh, I'm going to call this blood transfusion from Jehovah's Witness. Oh, yeah, actually it's not from a Jehovah's Witness, but it's a good story. This is from Mito. And Mito is Portuguese. Yes, this is from Portugal. Cool. Hello, guys. I heard your podcast about organ donation and you mentioned Jehovah's Witnesses not being big on blood transfusion. I have a little scoop on that. My father is a doctor in Brazil, and many years ago he came home all shaken up when he told us a story. He revealed that he came upon an accident where a small kid came into his operating room, managed to stabilize the kid, and all he needed was a blood transfusion and he would go home in a few days. And I know you know where this is headed. The kid's family was Jehovah's Witness. They argued with the father for hours and basically said very clearly, we would rather him die than get a blood transfusion. So like any good doctor, I don't know if that's true or not, but like this doctor did, he basically went against their wishes and gave the kid a transfusion without the parents knowing it. Well, exactly. The parents got really mad and were ready to take his medical license. But the kid awoke by that time, smiling. Seeing this the parents started crying, thanked my father for saving his life. More than ten years later, they still received Christmas gifts. My dad does from them every year. Wow. So they were like, oh, wait, this is kind of nice, actually. My son lives well, you remember the Jehovah's Witnesses believe that the blood becomes impure once it leaves the body. Sure. Yes. Seemed to help out this guy. Yeah. Didn't seem too impure to me. So he attached a picture of his father and says, this is one of many stories that turn my father into a hero while I was a boy. He saves lives for a living. Lives for a living. Doesn't that make him a hero? Definitely. And I say, absolutely. And he emailed back and he said his dad also gave a big pin tracheotomy one time. Awesome. So this dude is on the scene I told you about a friend of mine whose mom got an emergency tricky out of me with a steak knife and a straw. Oh, really? Yeah. So kudos to you, Mito, and to your father. And he also sent a picture of his little nephew Lucas, who just welcomed into the world I saw it. And whom his father delivered. Nice. So he does a little bit of everything. Yeah, he sounds like a pretty good guy. And a hero. Indeed. Well, if you have a great hero story, Chuck, and I want to hear it. Right. Yes. Still make it up. Please don't. You can put it in an email and send it to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Want more housestuffworks? Check out our 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 tech Elena Erkart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | ||
How Bigfoot Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-bigfoot-works | For centuries North American tribes have told stories of a hairy wild giant in the wilderness, and once Europeans arrived they claimed to see it, too. Chuck and Josh examine the claims of believers and the rebuttals of skeptics in this evenhanded episode. | For centuries North American tribes have told stories of a hairy wild giant in the wilderness, and once Europeans arrived they claimed to see it, too. Chuck and Josh examine the claims of believers and the rebuttals of skeptics in this evenhanded episode. | Tue, 01 Jan 2013 20:03:12 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=1, tm_hour=20, tm_min=3, tm_sec=12, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=1, tm_isdst=0) | 34024872 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the 2012 Toyota Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Before we get started, let's plug our our Brooklyn thing, our live event. Guys, we are throwing a premiere party for the TV show Stuffychnovariety show at The Bellhouse in lovely gowns. Brooklyn, new York. 149. 7th street. This is January 8, and this has tickets. We're covering our costs on this one, and tickets are $10. You can go to thebellhouse Ny.com or just Google that junk and go to The Bellhouse. Find us on the calendar. January 8. Show starts at 730. I'm sorry. Doors at 730, show at eight. Yeah. And we got special guests, like comedians and music. John Hodgman is going to be there. Other comedians doing their stand up. Lucy William Wright Roach is going to play singing with a pretty dang voice. Right? So we're going to have a nice little blowout. Agreed. At the Bellhouse. Come celebrate with us. It'll be a fun, festive occasion. Yes. We love The Bellhouse, and we love our fans up there. And I'm sorry, guys, if we haven't come to your town yet. We would love to. Trust us, and maybe we will. Yeah. So there. Okay, so now onto the show. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, as Charles W, Chuck Bryant. And that makes this stuff you should know the podcast. Right? Is that a wookie? That is me messing with Sasquatch. It sounded more like Frankenstein from Saratoga. I remember that. I love that. Frankenstein. Tarzan. Tarzan classic. Skip, have you seen the commercials messing with Sasquatch? Yeah, jack Winks is pretty funny. Yeah, all of them are. It's one of my favorite spots, actually. It contradicts. I witnessed reports that Bigfoot is kind of a benign, shy creature. Yeah. As far as Jack Links is concerned, he goes aggro when you mess with them, I guess, is what it is. So I have an actual intro for this one. All right, let's hear. We're talking Bigfoot. And very recently, there's some enormous, huge news. We should probably preface this one. If you are skeptic, don't worry, we're going to give your side of this, too. But we have found over the years that it's very respectful to give voice to both sides. We try to. Yeah. And we're not insulting you by speaking the other person's side. We'll express your side as well. And when we do that, we're not insulting the other side. And at the end of the day, it's about Bigfoot. So let's not get so worked up. Calm down. It's all just fun. There's a self professed veterinarian with 27 years experience, including forensics named Doctor Melba S. Ketchum, and she supposedly, she claims, got her hands on some samples of Bigfoot hair okay. And has been testing it, running genetic tests on it, and recently announced and wrote a paper that's under peer review, as it stands now, that she managed to isolate three separate nuclear DNA. Okay. That came from three separate groups. So one is the nuclear DNA. Remember, you have nuclear DNA is the mixture of the mother's and the father's DNA. Okay. Mitochondrial DNA is strictly from the mother. Okay. So the researcher found that the nuclear DNA came from a human, Bigfoot, which is a hybrid of the human. And this third species, a nonhuman species, doesn't know what it is yet, but supposedly that's what this hair sample showed. Really? And this is just now, right? Yeah. I believe they made this announcement, like, in late November, early December, which is now under peer review. It is under peer review. That doesn't mean that it's going to pass peer review. She submitted the paper for peer review. Now, she said that the mitochondrial DNA in the sample was human, which means that this third thing, bigfoot, is the product of a female woman. And this non human species, the mystery species, reproducing and forming Bigfoot. And she says that she isolated it to about 15,000 years ago. Wow. Now, anybody who's followed Dr. Ketchum's career can poke holes all in this. There was apparently I read an early draft of the paper that she said this third species was an angel. And skeptics love beating up on people like this, but my hat is off to her for, first of all, undergoing this, using the scientific method to root out the unexplained, that's extremely Fortian in nature, and I love that stuff. And then secondly, to put it up for peer review and to face that kind of criticism. One of the big problems is she isn't saying, like, where the sample? How she knows this is a sample of bigfoot's DNA. She didn't say where she got it. Not that I could find. And I actually saw in one article that she's not saying where it came from. So there's a lot of holes in it. But if you wanted big, current bigfoot news, that's about as big as it gets. That's right. Not quite as current as our own law officer here in Georgia last year or the year before. The one up in North Georgia. Yes. With his freezer. Yeah. I didn't follow that very closely. I'm going to go ahead and say that I really want to believe in bigfoot or not want to believe. I want there to be a Bigfoot. I don't think there is. That means you want to believe in Bigfoot, but I want to believe it's out there because it would be so cool. And whenever when I saw that story, the sheriff and I think he's a sheriff or deputy in North Georgia, it was a hoax, of course, but he said he had a body in a freezer, and they showed pictures of this. It was in a gorilla suit. Right. That's what it ended up being. And it had guts. It had, like, animal entrails, but it looked like initially, like, oh, man that looks like a dead bigfoot. And then you look closer, and it's like a suit that you can get online. I wish I had that kind of time to do stuff like that. Yeah. Apparently perpetrator hoax. Apparently they were trying to drum up potential business for leading bigfoot tours in North Georgia. That's a sound way to do it until you get found out and then ultimately either retire or get fired. No, the law enforcement officer, it can still work. Oh, well, okay. He lost his day job, is what you're saying. Yeah, you can't do stuff like that if you're a cop. You can't pull a hoax. No, you can't pull a hoax and try and snow people for money. That's not legal. I don't know that it is illegal to snow people for money to promise them something that's not true and charge for it. This guy says that he called it fraud. Oh, it's a hoax. There's a big difference between fraud and a hoax. If he had the business, it would be fraud. No, that would be like if he promised that you are going to see bigfoot, not a bigfoot tour, but he said, you're going to see bigfoot on this tour, then you could get them for fraud. I think he would still be fraud if he founded that business and advertised it on a false premise, which is I found this thing. Look at it. Yeah, I see your point. Yeah, he's a jerk. What I say? Let's talk about bigfoot. This guy up in North Georgia is pretty far from the only person to pull a declared bigfoot hoax. What keeps this thing going is that there's some stuff out there that's considered this body of evidence of bigfoot's existence that hasn't been definitively debunked or proven right. One of the other things that I think people who are believers in bigfoot, like the ones that are out there, like, looking for bigfoot and believe in bigfoot, one of the things that keeps them going also is this correlation between bigfoot sightings among people of European descent and bigfoot legends of Native American tribes long before the Europeans ever got here. And if you look at the names of these different tribes have and take a step back, you're like, wow, these tribes were all over the place somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Some are in Florida, some were in the northeastern United States and eastern Canada. And all of them have this weird tall, giant, hairy man legend that they have a name for, even though they're geographically scattered all over the place. And it's possible that all of these different legends share a single common ancestor that is further back, may be located on the steps of Eurasia. But it's also kind of noteworthy that they all have different legends for it. Sure. The Himalayas, even the yeti promoted snowman in Asia. Very popular. Apparently. You hear that one more than you see it. Yes. Which I didn't know. But we should call this thing Sasquatch because that is the most common name they use nowadays. And even though some of the names from Native American tribes wendego that's great. Omaru and books are some of the names that this gone by Native American lore. But Sasquatch Shashwatch comes from I have no idea how to pronounce that. It looks like sask. That word is another word from the area around British Columbia were similar enough that the 1920s white school teacher named JW. Burns coined the term sasquatch. And basically it's the umbrella term for any Bigfoot, like man. Right. So even though these sightings have varied in their description over the years, there are a few hallmarks that pop up. One is that this is a tall beast between seven and 15ft. 15ft is enormous. Yeah, I haven't most of the ones I've heard of between, like, seven and 8ft. Have you seen a troll hunter? I saw that recently, actually. That first troll that they watched, the guy zap and turned his tone. That thing was about 15ft tall. That's huge. Yeah, that was a pretty good movie. I buy 10ft. No way. 15ft. No way. Yes. Did you like the movie? Oh, troll Hunter was excellent. Yeah, it kind of wore on me toward the end. That was it a little long, but it was pretty cool. Yeah. And the imagination that it used is just beautiful. Totally agreed. Control hunter people. It walks on two legs. That's a big one. Was that Bipedal? Is that what they say? It's upright and has a looping gate elf. Right. The movie elf. Yeah, the one shot where they mimic the famous 16 millimeter film oh, yeah. Where it says Will Ferrell in Central Park and they, like, have that from frame 352 of the 60 millimeter film. It's pretty funny. So will Ferrell's doing so. Yeah, it says, like, the strange elf was seen wandering through Central Park. And they mimic that. It's wolf there. Sure. Yeah, it's very good. Long, reddish fur. That's a big one. Reddish brown. And that's really interesting that sasquatch is typically described as having long, reddish brown fur. That's a really specific thing for everybody to report. And, again, it's possible that people have heard other reports and said that's what they're expecting to see. Sure. Or that's what they're reporting, because that's what Sasquatch has. But it's still significant. You said that the yeti was more heard than seen. Yeah, Bigfoot is usually more seen than heard. But when Bigfoot is heard, he makes gurgling noises, howling noises. Noises that sound totally alien to the people reporting it. Yeah, I've heard weird noises in the woods camping all my life, and I've never thought, oh, that's a Bigfoot. I just think that's just some animal making a strange sound that I've never heard. Right, because you live in the city. That's right. Supposedly this Sasquatch also has sort of a manlike face and reports from either being really, really smelly to not smelling at all. Oh, yeah. That's not in this article. I forgot about how smelly Bigfoot is supposed to be. I've heard that many times. They're also supposedly very wary of people but also, at the same time, intensely curious about us. And a lot of people who have made eyewitness reports say that they weren't scared, which is weird. Yeah, most people say that. I didn't feel threatened. Right. And that kind of jibes with most Native Americans legends about Bigfoot, that it's a benign creature and often it has intellect and it's given spiritual powers in Native American lore. So it wasn't something to be afraid of. Right. Sasquatch is your friend. Yeah, they usually are by themselves. But there have been reports of several of these Sasquatches hanging out together and chatting. Yes. But for the most part, they're usually alone. Right. Yeah. So you put all this together and you've got, like, a pretty good common it's like the AKC breed for Sasquatch. These are its characteristics. I love it. Okay. If you take this at face value, which you should sure. If you're a skeptic, you should always look at things at face value and not just immediately dismiss it or poopoo it. Yeah. Try to get to the bottom of it. That's what we're about to do. Now, the first question is, could a creature that matches this description possibly exist? Yeah. And it's important when considering this, to point out that we have never, despite all the sightings and little still shots and film clips and audio clips, there's never been any conclusive evidence. They've never found bones that's huge or anything like that. A lot of footprints and stuff like that. So moving forward, could this exist, perhaps in the Gigantopithecus? Right. Because that's a creature that actually did exist at some point. And it says here in the article that the Gigantopithe pithecus, which is the largest primate in the fossil record, lives between one and 9 million years ago. Actually, I saw an article that had updated that to about 100,000 years ago, which meant that humans in Giganopithecus lived side by side. Have you seen this thing? I have looked like a Bigfoot. I guess if someone saw that in the woods, I would think it was a Sasquatch. Right. It lived in Southeast Asia or in Central Asia? And it's a relative of the orangutan. Yeah, big time. Looks a lot like one. Yeah. This is all extremely interesting stuff, in case you didn't know, because orangutans, for starters, have reddish orange hair. So that's one connection to Gigantopithecus. Yeah. They got the long arms like that. Yeah. They walked upright, about 10ft tall, usually about one \u00a3200. And since orangutans are the closest modern relative of gigantica C, it makes sense to kind of look at them, look at their behavior. Does it match? Bigfoot stuff. Yeah, they have teeth similar to humans. So that could account a little bit for the man like look that people often talk about. Occasionally, we'll make loud, howling calls that sound odd to other orangutans. Another thing that kind of separates them, too, aside from being Asian, whereas most primates are African. Yeah. Is that they tend to live solitary lives, so they don't aggregate in groups. They live by themselves, mostly. Okay, so chalk one up for the Bigfoot enthusiasts. Yeah. Again, they're like, okay, well, that's it. It's Giganopithecus. They live a long time, and because they are widely dispersed, they may not even see other orangutans for many long stretches. Right. So, of course, they may not see a human either. Exactly. And if they're intellectual or if they have intellect, as people who believe in Bigfoot like to point out, they would be able to successfully hide from humans, probably. Sure. Especially if their habitat was the woods and the mountains. And so you put all that together, that they have a long lifespan, meaning there's not a lot of them dying frequently. They're spread out population wise, and they tend to live in remote geographic regions. If you add all that up, it's a pretty good reason why you wouldn't have found any bones. Yes. Because bones can decay in the wild like that between five and ten years. And the author of this was this, The Grabster. This is Tom Harris. He's a good one, too. He is good. He points out that people have never gone on bigfoot bone hunting expeditions, so people aren't looking for these things, so they may not have found him. Well, yeah. There is a guy, actually, who's looking for Bigfoot. He's an Idaho State anthropology professor, and he's crowdsourcing blimp to hunt for Bigfoot with thermal imaging cameras and stuff like that. And he's 300 kwh. And if you're interested in it, you can check out that. I thought it was, but he's got his own website called Falcon Project, and that's what he's trying to do with it. So there is at least one person trying to do a rigorous scientific hunt for Bigfoot. But, I mean, there's all kinds of groups looking, right? Yeah. There's even a show on Animal Planet, one of our Discovery Channel stations, one of our I would call it a sister station, but not a station, one of our colleagues. And it's what's it called? Finding Bigfoot. Yeah. And these people are out there hunting Bigfoot, and I've even watched bits of it because I just think it's cool and interesting and it's kind of a fun little show, so I recommend it. And we weren't even asked to plug that. I'm just plugging it. So you have a possible link between the orangutan yeah. Right. And Bigfoot. And that link might be Giganopithecus. Right. Question is still remaining. How did Giganopithecus get here? Well, we walked over the was it the land bridge? Yeah. Bearing land bridge. Yes. Just like we did. Sure. Both not you and me, but that's one theory. But the big problem here, Chuck, is the absence of proof doesn't prove anything. The fact that we haven't found bones, even though you can explain it, we still haven't found any bones. It doesn't mean that something exists. And it's a big problem in this debate. You can also point to, though, very happily, the sealakanth. Right. The seal of anth was thought to have gone extinct 65 million years ago. It's a fish thought to have gone extinct in the late Cretaceous period, and then they found it swimming off the coast of Africa in 1938. So you can point to that and say it's entirely possible that Gigantopithecus survived somehow and we just didn't know. Yeah. And scientists, they'll point out that there are all kinds of creatures that are still undiscovered, but most of them are sea creatures. And that makes sense, too, because we don't spend very much time under the sea. No, we don't. Whereas we spend a decent amount of time in the woods. Okay. So if you're a skeptic, everything we just said probably made the hair on the back of your neck bristle an irritation. And here's why. Because, like we said, the absence of proof doesn't prove anything. Sure. And it's entirely possible that all of this evidence, this body of evidence, it's just basically a bunch of independent hoaxers fooling a bunch of people over time. Yeah. Or innocent mistaken identity. They're not all hoaxers. Some people have perhaps gotten confused about things. Sure. Boy, that mangy bear doesn't look right standing up on its back legs, too. Yes. Or the recent photo. There was that still image captured at night, and that's what they said it was. It was a mangy bear. But that thing was kind of weird looking. I think I saw that one. Yeah. It was like a night image shot. And it was on four legs or four I don't know if their arms or what. And it looked odd, but they explained it away as a mangy bear. Sure. But yeah. Lots of hoaxes over the years. Yeah. And if you go into the woods and you're even the least bit familiar with any kind of bigfoot lore, and you see something that possibly fits it, you may be the victim of wishful thinking or being impressionable or what have you. Yeah. That's a pretty good accusation of skeptican level against somebody who reports a bigfoot sighting. Sure. And the first and easiest way to hoax someone, to pull a hoax on someone is the old fake footprint. Yeah. Not too hard to do. You make a fake foot, you wear it on your feet, and you perhaps run along in the woods, maybe lope, maybe leap to make the footsteps the gate. Correct. Right. And then you make a plaster mold of it. The problem with these is so many over the years that it's, like, clear that there are hoaxes, because this one has two toes, this one has claws, this one has eight toes, and people aren't getting together on these and making them consistent. Yeah. Probably the most contentious bit of Bigfoot evidence was that 16 millimeter film you mentioned that was made in 1967 by a guy named Roger Patterson. Yeah, the Patterson gimlin film. And it's from Bluff Creek, California. And basically it shows Bigfoot walking across, basically, a clearing into the woods. And Bigfoot is aware that he's being watched, and he turns and looks at the camera. Like you said, will Ferrell didn't help. Yeah. And I remember years ago, like, watching this when I was back in my time, like books phase. Sure. I don't believe anything. Just tell me. Yeah. And they were saying that one of the reasons that this thing was so convincing that it was Bigfoot was that and he looked over his shoulder rather than looking with just his head, just turning his head, bigfoot turns his whole shoulder and torso along with his head, which is something that a primate would likely do. And non human primate I should do. Or someone in an ape suit wearing shoulder pads, possibly. That's another possibility, too. They also point out that Bigfoot's walking with his knees bent in this. That's another sure sign of primate. I did that today, by the way. Is it hard? Well, it's not the easiest thing, but what it makes you do is sort of loop along with a kind of a funny gate. A looping gate? Yeah. That's something that Bigfoot enthusiasts point to, is that this thing was walking with knees bent. And I didn't realize this until I read this in the article, but humans lock their knees with each step. We don't walk with our knees bent. Yeah. And then also the lastly, that the creature's fur is clearly rippling. Like, the skin beneath is rippling. And like some costume, some apesuit isn't going to do that on its own. Put all this together. And if you're a Bigfoot believer, this is irrefutable evidence that there is such a thing as Bigfoot. If you're skeptic, you can shoot a hole in all of those, can't you? Sure. Since this film came out in 1967, it's been, like the most reviewed and made fun of or backed piece of evidence ever for Bigfoot or Sasquatch. And Roger Patterson, it turns out, was trying to make a movie about Bigfoot. Oh, yeah. So he wasn't just some guy out there that happened to have a camera. He was trying to put together a film. Since this has come out, there have been various people. One guy came out and said, you know what? I made the suit for him. He paid me $1,000 to make him the suit. Well, the guy who supposedly did make the suit has never admitted to well, now there's a bunch of guys that's not the same guy. There's Chambers, and then there's this other dude. They aren't the same people. That's why it's kind of hinky, because multiple people have claimed they made the suit. This one guy says that he was the guy in the suit, but his suit story didn't match up with the guy who claimed he made the suit. Did match up with his suit story, but then people said, you know what? Patterson could have altered that original suit to match the guy who said he was in the suit. Right. Then there's Chambers, who other people say it made the suit, but he says he didn't make the suit. Well, it's a longstanding Hollywood rumor that actually John Landis, the director of American Werewolf in London, came out and said, yeah, this is true. When he was a young pup, he was working at one of the studios and he became friends with John Chambers, who did the apes suits for Planet of the Apes, which came out right around that time, right? I think so. And he had heard that Chambers had done this and he befriended Chambers and said, yes, it's true. This is John Chambers. And Chambers has never taken credit for it. Right. He's never come out and said, yeah, I did it. But if you ask the average special effects guy or makeup guy these days, if you show them that, they're like, yes, this is apesuit. There's a water bag underneath that's making the skin ripple. And that's a guy. It's a man. Right? I watch it again today, like five times. Yeah, me too. It's really neat. Yeah, it's kind of fun. I mean, just the detail they went into, like the crooked legs, the bent knees. Yeah. The shaky cam, like it looks like someone scared and discovering something. Yeah, it's perfect. If it's a fraud, it is perfect, because think about it. The thing was shot in 1967. It's 2013, and people are still debating whether or not it's authentic. Yeah. And it's gone through lots of rigorous testing by people that study whether or not the film was tampered. And they have determined that nothing was tampered post shooting. If it was anything, it was a dude in apesuit. And they really went out there in the woods and shot it. Sure. But like I said, this is all just kind of fun to me. People get so worked up over this. I don't get it. Who knows? Yeah, what's the harm unless someone's, like, defrauding people out of money? There are people who dedicate their careers to this. There's a woman named Kathy Moscowitz Strain, and she is a forest archaeologist for the US Forestry Service who basically became an anthropologist and an archaeologist so that she could hunt for bigfoot. And she's very respected, even among skeptics who counter all of her arguments. But she is very much searching for bigfoot and has been for many years. And she believes, or just wants to get to the bottom of it. She believes that there's a bigfoot, that there's another species out there, some primate species. That is what we call sasquatch or Bigfoot. Yeah. The arguments against to me, you can't say something like, well, somebody would have definitely seen it by now and proven it. You just can't say that the Pacific Northwest is so vast that an animal could probably hide if there was only a few of them left from people. But on the other hand, you also can't say it exists because of this hoaxes and these sounds. And you need some sort of, like, scientific evidence. Agreed. Bones would help. You do need that. Unless you're just enjoying thinking about it. Yeah. Another thing you can enjoy, it's kind of related, is watching the Mystery Science Theater 3000 of The Legend of Boggy Creek Two. I've seen that one. It's arguably the best episode. Oh, my God. It's hilarious. Strong state, but it's related. It's based on a Bigfoot, like, creature. Yeah. Well, Tom points out, too, that the reason people want to believe in stuff like this is the same reason some people want to believe in aliens. That like the sense of adventure is seemingly lost these days. There's nothing new to discover. And if we could just discover a Bigfoot, that would be so huge and so monumental, and I get that. That's probably why I want to believe it would rock the world of science. Oh, it totally would. But then we'd put it in the zoo. Yeah. Poke it with electricity. We humans. Yeah. All right, well, let's see. If you want to learn more about Bigfoot, you can type that word into the search bar. How stuff works. There's an adorable picture of a baby. Orangutan in this article, if you want to check that out, that's Bigfoot, and it'll bring that up. And since I said search bar, it's time to listen to Mail. Josh, before we do listen to Mail, we should quickly plug our TV show. Yes. Stuff You Should Know. Television show. We call it that because it's based on our lives as podcasters. Stuff you should know. Podcasters. I played Josh. You played Chuck. Yeah. We're going to change that around. I was going to play you, but this didn't work out. We tried. Yeah, but this is a show about our lives and here in the office, and it's fun. Good stuff. Yeah. Or fictionalized. Yes. We should point that out. We're not giving away our real lives. But we recreated our office. We hired actors. But it's still just you and me doing our thing among them. Yeah. And it's on Saturday night, January 19 of Premieres, 10:00 PM. Eastern Standard Time. That's right. Two episodes back to back after Editor Broad series, three premiere. And if you don't have TV, you can buy these on itunes the day after the show comes out. You can buy each episode one at a time. That's right. And if you are used to Josh and Chuck short form video content, if you're not, that will still always be around as well. You can go. To ScienceChannel.com revision three.com and always how stuff works.com to find some good Josh and Chuck video content as well. That's right. Yeah. The podcast isn't going anywhere, by the way. People ask us that. We're still doing the podcast. Yeah, we are. I don't care if this thing is the hugest hit ever. We're still going to be the podcast for sure. Thanks for saying that, Chuck. Sure. Okay, so, Step, you should know the television show January 19, that's Saturday, 10:00 p.m.. Eastern Standard Time, after the series three, season three premiere of Idiot Abroad, starting at nine. We'll see you then. All right? Listen to Melton. Yeah, I'm going to call this I don't even remember what this was. Oh, meth showers. Josh, Chuck and Jerry. A-K-A-L. Chucktran. My name is Jimmy Griffith from Lenore. South. North Carolina or Lincoln? I'm not sure. You pronounced that. I'm originally born in Brazil, a relatively young listener, and after listening to how meth works, reminded me of a story for my college days. I used to know these identical twin brothers that went to Appalachian State with me. It goes on, that school. Yeah, they beat Michigan with a bunch of hippies, which party kids sure. Had friends that went there. At one time, one of them was having unexplained hallucinations. See what I mean? And other weird psychological issues. The twin with hallucinations feared that he might have schizophrenia, but that did not make sense since his identical twin did not share the symptoms. As I understand, if one had the disorder, the other would also have it since they're identical. I'm not sure if that's true. It's probably like a percentage, but I don't think it's automatic. After dealing with this issue for a little while, the twin with hallucinations decided to see a doctor and after running a few blood tests, tested positive for meth. This made no sense since he'd never used meth. After a few questions about the daily routine, they found out that most of what they did was similar, except one of the twins preferred to take baths, the one suffering hallucinations and the other preferred showers. This led to further investigation of the rental house they lived in. They found out there was a high concentration of meth on the bathtub, on the portion of the bathtub which indicated whoever lived there previously made meth in the bathtub. As you'd expect, they shut down the house. The twins moved out. Cleaning crew with hazmat suits moved in. The twin with the issues ceased to have hallucinations involuntarily. He says we need to point that out. And he came back to his old self. Just wanted to share that. Hope you're having a great week. Sunday I hope to visit the studio in Atlanta and meet Jerry. Yeah. And that right here is Jimmy Griffith from North Carolina. Originally from Brazil. Dude. Thanks, Jimmy. We hope you're having a good week too, and we're glad your friend turned out okay. Jeez. Can you imagine? You tested for meth? It's like Elaine testing positive for poppy seed bagel. Yeah. Opium. Yeah. Or poppy seed heroin. Yeah. Good stuff. That was scary. Opium. Yeah. That's a good one, man. What that's? Yeah, I have one. If you are a skeptic and a believer in bigfoot, we want to hear from you. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffysheanow, and you can send us a good old fashioned email to stuff podcast@discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Brought to you by the 2012 Toyota Camry. It's ready. Are you?" | ||
Why is Venice so wet? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/why-is-venice-so-wet | Venice, Italy has a problem. It's sinking, and the water around it is rising. Thankfully, some engineers are working hard on the MOSE project - huge gates that keep high tide from happening. Learn all about Venice in this episode. | Venice, Italy has a problem. It's sinking, and the water around it is rising. Thankfully, some engineers are working hard on the MOSE project - huge gates that keep high tide from happening. Learn all about Venice in this episode. | Tue, 03 Jun 2014 14:50:18 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=3, tm_hour=14, tm_min=50, tm_sec=18, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=154, tm_isdst=0) | 32185437 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetuffworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's, Charles. Debbie. Chuck bryant Knowles with us again. And it's another Morning edition. We got an email, I think we had our last morning thing session not too long ago, and someone wrote in and said, please don't do that again. I didn't think it was that bad. You guys are clearly, like, really tired and not the same. So what I say is, if you have a choice, is save this one for the morning and just pretend like we're your local NPR station. Pour a cup of joe like Josh is drinking. Yeah. Vanilla. Yeah. It smells so good. Let's do this morning style. Let's do it, man. Let's do this morning style in Italian. This is going to be a fan favorite, I predict, because there's some Italian pronunciations that I'm sure you will do for everybody. Right? I'm going to do it my best. Oh, that was good. A little taste of it. Yes. That's one of the accents you can have a great time with without people saying that you're offensive. That's a T shirt. Yeah. So, Chuck, you heard about them sea levels? Yeah. Right. As in falling. Yeah. Due to climate change. Well, it's climate change. The big bone of contention is human cause, or anthropogenic. The thing is, it is undeniable that sea levels are rising at a rate of about 3 year, which doesn't sound like much, but, buddy, if you lived for 1000 years, you'd see the sea levels rise by 3 meters, which is almost 10ft in America. Yeah. Not the biggest deal in some parts of the world. Big deal in Venice. Yeah. And if you're waiting a thousand years to watch it rise 3 meters, that's the current rate of sea level rise. It could speed up tremendously. And while 3 mm might not sound that much to you out in the Rockies sure. Yeah. Because it's nice and dry there in the middle of the mountain. They're all stoned, right? Yeah. Because it's legal there. Yeah. Who cares? If you're in a place like the Maldives, you're saying, wow, my country is probably not going to exist in the next 20 years. That's scary if you're in New Orleans worried about the same thing, and a little town known as Venice, Italy, is facing the same problem and has been for a very long time. And you say little town, it is getting smaller, not only physically, but the population, because Venice is such a mess, has declined down to about 60,000 people now over the years. From 180. Yes. Because people are tired of getting wet. They are. They used to get wet. So back in 1900, they would get wet about ten times a year due to flooding. They could expect ten noteworthy floods a year. And when we say noteworthy floods, we mean like the squares throughout the city are flooded up to maybe your knees. Yes. Kind of like the whole ground floor of Venice. Yeah. It gets flooded like you're slogging around, which I mean, it sounds kind of fun when you're a kid, but it's not that fun. Right. Especially when you're an adult who may be a germophobe. Because Venice has an antiquated sewer system that's antiquated as the perfect word. Yeah. By antiquated, we mean all of the sewer pipes go right out into the canals. They have, along the years, added, like, septic tanks to treat the stuff first. But not everybody has those. Right. And sometimes they get backed up, too. But the raw sewage or septically treated sewage in Venice goes into those canals that you float around on boats. And when you're swimming around in the flood like a tourist, you're swimming around in fecal material. Did tourists get in that water? There's a picture of it on a man. I can't remember, I think, like a Bloomberg article about Venice or maybe Wired. But it's like, if you know about Venice, you'll think, these people are crazy for swimming in this floodwater, and it shows a couple of tourists, like, swimming in a flood in the middle of the square. San Marco. San Marco Square. Yeah. And now that you know it's gross to see. They're like it tastes briny and sort of, umami right. Why are my lips swollen? Yeah. That's one of many problems facing Venice right now, an antiquated sewer system. And a lot of the problems are unique just because of the city and how it's created. Yeah. Let's talk about this, because Venice is not something I knew a ton about. I knew it was on the water. I knew it was sinking. Shout out, by the way, to Phoenix is sinking. Athens band. Oh, okay. And stuff you should know, Finn. Oh, nice. Well, then I like them already. Yes. Noel, you know those guys? He does, in fact. Noel says, noel talks, Jerry doesn't. What if he was like, oh, yeah, they're great. He launches into, like, a five minute discourse. So I knew a little bit about Venice. Very little, though I've never been there. But when I watched this awesome video that Josh found yeah, we should go ahead and plug it because it's just super cool. Yeah. It's called Venice backstage period. How does Venice work? Yeah. And it was created by the Insula Spa, which is, I guess, the production arm of the city of Venice. So it's like a locally produced video about Venice. But it's one of the most fascinating, like, 18 minutes videos I've ever seen. Yeah. They pack a lot of learning into that 18 minutes. So if you don't know much about Venice, if you do know something about New York City, imagine, like, the Greenwich Village. And I use Greenwich Village because it's not on the Direct, like north, south, east, west grid. They got all those crazy diagonal streets. Imagine if this is so hot right now. Because of Lewand Davis. Yeah, true. Imagine Greenwich Village if every block was an island. And that's essentially what Venice is. Right. It is 124 tiny little islands all packed together, and instead of streets, you have water, 183 canals. And it's all connected by little foot bridges and real bridges. Yes, and yes. Canals by boat. Yeah. I mean, it's crazy. I've never even seen the big zoom in from above bird's eye view of what Venice looks like, and I was like, that's what's going on. Yeah, it's crazy, because especially when you're in the city, like, you're walking over canals, but you don't give too much thought to them. You're just like, oh, that's so quaint. You're almost thinking like they dug that out on purpose or something to get tourists. Now, those are necessity. Yeah. It was an odd and different way for a city to form. Right. They didn't start from a city center and grow out. Each little block and section was its own little thing. Yeah. It was kind of its own little municipality. And the reason that these people set up shop hundreds and hundreds of years ago on these islands was for protection. Venice is a very well protected municipality or cluster of municipalities. Right. Yeah. It sits in a lagoon and there are three waterways that flow water in and out every day, twice a day with the tides. Yeah. The Adriatic flows in to the lagoon and brings the water back out at low tide. Right? Yeah. High tide, it brings water in. Low tide, it takes the water out. Which is why they're not that worried about their sewage going into the canals, supposedly, because the water comes in and kind of brings all the trash out to the sea and then no one sees it. It's a self a flushing system. Yeah. Well, I mean, it pretty much is. So that's how they've been able to put up with that for so long, because twice a day the water is exchanged. There is a big exchange to it. The problem is when that water comes in, especially when you include sea level rises, and now up to six times more flooding per year. Remember, it was like ten times a year in 1900. Now it's up to about 60 floods. Yeah. You have kind of a problem now. You have a sinking city, essentially, is what it amounts to. Yeah. I mean, it's two things. It's the water rises and Venice itself, the buildings are sinking. So those are two bad things that don't taste great together. The reason it's sinking is because they extract fresh water from beneath the city. Right. Yeah. So there's less of a solid foundation now, and there's also drilling nearby, like for natural gas or fossil fuels. And it's also just eroding well, yeah. They've done a lot of things over the years when you've got seawater lapping up against well, let's step back. It's not just dirt and stuff. They realize pretty early on, we're not going to be around unless we in case the entire city basically in brick below the waterline. And they came up with some really ingenious construction methods that you can super ingenious in that Venice back stage video on vimeo. Is it vimeo? Yeah. But even though they've ensconced the whole city in brick as a foundation that was laughing saltwater and these canals are busy. It's not just the gondolier singing the song. If you see real footage and not movie footage, they're packed with boats. Yeah. Motor boats, cruise ships, all sorts of stuff. And that action creates a lot of movement in the water and it just whittles away those bricks little by little over the years. Over hundreds and hundreds of years, that's right. And then that's why Venice is sinking. Part of the other problem, too, is sediment builds up in the canals. They're supposed to close them down on a fairly regular basis, basically dam them up, drain them and then remove the sediment and basically call the dead hoodies. Yeah, they stopped doing that as frequently as before, and there's been a problem as a result. Plus saltwater permeates bricks. Bricks are semi permeable and they have capillary action, so it draws saltwater up into the bricks, which, I mean, as long as bricks are connected by mortar, that water, that salt water will rise all the way to the top of a building. And when the water evaporates, the water is gone, but the salt stays and it apparently increases in volume tremendously and basically crushes the bricks from the inside out. Yeah. And they've been taking steps and measures little by little in different ways over the years to help, but they're kind of fighting a losing battle. They'll like inject resin into between the bricks and into the bricks. Hydraulics a barrier. But they're fighting like I said, they're fighting Mother Nature here. Right. So finally they said, let's turn our attention from these piecemeal measures of kind of treating bricks and go to where the problem is. Let's go to the doorstep of the problem, which is the Adriatic and the three inlets into the lagoon. Yeah. And they turn their attention to that. And now they've come up with a pretty great plan for dealing with rising tides and floodwaters. And I think we will get to that plan right after this break. I knew you're going to save me. All right, so there's a plan. One thing on that video too quickly that amazed me. You're talking about the building construction. The walls in Venice, the exterior walls have a tendency to bow out at the top. They have these basically hooks that pull from the inside the walls in, and then those long metal hooks travel into the floor where they're spiked into the floor. So they're trying to pull it in there. And then the roofs of the buildings in Venice aren't just like, hey, let's keep the water out. They are literally like caps that lock the walls in at the top. So it's not just like a weather protector roof. It's actually like if the roof wasn't there, the walls would bow out. And then the interior walls don't even connect rigidly to the exterior walls. Yeah. They allow some give so that they can move back and forth. The wave action basically moves the walls. So, I mean, we're saying Venice is a mess but it's really an ingenious city of just engineering the fact that it's still there at all. Right. Another construction point that kind of stuck out to me was that buildings in Venice are built on piles of stakes. Like wooden stakes driven into the ground to kind of reinforce the mucky ground to build on first. It's really a remarkable place when you look at all the things they've had to do just to make that what shouldn't even be a city. I mean, let's get real. But it's very neat. Beautiful city. Have you been? No. You mean I went last summer and it is gorgeous. Yeah, I did. Rome. Very neat. Rome is neat too. Just walking around and all of a sudden you're like, oh, I'm next to 3000 year old ruins. Just basically part of the cityscape. Right. Whereas here in Atlanta, you're like, oh, there's a Burger King, but it's from the exactly. All right. So we had a pretty good cliffhanger that they had an idea. So go ahead and announce it. Okay. Well, the idea is called Mose. Or you should do this. Chuck the Modulo spare mentali electromechanical. Nico. Not bad. Electromechanico. So that's the experimental electromechanical module. Which is the reason that has that clumsy name is because Mose, the acronym is also the Italian spelling for Mose or Moses. And basically what Moses was well known for, one of his many hits was Parting the Red Sea. Right. Well, they thought that was very clever. He was his biggest hit. They were coming I don't know. He did a lot of stuff. Ten Commandments, that was a pretty big hit. Burning Bush. I would say the Red Sea was his American Pie or no, that was his Baker Street. The Ten Commandments was his right down the line. Who did Jerry Rafferty? Baker street. That was the saxophone one, right? Yeah. And right down the line was his other hit. I'd never heard that one. You have. You just don't know it. Okay, says you. I was just about to bust it out. Too early. So anyway, moses. Moses in Italian. That's a clever use of an acronym because this thing, the contraption they came up with, it's pretty ingenious and clever to defend against these rising high tides which are known as aqua alta. Yes. And this is one of those things where you say ingenious and clever, but I would add in its simplicity. Right. These are my favorite kinds of projects. When man looks at something and says, why don't we just build a big gate? That's pretty much what it is. Yes, but it is more complicated than that. Let's talk about the mosaic. Remember we said sea levels are rising in general, but high tides are a really big problem in Venice. Yeah. Because they're getting higher. So the Mosaic project consists of a bunch of gates that can be brought up and raised on command. They have a magician who commands the gates to arrive, and the gates come up and basically separate the lagoon from the Adriatic Sea. Yeah. So imagine a big, huge steel door that lays flat on the bottom of the ocean, and they fill it with air. And it's got two hinges on one side. So that big steel door just raises up as it fills with air, obviously becoming more buoyant, and until it looks like about a 45 deg angle facing out into the sea, away from the city. And that's it. It's just a barrier. It just swings up. And I think there's about a two foot differential in the water levels, and it essentially prevents high tide from happening within the Venice lagoon. That's exactly right. And these basically walls, floating walls is what they amount to. Like you said, they have hinges on the bottom, and there's all sorts of pictures of the Moz Project. The Mose project all over the Internet. I found it exponentially easier to understand when I saw what they were talking about. Yeah. It's like, oh, that's all it is. Right. But it'll allow us to clumsily, try to get this across. So you've got the hinges hinge the metal wall to the bottom of the sea floor, right? Well, not to the sea floor. Well, to a concrete trench within the sea floor that the thing sits in when it's not in use. Yeah. They tried to pound it right into the sand, and they were like, this is not working. Get us some concrete. So these trenches also provide a place for engineers to go underneath and basically fix things and fiddle with stuff. And it also provides the delivery system for the compressed air that the hollow metal walls, gates basically fill up with air so that they start to stand upright. Yeah. And how long does that take? Like 20 minutes or 30 minutes. Yeah. And then it takes about the same time to fill them with sea water again to return them back to their laying position on the floor. It's a little quicker going down, but it makes sense. Yeah, but that's pretty much it. When the high tides coming, they fill them with air so that the gates stand up above water. Yeah. And then on the lagoon side, the sea level stays low. On the sea side, it can get as high as it likes. And because they're hinged and filled with air, they're not rigid, which means that they can take a pounding and they can sway back and forth a little bit and still not give. So, like you said, it's ingenious in its simplicity. It is. And it officially launched in 2003. And this was after years of, I guess, ideas and bids and plans, and the Mosaic Project is what finally went out. They said it was going to be two to $3 billion and would be done in 2012. It's still not done. They're looking at 2016 now. They did the first successful test late last year, and like with every big project, city project like that, it's going to be over budget and over scheduled. Yes, but there's a lot of accusations of corruption. Really? Yeah. Southern Italy a big public project, so corrupt. The group that suggested the thing in the first place is called the you want to take it? Somebody's going to be offended by me, by the way. Maybe. I'll bet they're not Italian, though. Consortio Denisia Nova. So that's basically the New Venice Consortium. It's a group of companies and construction companies that said, hey, we've got an idea for this problem. Let's try this, and we'll build it for you. We have all the companies under our banner that can provide everything you need. Right. And they said, we'll build it for you for two to $3 billion. Sure. And everybody went, what? Which sounds like a lot, including to people in Venice. Is that American dollars or is that euros? That's American dollars. Okay. As far as I'm seeing right here. But if you go to Venice, martini is, like, $15 or 25. It's like 20 or $25 for, like, a little tiny martini at Harry's Bar. I know. Yeah. So it sounds like a lot, but all you have to do is go open the cash register at Harry's Bar on a Tuesday afternoon. You can get two to $3 billion to pay for this project. All right. Someone's a little salty about their vanishing. It was really expensive. Yes, it is. It was neat. But it's also, like, really expensive. Europe's not cheap. No. So there was a lot of accusations of corruption, of kickbacks, of the thing being artificially expensive. Apparently there was a study that found, like, this thing is they've padded this tremendously, but by the time this came out, public opinion apparently wasn't enough to stop it. Construction had started. They did their first test in 2012. Apparently, it was successful. And the Mosaic Project continues, and I believe they're tracking for 2016, they are to have all of the gates across all three of the inlets operational. Yeah. And you said multiple gates. So each of these inlets, you have the Lido, the Malimo, and then I pronounced this chiogia, but I heard it much differently on the video, so I know that's not right. But those are the three inlets. Well, that was a British student. They just pronounced things however they want. Yeah, that's true. And then we assume, because they're European, they know you're right. So it's not like one big gate for each of these things because it's on a curve and you can't just have one huge gate. So the Malimo has 19 gates, the Chiogia has 18, and they're all in one row. And then the big daddy, the Lido, has two rows, one with 20 gates and one with 21 gates. They're the same width, but they're not all the same heights. Right. And I mean, they don't need to be. No, some are taller than others. They're all about 16ft thick. So these are huge walled gates. Yeah. I don't know if we've gotten across how big they are. You said they're 16ft or about 5 meters thick. Yeah. The deepest amount of water is 100ft, which is like 30 meters. So these things are taller than that, or if need be, and then they're about 350 tons. I think that's just for one of the gates. Yes. Like one single panel that weighs as much as 737 or is it 747? 47. And they are using something that Rolls Royce makes that is basically an elevator for ships to convey each of the gates out to the sea floor. Really? Yeah. And it takes three days to move a gate. Wow. Yeah. So they're really big gates, but they are going to be very nimble when filled with compressed air and smacked around by waves. Plus they're in water. Yeah. So that helps with the weight. That reminds me that this project faces a lot of problems that the project faces. So some people have said maybe this is a good idea in theory, but practically this may or may not work. What if sea levels rise faster than we think? Yeah. Then these things are going to basically be very expensive, totally obsolete gates. Like the water would just go right over the top of the yeah, exactly. That's a nightmare scenario. Yeah. When I saw what I saw, it didn't look like to me they came out of the water enough. I was like, I would add another 5ft just to be safe. Just to be safe. So that's one possible problem. Another one that apparently they haven't addressed is the build up of sediment. Remember we said that you have to clean out the canals pretty frequently because sediment builds up, backs up septic systems that crumbles brick walls? Well, it will also fill in these trenches, which apparently need to be totally flat. And if sediment builds up, then these things aren't going to lay flat again. And you may have some problems, apparently, that's something that hasn't been addressed by the Mosaic project. How to deal with sediment build up? Well, I know they got about 150 people that will just be full time caretaking staff, and I guess part of their job will be to clean that stuff up, I would guess. And some of the other problems, anytime you're undertaking a project like this, it has to interact with the elements. And Mother Nature, they're going to be environmental concerns. And they range the spectrum here from we don't really know how this is going to affect things and disrupt the ecosystem to, well, wait a minute. We need this constant flow in and out of water twice a day to flush our giant toilet that we're living in. And proponents will say it's going to be better, actually, because and it sort of makes sense, if you have three holes going into something and you plug up two of them, you're going to have a stronger flow in the one hole. Right, exactly. So they're saying we can actually use this to manipulate this flow of water artificially and make a better toilet flusher. Exactly. Yeah. But I think that hopefully the ones who are like, well, why don't we just use this as an opportunity to update our septic system as a whole, sewer system as a whole. Hopefully those guys will win out. But pollution, increased pollution levels are definitely an issue that environmentalists are looking at. And I just get the picture in southern Italy, it's a tough game. There seems to be a lot of fighting. Like, this is a very controversial project, but it still remains so. Yeah. And it seems to be marching on. One of the other criticisms was that they basically just ignored easier, less expensive options right. That have proven effective elsewhere. Yes. The Netherlands. Yeah. Like building barrier islands underwater dikes. But although apparently they have a lot of this stuff already, and it's not necessarily helping, it's mainly just reinforcing the natural barriers that already exist. I guess they're like, why don't we just put up more of that? Yeah, I think it's interesting. It's going to be interesting to see how this plays out. I really hope it works because they suck a lot of money into this and they moved all in on this mosaic system. They can't scrap it and say, well, it didn't work. Let's think of something new. Yeah. And I wonder how much it would be. You can't just add a new gate, a new, taller gate, if the sea levels do rise faster. And the ones they have proved too short because it has to sit flush in the trench. Yeah. So you'd have to create a whole another trench to accommodate this larger gate. It'd be a real problem. That's the worst case scenario to me. If they're too short, I mean, surely they thought of that. It didn't look right to me. But they know what they're doing, right? I hope so. Pretty neat. And hopefully they have all this in that great video. A lot of footage where it looks like some parts of Venice on a daily basis with high tide is slightly underwater. Yeah. And just show people walking to work through water and delivering stuff to places through water, and everyone looks very sick of it. Yeah. Go check out on Vimeo. Venice Backstage. That is definitely worth watching. Venice backstage. Period. How does Venice work? I think they meant to put a colon there. The period bugs me. Period in a title. They're from England, Josh. No, these are the Venetians that made this. They're from Venice, Josh. They know what they're doing. Yeah. And check out stuff on the Mose Project. Moses. Moses. I just want to say MoS from Paper moon. Your favorite movie, right? Yeah. Boom. And if you want to learn even more about the Mose Project, you can type in Mose Project in the search bar athousedoforks.com. And that will bring up this article. Yeah. And, hey, check out Venice's. Sinking from Athens, Georgia. Yes, that's nice to meet you. My one buddy is no longer in the band. But you're still friendly with the other guys. I haven't been in touch, actually, but they set record and they're good folks. And if you ever get a chance to go to Venice, I recommend you do it because it is a neat town. But don't go to Harry's Bar. You have to go to Harry's Bar. Is that the legendary place? That's where the bellini was created. Why didn't you have a Bellini? You had a Bellini. She had a Ballini. I had a martini. What is a Bellini? Bellini is a peach juice, peach puree, and champagne. Okay. Very good. Yeah, but again, it's like, basically a shot for I think it was like $25 or maybe even more. Yes, but you have to you have to go. You walk past the seat that Hemingway used to drink at. Right. It's a neat place. Yeah. There's a lot of the seats around the world, though. Find a cheaper one. Yeah, I think we already went through the whole rigmar role. That leads us up to listener mail. So now it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this murderer in our midst. Murderer in the Mist. You're thinking of Gorillas in the Mist. Hey, guys. Have a boring job, so I binge listen several days a week to your show. I was listening to the insanity defense episode, and I heard a very familiar name. I happen to have met John Delling during his killing spree. I used to manage a coffee shop, and a guy was oddly peering in the window with his hand pressed against the glass, but the store was clearly open. He paced around the building for a while, thought it was pretty weird, so I sent the girl working with me. Pretty brave of you, Josh. His name is Josh, by the way. Okay. I'll just see what I do. I sent the girl working with me in the back. Oh, no. Okay, I take it all back. He's trying to protect her. And that was me. I sent her in the back and told her to hang out there until he left. He came in, looked the menu over, and asked if our ice cream was any good. I gave him a free sample. Here you go. We don't want any trouble. He liked it. He liked it and said he had to go to his car to get some money. He literally said, I'll be right back. Then he went out to his car for a while and drove away. A couple of days later, the girl I was working with that night called, crying and told me to find a newspaper. Oh, no wonder he's in the back. She's clearly fragile. She's crying like the guy was at the front door. You see that Sunday in New York Times is $6. Now, on the front page was a large mug shot of our guy from a couple of nights previous. Turns out he had actually left the store and murdered someone. Crazy. Because the ice cream drove him nuts. I guess so. And he stole something. Sold their car that same evening. Anyway, I just thought it was an interesting connection. The guy is definitely in need of some help and as you mentioned, had no shot at getting it in. The legal system here in Idaho is clearly a tricky ethical area. Thanks, everybody. And that is from Josh. Noel. That's from way back, the insanity defense. Yeah. That was a good one, though, it turned out. Yeah, we learned a lot. So he fed a guy ice cream and he went out and killed someone. Man, that is really scary stuff. His coworker, who was around for none of it, cried when she read the paper. Yeah, apparently she never got any work done because anytime a customer came in, she gets sent to the back. Crazy. What was the dude's name? Josh Noel. Yeah. Josh. Thanks, Josh. It's always good to hear from another Josh because we are the greatest names on the planet. Josh. This is such a great name. It is. Especially if you say it in other ways, like Josh or harsh. There's all sorts of ways you can say Josh, but really the only right way to say it is josh. And it's a verb. Yeah, you can josh. And it's a friendly verb, too, because you're making fun of somebody, but in a non hostile way. Yeah, chuck is a verb, too. How about that? Yeah, look at those, right, Joshua? Chucking. Yeah, that's good stuff, chuck. I can't believe it's taken us this many years to come up with that. If you want to tell us to shut up, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffychano, drop us a line via email at stuffpodcast@houseupworks.com. And wait, don't press stop yet. Go check out our awesome website. It will be your new favorite home on the web. Just bookmark it and do yourself a favor, make it your home page. The URL is http www.stuffyouichhtnow.com for more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseoffworks.com. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer 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 podcast. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today." | ||
42776212-53a3-11e8-bdec-c3bacfa1274f | What's the deal with subpoenas? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/whats-the-deal-with-subpoenas | Subpoenas are all the rage. But what do they even mean if someone can just ignore it? Learn this and a lot more in today's episode. | Subpoenas are all the rage. But what do they even mean if someone can just ignore it? Learn this and a lot more in today's episode. | Tue, 22 Oct 2019 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=22, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=295, tm_isdst=0) | 49458029 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And there's Jerry Jerome Roland. Over there, the legal eagles of podcasting. Can I be Daryl? Hannah? Yes. I call Barbara Hershey. I don't think so. Who was it? Oh, Legal Eagles. I know. Deborah Winger. Yes. Was Daryl Hannah even in that now? Yes, she was the client of Deborah Winger. Okay. And you're not Redford? No. I always have to be redford. Everybody's always like, the guy is a regular Robert Redford. He'll play him in this scenario. Right? That's the street chatter. Yes. Can I still be Barbara Hershey even though she wasn't in the movie? Sure. I think I'm thinking of Beaches. Oh, well, that means I get to be Bet Midler, right? I wonder how many Pod Save America listeners we just lost who just casually decided to give us a chance. I want to learn about subpoenas. All right, before we get going, though, can we quickly thank the cities of Orlando and Florida and New Orleans and greater Louisiana yes. For two fun live shows. Yeah, those were a lot of fun. Let's see, we did Orlando on October 9, I think, and then the 10th for New Orleans. Regardless, it was night, back to back, two fun filled nights, and they were just both amazing shows. Yeah. And when this comes out, I think New York will have been over. So. Thank you, New York. We presume it's going to have been a great time. That three night run at the Bellhouse, they're always great there. And that's it, too. That's it for us for the year, Chuck. So, I mean, thank you to everybody who came out to see our shows this year. Yeah. Can we go ahead and tease our January schedule, or should we not? I think we can, sure. All right. Well, we're hoping to be back at Sketch Fest again, and then what do we settle on? I don't know if settling is the right way to put it, but we decided to settle between Seattle. We're doing Seattle. Oh, we are? Yeah. And normally for January swing, we do Portland. Seattle sketchfest. Right. Well, we've got the iHeartRadio Awards in there in Los Angeles, and we just kind of have to go to that. No, sorry. The Iheart Podcast Awards. They don't care about us at all at the Radio Awards. No. We can't even get in that building. Right, exactly. So we said, okay, well, we got to pull out one of our shows because we're old men and we just can't spend that much time on the road. So instead, we're going to take Portland and put it with another town in the spring. So don't worry, Portland, we will be out there. Maybe the Cove, that's the talk. That's the chatter around town. But we have no dates confirmed yet. But just look for us again in the Pacific Northwest at the beginning of the year. It's a much better way to put it. Yeah. So do you want to talk about subpoenas? You got any other housekeeping to do? I don't think so. Subpoenas, weird spelling. Well, yeah, so I looked up the word subpoena is actually two words. It means under penalty. And it's typically the first two words that were read in this rid of subpoena, basically saying under penalty of blah blah blah. Yeah, I was thinking all I could think about is really dirty, dark stuff. Oh, yeah. So I just let you fill in the blah, blah blah. But anyway, under penalty of whatever, you need to do one of two things, and there are two types of subpoenas that everybody hears. Subpoena. You think like law and order. Maybe visions of Central Park running through your head because it's your only exposure to Central Park is from law and order. Yeah. Or you think of the US government, because a lot of this is going to be about congressional subpoenas, because that's really the juiciest subpoena. Yeah. It's not like it's new that Congress has just recently started issuing subpoenas. It's new in the conscious of America in this age, this generation. I mean, it's been going on for a while, but normally when people think subpoenas until like basically 20, 17, 16, 18, not necessarily in that order, most people thought of courtroom subpoenas, and that is typically the subpoena most people are ever going to come up against in their lifetime. That's right. But you mentioned the two types. You want to break out your Latin or shall I? You take the first, I'll take the second. Okay. The first one is easy. The first one is subpoena add testifactandum. Wow, did you see that? You just made a mouse appear and run out of the room. The next one so sorry, the first one, the one you just said that means you've got to come to court. You just nailed it. Yeah. It says that you have to come and testify and you might not be a party to the lawsuit. It can be a civil case or criminal case. That's a big thing to point out. But basically it's saying you have some information, you witnessed an act, you overheard a conversation, the defendant confessed something to you. We need you to come to court and tell your story. And that's what that first subpoena is saying to do. Yes. And not necessarily court court, but it can be any kind of legal authority. Yeah, it could be a deposition, it could be an arbitration. But typically it's the authority of a court of law to basically say, we're going to levy a fine against you or we're going to arrest you and put you in jail if you don't listen. That's used to kind of enforce subpoenas. That's right. So the second one is the subpoena Ducey's Tecom. Hey, nice. Thank you. And that is basically saying, hey, you have a document, you have a hair sample, you have some sort of bodily fluids we want to get our hands on. You have secret tapes yeah. Or a computer hard drive, something like that, that we want you to produce because we want to use it as evidence. And there's a really important point to put here, like a court a court or an official of the court or of the government is saying, we want you to do this because we have this lawsuit going on and you have something we need. But it's not necessarily the judge thing. And the judge is signing off on it. It's really a lawyer for one side or the other saying, hey, I heard that this person has the secret tape and I need to get my hands on it. Judge, can you order this person to bring it to me so that I can enter it into evidence? And then the judge says, Speak to my clerk. And then the clerk of the usually the clerk of the judge who's handling that case, they say, Talk to the hand. Yeah. And they'll generally issue it on like, official court letterhead and official documentation. It's not like the judge is washing their hands of it necessarily. No, I'm sure, like if they do something egregiously wrong, the judge is going to hear about it and punish them. That's right. And then it served usually in person, kind of handed to you, like on the TV shows and in the movies. Yeah. Either by a sheriff's deputy or a process server. Yeah, but not always. It depends on if it's congressional or if it's regular Joe Schmo stuff. Yeah, for sure. But I think even if it is regular civil Joe Schmo stuff, you can still go hire the sheriff's department to serve papers to serve a subpoena. Oh, for sure. I think the congressional ones are not served by a sheriff. Oh, I see. Who do they use? I think it depends. I mean, the way congressional subpoenas work is all sort of dependent on the individual committee that's seeking that subpoena. So they all have their own individual rules about whether you need a majority vote to even get a subpoena or whether the chair of that committee has the power to grant or request a subpoena. Right. I've read some of them know that it's a real downer to get a subpoena. So some congressional committees use that mascot from the 1984 Olympics, the Eagle, to come issue your papers to you. I don't remember that one. You don't remember that eagle? No. Is this like a cartoon eagle from 1984? Yes. I mean, all I can I can't get past the Atlanta Olympics mascot. That's why I can't get back to 1984. Was it what's it or who's it? Oh, I don't even know. It was one of those two. What was that thing? I don't know. It was a last minute thing. What was the name? It was what's it or who's it was. It yes. Man, it was bad. I was out of town. I fled. You didn't miss anything. But I do remember watching the opening whatever they're called, the opening ceremonies. Opening ceremonies, right. And seeing the stainless steel pickup trucks driving around and just thinking, oh, boy. Yeah. For those of you who are like, they've talked about this before. Yeah, we have. And we're still that upset about it. We'll talk about it again in five more years. We haven't forgotten. Yeah, stainless steel pickup trucks. They haunt me. I have dreams about those trucks. Yeah, they're just circling you, playing striper at the loudest possible volume. Oh, man. Okay, so we've got different kinds of subpoenas, but both of them apply to either courts of law or Congress. So there's one big question that most people who get a subpoena ask themselves the moment they're served the paper, and that is, can I ignore this thing? Do I have to do this right? What happens to me if I just pretend like I never got this? And that's really tough to do. I was reading about process servers, and the people who are issuing the subpoena or the lawyer who's asking for the subpoena say they want some sort of proof that says, you got that paper. So there's like certain rules and regulations to serving somebody with a subpoena. So it's really difficult to pretend like you didn't get it. And a lot of people actually go to a tremendous amount of trouble to avoid being served as subpoena. Sure. They will move around, they will pretend they're not home. They won't let anyone else answer the door because in some states, you can leave it with a competent 13 year old or 18 year old. They'll slip their hands in their ears and go. Right, exactly. They'll do a lot of stuff to keep from being served, but actually it will just delay being served in the long run. There's other remedies they can use. They can mail it to your house, certified mail. And if the male person says, this was dropped off, it made it to their house, that's enough. Or if you can say, I took the numbers off my mailbox, what are you going to do now, chump? They can actually post an ad in the local legal.org in the newspaper, and then that will be considered serving you. So either way, you're going to end up being considered to have received the subpoena eventually. And if you do, you probably shouldn't ignore it. Yeah, I mean, it says here in this article, which most of this is from the House Stuff Works article about subpoenas, but it says it's a lot easier if you just go or produce the documents. But as we'll cover here and a lot of this congressional oversight stuff, that is not the route that people take generally in government. Yeah, and I thought it was kind of an oversight to not say, but also, if somebody serves you with the subpoena, you don't necessarily have to hire a lawyer, but at least consult with one, get some legal advice, say, this is what I got. What should I do with this? There's a lot of questions that you should have answered before you just act on a subpoena. Yeah. And when it comes to ignoring subpoenas, and that's what a lot of this will be about, is what's going on with our government right now and previously, and what happens if you defy Congress. Is there any accountability for that? Or can you just sit on your hands, say no, but there have been some very famous cases in the past 15 years or so where subpoenas have been ignored, starting well, not starting with, but we can start with Eric Holder, attorney General for Barack Obama. Yeah, that was a big one. That was part of the operation. The fast and Furious scandal. Scandal, yeah, there was definitely a scandal. From what I remember, it involved, like, secret gun sales or some guns were let out into the community to be traced to see who they went to, and one of them ended up being used to murder an Ice officer, I believe. Well, Attorney General Eric Holder refused under direction of Obama to answer that subpoena, and he became the first sitting cabinet member to be voted in contempt of Congress. Oh, is that right? Yeah. And you're like, oh, what happens then? Well, three and a half years later, a judge ruled that he did not have the right to defy Congress. And by that time, there was a new Congress, and it was a moot point that's a really big thing to remember is like a contempt of Congress vote, where you are supposedly in trouble for ignoring a subpoena, only lasts as long as that session of Congress. Unless the next session of Congress wants to pick it up. Yes. But then they have to hold another vote. And the chance is that there has been a change in leadership, potentially, in that Congress is high enough that if you make it through that Congress going into recess, you're probably going to get away with it. And, I mean, that's par for the course. It wasn't just Eric Holder who got away with it. Harriet Myers, who was a White House counselor. George W. Bush. There was, like, a mass political firing of US. Attorneys. Yes. And she and I think chief of staff at the time, joshua Bolton, were both held in contempt of Congress. And, man, if you look up, like, follow up reporting on this stuff, it's like, while it's going on, they're like they could face fines and jail time. Finally, I found some follow up is like, nothing happened. Absolutely nothing happened. There was no legal ramifications. There were no personal ramifications. There was nothing happened whatsoever to Harriet Myers or Joshua Bolton. Or Eric Holder for just saying Congress. The United States Congress. Go sit on it. Yeah. Which is essentially what you're saying when you ignore a subpoena. Yeah. And because of this, you remember Representative Darryl Issa, probably by name. He was involved in trying to get Eric Holder in the room, and he was so mad, he sponsored or Intro to Bill to Strengthen subpoena enforcement Power, and it died in the Senate. And before we I think we're about to take a break. Before we do that, though, we should mention that currently White House Counsel Don McGahn has refused to testify or refuse to answer his subpoena under direct order of Trump. And right now, he's being sued by the House of August. And he in particular provides an unusual situation because at least with Harriet Myers or with Joshua Bolton or with Eric Holder, when they were directed by the President at the time not to submit to that subpoena from Congress, they were part of the President's staff. Don McGahn was instructed not to cooperate with the subpoena after he had already left civil service. He was no longer part of the executive branch. So that definitely makes it unusual. But if you're sitting there and your head is popping and you're saying, wait, how this is Congress. How can the President just say, just ignore that subpoena and people get away with it? There's actually a lot of case law that's been built over the centuries that kind of establishes that. And I say, Chuck, we take a break, and then we'll dive into that after this case lawsuit's. So, Chuck, there's something about subpoenas, whether they're issued by Congress or by a court of law, when you get them that a lot of people don't realize they're negotiable, that's one really big reason to hire a lawyer is because it may be overly broad. It may be kind of a fishing expedition. It may put you at risk to come forward and give this testimony or to hand over these documents. And if you hire a lawyer and say. Hey. These are the things I'm worried about. They can go and argue to the judge. Like. Hey. How about we just limit the subpoenaed of these documents rather than everything on my client's hard drive. Or It's really a big hardship for my client to make it here. And the $15 a day that the court is paying him for coming to testify isn't actually going to cover it. So can we negotiate a higher fee or something like that? There's a lot of stuff that can be done, but this is a tactic that's also used with congressional subpoenas, too, where, say, like, the executive branch will go, I think that this is a little overly broad, but maybe we could give you this document. Will that satisfy you? And then go, no. Sometimes they say yes, though, and part of that negotiation comes out of this subpoena process. It's a response to it, but none of it would have any effect whatsoever if Congress didn't have any redress for enforcing its subpoenas if somebody ignores it. Yeah. I mean, technically, there are fines and jail time sort of looming, but the more I read about this stuff, especially when it comes to congressional oversight, the more it became clear that none of that stuff really happens. It's all just dangled out there as a means to negotiate something with each other over a pretty long period of time, usually. For sure. Yeah. The Eric Holder thing, it was like four years before he finally handed over the file, and I think Congress had already gone out of session, you said, and it was basically just the whole thing had died down, which I think is basically the stalling tactic that people ignore subpoenas for. Like that's why they're doing it. Yeah. So technically, if you defy Congress, the committee that issued that subpoena is going to vote to issue a citation, a contempt citation, and then it's got to go to the full chamber to vote on it. And if that goes through and it passes, which it has before, then there are three basic ways that you can prosecute that charge. Right. And each one is worthless. Yeah, pretty much. We would never give official legal advice, first of all, because we're not lawyers or even trained as lawyers, but from what I can tell, there's just nothing happens to you if you ignore a congressional subpoena. But most people respond to it, because I feel like the further down the food chain you are, the more likely Congress is to do something in retaliation to you. Yeah. Well, let's go through the three at least. Fine. If for no other reason than pure folly. So if they vote and that contempt citation goes through, it is then under the control of the executive branch. And you think, oh, great, the President, or oh, great, the president. It's really neither. It's the Justice Department, which is part of the executive branch. It's up to them to decide whether or not they're going to prosecute criminally, and they're going to say no. They're going to say, and we'll talk a lot about executive privilege coming up, but they will usually cite that and decline to prosecute, basically kind of saying, you know what? We don't get involved in this stuff. Right. So that is specifically when it comes to subpoenaining something from the White House correct. Or the executive branch. Now, if Congress is being ignored by, say, like, the owner of the Houston Astros, they can go to the DOJ and say, hey, the Houston Astros baseball team owners ignoring a subpoena, we want you to go after the guy, and they'll go after the guy. It's when it's executive privilege that's being cited that the DOJ says, you know, how it's our jurisdiction to decide whether to prosecute this stuff, we're going to decline to do that because it's our own people and we're just going to consider this an internal executive branch matter. Number two is the civil judgment. Right. And that's when you need the courts to basically enforce this going to court and saying, we need your help to enforce this civil suit against somebody who stiffed us. Right. Like, you know how you can go arrest somebody and put them in jail? Can you do that on our behalf? Basically. But this is super slow. Like turtle like slow. Yeah. But I think the idea is that the thought that maybe somewhere a couple of years down the line there's going to be a judgment against you where you're going to have to pay $100,000 to Congress or something like that, or spend like twelve months in jail. We'll get you to the table to negotiate what documents they actually want or what testimony they want. Yes. Just leverage. Right. So the third one is something that isn't used anymore. Really? It's called inherent contempt power. It was last used in 1935 and this is sort of the jail thing. And while there is no capital jail, they do have a holding cell. Yeah. And like the sergeant at arms of the Senate or the House, depending on who is issuing the subpoena and who voted to sold you in contempt, an armed officer of the Congress will show up and say, you're under arrest. Congress says you're under arrest. You have to come with me. Or as it's been kind of bounced around lately by Democrats in the House, replacing the idea of jailing somebody, of arresting and jailing them with a much stiffer fine than people have traditionally faced. Something more on the order of, I think between 25,000 and $250,000, I think a day actually for ignoring this kind of stuff. Which I guess that would get people moving if they actually go through with that. Yeah, I would think so. Hit them in the pocketbook. Yeah. I mean, that hard. Plus it's the government, too, so it's like, hey, you know these tax credits you're getting? We're taking those away. And this tax return that you were expecting, we're going to hang on to that. This is where they could actually do something. Yes, I think so. If it's not congressional subpoena, if it's just like we're talking about a regular court subpoena, it all depends on what jurisdiction you're in and the presiding charge that's on that case. Yes, but again, because you can be arrested as a matter of routine course of a court, you really should respond at least to a subpoena or else the chances of something happening to you from a court of law much higher than Congress, apparently. Sure. Can we talk about case law? Yes. Finally, we got all that boring stuff out of the way. Yeah. This first one is kind of interesting and the way the judiciary works in this country is just super fascinating to me. The older I get, the more I read about it. I'm not becoming a legal wonk by any means illegal legal. But I get it. I get it that people are super into this kind of thing. I hadn't realized you gotten into the judiciary. Yes. I think it's pretty fascinating what got you into it. Just like news following the news or something. Yeah. And just sort of reading about a case, like in this case from 1800 and then precedent and what that means. Right. And when it shouldn't matter and should matter. Like the one from 1000 you're talking about is US. V. Cooper. Yeah. Thomas Cooper, who was a scientist and an attorney and a thorn in the side of President John Adams. Right. In a big way, yeah. So in, I think 1798, the US. Passed the Sedition Act, which said that it's illegal to criticize the US. Government. Yes. Unfortunately, when Thomas Jefferson came into office, he said, we're going to kind of do away with that and keep it away forever as much as we can. But there was a guy named Thomas Cooper who, like you said, was a thorn in the side of John Adams, and he was arrested and prosecuted during a time when the Sedition Act was still in effect and he lost his case. But the way that it relates to subpoenas and ignoring subpoenas and specifically the executive branch, ignoring subpoenas is that all the way back in 1800, when the United States was just a couple of decades old, this guy Thomas Cooper tried to subpoena John Adams to come testify as part of this case. And the court said, we don't really subpoena presidents. We decided, yeah, and that's a precedent for the rest of history. It basically said presidents are accepted from the goings on in normal court stuff, even when they're directly related to the case, they don't have to come. Right. But that same case but you can subpoena someone from Congress. That's a big one, too. That was a big one. It didn't work out for Cooper. Like you said, he was convicted, so none of that mattered except for establishing this president. You got it. In this case, you could say it either way, I guess. So that moves us on to seven years later, US. V. Burr. This is John Marshall. Chief Justice John Marshall headed this one up. And basically this had to deal with President Thomas Jefferson saying, hey, they want you to come to provide these documents. It was a Doozy's tekom right. And Jefferson was like, hey, here are some of those documents that you want. And they're like, but where are the rest of them? He's like, you know, I'm not going to give you those, and I'm also not going to show up because you know what? I got to be president. Yeah. The executive branch is too powerful and too important. It's the only branch that's supposed to be open 24 7365. And I just can't get away, like my work is too important to come be part of this. And it gets less and less able to prove these days, I think. Yeah, for sure. You could take off a half a day, right? You got a BlackBerry, you can definitely email, keep tabs on work while you're gone. But yeah, I thought the same thing too, that it does not hold water, but it does set a precedent for the President, like you were saying too. And those two cases basically say together again, the President doesn't have to come be part of this. And executive privilege is, I guess, where this came from, from this particular case, where it's saying, like, now the President doesn't have to have anything to do with this and the President's documents or the President's business can't be subpoenaed because we're going to call this executive privilege. Right? And there are basically five types generally of executive privilege that have been used thus far. One is presidential communications. Number two is the deliberative process. Number three is attorney client communications. Big one. Fourth one is law enforcement investigations and the fifth one is anything that's sensitive in terms of military or national security or diplomatic relations, that kind of thing. And that's the one in particular that has been upheld over the years, the idea that there are secrets that the White House has that just need to be kept or else people are going to lose their lives or else diplomatic ties are going to be upset, that kind of stuff. And so those should be protected under executive privilege. But the rest of the stuff has been subject to scrutiny over the years. For sure, yeah, because obviously an executive president is going to try and draw that privilege as broadly as possible. Oh yeah, for sure. And that's especially been the case ever since Nixon onward, at least where there's this idea called the unitary executive theory which is basically like these are separate branches of government and the executive branch is in charge of everything to do with the executive branch. It's none of Congress's business and the executive is basically this extraordinarily powerful single person and that's been attempted to be invoked improved time and time again in throwing off congressional oversight. And that seems to be kind of what we're in the midst of right now, is a really big test of this unitary executive theory in saying like not only just the President, but the entire President staff and in fact the entire executive branch can ignore subpoenas from Congress because Congress doesn't have any authority over the executive branch. And that's kind of what we're witnessing right now. And on the one hand, there's really just one hand. The great value of having an executive, like almost a unitary executive is that if you're a vested interest or a very powerful group, you've only got one person to change over to your side rather than 500 of them. Do you know. What I mean? Yeah. So it's very dangerous. It also very much flies in the face of the three branches of government and the checks and balances that each one is supposed to have over the other. Yes, because part of Congress's role is what's called congressional oversight that says we're responsible for making sure you're not getting out of control. The President, the executive branch, has veto power, saying, Congress, you guys are nuts. This is no law that should be passed. I'm going to say no to this law. And then the judiciary has judicial review. They get to say this law is unjust, or this executive agency's action is illegal. And by doing this, these three branches keep one another from getting too strong. And the unitary executive theory flies in the face of that and says, no, the executive branch is more powerful than all of them. The other two don't have checks over them, and let's just see what happens from here. That's right. Should we talk about watergate? Yeah. So we should do a full episode on Watergate. I think I've said that before. I agree. But everyone knows what happened there. President Nixon was involved in some hinky activities and congressional committees. There was one special prosecutor in particular named Archibald Cox who said, Wait a minute, you've got these secret tapes. You've been taping people in the Oval Office. Turn them over. Here's a subpoena. We demand that you turn that over along with some other stuff. And Nickel said, you demand, and we want you to come here and testify as well. And of course, Nixon was like, no, I don't think that stuff is going to happen. Here you go. Here are some of these tapes. Just ignore all the parts where it seems like it was heavily edited and sounds real funny because someone who was just in the room is no longer in the room, and there are non sequiturs all over the place. It's like the videotape of the guy who got the high score in Donkey Kong. Right. You know what I mean? But executive privilege was what he claimed he was protected by. So this went to the Supreme Court in 1974 with United States v. Nixon and Chief Justice Burger's opinion cited everything from Justice Marshalls Marbury v. Madison to the one we just talked about, united States v. Burr. And basically they're walking a fine line there with the judiciary because they're saying, listen, the President needs to be confidential and protected when executing these duties, these constitutional duties, on the one hand. But on the other hand, due process of law is an important thing, and that's what we're in charge of. So they kind of ended up wanting to protect each of the branches needs, it seems like. Yeah, and I think they did a very good job. And the fact that it was unanimous, I think Rehnquist was involved with some of the people involved. So he recused himself from voting, but it was unanimous. Eight to zero vote saying, no, you got to hand the tapes over. Because we don't think that you're just trying to protect intelligence secrets or military secrets or diplomatic secrets. We think you're just basically using the cover of executive privilege to cover your own behind. Exactly. And that does not supersede due process in a court of law, which is going on over here with the trials of these guys who broke into the Watergate. So you got to hand over the tapes. And in doing so, like you said, he cited another case, Marbury v. Madison, and that's a really, really important case in here, too, which I think we should talk about starting now. Well, I wanted to mention another quick thing before you dive into Marlbury. Another case USB at and T, this just basically laid out that the courts are only going to get involved if everyone really tried in good faith to work it out beforehand. So, like basically said, we're the last stop here. Don't just go run into the Supreme Court or the courts in general to figure this stuff out for you. Right. Although I think the Constitution says that the Supreme Court are the ones who are supposed to be running the show when it comes to a high enough official. A case regarding a high enough official. Oh, yeah. All at and T hey said was, you have to really try to work it out amongst yourself before it even gets to us. Got you. Okay, yeah, I see what you're saying. Good faith, of course, is probably defined, too. Right. So in Marbury versus Madison, that one basically said, hey, there's this one component here. Yes, we've established that the legislative branch, Congress, can issue subpoenas and that the executive branch can exert executive privilege and say no to some subpoenas under some cases. But we're also going to say in US. V. Nixon in 1974 that the Court can say no. Your right to secrecy is overshadowed by a right to do process in most cases. But the one that really says at the center of this is the judiciary, and that the judiciary has a right to decide cases where the legislative and executive branches are in dispute. Is this Marlborough versus Madison case from, I think, 18 four, and it was, from what I understand, a masterstroke of legal eagleness by Justice John Marshall. Yeah, it's the long and short of that one. That Secretary of State James Madison. He was trying to withhold the commission of William Marbury. Was that the case? Yeah, because the outgoing Adams had packed the courts with friendly judges and the commission had not all been mailed out. And Madison was withholding some and they basically said, Listen, man, you can't do this. It is your job. You shall commission all the officers of the United States. It's like right there in black and white, and you lose. Right. So that was one part of it. But what Marshall figured out and what made this a masterstroke of legal legalness is that there was something called a writ of mandemos, which basically says, you have to do this, which have been granted to the Supreme Court like an act in 1789. Marshall said. So, yes, madison has to give this over. Like, this is just part of his duties, and he's following a law that Congress made, so he's subject to that law as a minister of the government. But at the same time, the rid of mandemist power that the Supreme Court has been given is unconstitutional. We're not in a position to issue a writ of manimus because under the Constitution, we're not given that right. And so in doing that, he established the Supreme Court as the interpreter of what law is constitutional and what isn't right. And he did that by saying, this law that gives us this amazing power is unconstitutional. So he did it by taking power away from the Supreme Court. But in doing so, he gave the Supreme Court a tremendous advantage over the centuries in interpreting what law is constitutional and what isn't, and placing itself as the arbiter of disputes between the legislative branch and the executive branch. Yeah. Which is I mean, that's a lot of what the Supreme Court decides is constitutionality, and it all comes from the 18 fort case. Landmark legal. Eagle, should you take another break? Sure, man. All right, we'll take another break and talk a little bit about a little bit more about Nixon and what some other presidents have done when slapped with a subpoena right after this. So we all know what happened to Nixon. The justice did rule that, hey, dude, you got to comply with this. Ducey's tech them here, and you got to turn over these tapes. So Nixon turned over tapes. He did. And it all worked out in the end. Everybody was like, this is what you were protecting. This is fine, man. State president for a couple more terms. And he did. And the world was a better place for it. That's right. Flash forward to Bill Clinton. That was okay. So he said, hey, listen, man, what goes on? That was much better. What happens in the Oval Office stays in the Oval Office. Executive privilege. They're like even that stuff. And he said, well, it's executive privilege. Hanky Panky falls under executive privilege. So he said, I have executive immunity. I have that privilege, and neither me nor my aides have to respond to these subpoenas. Right. And then he fell into line eventually. Yeah. Newt Gingrich got him in the line. Well, yeah. And largely because of us. V Nixon. They said, you know what? You can't stand by this broad executive privilege. Stand behind this wall that you've built. You're going to have to comply. And he did eventually. Right. Which is traditionally what happens. Like the Congress issued subpoenas, the executive branch ignores it. The Congress holds the executive branch in contempt, and the judiciary comes in and almost always says, no, you're over exerting your executive privilege. Do what they're saying. Yeah. Which, you know, that gives me hope because in the past, president has been set that due process wins out over executive privilege kind of across the board, it seems like. But that only holds as long as two things are upheld. One, that the Supreme Court is an independent body regardless of who appointed the judges, and then two, as long as the executive branch recognizes the authority of the Supreme Court. This is where we are starting. Like, some people can see far enough along the horizon that, hey, this path we're heading down right now, there's a point where we could reach where there could be a Supreme Court decision that says, yes, executive branch. You have to hand over these aides for testimony. They have to come testify about Russian interference in the 2016 election or this call between the President and the Ukrainian president. And the executive branch still says no. And that is the point that everyone says, we have no idea what happens then. We have no idea. Do you go arrest the Secretary of the treasury? Do you go arrest these Cabinet members? This has never been done before. Like, what remedy do you really have? And that's where we are with testing out this unitary executive theory. How far can you kick the kind of unwritten rules of the Constitution? Well, there's lots of written rules of Constitution, but also, like, the unwritten rules and procedures that kind of have guided all of this for so long. What happens when those things just stop being recognized as valid? What do you do? Well, I don't know because in the past, through our history and this is on both sides of the aisle, democrats and Republicans have always not successfully, but they've always tried to argue that courts should not get in the subpoena battles and should not get involved with this executive privilege claim. Right? And in particular, Trump's legal counsel's latest position, which I think came out in September of this year it's a doozy, basically takes and here's something we need to remember here. Like, this is not brand new with Donald Trump, right? Like, if you can't stand Donald Trump, this is his White house. His administration is building on stuff that previous presidents have built on, both Democrats and Republicans alike. There has been a real push, basically since Nixon to instill as much power into the presidency and the executive branch as possible. And this is an extreme version of that, but it's still kind of following the same path. But what they're doing is more aggressive than what previous administrations have done. And they're basically saying this if you subpoena us, the executive branch, if you, the Congress, subpoena one of our people, any of our people, for any reason whatsoever, the president can say no. Do not respond to that subpoena. Do not go before Congress. Do not hand over those documents. I'm the President. I'm ordering you to. Congress can issue rid of contempt or find the person in contempt, but that's it. That's where it ends. Because the president can say, well, this is an inter branch dispute between the legislative branch and the executive branch. And because the judiciary can't be drafted or shouldn't be drafted in to solve these disputes, that's all it will remain. It's an interbranched dispute. And the Supreme Court really has no purview in deciding these cases. And when you have that, then that means that the executive branch has been removed from the oversight of law. It becomes above the law. The law no longer applies to it. And so whatever the president wants to do, whatever the president directs his or her agencies to do, is de facto legal. Just because the President and the executive branch are not subject to the laws of the land, including rulings by the highest court in the United States, that's what the latest argument is setting us up for. Yeah. I mean, this is what the Justice Department there was a great article in the Washington Post by Harry Litman called the Justice Department's outlandish and arrogant position on congressional subpoenas. And this is from the article. It said, according to the Justice Department, there is no constitutional or statutory basis for a congressional committee to try to enforce the subpoenas in the federal courts where the executive branch has decided not to do so. Basically, yeah, they said no, and so they said no. And all of this arose from an opinion regarding Trump's tax returns, I believe. Yes. That's sort of where the whole thing got started. Yeah. Where the treasury secretary, Stephen Mnuchin, said, no, we're not doing that. And Congress said, well, we're holding you in contempt. And then the Office of Legal Counsel from the White House issued this opinion. It's a doozy. But it's also saying, like, what are you guys going to do? What can you do? And that's the big question now. Well, and it makes you wonder what would have happened if Darryl Issa's bill had gone through that makes subpoenas super enforceable. Right. Because we've seen it again on both sides of the aisle, where one political party will get mad and vote something in that will come back to sting them later on. Right on the hind end. It is. But also you also can't help but wonder, is a Republican loyalty to Congress greater than the Republicans loyalty to the executive branch? It's like in any restaurant. There's tension between the white staff and the kitchen staff, but they're all working at the same restaurant. They're all trying to do the same thing. We just get high quality, nourishing meals out to the patrons who are citizens like you and me. Right. But there's still tension. You're not doing it fast enough or you burn these fries or something like that. But we benefit from that tension. We the patrons of this restaurant that we call America. That's right. At the end of the day, everyone just goes behind the restaurant and smokes a joint by the dumpster. You know, maybe that would make our Congress or government work more efficiently if the executive branch and the legislative branch and the judicial branch all got together and burned a doobie together by the grease trap. Right, exactly. I don't even remember what my analogy was meant to insert, but it's fine. But we are witnessing some historical stuff right now that is not normal at all from Watergate stuff. And I'm not even relating to impeachment proceedings. I'm just saying, like, this level of ignoring congressional subpoenas may be unprecedented, and if not, then the closest historical precedent we have is the Watergate scandal. Yeah, but I think Congress is one recourse to say, that's fine, that's fine, Minutiae. You just ignore us. We're going over here as Congress and we are altering our ability to jail people to say, no, actually, we can find you $250,000 a day and we will do it. That could be the leverage that gets people to actually comply with the subpoenas. But we'll find out, because if Congress has to actually pass a law to do that, the President has veto power over that. Well. And there are also all sorts of other things that have nothing to do with this, that Congress uses his leverage or negotiation tactics like, hey, do you want us to push through some of these appointees, or should we just keep stalling forever? Right. All kinds of that stuff is on the table. But when you have a president that comes out in January and says, you know what? I don't mind stall all you want. I like the term acting because that gives me more leeway. Then all of a sudden it's not leveraged anymore. You got anything else? No. Very curious to see what happens with this McGann case. Probably nothing. I am, too. Will it be the crumbling of our democracy? Who knows? We'll find out in a few years. If you want to know more about subpoenas, we'll just go look it up. And if you get a subpoena yourself, get a lawyer. Don't be stupid. And since I said, don't be stupid friends, it's time for a listener mail. This is about Obama's. I got a bunch of stuff about this I didn't realize. I made a prediction. Okay. Yeah, that one's going to be sitting in the coffers. Okay, guys, about 15 months ago, I started my journey through the stuff you should know. Archives have been on a steady campaign. About twelve to 16 episodes a week. That's healthy. Wow. Why am writing, though? Ten years ago, Chuck made a bold prediction in the rumors, myths and Truths behind Obama's Health Care plan episodes. Did we do like, four of those? Yes. I think we did four. You're right. But this one was specifically about that episode, Chuck. I said, Call me in ten years if there are no more private insurance companies, because that was one of the big knocks on it. It's like, this is going to do away with private insurance and I'll buy you a beer. It's tragic. Chuck legitimately said I'm on record, and he extended the bet to anyone out there. Now, that statement was more of a gentleman's bet than a legal promise. However, that is more binding, in my opinion. Nonetheless, I would like to congratulate you, Chuck. I was getting worried there for a second on the expiration of that term in that promissory statement. That could have been a pretty pricey liability that things turned out a little differently. A million beers, Chuck. Every single one of our listeners would have written in and asked for it. I know. That is from Jack Simmons. Nice going, Jack, and welcome to the club. We're glad you found us, and even more so that you like us, so we'll do our best to keep it up for you and everybody else. That email is a couple of months old, but he's probably forgotten about us already. That's right. He's moved on to Pod Save America. That's right. Well, if you want to get in touch with us, like Jack did, you can go on to Stuffyoushouldnow.com, check out our social links there. You can also send us an email, wrap it up, spent it on the bottom, and send it off to Stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio's how stuff works. For more podcasts My Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. 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c93908a4-4314-11e8-bbd1-77b079c5f38c | Two Times In the 70s When People Buried Ferraris | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/two-times-in-the-70s-when-people-buried-ferraris | Not once, but twice in the 1970s people buried amazingly valuable Ferraris, arguably the greatest sports cars ever built. One was dug up after being secretly buried; the other was put in the ground forever. These are their stories. | Not once, but twice in the 1970s people buried amazingly valuable Ferraris, arguably the greatest sports cars ever built. One was dug up after being secretly buried; the other was put in the ground forever. These are their stories. | Thu, 19 Apr 2018 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=19, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=109, tm_isdst=0) | 43930117 | 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. Hello, Australia. Hello, New Zealand. We're coming to see you. That's right. Are you psyched? I'm psyched, man. I'm ready to encounter all the deadly animals that are going to be in our way. I'm ready to hug a koala bear by a giant knife. I'm ready to play a didjuridoo. Yeah. What other weird tropes can we talk about? Well, we could probably drink a few oil cans of Foster, the national beer down there. Maybe a slab. I can't wait to get beat up by everybody for saying all this stupid stuff that we've said over the years. All right, everyone. We're super excited. Years in the making. We are coming to see you saturday, September 1 at the Astor Theatre in Perth sunday, September 2 ICC in Brisbane monday, September 3 at Goldfield Theater in Melbourne thursday, the 6th at Enmore Theatre in Sydney And we're going to wrap it up and find style at the Bruce Mason Theater in Auckland, New Zealand. It is going to be a great time. Tickets are on sale now as of April 17 and you can go to Syssklive.com for more info and buy tickets. See you soon. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetofworkscom. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry. Guess what Jerry's doing? She's eating her lunch, which is what she always does. So this makes this Stuff You Should Know just back from the road, the grueling two city tours were it was kind of grueling because I get really nervous before DC. Shows in particular. Yeah. So thank you to Boston, Massachusetts, the Commonwealth making it nice and easy and relaxing. The commonwealth in the district. We didn't go to a state. No, we didn't, did we? Yeah. Those poor schmoes in DC. Can't even they don't even have representation. Yes. But they can buy weed. Really? I didn't know that. I don't know if they have shops, but I know that DC. Is one of the places that supposedly voted it in. But it usually takes years after to roll that out. Sure. To roll that up. It's a big thing. I read a really interesting article. I think it was in The New Yorker years back when right after Washington and Oregon passed. They were the first to pass recreational, right? Yes. And I can't remember who it profiled or what state the guy was working for, but it was this guy who basically was like, okay, the voters voted this in. Go figure out how to do this and do it right so that we actually get rid of illegal weed and organized crime and all that stuff. But also, don't hurt the alcohol. Lobby. Like this guy had so many interesting balls juggling in the air that it was a really great article. Check it out. Don't remember what it was called. I'm pretty sure it was the new yorker. No recollection of the year. Go. Wait. I just left. So we're talking today not about weed or the new yorker or anything like that. Even jerry's lunch. Chuck. We're talking about ferraris, one of the most beautiful cars, car lines. One of the greatest automotive manufacturers of all time. Yeah. It's funny, dudes. Like, you and I, obviously there's one Ferrari to us. Although I have grown to appreciate other ferraris over the years, like the ferris bueller ferrari and some of those older, cool ones. But for guys like us, the magnum pi ferrari. Right. Is the Ferrari to end all Ferraris. Was that like the 330? Yes. I think. I don't even remember. I call it the magnum. Sure. That's all you need to call it. One of the greatest looking cars in the history of cars. And I'm not even a sports car guy. Right? No, I'm not either. But that is probably the greatest car ever made. It's dope. Yeah. So magnum could rock that thing. And if you watch him get in and out of it, it's pretty funny. Just that alone is like, wow, it's a really well made car. Well, yeah. Also, like tom sell, like 9ft tall. Yeah, he kind of is. Are his shorts that small? But that ferrari that I think is at 330 shorts were very small. A lot of thigh on that show. It was like a clown car. Basically, when he'd get out of it, higgins would come after and rick, man, what a show. But that's not the ferrari that we're talking about today. No. And I want to say so, there's some numbers that are in here. I went and looked up the real numbers. These are way low by the as far as value of the car. Yeah. If you want to get fascinated, everybody, even if you're not into Ferraris, just type in some of the names of the ferraris that we're going to throw out there today in the years, and you will find an entire world out there of breathtakingly rich people who buy greek tycoon half a million dollar cars. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, people value different things, obviously. I've never been a guy that thought like a $75,000 car. I've always just thought, why would somebody spend that kind of money? But some people, they love their car. Sure. Yeah. That's their jam. That's kind of what this episode is for. It's a car episode from two guys who are not car guys. So dig in and prepare to be outraged. Yeah. A moment after moment, I've got my kind of SUV that my brother thinks is a minivan. It's a crossover. Is that what they're called? No, a crossover is like a car and SUV. Yours is a minivan. And an SUV crossover. Yeah. I drive a Honda Pilot. Now, everybody. And the Pilot underwent to change from looking like a forerunner type of SUV a couple of years ago, I think. Then they kind of shrunk it and squatted it to where it sort of looks like their minivan put a clown nose on the front. I tried to get a Minivan. I tried to get the Honda Odyssey in them, and I was like, no, we're not getting a minivan. Well, I saw it just yesterday, and I can tell you it's a fine looking car. I appreciate it. Yeah. And you look totally normal. Drive again. First time I've ever had leather seats under my butt. That is so nice here at 47 years old. And you're just, like, fart. What? That's how you fart in a leather seat. Classy, like well, plus, it doesn't absorb those cloth seats. They get a little sneaky. Oh, they do? Yeah, they do. And it accumulates over time. You know what I mean? Yeah. That's why if you're ever going to buy a used car, everybody, which, frankly, I think you always should smell the seat. No, just do yourself a solid and splurge on the leather, because you can wipe those off. Right. But I do everyone, take heart. I'm true to my roots. I have my pickup truck because it's paid for and I still use it for holland. Nice garbage. That's my side job. I didn't know that. Yeah, that's cool. Good to know. Do you have a card? No, you just flagged me down. I just drive around yelling out the window. It's a good idea. You don't need a card. Why waste money on that? Exactly. So we're talking Ferraris today, and we're talking specifically a two year period in the when not one, but two Ferraris made the news for being buried. Can I not? Yeah, if you want to. Terrify Horrify, a Ferrari enthusiast, talk about burying their favorite car, especially how they did it the second way. All right, should we start out with the first one? Yes. All right. Spring in Beverly Hills. Very lovely, I imagine. Yeah, I mean, it's always lovely out there in Beverly Hills. Yeah, that's the slogan they put on the T shirts. That's right. There was a socialite named and she was married to well, the story is a little convoluted, but she was the widow of a Texas oil tycoon named Ike West. And this is the bare bones beginning. She was married to this guy. He died, and she had a car that she loved, a Ferrari. America 333 30 America. And her wish was to be buried in this thing. Right. And we'll go ahead and leap to the end and say that did happen. And now we'll fill it in with all the exciting details. Yeah. So this lady, Sandra West, she actually was born and raised in Beverly Hills. That's right. Her parents owned a clothing store, and so she was, like, middle class, but she was a looker. And she started dating, like, hunky stars, like Elvis. She was hot to Trot and Sinatra. I think that's actually fair to say. She was a fun loving person, but also a very lonely person, as we will see. So she starts dating around, and she ends up dating a guy named Saul West. Yeah. A little weird how this all happened. So Saul West was a Texas oil tycoon, and he was actually well, he was in a way, but he was actually the younger brother of IQST. So Sandra West, when she meets Saul, she doesn't know that I quest exist. And she's not super happy with Saul. Apparently. He ran around on her and everything. Yeah. Not a good guy. And she was like, wait a minute, you have a brother, and he's an older brother, and we all know what that means. And he's the true heir to the family fortune. Where is he, do you say? And Saul was like, oh, he's just a washed up loser. He loves drugs and drinking, and the parents, they're sick of them. So they sent him down to Mexico to live with his bodyguard. Yeah, that's where you go to clean up. That's another episode right there. I looked into Ike West. There's not a lot about them online. Yeah. I wonder, is it disparaging to say that she was a gold digger? No. Yes, it is. She undertook and carried out a project successfully, which is marry a rich guy. Right. But here's the thing. She could have married Saul West. He was rich. It's not like he didn't have access to the family fortune. He was the one of the, I think, two brothers who was in the good graces of the family. Yeah. So it's not like he didn't have an allowance. Right. She apparently wasn't really happy with Southwest, so she went after Ike West. And it wasn't like just picking the lowest hanging fruit. Like, she had to work for this. And she did. She, like, took this dude who was down and out in Mexico living with his body, going not down and out in Beverly Hills. No, that was Nicknally. Yes. Because his family kicked him out of the US. To go live in Mexico and just basically do whatever you're going to do. God knows what this guy did in Mexico. Yeah, but she went down there, like you said, cleaned him up, I guess, got him off drugs. And he must have thought, this is great. This lady came all the way down here. My brother's girlfriend came all the way down here, right. To take care of me. I think she likes me. Well, she definitely did. And he turned over a new leaf. He said, you know what? I'm going to come back to the United States, and I want to take the reins of this company that is rightfully mine, and this is my wife or my wife to be, I'm going to ask her to marry me. And they got married. Yeah. So she cleans the dude up, they get married, and then first thing is she's like, okay, now we're moving to Beverly Hills and I want a Ferrari. And he bought her Ferrari, bought her that 1964 Ferrari America 330, good looking car. And I looked and it was the Ferrari 330 SN. Whatchu, five zero fifty five? And I was like, what is SN? I can't see it. Yes. So I looked. There are so few of those made Ferraris, like these vintage Ferraris, that they'll actually put the serial number after it. And the serial number is usually a very small number. It's not like one of these ones that they ran out a number, so they started using letters. It's like four or five numbers usually, right? Yeah. Like my Honda Pilot, when they give it to me, they're like, here's your Honda Pilot serial number. Right. 80, nine, AJ two. You just checked your watch in the middle of it. Yeah, that's the one I want. So they will actually, if you look, they'll add the serial number after the name of this specific car is what they're talking about. And they can do that because this particular Ferrari America, the 1964 that she had was one of just 50 ever made. So it was a hot car right out of the gate. Yeah. All right, so they're in Beverly Hills. He has health problems because he had that history of abusing his body. He had some rapid weight fluctuations, which is never great for your health. And he ended up dying in Las Vegas at the Flamingo Hotel. What a way to go. In 1968 under what is labeled here as mysterious circumstances. It's all it's labeled anywhere. I can't find anything out about it. I wonder how many people have died at the Flamingo Hotel under mysterious circumstances over the years, whose family successfully covered it up so that a couple of schmoes like us, years and years later, 40, 50 years later, can't find out what happened. Right. So how long were they married? Do you know what year they got married? So I believe in 1964. Okay, so they were married a short four years, but nevertheless, Sandra West became heiress to that fortune. Yeah, she got Ike's claim to the company. His share went to her after he died. Right. And that's the thing. Like, you can say what you will about her setting her sights on the true air and him living pretty fast, but they appeared to very much love each other. He left her his share of the family fortune. She took his last name. She said that when she filled out a will, she wanted to be buried in Texas next to her husband, not in Beverly Hills, where she was born and raised and spent most of her life. So they were like an actual real couple. So I have the impression that when he died, like, there was something missing for sure in her life, especially considering that she is roundly known as a fairly lonely person. Yeah, it was like me and Emily, I married her for her dowry. Right. As the daughter of a central Ohio autoglass magnate. Right, but it's real. That's right. Well, maybe we should take what are you about to say? He's laughing at autoglass magnate. That's what he does. Okay. Seneco Glass, everybody. Plugin father in law's company. Nice job. You need someone to come out and you had a tree fall on your window. Rick will take care of you. That's nice. That is nice. Which he's going to be at our Cleveland show, by the way, which is great. He should be. It's like right there. Yeah. All right, maybe we should take a break because I see the words Inglebert Humperdinck in front of me. We'll come back and reveal the secret right after this. Only 45% of high school students feel they are prepared for college or careers. Stride career prep is helping change that. Stride Career Prep let students take charge of their education and their future by combining real world skills training and traditional academics. Students can earn college credit while in high school or get the training needed to land a job right after graduation. Stride Career Prep prepares your team for 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. What secret? Well, she dated inklebert humperdin. Okay. Yeah. After Ike West died. Right. She basically made the scene. She became a Hollywood socialite. Yes. And I went to see him in concert when I was a little kid. Oh, really? Yeah, it was one of those like I always say, my first concert was Cheap Trick because that was the first one that I paid to go see. But my parents, as much as they didn't like music, they weirdly took me to see Kenny Rogers, Inklebert Humperdink, and I think Bobby Goldsboro. Nice. Those are the three shows that I have some faint recollection of being in the building. Wow, those are some good early shows. And my mom saw Elvis. I didn't go, but I think you told me that one, that very last tour. Yeah, I think that was in the Graceland episode, probably. So, yes. Engelbert Humperdinc is one of the people she dated. She made a name for herself dressing up as the Texas rodeo queen, wearing, like, fringy stuff with rhinestones and a cowboy hat. She went down to Rodeo Drive. We should say that she was like a genuine, legitimate died in the wool car enthusiasts. Not only did she have that America 330, she also had a GTS. No, I'm sorry. A 365 GT and a Dino. Or is it a dino? Do you know? I think it's probably Dino. Okay. Anadino. She had three Ferraris, plus also a Blackhawk. I didn't look that up. What's that? So Elvis liked that car a lot, actually. It looks like a luxury land yacht, married a muscle car and that's what came out. You should look at Elvis. It's a neat car, but apparently it got like 8 miles to the gallon. Well, that's also why Elvis loved it. Weighed like two and a half tons. I don't want an efficient car, man. It's pretty good. So she would do crazy things like, well, this isn't super crazy, but she would BOP around town in that Ferrari and go to the Chasens in Beverly Hills and order a burger to go and speed out of there in her Ferrari and her rodeo outfit. So she was sort of well known in town as a bit of an eccentric, and by that I think we mean she liked pills a lot. Sure, she lived fast, but she had fun. I guess it's the way to put it, right? Died young. She did die young. So in her America, she got into a car wreck and sustained some injuries and she seemed to be on the men. She was getting better, but from what I understand, she was given a nurse and a doctor to oversee the drugs that she was taking as a result of the car wreck while she was mending. Then one night, I guess she had taken too much or else she got her hands on some other drugs and she overdosed, apparently on codeine and barbiturates from what I saw. Yes. Very sad. However, this is where the story gets a little strange. That was in 77 when she passed, and in 1972, five years previous, she actually thought ahead of time and said, I want to be buried next to my husband, see, in my lace nightgown by Porter Loring, who was, I guess, just the go to Mortuary mortician hot Mortician in San Antonio. And I want to be buried in my Ferrari. And this is a quote with the seat slanted comfortably. Yeah. She didn't want to be sitting straight, upright for eternity. Of course not. So here's the thing. For her will to be carried out, it fell to her brother in law exboyfriend, Saul West. Saul was not very amused by the prospect of having to do this. I'm sure he was like, Are you kidding me? After all this? Yeah, because not only is it bearing a Ferrari, the other Ferraris got auctioned off for ridiculous amounts of money. Some of her jewelry, after her death, was auctioned off for things. I think one of them was like 350 grand, 1970, $7 for one of her rings. Another one is like 150 grand for another ring and her Ferraris were auctioned off. So her estate was being liquidated. The idea of burying one of these cars with her, who I would guess he probably didn't like very much yeah, that was bad enough. But on top of it, this funeral was going to cost about $15,000 in 1970. $7. So he went to a judge and said, this lady was wacko. There's no way. I should have to do this judge now. And the judge is like, all right, wait, we're going to put a hold on all this. Let's put Mrs. West on ice in a mausoleum, literally, and we're going to sort all this out. So they did. Yeah. So her physician, Dr. Raymond Weston, had to testify and says, well, she was a bizarre woman for sure, and he described her as a psychotic with a tendency toward paranoia and hallucination. But the judge was like, It really doesn't matter. If these were her wishes, then it's legally we have to carry them out. So the final ruling came down that, yes, we are going to bury this woman in her Ferrari. Right. And by we, I mean you, Saul. The judge was not involved in that man, so Saul did it. He hired Porter Laurence, as Sandra had stipulated, and they shipped the Ferrari out from Beverly Hills to be outfitted with Sandra, who is wearing her lace naughty. Put into the car and then put into a casket, an enormous giant casket, and then taken by train out to the graveyard where a crane was waiting. The Ferrari was in a casket? Yeah, they put the whole thing in a casket. Wow. Well, I guess that makes sense. Sure it does. It's a big old casket. Didn't elon. Musk sent out. Oh, no, of course. That was a Tesla. Right. I was like, Wait a minute, wasn't there a Ferrari in space? No, it's a Tesla. Yeah. That would have not made it any sense whatsoever. No. And it makes you wonder, like, who really is Star Man? Which of his enemies was unlucky enough to be shot alive into space, to die out there while the whole world was watching? Because he's got to touch a supervillain to him. You think? Yeah. We're just all very fortunate that he's not 100% supervillain. Right. We'd be in big trouble if you want to keep it all in check. Sure. So the story, very sadly, sort of ended. Although she got her wish, she didn't have a lot of friends. Like, apparently the people that attended her funeral were her attorneys and nurses and doctors and stuff like that. So it was sort of a sad ending to this lady's wacky life to be buried in a 19 foot long, ten ft. Wide, nine foot deep grave in her Ferrari right. Which they filled with cement around so nobody could try to get the Ferrari out or that nightgown. But she got her wish. Her wish came true. Yeah. So happy ending. Sure. Sad ending. Happy. And apparently now it is still visited by people. Where is it? San Antonio. People go by and see where the Ferrari is buried? Yes. You went to San Antonio. Did you go by there? I didn't. And I knew about this, but I didn't realize she was in San Antonio. We would have totally gone. That sounds like something that you guys have put on your list. Totally. Well, it's on the list now, I'll tell you that. Should we take a break? No. Should we barrel into the second one and then take a break? Yeah. All right. We stay in California because that's where this kind of crazy stuff happens. Well, we have to go back to California because we were just in San Antonio. Good point. Watching the 300 spectators watch Sandra West get buried. It was really weird. That's right. So we go to South Central Los Angeles, the West Athens part. And I didn't know where West Athens was until I looked it up. 119th street, roughly. It's sort of by the 110, right? Yeah. It's kind of like east of Hawthorne. I have no idea what you're talking about. I just made up that 110 thing. I looked it up, too, though. I was like because I had seen it referred to as South Central, but then everything else said West Athens. And I'm like, what is that? And that's where Beverly Hills and Hollywood are. And that's it, right? Pretty much in Venice. Sure, venice by the water. But it's like in the south part of South Central. The southwest part of South Central. I think that seems about right. Okay. Yes. Okay. All right. So we're oriented, and there's a staff reporter from the La Times name Priscilla Painting, who's going to figure in because she kind of covered this story in depth. Well, this story is a little weird. We're going to tell you the story, but the story is not quite accurate. But we're not quite what it seems. Yes. We're going to go and tell it as it was originally written, which is what people thought it was for decades and decades. That's right. So there were some kids digging around in the dirt in their neighborhood, which is what kids are to do. There's probably little horse play. I'm sure one kid was probably self conscious. There was a lot of kids stuff going on, lots of kids stuff. And they were digging around and they felt something not too deep that felt hard and said this, you know, I guess they probably brush and dirt away and said, this looks like maybe the roof of a car. Right. That's a weird thing to find at 119th street. That's kind of a weird thing to find anywhere buried underground, you know? Yeah. So they got a cop involved pretty quickly, which was a great thing for these kids to do. I wouldn't have done that. I would have gotten a shovel and seen what was going on. Oh, yeah. Oh, sure. Okay. Well, these kids were a little more dugerter than you, apparently. Right. So they flagged down a cop, and then the next thing you know, there's two detectives on the scene, detective Joe Sabbath and Detective Dennis Carroll, who would become forever known around his precinct as Lenny Carol, because Priscilla painting called him that. Accidentally, she put down that was his name in the story. Oh, if only Joe had become Carl. Yeah, Carl and Lenny. That would have been so wonderful. So Dennis, Carol and Joe Sabbath were working this thing when Priscilla Payton comes out, and she's watching this whole thing going down, and this is what she thinks she sees. All of a sudden now there's an earth mover. There's a whole bunch of sheriff's deputies with shovels, also. Earth movers? Sure. Different kind. And they're digging around this car, and they're getting more and more dirt off of it. And Sabbath and Carol see that there's a car under there, but it's covered in, like, rugs and plastic. Somebody tried to kind of entomb the car, mummify it, I guess, is how one of the guys from Gelopnik put it. Yeah. And what it was was Adino. And this also had a serial number, and they kind of ducked through the car. They eventually got it out. They ducked through the trunk. There was no one buried in it. No drugs or big suitcases of cash or something you might expect to find in a buried Ferrari. Yeah. Who would just bury a Ferrari? This became an actual huge question. Well, they ran the plates and found pretty quickly that it had been stolen, that it was listed as stolen, and so they started digging into it. Right. Literally, they did. That's a good catch. They found that back in 1974, the car had been reported stolen by the original owner, a man named Rosando Cruz. And Rosendo Cruz and his wife had gone to dinner at the Brown Derby on Wilshire for their anniversary. Yeah. Well, we should point out, though, as originally reported, they said that it was in surprisingly good condition. Okay. This is Priscilla Paint in saying that in the Los Angeles Times. Kind of an important key. Little clue here. Right? Okay. So at the Brown Derby, Rosando Cruz and his wife are celebrating their anniversary, and he had just bought her recently a car, I think, for her birthday or something like that. And he was doing pretty well, apparently. He was a plumber by trade, I would guess. He owned his own company, but he had bought his wife a Ferrari that at the time had cost about $22,000 is how much it had set him back, which is well over $70,000 in 2017. Yes. Okay. So when they got there, he had noticed that the valet was looking a little too anxious to get the keys from him, and he's like, I'm not letting these guys get. Ferris Bueller my car. And his wife was like, what does that mean? He's like, Just give it a decade or so. Yeah. And you'll see. So he decided to just go park it himself on Wilshire Boulevard. Much safer. Yeah, good idea. Yeah. And so when he came back, the car was gone. That's right, the car was gone. There were no leads as to who took it, as far as the detectives were concerned. And Farmers Insurance Group said, you know what, we're going to pay, we're going to pay this thing off at a loss of that $22,500 to the legal owner, which at this point was the bank of America very big point as well. Okay, so basically what you just said, the upshot of it is they said, okay, we looked into it, the car was stolen, it's gone. Farmers Insurance, you need to pay the owner of the car, which is the bank, and it's all just done. This is four years prior. Right. So when the car turns up, like you said, Priscilla Painting. Well, you want to take a break? Nice cliffhanger. 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 lets students take charge of their education and their future by combining real world skills training and traditional academics. Students can earn college credits while in high school or get the training needed to land a job right after graduation. Stride Career Prep prepares your team for in demand careers in business, tech, health, science, criminal justice, and more. Students can take courses developed by industry professionals, prepare for certifications, get hands on experience, network, and most importantly, gain the confidence they need to succeed. Stride Career Prep is backed by over 20 plus years of experience in online learning and education. Take charge at K twelve. Compodcast. That's K twelve.com podcast and start taking charge of your future today. I took nice cliffhanger as a yes. You meant yes, right? Yes. Okay, good. Well, we're back. Like you said, priscilla Paintin had said the car seemed in surprisingly good condition. She painted a good picture. She did, but an incorrect picture. That's right. So basically, she set off this huge frenzy among Ferrari enthusiasts. Adeno Dino had been discovered underground, had been written off by an insurance company, and was in surprisingly good condition. That meant that they could probably get a pretty good deal on it, and everybody wanted it, and everybody started lighting up the switchboard at Farmers Insurance. Yeah. And I get the idea that not only could they get this Ferrari and do whatever little restoration it needed, but there's also just the story behind it, made it kind of a cool thing. This was the car buried in South Central Los Angeles. Yeah. And I look at it now. This made national news. Yeah. Also, Sandra West's burial made national news. And that had just been several months before so the two were compared. It was buried ferrari fever in the US. How close that was? Very close. Interesting. I mean, different years, but she was buried in May and this happened, I think in like the following year, like less than a year later. Okay. Okay. Alright. So the car actually was not in good shape at all now, to say the least, there were. And, boy, I love this. This is why it's a Ferrari. 21 layers of paint, 14 layers of primer, seven layers of paint. It was in bad shape. The paint was freckled. It had white spots all over it. Rust, of course, you can't bury a Ferrari and cover it with rugs, right, and expect it to that'll take care of it. So Rust had eaten through it, through the body. The leather interior was in bad shape. What did the thieves do with some towels? So they were smart enough to stuff towels into the intake to keep dirt and worms and stuff from getting into the engine, but they neglected to do that in the exhaust pipe. They had put some towels in between the window cracks, I think, to dangle the towels over the outside, but then didn't roll the windows all the way up. So they weren't doing a very good job. But in their defense, they had to bury a Ferrari in the middle of Los Angeles. How did this not get noticed? I don't know. But the cops, when they canvassed the area, the neighbors were like, we have no idea. That's not the residents of the house were renters. And they'd only lived there for three months. They had no idea. So the cops basically were like, well, it's a stolen car that was already written off. It's a done case where I can break our backs trying to find out what happened here. It's pretty obvious what happened here. So they sent it off to Farmers. That's right. In very bad shape. Even pulling this thing out of the dirt. Obviously the engine compartment got crushed, all scratched up and gouge. The windshield was smashed, which Rick cinnabon it's in a Coglass. Could have taken care of. Could have fixed you right up. Right up in an afternoon. Actually, probably not, because I mentioned a Ferrari windshield like that is pretty hard to come by. Yeah. Sorry, Rick, but the idea that someone could restore this thing was not true. Seemingly, yes. Farmers was getting so many calls and we're having to deal with the public on such a large scale that they decided to just put it on display. So anybody who called in, inquiring about it, they said, well, here's the address, you can actually go bid on it if you want it. And people did, but they didn't really make too many serious bids. They mostly just stripped the car as best they could. Somebody took the dipstick. Even this Gelapnic article said, I wonder if that was just let me get a piece of this thing, or if it was like, I can't find a dipstick for my maybe both. Do you know? Or ebay doesn't exist yet, but I will someday. I'm going to sell this thing for a million bucks. Yeah. So this was a couple of weeks on display in Pasadena, where, as this article says, everything that was not bolted down was kind of nicked from it. I can't believe they just didn't have security or something. Yeah, I guess they weren't doing a very good job. I mean, it was a junk Ferrari, but still, they were taking bids on it. It wasn't like, come take what you want sale. It's not like a starving artist sale at a hotel conference room or something. All right, so the long and short of it is, in the end, they did take some bids after it had been scrapped and gouged by onlookers. Right. So here's where the legend kind of picks up again. Right? You've got this car that has, like, a legendary status already, but it's also totally tragic if you are a Ferrari enthusiast. This is a sad story, but it's purchased by somebody, some unknown person, actually, like a mechanic, I think, who owned his own garage in Burbank. Tried to start it for some time. There were some dispatches coming out of this restoration project because the public apparently knew that this guy had actually gotten it to start. But then the engine just collapsed and it didn't look very good. Right? Yeah. What do you pay? Like between five and nine grand? Yeah, it's a pretty good deal. But it was in pretty bad shape. Right? So after that, the Ferrari just kind of disappears for a little while, and then somehow the Ferrari enthusiast public could confirm that the thing had been resurrected, it had been licensed, it had been restored to its former beauty. They had a new plate called dug up. So great, right? Yeah. But then it just is gone. It's not listed on any of the Ferrari registries or the Dino Registries or anything like that. They know it's out there, but they don't know where it is. It just becomes like this phantom, which makes it even cooler. Yeah. And that's where the story ended originally. There were a couple of gelopnic articles. It's a good website. It really is. It's a great website. And there was one gelopnik writer in particular who was like, that was a pretty good article, but I want to know more about his name is Mike Spanelli, and he did a follow up. He dug in even further to this legend. He wanted to find that Ferrari, and he actually ultimately was successful. But what he turned up, Chuck, was an even bigger twist to the story than digging up a Ferrari in the middle of south Central Los Angeles. That's right. He ultimately found Dennis Carroll. That one of the original lead detectives. Lenny and Carl. He was Carl and he learned the true story, which was kids did not find this thing playing in the dirt. That didn't happen at all. It was actually discovered because of a tip from a CI. And if you've seen The Wire, you know what that stands for. It's a Confidential Informant. He was a heroin addict, and I said he assumed it was a guy for some reason. Yeah, it could go either way. Yeah. I just hear confidential informant, heroin addicts, and I think, dude, not fair. Ladies, I'm sorry. Right? Yeah. Don't leave us out of that circle. So he and his partner had made lenny had made up that story about the kids finding it, I guess because it was a police matter. It was a confidential informant. Right. So they had to cook up this fake story. I don't know if they had to, but they chose to. They wanted to sniff painting off the case. That's right. They just protected their source and said it was kids playing. And that became how this car was found for decades. That was the story. Anyone you heard that story from, unless you were probably the wife of Joe Sabbath or the wife of Dennis Carroll, they would say they would start with some kids were playing in a yard and found this car totally made up. Right. So that's twist number one that they found. Twist number two is actually the fact that this was all a set up job to begin with. Did we say he was a plumber? Yes. Yeah, the plumber, basically. I mean, what, could he not afford it? So he decided to have it professionally stolen to get an insurance claim? That's my impression. That's what he did. We don't know the reason behind it. I think my interpretation and it's up for interpretation because he was never charged with this crime. Oh, really? Yeah. Okay. It was written off as a loss. Right? Right. Which we all pay for, let's be honest. Right. This is the Josh Clark interpretation of this crime. Okay. Rosando Cruz very much loved his wife, so he bought her a Ferrari that he couldn't afford. But did I say he very much loved his wife? He didn't want to tell her that he needed the Ferrari back. He arranged for it to be stolen and maybe make some money on the side as well. And then he could pretend to be mad that the Ferrari was stolen and all of his problems would be solved. Right. Which is why he cooked up the story about being wary of the valet parkers. So this is why I need to park it on Wilshire, and that's where it was prearranged to be taken. And he kind of thought, like, oh, you're going to strip it for parts and then drive it into a ravine. Yes. Which makes sense in a weird way. Right. Then you could fence the parts, so you got some extra money, and then he would pay them out of the insurance claim. That's not how it went down. He didn't say bury this thing in South Central La. Right. Without stripping it of basically any parts. I think they took the Ferrari logo off of the back of the car. Sure. But everything else points to the idea that Mike D's first necklace. But all of the way that the car was buried points to the idea that the thieves were going to come back for it someday. Right. There was an attempt to preserve it. Let me throw some rugs on this. And not only are you getting paid for stealing the Ferrari, but we're going to dig it up and drive it out of that hole. Yeah. Wow. Because it's got all wheel drive. Probably. That's pretty amazing. So, from what I understand, Rosando Cruz was never charged with this crime, even though the cops knew. Good for him, I guess. And that was just my interpretation. I don't mean to cast any shade on them, but just from my research, if that's not the case, my apologies, but that is what it looks like to me. Here's the thing. He didn't get the check. The bank of America. Got the check. Yeah. So if that was the point, he didn't think it through very well. Well, but he was out from under those payments at least, right. That's why I think he did it. You didn't have to pay that, like, $700 a month. I can't imagine, though. I mean, you can think about it. Just think about buying an $80,000 car. That's a lot of dough. That's a lot of dough. It's a lot, Chuck. But now that car would be worth about $300,000. Well, it's still around, though, right? Yes, it is. Sorry. There's still more to the story. Yeah. A guy named Brad Howard actually owns this car that was buried and trashed underground, which is a pretty amazing end of this story, is that this thing is actually restored to its former glory and still owned by a guy. Yeah. And the guy, Mike Spinelli, makes this point that when the Ferrari was found, it was in pretty bad shape, despite what Priscilla Payton said in the article. But it could have been in way worse shape. And the reason why it wasn't in worse shape than it was was because those years between 1970, 619, 77, and most of 1978, there was a huge drought in Southern California. The same drought that actually created skateboarding because nobody could fill up their pools. So skaters started skating. The Dog town. Z Boys. Yeah. There you go. They started skateboarding because of the drought. That same drought preserved this car a little bit underground, more than it would have been had it rained a lot. Right. And that's the end of that chapter, Paul Harvey style. So you got anything else? No. I wonder if this has happened again. Maybe we'll do a whole suite on buried cars. I would love to know that. Yeah. If you know that there is, especially if somebody buried another Ferrari, let us know. We'll add it and make it a hat trick, please. In the meantime, you can go look up buried Ferraris all over the internet and on jalapnik in particular, who did a great job of digging this story up. That was unintentional. And as I said, it was unintentional. It's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this another teacher writes in. We always like to feature teachers in their classes. Hey, guys. Long time listener, first time writer. Just listen to how the sun works episode. Again, I wanted to thank you for selecting it as a stuff you should know. Select. Did you do that? I did. Oh. Why did you do that to us? I don't know. I just thought it should be out there again because it's legendarily. One of our most troublesome shows. Yes, it is. She said it brought back awesome memories though. How the sun works was my very first episode that I listened to and it's the one that made me decide to continue listening. How about that? To give you a second chance. And she's like, are these guys for real? I think it was your disclaimer that you were not professionals, wanted corrections and that you're continuing remarks for that were badly screwing this up and it made me want to keep listening. For the record, I thought you were charming, relatable and delightfully human and wanted to hear more. Every time I listened to the show and hear you mentioned the awful sun podcast, I want to write it in and tell you that that's the one that actually started my eight year and counting love affair. Wow. How about that? That's something. Like many others who've been listening, your show has become very special to me. Not only because it's helped me through many long car trips and intensive home projects, but because I've listened through some very formative years of my life. I started listening as a teenager and I feel like all our friends who have been with me through high school, college and my early married years and now I am a teacher. What? I teach 7th and 8th grade, math, science, language arts and social studies. And I feel like I'm constantly telling my students facts and tidbits that I learned that week from your show. And now I am middle aged and now I'm retired. Now I'm dead. Seriously, it never fails. Guys. Thanks again for all you do. Looking forward to many more years to come. That is from Hannah Barton and Ms. Barton or Mrs. I don't know which. It's probably Ms. Barton's class, right? Yeah. Ms. Barton. Andrew. Class. Hello. Thank you for listening. Thank you for giving us a second chance after that being your first episode. Yeah, that was a great email, ms. Barton. Thank you very much for writing it. Good luck to you and your class. It's going to be a great year next year. That's right. If you want to tell us about your class, we'd love hearing from teachers. Like Chuck said, you can tweet to us at SYSK podcast. I'm at Josh Clark. Well, Chuck's at Movie Crush on Twitter, too. You can get to them there. You can also get to them on Facebook@facebook.com. Charleswchuckbriantstuffyshno. Send us all an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the Web stuffyouchnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means schools out. The sun's shining, the 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 Kilgarif and Georgia Heartstarts, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will help 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." | |
42aa95e2-53a3-11e8-bdec-df9a08cdad0c | Did Climate Cause the Collapse of the Maya? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/did-climate-cause-the-collapse-of-the-maya | After millennia of development, the Maya culture suddenly collapsed at its peak. Why is one of the biggest mysteries of history. One theory says catastrophic climate change was the cause. And it may have happened to other cultures too. | After millennia of development, the Maya culture suddenly collapsed at its peak. Why is one of the biggest mysteries of history. One theory says catastrophic climate change was the cause. And it may have happened to other cultures too. | Tue, 03 Dec 2019 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=3, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=337, tm_isdst=0) | 42038847 | audio/mpeg | "Hello, Seattle and hello, San Francisco. We are coming out to do live shows in January for you guys, like we seem to do every year now. Yeah. It's kind of a pattern that's emerging. Chuck. That's right. And the pattern is you come to see us, you laugh, we have a good time, and everyone leaves happy. That's the pattern. So if you want to leave happy, you can come see us on Thursday, January 16, at the Moore Theater in Seattle. And you can come see us Saturday, January 18, at the castro in san francisco. Yes. Part of our annual retreat to sketch vest. Yes. So if you want tickets and information, go to Sysklive.com, our home on the Web, powered by our friends at Squarespace, and we'll see you in January. Welcome to stuff you should know. A production of Iheartradios. How stuff works. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there. And this is Stuff. You should know the podcast. What else would it be? TV show not for a Long time, everybody. I like that intro. Okay, that's good. I'm glad. If I'm not mistaken, who did I say melted many years ago? Was it the Maya? No, neanderthals. Oh, that's right. Or Thal, if you don't want to be a douche. Can we say that? I don't know. We'll find out even here. Maybe she will in the edit. I bet she won't. Yes, it was the neanderthals, but I'm going to go ahead and say it again. Maybe it's the Maya melted. Sure. Due to climate change. Maybe. But that's what you were talking about, right? The nature falls melted because of climate change. That's right. Which I thought was hilarious. But let's talk about the Maya civilization. Oh, yeah, I meant to tell you. Let's kind of move stuff around here. Great. Do you want to? Sure. What do you mean? Well, let's talk about Charles Lindbergh first. Okay. I think he's a better intro than just kind of randomly in the middle. All right. Thank you. Sure. And that means we can start out on the way back machine. Okay, good. Which we would have been in anyway, but we'll be closer. We'll save some gas. It's way closer. That's right. We're going back to February of 1929. Yes, February 1929, when Chuck Lindberg was flying for Pan Am and he was flying over what is now Belize. And if you can believe that, so sorry. But what he would do back then and this is after, of course, the big flight, the big one. He would get hired to do these little exploratory routes for airlines. In this case, Pan Am. He may have done that exclusively. Panama? I have no idea. I don't either. I wasn't in this contract business. But he would fly these routes to sort of blaze new trails for flying routes and say, hey, this is a pretty legit flying route for delivering stuff. Or even passenger routes and maybe add it to your docket. Right. So he was doing this and he was flying over is this episode on air routes? No, it's not okay. Because he was flying over Mexico and Central America. Well, Belize, like you said. Yeah. And it was just very dense jungle everywhere he looked, until he went over this one part, where it was described not by Charles Lindbergh for some reason, but by an Associated Press writer who apparently got into the head of Charles Lindberg and said it looked like two emerald eyes staring up out of the jungle brush, the tangle of the jungle brush. So he went back, flew a little lower to investigate, and what he found was what? The emerald eyes were actually twin, reflecting pools in a massive stone temple, like, reflecting the sun into his face. And he was like so is he a stone temple pilot? I guess so. Oh, my gosh. Is that off the cuff? Yeah, it was. That was pretty good. Okay. That was great, actually. And he realized that he was looking at the ruins of a lost city. That's right. A massive, stone lost city. Actually. I don't think he realized that, probably, but we now know that well, he saw that it was covered in jungle and overgrowth and everything. Yeah. So the legend goes, Chuck, that Charles Lindberg discovered the lost Mayan civilization. Right. Which is not true. Okay. It's nuanced. Yes. That particular article is probably totally made up. Yeah. But even if he did find that part, he didn't discover and that's probably not what you even said. He did not discover the lost Maya civilization. Right. He found a part of it. Right. It's apocryphal. It's an apocryphal story, because by that time, people were aware that the Maya had existed, but they had kind of been seen as legend for a very long time. But starting in, from what I could tell, the 1920s, they started finding these massive, huge loss cities, just like Lindberg supposedly found. And later on, Lindberg did actually fly over some of these lost cities and photograph them, and he got into aerial archeology. But the point is this. There are still are, and there definitely were more lost cities that were just enormous with huge temples, some of them pyramids, that were among the tallest pyramids in the world, completely overgrown by the jungle, just overtaken abandoned cities. And they started looking around, and they started finding more of these cities and more and more all over the Yucatan and northern well, actually all of Guatemala into Honduras, Belize, and El Salvador, a big chunk of Central America that there's these lost cities that were found. And they all seem to share something in common, so much so that they now realize that they were peopled by the same cultural group. The Maya. That's right. So let's talk about the Maya. Let's go back even further. Let's go back between 2600 and 1200 or 2600 BC and 1200 Ad. Or what we now would call C-E-C-E-I think people now just say, like, years ago. Do they? Do they really? Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah, they're, like, get religion out of it entirely. Just, say a long time ago. Yeah. This many years ago. Okay. So many, many years ago, the Maya civilization occupied this big area that we're talking about, and there's a period of time known as the Classic Maya. They call it correct. The classic period between stumble on their way through the door, between 259 hundred, where, I mean, you talk about flourishing as a culture. Like, it hadn't been seen since the Roman Empire. Basically, these cities, 60 or more, 60, 70,000 people. They had sports arenas, they had pyramids, they had these advanced farming practices. They made calendars, they understood math, and we're really advanced. And I believe even at the time, some of these cities outnumbered the amount of people that were in places like London and Paris at the same time. Yes. And, like, something like, say, 800 Ce. If you travel over to London and Paris, you find far fewer people, like a double or triple the amount in the Maya culture. The way that I saw it put was in the area of the Yucatan and Guatemala, the southern lowlands, I think is what they call it, where, like, most of the great Mayan cities were, the population density is about what it is today in Los Angeles County. Wow. Imagine that. And now it's just overrun jungle, rainforest mostly, but it used to be as dense as La. County. Like, people just everywhere. Yeah, that's dense. Yeah, super dense. So here's the thing about the Mayan empires. They were never one big group. They were never unified politically. They were just a bunch of warring city states, but really thriving. And they also had political alliances between city states, but that same city state could be at, like, total war 50 years later. They're shifting constantly. That's right. But the thing we really need to hammer home is that they were doing great for themselves. They were really thriving as a culture and as a people. And then in about 150 year period, between 800 and 950, they disappeared. Yeah. For all intents and purposes, the Classic Maya culture just vanished into the jungle. And that is not to say that the people all died. They assimilated into other cultures. But what you were talking about, that Maya culture and those big cities of 70,000 people just went away. Yeah. It would be kind of like a good analogy, is if over the next 30 years, the United States just suddenly reverted to 16th century agrarian practices. That was it. We just abandoned our cities and went and farmed. And we didn't farm with any tractors or anything like that. We started using oxen. Just completely abandoned our culture and went back to a simple farming lifestyle that would basically be the closest analogy you could come up with. And it happened really fast, super fast. And as a result, that Mayan culture, like you said, was sort of looked at as a legend before we started finding these places again. Yeah, because locals kind of knew about they'd be like, oh, if you go into the jungle, you're going to find a lost city. Explorers are like, you're crazy, that's not real. But then they started to actually find these lost cities. And what's really surprising to me is they're still finding lost cities. Every year there'll be some new study coming out that says, oh, we used LiDAR. I think it's light. Leader. Yeah, leader. It's basically a way of looking through vegetation to see solid structures underneath. Okay, so they're looking through the jungle. It's like a jungle X ray, kind of. Yeah, actually, it's perfect. And they're starting to find even more lost cities, and they're also finding that the lost cities that we know about there's one called El Mirador that hasn't been kind of excavated yet, but the pyramid is so tall that it's sticking up out of the jungle canopy. Wow. So they know there's a lost city there, but using LiDAR, they've seen like, oh, it's way more extensive than we thought before. Now, Mir Door probably had 1000 people living in the city center at its peak. All right, so that's a good setup. We're going to take a break and discuss the merits of Jungle Xray as a band name and be back right after this. It's not bad. What kind of band would it be? That's your specialty? Jungle Xray. Sounds like a party band, right? It does. It's got a lot of funk going on. It's stolen funk, I think. 70s, sure, but like a 70s throwback that didn't exist in the yes, like a younger Sisters. Oh, who is that? Wasn't that a band? Jerry Scissor Sisters. It was like a funky throwback 70s thing. Okay. I got to listen to them. Well, they were around for a minute. I think they're not around anymore. Oh, all right. Do they leave, like, any kind of archive or documentation of their music? I seem to remember them being like a party band. I don't know, but I mean, do they have a record out or what? Yeah, man, they had records. I'm going to go check them out then. I think I just made this up. All right, so the Maya disappeared. Why would Jerry know? Is she hip all of a sudden? I don't know. Charles Lindberg comes around, referred to previous story. We already talked about Lindbergh. I know. Okay, refer to previous story. That's why I said that. Okay. And he puts this back on the map again. And everyone is excited about discovering about who these people were. Right. But the whole thing from the outset, they're like, what happened to these people? Sure. And the more we learned about them this is the other thing, like the legends of the sudden civilization just vanishing. The more we studied them, the more we realized that's actually kind of accurate. The legends are true. There was this amazing culture that just vanished into the forest. One of the big things, one of the big breakthroughs in studying Maya culture was cracking their written alphabet. Yes. They used hieroglyphs. And there's a really good documentary called cracking the Maya coat on. I think it was a Nova episode. Dude, it is good. It's thrilling. And it basically is them just sitting around some house one summer trying to figure this out, but they're, like, going back and forth. I think some 20 year old woman figured it out. Wow. Yeah. And now we understand a lot more. But what we're finding is it's like, oh, no, this really happened. Something really weird happened here, and we still aren't quite sure what caused it. That was a very odd description of how they figured that out. What, sitting around a house? That's what they did. I think they had, like, a workshop or something. They're like, we're really going to try to figure this out. We're going to try to crack this code. And they actually did. I guess we only had some house where we could go sit in. Well, that's what they were doing. It was a house. Someone's house, I think. I love it. Knowing me, it was definitely not a house by any stretch, and I'll have to do it correctly. They're like, Josh is your house. Harvard University. So there are some theories that have been developed over the years that all kind of makes sense. And some of them it's not necessarily a binary thing. Some of them could have all contributed to the collapse of the Maya. Right. Over farming is one which makes a lot of sense. And that's the idea that basically they were so successful. They had tons of food, tons of water, and so they said, well, let's just make tons and tons of babies. Which all of a sudden, the farmers are like, jeez, we're really growing. Hey, everybody. Yeah. Like, I don't know if we can grow this much corn, so let's clear some forest land and grow. Which means they're not practicing safe and sound farming practices all of a sudden. Right. They weren't practicing safe sex or they weren't practicing safe farming. That's right. So because of this over farming, they weren't allowed to they didn't have the opportunity to let their fields lay fallow because everything was in production, which is there's really no faster way to over stretch your agricultural resources than that. That's right. We're here to tell you, well, warfare. We know they were a warring people for sure. So the Maya rulers were they did a lot of disservice to their own people by kind of over inflating their resources and how tough they were, what kind of warriors they were, and how powerful they were. They could make it rain. They can control the weather and thus control the crops. And this may have backfired on them, as the theory goes, that they wore so much that they sapped their own resources and eventually people retaliated and they were not able to fight back. Right. And I think the guy who led that workshop at that dude's house where they cracked the code, I cannot remember his name, but he's an eminent Maya scholar. He is of the camp. It was warfare. That's what it was, plain and simple. They just fought too much and they eventually reached some tipping point from war. And there's real evidence about some of these cultures, at least or some of these cities going down because of warfare. Yeah. They engaged in total war where they would target civilians. They would burn your whole city down. They were a very warlike group. Which is funny, because for a very long time they were portrayed as one of the few mesoamerican groups that didn't practice human sacrifice. And then once we cracked my cobra, like, oh no, actually they were prolific at that. Wow. Yeah, it was bad news. The other is disease. And this is not human disease necessarily, but like a virus from their food supply. Yeah, that's another ecological disaster. That's right. I think maize mosaic virus was named in the 1979 article. So there's a lot of good theories out there and they aren't necessarily zero sum kind of thing, figuring it out. But over the years, lately, in the last decade or two maybe, people have really started to say, you know, I think we should look a little closer at the role climate change might play in this kind of stuff. And when they looked specifically at the Maya, they said actually, it looks a lot like climate change played a big role in the decline of the classic Maya civilization. That's right. And just because the Maya didn't burn fossil fuels to run cars doesn't mean that the Earth wasn't affected by climate change. And that they weren't affected by climate change. Yeah, they think that probably climate change happened on its own. But they've also pinpointed some ways that the Maya may have exacerbated it too. You mean people can impact that? Some fruit loops say so. They've done some studies. They studied mineral deposits in caves left by dripping water and they have been able to put together a 2000 year history of weather patterns based on splittings alone. That's right. And what they found out, and this was published in an article in Science in 2012, science magazine, the journal Science. The journal Science. It's not called, like, Science Weekly or whatever. The Ohio State University. But what they did find out was for the first few hundred years and this really lends a lot of credence to the theory that they may have over farmed and stuff like that, is they really had a lot of rain and they flourished as a result of that. Yeah, which you can't really blame them. It's them saying, okay, well, let's thrive and we can thrive in these conditions. It's not like they were like, oh, okay, this is a really wet period. Let's take advantage of it and really over stretch ourselves. They just kind of went with it and their population grew because it could be supported because there was such a large amount of rain. Their crops grew, their reservoirs were full. And there's a few hundred years. Right, over the course of a few hundred years. But from looking at the cave deposits, they found that there was a very wet record that corresponds with the classical Maya period. Okay. Wet record is a Scissor Sisters album. I don't know, what was it? Jungle Xray album. Jungle Xray. Wet record. Is that hip? That's hip. Jerry doesn't like disgusting with us at this point, around 660 Ad, this all changed. The rain. What's that funny for? I just thought of a good analogy. So Jungle X Ray. Their album wet record is to 70s funk soul throwbacks with the Darkness. Permission to land is the 80s hair metal throwback. That's not an Sat question. I think we just get it. Chuck, did we crack the code? Yeah, we cracked that jungle X ray code. Did you see where Motley Cruz is going to play shows again after we supposedly saw their farewell tour? That they even signed a contract saying they could legally never perform again together? And they're going on a stadium tour with Poison and Deaf leopard. What? I know. I'll see you there. Yeah. So remember we got invited to that show by Nita Strauss that's right. Who is like huge. Yeah. Guitar player at the time, maybe still for Alice Cooper's page. Yes. I think she does that still, I think. But she's like a guitar legend. She got her own gym. She's great. I hope she still listens. She's probably not. But around 660, the weather changed. The rains did not come like they used to and they had the longest dry spell of the last 2000 years. And this is going to have a real impact when everything is flourishing and you're just planting and planting. All of a sudden, a, you're thirsty, that's a big one. And B, you're hungry. That thirst thing, it's funny because we're talking about rainforests, but this area in northern Guatemala where the Maya will live, it's called the Petton or the Petin, I don't know, Peten. And it is kind of like feast or famine, depending on the rain cycle. So when it's dry, it's like you're in trouble because the closest groundwater is about 500ft below the surface and it's not going to rain for a very long time. So if you haven't prepared by building reservoirs, you might die of thirst. Wow. So a drought in the Petin, which is normally dry some parts of the year, would be a real problem if you're talking about a drought that lasts over years or possibly decades. Now you have a civilization collapsing problem. That's right. Yeah. So that's a big problem in and of itself. You've got a big population that grew when it was wet. Suddenly it's not wet, and you still have that big population. There's a lot of internal problems that can develop, especially between classes, too. Sure. The haves and the have nots, which existed back then, but also the rulers who are like, more human sacrifices. We need to keep this thing going to get the rain to come back. Well, and the common folk being like, jeez, I don't know about this. I hadn't rained in a while. It was my cousin before, but now he's asking for my brother. Yeah, exactly. So that created a lot of tension. The other thing that could have sped this whole thing up was the fact that they were thriving so much that they were expanding their territory and they were cutting down and deforesting the land around them for fuel and to build things. And they found pollen. They studied pollen in these ancient layers in lake sediment in Central America, and around 800 Ad, that pollen went from tree pollen to weed pollen pretty quickly. Yeah. And that's about when the Maya reached their fluorescence, when they really reached their pinnacles, about 800. So what that suggests is they cut down all the forests and they were using what used to be forest for cropland because they practiced slash and charged burn it down to introduce carbon nutrients into the ground. The problem is, if there's no force whatsoever, you've just altered your ecosystem. And by doing that, you can actually alter the local climate, which they think they may have. Yeah. Not only that, but it's going to have just the physical effect of erosion, like a massive erosion, because those tree roots are gone. And that's going to screw up your farmland as well. Right. So your top soil is gone. Your trees are no longer keeping things as cool as they were before. That's right. There was a NASA model that predicted that the temperature in the area rose by about six degrees Fahrenheit, which is a lot. I mean, that's noticeable for humans. But if you're talking about plants and soil, that can really exacerbate a drought. When you've already got a bad drought in a normally dry area, that's not good. The climate record is showing, okay, it was already bad, but they probably made things worse with the deforestation. Yeah. And all that stuff combined. And then maybe throw in a little dash of the previous theories could very well explain why they said, we're getting out of here and we're going to go live a smaller life, a more sustainable, smaller life that's not in a big city. Right. Yeah. And they think also that the other things dashed in, like the warfare. Sure. Like if you're in a town and you know, the next city stayed over has big reservoirs, and your people are dying of thirst, invading that other city might seem like a pretty good idea. Right? And if that happens enough times, and you have a lot of war going on everywhere, and that can really make your civilization decline pretty bad, too. Should we take another break? Sure. All right, we'll take another break and talk about how this climate change could have affected some other civilizations throughout history. All right, Chuck. So it's not just the Maya. This is the thing. This is kind of a new way of looking at history and especially social collapses. The idea that climate change played some driving role in it. And they started to look around, they're like, oh, actually, this kind of explains a lot of different ones that we thought we understood before. And the understanding before would be like, well, this king died, and this created political instability. We have evidence that there was this war and this group got invaded. What they're starting to find now is actually there might have been climate change that led to crop failure, that led to instability that allowed this kingdom to be invaded because it was weakened by a dying population. Yeah. What it is is a more nuanced look at civilization and ancient histories, because I'm sure there are a lot of people that when you talk about the Neo Assyrian Empire, which thrived in what is now modern day Iraq for a few hundred years, and that was one of those where the death of a king is what everyone has always said, well, that's what did it. Right? And I'm sure there were historians who are like, you know that there's something missing. Yeah, they had so many kings that had died leading up to why this one? And they started to look in particular at the Neo Assyrian Empire. And they said. Oh. Actually. If we go and look at the cave record again. They went to a cave called Kunaba in northern Iraq. And they said. Actually. The record of rainfall captured by this cave. By these mineral deposits in these caves. Kind of show that there was that same thing that happened with the Maya. A very wet period that corresponds with the growth of the society. And a very dry period that corresponds with its collapse. And that's not coincidence. They don't think so. It's starting to look like it's really not coincidence. Another one. The anchor Watt temple in Asia. In Southeast Asia. Asia. That was like, old timing. Who was it that said Paula Abdul? Because I've been saying that for like 30 something years. I don't know. It was, I think, in a Spike Lee movie or something. Sounds like Satura or maybe Paula Rabbi, who is the guy who ran sells pizza. Danny Ielo. I could totally see him saying it might have been Paula Rabbi. Yeah. All I know is I've been saying it for many many years now. So the anchor watt temple. Yeah. The Khmer Empire in Southeast Asia flourished for between 802 and 1431 Ce. That's a long time. It's a very long time. But they think that drought, once again, along with monsoon like rains, really is what brought them down as well. So, again, the effects of the climate, and if you look at the Khmer Empire, particularly around Anchor Watt, that's the very famous, like, lost temple in the land that you've seen. Historians have long known that they got invaded and taken over, and now they think, actually, the reason that was allowed to happen is because of climate change in it. Like, it led to problems that weaken the society, that allowed them to be invaded and taken over. This idea, that ingredient right. That civilization is just, like, doing fine. Doing fine. Suddenly invaded and taken over by a neighbor that's been there for hundreds of years, but had stopped asking, what was it that did that? Right now they're saying it looks like climate change may play a role. I think that's just fascinating. Yeah, for sure. Same with the Vikings. In the 13th and 14th centuries, they left Greenland. They had been around for several hundred years. And that was because of the Little Ice Age. Yeah. They had farming techniques that worked before the Little Ice Age, which was a very cool period around the globe, I think from like 800 to 1600 or something like that. No end of the 19th century, I think. At any rate, their farming techniques stopped working in Greenland because it was too cold, so they had to leave the land, said, you got to leave Vikings, and they went, Fine, we'll go take some shrooms and go berserk and get out of here. Yeah. Berserkers. So there's a lot we can learn about looking back through history, not only on the battlefield and politically, but also if we look at it through this lens, that maybe climate change was the cause of the collapse of an ingredient for the cause of collapse of some of these civilizations, the same thing could be happening to us very slowly right in front of our eyeballs. Yeah. One of the things is, if you step back and look at these historic falls of civilization, it's not like they were like, oh, there's a drought going on. That's it for our culture. It's like, this is an underlying driver that they may or may not have pointed to as the cause of these larger things. If you're engaged in a civil war or an invasion, you're not stopping and thinking, like, gosh, it's because of this drought. Right. You're focused on the invasion. It's the immediate thing. And in the exact same way, I mean, we're not that removed from people who lived a millennia ago. The way that our brains work, we tend to look at the trees rather than the forest, too. And if that's the case and we're. In this period of climate change right now, it's really worrying to think that a little bit of climate change can lead to social collapse and not directly. Again, that's the thing. That's what a lot of people argue about, is climate change isn't going to cause society to collapse. Not directly, but it could lay the groundwork for all the stuff that goes wrong that we're failing to identify is ultimately caused by climate change. That's what we need to be paying attention to, if that is in fact the case. That's right. And like we said, there are a lot of indicators that some of these same things are going on, deforestation not being the least among them. We are cutting down a lot of trees, and we have cut down a lot of trees. 90% of the forest of Northern America, just the US. Alone or just the US? Have been cut down. Trees are 50% carbon, roughly, and they absorb and this is a very big deal they absorb between one and 3 million metric tons of CO2, which offsets which we need between 20 and 46% of what we put into the atmosphere. So you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out if there are fewer trees, then there's going to be more CO2 in the atmosphere. And I think it's even more significant than that. We did a whole episode I don't remember the ins and outs of it. We did a whole episode on cutting down trees and the effect it has on weather. And I remember it has a big effect, like from single trees to huge forests, each loss of tree has an impact for sure. And it's not like we're stopping now. In the Pacific Northwest, roughly 80% of the old growth forest is slated for logging to go away for logging purposes. Which old growth forest? I read a really cool article on the old growth forest of Atlanta and how Atlanta is. If anyone's ever been here from, like, out west, maybe they remark about how Atlanta is a city in a forest. Right. And I was wondering what old growth meant. It was a really cool article. And the years differ, depending on who you're asking. But it's basically a forest that has not been touched by humans for between 100 and 150 years. That's cool. And there's still a growth forest in Atlanta. It's great. Is that right? Oh, yeah. Wow. Like pine forests? No, just, you know, like hardwoods. Sure. Wow. I didn't know that. Yes. That's pretty cool. It is like when you fly into town, you're like, this is just like a lost city in the middle of a jungle, but still functioning. What about social change and what's going on with that? So, I mean, one of the things that seems to be a hallmark of a collapsing civilization, for whatever reason, as part of its collapse, it can engage in civil war, war with other neighboring countries or city states or whatever. And if climate change is a driver of that. It seems to have happened very recently. Are happening right now. Because one of the ideas for the basis of the civil war in Syria right now is a drought brought on by climate change that started in 2006 and actually kind of cast a lot of farmers. A lot of Syrian farmers. Out of work from their fields into the cities. And so a lot of unemployed, restless people showed up to the cities, and they think that that was one of the exacerbateds that led to the civil war. But that climate change. A drought brought on by climate change may have been the underlying driver for the Syrian civil war going on right now. That like 400,000 people have died in so far. Population growth is another big one. We talked about both with the Maya and the Assyria empires, that even if you're doing great, you still got to keep the population in check because there's a point where you can't sustain it anymore. And we are expected to reach 10 billion people isn't that crazy? By 2050. 10 billion humans on Earth? Yes, just around the corner. And there is an argument that technology is our favorable climate. Like, we're doing great, technologically speaking. So we're just still growing and growing and growing. Yeah, we're growing because we can invent anything we need to invent to help out any problem. But if that goes away, then we're going to be in big trouble. I have to fess up. That was Me editorialized. Yeah, I could tell. Okay. Yeah. Well, thank you for the legitimacy you added to it. And I don't mean that goes away, but if there is a breaking point for technological advancement well, yeah, it's like the Green Revolution. We went from traditional agriculture to modern agriculture, but modern agriculture is on the verge of reaching its carrying capacity, and we have no idea what's coming after that. Plus, we also are well aware that our modern, intensive agricultural practices are problematic. There's a lot of fertilizer runoff that can spoil water, including drinking water. There's a lot of soil depletion that comes along with it. And in the same way that a lot of other cultures who have fallen seemed to have been stubborn and not adapted, but just kept at it despite having warning signs that it wasn't working any longer. We seem to be doing the same thing with our farming practices, and we need to figure out a more sustainable way to farm. Yeah, I think the thing that distresses me is the lack of a there are a lot of people that aren't doing this, but the lack of the long term outlook, it's like, well, it's not going to happen in my lifetime. Yeah, that's a bummer. So I need to keep pushing forward with whatever farming practices I'm utilizing or whatever the case may be. One of the suggestions I saw when I was researching the end of the world to get people to care about the future is to extend human lifespan so that you're like, oh, that's like 200 years in the future. So if that was middle age, you would care about that. And then it's weird to think it's simple if you think about it. But it's also weird to think, like, just how quickly that would make us start planning for the future a lot more. Rather than shrinking the future into human size, we would be growing human size into the future. I feel like the human lifespan or the human awareness of what a lifespan is. Right, yeah. That would change the whole outlook. Yeah, you may always have a good question about that too. She's like, at what point do we stop caring about our descendants? Yeah. We've got kids, grandkids, great grandkids, great great grandkids. At one point, we just stopped saying great and it's just descendants. Yeah, sure. I wonder where you really stop caring. Do you really care about your great grandkids? I don't know. Great great grandkids less so. I find it fascinating. Or maybe here's the thing. You could just not even think about it in terms of you, your family, but maybe just planet Earth and doing the right thing. Yes. Luckily, a lot of people do think that way. An increasing amount. We also have to say, Chuck, that the idea that climate change is a driver for social collapse is very new. Some people, some historians and archeologists are like, this really smacks of a trendy thing, and I'm just not on this bandwagon. Right? It's too young, it's too new. It just seems too hip. Like a Scissor Sisters record. I guess what I'm trying to say is this isn't definitive. It's not set in stone. Yeah. And there's also a lot of people who say, well, we are pretty smart. We're a lot smarter than we were 1000 years ago, and we can invent our way out of any problem. That old bag. But I mean, we've done it so far. It's tough to argue with in some cases. Good point. It's not to say that the world is necessarily going to end at any point in time in the near future. Right. Or that we cannot ourselves assimilate and change, enroll with it and go back to maybe a different lifestyle. Yes. Or continue on our technological progress, but like, say, adopt more sustainable farming practices. I mean, that's the view of the future that all these dystopian films have is this usually sometimes it's a barren, wasteland, Mad Max style. Right. But a lot of times it's like a return to the Earth in small villages of people farming. That's exactly what happened to the Maya. Yeah. They moved out into farms, the farm hinterlands. They just continued on like nothing happened. Right. But the people in the cities were like, oh, well, we're Mad Max now. Coastal elites. Yeah, right. You got anything else? No. Well, this was the climate change leading to the fall of the Maya, the episode, and that's the end of that. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. This is from Rosanna in Surrey, United Kingdom. Hey, guys. My husband and I are currently renovating in Eduardian house in very poor condition, and she details it sounds like a wreck, that they're in the middle of the lose, upside down, but worth it in the long run. There's a Lori in the living room. There's a lift in the lorry. When everything seems to be falling apart around you, the last thing you want is to be left with your own thoughts. And your podcast is always there so I don't have to be. For many years, I've listened to your show the way other people listen to the radio. The first thing I put on the morning when I get up, and this continues on my drive to and from work or whenever I'm in my car. And I often put it on before bed because I find your voices so soothing. Your show really helps with my anxiety as well. Both my husband and I are doing all the work on the house ourselves now. Electrics, plumbing, lifts, tiling, decorating, you name it. And I've left my job to work on the house full time. So for the past six months, I listened to you two talking to keep me company and learning while I'm working, which lasts at least 9 hours a day solid. Josh and Chuck man alive. You basically become my main source of human contact. Guys. For example, it's only 1020 in the morning, and I've already been listening to you for 4 hours and 20 minutes. Are you okay? All right. And we'll continue to do so until my husband gets home late tonight. Obviously, this means a lot of repeated shows, but it never gets boring. Much of the DIY work is unbelievably slow and tedious. Yes, I've been there, Rosanna. I definitely would have lost my mind long ago if it wasn't for stuff you should know. I want to say a huge thank you for keeping me sane, educated and chuckling along when I do would otherwise be on the floor crying about how much I have to do. That's awesome. What you guys do is brilliant. And I wanted to let you know you're not just educating people and helping to expand their beliefs. You're also genuinely helping me feel connected to others while I try to create a home for me, my husband, and our two idiot cats and two house rabbits. That's awesome. I want to come see you. Yeah, that's pretty cool. I want to see your Victorian home, Edwardian. I want to see your two idiot cats and your two house rabbits. Are you going to help plastic? Did I say Victorian? Yes, Edwardian. Are you going to help plaster? Help. Plastered the crew out of that house he'll get plastered and do some plastering. Right. He'll be all over the place. You'll get it all over the lorry. Well, thanks a lot, Rosanna. Best of luck in the renovation. I'm glad we can help you out. That's good to hear. If you want to get in touch with us, like Rosanna did, to let us know what you're doing with your time, we always want to hear about that. You can go to Stuffysha Know.com and check out our social links, or you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts My Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. 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. 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3fd7fe18-5461-11e8-b6d0-438d73e21aea | Selects: How Police Interrogation Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-how-police-interrogation-works | Every year, police across the U.S. get thousands of criminals to confess to their crimes. The trouble is, the procedure that almost all departments use is grounded in bad science and can produce false confessions. Learn about ways of making you talk in this classic episode. | Every year, police across the U.S. get thousands of criminals to confess to their crimes. The trouble is, the procedure that almost all departments use is grounded in bad science and can produce false confessions. Learn about ways of making you talk in this classic episode. | Sat, 31 Jul 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=31, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=212, tm_isdst=0) | 62770037 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody, it's Josh. And for this week's, SYSK selects I've chosen how police interrogation works from back in 2014. It's a really fascinating look into how the cops get people people to admit that they did the worst thing they ever did in their entire life, and some people who didn't do anything at all to admit that they did something. If you thought that was confusing, just wait until you hear this episode. But it is pretty mind blowing, so buckle up. I hope you enjoy, and as much as anything, I hope it really opens your eyes. 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 I guess producer Noel is over there which makes this stuff you should know. Jerry's on the beach. Good for her. Yeah. I'm jelly. Yeah. Be nice to be on the beach right now. Sure. What podcasting on the beach? Yes. Gerry is a beach person for sure. Isn't is she? Okay. She was flip flops, like in the dead of winter. Yeah, that's true. The beach person got my feet up. Can I say that? Fired for saying that? I don't think so. Okay. If you said it, like, alone in a room or something, she didn't feel like she could leave. You'd probably get fired for that. But seeing it on the podcast, everybody is probably in the clear. Okay. We'll find out. She edits these, so she'll say, thanks, Chuckers. There you go. So, Chuck yes. Have you ever been interrogated by the police? No. That's good. It's a good way to be. I was shaking down on the street once, but they didn't ask us any questions. Stop and frisk? Yeah. In New York? In Athens. Just walking to the car after being out. Threw us all against the wall, frist us, then left. Sure it was a real cop? Yeah, they were cops, man. I was like, what's going on? I don't even know. I still don't know what happened. Well, I guess they were just stopping and frisking. It little known fact at St. George is the real home of stop and frisk. Well, five minutes after it happened, we didn't care. These were college days. Yeah. Now, though, you must be burning with a sense of injustice over the whole thing. No. Well, I ask you if you've ever been interrogated by the police, because we're about to talk about police interrogation, so it seems appropriate. And before we get started, I have some side reading that I think might interest some people. Okay. There is a New Yorker article called The Interview. Yeah. There's one called Joe Arady was the happiest man on death row. It's in Westward. There's something called Brooklyn's Baddest, which is in GQ. And then lastly, looking left or right doesn't indicate you're lying in Smithsonian. So all those articles are awesome, and they all have something to do with this police interrogation which is, it turns out, becoming an increasingly controversial subject. Yeah. And I think this probably brings our police suite to a close or close to it, don't you think? I think so every time. I know. And I didn't even know this existed. And then I saw it, and it turned out to be one of the more interesting ones, I think. Yeah. And it kind of falls into this law enforcement category, into the subcategory of largely debunked armchair psychological or armchair psychology techniques. Yes. Like polygraph. Yeah, we did that. Fingerprints. We did that. Truth serum. We did that. Yeah. Like, there's all these episodes that we've done out there about just law enforcement techniques. We're doing them. We were like, oh, wow, this is this should not be the way it is. Yeah. And apparently police interrogation is similar. Yeah. It's a bit of a shakedown. So let's talk about this. In the United States, there is a long and storied history of rather intense interrogation, and I think this comes before the United States, too. We did a medieval torture episode as well. There were plenty of interrogations going on. We did the Spanish Inquisition. That was pre United States. Yeah. I would say that falls into the banner, though, of our police and crime interrogation. Yes. Right. The United States, though, has carried on the torch of basically beating suspects up to get confessions. Yeah. This is where the term the third degree comes from, actually. Like, when somebody's like, hey, why are you giving me the third degree? They may or may not know it, but they're speaking about interrogation techniques the cops used to use. Yeah. Those third degree techniques, a lot of them were involved deprivation or the one where they shine the bright light in your face. That's old school. Yeah. That's an old movie trope. Yeah. But no access to food and water, long periods of isolation. We might beat you up a little bit. We might threaten you. That's the third degree. Right. And then starting in about the public started to say, I don't know if this is such a good idea, because I might end up in a police interrogation one day, and I don't want to get beat up. And then I guess the straw that started to break the camel's back came in 1937 in the case Brown Versus Mississippi, where Brown said, hey, your thug cops tied me up to a tree and whipped me more than once. Not just whip me more than once. Strung me up in a tree to whip me more than once. It's happened repeatedly. And I don't think that the confession they got should stand. Supreme Court said we agree with you. Yeah, it was he and his two buddies were accused of murdering they were tenant farmers murdering their boss, basically. Of course, they were black guys and the boss was a white guy, so they were pretty determined. And we'll see over and over a lot of these cases of coerced, false confessions are mainly because someone really wants to tap somebody as the criminal. Oh, yeah. For a lot of different reasons. There can be a sense of injustice, there can be a genuine conviction that this person is guilty, and then there can be the case clearance percentage that a cop needs to keep up with. There's a lot of reasons why a cop might say you need to confess. Yes. I think a lot of them too, that I've seen documentaries on, at least, are because of the public. Like, hey, man, we really need to finger somebody for this because people are scared. Right. And who better than this person who might not be too smart or might be kind of poor and can't afford and doesn't representation, doesn't know what's going on. So let's just run them up. Run them up. Ring them up, sure. Run them up a flagpole, right. And see if it sticks to the wall. Yeah. But despite the fact that it is not easy to get someone to confess, they estimate between 42 and 55% of suspects do confess. And that's the one thing you don't want to do. And up to 55% still do it. Yeah. So we should say supposedly up to 80% of suspects in the United States waive their right to silence and counsel. Yeah. That's just agreeing to be interrogated. Right. Not necessarily confessing. Right. But you can get around the whole idea of a false confession or of being coerced into confessing or whatever just by remaining silent, not being part of that 80%. Demand your lawyer. I mean, we're going to give you some tips not how to get away with a crime, right. But some tips on if you are rounded up and put in a room, there are some things you can do. Right. This is a public service announcement with guitar. By the 1950s, the confessions that were involuntary, they considered it involuntary not just if you were beaten and threatened, but all the deprivation. Third degree techniques were no longer allowed. Like even if you couldn't use the bathroom or if you've been promised something in return for confessing. Sure, we'll go easy on you, buddy. Or if you'd even just been threatened. That counts as coercion too. Yeah. And so in about the said, hey, this kind of gentler interrogation technique thing is starting to work out. Let's put a bow on the whole thing and say that for a confession to be admissible, the confessor has to sign it. Yeah. And say, yeah, I didn't do anything under coercion. This is my own full free confession and here's my signature. Which helped, but certainly didn't stop false confessions. Right. So the thing is, law enforcement replaced the physical coercion with what amounts to plainly is psychological manipulation. And it's predicated on the idea that when you are saying you didn't do something and you're guilty, you are going to become stressed out and that stress is derived from anxiety over knowing you're guilty and having to lie. Because when you're being interrogated and you're denying that you're guilty, the cops don't just say, oh, okay, well, thanks for coming by. Sure. If they think you're guilty or they want to think you're guilty, they're going to keep pressing you. Like, interrogations aren't necessarily brief things. Right. So the more they press you, the more stressed you should get. And the more stressed you get under this idea of interrogation technique, the more obvious it is that you're guilty. Which means the more they press. So this feedback loop starts, right? Yeah. I mean, they're basically relying on a few basic human things inherited to humans, tendencies inherent to humans. One is you're going to probably open up more to someone who is like you. Two, if you start talking, it's going to be hard to stop. And three, if you're telling the truth, it's going to be harder to lie. Right. So they kind of prey on that with some age old techniques, like the good cop, bad cop. Right. If you feel like you're being persecuted, but then you're also being rescued by somebody else, you're going to identify with the rescuer, trust them. That's a classic move. And here's the thing. A lot of this stuff, like the good cop part, is predicated on this complete and utter deception that that cop understands where you're coming from. Sure. And sympathizes with you. Yeah. That cop does not sympathize with you. That cop may understand where you come from, but he or she probably despises that and they are not your friend. But one of the whole points of interrogation is for the cop to pretend like they're right there with you. They understand where you're coming from. They feel for you. Yeah. This is just you're jammed up and I want to help you get out of it. Yeah. If all this sounds super familiar from every TV show or movie you've ever seen is because it's been written so much that it's own. Like writers don't even need to do their own research into how this is done because it's just how it is in the movies. How it is in the movies is how it is in real life. When I was reading this, I was like, oh, yeah, I've seen that before. I've seen that technique before. It made me actually researching this article made me appreciate that there are some TV cop show writers out there who really do their homework. Like The Wire. Sure. It was a little more nuanced like Law and Order. What is it? I don't watch those. The one with Vincent Dinafrio, I can't remember what it's called? Criminal Minds, something like that. It's not it, it's a little more overt. Right. But all the factors are there. Yeah. Another one of the tried and true techniques is maximization that's when they try to scare you. If you've ever heard like, oh, you're pretty, Josh. They're going to love you in prison. I hear that almost every day. That is a classic maximization. Or just they're going to throw the book at you for what you've done. Unless you start playing along, you're going to get the max penalty. Exactly. They may also go the exact opposite route, which is minimization, which is to create the idea that society will commiserate with you because anybody in your position would have done the same thing. Right. That little old lady was asking for her purse to be taken in this day and age, in this economy, that kind of thing. Polygraph was used for a while and they still use that, but most times, if you listen to our show on polygraphs, they're not admissible in court. So a man named John Reed, he was a polygraph analyst, said, you know what, there's a lot of things that happen during a polygraph exam that we can use without the machine just to root out the truth or lies. Yeah. Basically, John Reid said, hey, I've noticed through all of my experience, all of these things, that a person who is guilty or who confesses at least goes through. And here are some ways to really make this more efficient, to make them react more strongly, to get them to confess faster, more forcefully. And he came up with order called the Read Technique. Nine Steps of the Read technique. Registered trademark of Johnny Reed and Associates. Yeah. Really? Johnny Reed An Associates is like this business that's still very much around. Yeah. I don't know if I need to say that, but it is there. Yeah. Technique. Yeah. And they train the CIA, the FBI, local law enforcement, they're like in the United States, the Re Technique is the gold standard for police interrogation. The problem is it is also being increasingly proven to be based on basically armchair psychology and not science. Yeah. It's going through the same thing right now that a lot of the forensic sciences are going through there's, like based on intuition that doesn't really hold up to scrutiny. And I should say the Read Technique has not been across the board debunked. Right. And it makes sense in a lot of ways, but there are studies out there that have said, like, this doesn't really hold up. Yeah. He defends it. He says it's a very sound technique, but false confession comes from improper use and bad police work. Yeah. And it's not necessarily like the Reed people are treated like they're out to get anybody and everybody. The Re Technique is criticized because the whole foundation that it's built on is the presumption of guilt and it has been shown to produce false confessions. That's right. Alright. If you sit down in a room to get interrogated by the cops, one thing that they're probably going to start doing is lying to you and saying, we have evidence that they may not have. We have witnesses that puts you at the scene that don't exist. Basically, with a few exceptions, cops can lie and say whatever they want in there and that is going to make someone nervous. Even though you wore surgical gloves when you broke into that house. If they say your fingers are all over the place, you're going to start second guessing yourself and get nervous. Yeah. And even if you weren't in that house ever, and you know that you aren't in the house, you're going to start to wonder if maybe you suffer from blackouts and do horrible things. Like this cop is saying, wow, you're blacked out. And yet the courts have upheld the cops right to deceive. And I read about a study that found that 92% of 630 detectives in the US and Canada that were pulled say they use false evidence ploys where they're saying how many? 92%? Yeah. I'm surprised it's not 100%. Yeah, you would guess maybe the other 8% were just like they didn't even look at what they were saying. But yeah, you can. And they do say, we have your fingerprints, we have a witness, we have DNA. They can completely lie about what they have and that they have it on you to get you to confess. That's right. And sign it. It doesn't matter. You can't say, well, that cop said he had evidence. It doesn't matter. And the whole legal basis for this idea for the cops letting the cops deceive is this long standing notion that no innocent person would ever sign a confession even if they were lied to about physical evidence of their guilt being at the scene of the crime because they know they're not guilty. The problem is that long standing idea is coming under. More and more scrutiny is being found to be not the case. Like people it's been shown people will when lied to in situations like that, they will confess to things that they did not do. I know it seems crazy for people like you and me because I know I would never do that, but I'm not mentally challenged or I'm not poor, and there's a lot of reasons why someone might falsely confess. Yeah. And I think though also, it's not just necessarily going how you are going into it. Yes. A lot of the mentally ill people make up a decent amount of false confessions. Same with mentally handicapped, cognitively impaired people, people of low socioeconomic status. There are a lot of factors that set you up th to be more likely to have a false or give a false confession, not knowing you're right. But if we took you and ran you through a long enough interrogation with people who knew what they were doing, who knows what you would sign? That'd be all right. We'll see. Because I understand this all. I know my rights. I have a very strong mind. Well, you would probably say, I want a lawyer. Well, yeah, I'd just end it all. And then I'd be like, I don't know any lawyers. Do you know a lawyer? I have an entertainment attorney. Does that count? They know lawyers. Yeah, exactly. This is the whole network. So once they bring you in the room, the room itself and this is all from Reed's manual. He wrote a manual 1962 with a Northwestern law professor named Fred in Bow called Criminal Interrogation and Confessions. I imagine every writer in Hollywood has a copy of that on their shelf, but the room that you see on TV, that's what they suggest. Nothing on the walls. A very plain desk, a very uncomfortable chair on one side, two chairs on the other. For the detectives, that one way mirror that's going to serve a purpose of letting people spy on you and just to make you nervous, even if there's no one on the other side. And put you out of reach from this one I had never really noticed, but out of reach from just light switches and maybe the AC what do you call those? Thermostat thermostat. Yeah. Just to make you feel powerless. It's all a mind game to make you feel helpless. Okay. So far seems pretty intuitive, pretty logical. Sure. Like if you can't flip the lights on and off, it's not something I would think that I would want to do right then, but maybe knowing seeing that it was that far away would just give me this reinforced the idea that I couldn't even if I wanted to, because it's all the way over there. That's probably smaller detective in between me and that. Exactly. But it makes sense. But I point that out because that's the read technique, stuff like that. Sure. Keep the light switches away from the criminal because it'll make him feel helpless. Right. Does it sounds a little hanky, but it makes sense in a way, sure. That is the read technique encapsulated. So let's continue. Chuck so that's just the room that they suggest. If you follow the re technique to a T, and this is one of the saving graces of it, you are supposed to do what's? Initial interview. Right. And if you're the detective and you go into an initial interview of an interrogation, the re technique tasks you with going in without a presumption of guilt. Yet that's the point of the initial interview, is you're supposed to be sizing your guy up and determining for yourself as a seasoned investigator, whether you think initially they're guilty or innocent. I'm sure that happens some. Yeah. There was another study that found that it's often skipped as well, and they just start, like, hammering right away. Oh, yeah. You're throwing out the potential for this person to be treated as possibly innocent. You're not sizing up. You're going in assuming they're guilty. But if you do go through that initial interview, the other point of it is that you're supposed to be creating a baseline which I think that showed up in the polygraph one, too, which isn't surprising because John Reed was a polygraph expert for a while, too. Yeah. And you've ingratiated yourself in the first few minutes by this point. Like, if you're in Philadelphia and your suspect has on, like, a Phillies cap, you might talk about the game last night. Right, exactly. And that throws back to the suspect being more likely to trust someone that shares the same views that they feel they can identify with. So the detective will do whatever they can to make it seem like, oh, you're a Catholic, I'm a Catholic, too. That kind of thing. Yeah. And so once you've got a little bit of rapport going on is when you're going to set your baseline. And I thought, this is pretty interesting, and I'm going to start looking for this on cop shows to see if they don't overtly talk about it, if they're just how good they are with their acting. Because if they're looking at the eyes, then they're going to be accurate. Because that's one of the ways supposedly you can create a baseline. You're going to ask some questions that require memory recall, and you're going to ask other questions that require more creativity, and you're going to look at where their eyes go. Supposedly, if your eyes move to the right, that is just recall because you're, I guess, looking in the direction of your memory center of your brain. If it's more creative, you might look to the left. And then you're going to use these later on to see if your suspect is creatively making up a lie, they might look to the left. Or if they're just truthfully recalling something, they might look to the right. Is that bunk? Yes. All right. It's very dangerous, too, because that is incredibly widespread. It's a popular misconception. If you ask anybody, if you move your eyes a certain way, does it indicate you're lying? Most people are going to say, yes, it totally does. I can't remember if it's right or left, but if you look a certain way, it means you're lying. So that's a long standing thing that's based actually on a self help philosophy from the really? It has nothing to do with science. And actually, Richard Wiseman, who we incorrectly did some research that proves that ghosts exist in our ghost episode, that guy, he's done some ones to debunk this. He did a couple of studies, and in one of the studies he found, he used footage of people who were holding press conferences searching for lost relatives, but the person pleading for their relatives return was later convicted of, like, killing or kidnapping their relatives. So they were obviously lying. They were committing a huge lie in front of the public. And he found that they were just as likely to look to the left or the right. There is no correlation whatsoever. Yeah, I'm sure there are facial cues of pantomimes if you're Christopher Walken. But it all depends on the person, too, right? Yes. Like, you could be really good at lying, or really good at throwing people off with facial cues. Yeah. Or the idea that your eyes move in a certain direction at all because you're coming up with a lie or because you're remembering something might not it doesn't mean anything necessarily. Yeah. We also did one of micro expressions. This is a culmination of a lot of shows, I'm realizing. Yes, it really is. So that was another one. You've got the baseline set. You're watching the eyes even though you really shouldn't be, but for the most part, you're seeing what your suspect appears like when they're stressed. Sure. I'm sorry. When they're relaxed. Yeah. And the reason you're creating this baseline of what they act like when they're relaxed is because if you ask them questions and they answer them and appear relaxed, then supposedly they're telling the truth. Again, this is predicated on some faulty ideas, because here's the problem. Anxiety is not necessarily linked to lying. Like, yes, you may appear anxious if you're lying, but that doesn't mean that if you're anxious, you're lying. Right. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I would do the Chuck technique would be the fast thing. I would set them up. I'll call him and be like, hey, did you watch the game last night? Yeah. Oh, cool. Why did you kill it all, ladies? Yeah. You like the Phillies? Yes. It was a pretty good game. How do you think they're going to go far? Yeah. Did you kill your wife? Wow. Boom. That was pretty good. You almost said yes. Yeah. Really? And you didn't kill your wife? No. I mean, jeez, that was thrilling. The truck technique. I like the Colombo. What's that? That's great. I'm glad you liked the Phillies. I just want to thank you for coming by. It was good to meet you. If we need anything, can we call you? And they're like, they're so relieved that they get the lead, and then you oh, I'm sorry, one more thing. Why did you kill your wife? That Colombo did? Yeah. Here's a little better at it than I was. There's one other thing. It's just not making sense to me. If you didn't kill your wife, why were you found standing over with the knife? Yeah, that's what Colombo we do. Catch them off guard. Like, really get them to let their guard down. I like that. So you said he colombo was I was about to say he went on and killed his wife, but that was Robert Blake. Yeah. That was Barretta. Yeah. What was his technique? I don't know. I never watch. Beretta, check your gun with the Matre d. Is that what he did? No. What did he do? I think he left his gun with the Matrix. Suppose that's what he said he did. Like, your table for two. Here's my coat. Here's my gun. We can hang on to that for me. Will you be my alibi? I think we're at the Read Technique now, right? We are. So the other stuff was from the book that's based on the Read Technique criminal Interrogation and confessions. But now we are at the actual Read Technique, the nine point technique that is designed to maximize discomfort, which leads to more frequent confessions. Yeah. And it's illegal in a lot of European countries for children, which it should be because that's another risk factor going in that can produce false confessions, is age. Of course, we'll get to some of those later. Those are kind of maddening when you read about, like, a 14 year old that's interrogated without their parents for, like, a full day. Yeah. But it happens. So step number one in the re techque is the confrontation. And this is after the initial interview. You're going to present the facts of the case. You're going to tell them about the evidence, what they're faced with, all the evidence against them. Even if you're making some of it up, you might want to invade their personal space at this time. If you're Matthew McConaughey and then you start looking for things like fidgety suspect. They look in their lips. Are they like muscle with their hair? And then if you're an investigator, you might say, all right, I've got this guy just where I want him. That guy ran his fingers through his hair. He's guilty. Exactly. And that's kind of part of the issue that a lot of critics of the Re Technique bring up is that basically if you strip nonverbal stuff out, then you got some sound stuff there. Right. The biggest problem is when you're trying to read non verbal cues because it's not rooted in science. It's rooted in armchair psychology and pop science. Totally. So the idea that somebody's fidgeting means they're guilty and they're lying not necessarily. They could be fidgeting because any human being would be really uncomfortable when placed in that situation and interrogated by cops who are experts at it. Right. So step number two is theme development. And you're going to be a little more soothing here with a softer voice. And this is when you come up with some theories and a story maybe, of why they committed this crime. Like, you just couldn't go on any longer knowing your best friend had sex with your wife. You just couldn't live with that, could you? And if the suspect latches onto that in some verbal or nonverbal ways and they'll continue if they don't, then they'll just create another theme. Yeah. And the detective will basically just kind of while they're creating the story for the suspect to latch onto, they're also actively listening to the suspect to see if the suspect will latch onto it in any way, shape or form. And if they don't, they try another one. If they do, then they start to. Kind of beef that one up and that leads alternatives, which actually comes later. Yeah, but in the meantime, one of the main techniques of the lead technique is stopping denials. But I didn't do it. Josh, listen, I'm telling you, I was imagine my finger on Chuck's lips right now. Quiet. You would never do that. Now you stop denials because it creates a sense of hopelessness. Yeah. Don't you feel hopeless with my fingers on your lips? So hopeless you have no idea. It makes you feel hopeless that you don't even have the opportunity to reason with this top. Yeah. You can't defend yourself. Not at all. So you have a sense of hopelessness. Plus, the other upside, if you're an interrogator, is that you're keeping the person from talking, meaning they also can't ask for counsel. Then I don't see why people don't just do that the first thing over and over. Say, I need a lawyer, I need a lawyer, I need a lawyer. I read this article in, I think, The Stranger, aren't they? Out of Seattle? I don't know. It wasn't a great article. It was just kind of misleading. Like the author really wanted you to sympathize with the guy who was guilty and didn't really reveal that he really was pretty guilty toward the end. Right. But it had this really great explanation for why people don't ask for a lawyer in this article. They seemed guilty. Yes. Really? And I've seen it before, but this article really got the point across. This guy was like, I mean, he'd done some stuff before. He dabbled in drugs and ran an illegal poker game and stuff like that. Sure. Light malfeasance. Yeah. And he knew he was technically guilty in the eyes of the law, but not for this thing that they wanted him on. Right. So he had that guilt to begin with. And then these cops saying, like, you're going to really look guilty if you ask for a lawyer. Yeah, that's true. And then the other aspect was, if you lawyer up, we can't help you. Oh, yeah, I've seen that one. If you talk to us, that's the only way we can help you get out of this jam. We would have done the same thing you did. Yeah, but the cops never want to get you out of a jam. No, that's not what they're trying to do. And so what they were saying was, if you clam up, who knows what's going to happen to you? They were doing all sorts of really effective psychological manipulation, and the guy they were talking to was a lawyer's son. And this guy like 40 years old. A lawyer's son. He had known his whole life to ask for a lawyer. And even this guy didn't immediately ask for a lawyer because these cops got him. You know, I probably wouldn't either, actually. If I was arrested today after work and obviously completely innocent of anything, wouldn't that be mind blowing. If that happened and I was completely innocent at first, my first instinct would probably be like, I need a lawyer, I didn't do anything. Yeah, why occurred that expense? Well, I think that's another aspect of the initial consultation, that initial discussion where it's like, oh, it's all friendly. We're talking about the Phillies. Why would you need a lawyer for that? I retract my statement. I get it now. But you should stick to your original statement no matter what. You have a right to counsel and there's no reason you should not invoke it. Your punishment is not going to be worse for asking for a lawyer. Yeah, you should open up. You sound like one of those legal commercials call Josh Clark. That reminds me, we should mention the ACLU episode. That was a pretty good one too. Yeah. Man, this thing is just so many tangential podcasts. So the stopping denials, that's a big part of the Reed technique. Yeah, and then there's something that's similar that John Reid noticed, but it's a little nuanced. There's a difference. And that's objections to read denials were different than objections, and objections were something to be treated differently as a result. Yeah, an objection. The example they gave here was like, I would never rape somebody because my sister was raped and it destroyed our family. So of course I wouldn't do something like that. Right. So to a cop, that's not a denial. And denial is like, I didn't do that, I didn't do that. That's not me, you got the wrong guy. Those are denials. And the cop would try to stop you from completing those sentences. That objection you just said is a denial, but it's encapsulated with like, a reason. Yeah, a justification, something to it. Do you remember when you used to take multiple choice tests in high school? They always said that if you don't know the answer, usually the one with the most verbiage, the one with the most words is the right one. I never heard that. It's true. It works out. It's not good at taking tests either. Well, no wonder we need to get in the way back machine. You can go take some more multiple tests knowing that now. But I think that's kind of the same premise for an objection. It's not just a denial. There's more to it. And the fact that somebody put that much more thought into it means that there's something to that. So a cop will take that and cultivate it and try to turn that around. Right. And they would say, I know you love your sister and you stood by her while she was raped. So of course this wouldn't be like a recurring thing. This is just a one time thing that you did and you were out of your head or whatever because you care about your sister. So you would never do this all the time or something? Exactly. And so all of a sudden you're kind of like you're giving the suspect, like, something to latch onto, something for them to basically re enter society to an extent, because at this moment, especially if they're guilty, they are totally on the outs of society. Sure. And the sole representative of society and who's speaking with them right now is the cop that's interrogating them. And everybody wants to be included. Yeah. And if you don't, then you're a sociopath, and they're going to get you anyway. Yeah. But they're going to have a hard time through interrogation. So number five is getting the Suspect's Attention. Are these the real titles, or is this just the liberties of the author of this article? I don't know. Well, we'll call it getting the suspect's attention. And this is when you pretend to be the ally of the suspect, because at this point, they're probably looking for a way out. And that's when you might go, hey, man, I get it. If I caught my best friend having sex with my wife, I'd kill him, too. Yeah. I understand where you're coming from. And maybe a little pat on the shoulder, little rub on the back or maybe a pat on the back and just some reassurance. I get to where you're coming from, man. It could happen to any of us. Right. And you're in big trouble at that point. Yeah. And that's probably going on, like, throughout. Yeah. And the themes run. These all overlap quite a bit. But if there is an objection that you've noticed that you're working, you've turned around and you're working that objection with an extra layer of compassion and commiseration, can, I guess, really kind of start to ensnare the suspect a lot more. Yeah. It's weird because I'm repulsed by a lot of this, but I'm also very impressed by what I've seen on TV, what you can tell with someone who's really good at it. Yeah. It's effective, like an art form. There's, I believe, something like 76% of suspects who are interrogated in this manner. When you take out people who invoke their Miranda rights, confess wow. Like, it has an enormous confession rate. And there's a lot of people who the vast majority, the study I saw or the number I saw, 99.6% of those confessions are from guilty people, but something like zero 4% are false confessions. The problem is there's still such a thing as false confessions. There's no safeguards. It just so happens that the false confessions are in that small of an amount. Yeah. And that percentage isn't high. But if you think about how many people are interrogated, that's like several hundred per year in the US. Up to several hundred per year. Right. That's a lot of people confessing falsely. Yeah. And it's not like that. Those people just get found out at trial or somewhere down the road that they're innocent. Those people may spend the rest of their lives in jail at the worst case they may be executed, which has probably happened in the history of the US. Although it hasn't been irrefutably proven yet. Yeah. And you can listen to how the Innocence Project works from June 2010. We interviewed. Paul is on. Oh, yeah, that's right. I wish I'd known a lot more about the Innocence Project back when we did that episode. Yeah. Like, I kind of got it and understood it, but just over the last few years, I understand it even more. I wish I would have known better than it's still a good episode. We talked to Paulazon. Yeah. She's a real pro. Yes. On Sister. No, it's not, is it? No. Okay. That's how rumors get made. Well, I just liked her, like, 50% more after you said that. Yeah. I love Steve's on. He's great. All right, and back to the read technique. At this point, number six, the suspect might lose resolve, and this seemed really obvious to me. If the suspect has his shoulders hunched or has got his head in his hands or is crying, then you've got them just where you want them as an interrogator. Right. You are going to get your confession, whether it's a false confession or not. That's not guaranteed by these outward signs. Again, if you strip away the nonverbal stuff from the read technique, it's pretty good stuff. And apparently this is where you really want to regain their attention. Like, if they start crying, like, force them to look you in the eye. Right. Because I guess that works. That increases the stress level. So remember we talked about that theme development? It's like, here's what happened, and they object to that. And then you take that objection, you turn it around, and they start to latch onto that theme couched in that objection. You take that next. And as you're developing it, it becomes one of two or more alternatives. But basically, you're taking the theme that the person latched onto, and you're making that the minimal example. It's almost like a good cop, bad cop version of reasons why you did it. Exactly. So you shot that lady in the back because she was a horrible person. Nobody is going to think that you did it because you just wanted the insurance money. Exactly. Yeah. Anybody in your position would have done this, and everyone's going to understand this is why you did it. Yeah. Not this horrible reason. This reason. This reason society can live with. Maybe you'll go to jail for a year or two, who knows? But when you come out, everybody's going to say, hey, that Bernie guy is okay. I would have shot that old lady in the back, too. Did you see that movie? Yeah. That's good. It's not, hey, that Bernie guy needs to burn in hell for the rest of his life because he killed some poor old lady for her insurance money. So with the cops sitting there saying, here's what we're saying, you're agreeing to here's this horrible interpretation that I can't control, but this I've created and sculpted with your help. Right. So let's throw this horrible big thing away. And this thing that doesn't seem nearly as bad as what the press will hear, that we'll start to put it down on paper. Yeah, but here's what you're not thinking about. What you're doing is it's the same in both cases if you're confessing to a murder, and you are just at a point to where you think, man, that sounds way better than a newspaper than this other thing. And also it's coming out of the mouth of this detective that is appearing to commiserate with you, that has empathized with you, that maybe told you on the side, like, hey, I hated that old lady, too, and I'm glad you did it. Cop can totally say that. And to win the trust of the suspect. So all of these factors combined, all of a sudden, you have a story, you have a narrative, you're working out with the cop. You may not even realize that that's what's going on. And then the cops going to say, I have a piece of paper and a pen here, and I want you to write down what we just talked about. I want you to write down your confession. Yeah, well, they're going to bring someone else in there first. Well, there's probably already someone else in there. They may bring a new person in there yes. To try and force them to retell their story, which they probably won't want to do. And that's when you can introduce, like, hey, you don't want to tell the story again to this new detective. I know you're tired. Just, here, take the spin. Exactly. Don't stab me with it. By this time, the person will likely want to do just about anything to get out of that room. And from writing and signing this confession, there's salvation on the other end. There's a light at the end of the tunnel, even if it's possibly jail. Yeah. They can get out of this room. They can get out of this horrible interrogation. Yeah. They may promise, like, a hot meal. Something as simple as that can get someone to sign a confession at the end of a long day. Right. So you've got the written confession, you have it signed. They probably have to sign an additional waiver that says, I didn't write this under coercion, or else they'll include that in the confession. And then you have basically what amounts to a slam dunk conviction in court. Yes. And that is the read technique. And we're going to talk about some real cases of interrogation right after this break. All right, Chuck. So that's the re technology name. You got your perp super effective, and it has been used in plenty of cases. Like we said, the number that I saw was .4% of confessions or false confessions, which is extraordinarily small, which means that a lot of truly bad guys get caught through the read technique, right? That's right. And there's this one in this article on how stuff works, how police interrogation works, and it's with a woman named Nicole Michelle Frederick. It's between her and a detective named Victor Lauria, and it takes place in Detroit in September of 2003. And Nicole Michelle Frederick was the stepmom to a two year old daughter. And the two year old daughter had shown up in the hospital, I believe, unresponsive, with bruises all over her body, had clearly been physically abused. And the step mom was saying, she falls down a lot. I don't think anybody hurt her. She just gets bruised like that. And it certainly wasn't me. But not only was it not me, I don't think it was anybody. The little girl just falls down. She does it to herself. And with that, Detective Laria took her to be blaming the victim that she was trying to go free. By blaming this little girl for being clumsy. Clumsy and difficult. Yes. Which a detective can then latch onto, as reprehensible as that sounds, by trying to get some empathy going, like, hey, I get it. Like, this is a tough baby. Yes. And I'm sure it's trying, and it's very difficult. So all of a sudden, Detective Laria has this, I guess this theme, this justification that was set up by the suspect. Yeah. And he starts to play it out. He's saying, like, this girl, she was a difficult baby. She's crying, you lose your head for a minute and you get a little rough, it could happen to anybody. And Ms. Frederick says, no, that's not right at all. Nobody hurt this kid. I don't understand why you don't believe me. You seem to be not listening to me, which, from what I understand, you're in the danger zone right there in your interrogation. Sure. If somebody is saying if they're pressing back their own reality on you, the detective, you're not in control. Right. Then they are. So Lauria started to look for another theme, and it was along the same lines, but rather than losing your head for a minute, it was a split second. Something happened in a flash of a minute or flash of a second and she perked up a little. Yeah. She started to latch on to that one. Yeah. So then he knew he had her in a pretty tough spot, and she started nodding her head. He sets up the alternative and said, you know what? If you don't explain this thing, everyone's going to just assume that you're this awful, abusive person. I think people might understand more, though, because everyone's been there. If it was just a split second thing and you lost control, people are going to get that those are the alternatives all of a sudden. And then it came out that her daughter had brain damage and was likely not going to die. And then all of a sudden, the suspect started saying, oh, they're going to get me for murder. Yeah, well, he pointed out to her, he's like, by the way, you haven't even asked about the condition of your daughter. Right? And she was like, no, I haven't. Totally have. He's like, no, you really haven't. And she's like, well, how is she? He's like, she's not going to make it. And that's when she goes, oh, no, I'm going to be tried for murder. And she was and found guilty. She confessed, I believe, right. Yeah. She admitted to shaking a baby and then said out loud, I killed the little girl. I killed her. Right. So she was convicted of killing her two year old stepdaughter. And last I saw, I found an appeal in 2005 that was denied. That was the last I saw of her after her conviction. So it does work. And Detective Laurie followed all of these steps and got a bad guy in this case. Yeah. And so a lot of times it goes down just like it should. But it is super controversial, which we've talked about some and you mentioned at the beginning. One of the biggest problems is it's guilt. Presumptive is they go in there thinking, all right, this person the goal of the interrogation is to get a confession, not to find out whether or not someone did something. Right. In many cases, they go in there thinking this person is guilty. And if you're going in there thinking you're guilty, even if you don't mean to, you're going to start to filter out any reasons why they might be innocent, even if they are good reasons and valid reasons. And that ain't no good. No, it's not. Well, it's pretty huge flaw, really, even if it does result in only zero 4% of false confessions. Yeah. And you also mentioned that the whole purpose of the interrogation is to make someone stressed and uncomfortable. And then when you notice people behaving stressed and uncomfortable, that's a presumption, an indicator of guilt, supposedly. It's like you said, what you call a feedback loop. Right. So I want to make you stressed and uncomfortable. You're being stressed and uncomfortable, that means you're guilty. Exactly, yeah. It's an odd way to approach things. It's coercion. And then there's also been a lot of people to point out that a lot of these techniques are the same thing that are used in Brainwashing, which we did a show on July 2009 did a brainwashing show. Invading personal space, not allowing the person to speak, using contrasting alternatives to have them come to make them feel like they're making a decision, or that they have a choice or some sort of power. I think you brainwashed me in that episode too, right? Yeah, we did a little role play. Yeah, it was awesome, man. I turned you into a prep. That's five years ago. Yeah. And then positioning confession as a means of escape. Yeah. That was like the last step, I think, before resolution, right, was to say, just denounce your family or whatever and you'll be saved or something. Right. In this case, it signed, this thing, and man, you're going to get that hot meal and that cigarette I promised you. Yeah. The thing is, like we said, it does produce false confessions. And I saw somewhere that 20% to 25% of people who've been exonerated with DNA evidence gave a false confession. Wow. So people go to jail for years for this kind of thing. Well, here's a few of the more famous cases. Peter Riley, in 1973, an 18 year old whose mother was murdered, I think. No siblings and no father, so like the only parent he'd ever known. And after 8 hours of interrogation by Connecticut police, he confessed to brutally murdering her and was convicted on manslaughter. Based on the confessional loan, there was no evidence, no motive. Medical findings suggested that there were at least two attackers. And the town really got behind him, apparently. And like so this kid didn't do this. He's not that kind of guy. And let's have baked sales and raise money. Oh, nice. Arthur Miller, the famous playwright, lived in the town and he championed it because he did a lot of work with ACLU. And eventually new evidence came out that exonerated him and he was set free after three years in prison. Three years. Not too bad. That's better than Earl Washington Jr. Who in 1982, he was described as and police, everybody, I'm using scare quotes here. He was described by psychologists as mildly retarded. He had an IQ of 69, which is a whole other kettle of fish that mean anything anyway. Sure, but he confessed to raping and murdering a 19 year old woman under interrogation. He was convicted on the confession alone, right? Yeah, just on the confession. Well, a lot of these are and spent 18 years in prison, some of them on death row, and was apparently rescued from the executioner with like nine days to go. Yeah, but at the same time, like, as a jury, what are you to do when someone says, I did this? Hopefully, I don't know, maybe add some other evidence too. No, I agree. The thing is, Earl Washington thing, somebody else was caught doing it using DNA. Yeah, that's been a huge change to this kind of thing. It's at least exonerated people, like free and clear. Sure. But that brings up another problem with false confessions. Not only do innocent people go to jail, guilty people stay free. And they accumulate more victims over time. Like, how many more children with that lady in Detroit have abused if she got an offer or something? And the guy who created the reki actually had a false confession and wrongful conviction under his belt. If you read the article, the interview in the New York, the first thing it talks about is this guy in the 50s who was in jail for 20 years for murdering his wife, even though he didn't do it, who was interrogated by John Reed himself. Wow. Yeah. So the guy who actually did do it went on to rape pregnant women and commit all these other horrible crimes that he wouldn't have done had he been caught the first time or had the cops still been looking for him. Wow. Yeah, it's a huge point. I mean, it's not just innocent people in prison, it's guilty people out still. Yeah. If you really want to see this all firsthand, I highly recommend the documentary from Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon, the Central Park Five. And this is the famous story in 1989 of five young African American men who were sent up the river for a rape in Central Park and they did not do it. And it's a great documentary and it just summarizes how you can get a false confession very nicely and it all plays out and you see these interviews and get really angry. But that was definitely a case of sort of like with the Atlanta child murders. Like, people are scared to go into Central Park now and we've got these five youths who aren't so smart and they're poor, and we think they did it. And I don't care what the evidence says, we need to finger them for the crime and put them all over the news so people will feel safe again. But they were eventually exonerated, thanks to DNA again, and they spent, depending on which guy, between six years and twelve years in prison. And really great documentary. I think it's on Netflix. It is, it is. Have you seen it? Yeah, it's a good one. So, Chuck, we've basically been talking mostly about the Reed Technique, but there are alternatives. Some law enforcement agencies have lost faith in the Re technique. And in Britain, apparently, in 1990, there was a bunch of false confessions that came to light and the British government said, we need to figure something else out. So they created a blue ribbon task force and said, come up with an alternative to the Reed Technique, which ironically, is a technique in the Reed Technique. But what they came up with was called Peace, which this is the worst acronym of all time, but Preparation and Planning, engage and Explain, Account Closer, evaluate clearly spells peace. So they came up with it after a couple of years, and by 2001 it was pretty widespread. But the Peace Technique is predicated on the idea that you're not going after a confession. I love this technique. Like, you as an investigator, an interrogator, you're going in to just get the whole story out in as much detail as possible. And you're not going after a confession, you're not accusing the person of the crime, you're being polite. And here's another thing, and a lot of people think that this will cure false confessions almost in and of itself, videotaping the confession from beginning to end. And so what the cops do is they interview the suspect. They say, well, what about this? Here's a discrepancy. What about this? And they're not being accusatory. They're just putting everything out there and letting this person explain it in front of the video tape or in front of the video camera. And then the tape is shown to a jury, and the jury apparently decides whether the person is lying or not. Yeah. And this is all built on the what I think is a pretty rock solid theory that it is really hard to lie and lie and keep it all straight and keep it all in that congruent line. That's believable. At some point, if you keep talking and you're lying a bunch, you're going to mess up. And that's what they prey on. Especially if you just spent the last 8 hours, like, drinking cruddy coffee and eating a few Ho HOS and being asked questions by interrogators, even if they're being polite. Yeah. You're going to have a really hard time keeping up with what you've already said. Yeah. Like you've got to be a real skilled sociopath to lie for hours and hours and hours. Yeah. And then they'll bring them in again a week later and say, let's have some more tea and let's sit down and talk. And a week later, you might forget some of the things you said. Oh, yeah. And the cops have the video and are writing down all the details. Seems pretty solid to me. Yeah. So good on you, Britain. And there are some people here in the US. Trying to teach it to cops here, but apparently it's just like word of mouth and the particular jurisdiction has to be down with it and support it. And it's just not super widespread here yet. The read technique isn't the force of law. It's just the gold standard. It's the one that everybody uses. And they're like, I want to be like the cops on the shows. Well, yeah, exactly. I don't want to do the peace technique in Canada. I found a completely different technique too. It's called the Mr. Big technique. Have you heard of it? No. It's extremely involved. Basically, you, the suspect, will meet an undercover cop who is posing as a criminal while you're out and about and free and easy or whatever, or maybe while you're being booked, whatever. And you guys are going to become friends. And over the course of the next several months, this undercover cop is going to gain your trust and get you to ultimately confess. That shows how little crime there is. They're like so you cut down your neighbor's tree. Right? Exactly. They can spend like, three months on a single confession. Wow. Yeah. But it's called the Mr. Big Technique. And actually the reason it's called Mr. Big is in its ideal form, you, the suspect, become criminal. Compatriots with this undercover cop who then introduces you to Mr. Big, the crime boss, who wants you to step up to the next crime level that is going to get you to talk about this murder that you did or whatever. And then you confess it and you're being secretly taped and you don't know it and you just entrapped yourself. Man, I love Canada. Mr. I might have to move there, man. Yeah. Are you going to stick around after Toronto or Vancouver? What's up, the country? So we said earlier we were going to give some tips. I think we'd be remiss if we didn't. They seem a little silly, but they recommend you just don't talk. You don't talk, they said. Imagine the words I invoke my rights to remain silent painted on the wall and stare at them. Ask for counsel, asked for a lawyer. And then the number five thing they say to do is cultivate hatred for your interrogator. Who is that from? Peace Help Beagle or something weird like that? Yeah, it's for recommendations for animal rights activists who get arrested. I got you. Yeah, it seems kind of basic to me. It is. But I think it's one of those things where they can't easily go out the window when you're in that situation. And again, if you're in the United States and you invoke your right to counsel, that's that like the cops. They have to stop. And if they don't, that's a big problem. I kind of perversely want to know how I would hold up. I know it's no laughing matter and I shouldn't joke around about it, but I would like to be interrogated just to see. So I guess that's it. If you want to learn some more about police interrogation, check out this article, police Interrogation on howsteporks.com it's a good one. And you can find that by using the search bar, of course. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this jittery, Joe's. Oh, yeah. Coffee. Hey, guys. Hope all is well. My wife Cassie and our big fan of you. And we've been listening for years. This summer we took a two month honeymoon to Southeast Asia. It was a blast. Your podcast kept the same. Thanks for that. We sent you a postcard from Angkor Wat in Cambodia. It was bought there, written in Borneo and mailed from Malaysia, I remember, so it was well traveled. Anyway, we live in Athens and love to hear your stories about Athens. We actually live in Five Points on the shortcut road where Chuck told about his mystery creepy old lady ghost story. I drive by there every day and always keep an eye out for her. So scary. But my day job is with Jittery Joe's. Coffee Roaster is a local Athens institution and he brought a huge box of coffee, good stuff, and shirts and hats and hand delivered it to the office. And I think he was surprised to know that. I remember when Jittery Joe's first opened, he was like, oh, well, that was before my time. I think he didn't think I was as old as I was, but I remember Jittery Joe's opening up. It was a big deal. It's like the first kind of good indie copy house in Athens. I didn't know they were the first, but I'm not surprised. The first one I remember, at least. Yeah, but he suggests the Sumatra Wahana. He said it's unlike any coffee I've ever had. People either love it or hate it. So that is from Mike Lord, and you can just look up Jittery Joe's online. I'm sure you can order this stuff. Yeah, you definitely can. Thanks for the coffee, Mike. It's good. Yes. And thank you to your wife, Cassidy, for all the support. Yes. If you want to give Chuck and I free stuff, we are happy to accept it. You can get in touch with us to ask for our physical mailing address, and we'll give it to you. Okay. Yeah. I have to say, showing up at the office unannounced is a little weird, but since he had a huge box of coffee, it was all for gifts. Oh, yeah. If you come bearing gifts, it's like yeah, it's social lubricant gifts are especially good ones, like Jittery Joe's coffee. You can get in touch with us via Twitter at sciskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffychatnow. You can send us an email at stuffpodcast@howstepworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuck. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My HeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows, you." | |
d950a8ba-361e-11ea-91dc-e3f30166f400 | Short Stuff: Nouns of assemblage... assemble! | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-nouns-of-assemblage-assemble | A gaggle of geese. A murder of crows. Nouns of assemblage are awesome and we talk about them for about 12 minutes in today's Short Stuff installment. | A gaggle of geese. A murder of crows. Nouns of assemblage are awesome and we talk about them for about 12 minutes in today's Short Stuff installment. | Wed, 24 Jun 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=24, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=176, tm_isdst=0) | 10393033 | 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. Hi, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And this is Short Stuff. There's an awareness of podcasters working together right now. I wondered what yes. I had a feeling that was coming. I just didn't know what you were going to use. What would you have said? I don't know. I have no idea. I didn't think about it enough. But I will say this, I didn't either. I know you're quick with it. I'm not. Okay. I'm dumb. No, I love this stuff so much. At first second I thought we were talking about foie gras. No, I love this stuff. I love words, as you know. I love entomology, etymology. I love where they come from. I love everything about the nouns of assemblage, which is what we're talking about, which is if you've ever heard a murder of crows or a harness of podcasters, a Harry of Hendersons, that's called the noun of assemblage, which is a great band name. And I know I say that a lot, but that really is a great band name. The Nouns of Assemblage. I think so. Yeah. But what would it be that feels like sort of shoegaze ninety S to me. Okay, yeah, I was going to say, like kind of early 2007 opening for Slow Dive. Exactly. But that's what we're talking about here. And we're going to talk about a lot of the specific ones, but also the story of how these came about. For the most part. Yes. It turns out that there was a book that came out in 1486 that kicked off this kind of craze that lasted a little while that basically said, hey, you know how there's no such thing as teenagers or college yet? Well, we're going to foreshadow all that by coming up with some word gags with this book of St. Albin's, which is basically a gentleman's guide to things like hunting dog breeds, heraldry sporting just that kind of like falconry. Falconry with kind of like 15th century guide to manliness is basically what it was. Yes, ma'am. I want a copy of this. I looked online to buy one. It's not affordable, but they do have a PDF. Okay, there you go. Because my first thought was, man, I'm going to buy one of these and send it to John Hodgman like he would totally appreciate this. Sure. But yeah, I might just print and bind the PDF and send to him instead. I think Hodgman would appreciate it. I don't think it would sync into him that you would like taking out a second mortgage on your house to buy him that book. It's not going to happen. I think the PDF is going to be just fine. Yeah. So we said nouns of assemblage, they can also be called terms of veteran, and they're linked to Norman culture. A lot of them came about from hunting and things like fishing and falconry that we're talking about. Right. Like venery actually means hunting. Oh, it does? Yeah. And that Middle English. It also means sex in Middle English, which is a weird combo if you think about it. What kind of venery are you asking me for right now, exactly? Are you going to be hunting foxes or hunting foxes? They say both. Well, this book has a lot of stuff in it, but there is a chapter called and this Is a Lot of Y's, where you would see I's like Chaucer style, So The Companies of Beasties and Foulies, which is a great chapter title. And basically it sounds like a bunch of dudes in the 1400 sat around, drank a lot of booze, and had a good old time making up these nouns of assemblage. Right. Which is really cute in a way. I mean, there's a lot of cuteness to the fact that this was ever like a big deal, but some of the things that we talk about today, like a host of angels or shock of corn or a panel of judges, all of those come from, if not this book, the little kind of trend in making up nouns of assemblage that the book kicked off. Yeah. So you've got a sleuth of bears, a sculpt of foxes. It also tells you a little bit about the time in that both women and geese were gaggles. But if you have a group of wives, a group of married women together, they're impatience of wives or noon patience in Middle English seems kind of Dutch to me, but I guess they're both derived from Germanic writers, were a worship of writers, so they clearly thought a lot about their own talents. Congregation of churchgoers, a staff of employees. All those kind of came from this whole thing. So there was like a lot of words that we came up with or that was that this book put out or the trend came up with that we still use today. But because they were terms of venery, it was mostly meant for animals. So the fact that humans were showing up in here at all was meant to be kind of like a joke, like a bit of satire, because the terms were meant to be nouns of assemblage for animals specifically. Yeah, and I think it became sort of just a popular trend period outside of this book, and younger people started making these things up, and it just became a bit of a fad for a little while. It did. It was like stuffing yourself into phone booths, 15th century style. That's right. You want to take a break real quick, and then we'll just come back and say some more of these because it's a lot of fun to do. Agreed. Okay. Hey, summer is here, my friend, which means school is out, the sun is shining bright, the days are longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. Yeah. Whether you're road tripping or you're relaxing by the pool, you can tune into the podcast here. It's on Amazon Music that's so good, it's criminal. Morbid. That's right. It's part true crime and part comedy. Morbid takes you on a journey through murderous mysteries and major laughs, all in the same week. Yeah, from the paranormal to the pretty spooky and everything in between, hosts Selena Ercart and Ash Kelly cover it all. And with two episodes released each week, you'll be hooked on this charttopping series before you know it. You can listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. 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, the dedicated US based restoration specialist will work to fix it. Identity thieves have had it easy for far too long. Now, finally, it's your turn. Just remember, no one can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transactions at all businesses. But everyone can save up to 25% off their first year by going to LifeLock. comStuff that's lifelock.com slash stuff for 25% off your first year. LifeLock identity theft protection starts here. All right. Started off chuck. All right, we'll go to birds. There are a lot of them for birds because they hunted birds, and birds are everywhere. So that's where we get murder of crows. I think that's one of the more common ones that people know, and unkindness of ravens, which I had heard before, and they kind of make a point here in this House of Works article that it really indicates, like, the gaggle of women and guests, how they felt about these things. So murder and unkindness for these two birds that people don't really like. Where you'll have a charm of finches because they're super cute. That's one of my favorites. It's a good one. There's also College of Cardinals, which for some reason, to me is really evocative. It really brings to mind a bright red cardinal for some reason. So I like that one. Yeah, I think that's kind of part of it. It's supposed to really be evocative, too, although some of them are clearly jokey, a mustering of storks, who knows? But it's worth mentioning, right? Yeah. There's one that CS. Lewis coin that's actually now considered in dictionaries as the proper way to say a group of owls. That's a parliament. Yeah, that one's pretty cool, too. Yeah. Way to go. See us, Lewis. Let me see here. You've got insects, swarm of bees have stuck around. There are not a ton of nouns of assemblage for insects, though. Business of flies, which I'd never heard of. If you have a bunch of lights, what's it called? A flock of lights, which is that's just creepy. Yeah. I think they should have gone with a beard of bees. Yeah. Instead of a swarm. And then there's some of the cutest ones are reserved for baby versions of our pets, domesticated animals, like a kindle of kittens. I looked up the puppies one. Are you ready for this? It's a piddle of puppies because of why you think it is. I'm glad I know that now because I often tell the story of when I got my dog who is no longer with us. Buckley I went to the shelter and there was a pitile of puppies all together in a little ball. And he's the only one who peeled away from that pitbull and came over to me. So I was like, you're the one. You're the one. But now I know piddle of puppies. That's great. Agreed. It is pretty great. What else? Chuck there are wild animals, a pride of lions, a wisdom of wombats, which I don't heard before. Yeah. I mean, you've also got dogs. A pack of dogs was one, but dogs had a bunch of them because dogs were pets and they were hunting friends. You could have a kennel of dogs, a pack of dogs, a cry or a mute of dogs. Yeah. Those were just the hunting hounds in particular. There's also gang, legion. A meat of dogs. Yeah, a meat of dogs. It sounds like they're up to something. Yeah. And although you may have a kindle of kittens, once those kittens grow up, they become a clouder of and that's clowder of cats. A clouder of cats, which is better than a chowder of cats, really. Oh, God. I said some of the wild animals already. But if you notice, the flies group was called the business of flies. There's also a business of ferrets. And really it makes a lot of sense because business is derived from busyness, like something that's busy and moving about and everything, which really does apply to both a bunch of flies and a bunch of ferrets, too. So some of these were kind of right on a GAM of whales seems a little out of the blue. Yeah, a prickle of hedgehogs makes sense. A bloat of hippos makes sense. Sure. But what about an obstinacy of buffalo? Yeah, that makes sense. They're kind of immovable, I guess. So I propose that we stop for now, but we start a spin off podcast where every episode, we just spend an hour saying these things. Okay? Yeah. And if you want to ever go on Jeopardy, I would recommend memorizing all of them. Yeah, agreed. And if you want to know more about these, you can go on to Howstephos.com and look up this really great article. And since we said that, everybody buddy short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio's how stuff works. For more podcasts from my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
20d44b0a-121b-11eb-85ed-a38eb50e578d | Short Stuff: Freedom House Ambulance Services | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-freedom-house-ambulance-services | As part of Black History Month, we wanted to share the little known story of the Freedom House Ambulance Service. Listen in to learn all about this seminal group of EMTs. | As part of Black History Month, we wanted to share the little known story of the Freedom House Ambulance Service. Listen in to learn all about this seminal group of EMTs. | Wed, 17 Feb 2021 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=17, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=48, tm_isdst=0) | 15769660 | audio/mpeg | "Picture this, friends. You could be packing a carry on for a trip to Hawaii when you realize you're going to need a bigger bag. But it's cool because you booked your flight with your city Advantage Platinum Select Card. So you can check a bag for free on domestic travel and still have room for those souvenirs. And surprise, those souvenirs also earned you Advantage Miles. Actually, you earned Advantage Miles and loyalty points with each swipe. So let's start dreaming about your next next adventure. This could be you, and you could be anywhere with the city Advantage Platinum Select Card. Learn more at citi comAdventure and travel on with cityadvantage. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Dave Kustan. The producer is here in spirit, but not really. He'll hear this eventually, and I'll bet he just got a warm feeling from the shout out. And since I said all that, it's short stuff. So let's go. Audios. Yeah. And you want to really mess with people's sense of time and space. Yes. I'm picking necka wafers out of my teeth as we record this. That should be a little hint. I'm actually refraining from eating one right now. Oh, really? But you want to? I do. I kind of like the wafers now. I mean, I'm not crazy for them, but I do like them. Chuck all right, so this is part of our Black History Month content. A very cool story about the Freedom House Ambulance Service. Yes. Which did we do one on EMTs or ambulances or what was the name of that? Paramedics? We did one on paramedics. We've done one on CPR, which is, I think, where Dr. Peter Safari's name came from. Sure. Spoiler. We've done one on medical stand in. I can't remember practice patients. Yeah, I can't believe we did an episode on that. It's like, one of the most obscure things that exist. But this one, I knew nothing about this, and then as I was researching, I was, like, 99% Visible did one. They're basically like our Simpsons did it to our South Park. Basically. It's crazy. Roman is always one step ahead of it. He is. I was looking up the Mojave phone booth. You ever heard of that? No, but I'm sure Roman knows everything about it. He does. It's like, why even do a short stuff on it now? Because there's a 99% invisible. But this one, I would say, go listen to the 99% invisible episode. I haven't heard it yet, but I'm sure it's quite good. This is still worth talking about here, too. Yeah. And it also really highlights our long motto, wwrmd what would Roman Mars do? That's right. He would talk about the Freedom House Ambulance Services, which is one of the most astounding origin stories I've ever heard in my entire life. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty easy to think about the fact that you call an ambulance today and someone's going to show up that actually knows how to save your life. But it wasn't that long ago, as recently as 50 years, that ambulances were sort of like taxi vans that would show up and drive you as fast as they could to the hospital if you're lucky and hope that you wouldn't die. And that changed between 1967 and 1975, when a low income neighborhood in Pittsburgh, the Hill District, launched an ambulance service that actually featured trained gentlemen. I don't think there were any women as a part of this first run, but trained gentlemen that could actually help save your life before and as they took you to the hospital. Yes. So, like, the history of EMTs, of paramedics, of emergency medical services, of this idea of an ambulance staffed with people who knew how to perform life saving procedures and had equipment in their car that could help them perform life saving procedures, started out in a traditionally black, low income community in Pittsburgh, and the first EMTs were young members of this community. That's where it all came from. Everything we understand about paramedics today that had nothing to do with military medicine came from this, which I just am astounded by. I think it's so cool. It's awesome. And also terrible that we didn't even know about this when we did the EMT episode. I thought so, too. That's how little known it is. Yeah. Even we hadn't heard of it. True. Roman knew. Yeah, of course. So in 19th, like, he probably listened to that episode and was like, that's weird that the guys didn't talk about the Freedom House. He was probably more like, why do I even listen to these two? I don't think he does anymore. He'll never hear about this. Yeah. So Pittsburgh Hill District in the 1960s was a place where if you and this is just like so many African American communities back then and even still today, if you call it an ambulance, you were lucky if one came at all, much less on time. And in 1967, the Freedom House Enterprises opened up. It was a community agency. They focused on employment, trying to raise employment, trying to get voting rights installed. And this sort of dovetailed with a guy named Phil Holland, who was a social reformer there, and he was like, this is unacceptable that we don't have a reliable ambulance service in this community, and we have all these guys around that people are saying aren't employable at all, and why don't we get them and train them up and put them in these vans? Yeah. Which, again, this isn't just some guy being like, oh, you know, it'd be cool, as if we staffed a paramedic service from members of the community to serve this under service community or underserved community. It's totally different. He also created paramedics out of thin air, too. It was like a two part creation. And luckily for this whole project, there was an anesthesiologist from austria named Dr. Peter Safar, who, again, has probably made multiple appearances in some of these episodes. But he's the guy, basically, who created the concept of civilian paramedics out of thin air. He said, look, we need to figure out how to take these life saving procedures that we perform in the Er that actually work and get them out into the streets and ideally into the ambulances so that you're not just sitting, laying there hoping that you get to the Er before you die. They're actually working on you as you're making your way to the Er. So Him combined with this idea to create this paramedic service in the Hill District, combined to create the Freedom House Ambulance service. And again, they picked from the community, the local community, to serve their own community. I think this is so cool. All right, let's take a break, okay? And we'll be back right after this. These days, you use your personal info to do just about everything, especially when you're online. And guess what? With all that info just floating around out there, it can make the Internet a practical gold mine for identity thieves. And stealing your identity, it turns out, can be dangerously easy, which is not good. But now it's easy to protect yourself with LifeLock by Norton. Yes, LifeLock monitors your info and alerts you to potential identity threats. And if you are a victim of identity theft, a dedicated US. Based restoration specialist will work to fix it. Identity thefts have had it easy for far too long. Now, finally, it's your turn. Just remember, no one can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transactions at all businesses. But everyone can save up to 25% off their first year by going to Lifelock.com stuff. That's Lifelock.com stuff for 25% off your first year. LifeLock identity theft protection starts here. What if we could change the world one relationship at a time? Don't miss the second season of Force Multiplier, the award winning podcast from iHeartRadio and Salesforce.org, which is out now. Yeah. Listed in as host, Barrette Thurston connects with leaders and doers out there tackling some of today's biggest challenges, like climate change, education, access, global health. You'll hear from organizations like the Trevor Project, doctors Without Borders, and the University of Kentucky, who are using their platforms to maximize their impact. You'll also be introduced to action leaders like youth activist Juan Acosta and advocate Amy Allison, who are inspiring change in their day to day lives. So join them as they discuss new ways of collaborating and taking action. Listen to the second season of the iHeartRadio and Salesforce.org original podcast, force Multiplier, on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast. All right. So Doctor Safar peter Safar has said, hey, CPR is not that difficult. We should teach people to do this stuff. He's like, eventually there's going to be a song called Staying Alive. It's going to make it even easier. That's right. There's a man named Jean Starzinsky, pittsburgh native and former paramedic who directed a documentary about ten or eleven years ago called Freedom House Street Saviors. And he said that these guys that they got off the streets were, like some of them were drug addicts, some of them were veterans, war veterans who maybe had a little bit of medic training, but a lot of them were guys that were struggling on the streets to get by. And this was a chance to get, like a real and not only a job that actually paid a decent wage, a living wage, but a job that actually had a real impact on the community. Yeah. So, like, a guy named George McCarry, he was 20 at the time, and his grandma said, look, you either need to get a job or go to school, or you have to leave. You just can't. There's no free ride here any longer. And he had heard about the Freedom House and that they were looking for volunteers or employees, I guess, is what they would be called. And he didn't even know it was for medical services. He just knew that they were looking to hire people. So he went down and showed up and started getting trained. And the way that he described it is it was like a real, genuine ragtag group at first. But under the guidance of Dr. Safar and this kind of vision toward creating paramedics, these guys were trained in life saving procedures. They went from zero to life savers over the course of basically a first year. Dr. Safari created an orientation course that lasted a year, required 160 hours of hands on training, took them to the morgue to see autopsies, had them basically assist in operating rooms in the Er department to give them real world experience in this. Yeah, they had to train for six weeks in hospitals, in the emergency room and operating rooms. ICU there was another man named John Moon as another great example of someone who really flourished in this new role. He said that he was kind of turned on by the glamor of it all. Yeah, I think it was sort of, I don't know. Was prestige the right word? I got that impression big time. I think John Moon in particular was like, he would notice the ambulance kind of driving by. And I get the impression that this Freedom House ambulance service had a really golden reputation in the community, and they were kind of viewed as everyday heroes in the community. So I would guess there's definitely a lot of aspiration for people or inspiration, maybe both. One of the sad things about it all is even though there were cases where patients were saved by CPR, there was one call where they actually had to incubate a patient, where they put that tube down the throat to get someone breathing again. A lot of times the emergency room was like, oh, my God, this is amazing that you did this, but a lot of times they actually weren't welcome. And they were looked at as sort of like, you guys are just drivers. You are not doctors or nurses. You shouldn't be getting involved. And I'm not defending them, but this was sort of before that was a real thing. So I'm sure they were like, what is going on? You can't have these guys that you pull off the street actually getting involved in our business. Yeah. And I think the ambulance drivers would be like, oh, okay, you're going to reintubate them? And they would say, no, this is good. Actually, it's pretty good. But there does seem to be like just like there isn't like a restaurant where the back of the house and the front of the house. There's always tension like that. Or whenever somebody's stepping on somebody else's turf. Like a Basil Brown versus the British Museum kind of thing. There's going to be resentment and mistreatment. Especially if the people are from a lower socioeconomic class or racial minority. They're going to get mistreated. But it seems like overall, especially in the Hill District, these guys were viewed rightly, as heroes. So as with just about any story in American history where black Americans or any minority group says they take matters into their own hands and become successful at it, it gets taken away from them and broadcast onto the larger community at their expense. Usually. Yeah. And this happened in the form of saving a boy who was hit by a bus. It was in a more affluent area. The ambulance was called there from the Freedom House and basically they helped us get out. They split it his leg. They started an IV. Word got around, and then these white residents in the more affluent neighborhoods were like, this is amazing. They weren't like, wait a minute, why were these African Americans treating my son? They're like, this is amazing. They did a great job. We want our own services like that in our neighborhood, too. The Hill District shouldn't be the only one getting this. And so the city of Pittsburgh said, yeah, you know what? You're right. We still have the city wide. We're going to launch our own service. It's 1975. It's overdue. The really bad part about all this, I think you probably see where this is going, is it cut off the contract with Freedom House. Right. They lost most of their funding because now it was this big official city program and they had the nerve to tell the Freedom House workers, hey, you can still work for us. You've been doing this for a while now and you're super trained, but you got to go back and get retrained by our criteria. Yeah. Despite all of the experience, years and years and years of experience, I mean, these guys were working from 1968, and this happened in 1975. You had to go back and retrain, even though you're the original paramedics that all this is based on. Freedom House losing its contract with the city was a little more insidious than that, from what I saw. There was a mayor named Joe Flairdy, and he always kind of balked at the idea of funding Freedom House. But when he got the opportunity to, when more affluent and more white neighborhoods said they want their own and they created a citywide EMS service, to him, that meant seizing the assets of Freedom House, freezing any funds going their way, and then using those funds and those assets to create this larger city wide version. Rather than just increasing the funding and widening the jurisdiction of Freedom House who were already good at it and knew what they were doing, he shut it down and started basically a white version of it. That's right. Not to be confused with SCTV. Great. Joe Flaherty and Freaks and Geeks father beloved Freaks and Geeks father Joe Flairty. So great. And he was the crazy guy in Happy Gilmore who used to heckle Happy. So the end of the Freedom House was very sad. But some of these workers did end up working for a long time and have really long careers with the city of Pittsburgh and their official service. John Moon, who we referenced earlier, worked for 35 years in the EMS department, eventually was assistant chief before he retired in 2009. There was another man named Mitchell Brown. He was an EMS commissioner in Cleveland, Ohio, and then ran the department of public safety in Columbus, Ohio, all because of his start at the Freedom House. Isn't that cool? I mean, these guys were just, like, hanging around looking for jobs, and all of a sudden, decades later, they have enough experience that they're running public safety in an entire city. That's just so cool to me. Yeah. And because it's so little known, pittsburgh finally has installed a couple of plaques commemorating their work, one in the actual Hill district and one in the Presbyterian University Hospital. And then Moon, who we mentioned, he lobbied for a long time and was finally successful in getting Freedom House medallions placed on the side of every ambulance in the city of Pittsburgh, which is pretty cool. And there was a woman involved. Her name was Nancy. Carolyn. She took over from Safar for oversight of the ambulance service, the Freedom House ambulance in 1973, and apparently lived, ate, and breathed freedom House ambulance services. I love it. Yeah. You got anything else? Nothing else. Just Roman Mars. That's right. Well, then I have one thing to say. We're out. I like the orange one. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
How the Human Microbiome Project Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-human-microbiome-project-works | If it was possible to take a full scan of all of the DNA of every cell in and on your body the results would be startling: Only 1 percent would be human. The other 99 percent comprises all of the bacteria, fungi, viruses and other microbes you literally c | If it was possible to take a full scan of all of the DNA of every cell in and on your body the results would be startling: Only 1 percent would be human. The other 99 percent comprises all of the bacteria, fungi, viruses and other microbes you literally c | Tue, 13 May 2014 14:53:53 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=13, tm_hour=14, tm_min=53, tm_sec=53, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=133, tm_isdst=0) | 29045745 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody. If you want a great website, you want to do it yourself. With no must, no fuss, turn to Squarespace. They have everything to sell. Anything. They have the tools that you need to get your business off the ground, including ecommerce, templates, inventory management, simple checkout process, process, and secure payments. And if you're into analytics, hold on to your hats, because Squarespace has everything that you need. Just head to squarespace. comSK and you can get a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code s YSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer school's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. I almost just forgot what I was going to say. Your name? Yeah. Wow. There's, Charles. W, tuck bright piping in. And there's trio, the Trifecta and this terrible Ikea lamp. You think? Well, we are getting a little heat off of it right now, which is nice. Did you ever see that Ikea commercial about the lamp that was thrown out on the street? No. It was really good. What happened to it? Was it like the monkey at the Ikea? No, it was like a lamp gets thrown out. Someone's just redoing parts of their apartment and the lamp is kicked to the curb. Computer animated. So it's human formed. Okay, not human formed. What am I saying? Anthropogenic. Anthropomorphize. And like looks up at the apartment that he was just thrown out of and stuff like that. Does he go back to Sweden? I don't remember how it ends. Do you remember the lamp that turns all human sad? It was like sad I got teared up. Did you go buy one of those lamps? No. Of course it didn't work. No. So I guess you're feeling pretty good since you're talking about lamps and everything. You know me and lamps. I do. That means it's a good day. It's a clear signal, checks in a good mood, everybody. You know one of the reasons why you're in a good mood, because your guts are functioning properly. Yeah, you know me, it's day to day with my stomach. Well, that's exactly right. Things change very quickly because of your stomach, and your stomach can't affect your mood. As a matter of fact, the vast majority of the serotonin, which is a mood stabilizing neurotransmitter, is produced in your gut. Yeah. And the way that things like serotonin and other stuff is produced is thanks to our microbiome, dude. Yeah, our microbiome. This is the most fascinating thing going on in medicine science right now. Yeah. I get the impression, reading various articles, when scientists talk about it, they all seem really pumped up. It's like the breakthrough of the 21st century. And this thing just started. It's 2014, and this could remain the breakthrough of the century. Yeah. And I mean, if you think about the timeline, up until the 20th century, you were like a plant or an animal. And then it was literally like the 1950s and 60s that they started saying, maybe we should break things down a little further. And they came up with the five kingdoms, and I think they're now even as a six kingdom. Well, there are three domains now. Eight kingdoms. There's eight. There's eight. And two of the domains account for two of the kingdoms as well. Bacteria and Archaea. And Archaea used to be thought that they were the same as bacteria. Yes. Then they started looking into them a little more, and they're like, oh, these guys are made up of different amino acids, and they have different characteristics. And Archaea, for example, are the kind of microbial life that you'll only find around undersea hot water, sulfur vents, like volcanoes, crazy places. Not in your vagina or in your mouth. Well, no, because they're extremophiles. And a vagina or a mouth isn't that extreme. Well, it is, because Arkia lives there. That's right. So the fact that we figured out that Archaea are different than bacteria, and not only that, they don't just live in extreme environments, but also on the human body, that was something we can thank the Human Microbiome Project for. Yeah, and I think they didn't even discover Arkea until the 1970s. So all this stuff is brand new. Right. And exciting. And by the way, the three domains are bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes are us. Yes. We're eukaryotes because we have Nucleus as nuclei. Yeah. Let's talk about this man we have before. I'm sure you remember in the fecal transplant episode yes. Because it definitely factors into it. You can poop shakes. Yeah. You can cure clostridium difficile, which is something where it's a gut microbe. It's very harmful to humans that can colonize your guts after you take antibiotics, which is basically just like a slash and burn approach, which, again, thanks to the Human Microbiome Project, we're starting to understand we might want to use antibiotics, because what we used to just think of is almost entirely bad, are actually mostly beneficial. Sure. And even some of the bad bacteria, aka germs, are actually present in our microbiome and normally live in harmony. It just appears that when the microbiome gets out of whack, that's when disease happens. Yeah. Like, you may have E. Coli in your body right now. Yeah, I probably do, but it's not a big deal if you're always talking about stasis homeostasis. Yeah. Keeping things balanced in life is the key. Yeah. And it's definitely the key with your own personal microbiome, which we have learned is very individualized, which we'll get to with the project. Right. So if you take the human body and you scan all the genes in it, what you would find is there are about 100 times more microbial genes than human genes in a genetic scan of a human body. Yeah. Our human cells only make up about 10% of the cells in the body. And here's another great stat. The healthiest person on the planet has between two and \u00a35 of bacteria pounds yeah. Of your body weight, about up to \u00a35. Is it chemical? Yeah. What's crazy is that that's even considering that microbial cells are anywhere from a 10th to 100th the size of an average human cell yes. Do you know how much \u00a35 would have to be? Adds up to quite a few. Yes. As a matter of fact, there's an estimated 100 trillion microbes on an average human person just in on. And a part of such a part of us and our normal functioning that we're finding very quickly that they're pretty much interchangeable. They are one with us and as their host, we are kind of one with them. Yeah. Like you have fungus on your skin. Yeah. No big deal. Right. Well, that's another thing too, we should talk about when people say microbe, it's kind of a catchall word for tiny. Yeah. Any tiny, typically unicellular life. And that's the case here too. But it doesn't just mean bacteria. The human microbiome is made up of lots of bacteria and lots of different types of bacteria. For example, the mouth may have up to 5000 different species of bacteria. Yeah. And they're not just laying around in your body like they are responsible for keeping your body in check or sometimes responsible for it being out of whack. Right. But they're all doing something or laying there waiting to do something. You also have what's called a virome. You have viruses in your microbiome and they appear to be present to keep the bacteria populations from getting out of control. Like they're there to infect bacteria, to kill them off. And it's kind of like they're the lions to the gazelles of the microbiome. Okay. You take away the lions, you got too many gazelles, they all start to starve, they don't function correctly, they may even eat each other. You don't want to see a gazelle eat another gazelle. So you have lions there and the lions, the apex predators, keep the gazelle population in check and ultimately healthy. Paradoxically. Same thing with the viral and your microbiome. Yeah, we know they aid like gut bacteria, AIDS digestion, and we'll get the gut bacteria more. I mean, they're discovering just all kinds of things that affect? Right. Synthesize vitamins. When you poop in the toilet and you look at your poop, which you should do, by the way, on a regular basis, how much is it? Is it half of that? Third to half. So a third to half of that is microbial biomass. It's not food? No. It's like dead and living bacteria that you're pooping out. Yeah, about half. I saw something that was kind of mind blowing, too. It's really neat and accurate, especially on a microbial level, to imagine your alimentary system, your digestive system, as the inside of that is technically outside of your body. 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. Comyssk 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. Today's episode of Stephanie Shannon is brought to you by SimpliSafe home security. SimpliSafe believes that your home should be the safest place on Earth for every family, so they offer advanced, whole home security that puts you, your home, and your family safety first. With 24/7 professional monitoring, SimpliSafe agents take action the moment a threat is detected, dispatching police or first responders in an emergency, even if you're not home. Yeah. And Simply Safe uses proprietary video verification technology so that monitoring agents can visually confirm the threat in order to get higher priority 911 dispatch and Simplyafe offers comprehensive protection not only against intruders and burglary, but against expensive home hazards, from flooding to fires. You can customize the perfect system for your home in just a few minutes@simplisafe.com. Stuff. Go today and claim a free indoor security camera, plus 20% off. With interactive monitoring, just go to SimpliSafe.com stuff. You have a hole, a trail running through the middle of your body. Yeah, that's technically the outside. Yeah, I guess I see what you mean. Just chew on it for a minute. Yeah. The inside of your digestive system is technically the outside of your body. Like in here. That's outside of your body. Yeah. It's confusing. It is. But once your head wraps around it. It's like one hand clapping kind of thing, right? And you're just like, Whoa, that is neat. All right, so that's, I guess, the briefest of overviews of microbes and bacteria, which we talked about ad nauseum on the show. Yeah. And our Great Digestion podcast, that was one of my favorite ones. And then we've already talked about the poop shakes. So the National Institutes of Health came up with a plan, got some money together and said, let's try and do what the Human Genome Project did. Let's try and map out the human microbiome. Which is a very tough task because everyone is different. Well, yeah, everyone's microbiome is different. And I just saw today, it was released from University of Michigan, they kind of already determined there is no such thing as a baseline healthy microbiome. Yeah. And that was one of the goals of this project that was started in 2007, was that to establish a baseline microbiome, they didn't know what one looked like. They knew that people had tons of bacteria and protozoa and viruses all over us and in us. But what is that supposed to look like? And when you figure out what it's supposed to look like, then you can figure out what an unhealthy one looks like and then possibly how to correct that by adjusting this microbial ecosystem back to a baseline. But I'm not surprised that they found that there isn't a baseline that is too different. And that doesn't mean that they can't learn a lot and help us out a lot. What they're basically saying is you take a dozen completely healthy people and their microbiomes are going to be completely different still. Yeah. And there is one huge revolution in the study of bacterial or microbial life that made this project possible. Same with the human genome, but much more for this. It's called metagenomics. And prior to the advent of metagenomics, if you wanted to study bacteria, you had to find a bacteria that could be replicated, cloned cultured yeah. In a laboratory setting. And this accounted for just a very small fraction of the number of microbes out there. What's more. So not only did you not have a representative sample yeah. But you also didn't have anything less than an artificial setting. So even if you did get these microbes, if you could replicate them in the lab, they weren't going to behave the way they would in their natural setting, like on your body. So what metagnomics did was you can now take, like, a representative sample, say, like a clump of soil or a swab of somebody's ear fold, and get all of the microbes in there, and then basically just do this rough scan of them, separate all the DNA out of these enzymes that go and clip coherent fragments of this DNA out. And then you take it and you put it into what's called a model organism. And that model organism starts to replicate as cells, and then each cell displays a certain characteristic associated with a different microbe. So all of a sudden, you can start studying the different cells and say, oh, well, this has to do with this microbe, and this means that this Protozo is present, and so on and so forth. And now you can get a truly representative sample of what's in a microbiome, and without metagnomics, none of this would be possible. But now we're starting to find all sorts of new not just information, but even new species of bacteria and protozoa and fungi from the study of this stuff, which is a great thing. It is a great thing, and we'll explain why it's a great thing right after this break. Hey, everybody. If you want a great quality website, you want to do it yourself with no must and no fuss, then there's nowhere else to look than Squarespace. That's right. Squarespace has every single thing that you need to put together an awesome website. Everything from growing and engaging your audience with email campaigns, collecting donations for your cause through Apple, Pay, Stripe, Venmo PayPal. Plus, you can also make your website optimized for mobile, which is great for your user on the go. That's right. And if you're into selling stuff, squarespace is everything to sell anything. They have all the tools you need to get your business off the ground. They have ecommerce templates, inventory management, really simple checkout process, and secure payment. So whatever you want to sell, you can sell it on Squarespace. Yeah, don't just take our word for it. Head to squarespace. 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. Today's episode of Stephanie Shinot is brought to you by SimpliSafe Home security. SimpliSafe believes that your home should be the safest place on Earth for every family, so they offer advanced, whole home security that puts you, your home, and your family safety first. With 24/7 professional monitoring, SimpliSafe agents take action the moment a threat is detected, dispatching police or first responders in an emergency, even if you're not home. Yeah, and Simply Safe uses proprietary video verification technology so that monitoring agents can visually confirm the threat in order to get higher priority. 911 dispatch. And Simply Safe offers comprehensive protection not only against intruders and burglary, but against expensive home hazards. From flooding to fires. You can customize the perfect system for your home in just a few minutes@simplisafe.com. Stuff. Go today and claim a free indoor security camera, plus 20% off with interactive monitoring. Just go to SimpliSafe.com. Stuff. Hey, Chuck. Hey. You know me. Yeah. I'm a snack guy. Yeah, I love snacks. You do? I also love convenient snacks. Well, I've got some news for you then, my friend. What? NatureBox? Oh, yes, I love NatureBox. You want convenient snacks. We're talking healthy and great tasting snacks. Like, have you ever had the PV and J granola? Oh, yeah, that's good stuff. I also love the salted caramel pretzel pops, which are awesome. They're like, basically four different great things all mixed together. And I have to admit, I'm addicted to the Sriracha roasted cashews. Well, the great thing about all that is there are zero trans fats, zero high fructose corn syrup, and nothing artificial, my friend. That's right. There's also snacks that are gluten conscious and non GMO. Plus, Chuck, like we said, it's convenient. You can get NatureBox shipped right to your door by heading over to naturebox.com. Yeah. And it's free shipping anywhere in the US. Baby. That's right. So we have a special deal. As if that wasn't good enough, you can try NatureBox right now and get 50% off your first box by going to NatureBox. comStuff. That's NatureBox comStuff. Stay full, stay strong. Go to NatureBox comStuff. That's NatureBox comStuff. Okay, we're back. All right, so now I guess we can talk about some of these great findings, some of the newest findings in the last what year is it? Well, they started in 2017, seven years old. And it seems like the first crop of amazing stuff started in about 2012. Yeah. So after they had categorized things and got, like, thrown all the crawfish out on the table right. Little corn is good. Have you ever done that? I've had that before. Yeah, it's good stuff. Yeah, it's fun going to a big party. There's a place in Beaufort Highway called the Crawfish Shack. I've heard of that, but I haven't been. Did they do it like that? Did they just dump it on the table? It's all picnic tables. No, it's in, like, bowls and stuff like that, but it's all picnic tables inside and just huge rolls of paper towels. And that place is so good. Yes. I guess you can't do that as a restaurant, but if you go to a true crawfish boil at someone's home, you have the picnic table covered with the plastic thing, and you just dump it on the table. And everyone stands around like a bunch of animals getting drunk and eating, like, sucking the heads of crawfish. My family used to do something similar to that. When I was little in Toledo, we would eat my dad called a garbage pail stew. Are you familiar with it? Is it like all the leftovers? No, it's like you use a trash can to make it oh, I've never heard of it. Over, like, a flame. Okay. And obviously you use a new trash can, like a brand new one. So I guess when dad got a new trash can, we would have garbage tails, too. Anyway. A metal trash can? Yeah. Okay. It was more like the plastic just added, like, the old large ones. Right? One of the old timey ones. What kind of flame you got in your house? I don't remember what he cooked it on. Interesting. In my mind's eye, I can't look down, I can just see the kind of the top of it. But anyway, it was like a Yankee northern Midwestern version of it. So there's like lots of cabbage in it, in like Kobasa and stuff like that. But it was essentially the same thing. Yeah, and you would eat it on newspaper. I can't wait to get emails from people who are like, we did that same thing. I've looked around, I've never seen it since. I'm sure that, yes, that sounds like a thing or your dad is a very unique person. Insane is the way to say it. All right, so back to the project and the findings. One of the things they've learned is that periodontist is gum disease. Some bacteria are elevated if you have periodontist. So that's going to give you a little insight to maybe how you can better take care of your mouth, what kind of bacteria you need in there, what kind you don't yes, exactly. Like, for example, streptococcus mutants is responsible for cavities. So you want to take care of your streptococcus mutense. The thing is, Chuck, reading this made me wonder, like, are we going to go the other direction now, where it's like, we understand that you can't just use antibiotics to get rid of everything, but if we identify bacteria that's like, oh, well, that one gives you cavities, let's get rid of all of that and find some sort of medicine that just gets rid of that. It could make things even worse in a whole other direction. One thing that I figured out from this is that the microbiome appears to exist in balance, like stuff that should make us sick, e. Coli kinds of stress staff, that kind of thing. It exists on a healthy person's microbiome and it's just hanging out there. So it doesn't mean that they're inherently disease causing for us or that they're inevitably disease causing. Apparently, if they exist in harmony with their neighbors, that's the way it's supposed to be. And we can't just root out just ones that make us sick and get rid of those because I think it will have repercussions. But we might have a future where instead of an antibiotic, you actually take a bacteria that will attack the other bacteria, the bad stuff. Right, exactly. As long as we're not intervening and going after a specific bacteria, we can aid the bacteria, like you say, that will fight it naturally, like by eating some sort of sugary paste or probiotics. I mean, that's what that is, right? Yeah, that's an issue that's being examined in more detail thanks to the microbiome. Like do probiotics work and apparently the jury is still out. In theory they should work, but it depends on whether these things are actually colonizing your guts. And also I have the impression that it's like you don't really know what you're doing when you're adding, like, all these new people in the neighborhood. Yeah. And because everyone's microbiome is so different, some one probiotic for one person might be great and for another person might not do anything or may make things worse. I don't know. Yes. Which is another goal of the Human Microbiome Project, that if we start to understand what a colony maybe there's not a normal colony for everybody, but what an individual's normal colony looks like. Right. Then you can take blood or samples and make adjustments based specifically on what you need right there. It could be the end of pharmaceutical drugs. Conceivably. I know they're doing a lot of research into how your gut bacteria affects obesity and your weight. They have found obese mice and transferred microbes from their gut and skinny mice, and the skinny mice gained weight. Just type in gut bacteria and obesity. And there are a lot of studies going on now thinking that maybe correcting your gut bacteria could actually help your metabolism straighten out. Right. Like, they think the bacteria itself directly informs how the body uses or stores energy. The one that blew me away was, there's a type of bacteria that helps break down milk in humans, and typically it's in the gut, but as a woman advances in pregnancy, some of it moves down to the vagina. And at first, the researchers who found this were like, what's the deal with that? And then they figured it out. They think when a baby is born and it passes through the vagina, it basically becomes covered in this bacteria, ingests some of it, and that bacteria goes down and colonizes the baby's gut and prepares it almost immediately to start breaking down breast milk. Yeah. Evidently, brand new babies are just sponges, and they're experimenting with cesarean sections to just swab. Like, after you have the cesarean section, you bring the baby out, swab it with vaginal mucus, and basically it just soaks right into the skin and maybe have the same result. Right. Or swab their mouth or something like that. Yeah. Another way, and I guess that's kind of related to is with the immune system. Apparently, the microbiome acts as kind of like a teacher to the early immune system and says, like, hey, these are the good ones, these are the bad ones. Why don't you go ahead and produce some killer T cells, but not too many, and we'll just go ahead and keep the homeostasis going. And they basically, like, teach a young immune system how to operate at an optimal level. And they found that by engineering mice that are, like, totally germ free, their immune systems have a tendency to go crazy. Like, they'll become inflamed in the presence of what are, say, non harmful fungi. They'll become so inflamed that they'll damage the surrounding tissue. Or they'll have, like, irritable bowel syndrome or Crohn's disease. They think also is a flux state of the microbiome in the gut. So apparently it directly impacts the immune system as well. Which, my friend, lends a lot of weight to the hygiene hypothesis. Yeah, that's basically the notion that here in the west and even in developing countries now, children are seeing such a decrease in infection when they're kids that when they grow up they have an increased number of allergies and maybe autoimmune issues. Yeah. And you kind of see it playing out. Right. It's a real thing. Like if you're slathering your child with Purel, you're not doing them any favors. Right. They may have asthma later on because of that. Exactly. And they're coming to think that it's because of just a stunted growth of the microbiome. Yeah, I think they found out even they think they have a direct link between your gut bacteria and allergies. So if you get hay fever, it may be because of your gut bacteria. Right. And it makes just utter and complete sense too. Yeah. Like, your body has been exposed to these things early on, learn that they're not harmful and no longer produces antibodies as a result of their presence because that's all. An allergy is it's a case of mistaken identity? Your immune system thinks that pollen or something is harmful for an invader and launches your immune response. Pretty cool. Some of the other interesting things they found so far is that there wasn't a single microbe that everyone had in the study, which is pretty interesting, and that microbes are most similar on the same site of different people. So, like, you and I have more similar microbes in our armpit even though we're different people. Right. Then your microbes in your armpit has to do with your belly button. Yes. Ours are more similar than the ones in different places on your body. Yeah, that's pretty neat. And different microbes can do completely different things, like the way you digest food might use one microbe and I might use another. Or that same microbe might have a completely different function in you than it does in me. Right. So personalized. It feels like the beginning of hyper personalized medicine. I think it is. In the future. I definitely think it is. I think it's also the beginning of a kinder, gentler approach to treating disease. All disease. It's entirely possible, especially if you take a brain based view of mental illness. It's possible that every bit of disease can be cured by understanding the microbiome. Even cancer, apparently they found from this that some types of cancer managed to cloak themselves by taking, like, residue from certain types of bacteria and basically sneaking past your immune system and going and lodging itself into cells and hijacking them and creating tumors. But it cloaks itself by getting buddy buddy with certain kinds of bacteria. Cancer is a jerk. Yes, cancer is a big time jerk. We've kind of covered it here and there, but I could see more specific cancer podcasts in our. Future. Sure. You know what? So far we've done two that specifically got into the microbiome, but we've never done like a microbiome one. So I think we should come back like a year from now and even more stuff is out and do like the microbiome. Yeah. It seems like they're making breakthroughs at a pretty rapid pace. Yes. So in a year, everyone might be skinny. Yes. Because of the microbiome pill. Have you seen a picture of an obese mouse next to a skinny or normal sized mouse? Yeah, it's pretty depressing. It is sad mouse. Okay, so I will see you here at the end of next April, God willing, for the microbiome ones. All right. If you want to learn more about the human microbiome, you can type those words into the search bar@housetoforce.com. And I said housedefworks.com. So it's time for the listener mail. Josh, I'm going to call this response from a creationist. Oh, okay. We got a few of these. Yes. Hey, guys, listen to your podcast on natural selection and really enjoyed it. I'm a biologist who is a Christian, and creationist, natural selection is not what we disagree on. And when I say we, I mean most creationists. But of course with every group there are outliers. We agree with micro evolution changes that occur within species, not macro evolution. Species developed into a completely different species, which is what most people tend to associate with evolution. The only major differences between creationists and evolutionists is that we believe the Earth is between six and 10,000 years old and again, excluding the outliers, and that all organisms were created in their basic form by our God. For example, we believe that everyone came from Adam and Eve who through methods of natural selection evolved into the many nationalities we have today. Same thing with animals. We believe that a small number of species were created by our God and all the forms we have today evolved through natural selection. So the only main difference that we have with evolutionists is the ultimate origin of species. The areas of evolution that we can see clearly occurring in front of our eyes, we agree with it's the areas that evolution is theorized about that we don't agree with. So while there are differences between creationism and evolution, there are actually more similarities. And that is Eric from South Bend, Indiana. Thanks a lot, Eric. Very salient point. Yeah. Biologist. Yeah. I love it when experts come out of the woodwork, especially when they're experts with a twist. Yes. And we love being refuted and refuting and reading reputations and we'll always read these things, reputation, life. That's right. If you want to refute something we've said or agree with us or whatever, if you just want to get in touch about anything, you can tweet to us at SYSK podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com, stuff, you know, we're on Pinterest or on Instagram. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com, and you can hang out at our awesome clubhouse, our homeonthewbsuffyshehno.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You know you're a pet mom when you plan your vacation around your pet. At Halo, we get it because we're pet moms, too. We make natural, high quality pet food that's rooted in science. It's the world's best food for the world's best kids. Learn more at halo pets.com." | ||
Do toads cause warts? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/do-toads-cause-warts | Toads have a reputation as wart-spreaders, but they're not actually to blame for the unsightly growths. Viruses are. Tune in to this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com to get the skinny on toads, warts and viruses. | Toads have a reputation as wart-spreaders, but they're not actually to blame for the unsightly growths. Viruses are. Tune in to this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com to get the skinny on toads, warts and viruses. | Thu, 16 Apr 2009 12:05:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=16, tm_hour=12, tm_min=5, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=106, tm_isdst=0) | 21847217 | 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. This July, don't miss an entire summer of surprises on Disney Plus with Disney's High School Musical, the Musical, the series season three Zombies, three Doctor Strange in the multiverse of Madness, and the wonderful summer of Mickey Mouse. Plus new episodes of Marvel Studios, ms. Marvel and National Geographics. America the Beautiful. From the awardwinning producers of Planet Earth, Frozen Planet, and the Disney nature films, america the Beautiful takes viewers on a tour of the most spectacular and visually arresting regions of our great nation. All these and more streaming this month on Disney Plus, brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetaffworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, is one Mr. Charles W. Luscious Bryant. We call him Chuckers. He calls me Compass Head. And this is stuff you should know. Welcome. How's it going, Chuck? Dude, that may be the best intro ever. Thank you. It's the fact that I'm not wearing pants right now. I think I feel very free and easy. Compass Head. And a little sweaty, actually. Okay, then. So, Chuck, have you ever had warts? Do you have warts when you were a kid? I have had two incidences of warts. Currently I have a wart sort of near my knee, and it's been there a long time. And it's not one of those real gnarly ones that sticks up out into the universe. Yeah, pretty small and not a big deal. And then I had planters warts when I was, like, 15. Have you ever had those? No, I haven't. These are the words. I think it's tough to walk. Oh, dude, it's awful. Do they hurt? Really painful. I didn't know that. Yeah, they grow up into your foot instead of out. And I think I caught it from my brother because he had it when he was at Georgia Tech. Brother was dirty. Dirty, dirty Scott, the handsome one that Christina Ricci likes. Oh, yeah, like a male model guy. It was great growing up in the shadow to because he's way smarter than me and slim and trim. It's great. Anyway, and happy birthday, by the way, to my brother. Oh, happy birthday, Scott. Can I say that? And Molly Edmonds. Happy birthday, Molly. Fellow writer. That aside, I had planners work, and it's really painful. And I had them burned off, and that was painful. Yeah, with the frozen liquid nitrogen. Yes, I have been through that experience, too. I had warts on my fingers, on my elbows here, there when I was a kid. Really? Yeah. Every once in a while, they just kind of pop up, and my mom would be like, let's go to the I guess, the dermatologist. Right. And quit picking up frogs. Were you told that? Not quite. I had a pretty good story, but yes, I have heard that toad specifically cause warts. I've heard that as well. It's not true. No, but it's not. Wow. Every bit of segue just fell away. You just got rid of an entire page of this article with that. Well, that's because we don't plan the stuff out. Do you want to talk about Australia? Yeah. Okay. All right. So Australia has a pretty big problem right now, right? Probably more than one. But this one we're talking about is oh, yeah. They're in the grip of, like, a horrible drought still, aren't they? Oh, really? Oh, yeah. And it's hitting the breadbasket, too. Basket. This one problem is with the giant cane toad, right. Baffo Marinis. And I love that it sounds like a giant cane toad name. Right, sure. So these things get to be, like, \u00a32, which is pretty substantial for a toad. Yeah, that would scare me. Well, back in 1935, the Australian government imported 101 giant cane toads from Hawaii. I love that it was 101. It's like they gathered 100, and then there must have been, like, one lucky frog. Yeah. They're like you come too. Come on. Right. Let's go to Australia, kid. So, yeah, they imported him to Queensland from Hawaii, and actually, these things are indigenous to Central and South America, but apparently they can live in Hawaii, too. Right. And the reason they imported them was to fight this giant cane beetle. No, not giant cane beetle. Just a plain old cane beetle. Sure. And apparently, giant cane toads like to eat cane beetles. Makes sense. So Australia had a big infestation in their croplands with these cane beetles, so they imported the giant cane toads, and the giant cane toads did absolutely nothing to eradicate the cane beetle. Right. I think a lot of times when you introduce a species, a nonnative species, to an area, thinking it will accomplish some feat, it usually ends up backfiring. Yeah, definitely. Kind of like kudzu here in the south. Yes, but that one wasn't that was a gift, actually, from our Japanese friends. Well, thanks for that in the 30s. Well, they keep in under control over there, but here in the south, it just grows like it grows like kudzu, right? Yeah. And for those friends of ours who are listening that have never been to the southeastern United States, this stuff can take over a 150 foot tall oak and swallow it whole. It looks like ivy. I've never seen it. It looks a lot like ivy, but it also has this kind of creepy quality. Like I'm killing this tree. Check it out. Right? And you can't do anything to kill this stuff. And it's out of control. So I guess what we're trying to say is please help us. Send help. So anyway, the giant cane toad did nothing to eradicate the cane beetle. And even worse, they apparently are prolific lovers. Yes, because since 1035, the 101 original cane toads turned into the billions. There are billions of cane toads in Australia now, literally overran the entire country and continent. Here's the most unsettling part. They are slowly hopping toward civilization. Perth and then Sydney. And I mean, isn't that just a creepy thought? Billions of toads slowly coming your way. Have you ever seen the documentary? No. There was an awesome documentary, it's really old, called Cane Toads in a Natural History by a documentary named Mark Lewis. And it's kind of one of these classic documentaries now. Yes. We're like Greg Garden just taking on this cult following. Yes. Which is our producer Jerry's favorite movie of all time. Gregardens. Yes. Really? He didn't know that. We've had this conversation eight times. I don't remember that. I just watched that this past weekend, though, for the first time. I've never seen it either. It was unsettling, I thought. A bit long. And I'm looking forward to the HBO movie starring one Ms. Drew Barrymore and one Ms. Jessica Lang. Right. And this is such a segue. Well, let me say this, since we're not a segway, but a sidebar a tangent. Yes. This is highly tangential. And this is a tangent on a tangent. One of my friends named Bo Kelly actually apparently had a ring that he lent to the people who made this HBO remake. Really? And the guy, whoever, the characters that plays the piano for the women a lot, he wears the ring in most of these scenes. That is weird. Isn't it weird? I just found that out yesterday, and I don't know how it pertains to anything, but there you go. Okay, so back to giant cane toast, right? Billions of them is where we left off. And they are moving toward the big city. Right. And the problem is they have no natural predators. Right. Which is even worse. The predators that are around Australia haven't figured out that they shouldn't mess with these cane toads. Right. Because what happens is the giant cane toes are highly toxic. Yes. They emit a cocktail of 14 toxins from the warts on their back, which are actually glands. Right. That's right. We should say that again. The warts on a frog are glands are not warts. But that's where you get the impression that toad can give you warts. Sure. Yeah. So, anyway, so things like crocodiles, dingoes, all sorts of other animals are being killed by picking up these giant cane toads who get scared. It secretes this toxin, and then all of a sudden, some alligators belly up. Yes. And I'm sure a two pound cane toad. Looks like a nice meal for you. Oh, I would think so. Yeah. Were I not aware of their toxins, I'd eat one. Sure. I cook it first, but sure. So, anyway, as big a problem as these cane toads are posing the Australians right now, one thing they're not going to do is cause boards. There is our segue that you ruined earlier, but now it's all good. What if you were a major transit system with billions of passengers taking millions of trips every year? You weren't about to let any cyber attacks slow you down. So you partner with IBM to build a security architecture to keep your data network and applications protected. 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 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. Teledoc 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 teletoc. comStuff to register or schedule a visit today. That's Tedoc. comST. For JDPower 2021 award information, visit JD powercom awards. Right. Am I forgiven? Yeah. Okay, so toads absolutely do not cause wars. We can say that with 100% factual. Yeah. And do you know how we know that? Science. Science? Sure. Well, what science has told us is that since toads don't actually have warts, they have glands. Right. And we know that actually it's the human pavlova virus that causes warts. HPV. Better known as HPV. Yeah. And since toads don't secrete HPV, toads can't give you warts. There you go. Yeah. So that's it? So we just pack it up? No. Should we talk about HPV? Let's talk about HPV, which may ring a bell for people because there's been a huge push, but it was really prominent in 2006 and 2007 to get mandatory inoculations for young girls against HPV. Yeah, a lot of people are affected by HPV. They estimate 20 million people in the US. Alone are infected with some form of HPV. And there are about 100 different types of HPV. Right. And some of them are worse than others. Like the HPV inoculation that the state governments are pushing for inoculates against the strain that gives you cervical cancer, which is the biggest threat HPV poses a person. Right. There's slightly lesser ones, like genital warts, which won't kill you, but it's not pleasant, and good luck finding a partner for that one. Yeah. I mean, those two words together don't make people feel good in general. That's why I was glad you said your wart was near your knee. Yes. Yeah. So, yeah, it can cause general awards, and of course, HPV can also cause good old fashioned regular warts. Yes. But can I say a little aside about that push for HPV inoculation? Well, yeah, I think, you know isn't this interesting? Yeah, I think so. Thanks for the vote of confidence. Basically, in 20 06 20 07 that huge push to get girls inoculated as part of the mumps rubella. If you want to go to school, you have to get an HPV inoculation. At the forefront of this push was a group called Women in Government. Right? Yes. And they are this huge assemblage of female elected officials, which is fine, and they took up the cause. So far, so good. Right. The problem is, it was revealed that a large proportion of Wig's funding was coming from merck is the pharmaceutical company, and they are the only ones who have an FDA approved HPV inoculation on the market. Right. Gardasil so if all 50 states started passing mandatory HPV inoculation legislation, then Merch stands to gain quite a bit, because there's no competition for it. Yeah. There you have it. That kind of set things back a little bit. But as of, I think, 2008, there are 41 different state legislatures that had bills on the floor, if not already passed. Mandating that girls have to get HPV inoculation. Right. And 19 states have already enacted them. Good enough. There you go. Absolutely. So the same thing that can give you cervical cancer can also give you wards. Right. Most people can walk around with HPV and not even know it. May not even have common words. Right, right. But if you do get common words, what's going on there, Chuck? Well, I mean, usually their warts are going to be on your hands and fingers, and aside from the way it looks, because warts kind of have a negative connotation. Sure. Physically. But aside from the aesthetics of it, there's really no threat that they pose. They're not cancerous. Which is weird, because all cancer is uncontrolled growth. Right. And all award is uncontrolled cellular growth. Yeah, it is weird. But they eventually stopped growing, I guess a tumor never stops growing until it's dealt with. Right. And warts can absolutely spread from one person to another, even through shared objects. Yeah. I don't have to go, like, if you had a wart on your cheek, I don't have to go and lick your wart right. Now, for me to get it, all you have to do is come in contact with your dirty older brother, and bam, you got warts. Correct? Yeah, I totally got it from him. It's weird. You can even get it off of sharing a bath towel with somebody with warts. It's a hearty virus. Yeah. So the other problem is, although warts do eventually stop growing, when they die, they slough off, which spreads. So if you ever have a wart on your finger, you can probably look forward to getting warts on other fingers nearby or very close by. This life cycle, it's not never ending. Eventually your body will produce the antibodies needed to ward off the warts. But sometimes you have to wait longer times than others, but they will eventually go away, which is good to know. So what do you do if you want to get rid of your warts? You don't feel like waiting around for your body to catch up and get rid of them. Right. Well, you can take some nail clippers. I'm just kidding. Absolutely don't do that. What you can do is what we were talking about earlier, you can freeze them off. It's called cryotherapy, and that's when they use the liquid nitrogen. And there are also some over the counter home remedies that have salicyclic. Is that how you pronounce that? Yeah, that's it. Celicyclic acid as the active ingredient. And both of these methods basically will create a blister around the area of the wart and then that will be shed once the blister falls off. So the blister falls off and basically what you're doing is you're making your skin react in such a way that it covers up the wart so it can't spread. Right. And then when the blister falls off, because it goes underneath the wart and over the war and along the sides, it basically encapsulates it, then your blister eventually goes away, but it takes the wart with it. Right. That's kind of gross. It is gross, and it's really simple and basic. It is kind of elegant in its simplicity. Sure. And I know if it's really bad, you can opt for laser surgery and prescription treatments. If you have general warts, you might want to go that route. Well, no, if your common warts don't work very well, if you have general awards, they're going to give you prescription medicine. Right. But if your common warts aren't responding to, like, cryotherapy or anything, they may give you the prescription for genital warts because it's hardcore stuff, I imagine. Or zap them with a laser. Right. Or they do for everything nowadays. I love that. Just hit it with a laser. Hit it with laser for the best. Right? Yeah. What if you were a global energy company with operations in Scotland, technologists in India, and customers, all on different systems? You need to pull it together. So you call in IBM and Red Hat to create an open hybrid cloud platform. Now, data is available anywhere, securely, and your digital transformation is helping find new ways to unlock energy around the world. Let's create a hybrid cloud that can change an industry. IBM let's create learn More@ibm.com it's 2022 when things look different. Like doctors visits, for example. Sometimes you don't have to go into a doctor's office to be treated for non emergency situations, like a sinus, infection or allergy. And that's why teletoc gives you the chance to connect with board certified physicians right from your home via phone or video. That's right. Doctors are standing by 24/7, so you can schedule a visit according to your schedule. You can see for yourself why teladoc is ranked number one by JD Power and telehealth satisfaction with direct to consumer providers. Teledoc 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 Tedoc. comStuff to register or schedule a visit today. That's teladoc.com stuff. For JD Power 2021 award information, visit JDPower. comAWARDS. There's also something called the blister beetle, and it lives up to its name. Right. So they figured out how to extract a certain toxin from the blister beetle, which causes a blister reaction in human skin, and basically it does the same thing as what was the first thing you said that creates a blister? The cryotherapy. Yeah. So it's the same thing, except it's natural. Right, because it's a beetle extract. Sure. And some people are into that. Like Spanish fly. Yes. Which is not good for warts or anything. No. So check. Let's see. Did you want to mention that one old wives tale, what to do if you have warts? Yeah, I've never heard of this, actually. So good on you. Thanks. Apparently, burying a cat at midnight is one of the wives tales that you could and does that mean burying a live cat? I check that out and no, it's a dead cat. Okay, so bearing a dead cat at midnight will get rid of yours. Obviously, this isn't true. Bearing a live cat? No, this won't really work. But, I mean, where would you find a dead cat as well? Yeah, I guess you could. Yeah. The whole thing is just not true. That is kind of unsettling. And that's one of the old wise. That's like a billion frogs approaching a civilization unsettling. Yeah, like, how do you get a dead cat? You should watch the documentary. I totally will go watch it after this, because I don't feel like working any longer today. Me neither. So I guess that's about it. Oh, even though toads won't give you warts, you probably shouldn't pick them up anyway, because toads like the pee all over your hands, which might not hurt you, but it's kind of gross, so you should probably just leave the toads alone. Unless they're hallucinogenic, and then you can lick them to your heart's content. Yeah, I think every time I've picked up a frog or a toad, it's peed in my hand. Really? You're not going to see A on that hallucinogenic toad endorsement. No, I like frogs and stuffing. They're kind of cool. Okay, I'll pick up. There you have it. I won't lick them, though. Oh, you won't? Okay, new. All right, so that's it. Go forth and tell everyone. Actually punch someone in the neck the next time they tell you. Toads can give you wards unless it's your mother, and then you should show more respect than that. Absolutely. So you want to do a little plug and plug? Sure, let's do it. Okay. Shall we plug the audio? Spoken word. We've been doing it like that first, and then the blog. So let's do the blog and then do the spoken word. Switch it up a little bit, pal. And you're blowing my mind. By now, most of you probably know we have a blog, a web blog, on our Internet site, how Stuff Works.com. You can find it on the right side of the homepage, and it's called Stuff You Should Know. And Josh and I post and we talk about cool things. And we've been interacting with the fans and it's been a good experience and I hope it continues to grow. We got some great fans, don't we? We do. Really smart people. And it's one of the few blogs I've seen so far where the comments don't take a bad turn and people don't start fighting with each other. No, we've only had one. Right. That one Nazi reference. Yeah. What was that? He had some crack bite. Okay, so it's all very above board and we're really pleased about that. Got you. Good. Nicely done, Chuck. Thanks. And now you want me to do the spoken word thing? Yes. So if you don't know by now, chuck and I and Jerry produced our first spoken word album, and it is called The Stuff You Should Know, super Stuff Guide to the Economy. And it is jampacked with information about economics, the economy, all sorts of bells and whistles. There are chickens, there's cows, there's grocery stores. We go to New York. We go to China. Yes. It's amazing. Yeah, I like it. Chuck. I have to say, I like it. I was terrified that it was going to be awful and it came out really well, I think. And it's up for sale and itunes for $3.99. Just type Superstuffed into the itunes Store search bar and it should be the first thing that comes up. And you want to download it. That's cool with us. Yeah, it is cool. The more people who download it, the more likely it's going to be that we'll be able to do another one, which we're hoping to do very soon. So keep an eye out for that, too. And I guess that's it. Right, well, we got a little listen to me chimney time. All right, listen or mail. Okay, Chuck, what you got, buddy? I have two quick emails and I'm just going to call this funny fans. Okay? And let me add real quick that for those of you who email in, I respond to your emails. And if you have not gotten an answer from me, and it's been more than a couple of weeks, and that means it has gone into a junk mail situation and I apologize. I don't know why that happens. It's in my junk mail settings. But I'm not ignoring you. So if you feel like sending it again, please do and I'll get back to you. Nice, Chuck. Having said that, this is a great one from Alex in Germany. Hey, guys, I'm a student from Germany and I really enjoy your podcast. Last year I went to college in California and listening to explain stuff makes me very nostalgic. On top of much smarter. On numerous occasions, however, you have mentioned the Germans. I have nothing to complain about historic facts, but as an avid learner of the English language, I feel made fun of. It's true that I am obese, I wear later hosen and I have a huge moustache, but my pronunciation of th is flawless. Greetings from the mazeland. Alex Zebra. So Alex had a very good sense of humor about that. Yeah. And we should probably say that's a reference to what? Snatch. Right? Oh, is it? Are you serious? You haven't known what I was doing the whole time? No, I had no idea. Have you not seen Snatch? Yeah, it's been a while. You know Jason Statham? Yeah. His character. He says that he goes, yes, the Germans. I do a terrible impression of it, but that's what I'm doing. I'm wearing yeah, I feel misunderstood. All right. And this is our other funny fan, our very strange friend, our oddball crackpot friend from Seattle. And this isn't even his real name, so I can say it. Martin Svenostren, aka. King Buck. A fart. Is this hijack. A little guy? Yeah. Nice. And he is awesome. This guy writes us quite a bit and he's made songs for us and checked out his website, which he didn't want us to plug, so I won't talk about it. Can we mention the song? I think we can mentioned the song. He made a song 14 seconds long. It's on his album, right? Called stuff you should know. And it's awesome. It is, it's awesome. And this guy is just one of the great strange folks I've been in contact with. And we love Hot balls because we're oddballs. So he writes in this is just one of his emails. I really do prefer stuff from your pod rather than the rest. Maybe it's your sterling personality or maybe it's your aluminum width. No offense to the other pods, but they seem to be the entertainment equivalent of rice cakes. You know, they're good for you, but they're too dang dry. Thanks for the excellent show. That is all I listen to now. Well, that and Mongolian throat singing, which is a real thing, by the way. Oh, yeah. You can do like two different tones at once. Pretty cool. They can keep up the good work. And don't be ashamed of your rainbow suspenders. If you could do me one favor. And we usually don't do this, so please don't write in and ask us to say hi to people, but we are in this case. If you could tell my old lady Leah that she's the best around on air, that'd be cool. But please sing it like the song from The Karate Kid by Joe Esposito called you're the best around. It's totally cheeseball and Chuck do it. You remember the song? I have the MP3. So Leah, old lady of Van Nostrin, you're the best around. Nothing's ever going to keep you down. So that's it. That's all we will do. And you are one of our favorite fans and a really cool, funny guy. Yeah. Thank you to everybody for writing in. Whether we've read your fan mail or not, your letters, your correspondence means a lot to us. It does. And if you want to write us again and you lost our email or you have never tried it before and your fingers are feeling foggy, you can send us an email to stuff. Podcast@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? Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's Criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen. Today, you want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that we mean your dog. Halo Elevate is natural sciencebased nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs. That better than leading brands. 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That Dang-old Goat Fell Over | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/that-dang-old-goat-fell-over | Due to a condition known as Thomsen's disease, the muscles of fainting goats tense up whenever the animal is startled. In this episode, Josh and Chuck break down the science behind this bizarre condition. Tune in and learn more. | Due to a condition known as Thomsen's disease, the muscles of fainting goats tense up whenever the animal is startled. In this episode, Josh and Chuck break down the science behind this bizarre condition. Tune in and learn more. | Thu, 24 Mar 2011 16:20:47 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=24, tm_hour=16, tm_min=20, tm_sec=47, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=83, tm_isdst=0) | 26861062 | 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 me. Chuck Bryant me. Yeah, that's right. That's me. Now call over. Yes. Not yet, Chuck. We're getting there. Okay. How are you doing? You feeling a little sick after Los Angeles? Yes, Josh. Heavy workload and stress usually means Chuck crashes and gets sick afterward. Yeah, I came very close. That's what happened. As I was telling you, I'm a walking ad for emergency. It works really well. That's good stuff, Chuck. I hope you feel better soon. Thank you. In the meantime, let's talk about the Satanic symbol. That is the goat. Yeah. The inverted star is supposed to be a goat head, is that right? Yes, that is actually the Bafomit. The Bafomit. It's, I think, a 17th century French illustration. No. 19th century French magician Eliafus Levi drew the Baffama of Mendes. Right, okay. And Mendes is, like, the key term here. This is where the idea that the goat was Satanic came from. Okay. So back in the day, back when the Greeks were running around Egypt, let's say the fourth century BC. Okay? One of them, Herodotus, wrote of the Mendes people who lived along the Nile and venerated and essentially worshiped goats, specifically male goats, as symbols of fertility. And the Greeks, doing what they did, eventually ripped this idea off and labeled their god Pan, the king of the Satyrs. Half god, half man god. That's right. Who like to woo the ladies and basically press his male goat sexuality onto them. Right. We have the idea that a male goat, aka. Ram, in a lot of cases, I'm pretty sure it became the symbol for powerful male sexuality. Right? Sure, why not? As the Christian church came about and sexuality kind of diverged from reality, that concept became more and more taboo, increasingly taboo, until finally you get to the point where we arrived at the Knights Templar who supposedly venerated Baffok. Do you guys pop up a lot with us? They do. That image of Baffomette, not the 19th century one, but the image of a goat head, which they supposedly idolized, was used against them to persecute them as Satanists and kill them. And from that point forward, the goat went from pagan god of male fertility or sexuality to Satanic from that moment on, to the point now where you can look at a goat and you get a touch of evil from it, don't you? No, I was just about to counter and say that's funny, because goats are the sweetest, most adorable little creatures on the planet. It depends. First of all, it depends on their age. It depends on their size. It depends on how readily you can see those Satanic eyes of theirs. I disagree. It's Satan walking. Chuck, let's just come out and say it, okay? Everyone knows I had pet goats. So you're not going to get me to say anything like that. Plus, if you're anything, you're lacking for the goat lobby. I am, yeah. What about fainting goats, though? I have to agree. These are not Satanic. They fall into the cute camp, right? Yeah, it's pretty cute and sad and funny. It's all wrapped up into one. In fact, I have never experienced such a range of emotions is when I watched Fainting Goats and Fainting Kittens. Yeah, Fainting Kittens in particular got my goat. I just showed Lizzie. It's awesome. She laughed. I know. I thought she was hilarious. Chuck. It's so sad looking, though. I know, but then they kind of look around and look like a stupid kitten and a few times and they're fine. I urge anyone who hasn't seen, first of all, Fainting Goats to go onto Youtube.com. That's Youtube.com. It's kind of like a video repository of sorts. You can share videos. Yeah, it's amazing. You type in Fainting Goats and then watch the one with the greatest number of hits and you will see what we're talking about. I think it's 10,800,000 hits right now. Watch that one. You'll see what we're talking about the rest of the time. You can also, if you want to treat yourself, type in Fainting Goat Kittens Hyphen original Video, and you'll see what makes me laugh and makes Chuck cry. And if you want to really treat yourself, type in where's Bee? Oh, that one's adorable. That little lamb. Yeah. Is that a lamb or a goat? It's a lamb. But a lamb is a female goat, right? Or it's a baby goat. Isn't a goat a male lamb? A baby goat is a kid. A lamb is a lamb. Oh, yeah. Lamb is a baby sheep. Yeah. Okay, we're all set. No need for emails, everybody. Myotonic Goats. Okay, so, yeah, there's other names for these things. Now that hopefully you've gone and watched this, you're up to speed and you know what we're about to be talking about, because we are going to explain this weird phenomenon that is Feigning Goats, aka, as you just said, myatonic Goats. What else, Chuck? What are some other awesome names for these things? The Tennessee Stiff Legs. Just good name for a band as his. Myatonic goats tennessee wooden legs nervous goats and fall down goats I imagine Fall Down Goats was pretty early in the game. Yeah, that's what Bam Bam from Flintstone called. Exactly. They go by several different names, Josh, but they are not fainting at all. Actually. No. We should say if you are too lazy to go look up this YouTube video and you don't know what we're talking about. Basically. These Goats videos of goats who are being chased by. Like. A farmer or something with an umbrella. And all of a sudden they'll just stiffen up and fall over and it looks like they fainted dead away or possibly died and instantly gone into rigor mortis. It looks like they've been shot and killed by a sniper. Exactly. And then after a second, they just kind of get up and run away some more. They're called feigning goats, but it's not at all what's going on. Instead, Chuck, it's like an altered startle response, right? Yeah. It's a congenital condition. Means they get it since their little baby kid goats, they were born with it. Right. It's called myotonia. Congenital. And there's another couple of names, the Becker type disease or Thompson's disease. And basically we'll get into the specifics, but what happens is they tense up, like the fight or flight. Like if an explosion went off right behind you right now, you'd tense up and then go maybe what happens here is they tense up and they don't UN tense. They stay stiff long enough to fall over on their side as if they were dead. Yes. Appropriately, Robert Lamb, who wrote this article, points out, it's like that when you tense up from a fight or a startle or danger flight or fight or flight, it's been a while. Clearly that tension that's relieved almost immediately. Basically, your brain getting your body zapped into preparedness, like you're ready to run. Right. Stop thinking about Too Roll, pops. Jerk. It's time for you to kick some bottom. Yeah. Or in the goats case, quit thinking about that big patch of grass. There's a wolf behind you. Run and get out of here. Exactly. But instead of running, they tend to they fall over because their muscles take about ten or 20 seconds to relax. Right? Yes. So you talked about myotonic. Myotonic goats. Myotonia exists in more than just goats. It exists in humans as well. Kittens, we said. Yeah. Saddest video. Ever so awesome. And myatonia is basically this disorder of the central nervous system, a congenital one, like you said, Chuck, that's characterized by stiff muscles, that they're rigid and they take time to relax. Right? Yeah. I think the voluntary muscles, we should say, not like your cardiac muscle or your involuntary muscles. Sure. The stat I found was that it affects about one in 100,000 people, and in northern Scandinavia, one in 10,000. Who knew? Well, I guess they have a bottleneck up there of some sort. I don't know, because not that many people want to move up to Scandinavia. I didn't see any kind of explanation for why there would be more abundant there, but that's how many it affects. Some people. If you have it, there's some medication. It's not that big of a deal. Stay exercise, stay loose. Right. Don't walk around big piles of glass, I would say, or beds of nails. You don't want to fall on anything like that. Maybe you shouldn't be driving a car. But I don't think humans actually stiffen and fall over like the goats. I think it's more of a temporary stiffening. Or, again, as Robert Lamp put it, a full body Charlie horse, but without the pain. Yeah. They say they don't feel pain. I don't know about that. Yeah, we'll get into that in a second. But there's a similar condition, too, called myoclonus, and it's actually the basis of probably my favorite physiological trait of humans. What's that? A myoclonic jerk. When you're falling asleep, and then all of a sudden you go, is that what that's called? Awake. Yeah, that happens to me. And if you'll notice most of the time you're dozing, and you're dreaming of maybe falling down a stair or something like that. So apparently your brain is either confused that you are, in fact falling, or it doesn't understand why your muscles are relaxing in some weird way. Right. And it's jolting you awake. Okay. Or it thinks you are dying, and it's railing against dying, trying to get your heart going again. You have the two experiences of her either way. Thank you. Body. Yes. And mind. But another name for it is the hypnic jerk. The hypnic jerk. It's just great. Do you like it when it happens to you or you just think it's neat? It's just funny. Yeah, it's a weird feeling. It's sort of like when you almost fall back in a chair and you catch yourself. There's nothing more like thrilling to the body than that, oh, my gosh, I'm going to die here in 1 second. Exactly. So it's thrilling because your muscles tense up. You have to wonder if you're just sitting there for ten or 20 seconds. Does your brain your brain apparently, would know that there's no longer any danger, but you can't move. Right. Which I imagine would kind of be kind of stressful. We know that the brain knows that there's no longer any danger because the actual disorder is on the cellular level in the muscles. Right? Yeah. There's a gene, Josh, called the CLCN one, the Chloride channel one gene, of course, and it's involved in the production of proteins, which are proteins are good for muscle relaxing and contracting and stuff like that. Yeah. And chloride ions, specifically. Right. Yeah. What's the deal? Too much chloride? Yeah. You want remember to check the point of being alive as a functioning body is homeostasis. Right? Right. So you want an equal amount or a relatively comparable amount of positively charged sodium ions, which tell your muscles to contract right. And negatively charge chloride ions, which say, go ahead and relax, muscles. Right. Oh, there's not enough chloride in this case. Yes. So there's an abundance of sodium and not enough chloride, which means that when the cells are innovated the muscle cells are innovated with an electrical impulse from the brain tense up. It takes them longer to relax because they're out of whack, because this gene is not expressing those chloride ions like it should be cool. So it's not the brain any longer thinking that we're afraid or that there's a danger. It's the muscles. It's all in the muscles. That's right. And it is hereditary it can be dominant or recessive, meaning either one of your parents can have the gene or both. It's not too picky there. And the difference is with the goats is they're actually bred to encourage this. Right. And here you mentioned something a second ago that kind of smacked the ethics of it. Right. I don't remember what it was. Maybe I did kind of like, well, just people laughing. Every time I see those videos, I think the goats, they're roaming around their pen, and then I get the feeling they see people coming. They're like, oh, God, here we go again. Some jerk is going to shoot a gun in the air or something, and we're all going to fall over and they're going to laugh at us. Very funny. Right? Exactly. So here we go again. Here we go again. And every time they see a human, without fail, I'm sure a human does that, too, and the humans laugh and think it's the funniest thing they've ever seen. The goats are just like yeah. And actually, there's two reasons that fainting goats are bred these days. One is for novelty, because they do that, and another is for meat, basically. Yeah. That made me sad. I thought it would just be strictly novelty and having them as a pet. No, initially, that's what most livestock goats are used for, is meat. And frankly, they're delicious, but I wouldn't know. They're so delicious. Goat is awesome. But if you think of them as Satanic, you can eat them all day long. It's like you're eradicating evil by eating the goat. You know what I'm saying? Sure. Give me one of those evil, Satanic goat tacos. I want to do my part. Can I give you, like, a tad of history? Yeah. Do you want to talk about the history of it? Sure. Okay. I know we're hopping around here. That's right. Goat on fire. Like b. But the reason that Tennessee Stiff Legs, or fall down goats, as some people call them, are called Tennessee Stiff Legs or Tennessee Wooden Legs is because they were brought down from Nova Scotia, allegedly, by a farm hand named John Tinsley. Yeah, that's what they think. Yes. From what I saw, that was the, likeliest, explanation yeah. To Marshall County, Tennessee, in the late 18 hundreds, 1880s, and he started breeding them, which is called unnatural selection. We'll get to that in a second. But the goats were originally not bred for novelty. Right. It took 100 years for them to really start to be bred for novelty. They are bred because, Chuck, as you pointed out, their muscles don't atrophy. Right. They do the opposite. Right. Well, yes. If you think there's muscle waste going on, think again, because it actually makes the animal much leaner for slaughter. Right. It's hard for me to even say that. Right. So because of all the tensing and untensing that they do more than the average animal, they're kind of bulk they're ripped, they're bulk, so they have a low they're lean meat, but there's a lot of meat to muscle as well. So they're priced for their meat. And apparently their propensity toward myotonism tensing up painting prevents them from climbing fences, which is a big problem when you're keeping goats as livestock. They like to just hop right over a fence to erect for them. Mine didn't. No. My goats loved being pet goats, I'm sure. Were they house goats? Well, no, we had a big pen, and they were actually in there with the dogs. We had two dogs and two goats. And they were I mean, the goats, I think, took their cues from the dogs because they were very playful. And I used to play games with my goat, Nestor, all the time. Whatever happened? Nester? Well, Billy died, which is very sad. That's a good name. And then, of course, and then Nestor, we eventually were like, we need to move Nestor out to a farm. So this lady took him and Nestor rode it back to the truck with me with his head on my lap the whole way. What's the lady do? The Nestor, do you think? I think she kept Nestor as a goat. And that's the story I'm speaking to. Nestor was a pet until he died of old age. That is a beautiful storyteller. Yeah. Okay. So good. So your goats fared very well. I'm glad to hear that. I remember the goats of my birthday party. One of them was a house goat, remember? Oh, yeah. House goat. Wow. So there was an actual reason that feeding goats were bred initially, and it wasn't for kicks. The Tennessee farmers of the 1880s actually were a little more soulful than the ones today. Yeah. And it wasn't funny back then. Nothing was funny. Right. Yeah, exactly. Don't laugh at that. I can't say it. I just have, like, 80 great jokes here. I have so you talk about the protection of the herd. Not yet. Okay. So the goats become an established breed of their own by the 1950s. Right. And about that time, they start to leave tennessee, I think, for Texas was the next place that they really spread out. But it wasn't until the 1980s that the goats were really diverged into two not necessarily two different breeds because they haven't separated yet. But there's one line that's generally bred for meat. Right. Like the original version. Got you. The other line is bred as a novelty. They tend to be smaller and just faint. Like that cuter. Yes. Faint longer. Yeah. Because if you just kind of leave it alone, the myotonia is younger worse early in life. Yeah. They get kind of used to it. Sometimes more. They adapt to it. They're not as scared later in life. So, yeah. Younger goat is more prone to fall overseas. Exactly. But I think if you compare an adult fainting goat bread in that line to be a novelty to a goat that was bred for its meat of the same age. The novelty goat is going to probably fall over at the drop of a hat. Right. Because farmers thinks that's funny. Well, the other reason that Robert says they can't find much evidence of this anymore, but I guess back in the day, and it sort of makes sense, they would add some of these fainting goats to their herd of regular goats in case there were predators around. Pack of wolves come up, scares the little pebbly dude out of these goats, and then the stiff goats fall over and get eaten while the other ones take off and run. So essentially it's almost like they're not bait, but a much easier kill. Keep the wolves occupied so the rest of them can escape. You know what they are? What? A sacrificial lamb. Yeah, you're right. That's exactly what they are. But there's no evidence that that's really the reason that they're breeding them now. No, there's apparently not much evidence or how much that was used. I think it could have just been a good idea. Right, yeah. So, Chuck, the idea of make no mistake, myatonia is a deficiency, it's a disorder, it's not a desirable trait. So the idea of taking, because it's an undesirable trait, under natural selection, it shouldn't exist. Right, right. Because if you take a feeding goat out in nature, like you said, along with a herd of sheep or other goats or whatever, no. They'll be the first eating and then they won't have a chance to reproduce eventually, and that trade would die out. But them being bred for that, for an undesirable trait and then protected by humans, whether by a fence or like a hillbilly with a shotgun or whatever, that's called unnatural selection. Right, yeah. Nothing natural about it. No. Or artificial selection is another way to put it. Yeah. And anytime something like that happens, there's going to be some people, probably at an organization called PETA, that might stand up and say, I don't know if this is such a cool thing for humans to do. And PETA, as expected, isn't the biggest fan of raising feigning goats. Humane Society isn't so worried about it. They say there's a lot more breeding issues in the world that we should be more concerned about, and neither one of them have an official stance. But no. The woman from PETA that Robert interviewed in this article sounded like she hadn't heard of feigning goats until he called her. Oh, really? Yeah. That's the impression I got. Yeah. The quote is a little vague, isn't it? Yeah. She just like the standard PETA quote, just plug in the animal. But who knows? There is no official stance, though, so maybe Robert alerted her to this whole phenomenon. Yeah, but they have an official stance now and it stopped breeding painting guts. It's a little late for that, though. It's recognized and prized as a separate American breed of goat. There's about 3000 to 5000 of them running around and then falling over. Right. And they don't look like they're going anywhere. The livestock conservancy, I think is what it's called, suggest that this breed of goat be very much protected and taken care of and conserved is, I guess, the best word to use. Did I tell you about Emily and the little baby goat at the winery? No. At the winery in Athens. No. We went to right before this La trip, we went to Santa Barbara wine country and we went in this one winery and as we were going in, there was a guy with a dog outside and of course we attacked this dog and we petting it. He said, yeah, they wouldn't let it in because they got a baby goat in there. So Emily here, of course, inside saying, where's the goat? Where's the goat? This lady has probably about a six week old kid in her arms, wrapped in a blanket that has some sort of physical ailment. Not feigning goat syndrome. It was part human. Part human? It had human hands? No, but she had this little baby kid and Emily goes over and starts drooling and the lady says, do you want to hold it? In less than a second, the goat swap had been made. And for the next 20 minutes, this goat is literally like nuzzling Emily in the neck. And I took about 20 pictures of the range of emotions on Emily's face. Was there any crying at all? It wasn't crying. It was a type of ecstasy that you rarely see in an adult human female. That is cool. Yeah, very cute. You're like? Long story short, we own that goat now. Yes. No, not true. My aunt used to have a pygmy goat in California along the Russian River. Did they not get big? I guess. No, I would say a pygmy feigning goat would be about the cutest combination. Yeah. Especially one that asked to shine your shoes with like, big girl eyes or something. Those kittens. Oh, man, I can't watch that. Yeah, it just doesn't look right. It's awesome. I think because they don't look like they're hurt, they don't look injured. They just look surprised every time and then fine. Well, kids look surprised with everything. They have that constant look at. Surprise. Yeah. Anything else? No. We've touched on the satanic nature of goats meat. Goats fainting. Goats fainting, kittens unnatural selection. Tennessee, Texas, the 19th century. And that's about it. Right. And he's a natural love of animals. Yeah. My clonic jerks. Yeah, everything's right on. And now when you see these videos and you show your buddies, you can now tell people exactly what's going on. Say they're not fainting at all, actually. Yeah. Stupid. So if you want to learn more about feeding gods, remember, go to YouTube. Youtube.com. And type in Feintinggoats and then faint and Goofkittens. It doesn't really make sense. It could just be feinting kittens, but still. Yeah. And you'll see some hilarity. You can also learn more about feigning goats in a very well written and well researched article by Robert Lam with Stuff to Blow Your Mind how Fainting Goats Work. Type that into the handy search bar howstep works.com? And that will bring that up. And that means I just brought up listener mail. That's right, Josh. I'm going to call this a real CSI. Dude. This is from Ed in Chico, California. Hey, Josh and Chuck. Jerry. I'm a crime scene investigator for a municipal police department in rural Northern California. Being a CSI is just one of my collateral assignments. I'm also an evidence technician, and I have a couple of other titles, depending on who's giving me orders that day. Nearly every agency in my area has trained cops for civilians to be a CSI when needed, not as a standalone assignment. So that kind of answers one of the questions we had. Yeah. I showed interest in being a CSI when I started my evidence assignment four years ago and was sent to Basic CSI school and later Advanced CSI Crime Scene Reconstruction School. He skipped right over intermediate. Yeah, I guess so. Skipped it. And finally, blood spatter analysis. We also do monthly in house training on topics like photography, trajectories, DNA collection, buried body excavation, et cetera. Our CSIS are jacks of all trades, since our agencies are too small to be able to afford specialized positions. Your show is very well researched and had all the highlights of blood spatter and forensic photography. And as a sidebar, while we do have two big, expensive $2,000 SLR cameras, we really only use them for the most specialized photos, like nighttime crime scenes. 99% of the time they use a point and shoot from Walmart. Really? Yeah. I can see that technology has gotten good enough so that I'm sure. I know, but it would just seem weird if you saw Dexter, like, walk up a little. Point and shoot. Yeah. And plus, I think if you were the family of, like, a murder victim and you saw some guy walk up, point, shoot, you'd be like, are you even supposed to be here? Yeah. How about a real camera? Yeah. How about a little respect? You mentioned blood voids at a crime scene. We call them blood shadows. I like that one, too. That's pretty cool. I enjoy being a CSI, but like Josh said ages ago, television ain't nothing like reality. I can't stand watching those shows. They drive me crazy. But they're not based in reality. Writing in reality. DNA evidence takes one to two months, and Layton prints can take four or five months, not four to six minutes. Yeah. And the other thing is, everybody is just this jack of all trades. Like, oh, I got these prints off of this scene, and I'm going to go analyze them and I'm going to go like shake down the bad guys, right? It's like spend more money on an ensemble, will you? Thank you. Ed from Chico. Oh, that was it. Yeah, that was it. Sorry to end your letter with a rant from me, Ed. Thank you very much for your illuminating letter. We appreciate it. We want to hear from you. First of all, you can go check us out on Facebook. Facebook.com stuff you should know. You can follow us on Twitter, syskpodcast. And you can join our Cuba team, kiva.org teamstepytoe. You can also always email us. And specifically, if you have ever tampered with natural selection through artificial selection, we want to hear about it. Send us an email about this. Right, Chuck? That's right. That's stuffpoodcast@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." | ||
20e348e4-121b-11eb-85ed-0fcf51e3d5b3 | Short Stuff: Brazilian Jars | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-brazilian-jars | In the 1970s big news was made when some underwater artifacts were found in a bay by Rio de Janeiro that would have rewritten history. Then it just kind of petered out. | In the 1970s big news was made when some underwater artifacts were found in a bay by Rio de Janeiro that would have rewritten history. Then it just kind of petered out. | Wed, 17 Mar 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=17, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=76, tm_isdst=0) | 14622344 | audio/mpeg | "You know you're the best pet mom. When you growl back during playtime, give epic belly rubs and feed them halo holistic made with responsibly sourced ingredients plus probiotics. For digestive health, find us at chewy, amazon and haloopets.com. Com. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. Producer Dave is out there somewhere in spirit, which means it's short stuff plus tax. Plus what my friend Meredith used to say. Hamunahamana plus tax. Is that not a thing? No. What's hamunahman mean? Hamunahamana is just kind of like an old VOD villian thing. I'm not exactly sure what it means or where it came from, but I always associate it with, like, old timey vaudeville stuff. Please don't let it be racist. As I was saying vaudeville, I was like, oh, God. I feel like maybe like Jackie Gleason. Or Laurel and Hardy. Not Laurel and Hardy, I think. Costello. Maybe not from a minstrel show. Right? Yeah, but yeah. Exclamation of excitement or looking forward to something. All right, well, I see Jackie Gleason on the Internet, so hopefully we're covered. You see Jackie Gleason. On the internet saying hominahmine. Okay, good. Let's just get going. So, yeah, this is a short stuff, Chuck. We're never going to be able to end this now. We're talking today about Brazil, the country that was first landed, as far as Europeans go, by a guy from Portugal named Pedro Alvarez Cabral. Right. And he landed there in 1500, and things went pretty poorly for the local populations as a result. Yeah, and I think Cabral was one of those people that Brazil had always celebrated as the first European to show up there. And like, this is our person and let's celebrate this person. And then in the 70s, something happened. I don't know where you found this, it's very interesting, but something happened that kind of put that all in doubt. I found a contemporary New York Times article about it. I don't remember how, but I did. And I said, my God, this is a gift from Zeus himself. So here's what was happening for a while. There were fishermen off of Guanabara Bay near Rio who for years had been fishing and saying, hey, we'll pull up our fishing nets a lot of times and we'll get these jars in our nets and we think this might just be like the local native tribes used to offer these up before Cabral actually landed on the scene. And maybe these are ancient, who knows? And then in 76, a man named Jose Tashara was diving there, brought two of them to the surface and said, I think these are really old. Yeah. And not just really old. Too. Because they could have been accounted for by the native tribes. But they were in a shape that people hadn't seen before and to share brought them ashore and I guess handed them over to the Navy. I think. Who kept them in a tank of seawater for a very long time until they caught the attention of a guy named Robert Marks who went on to become I don't know if he was or not by this time. I think he was fairly famous. But he wanted to become a world famous. Deeply renowned underwater archeologist. In fact, he's known as the father of underwater archaeology. But he caught wind of these jars being found and had a look at them, or got his hands on some pictures of them and said, these are not supposed to be here. These are not some local Brazilian jar. This look a lot like Roman emphora. And Roman emphora were jars that were used very famous, like vase jars with the double handles at the top. They were used by Romans, Phoenicians and Greeks back around the turn of the last millennia. And there's no good reason that they should be here in this bay in Brazil. Yes. So after first thinking it might be a hoax, he did say he thinks they're real, and let me get some other divers and go down there and check out and see what's going on. And about 90ft down, sure enough, they found about 200 intact and broken amphora. And he said they were kind of concentrated in an area about the size of three tennis courts. Very interesting. And he was like, sure. And he said, there's no way that these were planted here. He said these things some of these were like, 5ft under the mud. We had to dig them out with our hands out of the mud. And they're barnacle encrusted. Some of them have coral, and this coral was killed off, like, 30 or 40 years earlier. So there's no way these were planted down there anytime recently. Yeah, he became pretty convinced that it wasn't a hoax. And his suspicions were backed up by an expert that he enlisted from, UMass, named Elizabeth Will, who was an expert in ancient Roman empires, which is like that is a very specific focus of study. But she basically looked at the type of them, looked at their manufacturer. She got her hands on some of the samples that Toshira had brought up, I think, and she said, not only are these Roman empheri, I can tell you exactly where they were made and roughly when. And she traced the design of this particular employee to a place called KUAs, K-O-U-A-S-S in what is now present day Morocco. And the cows emphoria of this design were being made around the third century Ce. So about 1000, 201,300 years before Pedro Alvarez Cabral showed up in Brazil in $1,500. Yeah. So Marks puts that together and says, all right, I have a theory. He said they used to have boats back then, and ships that could make it certainly could have traveled over here from the Mediterranean. And I think what might have happened is they were blown off course, maybe, and they ended up kind of shipwrecking after they anchored off Rio. Maybe there was a big storm or something that drove the ship onto a reef and these jars just kind of ended up here. And no one knew that they were here until these fishermen started pulling them up. Yeah, so, I mean, that's a pretty good assumption, especially considering that these jars are spread out over about a three tennis court size area that's maybe the size of a Roman ships hold. And it's possible since they had seaworthy ships. But the thing is, if that were true, that would totally rewrite history. It was how there used to be vague legends about how Vikings made it to North America, and we suddenly found that settlement, I can't remember the name of it, that was a Viking settlement in North America that said, unequivocally, they had been here before. This would basically be like that. But there had been no legend before it. No one had any idea that the Romans had made it to Brazil in the third century. So this was required a complete revision of history. Even if it was just a tangential, fleeting contact between one small group of Roman sailors and prehistoric Brazilian tribes, it still was a big deal to find these things there. Alright, maybe we should take our break and come back and talk about the response to Brazil right after this. These days, you use your personal info to do just about everything, especially when you're online. And guess what? With all that info just floating around out there, it can make the Internet a practical gold mine for identity thieves. And stealing your identity, it turns out, can be dangerously easy. Which is not good. But now it's easy to protect yourself with LifeLock by Norton. Yes, LifeLock monitors your info and alerts you to potential identity threats. And if you are a victim of identity theft, a dedicated US based restoration specialist will work to fix it. Identity thefts have had it easy for far too long. Now, finally, it's your turn. Just remember, no one can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transactions at all businesses. But everyone can save up to 25% off their first year by going to LifeLock. comStuff that's LifeLock.com stuff for 25% off your first year. LifeLock identity theft protection starts here. 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 alright, so Marks has this theory. He's got these jars, the Brazilian government steps in and they don't say, this is amazing. Thank you. We're going to have a press conference and here's a podium, and we want to hear all about it. They said. You know what? You're shut down. We're shutting down your operation. We don't like the looks of this. He started excavating again, I think, in 83. Or was that the first one? No, that was the second time. The first time was when he found them and said he found like, a couple of hundred of them and that they were spread out over the 10th court. This is when he returned the next year to really excavate the site in earnest. And he also found out that the Navy, the Brazilian Navy, literally covered this stuff up. It dumped a bunch of fill dirt over the site and said, you know what? We think you're a plunderer. We want to keep it from being plundered. And we covered it up, and you're banned. You can't even come into our country anymore. Yes, he was accused of having stolen artifacts from other sites in Brazil and selling them on European auction houses, essentially on the black market, but out in the open, they had just been basically stolen from Brazil. That's a huge accusation to level against somebody. But apparently the Brazilian authorities were convinced enough by it that they actually banned him from Brazil and shut down all marine archeological excavations in the country. There was just like a blanket ban on them because they had just been so, I guess, rattled by the perceived theft of relics. The thing is, if Robert Marks had been anybody else, just some dude, it would have been easy to buy that that had happened. But he really had a good reputation, especially by the end of his life in 2019. Right? Yeah. He was knighted in three countries. He wrote the UNESCO laws about underwater archeological digs, and he was a book writer. I think he's kind of the granddaddy of underwater archeology. He's very much not a plunderer of things. So it seemed like Brazil was being a jerk. It does. So that seems like a bit of a twist that they would literally cover up this history rewriting site. And at the time, in the New York Times article, I think Robert Mark suspected that it was because they were so venerating of cabral that they couldn't stand the idea of some other Europeans having beaten them there by hundreds of years. The thing is, it's entirely possible that the Brazilians didn't cover up that site and that there wasn't 200 of those amphory and that there was no Roman galley that sunk in Brazil. It's possible none of this happened at all. Yeah. I mean, this is the real cool twist here is in 1983, there was a diver, a free diver named Emeriko Santa Lee. And America said, hey, all this hullabaloo about these M four, these are mine. These are replicas. And I buried these out there to try and age them. I dropped 16 of these things out there to age them, and that's what they are. Yeah. He'd spent some time in Rome and had kind of fallen for Amphore. They were his thing. Kind of like how some people collect different outfits to put on their concrete geese that they keep out in the front yard. This guy was into amphora like that. Sure. The thing is okay, so America Santorelli claimed that those were his Amphore after this world famous underwater archeologists had declared that there were 200 of them buried 5ft beneath the muck. That a UMass expert had declared that they were made from COAS in Morocco in the third century. This guy says, no, they were mine, and there were only 16 of them, and I dropped them there in the 60s. Yeah, that's the one thing I couldn't reckon with. Were there not 200? Was that just BS. Here's the thing. It's kind of like the end of The Usual Suspects. If you go back and look at all of the evidence we have. It's right there on the wall. Almost all of it is coming out of Robert Marks'mouth. He's the one who saw the 200 M for it. He's the one who said that they were spread out over a few tennis court sized fields. He's the one who said they were encrusted by Barnacles. He's the one who sang in a barbershop quartet in Skokie, Illinois. That's exactly right. And when you go back and you look at this, you say, well, wait a minute. There's not really much other evidence to back up this idea that he has aside from him saying all this stuff. And I think the most telling thing about how they actually were america Santorelli's 16 employee that he dropped in the Beta age is that Robert Marx just kind of dropped the whole thing. The whole thing goes cold after that. Yeah. Isn't that weird? It is very weird. He even wrote a book in 1992 that was about prehistoric contact between Europe and the Americas. And as far as I know, he didn't mention the jars in the bay in Brazil, and that's that as far as I'm concerned. I think since we mentioned Usual Suspects, we should shout out friend to the show kevin Pollock, one of the stars of Usual Suspects in a role where he gets to play the rare heavy. And Kevin has a great improv comedy show in our network called Alchemy this. Yeah, that is a great show. And actually, he has a cameo in our book, too. I can't remember what part we talked about, but there's one of the footnotes about the live show in La. Where he brought us water because we said we were thirsty. He brought us water up on stage. That's right. And he also played the role of Christopher Walken in my movie Crush April Fools interview a couple of years ago that delighted a lot of people and angered a few. Hey, man, if you're delighting and angering at the same time, you're doing something right. So hats off to both of you for that. Yes. I love pollock. Good dude. Good dude. Well, I think that's it. Right? You got anything else about Kevin pollock or Brazilian jars? No. I want to get my hands on one of these. Well, just start diving. Okay. And you will find one in Brazil off the cost of Rio. Great. And since I said everybody, that means short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
43edd522-53a3-11e8-bdec-7b76ef2863c2 | Olympic Torches: Remember Those? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/olympic-torches-remember-those | Back in the pre-pandemic days we had a sporting event called The Olympic Games. And at those games there was an opening ceremony that featured the lighting of a cauldron from a torch. Let's chat about that, eh? | Back in the pre-pandemic days we had a sporting event called The Olympic Games. And at those games there was an opening ceremony that featured the lighting of a cauldron from a torch. Let's chat about that, eh? | Thu, 13 Aug 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=13, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=226, tm_isdst=0) | 42349380 | audio/mpeg | "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, US and global health. Listen in as host Baritoon de Thurston connects with impactful organizations like the Trevor Project, doctors Without Borders and the University of Kentucky. Plus inspiring individuals like Amy Allison and Juan Acosta to discuss ways to maximize our impact. Listen to Force Multiplier on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. Hey, everybody. I don't know if you've heard, but we have a book coming out 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 Mills Parker who is amazing and is illustrated amazingly by our illustrator Carly Minnardo. And it's just an all around 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 pre order 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, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there. And this is stuff you should know. What is this going to do with the Olympics? It's equally stirring. I thought you had done the Olympic games song. That's what I started out doing. And then about two duns into it, I realized they could not bring it to mine. So I just want the Rocky theme is dead. You know, the Olympics. Well, I don't know if they would they still be going on right now? Would they be over? I don't know. They could have just wrapped up. Actually, it's kind of sad. It's sad for now. It will be encouraging later. I think the Tokyo Olympics, whenever they happen, are going to be a global coming together and celebration of beating coronavirus. Yes, totally. Those ceremonies. Yes. But from what I read, the Olympic flame is still alive and well in Tokyo. What if the opening ceremonies had little corona crowns running around and people smashing them with like, big inflatable hammers? That's right. They tell the story of the coronavirus pandemic through interpretive dance. It just has like a big giant bat at the beginning. Yeah, exactly. It's the villain. There'd be plenty of villains in that one. They'd be fun, for sure. So we're obviously talking Olympic torches, if you haven't guessed or hadn't bothered to look at the title of this episode, everybody. And I'm kind of excited about this because it's just died in the Wool S-Y-S-K episode. And that it's very niche. It's about one specific thing that's a part of a much larger thing, which we've not yet done an episode on. Yeah. And the kind of thing where one day when you're watching an Olympic ceremony again, you see that flame. Yeah. You'll have that insider knowledge. Yes. You'll think, oh, goodness. So, Chuck, I didn't know much about Olympic torches. I've seen a torch lighting or two in my time on television only. Yeah. But it's pretty interesting, actually, the kind of the history of it and how the things are made. I was reading over, like, I guess you'd call it like a request for proposal, a PDF from the London Olympics Committee from years ago, basically saying, hey, this is a call out to all designers who want to try their hand at designing the London Olympic torch. Here's all the details you need to know. It was really fascinating stuff, and we're going to convey that fascination post haste of that RFP or just RFP torches? Maybe a little bit of both, actually. So the history of the torch, we're talking you got to go back to Greece if you're going to talk about anything Olympic history wise. And if you go back far enough, you're going to hear a story about Prometheus stealing fire from Zeus, giving that to humans. That's how they say we got fire. Sure. And in order to commemorate that, the Greeks had these relay races like we all know and love, except instead of passing a little aluminum baton, they would pass live fire and flame via torch. Yeah. They would set a cow on fire, push it to the next person. Actually, the one thing on Prometheus, I was looking him up. So he was punished by Zeus for stealing fire and giving it to him. Being a bad boy. Yeah. A naughty Monty. And he had his liver eaten out by an eagle every day. And because he was an immortal Titan, his liver would grow back each night and then it would be eaten out by an eagle again the next day. That's how I feel these days, eagles eating your liver every day. Yet it is kind of 2020 years. But it regenerates, though. Yeah. But I guess the upshot of all this is that the fire was extremely important to the Greeks and they showed it off as much. So when they started having Olympic Games back in, I guess, 776 BCE, they wanted to make fire kind of a prominent part of it. And so they celebrated this theft of fire from Zeus by Prometheus by having a torch relay where there was basically today's baton relay marathons or runs or whatever you call them. But it was with the torch. And whoever reached the end with their lit torch won that relay race. And that's how kind of the Olympic torch was born. Yeah. And the Games back then were a very big deal and that they would stop war, which is something they love to do just to take part in these Games. And they had these runners, they called them heralds of peace that would go all through Greece saying, Truth, everybody. Right. And they would hope they don't get speared. And if they made it through, that truce would remain all during the Olympics until the flame is extinguished and then they start spearing again immediately. Yes. And the point was that anybody who wanted to go watch the Olympics could make it through Greece unkilled to go watch and then make it back home unkilled, hopefully too unkilt. Yes. So if you go back to Olympia, there was an altar there dedicated to Hera, who is the goddess of birth and marriage. And at the beginning of those first Olympic Games, they would ignite a cauldron at Harris altar and they would light it with a parabolic mirror. They call it a scaffia, and it's sort of like an archimedes death ray or a magnifying glass or something where you focus the sun down to that single spot. If you're a sadistic child, you burn ants that way. You should never, ever do that. No, it's not nice. No. Leave the ants alone. Leave the ants alone. But that's how they would ignite that initial flame. And that flame, the idea is that it stays lit throughout the Olympics. Yeah. So this is a pretty cool tradition, if you think about it. Just because the Olympics have been around for so long today, the modern Olympics, we kind of take this whole thing for granted. But this is a pretty neat tradition that I guess just came up out of whole cloth among the Greeks. And so they were like, we're going to keep this going. And they did for another thousand years while they did the Olympics. But then when the Olympics kind of died out after a millennium, the torch and all of that stuff died out with it. Fortunately, the Greeks were a highly literate society and they wrote a lot of this stuff down. And it was rediscovered when the Olympics were revived in the 19th century by a guy named Baron Pierre de Cubertin. And one of the things that he did was to say, I really love the Olympic Games. I'm not necessarily aware that there was a torch relay or anything like that. So we're going to wait another 30 years or so before we introduce the torch again. That's right. That came in 28 in Amsterdam, and there they had the cauldron on fire on purpose, but they weren't relaying that torch. Still, it took till 1936 in Berlin when Carl dean. He was the secretary General of the organizing committee of the Games there, and he said, hey, guys, we got to bring this back to the OGS, and we got to get that torture relay going, and we got to light it in Olympia and get it here to Berlin. We got to do it right. Yeah, he definitely did it right, for sure. Not only was the whole thing revived, like, the idea of the torch relay, but igniting that torch in Greece and then having it make its way all the way to Berlin, that's pretty cool stuff. And from what I read, that was also right up the Nazis alley in that it kind of connected the Third Reich to the great Greek and Roman empires of Your, which they were super into to try to legitimize themselves. So they went for it. Fortunately, that first Olympic torch, which we'll talk more about, the torches did not have a swastika anywhere on it, which is wonderful that they managed to keep that off of there. I know that's kind of surprising, too. It is extremely surprising. It really is genuinely surprising. And I'm like, very pleased. I was really pleased. I looked at pictures of that torch with, like, one eye closed, just trying to find a torch. No, I was afraid I was going to see it. I couldn't believe it. And little by little, I was like, It's not there. So pleased by that. You have it. My eyes I just turned into toast from the end of Raiders of Lost Ark and Melt. So the relay at the Winter Olympics, I think it took until 1952 to introduce it at the Winter Games, and they did not like it in Olympia that year. They lit it in Norway because that's where the skiing was born. So they thought they would honor Norway in that way. But finally, in 1964, in Austria, at Innsbruck, they said, we got to get it together, everybody. We got to get on the same page. We got to go winter and summer and start it out in Olympia and relay that thing to wherever the heck we're going to have these Games. That's right. And they did. And I actually looked a little bit into the, I guess, the 1952 Games where they lit it in Norway. They lit it in the heart of the home of 19th century Norwegian skiing legend Sandra Norheim. It's either Sandra or Sandre Sondre, and he was apparently quite the daredevil skiing. I saw a quote about him that he was fearless and daring. He ran straight down the most dangerous and challenging hills, rudely waving his cap, which made me love that guy immediately. Yeah. And I think those games ended up in Helsinki. Well, there's a little nugget I'll drop in the next segment here after we break. Oh, I can't wait. I've got another segment or another nugget on that. One other time in history when the Winter Olympic torch was lit in the hearth of the home of 19th century Norwegian skiing legend sandrine was in Squad Valley in 1960 because the Olympic committee couldn't get their act together fast enough to organize the lighting ceremony in Greece. So Norway stepped in again and said, she's got a fireplace. We've seen it in action. He. Oh, he. Yeah. Party at Sandra's house. All right. I'm sure we're mispronouncing it probably so rudely waving his camp. You want to take a break yet? Let's do it. All right, everybody, we're going to take a break, and we're going to come back and guess what? We're going to talk about Olympic torches some more. 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. These days, you use your personal info to do just about everything, especially when you're online. And guess what? With all that info just floating around out there, it can make the Internet a practical gold mine for identity thieves. And stealing your identity, it turns out, can be dangerously easy, which is not good. But now it's easy to protect yourself with LifeLock by Norton. Yes, LifeLock monitors your info and alerts you to potential identity threats. And if you are a victim of identity theft, a dedicated US based restoration specialist will work to fix it. Identity thefts have had it easy for far too long. Now, finally, it's your turn. Just remember, no one can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transactions at all businesses. But everyone can save up to 25% off their first year by going to LifeLock comStuff that's LifeLock.com stuff for 25% off your first year. LifeLock identity theft protection starts here. All right, Chuck, so let's talk about those RFP's that thrilled me so fully. Yes. If you want to be the design firm that designs and builds the torch, you got to get in there and you've got to submit your proposal. You got to grease some palms, you got to tip the right doorman, if you know what I mean. You have to spread many goats around that's, right? To the right people. No, I think you just submit a proposal and the Olympic Committee looks at it and they sort of sit there like at the beginning of Planes, trains and Automobiles for 3 hours in silence, kind of twiddling their thumbs looking, and finally they say, the bid goes to you. You win the assignment. You've got to have a torch that looks great, of course. And you've got to have a torch that works because this thing is got to stay lit under any condition. You can get this thing through a hurricane, supposedly, and it'll have to stay lit. Yeah. I mean, they're pretty serious about this thing not going out, so they build in redundancies. Oftentimes there's a couple of different flames working in conjunction to make this thing work. But in addition to the actual feel of it and the look of it, like, you want to make it so that anybody basically alive on earth could carry it. So it's got to be lightweight. Typically, I saw usually about a pound or so. It has to. Oh, is that all? Most of the ones in the RFP. The golden RFP from the London Olympics. It had a list, actually. You got to look this up, everybody. I cannot remember. Just search London Olympic torch proposal, design proposal. I'll bet that would bring up this PDF anyway. Some sleepy corner of the internet. Yes, I found it and I'm proud as punch about that. But I had a list of, like, some of the specs of past torches and most of them seem to be around one to \u00a32. This article, from How Stuff Works is three to four, but I saw one to \u00a32 maybe that's without being fully loaded with fuel. Sure. And, hey, if you can carry something that's \u00a32, you can probably put two hands on it and manage the \u00a34. Sure. Although they like you to hold it with one hand. Yeah. Just because it looks cooler. These modern torches that we're looking at were sort of originated at the Squall Valley Games in 1960, when a Disney artist named John Hinch designed this. Sort of the first modern torch that everyone else said, yeah, that's a good idea. That's what we should do. We should have fuel inside of it and we should have some backup flame inside of it. And they kind of function like a camp stove. Sure. A fancy camp stove, basically, is what it is. And we'll get into the fuels and stuff, but in that there is a liquid fuel that becomes a gas. It's under pressure and then it comes out these tiny little holes, just like a camp stove. Like a Coleman lantern. Yeah. And I didn't know this. This is pretty cool. There are two things that have to be designed into it. Well, a couple of things that have to be designed into it. In addition to being easy to carry by basically anybody, it has to be very light, it has to be aerodynamic. Ergonomic, I think is another sure. If you threw that word around in your bid, they would probably be like, oh, this guy knows what he's talking about. But you also have to, at least as far as London is concerned. But I got the impression that this was a standard thing that you have to design in a way to permanently deactivate it after it's one time use, so that it can never be lit again, which I thought was kind of cool. I bet you could hack that, though. Funny enough, I found another weird corner of the Internet researching this one at Olympic Torchrepair.com, which is possibly the most niche retail website I've ever seen in my life. They sell one part, and it is a part designed to fix the 1996 Atlanta Olympic torch. And they don't use the words that it will be lit again. But just from the pictures, from the text, from everything that I'm seeing, I believe this is a rogue website dedicated to making 1996 Atlanta Olympic torches burn again after they've been purposefully disabled. Well, and you might be laughing saying, how much could this person be making off this? But here's another little fun fact. There are anywhere from 10,000 to 15,000 of these torches that are built. If you'll notice when you see these and they don't cover all of this thing, or maybe they do in some dark corner of the Internet. I'm sure somebody does. I might end up doing it in the future as a hobby. Covers each and every passing of the torch, but they don't actually pass the torch. They light the other person's torch and then they run away. And then the camera doesn't hang on the person who just standing there with their torch. And you think, what happens to those things? Well, you're allowed to buy it if you want. The one from Japan this year was going to cost about 600, $650 American. That's a steal. Have you seen that thing? Yeah, it's good looking. They're beautiful. Have you seen the overhead shot where it looks like a cherry blossom? It's wonderful. I think so, too. And that is a price that's basically at cost because the IOC or the AOC can profit from the sale of Olympic torches. That is not a side hustle for her. No, don't believe what the right says. I know she can't actually make any money off of Olympic torch. So that's basically cost. And it turns out there's quite an aftermarket for these things, too. I think there are right now two complete collections for individuals in the world and another guy that's close. And they cost anywhere from 1500 to 4000 for the newer ones, 15 to 70 for older ones. And I think the priceiest ever was that 1952 Helsinki one. How much? $880,000. Oh, boy. Because they only made 22 of them. So obviously Rarity is going to drive that price up. The highest I saw was less than that is $215,000 for the 1960 Squad Valley one that Disney designer made. And I think I saw it like they made 100 of them. So you'd have to have some coin to have a complete collection. And that's a very niche collection as well. I mean, more power to you. And I have to say, like a lot of them, they're not very pleasing to the eye. There's some ugly Olympic torches out there. Mexico City, 1968 is. If it's not a hand whisk, I don't know what it is. Well, it's homey. Maybe it is. And it was cool. It actually, according to the 2012 London Olympics Torch RFP PDF that you have framed on your wall, that is the longest I'm making T shirts out of different pages. That is the longest burning Olympic torch in the history of Olympic torches. Most of these things are designed to burn ten or 15 minutes, which is alarming if you're like. Well, wait a minute. We don't want the Olympic flame to burn out, but as we'll see, these relays are actually super short. This one, the Mexico City 1968 torch, could burn up to 30 minutes. Dude, I like this torch. The whisk. I think it looks great. I don't think it looks bad. I just think it looks like a kitchen whisk. And I can't think of anything else but whipping cream when I look at it. I'm looking at two different torches, though, for Mexico. One looks like a Whisk and one looks like sort of like an Aztec club. There are two torches. I don't know. I'm going to have to get to the bottom of this, okay, because I'm seeing two torches. Let me know what you find because I'm going to have to add it to my niche website about Olympic torches. Oh, goodness. So I don't remember where we were going with that. Oh, you were talking about the Tokyo one, where you can buy it when you have the torch. When your torch relay is done, it's taken from you, disabled, put in its packaging, and then presented to you if you've indicated you want to buy it. And if not, they throw it into the nearest river. But I think that's pretty cool that you get to buy it if you want to. And it's disabled, so you can never lie again unless you know, the guy who runs the Olympic torch repair. But one of the other things too, that has become kind of a thing, especially in the last 30 years or maybe more, is sustainability built into these, and it's not a requirement, but I get the impression from that RFP, that's exactly where I got it from, that you're probably doing nothing but helping your bid. If you have figured out some sort of sustainable angle to it, like the Tokyo torch, which, again, it's just gorgeous. It's rose gold looking, but it's actually aluminum. And the aluminum is made from former temporary housing that was used after the Fukushima disaster to house some of the residents who have been displaced. They're really pulling at the heartstrings there. Yes, I'm sure the person who designed it was like, I got it. I got the thing that's going to get we're going to win this bid with this. And they're like, Is it true? No, but they don't know. Now, I shoot down airplanes in my spare time. I have a bunch of them in my backyard. Now I know what to do with that. I like the view from the top better. Yeah, it's gorgeous on the side. Yes. And one of the things we talked about, flames and them being redundant, you don't want that flame to go out. So one of those things that 2020 torch has is from each of those rounded petals that look like the petal of a cherry blossom flower, provides a flame. And they all come together to build one big flame. But because you have five different, smaller flames, that big flame, even if it flickers or wanes, it's never going to go out. Yeah, you got five redundancies. Exactly. So the fuel, they've used a bunch of things over the years because you want something to burn bright, something that you can see during the daytime. You want something that's not dangerous. But there have been some dangerous torches over the years. They've used gunpowder, they've used olive oil, they used to use something called hexamine, which is formaldehyde, and pneumonia can't be safe, and methylene. So in our soap episode, Chuck, one of the things I didn't get to talk about was that fell Snap, the laundry soap. Yeah, you ever seen that stuff? I don't think so. It's like this hipsterytic laundry soap, that's old timing that they still make. But naphtha is benzene and it's actually really bad for you. So they're basically burning benzene in this stuff. And all sorts of bad things can happen. Like your red blood cells can rupture. Yes, that's no good. You can also have nasty smoke, like in the case of Atlanta's was pretty smoky in 56. They had magnesium and aluminum lighting the flame, and there were chunks of flame that fell off. So you don't want that either. You want something that burns clean, that looks good. I think now they use propane and butane, which makes a lot of sense. It's what you use in lighters and then gas grills. And like I said, it works like a little camp stove. You've got this fuel being pushed through a valve, there's a fuel reservoir, and then you have all these little tiny openings just like a camp stove will. And once it squeezes through there, it builds up that pressure. Then finally, once it's out the other side, that pressure drops, turns into a gas, and it's ready to burn at a consistent rate. Right. And again, there's a couple of flames, typically one that burns really hot but small, that is almost like a pilot light for the bigger ones. In that 2020 torch, there's five of those things, and then you've got the bigger, brighter flame that is big and bold and just says in your face world, I'm the Olympic flame, but it's much less stable. It flickers a lot more in the wind, but it's not going to go out because you got those pilot lights. It's sort of like the understudy to the Broadway star. Yeah, but the understudy is really the one who's giving the star all of the suggestions and notes that are making the star a star. And we'll get to the route here in a few minutes. But this thing goes a long way, and sometimes even across oceans and sometimes underwater, which is what happened in 2000 when it went across the Great Barrier Reef. Very symbolically. And they had a flare inside this thing to keep the flame burning in the water, which is pretty amazing. Yeah. Did you see video of that? Yeah, I saw it live. Oh, you did? Sure. I'm an Olympics guy. I love that stuff. That's cool. Yes. I didn't see that. I like the Olympics, too. I don't know if I'd say I'm an Olympics guy. Okay. You're an Olympic torch RFP guy. Yeah. That's way more up my alley than running around. Should we take another break? Yeah, I think we've reached break time, if you ask me. All right, we'll come back and we'll talk about lighting this thing and then the big relay right after this. What if you were a global bank who wanted to supercharge your audit system? 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Identity thefts have had it easy for far too long. Now, finally, it's your turn. Just remember, no one can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transactions at all businesses. But everyone can save up to 25% off their first year by going to LifeLock. comStuff that's LifeLock.com stuff for 25% off your first year. LifeLock identity theft protection starts here. All right, Chuck, so we're back to talk about the actual lighting of this thing. And if you guys will remember, we talked about lighting the torch using a parabolic mirror to concentrate the sun's rays all the way back in the seventies BCE. Well, when the Olympic organizers of the modern Olympics started bringing the torch back, I guess. What was his name? Carl Burnham, I think. The German guy from the 1936 Olympics, I believe he had this he went right to it. He was also. A sports historian, by the way, which gives away why he was so privy to all this stuff. But I guess since that time, every time we've lit a torch from Olympia, they have used a parabolic mirror to concentrate the sun's rays. And they stick a torch in there and it catches flame. And then there you have the official Olympic flame that will make its way from Olympia to the host city. Somehow, someway. Yeah, they make a big show of it. They have an actor dressed as a ceremonial priestess in these robes and like the ancient Greeks, and they acted out. And for the Winter Games, actually, the relay begins at the monument to the guy who spoke up earlier, pierre, the cobortin who founded those first Games. But the Summer Games aka. The other Games, are carried to a firepot at that altar of was it Hara? Yeah. Zeus's wife sister. Sister wife. And then the relay begins. And how this works out is determined at every Olympics, the organizing committee determines the route. There's always some silly Olympic theme. It's not always silly. Sometimes it's nice, but I'm not a big theme guy. No, you didn't like the theme of the Olympics? What's it I think you're going to bring that up. That was the mascot. That wasn't the theme. Oh, I thought it was both. I think the theme was Redneckery. The theme was get her done. I was looking online today because remember, they had those I've talked about them before, those stainless steel pickup trucks in Atlanta, and I was like, Where are those things now? And I could find Gary any evidence that they ever existed. So I don't know if they scrub the Internet, but I know you're better at the dark corners of the web. So maybe what I can do, maybe we'll go in together and buy one. That would be pretty awesome, actually. So, you know, like I said, the route is determined by the committee. Sometimes it goes from country to country on a plane. Sometimes it's a train. There have been dog sleds, there's been motorcycles and horseback. And if you are a person who is tasked with carrying this thing, like, I think you have to be able to go at least 437 yards, 400 meters, got to be at least 14 years old. I would like to throw our name in the hat, quite frankly, for future Olympic Games. That would be kind of neat. That'd be fine. I'd be willing to carry it with you. We could put a hand on it. Yeah. But now you've done something for the community, or you're a notable human being. Yes. Or you work for the company who's sponsoring the Olympics. Right. You're a clevel executive, which is absolutely true. We're not kidding. No, and I mean, like, there's sometimes hundreds, sometimes thousands of people who are involved in this, because if you're running, like, basically a football field and a half and you're taking this thing? Thousand kilometers, right? You need a lot of people to do that. So there's a lot of people involved in the Olympic relay. So there's a lot of people who just kind of ended up there because they were a sponsor. But there's also interesting people, too. Sure. Sometimes they're not even people, buddy. I was looking at the Pyongchang 2018 Winter Olympics relay, and there was a robot named Hubo who was a torch bearer. And Hubo not only carried the torch, hugo drove the torch in like, basically a doom buggy with a human being in the passenger seat, and then got out, approached a brick wall, almost fell over, was righted by some other humans, cut through the brick wall and then passed the torch through the hole Hugo had cut into the brick wall. That's the level of zaininess that can be achieved with the torch relay because there's so many people involved. Can you imagine being that guy? Did you see the Olympics the other day? The torch relay? Oh, did you carry the torch? Now, I wrote in the doom buggy of the robot, just looking very nervous. I was a fail safe in case he went nuts. It was pretty great. They also did paragliding. They paragliding. Oh, yeah, I remember that one. The torch from one place to another. It's pretty cool. Like people, they try to outdo each other. Each host city tries to outdo the last. I think Montreal is the one that has everybody beat. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Let me go on. So in 1976, Montreal hosted the Olympics and they figured out how to take the flame transmitted into a radio signal. I'm still not sure how they do this. Shot that signal up to a satellite and then beam the signal back down from satellite to Canada where it lit another cauldron, another torch. So they basically transferred the energy from the Olympic flame, shot it into space, and then transferred it back to Earth and converted it back into flame. No one's ever going to beat that. I think that's cute that you bought that. Oh, well, okay, I guess, yeah, I hadn't really thought about that. You didn't see the guy who was in the buggy? He was also behind there punching the button, the relight button. It is a thing for sure. And now you hadn't really thought about that. So if you do notice these people that are actually on the street carrying these things, you'll notice they have security. There's actually a medical team, there's plenty of media. They have extra torches on hand because they don't want that thing to go out on camera. And eventually it's going to make its way to the Olympic Stadium where the big secret they keep it a big secret. Now who that final individual is going to be very much kept a lid on, because you don't want that getting out because that's the big moment. And that's always a big deal, whoever they choose, for that final person to light the cauldron. And there have been a lot of big moments throughout the years. And I think Atlanta's, when they came in there, Janet Evans, she didn't even know who she was going to hand it to. And out comes Mohamed Ali. That was really one of the great Olympic moments. I've watched it again today and it's like, why am I crying? What is wrong with me? It is amazing to hear that crowd when they figure out who it is at first, and apparently no one knew. Maybe it was Costus who was doing the probably Costus. Yeah, I think it was because he hadn't gotten pink eye that year, so he was still good to see the commentator. It was Cost us and somebody else. And they didn't know, apparently. And I guess Dick Ebersaw, who was a longtime NBC executive have you read that book Live from New York about Saturday Night Live? No, but I knew that he took over for a little while. Yeah, he figures big in there. And I can't remember if he did a good job or a bad job, but I have a good impression of him. So I think he did get but anyway, he figures big into that book, and that book is definitely worth reading. It like goes up to maybe the mid to late eighty s from the start to the mid to late eighty s. And it's all just like behind the scenes interviews and gossip and oral history of the whole thing is really interesting. But anyway, Dick Ebbersol lobbied really hard to get Mohammed Ali to be the guy because it was originally going to be a Vander holy Field. And Holy Field actually ran it for about 10ft and then handed it off to Janet Evans. Yeah, they had to get them in there. Yeah. And then Janet Evans took it up this ramp and then all of a sudden it looks like Janet Evans is going to be the one to light it. And then all of a sudden at the top of the ramp, muhammad Ali pops out and he punches Janet Evans in the face. And the crowd just goes nuts. I still got it. Yeah, especially when he has it lit. And he like, holds it aloft, and his hand is trembling with Parkinson's tremors, and they just are going bonkers. Like you said, it's probably the all time great Olympic moment as far as America is concerned. A few other highlights in Barcelona 92 who can forget Paralympic Archer Antonio Robo? That's a great one. He shot that fiery arrow. That was pretty sweet. I can't believe he made it to like what they gambled on that he could have missed it, could have gone out, and it didn't. And he made it and it lit the cauldron and it was just beautiful. Well, it actually didn't light the cauldron, but that was the please stop dashing my Olympic torch in the ignition button, because you can't take that chance. I'll tell you what, Chuck, when I form my weird, niche little Olympic torch website, am I going to be blocked? It's going to be all fantasy. None of this behind the scenes trickery grittiness. It's just going to be face value stuff. 64, Tokyo when they hosted their first Games, they had the Hiroshima baby. Aka Yohanori Sakai was born on August 6, 1945, the day Americans dropped the nuclear bomb in Hiroshima. He was 19 years old at the time. He lit that thing. What about Sole and those cooked dubs? That was rough, man. I wasn't aware of that until we were researching this. Were you? I don't remember that. I mean, I certainly watched the Games that year, but I was probably too young to understand that those doves did not make it out alive. Dude. Yeah. I put my hand in my mouth like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe what I just saw. That was awful. So they released the doves as part of the opening ceremony, and then some of the doves gathered in the cauldron. It's not funny. I don't know why I'm laughing. No, there's a certain element to it that's funny, but in the worst way. You know what I mean? And the three people whose job it was to light the Olympic cauldron with their torches, they did. And some of the birds didn't fly away. Yeah. And you can see some of them sort of dancing in the flame. That part is awful. But the whole idea of the thing is just so preposterous and contrary to what they're trying to do with the Olympic spirit, they sacrifice some doves. Yeah, that was tough to watch. So then there's a bunch worth mentioning. Watching again is Lillahomer, where Stein Gruben ski jumper, skis down a ski jump, 70 meters, which is quite a few feet. More than 70 meters. Well, it's the exact same as 70 meters, but in feet, just going some ridiculous speed with the torch that won't go out and lands this jump just beautifully. That was a little nerve wracking even knowing that it didn't go out. When I was watching it the other day, I was like, don't go out, don't go out. Right? Yeah. Because it looks like it could have at any moment. But no, it stayed straight. And then, let's see, there's a couple more mentioning 1996, 2000 and 2014. The flame went to space, which is pretty cool. Let's not forget 1976 in Montreal, and then it was on the Concord. Once it flew on the Concord. And I believe 1992 for the Barcelona Games. Amazing. So that's it for the Olympic torch, everybody. We'll talk more about the Olympics someday when we do an episode on the Olympics. But in the meantime, hope you enjoyed this. And since I said that, it's time for listener ma'am. I'm going to call this Chuck check your privilege did you see this one? Yeah. Hey, guys. This is in reference to your wasp podcast. Great information. Love the podcast. But at the end, it was almost amusing that you assumed people have the means to hire a professional to remove a wasp nest from their property. I said almost. Almost amusing. Equally amusing, which I guess is equally almost amusing, is the idea of fashioning a kind of trap. I don't remember that part. Did you say that? I don't know. I say a lot of things. Risk being stung dozens of times. For what? Guys, I don't think you should be shoving petastyle, non lethal rhetoric down people's throats, nay saying the killing of vermin and pest, especially when your solutions don't accommodate outside the middle class. Pretty sure there are poverty stricken individuals that love to learn and love this podcast as well. You very well could be unintentionally alienating them into thinking that they are being inhumane when in fact, they have no choice. Think bigger picture, Chuck. That is from James Huggins. I didn't mean to do that, James. I'm sorry. I think the overarching message was, leave it alone. Don't do anything to it. Don't spend money. I've never paid money to have a waspice removed. Do you know, Chuck, I have to tell you, just yesterday, I was challenged to live up to my own words, and there was a wasp in our screen porch, and I had a flyswatter and was trying to just lightly move it out. I was like, I'm not going to kill you. I'm not going to kill you. He's like, I know what that thing is. Number one, he wouldn't come after me. So we proved that wasps are not necessarily super aggressive. Like they have a reputation for. Right. But then he also wouldn't make his way toward the open door. Right. So I thought of this ingenious method. I grabbed, like, a little bowl, which virtually anyone on Earth can afford, put the bowl over the wasp so that it was trapped between the bowl and the screen. Then I took the flash water and I split it up between the bowl and the screen to create a cover for the bowl, and then ran that thing right out of the porch, removed the flash water from the bowl, and the wasp flew away. Like, have a good day. Amazing. That's Emily's method. She gets, like, a magazine and, like, a tupperware for kind of any beast. Works pretty well. Yeah. And that's not elitist. No, it's not. Like, I don't disagree with James overall message. I think it was more as delivery that's a little, you know, needs work. Sure. Okay. So if you want to get in touch with us and we can do what we will with your email, you can send it to us at stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is production of Iheartradios how stuff works. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows, 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." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2016-12-06-sysk-horoscopes-final.mp3 | Horoscopes: Written in the Stars? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/horoscopes-written-in-the-stars | A lot of people read their daily horoscopes, but does anyone really take stock in them? Turns out the answer is yes, even though there is no evidence of their accuracy. Learn all about horoscopes today. | A lot of people read their daily horoscopes, but does anyone really take stock in them? Turns out the answer is yes, even though there is no evidence of their accuracy. Learn all about horoscopes today. | Tue, 06 Dec 2016 08:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=6, tm_hour=8, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=341, tm_isdst=0) | 47861009 | audio/mpeg | "Make your business official with Google and Squarespace. When you create a custom domain and a beautiful business website with Squarespace, you'll receive a free year of business email and professional tools from Google. It's the simplest way to look professional online. Visit squarespace.com google to start your free trial and use our offer code works W-O-R-K-S for 10% off your first purchase. Google and Square space. Make it professional. Make it beautiful. Hey, everybody in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. We're also looking at you, Oakland. We are coming out to sketchfest this year again for the second year in a row, and we are doing a rare Sunday afternoon jam. That is Sunday, January 15, at 01:00 P.m.. You can come see us live and tickets are going to go fast, so go to SF sketchfest.com and just click on the little ticket links or look at the line up and follow us there. And we can't wait to see everyone. It's one of our favorite cities to perform in. And go to Sfcatchfestcom. Oakland, san Francisco. We will see you soon. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetofworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's Joe, Charles, W, Chuck, Bryant and Jerry's over here. And we're just relaxing here in studio one eight. So this stuff you should know I thought it was astrochat. Yeah, that's what we would call astro. Chat is a great name. Or horoscope or podcast. I say horror scope. No, you shouldn't say that. No. Would you ever want to do a horoscope or astrology podcast? Oh, you mean on its own? Yeah. No, I would not. See, well, we were talking about this briefly until I didn't do it this time, but normally whenever this is a secret, Chuck, that I'm about to share with everybody, the pretaping secret. Yeah. If we start to talk and get too involved in the topic before we start recording, usually one of us will be like, stop, this is golden, just save it for the podcast. Sure. We didn't do that this time. I think we just kind of naturally discontinued conversations sort of figured out. Right. But you were saying that you are and I don't know if you're ready to admit this or not this early in the episode. You're a little incredulous about horoscopes and astrology. Yes. Okay. I am as well. But I think the difference between us is you're just kind of like, Come on. And as I was researching it more and more, I was like, this is really interesting. I could sit here and read about this all day, and now that it's been brought up, I'm like, I could probably do a skeptical, but not with the aim to destroy it, but just from a skeptic standpoint podcast on astrology, I think that would fascinate me personally. I hope you get to know one day. Maybe. So, yeah, I think we got on that because I was having a hard time wrapping my head around a couple of I'm not going to say scientific parts, but a couple of the science parts of this. And I kept going back to like, who cares? It's not real. Yes. So it was hard for me to commit to the learning of it. And we typically have a thing where it's like, you know, poopoo people's beliefs. Yes. We're not really doing that here, but there have been a couple of occasions where we're just kind of like, there's just no way. One of them was crop circles. Yeah. I don't plan on poopooing this throughout, but I think it's good for us to state our beliefs from the get go. All right. So that we don't mislead anybody who does believe in it. Well, I had my astrological chart done once. You did? Yeah. I didn't seek it out and pay for it. My friend's mom is really into this, and she asked me one time, she's like, do you want me to do your chart? And I went, sure. So she did my chart, and I remember looking at it and thinking, like, wow, a lot of this kind of like when you look at your sun sign, we'll go ahead and say that's what most like when somebody says, what sign are you? Yes. Or if you read your daily horoscope, it's based on your son's sign. I would look at things like that or whatever my year is on the Chinese zodiac and think, oh, wow, I am some of these things. Right. But then I'm like, not about half of those things. Sure. So I just think it's interesting. I think it's interesting as well. But again, from the standpoint of where I don't actually believe it's effective or real, but just the thought put into it. And Ed wrote this article, The Grabster, and he makes a really good point, saying, like, even if you don't believe it or not, getting your chart done is interesting in and of itself. I think so. Sure. And at the very least, it's going to force you to be a little more introspective about yourself than you normally would be, because you're being presented with basically, like, here's your personality according to the cosmos. And you can't help but think, Am I introspective? Do I set things on fire? I think anything that can spur self reflection is valuable in some ways. Yes. I think that's where it interests. Like, I would go to a palm reader just to know what that's like. Right. But I wouldn't leave thinking, like, oh, boy, right. My life is set out for me. Yeah, exactly. You know Nancy Reagan. Well, we'll get to that, but spoiler. I am not Nancy Reagan. We should probably say, for those of you who are confused, they're like, how are they poopooing this? Like this is the science of Neil degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan. I don't understand. We're talking about astrology, not astronomy. Right. So astrology is basically the idea that distant objects out in the cosmos, planets, stars, constellations, specifically have an influence on our lives and events on the planet. Right. And it's very old. I saw as far back as 5000 years ago, people were starting to develop astrological systems. I saw more frequently 3000 years ago with the Babylonians that western astrology kind of started to develop. Yeah. Should we talk about history a little bit? Yeah, I think I finally figured out my beef with it. What? Should I hold on to that? Or should we talk about history first? That's up to you, man. How do you want it to play out? Just don't forget if you hang on to it. All right, I'm going to write beef at the top of my page to shoot a duck later on. Okay. It's like memento, I'll come back to that. So history, we need to go back in the way back machine, way back to ancient times, to Babylon. Yeah. When basically people we and we are going back to Babylon, basically when people were like looking around at everything and going, I don't get it. Why is all this stuff happening? Why did the Earth just open up and swallow fish mail? Why is it raining? Why is it not raining? Why are the crops doing well? Why are they doing terribly? Yeah. Why is that sun up half the day and down half the day? Yeah. So as humans started to get a little more I don't know about intelligent, but it is inquisitive. I was about to say answer seeky. But inquisitive is the word for that. As they started to get a little more answer seeky, they started to make things up that made them feel better about what was going on. Right. I mean, they did apply a certain measure of science, too, which is where a lot of people who believe in astrology get the idea that it's scientific in some way, shape or form, because it does involve the movement, studying and tracking the movement of the planets and the constellations, the cosmos. Right? Yeah. And Ed makes a good point. Back then, astronomy and astrology were the same thing. Right. Because you took those observations, astronomy and then you used them to predict or explain the stuff that was going on here on Earth. Right. Which we now call astrology. Right? Yeah. But I don't even know what they called it back then. They called it reality, probably. So but it wasn't just the Babylonians who are doing this all over the planet. Basically every culture that's ever lived had some sort of astrological system. Yeah. The Aztec and Incas and the mines in South America, they had a zodiac of 20 symbols, including things like earthquake, ape and rain. And when they died out, they took it with them. It didn't seep into modern forms of astrology, like the Babylonians, for instance. No Spanish Jesuit was saying, so can you explain your astrological system to an Inca emperor that was being tortured to death? What else? The Chinese, of course. They had their own by 1000 BC. And they had 24 divisions in a year. Yeah, they had like the most complex one, probably of all time. Not surprising. No. I don't know why that's not surprising. There are complex people maybe when I think of the Zodiac, I think of the Western zodiac and then Chinese zodiac. Yeah, me too. The only thing I knew about Chinese zodiac coming in was what year animal I was. What are you from the menu at the Chinese restaurant? That's where I learned it too. Yeah, I'm the dog. Oh, I'm a dragon. Yeah. Jerry, are you a cat? No, she just meowed. That was weird. Her first instinct. There is a year of the cat. That Al Stuart song. Are you the year of the fish, Jerry? Jerry said that she was the oxygen of the oxy meowed, but when she called upon to do animal sound cheap meow. I think it's cute. What if oxen meowed? Maybe an ox that was raised by cat and an imprinted might learn to meow. I think that's what Jerry was saying. This one's getting silly. The horoscope one is getting silly. It is. Is there a gas leaking in one of our vents that I don't know about? All right, so back to China. 24 divisions, 28 part lunar zodiac, and then the twelve branches that correspond to the animal. And then those animals have further subdivisions. Like you could be a fire dog or a water dragon. Right. Which we'll get to that stuff in a minute, too. Yeah. And I didn't know that you could be like an elemental animal. I thought it was just straight up animal. I did not know that either. Yeah, that's one thing about astrology. No matter what system you're looking at, there's like, oh, there's this one layer, and then let's add this other layer in another layer and another layer. Right. That's what fascinates me. It's just the thought that's gone into it. Sure. What about Babylon, though? What do you mean? Well, I mean, that's like the origin of the Western. Yeah. And here is where it becomes painfully obvious that astrology can't possibly be correct or real. Yes, I know what you're about to say. So our idea of the constellations here in the west came from the ancient Babylonian people and astronomers and astrologers who looked up and they said, oh, Mars is red, so blood can be red. Yeah. So Mars is probably associated with war. Right. They just kind of just made that up. They made it up. And that is fundamentally the basis of astrology. Stuff that was made up by the Babylonians can't possibly be true. It's just basically a fact. The other big thing is the Babylonians divided the Zodiac into twelve equal parts. But according to their own stories, there were 13 constellations in the zodiac. So they just picked one and left it out? Yes. Which is opiates. I like how you said that. Opiates. I don't know, man. I've never tried to say that out loud. Op. H-I-U-C-H-U-S. It's like the hidden zodiac symbol. Well, not hidden. They just kind of said twelve. Kind of works out better. Right, so let's just leave it out. Yeah. If the Babylonians prove anything, it's that for thousands of years, humans have always preferred things to be nice and tidy and neat. They don't like it to be messy because if you really look at what they were trying to do, it's super messy. So, for example, if you are dividing the night sky into twelve, trying to assign a month to each horoscope, you've got constellations slopping over into other zodiac signs. Sure. The actual movement of the constellations behind the sun is way less than a 30 day standard. I think Scorpio is actually in line with the sun for about seven days out of the year, whereas one of the other ones is around for like, 45 days, I believe. I don't think we even said what that means, though. Maybe we should start from the beginning. Shall we? Yeah, we got the history down. Yeah. Do you want to take a break first? Yeah, why not? I'll go check my horoscope and see if it says we should continue. Okay. Well, lucky for us, the horoscope said finish show. It said ask again later. Yeah, it said finish show magic, but take it easy on me. Yeah. Hey, lay off, jerks. I had even resolved to not poopoo astrology. I think the first thing I did was launch into it I'm sorry, astrology. So we should get to the basics of all this, and there's two things that we have to point out. One, we would have to spend years researching astrology to really get everything right. Yes. Two, even if we spent years researching astrology, we would still get stuff wrong, depending on who you are, because there's a lot of contradictory things. Like, for example, I saw that the Moon is a fire sign. I also saw that the Moon is associated with water. Yeah. How is that? Well, I think there's just been so many permutations over the years that it's been kind of mixed together. Okay, so we are going to get things that will contradict your understanding of astrology, I'm quite sure. But for the most part, I feel like if we're sticking to the basics of it, we can get it fairly right. Right. Yeah. I mean, the most basic thing is sun sign astrology, which is really just seeing where each planet was when you were born, the day you were born. That's the most simplistic way to look at it. Right. And when you ask somebody, what's your sign? What's your sign, PISCES. Okay, I'm Cancer. All that's saying is that on the date of our births, the PISCES constellation allegedly was behind the sun as it rose. Right. And when I was born, the Cancer constellation was behind the sun when it rose. I like to take the sunshine a little brighter when we were born, but probably I can't prove that. No, but you can just make a pretty good assumption. So the way that you do this is you basically take the sun and the Earth in its orbit around the sun, which equals a year, and you draw a line, an arrow, even from the Earth. Put it flat, lay it flat. I forgot to say that. Right. And you draw an arrow from the Earth through the sun and then out the other side of the sun and wherever the arrow is pointing, which is actually the opposite side of the sun, opposite to Earth, whatever constellation that is, that's your son. Right. Pretty simple stuff. Right. So you can think of the if you looked at it as a circle, each sign would be its own little zone. Zone, exactly. A pizza slice, a pie slice, whatever. If you have a sweet tooth or a salty tooth, you're going to go with either one of those. Right. What about cake? I guess a cake, too. Are you cake or pie? Both. What's your favorite cake? I like a good coconut cream cake or coconut frosting cake. I like what's your favorite pie? Probably coconut cream pie. No, actually that sounds gross. I would say a good key lime pie. But does cheesecake constitute pie? I think you've just opened up a hornet's nest. Well, I love cheesecake, basically. I don't really discriminate. I recently started trying cherry pie and I was like, where have you been my whole life? Why did I ever discriminate against you? It's just been sitting there in the pie safe, rotting because no one eats cherry pie anymore. Yeah, and then I came along and ate all the rotten cherry pie and loved it. All right, what about you? Cake pie? Oh, I love the good key lime pies, like you were saying, but I don't eat a lot of either. I just keep, like, cake and pie around the house. It's probably a good meal. And I don't really eat dessert in the restaurant either, so just neither probably more cake. Just because cakes are the occasion dessert, like people bringing cake for birthdays or whatever. Like public's cake is awesome. Their standard cake with buttercream icing. Yeah. Never had it. Oh, Chuck. I'll bring you a slice. I like a good pecan pie. Oh, yeah, those are good. I eat the pecan now, but I used to not like the nuts. I would just slice that off because I like the jelly. You get rid of the candy pecans? Yes, but I don't know because now I'm grown up. Okay, just eat the jelly man. Pecan pie. Pumpkin pie. Sure. All right, I'm going all in on pie, now that I think about it. Okay. Pie. All right. Wait till you try the public's cake, though. Where are we? Sorry, we were talking about how slices. Right. And each one of those slices is one of the twelve constellations of zodiac. Right. Okay. So whatever constellation is opposite the Earth on the other side of the sun, that's your sun sign. And when you were born, that constellation has a bunch of different personality traits and they are basically imbued on to you. You were born under that sign, which means you are going to have those personality traits. That's the point of what's called the sun sign. That's right. In Western astrology, there you can subdivide it into three groups mundane astrology. And this is basically what is your aim with these mundane astrology examines world events and makes predictions about big things like the economy and war in the country's. Astrology seeks to make predictions, very specific ones, or analyses events or your life, maybe. Like for you, the individual. Yeah, it's like when somebody says they'll consult the stars to see what the best course of action is. That's what they're talking about. Which seems like it overlaps with the last one. I think all three of them could definitely if you're doing like a serious chart to figure out something, a deep dive, you would probably do all three. So what would that be? Natal astrology. Like birth astrology. Yeah. And that's when you read your daily horoscope, and that's based on the idea that everything that happens to someone is expressed by the very beginning. Like that moment you were born. Right. But ironically, the moment you're born, not the moment you were conceived. So really, that's when the astrology starts. Not the moment you're conceived, but the moment you were born. Right, but the idea, this law of beginning says that the moment you're born, the stars basically make everything in your life predestined and therefore predictable. If the person knows how to read the stars correctly, that's the basis of astrology. Yeah. And then what? You would come up with these predictions, this chart that is your horoscope. That's right. And then there are different the signs that can be subgroups into four elements you've heard of, like, I'm a water sign, you're a water sign. Sure. We're both water signs. How about that? Yeah. So fire sign, that would be Aries, Leo, SAGITTARIUS, enthusiasm, action, leadership, open to change. Water signs. Besides cancer and PISCES, you've got Scorpio, emotion, sensitivity and compassion. Earth signs. Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn, practicality, and the focus on material goals. And then air signs. Gemini, libra and aquarius signifies intellect. Right. And those are the big groupings, the elemental groupings. Right. So here we kind of come up with another layer, right? Yeah. Since each sign on its own has its own qualities. Like, for example, the cancer is very domestic, imaginative, thorough, shy, interested in the past and tradition. That's me all over. Is it really all those things? Yeah, basically. But then you lay over the water sign, right? That it's a water sign. So that adds to the emotion or the sensitivity or the compassion of it. Where it really starts to get interesting is the idea that there's a relationship between the element and the sign. And those are with the cardinal fixed or mutable. Right. Whether or not you're resistant to change, you're able to change. Or what's. Cardinal just general movement. Cardinal is that it moves. Right. These three things. It's like a whole other layer. And basically they have to do with the solstices and the equinoxes, we should say. There's a couple of kinds of Western astrology. One is Sidreal, which follows the movement of the stars. So your birth sign is Sidreal astrology. There's another one called Tropical that really just has nothing to do with the stars. It's the idea that around in the cosmos, the zodiac is fixed, and it really has nothing to do with the stars. It has to do with the Sun's relative position to the horizon. So it has to do with things like solstices and equinoxes. Yeah. So when you go into the tropical type of astrology, that's when the cardinal fixed immutable comes up. So a cardinal sign. Right. Each element has a cardinal sign. So there's four cardinal signs. And for example, Cancer is the cardinal water sign, right? Right. Each element also has four fixed signs. So Leo is the fixed fire sign. That has to do with persistence, perseverance, resistance to change. And then, lastly, Mutable means you're flexible, adaptable, suggestible. And Gemini is a mutable airline. There are four different mutable air signs, right? So you put them all together and what you have is interaction between the elements and the signs themselves. So that you have sometimes contradictory stuff. You have things that enhance other things, but it's yet another layer. So now you have three layers deep of interpretations, not just the sign. And it's up to an astrologer to extract however they want to read it. Basically, it makes a point. You can ask 100 different astrologers to look at your chart and they might give you a hundred different readings. Yeah, because it's ultimately the astrologer's interpretation of the information that's presented by the signs and whether they're cardinal or fixed or mutable or what element they are. Right. Well, they can also be masculine or feminine, which Ed points out is not really I can't think of it in terms of gender. It's more like the concept of yin and yang. Right. Which makes a little more sense. Yeah. But when I look at mine, PISCES February 20 to March 20, mutable, water, feminine. Okay. So that's where I am. Emotional. Sure. Self sacrificing. Sometimes. Adaptable, sometimes. Empathetic? Almost always. Religious? Not anymore. Versatile. Yeah, sure. Talkative sometimes you get paid for it. Yeah. Sometimes really quiet, though. Don't want to talk. Okay. But that goes against all astrology. Often takes on the behaviors of others. I don't know about that. Creative, I hope. Impractical? No, I'm pretty practical, but more like half and half, maybe. Would you say half? I feel like you did. Or maybe more. Maybe 70 30. Yeah, that sounds about right. But even still, I mean, that doesn't prove anything. No, of course not. But it did just get you to think about yourself. Exactly, right. That's the whole point. Right. From what I understand, that's how Ed tells it. So you've got all these different layers to just the sign that you were born under, right? Yes. But there's even deeper layers to the whole thing. Right. That has to do with the movement of the constellations or the movement of the sun, and it also has to do with more than just the sign you were born under. Like when you sit down and you do an astrological chart, you're basically looking at the position of everything that's taken into account in the cosmos rather than just what constellation was behind the sun when you were born. We're going to dive even deeper into this stuff after this message break. So, Chuck, we were talking about how we've got, like, the fixed layers, right. And then depending on when you were born, where you were born, there's a lot of stuff to take into account when meaning, like, literally the minute. Yes. And second even. Yeah. Because one of the zodiacs well, the houses when you add this other layer, the houses of the zodiac, which are the same thing as the zodiac signs, but they're different. In this case, they represent the 24 hours movement of the Earth on its axis. Right. So now you have the added layer of time to the moment that you were born to create a genuine astrology chart. So not only are you taking into account time and your sun sign, but you also want to look around if you're a good astrologer and say, okay, where was the Moon? What house was Venus in? And you start to basically go through and find the position of every planet, including the sun and the Moon and all of the Moon are considered planets. Right. As far as astrology goes. Right. And then when you put all this stuff together, there's a huge, extremely complex interplay between all these different components that are all supposed to point to the person that you were born as. Right. I think I should say my beef now okay. I think it's a good time for that. My beef is that I couldn't find anywhere, and this is me looking for science where there is none is why, like, the position of the stars and they all affect who you are and what you're going to be like. All right, well, explain that to me. How does it do that? Oh, yeah. What scientific forces are behind this? Zero. That caused this? No, I can get what you're saying. People, the stars are aligned and these things are all in a certain place and you're going to be a certain way. How does it do that? It doesn't. That's my beef. So, I mean, that's a legitimate beef. There's no how. No, there's not. There's none. I guess I'm not hung up on that fact. I think I just kind of accept it and it's almost like coming upon the belief system of another culture. Yeah, it's so hard and knowing that I don't subscribe to it, but I'm interested in what they believe and how it applies to their life. But that doesn't mean that I believe in it. I'm just kind of interested in an academic sense. Yeah, well, we're curious people. I get that. Right. Just don't get hung up on the fact that it doesn't actually work and you'll be interested in I promise. No, I do think it's interesting. And I used to read my horoscope here and there just for fun. Just the same way I look at a fortune cookie. Right. It's just a parlor trick. To me, though. It's not, but they take me seriously, I think, in astrologer, even if they said, fine, you don't believe in it, it's fine. But this is more than a parlor trick. They're really sitting down and applying this. It takes a tremendous amount of time. Calculation, a certain measure of science. You have to understand astronomy, at least, because you have to go figure out when someone was born where, what was where. Right, yeah, sure. And so when you're sitting down and doing your chart, you were born a PISCES, right? Yes. So the PISCES constellation was behind the sun, but where was Saturn? And why would Saturn matter? Well, Saturn is a melancholy planet, right? It sure is. So if Saturn is in a house associated with happiness, you might have a thread of bittersweetness that runs through your whole life. That might be one interpretation of it. Or you might be happy sometimes and sad sometimes, maybe. Which is every person ever sure? Yes, definitely. And again, I'm not explaining how this works. I'm just saying, like, this is what an astrologer would sit down and think. Or Mars is war like well, if Mars was in, I don't know, a house associated with aggressiveness, you might get in a fight your whole life according to this astrology chart. So that's just each planet, right? Right. Let's say that you have Mars in an aggressive house and you have Saturn in a happy house. How do those interact with each other? How does that getting in fights all the time interact with the bitter sweetness that runs through your life? And that's open to interpretation as well. And that's where the astrology I think I was saying astrologist earlier, is that even a word? I think so. Okay. It seems like I've heard that before. Well, at any rate, that's where they come into play. Yes. With their varying interpretations. But not just the interpretations. They're actually going. To sit down and figure out what was where, what that means, according to the astrological tradition. Right. And then the third step is for them to interpret it for you. Right. You know what I mean? Yeah. So, I mean, there is a tremendous amount of work to it, from what I can tell, for a genuine astrological chart. Your friend's mom hooked you up when you were yeah, she didn't dash it off in five minutes, I'll tell you that. There was math involved and angles and stuff. So the main thing you're getting if you're looking at, like, a newspaper or if your son up for some sort of Internet daily horoscope is it's usually some sort of personality profile advice on your life, maybe some sort of map for finances. You might want to think about investing soon. That's where people probably get in trouble. Yeah. But it's pretty much personal advice stuff. Not so much long term future type of thing. Not like predicting your future, necessarily. Well, they do to the extent of, like, you'll have a so so day today. Yeah. Today will be rather unremarkable. Yeah. Or. Like. A lot of times it can be I think today might be a good day to reach out to an old friend. And if you follow that advice. Then that's great. Because your old friend probably would want to hear from you. And then you have lunch with that friend. And it goes great. And you might say. Well. See. There my horoscope said to reach out to an old friend. And it went awesome. Or if it went really horribly, you'd be like, Why are you punishing me, stars? Yeah. Or what if you get killed on the way to the lunch? Sure, you don't hear those stories. No, but that's the great thing about astrology. It removes personal responsibility from your decision. That's funny. And I should say also there are even more layers to the whole thing than what I said. Sure. I hope we kind of got the point across that there's layer upon layer upon layer, and they all interact with one another. But, I mean, a good astrologer will take into account, like, whether a planet was in retrograde and what that means when you were born or if it's in retrograde right now. There's just so much to it. I think that's what fascinates me. Well, it makes a good point. If this is a true science, then it should pass the muster of repeatable testing. Right. Which, of course, it doesn't. No, it really doesn't. But some other people might say, you know what? This is beyond science. You shouldn't try and quantify it in terms of science. This is something that you can't even understand it from your puny. Science cannot explain. This is outside that realm to something that we don't know and understand. And, hey, I'm a science guy, but I'm not foolish enough to think there isn't anything out there that I maybe don't know about or we can't prove. I think it's very healthy. My hat is off to you. You're 40 and you don't even know it. Seriously, to me, that's the pinnacle of what a thinking person can aspire to. I think that's when you stop looking when you think that we've got it all figured out. Right. Especially when you aggressively attack other people who say otherwise. Well, yeah. If this conversation is floating, your boat goes in the Enlightenment episode. That was good. Oh, that was a good one. Had a lot to do with that. They have done studies, though, on the viability of astrology as far as divorce rates. Are they compatible or do they comply or correlate with the compatibility of two people, astrologically speaking? They don't. Yes. There's supposedly interaction amongst the signs where, like, virgos don't get along with Capricorns or something like that. Yeah. And that doesn't hold up through scientific study. And if you cherry pick examples in your life, of course you might think it does. Well, yeah. That's why a lot of people are like, astrology is. Right. A selection bias is what you're encountering. You're ignoring this stuff that disproves it or that suggests that it's not true. And instead just focusing on the amazing facts where it lines up. Right. That's a selection bias. Correct. I think so. I need to know more about all the different biases. It's interesting. We should say another thing that kind of suggests that astrology is not accurate. The zodiac signs are no longer where they're supposed to be. If you're going by your birth date, for example, I was born July 15, so I would be a Cancer. If you actually follow the constellations, I'm a Gemini. Oh, really? Never knew that. So Geminis are concerned with information. Highly literate, curious, adaptable, absent minded. Love to travel. I am a Gemini. Wow. So the reason why is because when astrology was first created the constellations were lined up with where they were originally. Right. As the Earth rotates on its axis, it wobbles. And over the last couple of thousand years, it's wobbled so that those constellations are no longer where they were when they set them 3000 years ago. Right. So today we have totally different signs. What would mine be? Can we figure that out? So you were born in the eyes of March. You're still a PISCES man. I'm sorry. No, I love it. I am now a Gemini because it got moved. So let's go through because I think a lot of people don't know this and NASA blogged about it a couple of years ago and really caused a stir. Is Jerry still a cat ox? Jerry's birthday is April something, right? Jerry's birthday is what's? Your birthday? Your birthday is Valentine's Day. I didn't know that. Jerry just said her birthday is February 14. Because we have to edit out any Jerry talk. Right. Jerry, what are you supposed to be? Normally you are a Capricorn. You are january 20 to February 16. As far as NASA is concerned, you're a Capricorn. So it starts and we should say, I don't think we said this, but Zodiac officially in the west, starts with Aries and moves on. Yes. So starting with Capricorn, because NASA is like, no, we're going to start with the beginning of the year. Capricorn, january 20 to February 16. Okay. Aquarius is now February 16 to March 11. And you'll notice these aren't necessarily 30 day period. Close. Yeah. You were PISCES March 11 to April 18. AI, april 18 to May 13. Tourists may 13 to June 21. It's a long one. Gemini, june 21. July 20. That's me now. Cancer, july 20 to August 10. I used to be a Cancer. Leo, august 10 to September 16. Virgo, september 16 to October 30. Libra, october 30 to November 23. Scorpio, november 23 to 29th. That's six days. You got six days to be a Scorpio. Wow. It's kind of neat o fiuchus. Yeah. The long forgotten November 29 to December 17. Isn't that crazy? There's people out there who don't even know that they're that signed. Yeah. Or how to pronounce it. Right. No one does. No one alive knows how to pronounce it. And then SAGITTARIUS december 17 to January 20. Wow. I don't even know anything anymore. No one does. Chuck I think this is fascinating stuff, though. I've been thinking a lot lately about what does shape your personality and what you become in life as far as nature and nurture, and some people might throw this in there. I think we should totally do a podcast on birth order. Oh, yeah, that's a good one. Super fascinating to me. Or whether hearing your name or the vibrations caused by saying your own name throughout your life has an effect on your personality. What, you heard that one? No. Yeah. Supposedly the vibrations or the frequency made from hearing and saying your own name throughout your life makes your personality a certain way, weird. Yeah. It's probably not true, but it's interesting. Well, we teased Ronald Reagan earlier, but he didn't tease Ronald Reagan. He did. But we can't talk about astrology without talking a little bit about the Reagan administration, because in 1988, Ron and Nancy were out sort of exposed as having an astrologer on the payroll to the tune of about how much? Three grand. Three grand per what? Reading a month. Three grand a month? Yes. That's not bad. No. This lady was working hard. Joan Quigley Down Under. That's her nickname medicine Woman. And it was revealed that she wrote up star charts and basically detailed even down to the minute, supposedly, depending on who you listen to, what Reagan's schedule should look like. Right. So this lady was definitely doing mundane interrogatory and natal astrology combined to create a chart. Yes, for sure. And Chief of Staff John Regan wrote in his memoir, this is not a matter of debate or anything? No, this is for real. But Don Regan wrote in his memoirs and he talked about capturing the public's attention like that was a big deal because it looked like what was going on was going on, which was that his schedule was kind of being determined by an astrologist. You can't talk to Gorbi today. This is a bad day to propose the Salt Treaty. Wait until November 18. That's when you talk to Gorbi. And then Don Regan would be told by Nancy he should be talking to Gorbi on. Yeah, she would meet with Nancy. Right. Only met Ron once, supposedly, and Nancy downplayed it a lot. Of course, they all tried to distance do you think it's Charlie? So stupid. Well, they said it was more of a hobby, and she definitely had no impact on decisions. It was really just about scheduling. Okay, is what they said. Scheduling decisions. But she wrote a book, actually, Ms. Quigley, in 1990. It was called this is the most on the nose book title of all time. It was called. What does Joan say? Colin? My seven years as White House astrologer to Nancy and Ronald Reagan by me. Ms. Young. Did you get it? And she said, quote, I was responsible for timing all press conferences, most speeches. The State of the Union addresses the takeoffs and landings of Air Force One. I picked the time of Ronald Reagan's debate with Jimmy Carter and the two debates with Mondale, all extended trips abroad as well as shorter trips and one day excursions, end quote. So, yes, the leader of the free world, arguably the most powerful American president in recent memory, had his schedule determined by an astrologer. So weird. I got a couple more things. All right, what you got? So apparently around the time of Reagan had hit, like, basically a low in believing in astrology. Yeah. They did a poll after the news came out, and they found that American belief overall in astrology was at 12%, which is down from this is an 88, which is down from 29% ten years before. Yeah, which makes total sense. Like, coming off of the hippie age and the goofy 70s. What's your sign? Into the very kind of cynical late 80s? Sure. It aligns perfectly. Right. The stars. Somebody forgot to send Nancy and Ron that memo. So in 2004, another poll found that it had gone back up to 29%. Yeah, I have no idea why. And then another poll, I saw that as something different rather than, do you believe in astrology? Would you say that astrology is, quote, not at all scientific? In 2000, and 466 percent of Americans said that in 2000, and it was not scientific. Not scientific. So basically, they don't believe in astrology. 66%. And then in 2012, 55% said that. So apparently belief in astrology is still on the increase. Interesting. Even more interesting, in China, 92% of the public says they don't believe in astrology, compared to about 45% here. And then lastly, I have one more story. You ready? Yeah. And there's actually a blog post you can go read called the Genius Mural at St. John's. Okay. By you? Yeah, from years back. But I just came across this story. It's amazing. There's a place called St. John's anglican Church. It's in Lunenberg, Nova Scotia. Okay. And it was built in 1754, and it was built with a mural on the ceiling of the night sky with gilded stars. Lovely. And they were remodeling the church, and they wanted to redo the mural right. Recreate it exactly as it had been. But they realized they didn't have any dead on photographs of it, so they had to kind of, like, figure out what to do. So they hired an astronomer, and he started poking around into it, and he realized that the mural, which had been constructed in 1754, was the exact scene of the night sky over Lunenburg on December 24. One ce, which is in the Christian tradition, is the night Christ was born. Somebody in 1754 accurately calculated what the sky had looked like 1754 years before wow. On December 24, and turned it into a mural. Isn't that amazing? Amazing. I love that story. Pretty cool. Yeah. That's astrology. And what's the name of that story? The genius mural at St. John's. Nice. Thanks, man. You got anything else? No. I could talk about this all day. You sure? I think we did right by it. If you want to know more about astrology, go read Joan Quigley's book. And since I said Joan Quigley, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this Star Wars action figure near. Hey, guys. Love the show. I can say, like all the other fans is definitely my favorite thing to listen to. I'm a transplant to Texas from Tennessee, and I always get excited when I can make that long drive back home and binge on your interesting material. I just listened to action figures and was thrilled to hear you talk about Star Wars action figures. I'm one of those Star Wars guys you mentioned that read way too much of the fan fiction and knew way too many characters, too many of the character names. I wanted to share a fact I thought was interesting about the Kinner toys and two of the bounty hunter characters seen in an Empire Strikes Back. Kenner, when originally packaging the characters mislabeled for Loam. I'm probably not even pronouncing that right. For the number four L-O-M originally the Droid and Zuckus Z-U-C-K-U-S-S originally the bug looking guy and switched their names. I bet somebody got fired for that one. Do you believe it? The name stuck until 1989. And you can see on newer packaging of the Hasbro toys that their names have been switched back. I always thought it was interesting. An interesting mishap. Thanks for all you guys do, and I've learned so much, and it's love referencing your show every chance I get. Sincerely, Harrison Ford. Adam west. No. PS. Sadly, I'm not him. Wow. How great would that be? Man. That nice email, Adam. It was full of drama, suspense, facts, and I could do my Conan nerd voice. Nice, man. Which I completely stole from him. Sure. I just want to make that clear. Yeah. Not claiming it as your own. Right. An homage to the Conan. Yes. Well, Adam, thank you. That was a great one. If you want to get in touch with us, like Adam did, you can join us on Facebook. Comwichnow. You can hang out with Chuck too. At Charlesw. Chuck Bryant at Facebook. You can hang out with me on Twitter, joshlark. And you can also hang out with us at syskpodcast. Send us an email to stuffpodcast, HowStuffWorks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the Web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit 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. 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." | |
400268ea-121b-11eb-ba6a-7fe96dc52528 | Short Stuff: The Javelina | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-the-javelina | Pigs, hogs, boars and javelinas. What's the difference? Tune in to find out. | Pigs, hogs, boars and javelinas. What's the difference? Tune in to find out. | Wed, 15 Sep 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=15, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=258, tm_isdst=0) | 10981918 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. Jerry sitting in for Dave C. And this is Short Stuff about the Havalina, one of the most interesting animals of all time. Yeah, this one came to me. This is my pick. And I was watching for the probably 15th time the royal tenden bombs. And I always loved the part where Gene Hackman looks up on the wall where his stuffed havolna head is missing, and he goes, Where's my havolna? And I was always like, what is a Havalina? Is it something that only exists in West Anderson's world, or is it just a funny name that he calls a hog or a boar? Yeah, and it turns out a havalena is a havalena. Yeah, actually, doesn't it? First of all, what a great movie, man. Yeah, good movie. And secondly, havolna is not a boar or a hog because those are true pigs. Turns out a Havalina is only distantly related to the pig family. It's a collared peckery. And it's pretty interesting because the differences between it and a pig are kind of surprising, especially if you just see one of these things and you're like, oh, it's a pig, or it's a warthog, is probably what you'd say. Yeah, I think I would probably call it a bore because we do have boars here in the south. I'm not sure when the video came out, but they did pop up on the news when a viral video was released by Reese real estate agent in Tucson, who did this great video. I'm sure you watched it. This havolna just trucking like, kind of beside this apartment complex by itself, holland butt. And you've always heard that Boers and havolna can be really fast, and they're big animals, and you're like, how can they be that fast? But then when you see this thing flying down the road, they're really going fast. It's kind of cool. And then people, of course, put music to it, and it became a big thing. But aside from that, if you don't live in probably the handful of states where you might see wild havoltas, you might not know that they're even a thing at all. Yeah, they're pretty cute looking, actually, especially if you think boars are cute because they do look a little bit like boars, like warthogs, but they're much smaller. They're maybe 2ft tall, up to \u00a355, which is not much. You can pick up a havolna if it would let you. Sure you don't want to, though, for a couple of reasons that we'll get into in a minute. But one of the big differences is that they don't have a tail, or at least not one that you can see, whereas, of course, pigs do. And then another thing that really stands out about the havalena is that they tend to hang out in herds much more than a pig. A pig will hang out with you, human whereas the heavy NASA wants anything to do with you and would rather hang out with its own people. That's right. And this is a shortly from the House of Work's website. And they kind of tick off just a bunch of interesting facts and myths and things. And another identifier is that they have a scent gland near the base of their tail and they use that to identify one another. They use it to mark their territory. They will use it to mark each other. They will, like a bump, sent glands against each other. Yes. Pigs are old world meaning from Africa, Asia and Europe. Whereas these peckeries are all new world from North Central and South America. So they look a lot alike, but they really aren't the same. And actually took one way that you could distinguish them because they do all look like, or at least they do bear, a similarity to pigs is that havolna, their noses are different. And actually, now that I say that out loud, I'm not sure if pigs all have different noses, but with havolenas, you can basically use it as like a fingerprint. For a human, it's that different, which is pretty cool. And then tangentially related to that, they have a really great sense of smell because they use musk to kind of mark territory or say hi to one another. They bump their stinky lands. Yeah, and they're very stinky, so they both smell. And they also can smell really well. Get it? I do. They're called muskogs or skunk pigs sometimes because of that kind of musky nastiness that comes with them. And they also sometimes, I think, have been confused for rodents. I'm not really sure how. I guess it could be a giant rodent, but giant gerbil, a gerbil from hell. So this expert at least says that it's a common misconception. So who knows? I guess maybe some people do think they're rodents. So, Chuck, since we're just tossing out facts about heavens, one of the other things that I like is that they can't see very well. They can see about 30ft away, almost like they're near sighted. Not even almost like they are nearsighted. They rely mostly on smell. But because of that, it's easy for a human to get close to them. And I'm going to leave it for the other side of this commercial break to answer whether that's a good thing or a bad thing for you, the human. It's actually a bad thing. Okay, here we go. Got it. That's a quick answer. It really was. Let me elaborate. The reason why it's bad is because heavynas have a reputation, at least out west, for being ferocious. And that may or may not be deserved because supposedly people who are heavilyina experts, like Cornwaller and their ilk, say that, no, they're defensive, they're defending their territory. More often than not, they're defending their young. And you've just kind of startled them because you've gotten close to them and they didn't notice you there before because they can't see very well. And now they're saying, back off, our kids are here. Whereas if you're a human, you're just seeing some scary hell pigs coming at you as a group, basically. Yeah. They are even what's known as even toed ungulates, which means they are hooked mammals, but they bear the weight. And this gets a little wonky, but I love it. They bear the weight almost equally on their third and fourth toes rather than like a horse or a rhinoceros who are odd towed ungulates. And they bear most of their weight almost entirely on the third. You know, I saw a really cool documentary on horses called EQUS E-Q-U-U-S. It's about the natural history of the horse. And they talk about how the horse, the feet of the horse is actually just one toe. So, like, the horses are walking on four toes. That's what they walk and run on. Isn't that amazing? It is. And I'm going to have to see that documentary. Did they talk about Cumberland Island, Georgia, at all? Yes, I think they do at some point. I don't remember where, but yeah, I think so. Yeah. If you're listening and you don't know anything about it, one of our barrier islands here in Georgia, cumberland island still has wild horses that roam free. Yeah. Amazing. It is amazing. You can see video of them. You don't even have to go down there for it. Someone travel to Cumberland island, though? It's beautiful. It is. I've never been. I've just seen it on video, but it looks pretty beautiful. It's great. One of the things that really struck me, Chuck, was the second part of that movie is about the domestication of horses and how it first happened on the steps of, like, Mongolia. I love that stuff. So I get this I watched that documentary and it seemed vaguely familiar to me. The next day I was queueing in an episode on Animal Domestication and we talked about the exact same thing, like six, eight years before. Yeah, see how that happens? Isn't that neat? That timing, though, from one night to the next day. And then my brain just exploded a little bit. Is that Mandela effect? Is that what that is? I don't think so. Maybe it touches on Botor minehoff a little bit. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. There's a couple of stuff you should know. Effect. We should have our own effect by now. Yes, I think so, too. Pushing for the star wipe all these years. A different effect. Yeah, totally different meaning of the word. Here's another havola back to have alinas. Another havolena factoid that I think is kind of cool is that they are generally herbivores. They have kind of the big canines or like tusks. And you would think, like, boy, those things are some meat eaters and they will eat meat. Like if a bird happens to come a little too close or something, but they're generally trying to get down there in the roots and fruits and trying to dig down and eat plants. They're plant eaters. I thought you were going to say something like, Boots, I wish I had another one. Roots. Oh, and fruits. Very nice, Chuck. All right. One of the experts mentions how they'll sometimes find dove feathers in the Havolna pen. It is a little sad, but I guess that's the natural course of things. And they can be a little if you live out in Arizona, you might have stories of them coming after your dogs because they might think it's a coyote or something threatening their pack. And did see some videos of dogs in a fence with Havolners on the outside of the fence. They'll get the Mohawk like a dog does on their back when they're all set and the hair pokes up. But I also saw a video of Havolna and a dog playing in a field, and it was one of the cutest dang things I've ever seen. I got to see that one. Havolen was just bopping them with his head and nosing them, and the dog was kind of fake biting, and they would run around and it's just the best. Do you know what I should search to see that? I would just say habilena, dog play. And I bet you that will take you right there in Boots. You got anything else about Havalina? No, I think they're the unsung heroes of the Even Toadangula community. Very nice. Well, everybody, the short stuff is over. The short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my HeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you're listen to your favorite shows." | |
Yakuza: From Samurai to Slot Machines | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/yakuza-from-samurai-to-slot-machines | The Yakuza trace their lineage back to the 18th century samurai, left masterless following political upheaval, who turned to lives of crime. After centuries, the Yakuza is still going strong, following both tradition and new avenues of illicit revenue. | The Yakuza trace their lineage back to the 18th century samurai, left masterless following political upheaval, who turned to lives of crime. After centuries, the Yakuza is still going strong, following both tradition and new avenues of illicit revenue. | Tue, 06 Nov 2012 20:57:15 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=6, tm_hour=20, tm_min=57, tm_sec=15, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=311, tm_isdst=0) | 34885052 | 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, it's summer, everybody, which means schools out, the sun's shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, my Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, my Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarif and Georgia Hardstarkk, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, with me, as always, with Charles W, Chuck Bryant, Ty, and we have a guest producer, Matt, here today in the hizzy. Yes. In the leather wingback, director's chair, Matt, who has gotten fan mail before. Oh, yeah, that's right. Wines and scissors back together. Oh, yeah. Nice. He's right here. I didn't know that. That's great news, man. It feels weird to talk to you without looking at you, but I've been instructed to do so. That's the whole point, to just feel weird. All right. This point of life. Well, that's great. Yeah. You guys need to get a website together. Matt, he shakes and said, yes. We got a MySpace page. It's so funny that's still being financially supported enough that it's up that you can still access MySpace. Yeah, but have you seen some of the other stuff that's still up? MySpace has got a long way to go. Oh, really? To fall off the radar. I'm interested to see when that happens. Maybe there'll be some sort of event. Yeah. Can you tell? Installing. Yes. Okay. That means everybody else can tell, too, then. So we should probably start. Chuck? Yes. Have you ever seen the Simpsons episode the Twisted Life of March? Twisted world of March Simpson. Yes. The one where she starts selling pretzels. I think so. It's hard to keep them all straight. It is. Well, in it, Mars decides to make some extra scratch by selling pretzels. Right. Now, she's a part of an investment club. Yeah, and the investment club gets a little crazy. I think she's forced out of their fleet of Pita franchise. Okay. Pita food truck. Basically, she gets forced out. So she goes off on her own, start selling pretzels. Well, she gets in bed with the mob inadvertently, and when the mob comes to call in just in time, and they're storming the front door. Is it the mob guy that's always fat Tony? Yeah, Fat Tony. The fleet of pita ladies show up and they want their cut of her turf, I believe. And it turns out that they've gotten in bed with the yakuza. Yes. The Japanese mafia. Pretty cool. And as the mob, the yakuza and the mafia are about to battle, the door shuts and all you can hear is some stuff, and then the door opens and everybody's like, laying debt. It's pretty awesome. That's a trope. But after reading this article, how the Yakuza works, I would say that they probably, had they spoken before they fought, would have found that they had a tremendous amount in common and possibly wouldn't have even fought at all. Maybe they would have had some wine and sake or some sushi and pasta and broke bread together. Exactly. Or whatever the Japanese version of bread is bread. Okay. So that's the intro to how yakuza works. Very nice. That's a good one. Thanks. It is. In reading this article, you're right. I was kind of like, you know what? It's just like the American mafia. It is. So there's a model out there for organizing crime, and somebody figured it out at some point in time. Maybe it was the Japanese, maybe it was the Sicilians, maybe it was all independent. But the point is, it's out there, it's established. Don't try to mess with it. It's perfect. Yeah. As far as organized crime goes, I guess you're right. The origins of the yakuza, depending on which history you're following, if you listen to some of the clans and their clans, I guess I just gave that away. Well, clans, family, same thing. Yeah. They might say, like, we have noble origins and we descended from the ronin, and we are more like your American Robin Hood, although he was American. Your English Robin Hood. We're like Kevin Costner. Exactly. And our lineage is, like, very proud and honorable. Probably a little bit of an inflated story, because the other side of the coin is that they descended from the Kabuki mono. The crazy ones. Yeah. And these are basically masterless ronin after the samurai. They were just crazy kids. Well, they were masterless samurai. Oh, were they? Oh, yeah. Okay. And they would go around doing bad things with their swords. Yeah, because they didn't have a what's it called again? Golan life. No, the mastermino. Yeah. I was about to say that. I can't believe I did that from memory. I had it. Yui is going to be so proud. But I doubt it myself. Oh, you had dame? I had it in my brain, but I doubted myself, which will make Emily proud. So you've got some political upheaval. I think a time of peace is what it was. And the samurai became basically useless and lazy. Yeah. And I guess that made them cranky because they started to do crime or they just kind of went into business, which is something that samurai didn't need to do because they were the political elite for a very long time. Yes, very true. They did their jobs too well. There was a lasting peace and then political upheaval. And then all of a sudden, they're just kind of out on the street. So yeah. They're either going crazy, cutting the heads off of peasants for no good reason. They're wandering around not cutting the heads off the peasants. But they're samurai, and you don't want to look at them wrong. Yes. Or they're samurai who are selling apples on the street now, which is new to them. Or running gambling casinos. Right. Gambling houses. Yeah. Brothels. Making money from ill repute or legitimate ways. But the point is, you have these people who are coming into the market who are coming in from the outside. Outsiders. Exactly. Like C. Thomas Howell. Right. Or Yakuza ralph Macco. Stay gold. Yakuza. And the Yakuza still wears that today, kind of as a badge of honor. They're outsiders in Japanese society. Yeah. Which we'll talk about the Korean Yakuza later. Is that how you say Korean now? Korean? Yes. You're from Georgia. You sound like Hank. His area doing billy Bob Thornton and homegrown. So the name Yakuza, I thought this is pretty interesting. It actually reinforces that outsider status because it came from a game called Oycco Cabo. Sounds good to me. And it's similar to what we call back a rack, and that the second digit of the hand is where you get your point value. It's very numerological. Yes, it is. So you add up your cards. Yeah. And the second digit is what counts. Like in backer rack. Right. So if you have three sixes or something like that, you have 18, and your hand would be worth eight because the second number, the last digit yeah. 16 would probably be more appropriate because that's actually two digits. A six is just one digit. You know what I'm saying? No. Well, if it's a two digit number, it would be based on the second digit. Right. Is it a two digit number? I would think it'd be like no, I think it's the last digit of your hand. So, like, for example, if you have in this case, you have an eight, a nine and a three that equals 20, that your hand is worth zero. Okay. So it's the second digit or the last digit. Right. But at 16 would be worth six. Yes. But I guess there is no 16 if you had three, four. Okay, I see what you mean. So if you have a hand of three cards, you add them up, and then whatever the last digit is, if it's a single digit. It's that if it's a two digit number, it's the second digit. Boy, there are gamblers out there just like, I hate you now. They're probably just like, I stay out of the casino. Yeah. Stick to the shows. So, anyway, eight, nine and three equals 20. That is zero points. That is a very bad hand. It's a worthless hand. And the Japanese words for eight, nine and three? Yakuza. Yakuza, meaning worthless or pointless in the vernacular. Very roundabout, probably incorrect way of explaining that. So you've got a group of people who know their way around a sword who suddenly are selling Pachinko cards or women. Yeah. Or opium. All bet. Oh, sure. And they're very proud of this outsider worthless status. They're making themselves anti here. US against the world. Exactly. If you are a cop, though, you're probably going to refer the yakuza as the Boris Yokudan yes. Which is basically as a degenerate gangster has no sense of values or tradition. That's right. That's a very big insult. You wouldn't want to call a yakuzo member that. No. Unless you were arresting them. And even then, you may want to avoid it. Yeah. I saw that name turn around a lot in the press, though. Did you? People aren't shy about it. I got you. I mean, I'm sure it's like being called a Mafia member. A hood. Yeah. A thug. Heavy. Or in the US, a degenerate gangster who has no sense of tradition or values. That's right. However, this article who wrote this, was this ed? Yeah. He points out that the most direct ancestors come from the 18th century. He called them quasilegal businessmen, and they are known as Bacuto and Tekia. So Bacuto is a gambler. Yeah. Gamblers, peddlers. Not like, of the highest repute, I would imagine. Yeah. The tech is the peddler. Yeah. I don't think they were either, but they were enterprising businessmen who knew how to make a buck, however. Yes. And eventually they decided, if we organize ourselves into these clans, it might be better for business. Yeah. And they did. And a lot of the clans still have the names of these Bakutos and Tekias today. Can you name one? The Yamaguchi Gumi clan. They're the biggest one, right? Yeah. Like 80,000 strong. 80,000 members. Not bad. Yeah. And we should also say that that clan, if it has 80,000 members, it's probably assembled in well, usually Yahoo. Is assembled in one of two ways. It's a straight up clan, and everybody's related, everybody knows one another, or it's a kind of a confederation of clans. So if you have 80,000 members, it's probably the latter of the two. Yeah, I would imagine so. The Yamaguchi Gumi clan would be the nominal umbrella clan of several other smaller clans that are structured very much like a Mafia family with a dawn at the head. But in this case, it's called a kumicho. Yes. And it follows that rough pyramid structure working its way down to, I guess, the lowest or the highest man on the totem pole, which would be just the heavy the thug. Sure. Carrying out the tough assignments. The guy with the baseball bat. Yeah. I was about to say they might use something else, but baseball over there, so they might use two baseball bats for Holland. Right. And make them, like whirl. The only reason you know that is because of Tom Zelich. No. There's a story about the KFC colonel that they threw in the river in, I think, Osaka. 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 cyberatch slow you down. So you partner with IBM to build a security architecture to keep your data network and applications protected. Now you can tackle threats so they don't bring you to a grinding halt and everyone's going places, including you. Let's create cybersecurity that keeps your business on track. IBM, let's create learn more@ibm.com. 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. 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It's like a father son relationship, or a denmaster Cub Scout relationship or mentor. Protege. Protege, right. I say mentee. What's significant about this is that everywhere within the Yakuza structure, this clan structure, everyone plays both roles except at the very top and the very bottom. So you are the Oya Bun, the father to the guy below you, or the guys below you, and you're the cobunt to the guy immediately ahead of you. Yeah. Let me show you how to clean your gun properly. Right. Or your sword. Did they still use swords? I imagine there's a couple that still use swords, throwback kind of thing. They don't use guns that much. Oh, no. I actually have a stat because I just got a little curious about gun violence. Six guns for every 1000 people in Japan compared to 890 per 1000 in the US. No way. Yeah. And in 2008 there were only eleven gun deaths in Japan. Completely in the US. About 12,000 that same year. I'm surprised it's that low. 12,000? Yeah, that's pretty high. I know, I'm saying I'm still surprised it's that low. The thing about Japan is like, they don't have a lot of crime, especially violent crime, but when they do, it is gruesome like little elementary school kids cutting the heads off other ones and like planning it on the gate outside of the school. Wow. Yeah. People like on just killing sprees and bathing in the bloods of their victim and all that. Just like the craziest stuff. It's like this very straight life culture that has very strict rules. Every once in a while somebody just pops and really bad things happen. But it's very infrequent. Yeah. And I did find out though, about two thirds of the gun death, which I guess would only be about four people no, two thirds would be what? Out of how many? 1111. Yes, about that. They come from the Yakuza, which makes sense, like most of the gun violence is attributed to them. But there is a pretty good point in this article later on that they don't really have to use violence or even the threat of violence because a lot of the extortion schemes that they carry out are based on Japanese politeness. Yeah, I think the implied threat of violence is there though. Oh, it definitely is. Okay. But they'll be like, we want you to, or we strongly feel that you should contribute to this charity. That's not a real charity, so maybe you should write a check. And people are like, well, of course I want to help these throw in this golf tournament this weekend. That'd be really great if you were there. About 09:00 am. To tee off. Right. And the green fee is a million dollars. Sure. All right, so back to the Oyeban coburn. When they submit their relationship, it is done in a ceremony where a third person, I guess, named Spider pours up some drinks, pours sake, and I believe they drink from their own glass. Then they switch and drink from each other's glass. Then the Oyubon is allowed to get hammered. And I guess the Cobun isn't no, he just sits there and sips and I guess cleans up after whatever happens with the cobn. That's exactly how they do the that's how you get a sponsor in AA, but they use coffee instead of sake. Really? Yeah. Very nice. Oh, I mentioned the Koreans. They only make up 5% of the population, but I was trying to find a good number. I found 10% of the Yakuza. That's a pretty big disparity. A huge disparity. And apparently it's because in Japan koreans are looked down upon in many circles and disrespected and it's racial bigotry. Yeah, pretty much. So they're outsiders and so they identify, I think, with the Yakuza. Well, definitely that further strengthens the Yakuza's sense of being outsiders as well. Yeah. It's also very good for business to have Koreans in your gang, because a lot of smuggling between Korea and Japan goes on. Yeah. It's practical as well as prideful. And if you're a woman, don't count on playing ball very much in the Yukuza because you are marginalized and you're not going to be doing a lot of work unless it's a prostitute or a servant. Sadly, yes. With one exception. Should we go to that exception? Yeah, might as well. Fukuyota. Yeah, fukuyota. Fumiko. Sorry. toaca was the wife of Kazuo Tahoka. Man, I've been screwing their names up left and right. No, you were good up until this point. Fumiko Tahoka, I had it totally wrong. She was the wife of Kazuo Taoka and he basically ran the Yamaguchi Gumi, which is like such an adorable name, but they'll kill you. I know, it sounds like a little teddy bear or something. Right. Or like a whole line of teddy bears that are like, slightly different from one another. But you have to collect all $800 and there's trading cards, too. So he ran that clan from World War II to the 80s. Not bad, run. And then he died and actually translated from the Japanese, that was like perfectly spoken. I turned into target. Not bad, run. So he died of a heart attack in the early eighty s. And Fumiko took over and became the first woman Oyoban ever. And she held power for a few months. That's not very long. No, but she was it the only one. No one had ever done it since like, the 17th, 18th century, 18th or 19th century to the 80s. No woman had ever taken over, despite Kill Bill. Yeah. There was no woman in power at any point except for Fumiko. And even for a few months. It's pretty significant. Yeah, that's true, as I understand. Yeah. I wonder I'll have to look into that. If she was removed or if she was just like, this ain't for me. Right. I have no idea why she didn't maintain power. But she held the claim together, as I understand, for several months. That's right. One thing you do not want to do if you are in this Oyabon coban relationship is disappointing oya bun. Because you could take part in the Ubizumi, I would say Ubizumi. And that is when you basically screw up. They give you a knife and a bandage and say, you know what to do. Just go do it. And you do it. You cut above or at the first joint of your pinky finger and you take it after you've bandaged it up and stop screaming, and you take the finger and you present it to the oya bun. So I'm really sorry. Let's just forget this ever happened. Can you please take me to the hospital? He's like, yeah, right. Looks good. And I'll bet if you really wanted to mess with your oban is it oban? Yeah. Oban is an old lady, I believe, like, Grandma, don't hand her your pinky. Right. It would be to just pop it in your mouth and eat the guy. Wouldn't that just kind of consolidate, like, any fear that the person had for me? It would, for sure. And apparently, it is a symbolic weakening of your ability to hold a sword. I say it's not a very smart thing to do to physically give someone a physical disadvantage. That's on your team. Right, but I'm not making the rules. Well, it makes sense. It weakens your ability to hold the sword, but in that sense, it also makes you more dependent on the other clan members to help protect and defend you. That's true. Like, I see your point, but I think it's cool. Symbolically. It's very cool, I think. Yeah. And apparently, if you keep messing up, then they will go down more sections of your finger than if you lose all your pinky. They're still screwing up. They'll move to your other finger at that point, I guess you should probably rethink your way of doing things. Do you remember the geeky guy from Greece? Kiniki? No. He was, like, just a peripheral character. He wore glasses. Yeah, that guy. Can you imagine that guy after two months in the Yakuza, he'd have, like, nothing left. He just runs into walls all the time. Yeah. I wonder what he's doing now. I have no idea. After playing the nerd in, like, eight movies. Yeah. All right, Josh, what did the Yakuza do? And I'll go ahead and set you up by saying they kind of do the same thing as the American Mafia. Again. Yeah. And the Italian mafia and the Bulgarian mafia and the Russian mafia, which I want to say, do you remember how the post Soviet Russia just fell into utter, like, lawlessness, and the mob stepped in? Apparently, the Yakuza went from relative outsiders to political powerhouses at the end of World War Two for much the same reason. It was just they were organized crime syndicates in place that were ready to fill the power vacuum that happened after the Japanese government was cleaning up the mess. Well, yeah, and that's the same thing that happened when the Soviet Union crumbled, but that's how the Yakuza got where they are today. Opportunists. Yeah. Interesting. The right place in the right time is another way to put it. Yeah, that's true. So apart from gambling, prostitution, you got your smuggling, you got your firearms, you got your porno, you've got the age old you got the age old protection fees, which means pay me and I won't beat you up. Yeah, it's put way better than that, but that's what it amounts to. Yeah. They also recently have killed people. Eleven of them. Well, no, they don't get into politics that much. But in 2007, the mayor of Nagasaki was shot and killed. Jeez. A senior member of the Yamaguchi Gumi clan. In what year? 2007. Well, like, murdered in cold blood on the street. But it wasn't exactly a yakuza thing. Like, he was a senior guy in the Yakuza, so he ain't messing around. But apparently what happened is he was driving his car through a public works site and drove through a hole and damaged his car and could never get any restitution from the government. He got mad and went and killed the mayor. Geez. Yeah. And they think that's what it had stemmed from. How? Pesciesque. I know. Yeah. That's very pesce. Although pesci would have been smarter, because this guy was I don't know, he wrestled to the ground, and he's a big hothead and casino. That's true. But he never got nabbed like that. No, but this guy got nabbed, and they tried to make it a yakuza thing, and they were kind of like, no, not really. He was in the Yakuza. He was just ticked off about his car. We are now affiliated with this act. Yeah. So I'm sure that they wish they would have fixed his car at that point. I wonder what kind of car it was. It was just like an Accord, maybe. I don't know. It was probably not a Chevy or a Ford. That's my guess. Sometimes these guys segue into real work, legal work, invest in the stock market and semi legitimate ways. Yeah. You can do it legitimately. Like, you can just take your illegal winnings and invest in the stock market, or you can be like, I think this company could make more money under my personal direction, buy some stock, get some dirt on some of the board of directors, or make it up right. And then send some of your underlinks to a board meeting and be like, oh, we would hate so much for these pictures of you with your mistress to get out. So I think now our boss, the Coban yeah, where's that Y? Why won't I get that Y in there? Our Kojoban is now the head of the board of directors of this company, and pop culture yakuza is huge in the did it say huge? Yeah, I think there was an h. It's weird. It's huge. It's crazy. You need my missing wise, I guess. So that's what happened. Huge on the small and big screen. Like, if you think Mafia movies are big here and nothing like the Yakuza. Right. And they're very much idealized over there, even more so than we do the Italian Mafia here in our movies. Yeah. I looked up lists of the best ones, and it's sort of obviously, if you're doing opinion lists like that, it's going to range. But one I saw consistently listed as, like, the best is a five part series called Battles without honor and humanity. And I want to check this out. It's supposed to be amazing. I'm writing it down. They compared it to the Godfather trilogy. Nice. I imagine they mean one and two only. Unless the third one of this one started the directors daughter, who was a lousy actor, and Andy Garcia, but happens to be a great director. Yeah, she's pretty good. Andy Garcia. I like, though. Yes, I know. It's weird to see him in that. Agreed. What's another one? Well, that's the one I had at number one, so I didn't like to list them all out because everyone had their own opinion. I'm going to search someone out. As far as the west goes, black Rain, that was a good yakuza movie. Okay. I was trying to think of one. My first thought, like an idiot, was, big trouble in Little China. And then I thought, Wait a minute, what's wrong with this picture? And I couldn't think of any yakuza. Black Rain, of course. Yeah. That's the only one I can think of. Yes. Unless if you suspect, as I do, that Mr. Nakatomi was involved in the yakuza and Die Hard, but that's kind of like a sub subplot a side bet, if you will. Yeah. I don't remember much about black rain. I just remember lots of motorcycles. Yeah, that was pretty much it. And raining. It was raining black. So I guess you already mentioned Kazu Teoka. I know. It's hard, isn't it? It is. He's not even my favorite, though. And neither is Fumiko. Well, who is then? Yoshio Kodama. Okay. And I guess we're just touching on the fact that they do get involved in politics a little bit. Well, this guy got involved in politics a lot. Yes. He was a war criminal during World War II. He was dealing with China and was imprisoned. And then after the war, the occupying American forces, freedom. I guess if you were an enemy of the Japanese state, you were an ally to the US. And he actually kind of proved to be an ally. He made contacts with the CIA and deals with them and basically consolidated power using the CIA and the occupying military. Not too bad. And he had made most of his connections in prison, right? Yeah. But I think also he had a pretty extensive smuggling network to basically get materials from China to Japan to sell them at grossly inflated prices. And if you have a smuggling network, you have pretty much by proxy and espionage network. So this guy has his own little intelligence military going under his wing. Yeah. And like Al Capone, he was finally brought up on financial charges, but died, I think, right before he could stand trial. Right, but before he died, he had a lot of power and a lot of political influence, and he used it. He was a right wing nationalist, and apparently the yakuza goes through bouts or periods of certain clans. Are known to be very nationalistic. Right. Which is kind of weird because it flies in the face of Korean membership. But I wonder if some clans don't have Korean members. The nationalist ones. Oh, yeah, I imagine so. It's just weird. So Japan these days, they say their tolerance is pretty low, and in 1992 they passed. Remember we talked about the Rico law? I guess it was the Mafia podcast. And basically it beefed up a lot of the penalties for crimes conducted as yakuza. More jail time, that kind of thing. Well, one of the hallmarks of the Rico Act is the higher ups can be held accountable for the crimes committed as the guys further down the ladder. And apparently Japan has that similar clause or statute. So I guess the various Oya bond would be responsible for whatever the underlings did. For whatever the coban did. Yes, very nice. But apparently that act worked in a way and didn't work in a way because some say it caused some of the claims to restructure and move into different areas where they overlapped with other clans for the first time, caused some turf wars or bloodshed. And so it made it harder for police to get good information because all of a sudden it was kind of thrown into turmoil. Yeah, and apparently it had very little effect on their income because I think in 2004, yakuza as a whole made an estimated like $13 billion in revenue, according to Japan Times. That's a lot of yen. Let's see. I think it's a trillion and a half yen. Wow. That's more than a fistful. Very nice little clinicwood reference. That was a Jerry Zucker fistful of Yen from Kentucky Fried Movie. Oh, that's right. Well, which was a Eastwood reference. Right. Okay. Clinic wood and his invisible Obama chair. Yeah. Guess there's really not a lot you can say other than politics is getting pretty surreal here in the US. Performance. It is. And I guess we can wrap up with the tattoos that they wear. Very interesting stuff. Man, have you seen this? I have. They're usually full body, like multicolored. I sitting here torso, but I saw nakedness, like every square inch covered. Really? Did you? Or they showed people from the rear at least. Yeah, we're in the diapers. Well, now, these people, they were just totally naked, bare bottom. Do you see these guys? Yeah, when I was in Japan with Yumi, they have little baths. And one of the rules of the bath is, like, if you have tattoos, you can't come in. Oh, really? Because you don't want to. I was a little worried, but I think they figured that since I was obviously American and I just have like one, two maybe they were like, I think you're okay too. Maybe. Like, you don't know how many tattoos you have, but if you have tattoos, they can't ask you to leave. And the whole reason is they don't want trouble. Sure. It's not like the professional wrestling venues where they just know that it's Yakuza owned and controlled. Yes. I don't think we mentioned that that's one of the sectors of legitimate business that Yahoo is often get involved in is pro wrestling. Got anything else on that? No. All right. That's Yakuza. Ever since I was a kid, I always wanted to be a Yakuza guy. What if you were a global bank who wanted to supercharge your audit system? So you tap IBM to UNSILO your data and with the help of AI, start crunching a year's worth of transactions against thousands of compliance controls. Now you're making smarter decisions. Faster operating costs are lower, and everyone from your auditors to your bankers feels like a million bucks. Let's create smarter ways of putting your data to work. IBM let's create learn More@ibm.com only 45% of high school students feel they are prepared for college or careers. Stride career prep is helping change that. 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Yeah, right there. What does it say? What's the caption? Jet Lee is rogue in the film War, which focuses on agent organized crime. Interesting. That is one heck of a caption. If you want to see that caption for yourself, you can type the word Yakuza Y-A-K-U-Z-A in the handychurchbar howstoforce.com and since I said handy search bar. You know what time it is? For reals? Josh, I'm going to call this video blog I'm trying to plug, but I don't have the name of it. Oh, that's rough. But it's from the past. Hey, stuff you should know. Team. I'm tagged along with you through four years worth of sisk, but have not yet caught up to the most current editions. I'm writing you from the dawn of 2011. Woah. Is this just an old email then? No. In the past, I have seen the rise and fall of Haiku Theater. Yeah. Appropriately celebrated when Josh quit smoking. Yeah, which has been a while now. Yeah, I don't even remember smoking. Josh. Now. I know. It's nice. Yes. It's like a whole different thing now. I'm like judgmental at other smokers, Josh, as it should be. And I've wondered what the W stands for in Charles. W. Chucker's. Chuck Bryant. More recently, Chuck has periodically replaced listener mail with the relatively new Facebook questions, but he points out that, again, he's behind the times of it's been around. Jerry is as enigmatic as ever, having never actually spoken on air. Not true. And Josh has run a commendable yet untimely I'm sorry, ultimately failed campaign at Abolishing Handy from the Handy search bar. Yeah, I just kind of gave him to that. That was a phase. Yeah. But perhaps the Josh, Chuck, and Jerry I write to now are quite different. I won't know until I've come to the present or future, depending on whether you're reading this from your perspective or mine. We're different. We're aged. Yes, we are. My beard has got noticeably grayer. I'm sagging. I needed to write you now instead of waiting until I caught up, though, because I started a video blog, I need to give credit where credit is due. I feel like I've gotten to know the gang fairly well with us over the course of 250 podcasts. This kind of relationship that I'm hoping to build with my audience, 250 podcast, he's way behind. He's got 200 to catch up on. You've been an inspiration for me, and I hope to form the same kind of connection with an audience through my video blog. Or Vlog. Or Vlog. More importantly, I need to thank you guys for all you do, providing something that is real, entertaining, informative, and that has brought me back for all these episodes. So thank you for the inspiration. You're a fan from the past, present, and future. Nate Velpov and I tried to plug Nate's Vlog, but he didn't mention it. Nate first rule of thumb is to pass along the name of your blog when people that can get the name of it fight Club. And I even tried to look it up, and I couldn't find it. So, Nate, if you want to write in, we'll post on Facebook. Yes. And we'll even tweet it. Agreed. Okay. And speaking of Facebook and Twitter, you can join us on Facebook@facebook.com stuff you should know, you can join us on Twitter. Our handle is the very clumsy SYSK podcast. All one word. You'll never find it if you're just searching for us, but it's SYSK Podcast. You can also send us an email to 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 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. 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4205aea6-53a3-11e8-bdec-a328cac888e8 | Will Deepfakes Ruin the World? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/will-deepfakes-ruin-the-world | Very recently, thanks to a new type of AI, it’s gotten much easier to create convincingly realistic videos of people saying and doing things they’ve never said or done. Will fake videos undermine our shared sense of reality and lead to the death of truth? | Very recently, thanks to a new type of AI, it’s gotten much easier to create convincingly realistic videos of people saying and doing things they’ve never said or done. Will fake videos undermine our shared sense of reality and lead to the death of truth? | Tue, 30 Jul 2019 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=30, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=211, tm_isdst=0) | 42143324 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. There's our brand new producer from now on, Josh other Josh. Josh, have we said your last name? Josh? We don't do that. No. Okay. Sometimes we say Jerry. Jerry quit. She really did. But she did. It like that kind of like quiet, silent way for her. She just stopped showing up. Yeah. Jerry didn't quit. Everyone. We don't think it's not entirely certain until I see her sitting in that chair. Then I'm assuming she's quit. What if Chuck she sent us a video of herself saying, I quit. I'm so sick of you guys. I'm done with this forever. Would you believe it then? But the lips didn't quite match up. Yeah, then it would be a deep fake. It would be a deep fake. I saw a tweet. I don't remember who it was, but they were maybe Ryan Lizzie or somebody was complaining. Why do we call these things deep fakes? And somebody schooled them on it? It was kind of nice to watch. Who did he said this? Ryan Lizza. I think he's like a CNN correspondent journalist. So, first of all, we want to issue a COA here that maybe kids shouldn't listen to this one. We're talking about some really everyday, dark, harmful stuff. Yeah. Really despicable, gross stuff. The only thing I can think of that would be worse than covering this would be to one on, like, snuff films. I kept thinking of that while I was reading this. I don't know, man. I don't want to pit types of despicable media against one another, but I think Revenge Poor might have a leg up on this. Well, which this sort of is as well, right? It's definitely a close cousin of it, at least. Yeah, but this one didn't for kids. And I was shocked and dismayed because I didn't know about this. And when I saw it's, a podcast on fake videos, I thought, well, how fun, because I love those videos of David Beckham kicking soccer balls in the cans from 100 yards out on the beach. That's for real. No. Yeah. And it's just coincidence he's holding that Pepsi can up. I saw it with my own eyes. I thought, that's what this is about. I was like, well, those are fun. It is, kind of. But then I wanted to take a bath after this. I can understand. Yeah. So we should probably start out after the COA by saying what a deep fake is. A deepfake, deepfake all one word is a type of video where somebody is saying or doing something that they never actually said or did, which you say, okay, this is nothing new. This has been around for a while. Like, people have doctored photos and videos and stuff like that for basically as long as there's been videos or CGI. Sure. This is different. This is in the same ballpark, but this is an entirely different league. Like, this league plays on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, not Tuesday night. Do you know what I mean? Like, this is something totally just let it simmer for a little while and you'll be like, wow, it's a really good analogy. It's different. It has a lot of the same in principle, but because they are so realistic and they're getting more and more realistic by the day, they actually, in a lot of people's minds, pose a threat not just to individual people, as we see, but possibly to society at large, say a lot of people who are really worried about this kind of stuff. Yeah. And we're not talking about, I'm assuming, the fake lip reading thing. That's deep fake, right? Or is that just no manipulation of video whatsoever? And that's just people using their voice. So what that is it's just somebody pretending like they're just fake lip reading and then doing a voiceover? They're not manipulating the video at all. No. Okay. No, they're just doing a really bad job of lip reading. They are hysterical. They are hilarious. I would put those up with the GI. Joe PSAs. Yeah, like pork chop sandwiches. Those are just all time classic. Can watch them anytime and still laugh. Have you ever seen the GI. Joe's action figures on, like, the dead road kills? No. It's sad because it's a dead animal, but there'll be like a dead squirrel in the road and someone will pose like a GI. Joe action figure with his foot on his head, like it's a trophy game. It's kind of funny. Yeah, I can see that. Let's put it this way. It's as funny as you can make a picture of a dead animal, right, that I assume got hit by a car. You hope. And maybe they are like killing squirrels just to after reading this, I don't doubt anything, and it makes me hate the Internet even more. All right, so let's get into this a little bit. Okay, Chuck, calm down. We're not allowed to have personal positions on these things. That's right. So this is totally a neutral thing. Okay. So there's this really interesting Gizmodo article that talked about the history of kind of not necessarily deepfaked, but altering videos, like presenting a doctored video as reality. And apparently there is a long tradition of it at the beginning of cinema where people got their news from NewsReal. Like, you actually go to a movie theater to see the news because you were just an early 20th century Yoko living in Kansas or something like that. Yeah. And after reading this bit, I thought that was a very gizmodo way to say, here's one not so interesting fact that really has not much to do with this. Oh, I love it. Really? I personally selected it and put it in here, and I thought it was kind of funny. I think it's great. Yeah. They used to fake real life events and recreate them. Don't try to backpedal. And that has nothing to do with Deepfakes. It does, because one of the big problems or threats from deepfakes is a way of seeing what you think is news, but it's not. It's a sham. It's recreated. Yeah. The difference I see is they were recreating real news events, and just like here, you didn't see it. So this is what it may have looked like, but they were passing it off as real. Therein lies the tragedy of all time. I thought it was a very thin gizmodoe. Whatever. We'll edit this part out. Webster's defines deepfake. I like it. I put it in there specifically because I thought it was good. All right. Okay, so we'll take another text. Okay. Why don't we talk about deepfakes? So, Chuck, let's talk about deepfakes. We can just cut there. So Deepfakes actually are super new. Yeah. And the reason they're called Deepfakes is because in late 2017, I think, November, this guy who is a redditor, a guy who posts on Reddit, that's your first sign, warning sign. Not necessarily. Reddit's pretty sharp and smart and got some good ideas going on all the social media platforms. I throw my two cent in with Reddit. All right. But there was a redditor called Deepfake. De epfake, all one word. And he said, hey, world, look at what I figured out how to do. And he started posting pornography, but with celebrities faces transposed on it. And he said, this is just my hobby, but here's how I did it. And he said that he used I'm assuming it's a him. I don't know if it's a man or a woman. I'm going to go with a man. Okay. And he said, I just use Keras and TensorFlow. And these are a couple of basically open source AI programs that this guy was smart enough to figure out how to use to train to create these videos, where you take a celebrity space and put it on a clip from a porn movie, and it looks like the celebrity is doing what you're seeing. Right. And at first, it was kind of hokey and not very it was very obviously not real. Yes. I think the scary part was how quickly and easily it could be done. Motherboard, who we used to write for every now and then, remember that? I tried to forget. They tried to forget for sure. Yeah. If I set us up, what, like, seven or eight years ago, I'm trying to forget, and you're making it really hard. Do you guys want to write some blogs for Motherboard? He said, sure. So we did. We did. We wrote ten. Yeah. You can probably go find those on the Internet if you want to learn how to drive a stick shift or something to find people at Motherboard scrub those from the Internet. Let's hope so. This Deep fake character figures this out. Another guy released a downloadable desktop software that said, here, you can do this awful thing too. Right. Within like, two months of deep Fake coming out and saying, look what I did, and here's how I did it. Somebody said, that's a really good idea. I'm going to turn it into an app and give it to everybody. That's right. And now people can at this time, this is a very short time ago, and it's really come a long way in the past. Whatever. Not even two years. Right. Because this is late 2017. Right? Late 2017. Early 2018, when it really first popped up. Yeah. So this thing was downloaded 1000 times in the first month alone. And some people used it for fun stuff, like putting Nic Cage and movies he wasn't in. Yeah, those are called dirt fakes. Yeah, they've all got fun names. Something. Dude, nicholas Cage's Yoda is patently objectively hilarious. I didn't like that one. I thought the I don't know, the rages of all Stark thing was interesting, I guess, but none of them made me laugh. Like, maybe I just don't have that kind of sense of humor. Yeah. But yeah, I never was like, oh, my God, that's hysterical. It's Nick Cage's face. I understand. I understand where you come from. I don't think I was in stitches or anything like that, but it's pretty great. Okay. It's just not my thing. You're not a gizmodo reader, are you? No, none of this is my thing. But that doesn't mean we can't report on it. However, since it started happening, it became pretty clear pretty quickly that this could be a bad thing in the future. And not just for putting your ex girlfriend's face on a sex video saying, look what she did. You could put a world leader up there and really cause a lot of problems. Yes, hypothetically, you could. And as we'll see this new technology, this deep Fake technology, it poses at least two risks. Two immediately obvious risks. And they're hyper individualized and hyper macro social risks. But they both stem from the same route or same seat to keep the metaphor going and on track. That's right. So let's talk about the technology behind this because this stuff is just totally fascinating. Surely you agree it is AI. It was created by a guy named Ian Goodfellow, just this particular type of AI. He didn't make the deep Fake stuff. No. But basically, what this model everyone knows AI is basically, when you teach a machine to start teaching itself, starts learning on its own, which is a little creepy. But the model that they're using these days is called artificial neural net, which is machine learning. And basically what they've done in this case is all you have to do is show something, a lot of data, right, for it to start to be able to recognize that data when you aren't showing it. That data yeah. And it learns on its own what makes the classic example of an AI that can pick out pictures of cats. Right. Easy enough. But you don't tell the AI here's what a cat is. Find pictures of cats in this data set here's a bunch of stuff, and figure out what a cat is, and they get really good at picking it out. You can also turn it the opposite way once you have an AI trained on identifying cats and get it to produce pictures of cats. Right. But they're usually terrible and often very bizarre. Like, anyone would look at it and be like, a human did not make this. It's just off in some really obvious ways. And what Ian Goodfellow figured out was a way around that problem. Yeah. So I'm not sure I agree with his wording here, but we'll say what he calls it. He set up two teams, and one is a generator and one is a discriminator, and he calls it adversarial network. So basically his contention is that these two are adversarial. I saw it more as like a managerial in nature. Okay. Very bureaucratic. Yeah. Isn't that what it's all like to you? The discriminator is like, yeah, I'm going to need you to come in on Saturday, kind of felt like so you've got these two networks, and they're both trained on the same data set. Right. But the generator is the one that's producing these fake cats. Right. And then there's a discriminator, or what I like to call a manager, saying, these look good. These don't look so good. Right. The other way, the way that Good fellow has proposed it is that the discriminator is going through and looking at these generated pictures and trying to figure out if it's real or if it's fake, if the generator created it, or if it comes from the data set. And based on the feedback that the manager gives the generator, the generator is going to adjust its parameters so that it gets better and better at putting out more realistic pictures of cats. Yeah. I don't get the adversarial part unless it gets mean and how it delivers that message. The reason they call it Adversarial Spanking, I saw it put, like it's like an art forger and detective and the art forger putting out an appraiser is a better way to put it. The art forger is putting out forged art, and the appraisers like, this is fake. This is fake. This is fake. I'm not sure about this one. I don't know if this one is fake. This is real. It's is real. And then at that point, the generator has become adept at fooling an AI that's trained to identify pictures of cats, creating pictures of cats that don't exist. Right. Okay. It's adversarial. The generator is trying to fool the discriminator. Okay. And the discriminator is trying to thwart the generator. That's the adversarial part. But in the end, they're really on the same team. Yeah. Okay. I guess that's where it loses me. You have a really positive image of corporate America. What does that have to do with anything? The manager is on the same team as everybody. Come on, get on board. Get on the trolley. Josh so if you want to look up Mona Lisa talking, there was a video this year from Samsung that showed how you could do this. And all the stuff is on YouTube. If you want to see Nick Cage as Indiana Jones, which is pretty funny, or Yoda, which is hilarious. Or if you want to see Mona Lisa talking, it looks fairly realistic. Like, hey, they brought that painting to life, right? Yeah. And if you scroll down a little bit, they did one with Marilyn Monroe, too. They brought her to life. They did. Interesting. Well, I mean, this is, like, just set up for TV commercials. Yes. They've already done stuff like this. Right. This is like Red Asteroid dancing with a Dirt Devil or whatever that was. What this could bring is creating entirely new movies and bringing back dead actors and actresses. Or, I guess just actors now these days. Right. Well, I mean, you've seen some of the are you talking about the dehaging people or just creating, like, bringing back someone that's been long dead? No, I'm saying, like, you call actors and actresses just actors these days. Oh, that part. Yeah. You can do whatever you want. Okay. Motion picture performers, maybe even television performers, but bringing them back and giving them, like, they could star in an entirely new movie. Sure. Because it's so realistic in life. Yeah. They're not at that point yet. No, because they're just now getting to where the de aging looks decent, depending on who it is. Like the Sam Jackson stuff and Captain Marvel, my friend, looks pretty good. It looked amazing. Yeah. And this Will Smith stuff in this new angley movie looks really good. What's that one? He's angry movie where he plays some sort of assassin? That Aladdin. Yeah, that's it. Have you seen that? No, it was good. No, I have no interest. It's good to go back and kill the younger version of himself. Or the young ones trying to kill the older one is what it is. Man, this is a lot like Looper, sort of, but it looks pretty good. It looks like young Will Smith. Slightly uncanny, but not as bad as I think some people are easier than others. Like, the Michael Douglas stuff and Ant Man and the Marvel stuff is kind of creepy looking. I haven't seen that. I mean, I've seen parts of it, but I didn't notice that they were dehaging Michael Douglas. They took Michael Douglas back in scenes to, like, the really, it's just, like, doesn't look great. But anyway, that's sort of off track a little, but not really. I mean, it's kind of similar type of stuff, I guess. No more than that Gizmodo article to start. Yeah, that's a good point. But the whole reason we should point out that people are doing this stuff with celebrities and stuff like that, it's just because there's more data out there. It's a lot easier when you have a gazillion pictures of Brad Pitt on the Internet to do a fake of Brad Pitt. Yeah, because the data set that the AI is trained on is just more and more robust. And the more pictures there are, the more angles the AI has seen Brad Pitt look around at and so can recreate these faces because the AI has seen like, every possible pose or expression or whatever Brad Pitt has ever made. We've seen all of them. But the thing is that Mona Lisa and Marilyn Monroe thing that Samsung showed, they showed that you could make a pretty convincing deep fake with just one picture, one pose. Right. So that's a big deal. But again, the bigger the data set, the better. And that's why, like you said, celebrities and world leaders were the earliest targets. But over time, with the advent of other software and the fact that people now post tons of stuff about themselves and pictures of themselves on social media, it's become easier and easier to make a deep fake video of anybody. There's software that scrapes social media accounts for every picture and video that's been posted. Yeah, public accounts, right. Big distinction. Yeah, for sure. And then there's other sites and other apps that say, oh, this picture of this person you're targeting, your classmate or whatever, they probably have a pretty good match with this porn star. So go find videos of this porn star, and then the next thing you know, you run it through the app that deepfake app came out with, and you've got yourself a deep fake video and you've officially become a bad person. All right, that's a good place to take a break, and we'll talk more about these bad people right after this. All right, so you mentioned before the break, this person's face that I just stole off the Internet fits this porn actor's body, which is a consideration if you're making that, because to look right, they have to bear a passing resemblance. I think that's right. Okay, that's what I was just about to say. Yeah. So what they're doing now is they're browsing these applications with facial recognition software to make this a lot easier. And that's what most of this is about. It's like, let's just see how easy we can make this and how much we can democratize this, where any schmo can take any single photo and do the worst things possible with it, but also how convincing they've become as well. Yeah, that's another big change. It's looking better and better, quicker and quicker, which is pretty scary, right? Did you see the Obama one? Yeah. Had it not been for Jordan Peele's voice obviously being not Obama, I would have been like, wow, this is really convincing. Oh, really? Yeah. See, I didn't think the lips matched up at all. I thought it looked pretty close. Yeah. So what we're talking about is Jordan Peele did basically a demonstration video to raise awareness about how awful this is by doing it himself and did a video of Obama referring to Trump as a curse word, a dipstick, and basically saying, like, hey, this is Obama. And what people are doing basically, is describing what's happening as you're watching it. Right. And I thought it looked kind of fake. He's describing a deep fake through a deep fake in Jordan Peele. And he did it in conjunction with BuzzFeed and another production company. But in their defense, they were making this in, like, early 2018, like April of 2018, and since then, even more technology has come out that is dedicated to matching the movement of the mouth to whatever words you want the person to say. Yes. And you can also use only parts of it, so it's even more convincing. Right. So if Obama had a lead in that actually worked, you could just keep that in there and then take out certain words and you can manipulate it however you want to. Right. And the AI can go through and find, like, phonemes and stuff like that to make the new words that the person never said. It's becoming extremely easy. Let's just put it like this. It's becoming extremely easy. And it's widely available for anybody to make a video of somebody doing something or saying something that they never did or never said and to make it convincing enough that you may believe it at first. Yeah. Which, like we said, the obvious scariest implications that aren't just of the personal variety are in politics, when you could create real fake news that actually put people in jeopardy or put the entire world in jeopardy by announcing a nuclear strike or something like that. Right. Yeah. Marco Rubio and I can't remember when it was, but within the last year or two basically said that deepfakes are the modern equivalent of a nuclear bomb. That you could threaten America to that degree with the deep fake. I think that is a little hyperbolic. For sure. We're not the only ones. Yeah. There are other people that say people that know what they're talking about, not just slumps like us, but other people that say, like, hey, listen, this is probably not like a nuclear bomb going off. We should keep our eye on it. But there are other bigger fish to fry when it comes to stuff like this, for sure. And then there are other people who are saying, well, that's not to discount, like, the real problem it can pose. Right? Sure. Like, we're already in a very polarized position in this country. So the idea of having realistic indistinguishable from reality videos of world leaders or senators or whoever saying whatever is not going to help things at all. No, it's not going to bring everyone together, like, look at this hilarious deep fake. It's going to be like, See? Look. And it's just going to erode that trust that is necessary for a democracy to thrive and taken to its logical conclusion. This one researcher put it like this. Eventually we're going to lose our ability to agree on what is shared, objective reality. Right. And at that point, what we would face is what's called the death of truth. There is no such thing anymore. And on one hand, that's horrible. It's a horrible idea, the idea that nothing is real because there's such a thing as deep fakes and anybody could make something like this. But on the other hand, you can kind of say, you can engage with yoda. Right? Exactly. On the other hand, though, you can say the fact that people know that deep fakes are out there means that it's going to be easier and easier to be like, that's obviously not real. It's just too unbelievable. So it may actually make us more discriminating and more discerning of the news than we are today. Yeah, that's the only thing that salvaged my brain from this track of talking about this today was like, well, we'll go tell our listeners, at least. Be on the lookout, be wary, take everything with a grain of salt. Right? Because we're already in a place where you don't even need some deep fake video. It's happened all over the place. You can see something that's photoshopped or a real photo that someone just writes a false story about. Yeah, that's a good one. You can just come up with a false narrative from a picture. There's a guy on the street and he's laying there bleeding, and you can just say, this person was attacked yesterday by a group of angry Trumpers or an antifa on the other side, and it will get passed around 20 million times and then the retraction gets seen by 800 people. Exactly. That's not a deep fake. No, that's low hanging fruit. That's a low five fake. Imagine inserting into that and this is what we're talking about, into that climate like video where you're looking at the person and seeing with your own eyes what they're saying, and a lot of people who aren't like, I thought the Obama video looked pretty fake. You thought it looked pretty real. Everyone's eye is different and ear is different. A lot of people will believe anything they see like this. Right. We'll talk about how to discern deepfakes in a second. But we're getting to the point people seem to be in wide agreement that very soon it will be up to digital forensic scientists to determine whether a video is authentic or not, because you or I will not be able to distinguish it from reality. Yeah. And I imagine that every country will have their own team that will be hard at work doing that stuff. And by will already does. Yeah. Since the end of 2017. Yes. Or at least they're scrambling to catch up, because when the video comes out of the leader of North Korea saying, we want to drop bombs on America at 02:00 this afternoon, that's going to send our DARPA team scrambling to try and disprove this thing before we push the button. It's like war games. It is, but way, way worse. Yeah. So, just to reiterate one more time, the one thing that you and I can do, and the one thing that you guys out there listening can do to keep society from eroding is to know that deep fake videos are very real. And just about anybody with enough computing power and patience to make one can make one. And the very fact that those things exist should make you question anything you see or hear with your own eyes that seems unbelievable or sensational. Unfortunately, I think this stuff you should know crowd is pretty savvy. Very. So we're sort of preaching to the choir here. Yeah, but maybe they can go pass it along, preach to their older relatives on Facebook or yeah, exactly. Take this to Thanksgiving dinner. Just explain it to folks. We should talk about porn a little more. Should we take a break first? Sure. Are you okay with that? Yeah, I feel bad now. No. Okay. We'll wait and talk about porn in about 60 seconds. All right? Chuck, you promised. Talking about porn? Yes. In this research, it says one of the defenses people make in favor of deep pig porn is that it doesn't actually harm anyone. Is anyone actually saying that? Yeah, a lot of people who I shouldn't say a lot. I've seen at least one quote from people who make this stuff saying, like, this is the media drumming up a moral panic. Like, what's the problem here? What's the issue? It's not like they're going and hacking into, like, a Stars icloud account sure. Getting naked pictures of them and then distributing that. And this is really a private naked picture of a celebrity. They're just trying to think they've done that to them. I think that they would say they're just creating some fantasy thing that's not even real. It doesn't even really exist. I'm not defending it. I'm just telling you what the other side is saying. Yeah. And that's a perfect example of why these are very bad people, because it is harmful to everyone involved, to the person whose face you're using, to the adult film actor who did a scene right. And watch credit, regardless of how you feel about that stuff, someone did something and got paid a wage to do so, and now it's being ripped off, and there are real people's faces involved and real bodies involved in real lives. It's not a moral panic, but it's not like, we need to march this to the. Top of Capitol Hill right now. Well, that's funny, because Congress held hearings on it this year. Well, yeah, but I have a feeling it's a little bit more about the political ramifications than putting your ex girlfriend's face on a pornbody. Oh, yeah, I see what you mean. Although they could put your governor's face on a porn body right. And get them removed from office. This video was just dug up. Look at your governor. Yeah. Look what he's doing. For sure. But even take that down to the less political level. Like you were saying, you could ruin somebody's marriage if it was shaky or on the rocks before. Sure. Hey, here's the sex tape of your husband or your wife. Yes. Blackmail is another one, too. There's a lot of ramifications of this, and it seems like the more you dig into it, the more it becomes clear that really the big threat from this is to the individual whose face is used on the deep fake porn. Right. They could do a video of us holding hands, walking down the street. Right. Or they could just use that video of us doing that, the one that exists in reality. I'm glad you picked up that one just a couple of weeks ago, because I saw this one when I Googled this under News, so it was very recently. There was an app that we won't name that's undressed. Basically, what you could do is just take a picture of any woman, plug it into this app, and it would show her what she would look like nude, not her body. But it would just do it so fast and so realistically that you could nude up some woman with the touch of a button. Yeah. And it would replace her clothes in the picture with nude lady new clothes. Right. With a birthday suit. Right. Birthday suit. Right. That's what I was looking for. And it's just as awful as you think. And the creator actually even shut it down within, like, three or four days. Yeah, but, like, what was this guy thinking? Like, this is a great idea, and like, oh, people have a problem with this. Well, I'll shut it down. Right. Like, really, in his defense, he's probably, like, 14. Well, I guess that's a good point. Even if you plugged in a picture of a man, it would show a woman's nude body. And you know what that means? That means that and the person who created this app says, well, I just did that because there are way more pictures of naked women on the Internet. And I was going to do a man's version, but I had to go to baseball practice and never got a chance, too. Yeah, that's pretty amazing. And of course, that person is anonymous, right? As far as I know, yeah. Which means that they really must be 14 because they weren't unmasked on the Internet. Despite the outrage against this app, you're probably right. I wonder. It's just pharma, bro. That guy just played everything on him. He's still in jail. Is he really? Yeah. Good. So that's a good segue into what you can do if this happens to you. Right. There's a lot of outrage. Call your congressman. There's a lot of outrage against this kind of thing on the Internet. So if you are targeted and you end up in a deep fake porn clip or video or whatever, sure, you could drum up some moral outrage on the Internet or go to the site that is being hosted on directly and say, hey, I know this is messed up. You know this is messed up. Please take this down. I didn't consent to this. This is an invasion of my privacy. Get rid of this video. Porn websites are good about that, actually, because they don't want that stuff on there. No, and it's not just porn websites. Like Pornhub Reddit, Giffy. Some other sites have banned all kinds of deep fake videos. And apparently Giffy. I think it's Giffy. G-Y-F-Y-I have no idea. I don't either. I'd never heard of it until I started researching this. But this site actually created an AI that's trained to spot deepfake videos and remove them from the site, which is a big tool that they need to be sharing with everybody else. Right. But if you can contact the site and say, hey, man, take this down, this is me, they will probably take it down just because everybody knows this is really messed up. Yeah, they got enough. They have plenty of videos to work for from that are real. They don't need this stuff. But there's no laws that say they have to take it down either. Well, not yet. There's this guy, Henry Faree. He studies digital forensics at Dartmouth, and they are hard at work. Again, this just started very recently. So all of this stuff they're just like, scrambling to get ahead of as far as sniffing this stuff out. Well, the whole world was caught off guard by this. Like, this guy just went, hey, look what I can do. I'm going to change the world. Here Nick Cage. This is so funny. Oh, wait. What is Nic Cage doing? As yoda. Oh, my God. So, professionals, there are some pretty easy to spot things if you're a pro. Unless it's just really bad. Your average layman can spot those. But if you're a pro, you're going to look for bad compression stuff. That like lighting, that looks off. Not blinking is a big one. Yes. Like Michael Cane. Don't blink. That's right. Maybe he's just a big deep fake. Right. His whole career, man, that'd be something. Sound is a big thing. Wait, hold on, hold on. I want to say why blinking is not a thing. Oh, sure. Because it's fascinating to me. Probably wasn't to you because you didn't like that gizmo article. But the reason why not blinking is a thing in deepfakes is because deep fake AI that is trained on data sets probably are being shown photos of somebody not blinking. Right. So they don't learn that people blink. So the AI doesn't know to add blinking when it renders the new face on this video, but all they can do is just say, all right, now, then we'll program it to blink. Right. That's the big problem. Chuck. Like everything they can spot. In fact, when they list out all the things like look for blockiness compression, fix, pattern noise, I'm sure there's some deep faker that's like, check. Thanks for the list of stuff we need to work on. And it's still maybe like you were saying at a point where possibly you or I could look at a shoddy video and be like, I see this, this, and this is a little wrong. Like, there is a little bit of compression relic or remnants or whatever, like they're not blinking the shadows off a little bit. But there's also plenty of videos where you do need to be like a digital forensic scientist to find them or an AI to find it. Yeah. You can also use your ear holes because look at the room that the person is in and what it sounds like that in a room like that. It's one of the things audio specialists look at is like, if you have Obama in a concert hall speaking and it sounds like he's in someone's closet or us. Yeah, it sounds like a can. Like our earliest episode. Yeah, exactly. That's a pretty strong indicator. It is. So there are things you can do when BuzzFeed tweeted that Jordan Peele, Obama deep fake, they included a list of things to do to spot a deepfake I wonder how many times you said deep fake in this episode. I don't know. Don't jump to conclusions. Okay. Consider the source. It's a big one. That's what's going to guide us through here. People like this is Jordan Peele. I can trust that. No, but I mean, like, if you go onto a site, I can spot, like, a fake news site a mile away. Yeah, you can just tell it's off. It's uncanny. It's our sense of uncanny that's going to guide us through this. Yeah, you can always tell because the screen is black and the text is fluorescent green in comic sand. And then another one is, check where this thing is and isn't. This is kind of like the opposite tip we always give people, where if you see the same thing and basically the same wording throughout the Internet, you should question that. If you see a deep fake video in only a couple of places and it's news, but you don't see it on, like, ABC or CNN or Fox News or wherever, if you don't see it on, like, a reputable news site, you should probably question it. Yeah. Donald Trump threatens nuclear war. We have the video from Slappy.com. It's probably a good indicator. Slappy.com. I'm sure the good people at Slappy are like, hey, we make hamburger, but you're picking on it. I should probably check and see what that is. Everyone else is right now. What else? Look closely at their mouth. And then here's a kind of a no brainer. It's like, slow it down. Slow the video down. Slow your role and like, really look at it closely because that's where you're going to see strange lighting changes and stuff. But it's all legal. It is. We were kind of talking about that. The best way to get a video taken down is to contact the website. Just be like, Bro, come on, this is awful. There are no laws that protect you directly, but a lot of people are saying, well, we've got revenge porn laws that are starting to pop up around the country. It's a very short trip from revenge porn to deepfake porn. It's virtually the same thing. It's involuntary pornography. It's even more involuntary because with revenge porn, the person even posed for the picture or whatever initially, for whatever context or reasoning that out, with no intention to get it out. With deep fake porn, this person never even posed or engaged in this act or anything like that. So it's even, in a way, maybe even worse than revenge porn, which feels like bitter acid in my mouth to say so you can make a case, though, that these revenge porn statutes that protect people could be extended to this as well. But that's for personal stuff, for national stuff or public figure or something like that, especially when it comes to politics. You could make a really strong case that these deep fake videos, even the most misleading, nefarious deepfake video you can imagine, would be protected under the First Amendment. Yes, I could see a satire defense being mounted in the future. Like, what's the difference between doing a really good deep fake and doing an animated cartoon like South Park, which shows people saying and doing things they wouldn't do either? It is very slippery and thorny and a very fine line. But even if the person who makes the deep fake says, no, I did not mean this is satire, it was meant to be misleading and I wanted to see what effects it had. They didn't shout fire in a crowded theater, so they could probably still get away with it under the First Amendment. Yeah. It's interesting to see where this is going to go. Hopefully right down the toilet. No, it's going to get more and more realistic and we're going to end up inadvertently falling into the simulation. That's what's going to happen. Chuck, prepare for it. That's great. Okay, just try to put a smile on your face regardless and smiling. If you want to know more about who am I? If you want to know more about deepfakes it's so hot right now just go on the Internet and you can read all sorts of news articles about it. Since I said that, it's time for listener mail. I think the first thing that turned me off was the name. Anytime I see something that's, like, not a real word, but they're, like, squeezed together two words and it's all lower case or something, it's just the worst of the Internet, you know what you mean? It's terrible. All right. Hey, guys. Just finished the Neanderthal episode, and it was mentioned that their language could have some remnants in our modern languages. That was a really good demonstration. Automatically remembered that during how swearing works. You guys mentioned that a different part of our brains activate when hearing or using square word. So maybe, just maybe, that small percentage of our Neanderthalian DNA activates when we stub our toes or hit our shins to unleash our primitive and original language. That's neat. How about that? I like this person. Anyway, I love the podcast, guys. Grateful for the knowledge and entertainment. And thank you, Jerry. Or should we just say, thank you, Josh, Josh T, for keeping the quality of these podcasts awesome. We're not thanking Jerry anymore. No, just Josh T from my overpriced apartment in Redlands, California. That is Falcon. No, that's his last name. Wow. The N is silent, though, so it's Falcon. Thanks a lot, Falcon. We appreciate you. That was a great name. Thanks for swooping in with that idea, and I'm sorry for everybody for that. If you want to get in touch with us, like folk did, you can tweet to us. We're at SYSK podcast. I'm at Joshua Clarke. We're on Instagram. We're on Facebook. Where else are we, Chuck? We're on every deep fake. We might be on Giphy. Who knows? Giffee flappy. You can also send us a good old fashioned email. Spank it on the bottom after you wrap it up, of course. 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, you." | |
Did the Dutch trade Manhattan for nutmeg? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/did-the-dutch-trade-manhattan-for-nutmeg | Today nutmeg is commonplace, but this wasn't always the case. In the 17th century, the Dutch and the British fought a trade war over nutmeg. Join Chuck and Josh as they travel across continents and centuries to trace the story of nutmeg and Manhattan. | Today nutmeg is commonplace, but this wasn't always the case. In the 17th century, the Dutch and the British fought a trade war over nutmeg. Join Chuck and Josh as they travel across continents and centuries to trace the story of nutmeg and Manhattan. | Tue, 08 May 2012 17:08:55 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=8, tm_hour=17, tm_min=8, tm_sec=55, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=129, tm_isdst=0) | 33516239 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. This is Charles. Www. Chuck Bryant with his Atlanta Braves hat. How's it going, slugger? Yeah, the Yankees are doing terribly, too. Yeah, it's a great way to start the season. Yes. But at the same time, it's like Owen four out of 189. It's not like they don't have time to come back 160. But yeah, no, of course it's no big deal. But you never want to start out like that. No, you really don't. But as the GM pointed out in an article in Atlanta Magazine, still a lot of games to play. It's a rebuilding season. So they fired Sunday, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. He basically said, like, if you're a fan, don't go read it. Okay. I'm not kidding. Even if that were true, the GMs don't say that he said it. He sounds like a straight shooter. Maybe he was drunk when he did this interview. I don't know. But that's how I read it. And Arnett's in it too. There's a picture of them in front of the grocery. So I guess we should stop talking like we're not being recorded right now. Are we recording? Yeah, we are. Okay. Chuck? Yes? This is stuff you should know. As you know. And I propose that we begin in earnest now. So, Chuck yes. Back in 1999, there was a guy, an entomologist, who he's not an etymologist, but he did coined a term in an editorial that he wrote for the Journal of Insect Conservation. The guy's name is Michael Samways, and the term he coined is the homogeneousin. Okay. And the homogeneousine is this word that describes basically the sweeping similarity and homogeneity that's come about around the planet since the age of exploration. It's the reason why you have chili peppers as one of the basis of Thai cooking. Even though chili peppers are from mesoamerica, tomatoes from Mesoamerica form the basis of Italian cooking. It's the reason why there are black people and white people in the United States. It's the reason why there are Asians in Mexican in Mexico. It's the reason why the Irish entered a famine because they became too reliant on the potato, which is actually from the Andes. And it's the reason why there's Old Navy stores on every continent. Are they really? Probably, except maybe Antarctica, but I wouldn't be willing to bet too much against that. But the homogeneous age that we're living in now, where biologically, like the Earthworms in Minnesota, they're really from Europe, but they're destroying forests in Minnesota. Right. It's all of this coupling together. A geographer named Alfred Crosby called Re stitching the seams of Pangaea the supercontinent, back together once again. And then one of my heroes, Charles C. Mann, of course, it's the basis of his book, the follow up to 1491 called 1493. It's all about the homogeneous scene and like, the world that Columbus inadvertently created the big global stew. Thank you. So a lot of people attribute it to Columbus, but you really need to go a little further back, and you can place the responsibility for the homogeneousine, the good, the bad, the ugly, everything at the feet. Pretty much of one guy, an Ottoman sultan named Mebud II, who kind of changed the course of history when he overtook Constantinople. That was a pretty good intro. You just did like, a mini jazz hands. They were trembling. Yeah. You, like, tried to stop yourself. Yeah. Age of exploration. It was kicked off by Member II. Yeah, because he basically shut down trade routes through the Middle East. He the Silk Roads. The famous Silk Roads, which was huge. Well, yeah. I mean, think about it. Like, Europe got everything from the Middle East or from Asia, through India, through Turkey, through the subcontinent, and this guy took control of Constantinople and effectively said, you know what? I'm kind of tired of your crusades. So any Europeans are barred from taking part in this trade. And that was that. That was huge. Because then they had to take to the sea. Yes, but think about it. Within, like, 50 years, all of a sudden they were like, okay, well, let's just sale and see what happens. And that changed everything. Well, did that kick off the age of exploration? Okay. That act is what made people say, I'm going to go get in my frigate. Exactly. Yeah. And just say frigate. I'm out of here. Sorry. The word play today is world class. Yes, Josh. I also found it interesting that it seems like almost every great discovery that happened because of that was a big accident. Yeah. These dudes didn't know where they were. No. Well, Columbus cologne, crystal ball cologne, is apparently what he would have answered to. Well, and then later on, Hudson was like, oops, I found Manhattan. Yeah, but that's not what I was looking for. But they're failing again and again and again. Ultimately, what they were looking for was a passageway to China, and they found it in Panama. But even then, they were like, still a little too wide. Right. And a little too far. Right. But yes, it was very accidental, except Vasco de Gamma was one of the few success stories in one of the earliest, too. And he kind of cemented the Portuguese control over this because the West Indies like what we now refer to as Indonesia, the Indian subcontinent, Australia, Asia, basically, that was the place where we wanted to get to, the Europeans wanted to get to, but they couldn't do it over land any longer. Well, the Gamma sailed down around Africa, passed the Cape of Good Hope and up to India and came back and said, okay, Portugal owns the world now. And they kind of did as far as being the dominant traders of the time. At least for pretty much the whole 16th century yeah. In Europe, of course, wouldn't have that. So the Dutch and the English ponied up, and well, pony up means they paid. They manned up, I guess, and said, you know what? We got to get on the scene here, because Portugal is kicking our butt yeah. In the spice trade. And I looked up the whole spice thing just to get a little more into it, because I was like, why were spices such a big deal? Well, he who controls the spice controls the universe. Well, it was kind of true back then, spices were a huge deal because, one, Europe didn't have these exotic spices because they didn't grow there. They had gruel, they had garlic, they had onion. Okay. And they had, like, horseradish. That's about it. So all of a sudden, these exotic spices come around, and it makes crappy meat tastes better. It makes spoiled meat taste edible, and other bad foods that have gone bad gruel. Gruel spice the crap out of it, and it was expensive, so it became like a sign of nobility. So if you were entertaining and you were either noble or wealthy, you would really turn it on to your guest. If you brought out the spice tray along with the meal that's already spiced, and they would just sample different little spices, and it was like, a really big thing. And then to top it all off, it was served by a captured human being wearing, like, bright feathers you could really show off for your guests. It's true. Spices also improved health. They were used medicinally to treat dozens of maladies. Well, let's get to the star of this episode. Nothing preserved. Meats not there yet. Oh, sorry. Well, salt. Yeah. Salt is preservative. That's how we get jerky. Yeah. Salt was so valuable, they, like, hit it in the Tower of London. Oh, yeah. I think they called it the salt Tower, even for a little while, not officially. And then peppercorn, evidently, was one of the most valued. It was, like, a really huge deal. You had pink peppercorn. Yeah. Plus, it's not cheap pepper, even to this day. No, but they would actually use peppercorn as rent in areas where they didn't have money. So they would use this currency and pay peppercorn rent to your landlord in the background. So they shouting, Bring out your dead, and you're paying your rent and peppercorn. Exactly. So that's the primer on why it's such a big deal to get spices back in the day. Well, plus, also, ultimately, the reason why people were doing everything and anything. Like mehmed shut down the Silk Roads in 1453. Columbus set sail in 1492. So in less than 40 years, we're like, okay, we have to figure this out. But I think the big driver of it all was money. Sure. There was a merchant class that could make money from selling this stuff to the nobility. That's right. There you have it. There you have it. So where were we? Portugal ruling the spice trade. Okay. And then the Dutch are like, we got to put a stop to this. We need to go form a corporation chartered company, one of the world's first I'm going to butcher this. It's Dutch, man. I mean, that's hard to say. The Virindish Company or the Dutch East India Company? In English. Yes. Or the VOC. The VOC, which is probably what we'll call it. Or if we refer to the Dutch, that's what we're talking about. Yeah, because they were representative of the Dutch government. It was a government established in government initially funded company. Right. The Dutch came about and said, hey, Portugal, you're not the only guys on the map now. And then shortly after that, the English said, what's a map? The English said, you know what? We're going to form the East India Company, which, by the way, we should do an episode on just itself. The East India Company. It was brutal. Just the crazy stuff that the East India Company did. Killing in the name of spice. Yes, and the Dutch did, too. You'll see, pretty much everybody did. Your Europeans were brutal. But the EIC, the East India Company, or the English, and the Dutch suddenly hit the scene and gave Portugal a run for its money and basically rested control away from Portugal and started dividing it between themselves. Yes, that's the scene in the West Indies. That's right. And then they all said, hey, let's go west and check out what kind of fur is being traded. I'm sorry, that's the scene in the East Indies. Would you say? West Indies? Yeah. Nice catch. So the VOC and the EIC, england and Holland, let's call it. Okay, so we call them the Dutch. Sure. Or maybe we should just say that from Amsterdam. Okay. They're all the same. Jerry's laughing. Let's call the Netherlands. Everyone in Rotterdam is really mad at you right now. Are they? Oh, yeah, Rotterdam is very nice, actually, I would imagine. I think all of the Netherlands are nice. Lovely, lovely country. So they both say, let's go check out the New World, because there's got to be some fur there and let's do it. Let's beat the Portuguese over there. Let's do it. Yeah, we can do it right now. They were competing. They didn't do anything together. It was all competition. There's competition in the east for the Spice Islands, and now there's competition in the west and specifically in the northeastern, what is now the northeastern United States. And the whole thing began with like you were poking fun at Henry Hudson, who tried to look for a Northeast Passage to China. For the Dutch, though, that was on his own. He was an English explorer. I thought he was paid northeast. Then the Dutch said, hey, while you're up there, look for a Northwest Passage. Try that one. And we'll pay you. Now, here's what I was curious about. Was he a traitor to his country for doing this, or was it just like, all bets are off when you're a hired explorer? Christopher Cologne was I think he was Portuguese. No, he was Genovese. He was Italian, and he was exploring for the Spanish when he landed on hispaniola so, yeah, I think whoever would pay for your expedition. All right, so Henry Hudson, I don't believe I've ever heard him considered a trader for that. But he basically contracted out with the Dutch. That's right. The VOC. And he didn't find that Northwest Passage, but he did discover the Hudson River. He did. It wasn't called that until he found it. That's right. Long island and another place called Manhattan. Yes. And now we get to the crux of our story, because the Dutch are aware that there's a place called Manhattan, and they want to check it out because it has awesome street food. He did a little trading there initially, and that's how he kind of established it for the Dutch, was by taking part in some commerce. Yeah. Because furs were fairly lucrative. They're nothing compared to spices, but they were enough to get in person's interest. Bird was nothing compared to peppercorn. Yeah. That's because we were lousy with animals at the time. Yeah. Like we didn't know what we were doing with them. Yeah. Just kill them all. And fur is easy to come by. Yeah. Peppercorn, though, doesn't grow here. He claims it for the Dutch. The States general of the Netherlands set up the Dutch West India Company after this revelation that they have trading partners over there, and I started to colonize it. That's right. And it became new netherland. Not New Belgium. Not New or New Amsterdam. Yeah. New Amsterdam is New York. York, exactly. New Netherland is the area around New York. Yeah. Specifically, I think New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, and parts of Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. Yeah, like a lot of area. Yeah. So the Dutch West India Company sends a bunch of Dutch people to colonize, start hanging out, kind of making friends with the local Indians. Yeah. The Algonquin Linopee tribe. So I also read that there was Delaware, the Meadow Occur, and we're all in the area as well. Sure. So the Dutch are, like, hanging out around. These people are the new guys, and they're talking here, there. And within five years, the director himself of the VOC, Peter Minuet, shows up, and he's basically just coming to check on this newly established colony. And while he's there, one of the things he does is try to establish claim for the Dutch of Manhattan by buying it from the local tribe. Yeah. Well, at first, the Indians are all like, we don't trade land and air and water. That's for everyone to use. Right. We don't understand that. The Dutch said, have you tried liquor? That was that true. I couldn't possibly. Okay, this is what Jane McGrath says. She's pretty good at history generally. I just looked at I couldn't find the liquor. I couldn't find any other great sources for that. So according to this article, the Dutch said, hey, guys, let's partake in some liquor, and the Indians on the island drank it with them and got really drunk. And that's where the name Hanh supposedly comes from, which I guess it would be in an algonquin tongue because that's what everybody spoke up there. But it was Mannatin Manajanik, which means the place we all got drunk. Yeah, that's where Manhattan comes from, supposedly. That's the legend. Well, that's what they say. The Dutch translated that into Manahatta, and then that eventually became Manhattan. Right. So the Dutch are there? Peter Minuet's there. And he's like, you know what? Let's just see what we can do, and let's try to buy this. Like you said, the Indians at the time supposedly nowhere in the New World understood or believed in the concept of owning land. So the idea of an Indian saying, I will see this land to you, you have to also follow that up with the image of him turning around and laughing to his friends. Right. And not only that, apparently Manhattan wasn't inhabited. It was a place where they hunted and fished and kind of hung out sometimes. But apparently no local tribe lived on Manhattan, which made the idea of one of them selling it to them even funnier. And no one knows which group the Dutch bought this from. The only record of this transaction ever taking place was a letter written by Peter Minuet, who just mentions offhand the next year that, oh, yeah, we bought Manhattan for a chest of stuff worth 60 yielders. Yeah, that's the old rumor. $24 bought Manhattan. And that's been disputed here and there. Well, the 60 guilders is what he wrote that he spent for Manhattan. Right. But how much that was worth at the time, like you said, a lot of people said $24. I've seen $1,000. It wasn't much. Right. I did a little more reading on this, too, because, of course, the first thing you think is, boy, the Native Americans got rooked out of Manhattan, and who knew at the time? But like you said, they didn't even own it. So they sort of pulled a fast one. And in the end, I think most historians think that neither party really fully even understood the terms of the sale. And it wasn't like, oh, my gosh, we have these trinkets now. It was, hey, we've got some potential military partners. And the Dutch were like, hey, we've got some potential trade partners. Right. So it meant a lot more than the 60 guilders. Right. And even the trinkets, like you mentioned, that's under dispute as well. It's also, in addition to the $24, which is estimated in the 19th century, is kind of a way to make the Indians look like idiots. Right. Saying that it was just a box of trinkets makes them sound even dumber. Right. But probably what it was were, like, axes, metal kettles, scissors. Just stuff like the Indians. Just technology. They didn't have a really big deal. Sure. So I guess the idea that the Indians selling Manhattan for $24 is false. At the very least, it's been taken out of context. Agreed. But what we have here, I think what you're saying is that there's two parties, neither of which are in any position to sell or buy this land, who do just that. And the sale of Brooklyn actually is a lot better recorded. It's a lot better documented. From 1636 to 1684, over, like, 22 treaties, the local tribes sold Manhattan or Brooklyn piece by piece what amounted to like, 12,000 guilders over time. And historians now see that as the Indians kind of figuring out that if you sold this land that you didn't even think you owned to the Europeans it was a way of staving off your eventual removal and that they were basically doing it. They kind of mastered, like, pawning, the Europeans. So they were on views of land. They weren't the rubes that they're painted to be oftentimes. I think that's the point here. Yeah, I like that. Okay. They said, check out Park Slope. Can you imagine the baby carriages one day? And the young yuppies who will be living here? Yes. Are they yuppies? They're still yuppies, if not in name and practice. Okay. Yeah. So the long story short is that the Dutch now believe that they own Manhattan and New Netherlands in short order. Like, by the end of the 17th century, they own what's now? New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Right? That's right. At the same time, back east in the East Indies, things are starting to heat up specifically around what I said earlier is the star of this episode. As far as spices go. Nutmeg? Yeah. Nutmeg was very valuable. It tasted yummy when sprinkled on puddings and desserts. And it was an aphrodisiac, supposedly. It was hallucinogenic powder. It's an abortive fascia, which means it can cause abortions. Really? So if you're pregnant, you are not supposed to touch nutmeg. Interesting. I didn't know that. Yes. And during the Black Plague, they would wear nutmeg around their neck. And if you think that sounds a little hinky it might have actually kept the fleas away that carried the Black Plague. So it may not have been simply superstition. Right. So they were kind of smart. Plus, again, we get to what really drove people the markup big time. Some traders marked it up as much as 6000%. Wow. That's a lot of profit. Which would make people go crazy for it. Which is what the Dutch did. That's right. And at the time, up until about the mid 19th century the only place you could find this stuff was in the Banda Islands in Indonesia. Group of islands got this nutmeg, this one island in particular, paula Run, which they called Run. Yeah. That one was lousy with us. One of the smallest islands of the Banda Islands, but it was, like, just covered in nutmeg. And there was how many? I think five islands to the bandits. And four were controlled by the Dutch, clearly and outright. Then one was controlled by the British. That's right. And the Dutch landed on the Band Islands and kicked the Portuguese out, did their little treaty thing with the locals, which they like to do. That's right. The locals said, okay, thanks for the money. I don't know what you're talking about, and proceeded to trade with other people. Well, yeah. They wanted to establish the monopoly. The Dutch did. Yeah. They're saying, like, we want to be the only exporter of nutmeg. Right. You can only sell to us. And then here, sign this. But the locals had no idea what was going on, and they didn't understand this concept, or they just didn't really care if the Dutch wanted a monopoly or not. Right. So, long story short, the Dutch brutalized the Banda natives. Yeah. Enslaved all of them, carried out like raids and massacres of villages, executed chiefs, basically wiped themselves out of the local population that was capable of growing nutmeg. So they had to import colonists from the Netherlands to come grow the nutmeg. That's right. But they had their monopoly. Well, almost the monopoly, because the British still had control of Run. And like you said, even though it was small, it was lousy with nutmeg. It's so crazy that nutmeg was the reason all this was going on. I've got, like, four whole nutmeg nuts in my pantry right now, and it's like, nothing to me, like, to say my pants. I didn't understand that. It was like, what's that good for? I just have one in my pocket. Get rid of fleece. It does. All right. You were saying they didn't quite have a monopoly because the British had run. Exactly. The British had run. So they would dip the nutmeg and lime the Dutch wood, which would mean it can't grow, like, if you plant it. Yeah. Because think about it. If you're exporting nutmeg, it's the fruit, the mast of the nutmeg tree, which means it's also the seed, which any smart person could take that, put it in the ground in a similar climate and grow nutmeg. And then all of a sudden, the Dutch don't have that monopoly any longer. So they very ingeniously dipped it in lime. Right. That was that jerk move. It is a jerk move, but it's a good way to control nutmeg. That's true. But it didn't quite work because somebody decided one of the higher up. So we need to partner up with England here. Instead of trying to war them out of business with a nutmeg, let's partner up. In 1619, they signed a cooperation agreement, but there was a commander of the VOC yon Piercingo Cohen, who said, screw that and screw your agreement. I'm going to go and I'm going to burn down all the nutmeg trees. Yeah, he seems like a very vindictive kind of guy. He wanted the Banda Islands just under Dutch control so badly that even after the higher up said, well, we're cool with the British, he's like, no, you know what? I'm just going to burn the whole island down. That's right. He was crazy. He was. So fast forward to the Second Anglo Dutch War. The Dutch finally get control of Run in 1666, and then right after that, the Dutch and the English said, all right, things are a little out of hand right now. Let's end this war with the Treaty. Yeah. Very appropriately named treaty of Breta. Well, back up a little bit before this in 1664, we need to point out what's going on back in Manhattan. England took control of Manhattan pretty much by sailing four ships into the harbor. And because the fur trade wasn't as lucrative as they thought it was going to be, the West India Company from Holland said, we're not so concerned about that area, so we're not going to fortify it too much. We're not going to send them a lot of ammo. Right. So basically when the English showed up in 1664 and said Surrender, they all went, okay, right? Like, we'll surrender because the Dutch are motherland kind of forgot about us over here. They don't care about us, and so come on, it's yours. And by this time also, they'd form the first brewery, remember Block and Christianson? So they were just getting drunk. Yeah. They were like, come on. And of course, England was like, sweet. Yeah. So thank you for that. By the way, the Dutch and the English after what was the war? That was the second Anglo Dutch War, the second of three, I think. And in the Treaty of Breta between the Dutch and the English settled, a lot of disputes ended that war, but they had disputes in the West Indies. So this way the Dutch had all of the in the East Indies had all of the Band Islands. There was a lot of skirmishes between the Dutch and the English in Suriname over cocoa and sugar plantations. Finally, in the Treaty of Bread, which was very much in the Duchess's favor, the English ended up with Manhattan. They said, you just have that, you're already there. And it was kind of, as man puts it, in 1493, it was kind of a booby prize. Like, the English were like, you can keep that, it's all right. And you're like, no, we want you to have it. We're so grateful for the islands and for Suriname. You keep Manhattan. Yeah. And today the Olsen twins live there. At least one of them does. So in the end, England kept Manhattan, which they kind of already had. The Dutch kept run, which they kind of already had again by that point. But England kind of pulled a fast one by taking lime free nutmeg and planning it on different islands like Granada, who came out on top? England, I would say so. So they sort of ended up trading Manhattan for nutmeg. That's really round about where to put it. And then, of course, in 1673, the Dutch retook Manhattan, said, no, it's ours again. It was a third war. Bangalore. Dutch war. But they were also fighting the French at the same time, which really screwed them. They went bankrupt, basically. And finally in 1674, the Treaty of Westminster. They finally said, all right, here officially, once again, you have Manhattan. That's where like, all over the place. Weren't they? Who knew you you knew. That's it. That's all for nutmeg and Manhattan. I'd like to do more history of New York stuff. I love that. That's cool. Great topic. Very cool. You got anything else? No. If you want to learn more about nutmeg, you should type that word into the search barhouseupworks.com. You can also type in East India Company, dutch West Indies Company, like all sorts of cool stuff. And it'll bring up all sorts of cool things. Try Manhattan. You'll be pleasantly surprised if you type that into the search bar. It'd probably be a drink, maybe article in there soon. That would pleasantly surprise me. Sure. So I said, handy search bar. Which means it's time for the listener, mate. Josh. Appropriately enough, this is about Robert De Niro talking to New York Tribeca area. Hi, guys. I worked in the service industry for about ten years. This is about tipping, by the way, from salad bars to four star hotels. And I've had tons and tons of stories. Most memorably is the one I had when I served Mr. Robert De Niro in his family. This is about seven years ago. I was acting as doorman at Fairmont Washington, DC. Nice place. De Niro stayed with us for about three nights and I happened to work every day during his stay. Because I worked the night shift, I had several opportunities to greet him and his lovely wife and pretty much no one else was around. His wife was very charming and talkative and would indulge the driver in genuine conversation. This would afford me time to fit in a little small talk with the man himself and his reactions were classic Deniers. He even shrugged his shoulders when he spoke. The man is a movie. Can you imagine being DeNiro, where people are like, Dude, that's so DeNiro. He's just like that's me. Yeah, please stop it. Anyways, for some reason, his wife and himself took a liking to me and requested me to assist him in checking out of the room. At the end of the day. He had three beautiful children, all mixed race, like myself, and he had to tend to one of them who was dealing with. An eye infection and manage their luggage in their checkout and proceeded down to the driveway at the entrance. It was all hands on deck, including the general manager, all supervisors, and my bell staff. Problem is, on a checkout like this, too many people get in the way of us. Lackey is receiving any kind of proper gratuity. On top of that, celebrities tend to have what we call a fixer. Someone who acts as a middleman between the hotel and the guests. Because, of course, the guests don't want to talk to the bellhop. Get someone else do that. Sure. So I'm waiting next to his vehicle. Luggage is packed, not expecting any tip because it's part of the course with this kind of check out. And I can't complain, having had the opportunity to serve someone I admired greatly. At that point, Mr. De Niro walked up to the fixer and I heard him say, are these guys taken care of? Of course. The fixer replies, oh, yes, of course. Knowing darn well that wasn't true. That's when De Niro pulls the most classic move ever. He looks at the fixture and says, okay, well, I want to take care of them myself. I wish I could do it. De Niro I'm not even going to embarrass myself. Though I'm surprised you can't proceed to hand out $20 bills to all the bellman simply for holding the door open. Then he walks over to me, thanks me for my service, and shakes my hand. My heart is beating like Jimmy Conway. I looked Jimmy Conway's boot in Billy BAT's face. I looked down and there are $520 bills folded up neatly in my palm. He seriously folded up the bills in his palm and shook my hand like square. Stacey had just called action. The only thing I could think was, wow, he really just did that. I basically blacked out after that. And that is from Corey Osborne. He came to and wrote the email. Pretty cool. That is very good. I love that. De Niro taking care of the common man. Yeah. And boo on the fixer. Yeah. Fix this, buddy. That was a great one. Thanks a lot, Corey. That was a good tipping story. That was maybe the best one we got, I think. So. Let's see, what else, chuck, we got nothing. Can you think of anything for anybody to write in about? If you got any interesting Manhattan history stories, that's a great one. Or Brooklyn. The Brooklyn Historical Society is killing it. You know our friend Rachel Grundy does literary pub crawls. That's right. So seek out the literary pub crawl in South Manhattan and Rachel and her cohorts will take you around to the pubs and you'll drink and learn about the famous people who wrote there and drank there. Yes. That's great, Chuck. Sure. So, yeah, what Chuck said, and you can wrap it up in a Tweet 140 characters or less to SYSK podcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstuffyshow. Or you can send us an email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, send it to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseoffworks.com. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? 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." | ||
2a7adcec-3b0f-11eb-a672-83d4bacb27a4 | How Forgiveness Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-forgiveness-works | For most of history, forgiveness fell under the domain of religion. But in the 1980s science started investigating it and found that forgiving someone is really, really good for you. Learn how anybody can be the better person in this really great episode.
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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | For most of history, forgiveness fell under the domain of religion. But in the 1980s science started investigating it and found that forgiving someone is really, really good for you. Learn how anybody can be the better person in this really great episode.
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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Thu, 27 Jan 2022 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=27, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=27, tm_isdst=0) | 56394469 | audio/mpeg | "Picture this, friends. You could be packing a carry on for a trip to Hawaii when you realize you're going to need a bigger bag. But it's cool because you booked your flight with your city Advantage Platinum Select card. So you can check a bag for free on domestic travel and still have room for those souvenirs. And surprise, those souvenirs also earned you advantage miles. Actually, you earned advantage miles and loyalty points with each swipe. So let's start dreaming about your next next adventure. This could be you and you could be anywhere with the city advantage Platinum Select card. Learn more at citi comAdventure and travel on with cityadvantage. This July, don't miss an entire summer of surprises on Disney Plus with Disney's High School Musical, the Musical, the series season three Zombies, three Doctor Strange in the multiverse of madness, and the wonderful summer of Mickey Mouse. Plus new episodes of Marvel Studios, ms. Marvel and National Geographics. America the Beautiful. From the awardwinning producers of Planet Earth, Frozen Planet and the Disney Nature films, america the Beautiful takes viewers on a tour of the most spectacular and visually arresting regions of our great nation. All these and more streaming this month on Disney Plus. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. And Jerry's here too. And this is stuff you should know. Some philosophical waxing is going to happen in this one. I think it's inevitable. Chuck that's right. And Don Henley songs. Oh, yeah, that's a good one, too. Heart of the Matter, you like it? Sure. All right. That part where it's like, I'm learning to live without you now stirs my soul every time. Forgiveness. Yeah. You'd have to be dead inside to not be stirred by that part. I agree. It's good song, but he really kind of nails it in that because he's talking about forgiveness and the heart of the matter. Sure. And he wants forgiveness. He needs forgiveness. Even if it's the end of the relationship. Yeah. Even if she doesn't love him anymore. Sure. So on the one hand, that is a certain kind of forgiveness. That an individual or person, that's a path someone can set down. But there's been a lot of research starting in the very beginning stages at the middle of the 20th century, but really picking up in the 90s, research into forgiveness, like legitimate scientific research. And it's a multidisciplinary thing because there's a lot of different fields, disciplines sure. That have said, hey, actually, this is something we can study and measure and produce articles and work on. And they have, they've produced some really good legitimate work. But what most of them have been focused on is not the Don Henley position of somebody who needs to be redeemed, who needs redemption to feel better, who needs forgiveness, but rather the person doing the forgiving the person who was originally transgressed against not the offender, but the offendee. That's where most of the research has been done on forgiveness. Right. Don Henley is a rock star, so he's writing a song about wanting to be forgiven for a foursome he had in St. Paul backstage. Sure. Even if you don't love me anymore, can you forgive me that? Can you blame a guy is what he's saying. Yeah, I think that's probably exactly what that song is about. Now that you mentioned that's the subtext. So I think we should start by pointing out something about forgiveness. Is that a lot of people there's a lot of stories about people not forgiving. We call it revenge, and people love revenge. Think about the revenge movie genre and how many entries there are. Pretty great. Have you ever seen? I saw the devil. Yeah. Have you ever seen old boy? Yes. Have you ever seen death becomes her? Yeah. Have you ever seen she Devil? No. Oh, you haven't? With Roseanne Barr and Ed Begley and Merry. I saw that. Was that a revenge movie? Yes, all of them. Great revenge movies. Can I shout out one of my favorites? Yeah, please do. Like legitimately kind of a smaller indie movie called Blue Ruin. Oh, yeah, I saw that one. Great revenge movie. If you're into revenge movies and I am, I enjoy it. There's a catharsis involved because I'm a big forgiver. So I think I like seeing movies where revenge happens. Yeah. And we'll talk a lot about revenge because they're virtually two sides of the same coin and they really interact in some surprising ways that are sensible when you see it laid out, but you might not necessarily be walking around thinking about. But on the other side, if you look up movies about forgiveness, almost all of them were produced by a megachurch somewhere in the south. Or you've got Magnolia and then the Fisher King are like, the two legitimate contenders for movies about forgiveness. Well, I don't know, because I think there's a fine line sometimes between redemption stories and forgiveness stories. Okay. They can kind of go hand in hand. There are plenty of redemption stories. Stories, okay. Like what? Redemption stories. Yeah. Let's hear it. Oh, I mean, Hoosiers one of the great sports redemption movies. Okay. I think that's a pretty loose definition of redemption. Sure. Former alcoholic coach who was not working because of some bad deeds gets redeemed by leading a team to a championship. Dennis Hopper gets redeemed as the alcoholic father. Wait a minute, was Gene Hackman on the road to redemption? I thought he came in and basically got Dennis Hopper redeemed. It was a double redemption. He was getting redeemed as well. All right. Okay. Plenty of redemption stories. And I think there's a lot of movies that wrestle with the idea of forgiveness in really weighty heavy ways. Like these true stories that you hear about these awful things that happen, whether a family member is accidentally killed by someone or murdered by someone. Like, there's a lot of that stuff in movies. Okay, so my thesis is this and this is strictly me editorializing here. I think there's some validity to it. And that is that the reason why it's much easier to name revenge movies is because revenge appeals to our baser instincts. It makes sense. It's universally understood. And like you said, you even consider yourself a big time forgiver, and yet you enjoy revenge movies. It's cathartic for you there's something to be delivered by a revenge movie, a movie about forgiveness. It's just more complicated. It's harder. We're not as good we're not as automatically adept at forgiveness as we may be with revenge. That's why I think there's fewer forgiveness movies. But that's not to say that we're not moved by it, because I think if you hear whenever you hear real life stories of forgiveness, they just bowl you over. Even when you step back and think about what the person is actually doing, you're like, yes, legitimately. Anybody could do what they just did. It's akin to hearing somebody solo climbing Mount Everest or something like that. It makes the news literally when somebody forgives in a really deep way that the average person might not. Yeah, like a big time transgression. A lot of times you'll hear of a courtroom scene where someone has forgiven the person who, like, murdered their relative or loved one or something. And that stuff is powerful. You're right. Every time you see these stories, you dug up this one story from Berkeley, the Greater Good magazine. Science based insights for a Meaningful life out of UC Berkeley. This woman who was a nurse's aide who hit a guy she had been drinking, hit a guy in her car. He went through the windshield and was stuck there. And she was so impaired, she didn't realize it for a while, eventually realized it, got out of the car, could not get the guy out, who was still alive, mind you. And so drove home and parked her car in the garage to let this guy slowly die in her garage over the course of a couple of days. And she sobered up, would go out and check on them once in a while, but refused to call for help because she was too concerned about getting in trouble. So instead, she let him die, had a couple of friends come help her hide the body, move the body, and then actually got found out later on because four months later she was at a party and she joked about it to an acquaintance who went and told the cops, and this woman ended up getting 50 years in prison. That's a horrible story. That's one of the worst things that a human being could possibly do. There were so many opportunities for this woman to save this man's life. And by the way, everyone involved in that court case who had a medical degree, said that had she called the cops, the fire department, take the guy to the hospital, he almost certainly would have survived those injuries. But given that she didn't for days get him medical aid, he finally did succumb to them, but he probably would have survived. Almost certainly would have survived. What she did was about as horrific as what a person could do, and just so irresponsible with human life, and she rightfully got a 50 year prison sentence for that crime. And yet, despite how horrific that was, what made news just as much as that is that a short time later, that man's son, the man who was hit and killed publicly forgave that woman, for killing his father yes, at the sentencing, said, quote, there are no winners in a case like this. Just as we all lost Greg, you all will be losing your daughter to her family. I still want to extend my forgiveness to Shantay Mallard was her name, and let her know that the Mallard family is in my prayers. And this is the kind of stuff, like you said, that makes the news where I think it hits everybody, because it makes everybody stop for a second and say, Could I do that? Yes. Could I reach that point of forgiveness? And that's a big weighty question, because there are all kinds of forgiveness. There's a couple partners together who get in a fight, and someone says they're sorry for doing a certain thing and they're forgiven or not. There are situations at work where people are forgiven. There are friends who maybe betray you by cheating on somebody with someone. I had a situation like that where I had a former friend. I felt like, cheated with my barely ex girlfriend, and I spent quite a few years being upset about that and then forgave him. And it's a powerful thing. So there's, like, levels. But when you get to this kind of thing where someone caused the death of a loved one and then even laughed about it, to be able to forgive like that is just that's next level. It is so much so, Chuck, that a group of convicted murderers who were serving sentences in prison heard about this and I guess got in touch with one another and raised funds and got a $10,000 scholarship together for Brandon Biggs to go to college. The convicted murderer sent the kid to college because this very generous act of public forgiveness of his own father's murderer. So, yeah, it is. It's an astounding thing. And yet everything that the research that really, like I said, started to take off in earnest in the 90s has shown us that we're all perfectly capable of doing that. The answer is, yes, you can do that. You totally could do that, but that we don't necessarily fully understand how to. And yet there's a lot of evidence also that it's evolutionarily wired into us to do that. Yeah. And we'll get into religiosity of it a bit more in detail later. But all religions talk a lot about forgiveness. There's a pretty famous story in the Bible where Peter said to Jesus, lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times. And Jesus said, I tell you not seven times, but 70 times seven. And Peter said so 490 times. And Jesus said, peter always so literal. Yeah, that one's pretty good. But you can read Hindu, you can read the Buddhists talk about it. Every religion talks about forgiveness is kind of maybe a cornerstone of the religion in some cases. So much so that when science started looking into forgiveness and just trying to figure it out, generally, people just presumed forgiveness was under the realm and the domain of religion. That's where you went for answers about forgiveness. And science said, Ho ho, ho, we can top that. Surely we can beat that 490 number. And that's what they've said about doing yeah, I mean, Jesus forgave his crucifiers. It's like one of the few things Jesus said on the cross. According to the Bible, they know not what they do. Like, forgive them for they know not what they do. Right. And like you said, it's not just Christianity. Although Christianity gets all the accolades for forgiveness, jainism is a big one. There's a kind of a mantra from Jainism that says, I grant forgiveness to all living beings. May all living beings grant me forgiveness. My friendship is with all living beings. My enmity is totally non existent. When you look at that, especially if you're not a Jainist, you're like, wow, how would you ever reach that level? And I think the point is you never reach that level. It's an ideal goal that you try to achieve probably on a daily basis if you're a janus, but it's certainly over a lifetime, you know? Yeah, and I'd like to read this again, not to pile on the religious stuff, but the Hindu one really spoke to me. This one part in the middle says, what can a wicked person do unto him? Or into one who carries the sabre of forgiveness in his hand? And that one really speaks to me in that it's a powerful tool to forgive, and it's for you as the forgiver. I think a lot of times people think it can clear the conscious of someone who's done something wrong. I guess that certainly happens, but to me, it's a powerful weapon. You have to regain your own strength as a human. Yes, that seems to be the bulk of what psychology is coming up with as far as studying forgiveness goes. That it's really the person who has been wronged. That's what forgiveness is more about. That's the psychological aspect of it. Like we said, it's a multidisciplinary investigation. And so you've got evolutionary biologists who are like, that's really great psychology, but we found a different reason for forgiveness, and it doesn't quite fit that mold. And then the medical field says, no, it's even better than that. You can actually improve your health by genuinely forgiving somebody. So there's all these different inputs that are coming together to create this really complex contextualized picture of what forgiveness is and what it does for us and why we have it. That's right. I think it's a great set up. I agree. You want to take a break? I might just not come back. I feel so good about that. No, we have to finish. We got to complete. All right, we'll be back in a minute to talk about what I think is probably the most interesting part of this is the evolutionary aspect. Right after this stuff, you should know. What if you were a trendy apparel company facing an avalanche of demand to ensure more customers can buy more Sherpaline jackets? 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Okay, friends, so imagine you're in an accident and your injuries are extensive enough that not only do you have to spend time in the hospital, but you're going to need rehab, too. Well, you have insurance, so no problem, right? Well, not entirely. You get back from the hospital and notice there's a gap and that your insurance is only covering part of your bill. And it's a big bill. Yes. Until you get back on your feet, you can't get to work, and now you have this financial burden hanging over your head like some dark rain cloud. So what do you do, Chuck? Well, if you have Aflac, you can worry less knowing they can help with the expenses health insurance doesn't cover. Aflac pays cash, which can be put toward expenses, which may be impacted by a covered medical event. Things like your medical bill, copays, or even routine things like rent, groceries, childcare, and more. Yeah, that's Afflac in a nutshell. They care about what health insurance doesn't cover so those they insure can care about everything else. And care has always been part of Affleck's DNA. It's the foundation that the company was built on more than 65 years ago. And it's at the core of who they are still today. That's right. They believe the cost of health care shouldn't come at the expense of peace of mind, which is why they are on a mission to help close health and wealth gaps for Americans everywhere. So when the unexpected threatens your peace of mind, let Aflac stand in the gap to help you. To learn how Aflac can help with expenses, health insurance doesn't cover. Visit Aflac.com. That's Aflac.com. This is Libya. Correct. Forgiveness was the Dave Ruse joint. Okay. I thought this was livia. So, yeah, thanks to Dave for this. He did a great job with this research. But the evolutionary aspect of forgiveness is super interesting to me because I think that a lot of people assume that it's what Dave calls a higher virtue. Like took in the gang were so base as kind of primitive thinkers, is that they didn't have the capacity forgive. They would smite somebody if someone punched took in the face, took punch back, or someone attacked, took attack back, maybe even harder. And there is quite a bit of evidence that they're not mutually exclusive and that fighting back and forgiving both have a big evolutionary advantage. Yeah. So the big evolutionary advantage of revenge is if you live in a social group and somebody takes advantage of you or they hit you or they steal your food or whatever, if you don't do something to right that wrong, you're broadcasting to the rest of the group that you're open for exploitation, and that's not good for you. It's also not good for the chances that you're going to pass along your genes. And so under the auspices of natural selection, it makes sense for you to hit that person that steals your food or who hits you. And that's revenge. And revenge forms that function in the social group. It says to everybody, it signals to the rest of the group, you are not to be messed with. This guy tried it and look what happened to him. Nobody else should try that. Go pick on somebody else. And there's actually been studies that have shown that not just among apes and primates, but among human cultures, revenge is found pretty much universally. And I saw a study, Chuck, that said that the mere presence of a person, a third party, who's witnessing an argument increases the chances that the argument is going to come to blows because you're signaling to the rest of the group, and in this case, just that third person, you are not to be messed with. But that's the purpose of revenge is to broadcast that signal. Yeah. I mean, I would say that any kind of dumb, drunk bar fight, half of it is the fact that someone doesn't want to back down in front of other people. Sure. More than half. Totally. And then if those two guys were just in an alley somewhere, they may just hug it out yeah, probably not. But you never know. It's possible. Or they might talk it out, at least. Yeah, or just agree that it's dom and leave. Yes. But you talked about studies in the animal world. There's a primatologist named Franz de Vault who looked at wild chimps, recorded 350 encounters, aggressive encounters between these chimps and then what happened afterward. And in 51% of these encounters, the chimps would literally kind of kiss and make up and touch each other and embrace each other after a fight. We've seen the same thing in Bonobos, in great apes. There's sheep, there are dolphins, there's goats. Even hyenas have shown traits of forgiveness. So it's not ubiquitous, but it is all over the animal kingdom. Animals fighting and then animals making up with one another. Right. The revenge one is pretty easy to understand, but then you're like, okay, why would there be the making up part? But that also ties into the fact that these same animals are also living in tight knit social groups. And so you have a limited amount of people that you can possibly have a dispute or a feud with. And if you're not working together cooperatively, in that sense, also your chances of survival are decreased. So what makes sense is what's called the Valuable Relationship Hypothesis, which says if somebody hits you, you should hit them back, but then after that, you should make up with them. So you're sending that signal you're not to be messed with, but then you're repairing that relationship, that valuable relationship that you depend on to help your survival in the social group, you're repairing it, and then you guys can move forward. And that is how revenge and forgiveness are basically two sides of the same coin, or at least work in conjunction with one another to keep the group functioning at its best. Right. And that kind of dovetails with the second part of that thing, which is called negative reciprocity, which is if someone hits Tuktuk and tooktook goes crazy and just starts wailing on the other person who just slapped him in the face, that's not good either because everyone's going to go, whoa, I'm not sure I trust him now. He's definitely burned that bridge forever between him and the other guy. And none of this is very good. So what they found is negative reciprocity. If someone smites you, you smite them back the same amount and then forgive them. Like if someone takes off their glove and slaps you across the face, you don't kick them between the legs and then wail on their face. You slap them back with your glove. And then you talk about forgiving one another. And everyone sees that you can work with people, you can stand your ground, but you can also forgive and work with people, which means you're valuable to the group and you're valuable to have around. Yeah. And so kind of tied into what you were saying earlier about how there's this idea that revenge is a base instinct and forgiveness is a higher instinct, rather than realizing that they're both pretty basic instincts. Among the animal kingdom is there's this idea that in human society we have created, like, these social institutions in these contexts so that the individual doesn't have to carry out revenge and then forgiveness, that they can just focus on forgiveness. As long as those social institutions are doing what they're supposed to do, as long as there is like a pursuit of justice and you can rely on the idea that the person who transgressed against you by killing your father is going to be caught and punished and sentenced to jail. You don't have to worry about revenge. It's being conducted for you. And then you the individual in this well functioning society can just focus on whether you want to forgive or not. And that's that kind of higher and lower echelon, because in the opposite situation, where there isn't like a good sense of justice, where it does seem like if you want justice, you have to go seek it out yourself, revenge is going to be much more exercise much more frequently than forgiveness will. Yeah. Which says a lot about the United States these days. Yeah, I'm not trying to be cynical even that's just sort of what we see around us. I think a lot of people feel like that sense of justice in this country is pretty skewed and that's why you might see the increases in things like vigilantism or revenge. And I don't know what societies you look to to do a study like that. I'm kind of curious on the ones that are very well policed and the justice is sort of fair and equal. But I think that's one of the problems in the States these days, for sure, without getting too far down the rabbit hole. But also even it's kind of eye opening to me because I've never really thought about the courts. And the justice system is set up to help individuals move along. Yeah, it should be. You just think of it as punishment. It's a system for punishment, not for redemption necessarily, but it's also to help the victims. I just never saw it that way before. Yeah, it's interesting when you talk about that guy in court, and a lot of times you'll hear the courtroom forgiveness. Sometimes you'll also hear the opposite and you hear the courtroom like, I will never forgive you for what you did to me. And I think not always, but it seems to be a lot of time tied to whether the transgressor has really acknowledged what they've done and sought forgiveness and said, that was the worst thing I've ever done in my life, and I don't think you should ever forgive me. Like, it's an interesting sort of dance that happens there because it's not a one to one thing. It's not like every time a bad criminal that does something really asks for forgiveness and says, it was a terrible thing, the other person forgives. Sometimes the person could laugh it off, like this lady did, and not ask for forgiveness, and the other person could forgive. Which I think goes back to the notion that forgiveness comes from the forgiver. Right. It's really about the person who has been wrong. That's what it's about. And so. Yeah. Now we've reached the kind of psychology's domain over the concept of forgiveness. Which is that it's about you. The individual who suffered a wrong. Releasing the pain and the anger and the resentment and all the negative feelings that you're experiencing so that you can feel better. And that it doesn't matter whether the other person is asking for forgiveness and that it doesn't even matter if the other person deserves forgiveness or not. That genuine forgiveness, psychologically speaking, according to some psychologists will hear that some disagree, but that genuine, true forgiveness is unconditional, that you forgive the person whether they deserve it or not. Yes. And this is where the language to me is a little I could see people debating this because it is forgiveness in a way, but to me, it's almost more of just a letting go. Yeah, I agree with you of an anger. It's so tricky with the definition, because when you think of forgiveness, you think, I'm saying and it's really not what it is. What you're not saying is, it's okay what you did. Okay. You know what I mean? That's not a key component of forgiveness. No, it's not. And that's a very confusing thing for a lot of people, too, is that the idea that if you forgive somebody, you're condoning their behavior, you're saying it's okay what they do? That's not the point of forgiveness from what psychologists who research this are coming up with. They're saying, no, what you're doing when you forgive somebody is to say, I know what you did. You wronged me last summer. I can live with that. It doesn't make it any better. It doesn't make it any better. It doesn't excuse what you did. Right. And it certainly doesn't excuse future repeated instances of what you just did. But it's saying that I'm willing to let go of the pain I have associated with this act you did against me. That's wrong, and I'm going to move forward with my life. And in doing that, I'm willing to let you move forward as well. Well, or I think sometimes in a case like this, that kind of forgiveness can make the transgressor suffer worse. Sometimes. Yeah. Just out of guilt. Yeah. And they want to be admonished and hated as part of a punishment. But TS. Because, again, forgiveness is not for you. It's for the person. Dave even makes a great point. The person being forgiven is secondary or even unnecessary to the process. And that's sort of the key. You don't even have to tell that person necessarily. We'll get to later some kind of like how to forgive. Some people say that you should tell someone out loud, like literally tell someone, but you don't necessarily have to tell that person if it's a situation like this or even if it's like a close personal friend. I think usually you do when it's someone you know because that's a part of communicating with one another in a healthy way. But if it's the person who killed your family, you don't have to tell them to forgive them and you can still forgive them. Yes. So some psychologists define forgiveness like a full forgiveness as including you actually seeking out contact with that person. Right. And that if you forgive them but don't tell them or you still avoid them afterwards where it's like, hey, I forgive you, but good luck with the rest of your life, you're not in my life anymore. That to some psychologists, not all. Some psychologists say that's not genuine forgiveness. That's akin to like what you were saying, which is letting go of anger and moving on, but not really actually forgiving. I still say it's forgiving. I'm not one of the psychologists. Sure, and it's very much debated for sure. But then that also leads to another point too, that if you forgive someone, it doesn't necessarily mean you forget. Right. And that's not part and parcel to it. Forgiving doesn't mean forgetting. You can forget. I'm actually really good at that kind of thing where I forgive because unless it was a really huge wrong, it just kind of fades from my memory fairly easily and I don't dwell on it, they can go hand in hand. But if you've been deeply wrong by somebody where you're actually going through the process of forgiving, which we'll talk about, and it's a deliberate step that you're taking toward finding peace with yourself and your life again, then you know very well what that wrong was and you're not going to forget it. But eventually the aim is that you will have divorced the emotional attachment from that memory of that wrong to where it becomes akin to like a movie you saw once or a trip you took once. It's just a thing that happened in your life rather than this crisis that is sucking up your attention and emotions. Yeah, I really like this definition from Fred Luskin who is a psychologist and forgiveness expert, for what it's worth, director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Projects and Fred's definition is to forgive is to give up all hope for a better past. And that really lays it out there in a very practical sense that what has happened has happened. You may not be there yet in your journey to forgiveness or the letting go, but you cannot change what happened, no matter how angry you are or how much you want someone to pay for it or suffer or how much revenge you want. So there is no better path. That's impossible. So giving up hope for a better past, it's sort of a bleak definition, but one that I think is pretty instructive. Yeah, but it's also a realistic definition, too, if you think about it, because you can't change the past one way or another. You can only alter how you let the past continue to affect you. Or not. The other thing I really want to say here right now, because it can be confusing for me, too, when I think about forgiveness and anger and stuff like that, is not no one is talking about something like throwing a switch. Or rather than feeling anger, you feel forgiveness. That's actually counterproductive. As we'll see, you can't replace anger with forgiveness. Forgiveness is meant to come after anger because you use anger or hurt or resentment or whatever. Your version of that is to protect and guard your own boundaries. So it's unnatural for you to not have some sort of negative emotion or negative response to being wronged, but you don't want to replace it or try to replace it with forgiveness because you may accidentally trip up the process and you're not really legitimately feeling forgiveness. You're basically just setting yourself up to be wronged again. Yeah. My deal personally is Emily always talks about what a forgiving person I am because I really crave to forgive. I don't know. I was about to say crave forgiveness. I crave forgiving. I guess it sounds funny, but all I need is for someone to say they're sorry for something and then it's done. Nine times out of ten, that's done for me. And as far as forgetting, I'm a pretty good forgetter too. I don't know about literally forgetting something, but I definitely look back on a lot of relationships, especially with ex girlfriends that were terrible, and go, that was so bad in that relationship. We were pretty good, right? Sure. No, we weren't pretty good at all. Right. I just have rose colored glasses, and I think you and I are both podcasting partners and family and team. Good. About when we had little dust ups forgiving one another. If the other person says they're sorry, you and I both get over that stuff pretty quickly. Yeah. It's very key, though. Yeah. Forgiveness is like from the heart. If you're hanging on to something, then you're not done with it yet. No. And that is so important, Chuck. That's important for the individual to remember that if you are unable to forgive, that means that you're still hanging on to it. That doesn't mean you'll never forgive, and it also doesn't mean you have to hurry up and forgive. It means you're still in the process of reaching the point where you can forgive. It's a deliberate choice. From everything I've seen in the research, you are making a deliberate choice to forgive somebody, but it's not throwing a switch. It's part of a process. And during that process, while you're on the road to forgiving the person. You're still going to be kind of angry at them, maybe not the whole time, but every once in a while it might hit you before you fully forgiven them and then you're going to be mad about it all over again. That's okay, that's normal, that's natural. You can't really rush it. You can, but it's going to be detrimental. What you want to do is just kind of let it play out and have faith that if you're on the path of forgiveness, you'll ultimately will forgive the person and things will be good again. Yeah. And depending on your life and your childhood, you probably have an inclination or an instinct to forgive or not based on what you saw, what was modeled there's, both nature and nurture involved. But I think people generally have an instinct of revenge or forgiveness, and to do one of the other that is against that instinct requires great effort, especially in the case of forgiveness, because you may not be inclined to be a forgiver at all. That doesn't mean something's wrong with you. That just means that's probably what you saw growing up, or maybe something happened to you when you were young that makes it harder for you. But it's still possible to get there. It just might be tougher. Well, what's neat is another thing that the field of psychology is telling us about forgiveness is that it can be taught. You can learn to forgive even if you were raised in an unforgiving environment where you never learned how to do that. You can learn how to do it. And I say we kind of jump to those to how to forgive before we go into physical health because I feel like we're kind of there right now. Yeah. Well, let's take a break. Okay? Let's take our final break and we'll talk about that when we get back, as well as this one. Sort of interesting study I'd like to hit real quick too. Okay, stuff you should know. What if you were a major transit system with billions of passengers taking millions of trips every year? You aren't about to let any cyber tech 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 play time and you insist on feeding them the highest quality food you can find. Enter Halo holistic made with only whole meat, no meat, meals, and probiotics. For digestive health, our first ingredient is always responsibly sourced protein raised with no antibiotics. And bonus, our fruits and veggies contain no GMOs. It's a lifestyle and a pet bomb thing. Find Haloholistic at chewy amazonandhalopets.com okay, friends, so imagine you're in an accident and your injuries are extensive enough that not only do you have to spend time in the hospital, but you're going to need rehab, too. Well, you have insurance, so no problem, right? Well, not entirely. You get back from the hospital and notice there's a gap and that your insurance is only covering part of your bill. And it's a big bill. Yeah. And until you get back on your feet, you can't get to work. And now you have this financial burden hanging over your head like some dark rain cloud. So what do you do, Chuck? Well, if you have Aflac, you can worry less knowing they can help with the expenses health insurance doesn't cover. Afflac pays cash, which can be put toward expenses which may be impacted by a covered medical event. Things like your medical bill, copays, or even routine things like rent, groceries, childcare and more. Yeah, that's afflac in a nutshell. They care about what health insurance doesn't cover, so those they insure can care about everything else. And care has always been part of Aflac's DNA. It's the foundation that the company was built on more than 65 years ago, and it's at the core of who they are still today. That's right. They believe the cost of health care shouldn't come at the expense of peace of mind, which is why they are on a mission to help close health and wealth gaps for Americans everywhere. So when the unexpected threatens your peace of mind, let Aflac stand in the gap to help you. To learn how Aflac can help with expenses health insurance doesn't cover, visit Aflac.com. That's Aflac.com. All right. So there's this study that Dave dug up that I thought was interesting. I think it's flawed extreme social psychology. They took 46 people. They divided them into two groups. One wrote about a time when they had something wrong committed against them, but they forgave. The other wrote about a time when they had something wrong committed against them, but they did not forgive. And then they told those people to stand at the bottom of the hill to estimate how steep it was, and also in a separate part of the city, to jump as high as they could. The unforgiving group guessed that the incline was five degrees steeper on average than the forgiving, and the forgivers jumped 7 CM higher. So the takeaway here is you literally it's more difficult for you. You see the world as being more difficult and steeper, and you can't jump as high, and you can't accomplish as much if you're holding on to that all kinds of red flags study, especially when it comes to the jumping part. Yeah, but I thought it was interesting that the guessing the incline of the hill, there may be something to that. Well, yeah, it is backed up, Chuck, by the physiological studies of how stress and anger affect you and how releasing those can actually help you. There's a lot of research that shows that you can suffer from chronic stress when you're angry all the time, and that that's tied to everything from high blood pressure to diabetes to poor cardiovascular outcomes. Just a whole host of chronic conditions can be traced back to chronic stress, and chronic stress can be traced back to chronic anger. And what they're discovering is that forgiveness can actually undo that, can actually reverse that. There was a study that rated people based on the life stresses they'd had, and they apparently recruited participants for the study who'd been through a lot of stress, so much so that they were basically always chronically stressed because they have had so many terrible events in their life. And there was one group that actually did not have poor health compared to the rest of the group. And they found that when they gave them a test of forgiveness of how forgiving they were generally they found that this subset was actually overall a very forgiving group and that that somehow was battling back the chronic stress or the effects of chronic stress on their health in life. Yeah, I think that makes complete sense. If you are someone who really has a problem with forgiving and just holds on to these deep, deep resentments against people, usually against people very close to you and your family, even that can't be good for you physically. I've seen it happen. I don't want to get too personal, but there are people in my family who haven't spoken for 20 plus years over dumb stuff that it's like, you see that kind of, like, stubbornness coupled with resentment, and it's just man, that is just no way to live. No way to live. Yeah. So there was another one, another study that Dave turned up that shows that even, like, in a very short term, thinking about holding a grudge can actually affect you physiologically by activating your sympathetic nervous system as they put to the battle or skedaddle impulse. And they found that they cut these two groups into or they cut the participants into two groups. All of the people had to think about some time when they were deeply wronged in the past. And then one group was taken through an exercise where they learned to forgive the person. The other group this is so mean, was encouraged to hold a grudge. They went through an exercise to hold a grudge and be angry and resentment or resentful about that. And they found that the people who were taught to hold the grudge had elevated skin conductance, which meant their nervous system was aroused. Higher arterial blood pressure, not good. They also have muscle tension in the brow area when your brows furrowed, when you're stressed out or mad. Sure. And the symptoms, even after they went through an exercise to basically de escalate everything, the symptoms persisted. And this was just an exercise where you were just thinking about being wronged and then holding a grudge about it, just like, probably this is like an hour out of their lives. And that was the effects, that was the findings of that. So it's pretty clear that, yes, anger can affect you physically. We don't have the reams of data that we have supporting it like we do, that anger hurts you physically. But there seems to be the opposite of that holds true, which is releasing that anger, which is forgiveness in whatever form it takes, can actually improve your health as well. Right. Earlier in the episode, we were talking about religion. All religions talk extensively about forgiveness. And when they do, studies these days usually like questionnaires and stuff. Depending on the studies you look at, you would think religiosity does play a role in that. People who describe themselves as religious, supposedly in some studies are two and a half times more likely to say that others should be forgiven unconditionally. But I know you found some studies that found that religiosity does not play as big a role as a lot of people think it does, and that sometimes religious people may be more inclined to say that they are forgiving when they aren't because it's the right thing to do. Yeah. The study found that basically when you survey them, people who are religious tend to come off is more forgiving. The self report is forgiving. Right. But then if you ask them other certain questions, I guess in real world situations, they're no more forgiving than other people. So that would be an interpretation that they think they're more forgiving or tell people they're more forgiving than they actually are. But there is another way to look at it too. And they went back and followed up on that study and they found that over a longer term, people who are religious actually do tend to be more forgiving in their lives. It wasn't like the most set in Stone study, but I found it interesting that the religious people in this study had more difficulty in relating grudges that they're carrying around compared to the control group of people who weren't religious. Yeah, makes sense. Sure. There was some redemption there. Yeah. As far as how to forgive, like we said, hopefully we've gotten it through. That is something you can learn if you are not an inherent forgiver. You can learn how to through practice. There's a psychologist named Worthington. Edward Everett. Everett Worthington. There should be a third after that, if you ask me. Totally should be. And Worthington has developed a reach model which will go through it's an acronym, of course, recall is the first step, and that's to really recall the event in detail, but in sort of an objective way and not necessarily something that was done to you, but just to look at the detail of it and try not to judge yourself or the other person. Just simply bring that back to your mind. Yeah. And the point of that is to feel the feelings. Like, we humans have such a tendency to try to get away from negative feelings and run toward positive feelings. And I think Worthington's position is that we have to feel whatever feelings are associated with it, and that's a huge part of it. We have to go through that experience. That's part of the recall. Right. The E stands for Empathy. This is one that is I don't know about controversial, but not everyone agrees at all on whether or not you need to actually have empathy to forgive. But empathy can certainly help you forgive. If someone has broken into your home and stolen from you, it might help to forgive them, to empathize and think about where they may be in their life. To feel like they needed to do something. Like that is one example. Yeah. And he points out also, like you're not excusing their behavior, but you're just thinking about them beyond just a villain or criminal or person who wronged you. For sure. And actually, we should say Everett Worthington had to put his money where his mouth was because his mother was actually murdered by a burglar, I think back in 1997. And he put himself through the reach method, and he said he came out on the other side better off than he had been. And I think he was already doing this. Right. That didn't inspire his career, did it? No, I think he was already doing it, coincidentally. Wow, the irony. So the A stands for altruistic gift. And the point of this is that you realize that you are actually giving a gift by forgiving somebody even, I guess, if you don't tell them, even if you don't necessarily empathize with them. But the way you do this. The way you recognize that your forgiveness is an altruistic gift. Is to think about times where you've wronged somebody and that they've been forgiven or forgiving. And even if you didn't necessarily deserve it and what a gift that that was. You're kind of bringing it to mine. Which I think is really suspiciously kind of tied in with empathizing. If you ask me. Yeah, I mean, he was trying to make the word reach sure. Commit to this is what I mentioned earlier about telling someone else doesn't necessarily have to be the person you're forgiving, although that could help if you want to go that route. But telling someone else, at least in Worthington's mind, gives it a degree of permanence, and it basically makes it part of your story. Like you're changing the story, essentially. Exactly. And then hold. And this is very important too, that we said earlier, you can forgive, and it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to forget. So when you do remember that kind of thing, you're still going through the process and you're still angered by it, you're still hurt by it, but you're on the path of forgiveness. You have to hold on to the idea that you're working on forgiving them, that it's not an instantaneous thing. So you have to hold the fact that you're forgiving them even in the face of being triggered by or flooded by this. Again, when you think about the memory of it. Right. Luskin has a nine step process, which we weren't going to really get into, but step eight is interesting. Just like REM says, living well is the best. Revenge is sort of the nuts and bolts of number eight. And there's something to be said for that. But I think it also makes it much harder to forgive and move on if you're not able to live well. And that doesn't mean money and riches and stuff like that. That means living a full life. But if you were not able to forgive and get past that, I mean, there are plenty of movies of people that have been have some awful thing from their past that they're just wallowing in all these years later. And that's the central plot of the film. She Devil Hoosiers. That's right. But that's the point of forgiveness, is to free yourself, to find peace within yourself. And yes, it's great for the person who wronged you if you overtly forgive them and let them know, but you don't have to. And then also, Chuck, there's a whole school of thought in psychology that says not only do you not have to tell the person that you're forgiving them, you don't have to forgive them right at all. And that there's this whole almost kind of not culty, but really kind of dogmatic idea that if you don't follow these steps and you don't, like, genuinely fully forgive somebody, you really haven't worked out the process, there's something wrong with you. Maybe you're an unforgiving person, and that makes you tacky. That's what psychologists call it. And there's a whole group of psychologists say, no, there's way more to this process than just nine steps or the reach method. It's more nuanced than that. And that you can be a fully functioning, emotionally developed person who says, you know what? I don't forgive you. I may never forgive you, but I'm still going on with my life. And if the point of forgiveness is to achieve peace in yourself, if you can achieve peace in yourself and you do it without forgiving somebody because you don't want to forgive them or you don't feel like you should forgive them, then that's okay too, as long as you're getting inner peace. That's the point. Yeah. And there's a school of thought saying that in cases where a harm has been committed to you that could happen again. You may be more likely to have that harm committed to you again if you do forgive too much. There is research about spousal abuse that when you're quick to forgive the abuser, then you are victimized more regularly than spouses who aren't as forgiving. And that's based on operate learning, basically you're less likely to engage in a behavior that has a negative consequence. So they've done plenty of research on that and a lot of psychologists say, like, yeah, forgiveness is great, but while you shouldn't be bitter, there are a lot of times when you should not forgive somebody and that's okay. Yeah, there's an article from 1999 on Psychology Today called Must We Forgive? And it is really interesting. It's fascinating. The psychologist writes about probably half a dozen or more people and they're different individual circumstances and the reasons they chose not to forgive. And she kind of pigeonholes them into three general categories, but psychologists love doing that. But it's a really compelling article and it's definitely worth reading and it provides this kind of alternative idea that, no, there are definitely situations where some people don't deserve your forgiveness. One of the chief among them is if you say like a sibling or a family member of some sort you have some sort of falling out with or they've wronged you and you choose not to forgive them, you might feel tremendous pressure from the rest of your family to just go ahead and forgive them. That's a terrible reason to forgive somebody. And if you do forgive them under those circumstances or say because your religion decrees it. That's not full forgiveness and it may actually harm you because you may suffer from a distorted self image or lowered self respect because you basically went back to this person who not only wronged you in the past is unrepentant about it. But it's just going to continue the behavior again in the future. So there's definitely instances where you probably shouldn't forgive, but that doesn't mean that you should be stuck in resentment and anger and letting that person have power over your life. You might just need to move on without them and without forgiving them. And you can make that work as well. Yeah. There was that one terrible story that you sent about the woman who as a child had this terribly bullying and abusive older brother and we won't even talk about the awful things this guy did. But the parents were really always pushing like. Oh. He doesn't know how to say he loves you. He doesn't know how to talk to you. So he does these things and you really need to forgive him. And that's just bonkers. That is a situation where you were doing such great harm as a parent to teach your daughter to accept this kind of behavior and not only accept it, but forgive it. It's like just setting her up unless she really therapies through that stuff later in life of just a series of terrible relationships. Exactly, yes. Forgiveness isn't always the thing. I have a friend who had a terrible thing happened to him when he was younger and we talked a lot about this and he has forgiven that person in his heart and I was like, Well, I haven't. And I was like, I'm still angry about it. And he was like, thanks, that helps. I'm angry and have not forgiven on his behalf. And I thought he was going to say like, no, man, you need to do the same. And he was like, brother he was like, thank you, man. Yeah. I appreciate that. Yeah. And I think that's another thing worth pointing out, too, is we have this concept of people who forgive others being saintly. Yeah. And it's not necessarily that kind of a thing. It's not necessarily that kind of a process. Sometimes it is just straight up self preservation. Yeah. That's the way that you're going to get to a point where you can feel peace again in your life, and that doesn't mean you're a saint or you're even feeling saintly, or you're conducting yourself in a saintly manner. And that doesn't matter as long as you're feeling inner peace and your life is no longer in turmoil and this person who wronged you doesn't have power over you any longer. That's the point of forgiveness. Yeah. And that was totally the deal in his case. That was his only way forward to healing himself. But since this wasn't something that happened to me, I was able to not forgive and remain upset about it. And he was okay with that. Yeah. And still to this day, you won't buy that guy beers. Oh, man. So there's one other thing that has started to kind of come out of the shadows that's just getting picked up by psychology as far as forgiveness goes, and it's self forgiveness, and we don't really have room to talk about that here, but it's worth exploring sometime. Maybe in a short stuff. Yeah, that's a big deal. A lot of times when I'm beating up on myself, emily says, you need to be nicer to my friend. Oh, I know you've told that before. I was just one of the sweetest things I've ever heard. What a kind thing to say. It works. You know who needs to hear that? Don Henley. Is there anything else unforgiveness to I got nothing else. This is a good way to philosophical discussion. I like these. Agreed. Thanks a lot to Dave Bruce for helping us out with this one. And if you want to know more about forgiveness, you should seriously go out and do some reading. Especially if you have something to forgive. It's not something you necessarily can understand. Just instinctively, it helps to see what the experts say. So maybe go explore that and free yourself. Since I said free yourself, that of course, means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this dental art. Hey, guys. Been a listener for a while. We've nearly finished with the sandwiching method before I knew it was even cool. You were talking a few shows back before the holidays about putting a kidney stone in Chuck's replacement tooth. This. Would be unusual, but people actually get custom inlays and artwork made for their crowns. Inlays are generally gold or gemstone with custom artwork, and it's referred to as a tooth tattoo, which is handpainted onto the crown before it gets the final quote of Glaze. The most common request here in the Chicago land area are sports logos. Oh, no. Like a little Chicago Cubs logo. But I've seen names, company logos, even a tiny version of Starry Night on a tooth. While a lot of modern crown and bridge manufacturing has gone digital, highly leveraging cam, CAD and 3D printing, for most restorations, two tattoos are unique manifestation of the relatively unknown artistry of a subset of dental technicians. Wow. While I recognize that dentistry as a whole is widely disliked and a pain to endure, I appreciate you guys probably unknowingly helped to destigmatize restorative dental work by openly talking about your dealings with it. Tooth wear and decay is part of the human condition. No need for shame. After all, will keep me and my cadre employed and happily listening to stuff you should know. Many regards. That is from Eric Crowley or Crowley crowley. I'm going crowley in Park Ridge, Illinois. Very nice. Thanks a lot, Eric. That's awesome. Can you imagine seeing Starry Night on a tooth? I got to look that up. Wonderful. I'd have to scream. That's a good one. And then you could scream whenever you reveal it, too. Yeah, freak people out. And speaking of sports teams, Chuck, I feel like we should congratulate our Georgia Bulldogs for winning the national championship. Yes. Never thought I would see the day. What a great, great game. Just unbelievable feeling. Two championships in three months for this longsuffering Atlantisgeorgia band. I know. That's amazing. I don't even know how to reconcile these feelings that I'm having lately. They'll be robbed from you next year. Don't worry. I'll go back to normal. But that is pretty great to go out on a highlight, probably. That was great. Go Dogs. Go Dogs, indeed. And if you want to get in touch with Chuck and I and Jerry or Frank the chair or Harry Dog even, we can probably pass along emails you send. You can wrap your emails up, spank them on the bottom and send them 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 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." | |
What Saved the American Bison | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/what-saved-the-american-bison | The pre-colonial range of the American bison stretched from Canada to Mexico. From 1820 to 1880, the population dwindled from 30 million to just over 1,000. Join Josh and Chuck as they explore how bison were brought back from the verge of extinction. | The pre-colonial range of the American bison stretched from Canada to Mexico. From 1820 to 1880, the population dwindled from 30 million to just over 1,000. Join Josh and Chuck as they explore how bison were brought back from the verge of extinction. | Thu, 03 Nov 2011 12:51:59 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=3, tm_hour=12, tm_min=51, tm_sec=59, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=307, tm_isdst=0) | 52072779 | 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 talk to Bryant. And that makes this stuff. You should know the big Woolly edition. Yeah, I'm kind of excited about this one. Yeah, man, we've seen one of those before. We're talking about bisons, by the way. Yeah, I thought you might bring that up. Yeah, we saw one at that animal preserve. It was like a bear and a bison, and they were fighting. Yeah, a little depressing, actually. But they are supposedly rescued animals at this animal petting zoo, this wild game. Petting zoo? Yeah. And that was a smart Bison, because he had learned to go to the little shoot where you had put his food. And wasn't he doing something, too? He's manipulating it somehow. Seems like it. Or he's trying to manipulate us into giving him some food. I can't remember there's some manipulation involved because I remember thinking, like, bisons are very manipulative animals. Jerks. Yeah. I have a story for you to start this one, if you like. That sounds great. Chuck, have I ever told you about my one glorious football story? I've heard little bits about your football experience, that you were a bigger kid, so you played on the line, and that's about all I remember. Okay, well, as a child, I went to Beverly Elementary School and I played football for them. And the way it was in Toledo was you would play for your elementary school team when you got to middle school. Interesting. So you could play your last year of elementary school, 6th grade, but then you could keep playing through 7th and 8th grade, but it was for your elementary school. Interesting. It was weird, but so I played for Beverly elementary, which meant I was Beverley Bison, and I was probably the kid on the team that must resemble the Bison, because I was a pretty big fat kid and I was a lineman, and I sucked at football because no one ever explained any strategy to me. It wasn't until college that I understood that football even had strategy. Old technique. Yeah. I thought it was just like, block that guy, right. I didn't teach you to swim, move, nothing. Okay? They taught me nothing. It was literally like, Just stand there and don't let that guy through. That's what I was taught. That's the big I was failed by all coaches. Perfect. Anyway, I did have one shining moment, right? I was 8th grade. I was third string. We were playing the colts. I can't remember what school, but they were the worst team, and we had the game in hand, and the Cults were all, like, just three and a half foot tall, little pint sized kids. So we had the game in hand. It was late in the game, and they put me in as a defensive lineman, right. So you're the biggest guy on the team, and you are third string. I am, at this point, the biggest guy on the field, but yes, I was third string and an 8th grader, too, right? So at this point, I'm the biggest guy in the field, and they put me in, and I point to the quarterback. I'm like, I'm coming for you. They put two guys on me, right? The quarterback hikes the ball. He's appropriately nervous because I'm staring at him. He knows I'm going to get to him one way or the other. This is, like, my last chance, right? These two guys come at me, these two offensive linemen. I just grabbed both of the bachelor helmets and just push them down right underneath me. Go right through them after this, because you're like, maybe we should put this kid in earlier in the season. Anyway, I just get through both of the guys who are on me. That's called the mo. Howard. I go, Is this that's what I did. I go right to the quarterback, didn't tackle them. I picked him up and threw him down. I didn't even like stagger. I just picked the kid up and threw him, and I turned around. I was like, yeah. What I didn't know is I caused a fumble, and one of our guys picked it up and ran it in for a touchdown. I didn't find out until actually the play was over. So your line sheet that day was one play, one sack, one force fumble. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. And a touchdown as a result of the fumble. Dude, that's great. So that was my big story as Beverly Bison, and that is the intro, I guess you could say to this. What happened to bring the Bisons back from the verge of extinction? I think that might have helped the cause. I think it did, too. Perhaps. I've always had an infinity affinity Ford Bison ever since playing for the Beverly Bisons. But I think we should probably start out chuck. Some people might be like, I've heard of buffalo, but I don't know what a Bison is. Well, if you've heard of a Buffalo and you're an American, you've heard of Bison, pal. You're confused. That's right. Right. Here in the States, they are bison. Technically, they are pretty interchangeably. You can call them a buffalo, but technically, a buffalo is a Cape buffalo or water buffalo, and they are native to Africa and Asia. Right. The bison is native to here in the United States, North America, typically. Specifically. And the word buffalo comes from the French 17th century, explorers encountered these things and said, lebo. What is that? Beef? It means oxen or Beaves, whatever beef is Beaves. B-E-E-V-E-S is what I said. No, it's beavers. Okay. And then the English folks arrive later and change it to Labuf and then Buffalo, then Buffalo, then Buffeto. And eventually they settled on buffalo. So that's where we're at now. That's where right now, they're both members of the Bobby family. Yes. And they're very much related. But yes, one lives in Asia and Africa. One lives in North America, and we've got two types of buffalo or bison. I'm sorry. In North America, we've got the wood bison, which is the smaller of the two, and then the Plains bison, which is the big daddy. Yeah. If you've ever seen the one with the big hump, that's the wood bison. The Plains bison has the flat back, more distinctive cape, and a more well developed beard and throat Maine. Is that right? So the one with the big hump is the wood bison. Yeah, because the hump, from ground to hump, can get up to, like, 6ft tall. Wow. Yeah. That's huge. Let's talk numbers first. Like sheer numbers. Yeah. In 2007, they did a bison census, and the number on private ranches was 198,000. 234. That is significantly more than it was a century earlier. Yeah. About 220,000 in Canada. And about 20,000 of these bison in the United States and Canada are roaming free on public land and close to a half a million total herd in North America today. But at one point, though, Chuck, in about, there were maybe in all of North America, 500 of these things. 500. And those 500 were federally protected on federally protected land. Prior to that, say, I think it was 1897 in Lost Park, Colorado, poachers killed four bison, and those four represented the last unprotected free roaming bison herd in North America. Wow. And thus ended what was called the great slaughter, which we'll get to in a second. Let's go even further back. Okay. To really get to the point about how few 500 bison is in, like, say, 1897, 1900, you have to understand how many there were in, say, 1700. I've seen estimates as high as 60 million that far back. Oh, yeah. Two on this pal, I saw an estimate as high as 100 million. Really? Yeah. Normally, the accepted number was proposed by a guy named Shepherd Crush III. He's an anthropologist from Brown University. In 1999, he came up with an estimate of 30 million. And if you're an anthropologist or a wildlife biologist or just a bison enthusiast, you're probably going to go with 30 million at any given time. There were 30 million pre European settlement. There were 30 million bison roaming North America at any given time. Well, they were the largest large mammal in the United in North America, the largest population at one point, but they're also the largest physically. They're about \u00a32000. The average male is about \u00a32000. And they're quick, too. They can get up to, like, 35 miles an hour. \u00a32000 is 35 miles an hour. And there are 30 million of these things running around. That's a ton. That's a lot of tons. 30 million tons. Yeah. And they spanned they obviously made their home most abundantly in the Great Plains because there was lots of great virgin grassland that was packed with vitamins and minerals, which allowed it to grow back really fast after it was eaten from Canada to northern Mexico. Yeah. And tons of buffalo. So something interesting, if you've read 1491 that pops up toward the end of the book. I know I keep going back to this well, but it is I love it. It is really wet. It's a consistent thread. There's this whole idea that what the settlers out west are on the plains encountered and took to be like a wild state, like the natural wild state of tens of millions of buffalo running everywhere was actually a freak of nature. Right. That you have an apex predator in any ecosystem, and if you remove the apex predator, all the other species are allowed to just boom. Right, sure. On the Great Plains, the apex predator was man human in the form of Native Americans who were removed from the ecosystem. And without the Native Americans to effectively manage the herd populations and the prairie lands, buffalo's were allowed to explode to unnatural population numbers. So there's an idea that what we took, and still to this day consider, was a natural population of 30 million. It was actually far, far less than that prior to the Columbian Exchange. Really? Yeah. Very interesting. Isn't that interesting? Either way, they're probably about 30 million buffalo roaming the Great Plains in, say, 1700. That number dropped dramatically starting about 1820. Right. Yeah. With the great slaughter. Well, we'll get to the horse, pre horse dating back to prehistoric times. There was what was known as buffalo jumps. Did you see this? No. So buffalo jumps were when Native Americans would hurt buffalo down these narrow shoots and run them off a cliff. Like lemmings? Like lemmings. And it would break their legs. I mean, not such a cliff that it would destroy the animal completely. It would just break their legs so they couldn't move. And then they had guys waiting down there with spears and stuff and clubs to kill them. And it was sort of like the first factory farms. It was where they would get large abundance, over and over abundance of buffalo meat and pelts and all the stuff that they use. And there is today in Canada, a World heritage site called head Smashed in Buffalo jump. No way. And it is one of the oldest and largest and best preserved buffalo jumps known to exist today. And if you go to their website, it has a little animation of buffalo like lemmings, like running and then falling off a cliff over and over. Right. And I should also insert here that Chuck and I are both fully aware that lemmings don't naturally run over the cliff. That was actually the producers of the Walt Disney thank you documentary that created that myth and drove those poor lemons over the cliff. That's true. Yeah. I'm glad you said that, because we would heard about that. Totally. So at any rate, they were buffalo jumps. It was a way to get lots and lots of buffalo dead quickly. And if you live in Alberta, you can go see the head smashed in buffalo jump for a mere $10 for an adult. And not only if you live there. If you're visiting there, you could do it, too. That's right. But the Native American had I mean, I know the white man is blamed for it, and they largely are responsible for the mass slaughter, but the Comanche Indian in the 1830s were killing close to 300,000 bikes in a year, which was not a sustainable number. Right. That's actually a very hot topic there's the idea that the Native Americans are the noble savage, and then there's also evidence that they're not that they weren't there was this thing called bison overkill. They also believe that that's what happened to the mastodon and the sabertooth tiger and that they were basically hunting to extinction by the Clovis people, in turn, became extinct as well. It's like a highly debatable topic over exactly what happened. But if that's true, then that means that bison have always been over hunted, because if the Comanche were doing that, and apparently it takes six to seven bison for a person to subsist a year. Six bison per person per year? Yeah, but that's without agriculture. That's just living on bison. Can you imagine your stool production? Bison breakfast, bison eggs, bison burgers. Yeah. And I would imagine your sweat smells like vinegar, because apparently, if you have a high protein, low carb diet, you sweat vinegar. That's gross. It is gross, believe me. The railroad industry was also a great threat to the bison, because the bison were a threat to the railroad industry. And you know who won that war? Well, there's a guy named Frank Rowe who wrote a book in 1972 called The North American Buffalo, and he sites a train that was headed west in 1850 that had to wait for three days for a herd of bison to cross the track. Yeah, that wasn't working for them. They weren't necessarily slow moving. There's just that many bison. So, yeah, we reached the point now where the white man has entered the picture. The Winchester 50 caliber rifle has entered the picture, and the horse has entered the picture. So all of these factors that would lead to the near extinction of bison have all come together and converged on the Great Plains, and they are about to unleash holy hell on the bison population. The great slaughter. Have you heard about the great slaughter? Do you know some things about it? I know that they could have been potentially killing, like, 200,000 buffalo per day at one point. They had contests, Chuck. There were buffalo killing contests. The railroads, like you said, to get rid of this bison problem. They also figured out how to make money by hosting hunting expeditions where you never left the train. The train would just drive slowly, and you would shoot. That's good. It's also in dead man. Oh, yeah. That was real. They had bison killing contests. There's a man who holds the record in 1870, buffalo Bill. No, he had Buffalo Bill beat. A man named Thomas C. Nixon of Kansas set the record in 1870, killing 120 bison in 40 minutes. Buffalo Bill supposedly killed many thousands himself. He was hired to do that. And hides were going for $2 ahead. And in the winter of 1872 to 73, just the winter, 1.5 million buffalo hides, bison hides were shipped back east by train. Well, I do know at one point that they said that the big hunters were using two guns because they were shooting them so fast, they had to let one gun cool down. So they just picked up the fresh gun so they wouldn't have to stop killing at first, like they were shooting for meat. And then buffalo hide, bison, hyde became all the rage, not just back east, but in Europe as well. Demand increase, so they're like, oh, well, we'll just leave the meat there. We don't need the meat. There's millions of these things rotting carcasses everywhere. Yeah. And as if this couldn't get worse. As if it couldn't get worse. Right. So the poor bison population, possibly if there was bison overkill, their apex predators removed, they're allowed to bloom, and then a new, even more damaging apex predator comes in, starts killing indiscriminately like they've never seen before. One of the reasons why they have bison killing countries was not just for the railroad, but it was because the federal government and whites in general figured out that the Plains Indians subsisted on bison, take away the bison, take away the food supply, and civilized the Indian. So that was one reason why bisons were hunted to near extinction with such glee, was because it was serving a larger purpose of bringing the Indians into the fold as well. This is a way to tame the west or removing them from the fold or starving them again. We get down to, what, 500 bison that are finally protected and starting in. Who is responsible for this? Environmentalist you might have heard of by the name of Teddy Roosevelt. And William Hornady, who is a zoologist, poet, conservationist songwriter, realtor, evidently thought that was odd. It is odd. Well, you got to make money somehow, because those other ones aren't going to do. He was a really top notch conservationist, actually. But William Horn today and Teddy Roosevelt form the American Bison Society 19 five because they were like, wait a minute. These things are remember all those buffalo that used to be out there that aren't there anymore? This might be a problem. Yeah. They're like, what are we going to hunt? So where better to send them? Plus send them to the Bronx in New York City. The Great Plains of the Bronx. Yeah, it definitely got them out of the hands of poachers. And kidding aside, though, the Bronx Zoo was a great place for them to send some species for reproducing. And Yellowstone National Park was established as a preserve, and the New Yorkers got to sit there and watch bison getting it on. I guess. So nickel ahead, boy. Not a buffalo nickel. The federal government created the National Bison Range in Montana, but these weren't the efforts that ultimately did a lot to increase the numbers. No, because you know what? Although they were protected, and Congress actually did pass an act, the Federal Park Protective Act, I believe, that said, if you poach buffalo, you're in big trouble. Right. They were never listed as endangered. Yeah. I wonder why. I couldn't get a reason there, so I don't know either. But they were clearly close to being in danger, but they were never listed, so they didn't enjoy that full protection. Yeah. So Roosevelt, he had a pretty good effort by establishing the Park Service. Yellowstone had a protected herd. You had them in the Bronx Zoo, you had them in Oklahoma, you had them in South Dakota. But none of these, like you said, led to the real resurgence, the resurgence in the bison population in North America. What did, though, Chuck? Well, maybe we should talk about well, yeah, sure. What did private landowners ted Turner. Ted Friggin Turner. Yeah. He was the one responsible for bringing the bison back from near extinction. He's one of my heroes. So we just give a few Turner stats here. Sure. The second largest private landowner in North America, he's got about 2 million acres of ranch land and 15 ranches in seven states that are all bison ranches, active working bison ranches. And I believe he manages about 50,000 head of bison himself by hand himself. Jane helped out while they were together. Yes. And he opened I'm sorry, he purchased his first bison in 76 and opened his first bison ranch in which makes me wonder, where did he keep that bison for eleven years? Did he just, like, take it everywhere with them in the backseat? He had plenty of land. There was no shortage of space for that one bison. Okay. But I think to answer your question, he kept it at his mansion in Buckhead. Okay. If you want to learn more about Ted Turner's, he has many ongoing projects to save the species, you can go to www.tesf.org. A lot of this is obviously for raising bison to sell, to stock his Ted's Montana Grills with fresh bison steaks and burgers. But it still helps the conservation. Well, it does whether they're free roaming or commercially raised. If you are just looking at the hard numbers of bison populations in the US. They are not endangered anymore. And it's because they're so delicious that's the reason why they're not endangered. Well, and one of the cool things about the bison is across the board, the National Bison Association prohibits the use of sub therapeutic, antibiotics, growth hormones, and animal byproducts. So it's not like, oh, this one cal farm says we shouldn't inject them with hormones. It's all bison in the US. And they are very nutritional compared to cow beef. They don't need to be handled much. They almost exclusively dine on grass. And if it's unmanaged grass, it's organic. It's fully organic. Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk nutrients. The proportions of protein, fat and minerals and fatty acids to its caloric value are outstanding compared to grass. Beef. I'm sorry. Just beef, period. Yeah. And large concentrations of iron and a lot of essential fatty acids. So people are up with bison. They're eating it a lot more. Over the past decade, the numbers have really risen dramatically. Do you eat it? Yeah, I've had it. It's good stuff. I've had a bison burger. I've had bison steak at Ted's Montana Grill, which, I should say, full disclosure, we own no stock whatsoever. I've never eaten there. Oh, you should. It's cool. It's got, like, the interior decor, like a turn of the last century, like Kansas. Really? Restaurant. Yeah, it's very cool. Like the tin plate ceiling and all that stuff and yeah, the bison steak is very good. Now, can you tell a big taste difference? Yeah. Really? Yeah, totally. Because I've had the burger and I couldn't tell a huge difference. Well, you're a steak guy. You like steaks. Sure. Immediately, you can look at it and tell the difference, but the taste you can tell the difference as well, too. I mean, it's not like eating cat and eating steak, but you can tell the difference. Well, yes, sure. Cat is gamey. Chuck. Also, we should say it's not just Ted Turner who's single handedly no. Keep saving the bison herds, because now there's 400,000 commercial bison living in the US. Right now. Yeah, a little more even. That's just the US. Alone. Turner's got 50,000 of those. It's pretty substantial portion. The Canada is doing their part. There is a group of eleven tribes who got together in 1990 to form the Inter Tribal Bison Cooperative no, I'm sorry, 57 tribes that manage 15,000 heads of bison collectively. And one of the things that if you manage a herd of bison, whether for conservation or for deliciousness, you are going to run into something called brucellosis, which is not good. No, it's a bacteria, and it's called another name for it is contagious abortion. That's two great words to pair together. So basically, brucellosis is a bacteria that ruminating animals, which is grazing animals they can pick up pretty easily through the mouth. The bacteria collects in the reproductive organs. If you have milk, you're going to pass bad milk. If you're pregnant, you're going to abort your fetus. And if you lick this genital area, you've just contracted it. If you eat tainted meat, tainted buffalo, as a human. Yes. You can catch it as well, and you get terrible, terrible flu like symptoms. But if you're a bison or a reindeer or something like that, you are in grave danger. If you have this bacteria, it can kill you pretty easy. Well, and that's certainly one of the big reasons, because with all these conservation efforts, you might think, well, why are there still only half a million? That's one of the biggest reasons. And sadly, there are quarantine periods, and when these infected bison roam free, like they are prone to do, they have to be put down. They get shot. Yeah. Like 3700 of them in the past 20 years have wandered outside of Yellowstone, and they have to take them down. Yeah. One of the big problems we're facing with getting the bikes and population back on its feet is that we don't have land like we used to. Well, that's the other big reason. So their original range, their original ecosystem are now developed. It's like a quickiemart house. So it's like you guys just stay in Yellowstone. You wandered outside of Yellowstone and bang. Right. Apparently, also, even in Yellowstone, sometimes things converge like they did that winter. There was a particularly harsh winter, so a lot of the food supply was covered up with snow and ice, and, like, 1300 bison starved to death in the park wow. On top of a bunch that had to be shot for wandering out too. So it was a bad year for bison in Yellowstone. Well, and not the final reason, really, is when you have a smaller herds like this, there's going to be more inbreeding, and inbreeding doesn't lead to a healthy population. Yes. Which is one of the reasons why brucelosis is so rampant. You have a narrower gene pool. So thank you to the private citizen. 95% of all bison are on private land. Yes. That's crazy. Yeah. People coming together to single handedly revive the species from the brink of extinction. So every time you eat a bison burger, you are helping to conserve the bison population. Isn't that weird? It's weird. I got one more fact for you. Is it on a high note? Sure. Okay. Do you like buffalo cheese and stuff like that? I do like buffalo mozzarella. It's good stuff. Not from a bison. Apparently any kind of buffalo product like that. Milk and cheese is from the water buffalo. Cool. And the reason why bison are not commercially milked is because the ladies have little teats. Really? They have tiny little teeth that are very small, and they're not great for milking, and so they don't adapt well to that kind of thing. The ladies are like, hands off, fellas. Did not know that. I can tell you, Chuck, even having been a Beverly bison, I know today, as of today, more than I ever have before about bison in general. Yeah, me too. And it's bison's, plural. We should go free. That we should go free that bison at the Cambridge. Do you want to yeah, we should just send it down 78 east. Well, that's one reason why it'd be a descent. Somebody shoot it because they behave erratically. But apparently one last thing. You can tell how a bison is feeling based on his tail. If his tail is dangling between his legs, he's calm. If it's moving, he's alert. He's maybe watching you. If it's pointing straight out or up, get out of town. Yes. Because he's going to charge. Wow. That's pretty cool. Yeah. So that's it for bison. And again, hats off to everybody who's eating bison burgers, because you are keeping the bison population in check. Ted Turner. Thank you, sir. I commend you. I raised my cutty sark to you. I saw him at the Willie Nelson concert a few years ago. You did? Yeah, and I wanted to tackle him and say thank you. He probably would have liked that. He was a big part of my childhood, being from Atlanta. Like, he can't be from Atlanta in the not think a lot of Ted Turner. Yeah, I'm sure he was like your Secret Santa one year. Yeah. Of course, if you want to know more about bison and extinction and bison burgers and Bruce Alasis, you got all this stuff packed into one great article called what Brought Bison Back from the Brink of Extinction? That's a ton of literation there, Connor. You could just put a bison extinction in the search bar howstep works.com? And it should bring up this article. And I think I said search bar, did I not? Let's just the cat's out of the bag already. Okay, john Hodgman is sitting right here. We're not going to do this mail. Sorry, listeners. This is the fourth time I'm putting my foot down. This is the last time, at least for this series. This has been going on for two weeks. It's fine. This is the last time. Okay, so this is four of four. Yeah. Maybe we should treat you a little more regularly then. This is four of four. Can we keep some coronets? Excellent. Lovely. Yeah. So, Mr. Hodgman, thank you very much for coming. Pushing me right out the door. Josh, thank you very much for coming. And I'm a hologram. I'm not even here. I know. Pushing through you right now. Hodgman actual is in St. Louis, Missouri, gateway to the west, getting ready to perform tonight on the book tour. On the book tour. Live atop the St. Louis Arch. Yeah. Well, no, not exactly. Where is the locale again? I had it here just a second ago. It was at the bookstore. There's, like Laugh a Minute bookstore, I think is what it was called. I think it was the Mad Art gallery. Same thing. Laugh a minute. 07:00 PM. This very evening. November 3. You want to say the name again? The Mad Art Gallery. 07:00 PM. This very evening, November. 3 hodgman actual is presenting material from his book, that is all, with special guest insert name here. That's excellent. I can't believe we got that guy. Or gal. Yeah, get going. So, no, I am just a holographic representation of myself here again to say hello to you guys. Well, thank you, because I'm a big fan and I'm a deranged millionaire who has a hologram of himself and sent to his favorite podcast, so why not? Yeah, exactly. And that's the thing about Hudson. Even getting the hologram of them is more than you could possibly want with anybody else. I agree with you. Yeah. As the hologram, I can say I'm actually a little better. Oh, really? Yeah, we noticed. We noticed last time. I'm not as flatulent. We noticed. Due to my holographic nature. Although you still make the sounds, which is weird. That part of the program. I'm a simulated program designed to interact with real world stimulus in a realistic manner. Eat a hamburger sandwich. That moves you. One of your famous Atlanta hamburger sandwiches. So, John, you wrote a book. It's called? That is all. It is the third in your series explaining the world. It is my complete book of world knowledge. It is like my previous two books, a collection of fascinating trivia, historical tidbits and amazing true facts, all of which made up by me, this being the last in the series of complete world knowledge. Indeed, the final world knowledge, dealing with subjects as diverse as travel and ghosts and magic tricks and wine and sports in the end of the world. And it is called that is all. And we've covered a lot of those in the podcast, too. So this is almost, I guess you would say, companion piece. Well, last time you accepted, except you should Know body of work. Yeah, that's right. It's also my life's work. Thank you. Okay, last week you accused me of taking sorry. Last week Chuck accused me that's right. Of making a connection, let's say over liberal inspiration from the Stuff You Should Know podcast after I had very graciously pointed out that a huge section of my book regarding Noodling was an homage to your very podcast. And then I took that nice gesture and I stomped on it. But I will tell you one thing. I did download one of your podcasts specifically as research for the book. That Is all. Which one? Narrowing. That was a good one. With cohost Jonathan Strickland, who, by the way, just peed himself because we mentioned him in reference to you. What just happened just now? Yes. My other hologram is cleaning that up. That is you're a full service guy. There are many holograms wandering the halls right now. It's part of a new security system. How stuff works is considering. So, John, is it true that in this book you explain things like the thick fish? What's? The thick fish in the bowl of brown. Oh, yes, that's right, well, that's not part of my you know my book better than I do. Is it true that you explain the superiority of the year 1971 as birth year, which we both share? That's true. What's going on? Yes, true. Is it true that you explain the benefits and taboos at sea while cruising? That is so. Is it true, John, that there is a table in your book about disgusting regional sodas? That is true. Would you be kind enough to read some of those sodas? I feel like I'm being interrogated. Yes, I have my own copy of the book. Okay, well, you have it open there. Sure. The thick fish and the bowl of brown. What's? The thick fish? The thick fish, the bowl of brown, the patagonian toothfish wine, the furry forearms. These are some of the funny things that you ingest in your book. Those are just words that you're stringing together. You would think that's my job. Okay. To string those words together. Bowl of brown comes from a section of my book on rose wine, because rose wine is neither white nor red. I love the wine chapter. Thank you very much. It's something that I previously knew nothing about because I thought the wine was so complex and multilayered and historic that it could only be enjoyed by but apparently no, it's simple, just grape juice. All you need to make it is grape juice, human feet and thyme own yeast. But I point out that because rose is neither white nor red, it is best paired with ambiguous foods like the thick fish. Like thick fish squad bowl of brown. Bowl of brown. Mystery meat. That's a rose. I like rose. Yeah, I mean, it quite honestly. I like sparkling rose as well. I know you can tolerate ambiguity. I can, yeah, some of us can't. Like, I'm not the least bit certain how either of you two feel about it. We like things black or white, so we drink either white wine or black wine. You know what I mean? Mix them up. I don't remember what all those other words you were talking about were. That was pretty much it. You were going to talk about regional soda, but they're also non alcoholic drinks that you can drink. And there are still regional sodas all over this country that are not distributed to the rest of the world. And you might enjoy going on a road trip, go into a little trading post there and reaching behind the disgusting handmade sandwiches and pulling out one of these disgusting regional sodas to enjoy. For example, there's a Thai's gumption brand, Brain Drizzle, which you can only get in Maine. Vermont sodas were originally served in pharmacies. That's why in parts of the country, they're still called tonic. In New England, they still called tonic. Sure, because they were medicine. There were ways of delivering medicine, and in particular, sort of like herbal remedies and nerve tonics and cocaine physics these are what they would serve. Cocaine physics were invented in this very city, in this very city of Atlanta. The cocaine fizz later became CocaCola. Thai's gumption brand brain drizzle was the only one of the great old sodas to actually contain cerebros spinal flute. Once incredibly popular throughout the eastern seaboard for its invigorating flavor and hallucinatory properties, it is now primarily found only in northern New England where it is still made using the company's own secret recipe, including fluid from patient 31 unnamed hydrocephalic patients in a secret hospital in Brattleborough, Vermont. Do you have a flavor profile on that one? Yes. Bitter medicinal brainy sugary brownborough Vermont is a town very near to my retreat in internetless hills, western Massachusetts. And it's a wonderful town. I had a hard time during hurricane Irene. There was a lot of flooding in Brattleborough, so I hate to make fun of it. Do you know what I mean? They're all dried out now. You should go up there, go visit the latches theater, go eat fireworks, go to the retreat farm and petting zoo. It's a wonderful place to go. But did you know the Brettleborough Vermont? Speaking of Thai's brain drizzle, that the hit rap song from 2007. Sipping my drizzle is now synonymous with the musical subgenre known as Brattleborough, Vermont. White person with dreadlocks rap. That whole subculture, that whole subculture started up there. And that song Sipping on my Sadrizel also introduced America to the controversial drink known as sadrizzle, which is Thai's brain drizzle mixed with apricot brandi, about 100 tablets of sudafed, crushed up and maple syrup. And to enjoy it, you serve it in a solo brand plastic cup with a vicin and dusted rim. That's great. I don't know if we need to go into any other regional sodas, but there are a lot of them. Well, the only other one in the Denver, Colorado area and the Rockies, you can still get chicko soda and that's roast chicken flavored soda. And it's the only remaining product in the company in the line from Savory meat soda Corp. Up until like 1992. Not only could you get chicko, you could also get porco and steak and eggs, though those are also available. But now just chicko and then chum wine. Yeah, based on cheer wine, right? Yeah. It was one of many ripoffs of North Carolina's famous cheer wine. But this one, unlike cheer wine, this one has a flavor profile of sweet cherry, bubble gum and fish blood. It's motto is the one to drink while spreading gem for fisher persons. Exactly. And that little bit of delight was read directly from the book. That is all. That is all. John, that is a hardcover book. It is a usually issue. It is it is the first edition hardcover book in pure black and white. Yeah, no light can escape from that. No, it is the black hole of hardcover books. It is absorbing every light ray that comes at it. Yeah. It is a dark, stark tablet reflecting and monolithic, indeed, reflecting the end of this series, the end of human civilization and time as we know it in 2012. And now that I've turned 40 at the end of my life, so more tragically, what's? Your life's work? Yes, it is, actually. I'm sorry to put it in such stark terms, but I mean, it is the purest unfiltered expression of my adult brain. I hope very much that people will I mean, look, we live in a culture where people are getting their fake facts and they're made up trivia and they're invented truths for free on the news every night. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. You may ask why should I go out and buy a hardcover copy of a book full of it? And that is a question only you can answer. All I can tell you is this is truly my life's work and I enjoy sharing it with you and I hope you enjoy it. Well, as such, you're curating. It this kind of experience, this release. This is not just like Hodgman dropped a book. Hodgman dropped the book. It's a great book. This is not my Tumblr book, right? Yeah. You're touring with it, right? I am starting St. Louis. And then tomorrow I will be in Los Angeles, California. November 4. The Largo theater with Paul F. Tomkins. The Largo. You have that place. That's a wonderful place. And then I will be in Portland on Sunday the 7th with John Roderick, and then we travel directly up to Seattle after that to be at Town Hall again with John Roderick and other special guests will join me later on the tour. John will be singing. He will be singing songs. You will not just be going to join him on ukulele and vocals. There will be ukulele playing for sure. Jumping fleet playing, right? John is going to, on stage, teach a kid to read. That's right? An illiterate kid, too. This isn't a sham, it's not a carnival act, right? I will find an illiterate child in each town and teach them to read the words. That is all. And it's going to be heartbreaking. It's going to be pretty smooth. That last part isn't true. But I will be joined by other special guests who may or may not be literate throughout the tour. And it'll be going on through the 16th. And if you want to find out where I am and if you want to come and see me present material from the book, you can go to areas ofofmyexpertise.com and visit there. You will have to buy a ticket for the book, but the cost of the ticket includes a copy of the book. So that's a pretty good deal. Yeah, I think. And you'll be signing some too, to be gawked at. I will sign every book. You're one of those guys, aren't you? Of course he is. You see to it that everybody who's standing in line gets the signature I want legionnaire's disease. I'm going to shake everyone's hands for you. Yeah, come on. If I can pull it together, guys, and I hate to make promises, but sometimes you got to say something publicly to make yourself do it. Sure. I'm trying to find maybe you guys can help me. We probably can't. Is a company that will make me some custom mini packets of mayonnaise so that I can give people who come to the event free premium, which is samples of John Hodgman's ragnarok proof survival mayonnaise. Awesome. Because aside from your own urine, mayonnaise is going to be the thing that you need most after the feces comes down and civilization is over. Well, I know that one thing you can do is lubricate small engines with mayonnaise. With mayonnaise, yeah. That's just one of the uses. You can use it as a cleanser, a hair cleanser, and it's a wonderful conditioner. You can use it to lubricate small engines. You can take garbage bags and spread them out on the lawn and put mayonnaise all over them. Guess what? You just made a slip and slide in a time when there is no more running water. Your kids can enjoy that. You leave those garbage bags out in the sun for a while. Guess what? You've just made yourself a handy poison. Well, and after the super collapse, John, you also make a good point in the book that the currency could very well be the beef jerky dollar. It's definitely going to be the beef you have a handy table of what one beef jerky dollar equals? Yeah, and I think where I would spend my beef jerky dollar, yes, sir, if I had one, would be, I think, 7.5 hours of human contact. Was that it? Yes. Without murder at the end, I think without being cannibalized at the end. Do you recall any other things a beef jerky dollar will get you after the super collapse? Well, no, but if you're interested, listener, you can take a look at my book. That is all. It's one of my favorite parts, actually. Let's just come out and say it. It is something of, if not a survival guide. There's some survival to it, but also like a pretty beat by beat prophecy of what's going to be going down in 2012. If you accept the hard made up fact that the Mayan Long Count calendar ends on December 21. 2012. Thus bringing an end to human civilization in time as we know it and the end of the world. Then you will find in my book a day by day today in Ragnarok page a day calendar running down for you what's going to happen starting December 21. 2011. All the way through the blood wave. The omega pulse. The collapse of the dollar. The return of the ancient and unspeakable ones. And the singularity as well. So we'll teach you how to survive all of these terrible catastrophes until December 21, 2012, and then it's just all over for everybody. Or maybe not. Maybe not. I could be wrong. Well, that's probably right. Well, I think what you're saying is there are limits to even your power. Look, there is a possibility that there is a possibility when December 21, 2012 comes around, that the last event of Ragnarok will be the headless body of Nugsh HAB, one of the ancient unspeakable ones pushing the Earth through a rift in spacetime into another dimension in which none of us have any memory of Ragnarok. And the things in my book are considered to be simply the flights of fancy of a television personality and the made up facts of an adult deranged millionaire. Look, I hope that happens, okay? Probably not. But it's one possibility. We will wake up on December 22, 2012, and it will be like none of this had ever happened. Sort of like y two K. No, that's coming. Okay, yeah. Y two K is coming next in 2012, I think, in about sometime in May or June. The thing with Y two K, though, is that it doesn't attack computers. It only attacks small non mechanical tools like can openers. We had that all wrong. It is not after computers at all. It is after non computerized helpful devices. It's weird. And John, I misspoke. I don't want to misquote your fake fact, but one beat jerky dollar after the super collapse so people know is equal to 7.3 hours of human intimacy. Yeah, and that's what I spend my dollar on, your jerky dollar. Either that or the Hanukkah guilt. Yeah, well, it's not that there's going to be one currency. This is why I say you shouldn't bother hoarding gold. Do you know what I mean? Yes, gold is shiny. I'm not going to argue with you on that. Shiny and heavy, you know what I mean? But when you have been turned into an albino by the great worm hug Nubbus, right? You don't care about gold. You want sunscreen. You know what I mean? Yeah. And the great thing about mayonnaise is that it's not very good sunscreen, but it makes a terrific short term albino mask. If you want to sneak into albino town and sell them mayonnaise posing a sunscreen, this is how we're all going to have to live in the future. Do you understand what I'm I'm saying? Taking notes. This is why mayonnaise is so helpful. It all comes back to this. So listen, everybody. I hope by the time you hear this, I will have solved the problem. I got a guy. You got a condominium? I got a packet guy. He does all kinds. Really? You're not messing with the hodgeman now? You want Hodgman Ketchup? You want? Hodgman tartar sauce. No, I don't want tartar sauce. For God's sake, what do you think I got a guy? Do you think I'm looking for something to put on a FileTO fish. I'm looking for something to save the world. John, I got to go. Yeah, I got to power down, guys. It's been a lot of fun. I'm sorry, listeners whose mail did not get read because I took over your segment. There's a backlog. All four of you. No, come on. But I please understand, listeners, i, too, am a listener, and I hope you will continue to support these two wonderful natural broadcasters, even though they have betrayed your trust by putting me on their podcast air for podcasts in a row. That's right, by that is all. I recommend the hard cover just because I'm old school and it's all that exists. There's no audiobook. There is no electronic edition. There is no paperback. There is only hardcover edition. You know why? Because when Ragnarok comes, you're going to be using your reading tablets to make shanties. That's right. This is the only thing that's going to be left. Also, I haven't gotten around to recording the audiobook, and I don't know when we're going to do any book. So if you want to support my life's work, seriously, please come and see me on tour. Or go to your local bookshop and purchase the book. Go to see me on tour. That's a treat. Just to share air with you, my friend. Hey, you know what? We're not sharing air. I'm a hologram. But the people who go to you will be able to share air. They will. And we have before, and it's not and despite what you may have read in the Huffington Post, my breath is not poison. So if you want to catch up with the real hodgeman, share some air with them on tour, right? Yeah. You can go to areasofmyxpertise.com. Areasofmyxpertise.com. All one word. Spell it out like a normal person. Or you can tweet to them and be like, Hodgman, where are you at? On Twitter by addressing it to athodgman. It's the at sign. At sign. H-O-D-G-M-A-N. Yeah. And that will go directly to John's Pocket. I shall feel it. Yeah. And if you are ready to get back to business with us, join us next week when things should be substantially more normal. And in the meantime, if you want your listener mail read, you send it to us. Send it to us right now. And if it's the coolest one, it'll be the first one we read after the hodgman break, posthudman break. And that will be substantial. That will mean something. Okay. Hey, you know what? Whoever's listener mail you read next week, I'm going to send them a free book. Wow, that is really fun. At least I can do right? Well, then it's on us to pick it out, though. I trust you guys. So they can bribe us, but not Sarah. No. Sorry. Sarah. No, I'm going to send something else. Sarah gets one anyway. Wow. Yeah. All right, well, then I would get to my email if I were you, because obviously the first ones we get are going to be the ones we read. You can shoot us that email all at stuffpodcast athoustuffs.com be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff From the Future. Join House Deport staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | ||
8350de9a-3b0d-11eb-b411-9792452c1f9a | The KKK: Loathsome Cosplay Rednecks | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-kkk-loathsome-cosplay-rednecks | The history of the KKK is rooted in hatred and racism, and it still is today. Learn all about these loathsome rednecks today. | The history of the KKK is rooted in hatred and racism, and it still is today. Learn all about these loathsome rednecks today. | Tue, 26 Jan 2021 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=26, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=26, tm_isdst=0) | 54467691 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm josh clark. There's charles w chuck brian over there, and this is stuff you should know about. Out. Vile, racist, jerks. Boo. Boomi. Not you. You're not a vile, racist jerk. I saw my chuck. Yeah. So, chuck, do you remember when we did our two part episode on the simpsons, and one of the first things I said was I didn't want to record because all I wanted to do is sit around and research the simpsons for the rest of my life? Sure. I felt basically the opposite way about researching the clan. I didn't want to record because I didn't want to research the clan anymore. Yeah, it wasn't a fun one. No. Well, here's my personal history here in regards to the clan. This will be peppered throughout a little bit, because I grew up in stone mountain, georgia. Oh, that sounds familiar. Which is very similar in the early days of the second wave of the clan. Which we'll get to all this garbage in this episode. But some mountain was kind of one of the large national seats. And one of the leaders of the clan in stone mountain had kids. Either kids or grandkids that went I guess I had to be grandkids that went to my elementary school. The venables. And I was like, I heard about the venables, and I knew about their story, and that his granddad was the grand wizard. And it scared the crap out of me, rightfully so. I was scared. And then I got older, and I was like, these are just dumb cosplaying rednecks. And then I got a little older still, and I was like, well, that's not fair either. And I tried to start in my life, look at things through the lens of minority peoples, even though you can't as a white man, but you can do your best to walk a mile in someone's shoes and see what it might be like. Then I was like, I can't dismiss it as rednecks cosplaying, because they killed people and lynched people, and it was a feared group to black people and all kinds of other minorities, as we'll see as they kind of progress. But I felt it was dismissive to say, they're just a bunch of dumb rednecks and don't give them that power. So it's just interesting to sort of go through that evolution. As a kid growing up in the south, who no doubt in my lineage and ancestry, have horrible things that happened in the deep south. I had to rectify as, like, just because I'm related to great great grandparents who probably did awful things, does it mean that I'm that person? No, not at all. Not at all. You certainly aren't that person at all. I can attest, but you have to come to terms with it as someone who is the opposite of those people, for sure. And I think it is wise of you and very thoughtful of you to be like, no, I can't just use, I guess, white privilege to dismiss the clan because it does kind of infringe on like the impacts that they've had on people of color in the United States, for sure. I think that's very insightful. At the same time, yes, the clan are dumb redneck cosplayers. They're just ones who will also get whipped up into violence and carry out horrific acts. So they're dumb redneck cosplayers who you really have to keep an eye on and then break the back of as an organization by putting them in prison whenever they do something like that or start to. Yes. And as we see through their history, depending on when it was and which sort of iteration, because there's been at least three, some were more violent and dangerous than others and some were sort of like cosplaying rednecks. Of course, it doesn't excuse it, it's just like a fun social club or anything like that, but it is fairly interesting. But I'm ready to be done with this as well, so let's do it. Yeah. The thing that kind of strikes me about the clan the most is the clan enjoys its largest popularity when America is feeling it's most racist. And usually America feels it's most racist at times when the rights of minorities or anybody who's not basically white Protestants are being advanced in society, it's not an accident. Right? But then the clan always oversteps because America may be racist and America might be can't even say why. America is definitely based on white supremacism or white supremacy and enforcing that. But the taste for violence and the willingness to kill people of color just for being people of color is not a mainstream thing, unfortunately. So the clan has always been on the fringe and always will be on the fringes. It's just hopefully eventually society will learn its lesson, like advancing the rights of people of color doesn't mean that there has to be some spasm of anti minority sentiment that inevitably leads to violence carried out by groups like the clan. I really hope we get to that point rather than just keep existing trapped in this cycle. And I think we will. I think we are approaching that eventually. I don't know when it will be, but I feel like with each of these cycles that we go through, there's less and less people who react horribly the next time or the next time or the next time. So that eventually that reaction will just kind of fizzle out. That's my hope. Yeah. And it's also interesting, I watched a documentary, it's sort of like several part new show from this British might have been a BBC crew about the modern clan just from a couple of years ago during the Ferguson uproar, Missouri. And he went not undercover because he was a British guy who was interviewing him. He went in deep with the clan there for seven months. And it's interesting to see just the scattered ideology. And that kind of is a bit of a hallmark of the Clan period. Through their history, it seems like there's never been a very codified thing of this is who we are. Because there are people in this documentary that are like, three of the members were arrested for plotting to kill a black man. And the people they talk to, they're like, Whoa, whoa, whoa. They're out, man. We're not into that. We don't want to commit violence against black people, and we're not even bigoted. We are just a superior race who are white separatists, but we might burn across for our ceremonies, but we're not doing bombings and lynchings, and we're not down with that at all. But you also get the feeling that behind closed doors, they're probably like, hey, I wish this guy would have been able to carry that murder out. Right. And that seems to have been a transition that kind of went in the 70s, started in the believe, but there's, like a different public face to the clan where they tried different, like, okay, well, everybody hates the clan. What if we explain it like this, right? What if we put it like this and society is like, no, that's nice try. Yeah, it's not going to work. All right, should we get into this and the origins? Yeah, like you said, there's been three iterations of the clan. The first iteration of the clan started out, as, they think, basically a social club made up of disgruntled Confederate veterans in Palaski, Tennessee, in 1866. And this group of veterans got together at a time where there was a real trend, a craze, basically, for secret societies in the 19th century. Apparently in the 1890s, up to the 1930s is called the Golden Age of Fraternalism, where something like a third of American men were members of a secret society or something based on actual, real, ancient secret societies like the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians. These are just kind of fake ones that give you a reason to leave the house on Tuesdays and Thursdays and go have whiskey down at the Moose Lodge. Lodge feeling. Yeah. And groups like the Moose and the Elks and the Knights of Columbus, they all grew out of that. And in fact, Woodman of the World Insurance is called that. It's kind of a weird name, if you think about it, but Woodman of the World was a secret society from the 19th century, and they would sell their members insurance policies, and that's where that insurance came from. So this is kind of like the context of where the Ku Klux Klan originally came from in the 19th century, this crazier trend for secret societies. Yeah. And by all accounts, it was started on Christmas Eve, like you said, in Polaski in 1865 by six men. Calvin Jones, Richard Reid, Frank McCord, John Kennedy and John Kessler, I think. And then, believe it or not, the final guy's name was Jim Crow. No. James Crowe? No. Yeah. In Palaski, Tennessee. And they were sort of based on one of those secret groups called the Sons of Malta. But it seems like it was more inspired by because they weren't around by the time the Civil War ended. But they definitely sort of cribbed some stuff from the Malton as far as and this is the whole thing with the secret societies like outfits and costumes and rights and initiations and dumb names of leadership that you make up. It's all a big part of it. I have never understood the desire neither. And not just obviously the clan clearly not interested it in that. But any fraternal group like that, including fraternities in college, I never got it. Yeah. That Sons of Malta you mentioned seemed to have been directly impactful. I don't know if there are members who were from the Suns of Malta or how they heard of it, but the Sunset, Malta, and then another group called the Kuklos Adelphi, and both of them seem to have been party cruise or cruise from Mardi Gras in New Orleans. And then the Suns of Malta somehow made their way up to Boston, and that's where they really kind of got hold or got popular, I guess. But neither one of those were racist groups, from what I could tell. And from also what I could tell, the Ku Klux Klan wasn't necessarily intended to be a racist, terrorist political organization, at least at first. But shortly after they formed in 1865 66, the federal government passed the Reconstruction Acts, and Reconstruction definitely deserves its own episode. Really want to do one or two on Reconstruction at some point. But when they pass that act, that kind of changed or gave focus to this, what may have been like just kind of a group of racist people and turn them into a racist, political, terrorist organization. Now they had something to do besides meet at the Moose Lodge, and that was to enforce white supremacy in the Deep South through acts of violence and intimidation and terror techniques. And that was the first incarnation of the claim. And they spread really quick from Tennessee down to Georgia and other neighboring states, thanks in part to personal visits for organizing by a guy named Nathan Bedford Forest, a Confederate general who is not a great guy. Yeah, there are a lot of complications with that guy. We'll get to him in a SEC. But the name KKK or Ku klux klan, they think, might have. And again, it's been such a sort of willynilly organization as far as having a national sort of codified presence that there's not even, like, a website that I saw that you can go to. It's all regional. Man, I'll bet those are some terrible websites. They're pretty bad comic sands everywhere. Yeah, they're pretty bad when there's like, a black background in like pink fonts and stuff like that. Spewing racist bigotry and ideology. Oh, my God, it's pretty bad. Yeah, I wanted to throw my laptop out in the window at one point. But they think it might have derived from the Greek word Kylos. Kyklos, which basically denotes what people thought were like the natural cycles of government or types of government that a civilization could have, which is pretty haughty if you think about it. For the KKK, I mean, of course, political philosophy that dates back to the third century DC. It's really something. But Kuklos is K-U-K-L-O-S is what it was sort of translated as not the modern era, but back then, and Klan with a K. What I saw was it was originally Ku klux one word, and then clan with a C. And they think that may have come from maybe Scottish clans. They play Scottish music sometimes at their rallies, but that's not affirmed either. But eventually, I think that C was replaced with a K. It became KKK. And these lodges started popping up all over right after the Civil War, because like you said, once a minority gets a little bit of freedom, there's a bit of an uprising in clan membership. And that's what happened from the first iteration, is like, we have these enslaved people that are now free. We need to basically intimidate them into feeling like they still have no freedoms, even though the loss is different. Right. So one of the first things they did was when Reconstruction came along and all of a sudden there were black people in the south could hold political office or be judges or all this is like flipping a switch as far as the south is concerned. And like I said, it laser focused, like the aims of the Ku Klux Klan and that they now took up an intimidation and terrorism campaign against black people in the south. Against Republicans in the south. The Republicans at the time were a much different party than they are today, and that they were into the idea of big government to support and enforce social justice. And then years later, around the turn of the last century williams jenning Bryant was a candidate who was a Democrat who basically ran on the Republican platform of big government to enforce social justice. And then later on, it was cemented by FDR. It was a big kind of transition or switch, basically, of ideologies between the parties. But at the time. If you were a Republican. If you're in the south. You're probably for equal rights for black citizens and you were a target of their intimidation campaigns as well. Big time. Because not only were they kind of battling these politicians. But voter intimidation was a very real thing. And voter suppression. And they would murder people like hundreds. Maybe thousands of people in the south. Especially Louisiana reports ahead of the 1868 election where they murdered people for intimidation and literally to keep them from voting. Yeah, dude. There was one town called Opeluces, Louisiana, a town of 250. So it was pretty big. It was the county seat of the parish. I can't remember what parish, but in two weeks, 200 people were murdered around the 1000 868 election. 200. That's 14 people a day in this town of 250 people, all because of terrorism carried out by the KKK. Yeah. And Ed helped us put this together, and Ed is keen to point out, and I think we should, too, is that a lot of what the client has always tried to do is lead their groups by fear. And you still see that today, not only through the clan, but other groups, like fear of that the immigrants are going to take your job, or fear of this, fear of that. And back then, it was fear of these enslaved people that are now free rising up and getting revenge. And that didn't happen. Like, even though slavery happened, like, once black Americans earned their freedom, they did not all of a sudden say, oh, yeah, well, payback time. We're angry. We're going to come after you. They were happy to be freed and just to try and live as regular people with rights in society. And that wasn't the message that the clan was putting out. They were like, you need to be afraid of them, even though there are no accounts of that happening. It was just black people trying to be regular, normal people. Right. And the other problem with that kind of thing is when somebody does stuff like this, when they carry out a terror campaign, it makes people wonder, like, geez, what did the other people do to deserve this? Well, the other people didn't do anything to deserve this. And that's what's called the false balance or balance fallacy, where the idea that there are problems on both sides, where there's good people on both sides, it's like, no, sometimes one side is the problem, basically 100% of the problem. And I think that was really important of Ed to point out, and for us to point out, too, that there was nothing that the clan was defending against except white supremacy and black suppression, the suppression of rights among black people. That was it. It's as despicable as it sounds. There was nothing gallant or good about it. There was nothing honorable about it. And in fact, they were so violent and so criminal and so despicable that within three years of their founding, the Grand Wizard of the KKK, Nathan Bedford Forrest, who we mentioned earlier, issued his one and only, basically, executive orders. Grand wizard saying we have to disband and burn all of our stuff because this has gotten out of hand. That's how violent they had become and how despicable their acts had been. Yeah. Forrest Gump's namesake. Yeah. Like I said. He was a pretty controversial remains a controversial dude and that he was one of the generals of the Confederacy. And he was in charge when the Fort Pillow massacre happened. Which was something we can get into in detail. Maybe in a short stuff. Maybe. But essentially hundreds of largely black soldiers who had given up and surrendered were just massacred on this stay at Fort Pillow. And he was known as a brilliant general, the wizard of the Saddle, which is what he was called because he was a cavalry guy. And that later became they kind of ganked that for the clan. As far as the Grand Lizard, they kind of stole that from there. But he seemed to be a vile man. But then later in life, like you said, became disillusioned with the clan. Some people said it was just because he didn't think they were organized enough. Some people said it was because he thought they got too violent. But in Memphis, late in life, he gave this big speech about basically trying to hold up the black man and give them jobs and put them in positions of important positions in our government and to make them doctors and lawyers. So I don't know if it was a change of heart. There's been a lot of controversy since then about, like, should we honor this guy or talk about his entire life up until that moment? No, I think he deserves to have it all spread out on the table. But I feel like once you oversee a massacre of unarmed black soldiers, like a white supremacist terrorist group, that's pretty tough to come back from. It is definitely worth noting, I think, fair to note that he did have at least something of a change of heart, at least publicly. I saw that he wrote to, I think, the governor of Tennessee or somewhere and offered to help destroy white vigilantes who were harassing black citizens because he thought it was uncalled for. So, yeah, he was an unusual person over the span of his life, but he still did some pretty horrible stuff, of course. And this pops up anytime there's a debate over whether they should strip the name from this or that, because there's plenty of stuff named for them. There's a high school in Jacksonville, Florida, that was named Nathan B. Forest High School. Until 2014. Yes, 2014. There was a high school named after basically the founder of the Ku Klux Klan in Jacksonville, Florida. They should just name all the high schools in Florida. Tom Petty High School. Is he from Florida? Yeah, he's from Gainesville. Didn't know that. Yeah. Big time music scene down there back then. Okay. What happened to him? The music scene? Yes. I don't know. Maybe there still is one. Who else came out of Gainesville at that time? Don Felda, the guitar player for the Eagles was Tom Petty's guitar teacher. And then Leonard Skinner hung out in Jacksonville. And I think the Almond brothers, they were making guys, but they hung out down there, too. All right. Okay. Should we take a break? Sure. All right, let's take a break. I didn't think Tom Petty and the Alman brothers would make an appearance in the clan episode. Yeah. But they did. And we'll be back right after to talk about the Enforcement Acts. 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. The Enforcement acts. Yes. This is basically when the federal government stepped up starting in 1870 and said, you know what? We can't count on these states, especially in the south. And we should point out, and Ed makes a good point of pointing out that there was racism all over the country, always has been. There have been clan groups all over the country. But in the south, it was in the government, it was in the courts, it was in the school systems like it was nowhere else in the country. Right. So the federal government said, we can't count on these southern states to do the right thing and to have real investigations and prosecute people and to protect black citizens. So we're going to pass the Enforcement acts that basically says we can go in there and we can kind of take care of business on our own if we have to. Yeah. And take care of business they did. General Grant. Ulysses Grant, who was then President Grant, had an attorney general named Amos Ackerman. This guy's awesome. He's one of the heroes of this story. He doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. He doesn't know. That's pretty lame. Wikipedia. It's bad. He's a Georgia boy, too. Yeah, he is. So this guy ended up the Attorney general under Grant, and he basically used everything at his disposal, from forming, basically the prototype of the FBI, to getting federal troops and getting Marshall law declared down in South Carolina to oversee the presidential election. Down there, like, all sorts of different stuff. Everything he had, he would throw at the clan and ultimately kind of broke the back of that first clan. That combined with Bedford Forest I don't know why you have to say both of those names, but you just kind of do. Combined with his executive order disband, the first clan went away very quickly, actually. Yeah. And it's hard to tell how big it was at its first peak. Some people say maybe a half million people, but like you said, it faded out pretty quickly. And we'll talk about when the clan fades out. It doesn't really go anywhere as far as these people go, it's not like everyone all of a sudden was awesome and not racist. It just means the formal clan just lacked membership, basically. I don't know, I think when suddenly, like, the federal government and maybe your senator or your representative or you hear the president talking smack about this group that, you know, you used to think was pretty cool, but now all of a sudden you realize that the rest of the country thinks you're a backward dummy for looking up to these clan members. It can kind of make people self reflect a little bit. So I wonder how many people do change their minds or have historically over the course of this, not necessarily like, well, I'm not racist anymore, but I think that's a possibility that somebody can reflect like that or at the very least, the next time they're not going to participate or agitate or join in. I don't know. Did you see that meme of the dude in, I think, Indiana or Illinois, I can't remember. I believe in a wheelchair, and he's at a Black Lives Matter rally. He's holding a sign that says, I'm sorry I'm late, I had a lot to learn. And he apparently was I don't know if he was racist, but he was certainly not in favor of Black Lives Matter. And I just started reading about it and looking into it and doing his research and had a complete change of heart and showed up at one of their rallies in support of them, which is pretty cool. Have you seen that? I have not seen that. It can't happen. Like, people's sentiments about this kind of stuff can change. And I feel like when people are like, oh, I'm in favor of keeping other human beings down for really no reason whatsoever, except they don't look like me, I feel like that's like, there's a lot of room for improvement that can happen in that sense. Yeah, I'm sure individuals have changed like that. I wish it was en masse. There were other violent, racist groups when the clan was not as popular during that period. They just didn't have that sort of unified look. Let's talk about that look, if you're ready to do you want to? Yeah. I mean, you can thank D. W. Griffith and Thomas Dixon Jr. For that. Yeah, because prior to this, the clan did not really look like what you would think. They wore masks and hoods and disguises and they tried to disguise their voice, apparently. Sometimes they would pretend that they were the ghosts of Confederate soldiers coming to terrorize black families, fooling absolutely no one. But they didn't wear necessarily what you would think of as the clan today. And like you said, that strictly came from DW. Griffith and I guess Dixon, Thomas Dixon to a lesser extent, but Griffith really put it up there for everybody to see with The Birth of a Nation. Yeah, birth of a Nation was a movie based on a play that was based on a book from Thomas Dixon, Jr. He published The Klansmen with a Cullen, a historical romance of the Ku Klux Klan and where they were depicted as heroic sort of noble Christian warriors. And that became a play that was a little bit more popular. And then DW. Griffith based the movie on that play. And this is where you saw crosses burning. And this is where you saw those white pointed hoods and horses with robes on them as poor horses. They have no idea I know what they're doing. It makes me drag the horses into this. Shall we? No, I wish they wouldn't. But what we know is sort of the look of the clan was fully put forth by DW. Griffith on screen. I was kind of curious because I know he was a huge name in Hollywood and a pioneer in Hollywood and was a founding partner of United Artists with Chaplin and Mary Pickford and I think Douglas Fairbanks maybe. But I was curious about both those guys. Like, were they super racist or was this just a movie to them? And Dixon was supposedly really racist, although he supposedly denounced bigotry. In the wake of this sort of new clan that was created, I had a harder time finding out what D. W. Griffith was all about. He never apologized for anything. And he seems to have sort of escaped scrutiny in some ways in his lifetime. I think so, but I'm not really sure because I didn't have time to really do a deep dive into whether or not he believed this stuff or he was like, I'm going to make a salacious movie that's going to be super controversial and get banned and get me a lot of attention. But whether his heart was in it or not, the impact that his movie had is astounding. It was like, imagine if when Star Wars came out, all of a sudden, like Jedi schools popped up in real life and they would form together and go out and run for office as, like, Jedi, basically. Sweet. We need a third party, right? Yeah, the Jedi party. But imagine if those Jedi were like virulent racists who were dedicated to suppressing the rights of minorities. What do you think. About that. It's much less good. It's much less good. And that's kind of what happened. That's a good point. Yeah. But based on this movie, it was a popular movie that kicked off what's considered the second wave or second incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan and gave us all of that symbolism, the grandiose look and feel, and just kind of like, gave it this almost legend that really didn't exist because the first claim was never like that. They were a bunch of hooded, murderous thugs who would ride around on horseback at night and set people's houses on fire. They didn't look anything like that. So, yeah, you can lay the resurgence in interest of the clan almost squarely at the feet of DW. Griffith, and then only because it wasn't as popular to a lesser extent. Tom Dixon's feet. Not Tom Dixon, the great lighting designer. Tom Dixon, the racist author. Yes. Thomas Dixon, Jr. I think, right? Yeah. In fact, Birth of a Nation part of it was filmed in the neighborhood I lived in La. And Louis Felas right there. Remember where we shot the driving around stuff for the Toyota commercial? Yeah. Can I just say one of my favorite what's you going to say is we're driving, right? Yes. You didn't look to the right and you started to pull through a crosswalk. And this lady with her husband and three kids start, I think, smack the hood of the Prius that we were filming in. Oh, man. And yelled at you, and you'd, like, yell back at her and shook your fists. You got a shouting match. You did in every way except physically shaking your fist. But you got, like, a shouting match with some pedestrian while we were filming a Toyota commercial. It wasn't quite a shouting match. It was very brief. She way overreacted. Oh, totally. No, I'm not saying you were in the wrong, but it was just it reminded me of everything I hated about living in La. I think that one moment was like, how bad this lady over yet? Yeah. That was fun, though. That was a great memory. Yeah. But Birth of a Nation was filmed, like, right down the street from there. Part of it my favorite movie theater in La, the Vista, was right on this corner. And also the movie theater that doubled as Detroit for True Romance for the Karate Kung Fu Theater at the beginning. But yeah, like, right out there in front of that, this big convergence of five streets and apparently some of the huge marching scenes from Birth of a Nation we're filmed right there. Oh, boy. Anyway, this second birth of the Clan, a lot of it can be credited also to the actions of William J. Simmons, who was inspired from the movie and in 1915 went to the top of Stone Mountain here in Georgia and burned across inspired by a movie. Yeah. And the hate and the previous clan. It was all still there. But James Venable, who I mentioned earlier, who I went to school with, his grandkids, he was a kid on top of the mountain with William Simmons at the time. Oh yeah. And he was up there and I think with his uncle and this was kind of looked at is sort of one of the first meetings of the newly reborn Ku Klux Klan in the 1915 to. So in addition to having a much more unified look and I guess design ethos sure this version of the clan, the second version of the clan seemed more organized. At least they were organized enough to actually become a political force not just in support of say the Democrats at the time or in support of just whatever local judge was known to be a racist and they would support him and intimidate voters against him. They would actually put forth candidates who were members of the Clan and publicly members of the clan. Probably most famously Robert Byrd, senator from West Virginia was a clan member and never backed away from the Clan at any point. There were other Southerners from Georgia who were also southerners from Georgia who were from the Clan. Some representatives, lots and lots of local officials. They became something of a political force as well. Yeah, the local thing really was a big deal because it could be and politics, we all get worked up over national politics, as well we should. But if you really want to see a difference in your life, day to day local politics is where it's at and county commissions and school boards and boards of directors like that on the local level is really where the clan could get in there on a more low key basis and do a lot of damage. So they had official uniforms now they had official ranks and titles. They were still sort of like hey, we're just a fraternal order and that's kind of all we are. But at the same time they expanded their ethos and it wasn't just black people anymore. They were anti Semites, they were anti Catholic, they were against communists, they were against anything that wasn't white. And all of this was sort of under the banner of hey what we really are because they would also like trying out pedophiles and stuff like that. What they said they really were, were patriots and heroes and good Americans which sounds very familiar these days. It really does. This version of the clan very much reflects the kind of white supremacist BS that you see today in America where it's very much spread across different groups that are kind of held together by this thread that white people are losing ground and they need to make it back up through whatever we need to do. That really seems to reflect a bit also the fact that there are crazy nut jobs in Congress today who hold white supremacist values basically publicly really bears a striking resemblance to the second resurgence of the clan. Yeah, we should point out again, white Protestant, Christian. Right. That's important. It seemed to be the only thing that was okay like anything else, like anticatholic, anti Jew, anti everything except white Protestant, Christian. And so this is the largest popularity of the whitest popularity of the clan. The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that they may have had, around the mid 1920s, as many as 4 million members spread across the US. And it wasn't just in the south. I mean, there were plenty in industrial cities in the north, there are plenty on the West Coast, plenty in the Midwest. Indiana was known as the stronghold of the clan. And I read that as many as had half a million members, which would have been a third of the population of white men in Indiana at the time in the 1920s. So you might ask, why was everybody in the clan just in the same way that the Reconstruction gave, I guess, purpose to the clan? Massive waves of immigration that had started in the late 19th century to the United States was making America generally racist. And they were easily whipped up by things like, you're going to lose your job to all these immigrants. Yeah, it was very much based on local grievances, like whatever the local fear was. And a lot of times you're right, that was immigrants coming into the town and taking your jobs or black men marrying white women or whatever they felt the local thing was that would be most effective at recruiting, kind of was what they kind of honed in on. The mystique of it all was very, I think, intoxicating to a lot of these people, and still is in that documentary. It's amazing to see these people two years ago talking about clearly that's an important thing for them, like getting dressed up, meeting together in the woods and burning across, riding around at night on your night rides or midnight rides in your car, putting up flyers under the cloak of darkness. It's like cosplay. It really is. They're playing like they're in some important club. It's interesting that the women in this documentary, all of them said, well, you know, this isn't the kind of thing I probably would have been into, but it really improved my marriage when I got on board oh, my God, and joined. And now my husband and I have something to talk about. We have commonalities. And you hear this and you're just like crawling out of your skin at seeing this marriage, which is clearly just a male dominant marriage, but if you'll join my clan or if you like my football team, we'll finally have something in common. Right. And I love football, so I don't want to throw football into the butt. Yeah, it makes sense. Like if you don't have much of an identity or you are looking for something to give your life purpose, like a group or a club, especially one that's looked up to by some people, like can really give your life a real shot in the arm, I guess in good ways. There's so many great clubs right, where people that feel like yeah, but I mean, it is interesting that so much of it in this documentary seems to come from that mystique and that wanting to belong to a group. And this one guy, he was like, I'm just a landscaper and I was just out partying and now I have focus now something to do. I've got these brothers. So one of the things you mentioned was the midnight rides and going out at midnight. And one of the reasons they do that is because the clan has always thrived on anonymity. That's not to say that they don't show their face in public. Some of them do, but plenty of them don't. And there's strength in that. And one of the reasons that they would ride at night was because it afforded that much more anonymity, even if they weren't particularly anonymous, in that their neighbor, who they were terrorizing, probably recognized their voice, but the fact that their face wasn't shown, there was plausible deniability to that. Well, speaking of anonymous, though, in this documentary, anonymous Outed, this one group in Missouri, they got shut down and they put all their information on the web. Wow. And it showed a little bit of the video with the guy and the guy Fox mask and the computerized voice or whatever saying that we're coming after you, we're going to put your names online. And it was fairly interesting doing God's work. That's actually yeah, for real. And that's actually like a traditional anti clan tactic that groups like the NAACP or the Anti Defamation League used back during this time when the clan was at its peak popularity in the 1920s. They would bribe people to get their hands on a membership list. They would send in people to infiltrate to get their hands on a membership list and then they would publish it. And now all of a sudden, that anonymity and the strength that's afforded by the anonymity is gone. And you just broke up a clan chapter in your local area because nobody wants to be associated with anymore. And they probably have to make some sort of public statement about how they left or it's all just a misunderstanding, they were never part of it. Right. Or you're in fear of losing your job, maybe, but that really helped break up this version of the clan in the 1920s and then the federal government again, if you look at these successive waves of the Ku Klux Klan, the federal government is the one who steps in to break the back of the clan. And they did it again, basically using the same playbook from the enforcement Acts, the IRS in the 1940s. Somehow the clan had gotten tax exempt status and the IRS removed it and then sued him for back taxes equal to about $10 million in today's dollars. And the clan broke up real quick after that book. That's the yeah, exactly what you do. So the federal government just used a bunch of tactics to basically get rid of the clan again, and then the clan went away, and that was that for a while. All right, should we take another break here? Yes. All right. It sucks, man. This is going to be a long episode. Giving the clan a long episode. I know. We'll take a break and maybe we'll just come back and sing protest songs and then call it a day. All right, we'll be right back. 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. If I had a hammer, I'd hammer in the morning, I'd hammer in the evening all over the phone. This land. We should totally do this. Outer space. What do you get that reference? Is that from hold on. No. Which one was that one? Going brothers? Oh, no, I was thinking of the one the Christopher guest movie. No, it was from the coen brothers, the folk music movie that is escaping me right now. Isaac. Yeah. Adam driver has a really funny part where they're recording in there and he's just doing background speaking like that, right. And timberlake is singing about I remember going to outer space and he goes, outer space. What's the one where Harry shearer ends up joining, like, a folk group at the end? Oh, yeah, that was mighty wind. Mighty wind. Yeah. That was a good wind. That was a good movie. That was a good one. All right, unfortunately, we have to wind this up and talk about the third wave of the clan, which was the civil rights era. You would think that the civil rights era clan would be the biggest iteration, but it actually wasn't. They were one of the more dangerous areas because they were very famous for carrying out bombings all over the south, mainly including, very sadly, the bombing in Birmingham. I think there were 138 bombings over like a seven year period. But the bombing in Birmingham where they bombed the church and addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carol Robertson and Carol Denise McNair, four young black girls were killed. And if you don't know the story, just go watch the spikely documentary for little girls because it really does a great job of kind of retelling what an awful thing that was. Yeah, definitely. Most famous and most despicable, but they bombed a lot of other people, murdered a lot of other people. There's a couple that lived not too far from where my place in Florida is named Harry and Harriet Moore, whose house was bombed by the clan on Christmas Eve. They chose Christmas Eve because they knew that I think their older children would come home. They wanted to kill as many of them as possible. So there was a real reign of terror that the clan was carrying out during the civil rights era. And Birmingham apparently was called Bombingham for a while because it was just so prone to being bombed, like where the church was bombed, but also because it was where the claim was the strongest and most politically backed up, which, to the civil rights leaders credit, they said, well, then we're going to Birmingham. That's where we're going to set up shop. Which is what brought Birmingham to basically the forefront of the civil rights war. Yeah, there were some other high profile events. The assassination of Medbier Evers. Obviously. The Mississippi Burning case. If you saw that movie again, it did a really good job of the case of those three civil rights workers in 1964 who were killed and there were still lynchings going on and there were still people in seats of power attorneys and people on juries. And it was very mixed up time in this country because rights were being achieved while all this bloodshed was going on. And like you mentioned before, it's like they're trying to hold onto this thing. That is not what America is anymore. No, it's like, TS, America is a multicultural society and it's better off for it. Let's just all get on the trolley, shall we? Yeah. So the FBI, it's worth mentioning, played a dual role. Apparently, Jaeger, whoever knew all the way back in 1965 who carried out the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing but just sat on it because he wasn't a really big fan of civil rights or the civil rights movement. But at the same time. The FBI actually did have an integral role in breaking up local clan groups by using. Like. Co Intel Pro. That program where they would basically infiltrate and start getting people to question the leaders or start accusing each other of disloyalty and just turn a group on each other. Like what they did the Black Panthers. They did to the KKK far less frequently. But they did have an impact on helping to break up the KKK in the civil rights area as well. Yeah. And since the civil rights era kind of to today, the clan has really lost a lot of its membership. And that, again, is not to say that any of the racism went away. It's been fractured sometimes into more dangerous groups, further alt right, white supremacist groups and neo Nazis. There have been people in power. David Duke, we have to mention him. He was an actual House member from the state of Louisiana. He was the grand national grand wizard of the clan. And I think they started to kind of push away a little bit from the symbology of these kind of crazy symbols and the hoods and the crossbarnings. I mean, that stuff still went on on local and state level, but I think nationally they kind of tamp that down a little bit and was like, I think it'd be better if we could just hold office. Right. Quietly. There's a direct thread to today, this idea where they're just trying to soft sell racism and suppression of minority rights and just repackage it in other ways, but it's all the exact same thing. And it doesn't matter how you dress it up, you're trying to deny the rights of other human beings. So say whatever you want. To hell with your ideology. Yeah, totally. There's never been a good handle on the numbers because it hasn't been a super organized national thing, but they think it is down to like less than 30,000 now. And when they do these specials and kind of go to these groups, the meetings in these towns are number in the single digits sometimes. It's not like hundreds of guys getting together and of course there are women in there now keep saying guys, but it's largely always been men because they call them clansmen. But these wives are getting involved as well, so they can have something in common with their husbands. Yeah. The good thing is the numbers are small enough that basically local communities are strong enough to come out and chase clan rallies, break them up, as was the case in Madison, Indiana in Labor Day in 2019. The clan said that they were going to have a cookout and apparently about ten of them showed up and the entire Madison, Indiana community, not the entire, but a significant portion of them, showed up and basically chase the clan out of the public park. Awesome. And broke up their rally in ten to 20 minutes. From what I read, that's usually par for the course. And then the clan is relegated to basically spewing hate online or like you said, leaving flyers on people's cars. So the Southern Poverty Law Center says that they have been tracking their decline and they think they may have plateaued, which is not good because you like to just keep seeing them decline, but they bottomed out. In other words, the problem is there's no lack of other racist groups that are equally problematic, if not more so. Yeah, there's one part in this new special where this kid there are these two guys dressed in their robes and putting up a flag in their front yard or whatever, a confederate flag. And then one other, I guess, clan flag, and this teenager in st. Louis comes across the street or whatever suburb they're in, and it's just like, hey, man, white power. I just want to see what you guys are all about. I'm really interested in joining up. And these guys talk to him for a minute and it's just like so troubling to see this dumb kid reaching out in all the wrong ways because he's been taught something right. And when you see this family, he's in these people's homes, and there's five, six year old kids sitting around, and the wife's got a cigarette and she's taking a shot of bourbon, and she got her mountain dew in her hand and spewing hate. And these children are sitting there, and you just want to like you want to run in there and steal these kids. I know you're not supposed to say that you just did that, but I just did. It's awful. It is pretty awful. Anytime you're talking about hate, it's awful. And it should be. It should turn your stomach. I hope it turned everybody's stomach. It is learned stuff. Almost cost. Totally. Yes, for sure. We already did one on hate before and we maybe we should do a redux on it. I don't know. I got one more quick thing that I always thought was kind of fun. On a lighter note, at baseball games, I'm not sure the history I should look that up, but a strikeout when you're keeping log is known as a k. And fans have bring k signs and they hang up with the picture is known for a lot of strikeouts. Yeah, one for each strikeout. Yeah, one for each strikeout. And they hang it up in the stands in front of their seats. And they have always hung that third k upside down as per tradition. So it never says KKK, which I think is great. Yeah, it is great. Way to go, baseball fans. Sticking it to it. The way to go, baseball fans. Well, you got anything else? No, nothing else. If you want to know more about the KKK, go visit the southern poverty law center. They have some really good research on it, including some pathetic it's kind of reassuring in some ways. If you're bothered by this, maybe that will help. And since I said that, it's time for a listener mail. Let me see here. I'm going to call this ezra the podcaster. Hey, guys, my name is ezra. I'm 14 years old. I've started a podcast on my own and it is inspired by your show. I'm doing a school project on my podcast and I would love it if you could respond with a couple of your tips for beginners. My podcast is called High School is a joke. I listen to you every day and that would mean a lot if you responded and even mentioned me in an episode. Thank you for always making me laugh to be more knowledgeable at the dinner table. You guys are really cool. And I want to let you know that you've inspired me to start my own show. Sincerely, Ezra. That's awesome, Ezra. Congratulations. You got any advice? Well, I'll give you the advice I found is the best of all time, and that is just talk about stuff that you find interesting. Because even if people aren't listening, you're still going to enjoy doing it and that'll make you keep it up. And if you keep it up, then other people start to notice and come around and next thing you know, you'll have an audience. That's great advice. Yes, stay away from the clan. It's even better advice. Chuck, everybody, whether you're a podcaster or no, steer clear of the clan. Don't even talk to them. But if you want to get in touch with us, like Ezra did, you can send us an email. Send it off to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is pretty of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
SYSK's Guatemalan Adventure, Part One | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysks-guatemalan-adventure-part-one | Josh and Chuck share the story of their recent eye-opening trip to Guatemala, which was sponsored by a nonprofit organization called Cooperative for Education, in this very special episode of Stuff You Should Know. | Josh and Chuck share the story of their recent eye-opening trip to Guatemala, which was sponsored by a nonprofit organization called Cooperative for Education, in this very special episode of Stuff You Should Know. | Tue, 18 May 2010 16:20:29 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=18, tm_hour=16, tm_min=20, tm_sec=29, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=138, tm_isdst=0) | 53699636 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. This episode of Stuff You Should Know is brought to you by GoToMeeting. We all have have to meet, but the average cost of a single business trip is $1,000. With just one click, you can save time and money and have your meetings online with affordable and easy to use GoToMeeting. Use GoToMeeting for sales, presentations, product demos, training sessions, collaborating on documents, and more. And at $49 per month for unlimited meetings, it saves time, money, and travel. Try GoToMeeting free for 30 days. Visit. Gotomeetingcom stuff that's gottomeetingcom stuff. And what the heck was that? That was not you, my friend. No, it wasn't. Clearly that was the booming voice of our buddy that we met down there, who had such an impressive voice for radio. We said, we've got to get this guy to record our podcast and if we can use it. Yeah, he works at one of the schools we went to, and he was MCing an event. And we're like, holy cow. Yes. Boy, was he. He's the Guatemalan meltor. May the velvet fog. Yes. And this is a very special pair of podcasts, right, Chuck? Absolutely. Our Guatemalan adventures. Yes. Our Guatemala. Not there. Ours. Yeah. So Chuck and I and Jerry went down to Guatemala, as many of the listeners know. Team S-Y-S-T-S-Y-S-K. Nice, chuck and our eyes were open quite a bit. You could say that. Yeah. We were originally going to go down. We should probably tell the backstory. Do you want to take it? Chuck loves emailing people back, especially when they say, do you want to come to Guatemala with us? We'll pay for exactly that's pretty much how it went down. We got an email from a fan named Anne Dempsey, our buddy now. Yes, she is, buddy. And she emailed us, I don't know, last year, last fall, and said, hey, I work for this nonprofit called Cooperative for Education, and we do work in Guatemala supplying school books and computer centers for rural, indigenous poor people in Guatemala. And check out our video and our website, and we'd love it if you guys came down. We'll sponsor you to come down on this trip and see what you think about it. No strings attached, of course. We just think you would enjoy it and have a great experience. Right. It's pretty much how it happens. And we're like, what's the catch? What's your game here? And she really was like, no, really, we just want you to see if you guys want to mention us on the podcast or something, that'd be awesome. Right? Because they are donor driven organizations. Sure. Like all nonprofits. Exactly. Because nonprofit can't turn a profit. We went down there initially with the idea of like, okay, we can't just completely throw to this organization. Let's do one on can education alleviate poverty, can it actually happen? Because that's what coed does. Right? Well, originally she just asked for us to come down and then we were like, wait a minute, why don't we bring Jerry and then we can record down there and do our first on the road live recording type of deal. That was your idea. I think I was snacking while you were thinking about it. You were way down with it, though. Yeah. So, Chuck, we never go anywhere unprepared, or I should say, we never do anything I don't put on my pants without doing a little research first to find out if overnight, while I was sleeping, somebody figured out a better way to do it. Sure. Yeah. And that is true. So we did some research on Guatemala, and I actually have a little story for you. The night before we left, I secretly wrote a note to my dear Yumi telling her that I love her in case anything happens to me. I really wanted to make sure she knew that I went down thinking that there's a 40% chance I was going to lose my life in Guatemala. Yeah. Here's a little tip. If you guys are going to travel in some country that's not like France or Italy, don't go to the State Department website. Is that where you found it? Yeah. To read, like, the travel warnings and all? Because you go to some of these countries that are little off the beaten path, and they do. They make it sound like you will be lucky if you come back alive. Yeah. And that's exactly what I thought. There's about 18 paragraphs you were scared. That detail. Kidnappings, ransoms, beheadings sure, straight up murder. Yeah. It sounds like the country is just overrun with criminals and disease. Yes, all manner of disease. We got shots out the YinYang. What do we get? HEPA. We got lockjaw tetanus. Yeah. It wasn't dip, Ted. It was tet. Something like that. I don't know what they shot me full of. I just hold my arm out when somebody presents me as a syringe. Jerry got sick, actually, from the shots ahead of time and a little bit of foreshadowing. Yes. Little Chucky got sick on the way back. Yeah. I think I ingested some ice from a rum drinker, too. Yeah. Last night. There's some precautions you have to take. And then to finish my story, yummy found the secret note within hours of us leaving. So that worked out well. Yeah, it's great. All right, Chuck. We also did some background on the country. One of the first things you find out about Guatemala when you look into it is that it had a pretty serious civil war. Yeah. For about 30 years. 36, my friend. Yeah, that's what I said about right. Actually, that's about 40 years. Yeah. But sure. Internal conflict it formally ended in that's a long time to be under a civil war. Yeah. And actually, Guatemala's is kind of this very put upon Latin American state. It was run by a dictator up to the 40s, when there was a I don't know if it was a bloodless revolution, but I think it was one of the softer revolutions. And there were some liberals running the show for about ten years, and Guatemala still referred to it as Ten Years of Spring. Right. Chuck? They refer to everything in regards to spring. It's the land of eternal spring. Ten years of Spring. The Spring is like the spring spring. They had this time of peace, and part of that was involved taking land from the United Fruit Company, which owned a bunch of land it wasn't using, and redistributing it to farmers. Right. And United Fruit Company didn't like this, went to the CIA and said, hey, you know, you got some lefties in your backyard. Right. You should probably support a coup. CIA backed coup. End of the ten years of spring and the beginning of the Civil War. Right? Yes. Which they did not refer to as ten years of summer that followed the spring. No, it was pretty bad. And we'll get into a couple of stories. We got a couple of stories while we were down there. A couple of bad massacres that happened. Yeah. There were, I think, 100,000 killed and 100,000 disappeared is what they call them. Which meant killed that they didn't find your body. Sure. And a later Truth Commission report concluded that 93% of the atrocities committed in the Civil war were done by government soldiers. Right. And actually, oftentimes they disguise them to make it look like the gorillas had done it, to drum up resentment, antipathy towards them. Yeah. It was a bad 36 years for Guatemala, and like you said, it ended in 1996. So they're still kind of coming out of this, right? Oh, yeah, very much so. I think more than half of Guatemalans are direct descendants of the Mayan people. And some of them, like you said, speak in the Mayan tongue. Still Chichal. Some of them don't even speak Spanish. Right. Many of them. Right. If you run into a Guatemalan who speaks Spanish, likely they're bilingual because they speak their indigenous Mayan tongue and Spanish as well. Right. They are one of the most populous Central American countries. Yeah. Most of their population is rural and 56% live below the poverty line. And that's Guatemala's poverty line. Yeah. That's a very important thing to point out. North America's property line very different. And they are mainly agricultural, labor, industry, services. Industry is only about 15%. Yeah. The top three segments of the economy are agriculture, remittances and tourism. Yes. Unless remittances is people that leave the country to go make a decent wage and then send money back home. Yeah. And that's the number two segment of their economy. Crazy. And with tourism as well, it's number three, but it's not entirely enormous. I think it makes up a pretty decent portion, but it's not that big of a money maker. Again, because of things like the State Department website and the fact that the Civil war only ended 14 years ago. Yeah. And I tell you, except for Antigua, which we'll get into, that was the end of our trip. We didn't see any tourists where we went. No, we went definitely off the beaten path way. Right. Yeah, way in country. We weren't like hanging out on the beach or anything like that. And check the educational scene in exactly. Happening down there. Yes. Which is why we went and why coed is there, clearly. Right. You mentioned Anne. So here's a clip of Anne explaining a couple of stats that we found a little staggering. We know that in rural indigenous villages in Guatemala, three out of four students who start first grade will drop out of school before they complete 6th grade. So of the four of us standing here, only one of us would actually complete 6th grade. That would be Josh. Exactly. But that's good to know, Josh, that you would have been the one to stay in school. It's possible. I think you were the clear winner. I appreciate that. And seem to get a kick out of it. Yeah. And most students who live in Guatemala, she also told us during the interview, don't learn to read until maybe third grade. And the teachers don't really feel it's a problem because they think that kids can't learn to read until that age. Right. So they don't teach them. They're finding, thanks to groups like co ed that oh, wait. Well, kids can actually start to learn to read in the first grade if they have books. Right. Which is a big deal. So that's why they're there. The whole thing that all this hinges on. Yeah. That's one of their big programs. Yeah. We'll break that down low a little bit later, right? Yeah. So that's why coed is there. That's why we got invited to see the stuff firsthand. And so we begin our trip. So, Josh, we meet the three of us early. Early at Hartsfield Jackson. Early? A bonus for us is there's a direct flight to Guatemala from Atlanta. Just scanned. What was it, like 3 hours? Maybe 3 hours. 3 hours. And like $300 for airfare round trip. Yeah, it was a pretty good deal. Yeah. So we get on the plane, jerry and I, we sit together. Josh, I like not to sit with this because I love the quote you gave me when I was like, what's up with that? You said you like to leave it to the gods. I like to leave it to fate to determine whether I'm going to die in an airport crash or not. So Josh is behind us. And a funny nickname came out of this. Josh had turned around at one point because we all know from previous podcast that you don't love to fly. No, it's not your favorite thing in the world. No, it's not. So you actually put the black blanket that they give you jerry is so cracking up right now. The black blanket that they give you over your entire body and head, and it's like, Jerry, check it out. And we started calling you what? The black ghost of the sky. Black ghost of the skies. Yeah. I went to sleep. I needed to sleep because I don't like to fly. It was so funny. And I had taken a painkiller. Right, so that did you write right? I didn't wake up until we landed. I think it was pretty awesome. I remember when we did land, I actually woke up right before we landed. And as we were coming in to the runway, right as we were touching down, I noticed there was, like, a line of airplanes that had apparently been stripped for parts. And I just thought, You've got to be kidding me, because I thought I was going to die. Remember? Sure. You probably thought that when we took off from the same airport, but that I was going to die. Well, not from the heading, no, but just reminded when you say, like, hey, we need a tire, go get one right off that plane. It's hilarious. So we get there, the first ten minutes in the airport is literally like a Three Stooges episode. We're just kind of, like, walking in circles. We know we have to go through our passport. We know we need to exchange some money. We eventually get outside. And this is when coed shines. I can't stress enough because we're going to try and get some of you people out there to go on one of these trips on these tours. It's so cool. They really take care of you, so there's no need to be worried about going to a foreign, scary land. Like, the second we got out to the airport, they had the signs and the bus waiting for us. We met our Cohorts and got on the bus and went to Guatemala City. Yeah. And Chuck, I think all three of us, I was still groggy. And we decided that we needed to kind of create some intro in the field that we could use. And we started drinking Gaios, which is the national beer of Guatemala. And actually, you can get Guyo here. Guyo is rooster, right? Yeah, it means rooster, I think so. They call it Formosa here, but it's the exact same beer. Right. Well, coed hit the ground running, though. Remember when we first got there? Oh, yeah. Holly. Awesome. Holly met us at the hotel and was like, here's a Subway sandwich. We've got to go to our first school. Do you guys want to go? It's your option. And we're like, we want to record an intro here, so you guys go ahead and we'll meet up later. Right? So that was time well spent because we were thinking about what to record while we were drinking Gallos. And eventually we got to the point where everything we recorded is kind of useless. I wish we could include some of that because it's really funny. Jerry was so frustrated with us because we were doing a good job. Yeah. But it wasn't just that. We didn't really have a conception yet of what coed did. And that was about to change, actually, because, remember, we were still going down on the premise that we were going to record a podcast, can Education Alleviate Poverty? I think it was in Guatemala City that night where the turning point began and our eyes started to open more and more like, holy cow. Yes. Dinner at dinner. Yes. So they took us, they got back. I was setting us up for a clip. We don't have a clip for that, too. That sounded very much like an NPR set up. Thank you. So, yes, we met up, they came back to the hotel. We had a couple of beers at that point and failed miserably with our intro. And they all said, hey, let's walk down the street here to this restaurant and we can talk a little bit. And I thought, Are we going to be kidnapped at any point during this walk? Right. But we weren't. No, we weren't. And we ended up hanging out with Joe. Can I mention real quick our kidnapping plan that Jerry and I hatched? Yes, you can, because we came up with a plan. If the three of us were kidnapped, then we were to tell them that Josh was a prince or a very rich man in the United States and that we worked for him. We were mere servants. And I figured that probably would have gotten us off. Yeah, it would have gotten you two off. Thank you for that. Prince Josh. Yes. So we hung out with Joe. Yeah. Joe Burninger is one of the founders, along with his brother Jeff. Go ahead. Yeah. And Joe and Jeff used to go down to Guatemala for spring break. Right? Yeah. They were going down there, having a good time, meeting the ladies, but they come from this fairly uncommon family where they had tons of values instilled in them. So they're going down hanging out a sickening, actually. And it was I felt like a piece of trash. Yeah. Jeff was telling us all about his parents. I was like, wow, you sound like really great people. Yes. So much so that I guess they kind of led to Joe and Jeff being inspired to actually go back to Guatemala and live there right. To help this country. And they've done it in a very clever way. Do you like all this, like, teasing that we're doing? Right? People like, what do they do exactly? Yeah, I told you, it hinges on books. It does. So we have this awesome dinner. Joe and Holly give us this really, really great rundown to where we finally feel like, alright, we got a really good idea what's going on here and we're not ready to share that with you yet. We're not ready to share that. We go to sleep. We go Betty By. I watch a little Spanish language. Seinfeld. I watched I think Law and Order in English was on down there. And I was like, oh, thank God. So we awake in the radisson at Guatemala City and they have a couple of buses arranged for us. It's like Mercedes, the small sprinter buses. I know they're not yes. Not the huge chicken buses. We saw plenty of those. Those are red, those are brightly colored and little aside. Do you know why chicken buses are painted brightly, vividly and differently? I do, but you should say so. It's because a significant amount of the Guatemalan population who use those busses can't read where it's going, so they just know, oh, this red bus with the Tasmanian Devil on it is going to a teal on. And that's where I need to go and I'm going there. Pretty cool. Nice little factory. Josh. Yeah. So actually, that's where we went. We went to Santiago Ateeflan. Yeah. Which is where Lake Atitlan is. Beautiful. And actually, you should check out the coolest stuff on the planet. Cast on Lake at Teitlan. Yeah, the footage that Jerry took while we were down there. So we arrived there and I think it was a few hours by bus. We got to see some of the countryside. Tobacco farms. Coffee. Coffee. Bananas. Bananas, yeah. Agriculture. Poor towns. Yeah. So we arrived there at the lake. And this is a volcanic lake formed a long, long time ago from a volcano. And I think three volcanoes are surrounded, right? Yeah. Those are dormant. But on the way up we saw a couple of volcanoes that are active. Had smoke coming out of them. Yeah. First time for me ever. Yeah, me too. And yeah, it Line, I think, was formed about 80,000 years ago. I learned from the coolest stuff, Cast, and it was actually ridiculously polluted for many years, which is kind of screwed because it's a major tourist destination for Guatemala. So they actually bioremediated it. Yeah. And they said it's all good now. Yeah. We saw people swimming it and Chuck and I didn't get it after a couple more years of buyer remediation, but it was gorgeous, man. Unbelievable. And people canoe standing up. Yeah. It's the craziest thing I've ever seen. Very good balance. Yeah. So we're at this Idyllic scene, we go to this little place that's run by this hippie expat American expat, which is my dream to do this one day. Yeah, I know. Central American country. Yeah. You're jealous of that guy. It was awesome. He had it going on. And actually, the resort that we stayed at was around in the Think and it was taken over by the army and they had to evacuate the guy's mom had owned it originally. Right. And to call it a resort is like, kind of overstating things. It was really awesome. But there were little huts, like Stone Cabanas, kind of peppered, like ten or twelve of them. Peppered on the property. Yeah. It was called Pasada de Santiago. Yeah. And it was awesome. And we should point out this is the first time on the trip and only time and probably the only time in our history that we will all stay in the same place. Yes. We had to share not a room. Jerry, luckily, had to close the door and had her own room. But you and I were there, like New Hampshire, Vermont, on those little twin beds. Right. And apparently Chuck confirmed something that I've been told before, that I snore really loud. Wow. Yeah. It's kind of a problem, actually. It sounded like a sow being murdered with a spoon. Weird. It was bad. You're not the first person who said that. Really? Yeah. The room was awesome, though. A little fireplace. It was very cool. So we get there, we set up and had an awesome lunch. All the food was great the whole trip. It's going to get old saying we had an awesome meal because it was so delicious. Well, I noticed that in the rundown, you noted every single one of them, so those things really stuck with you. I'm all about the food. Awesome meal. Mentioned this. So one of the first things we did was we went out, they took us out for a little tour of the main square in town. Saw a church from like 1730 or something. A church? Where the lead, I guess, priest, the head priest was murdered. He was an American priest down there, and he was murdered in the Civil War. And that was kind of a big deal. Yeah, very big deal. And remember, they had, like, the carpet made of flowers going from the doorway to the altar, which had to be at least 50, 60 yards. And we should say it wasn't just flat. We're going to put pictures of all this on the website, by the way, so you can check it all out. It wasn't just flowers. It was an intricate design made of flower petals the entire way. It was astounding, actually. And we found that it's considered a very gracious way to welcome people by putting down evergreen straws. And then you got flowers over there, like, higher up, but if you put down evergreen, then your guest feet never touch the ground. Yeah. And every school we went to, they did that for us. And it was I don't know. I've never had anyone do that before. No, but I started doing it around my house. You do that for you? Yeah, I felt very unworthy. If I did that, then I should be like, pick all that stuff up off the floor. What are you doing? What kind of a mess is this. So we take a tour around the main town there, and then they set us up with a visit to the home of a girl that had been one of the co ed students, and still is, I think, at the Taxicoy family. Yeah. And they invited us into their home. And we've got a clip for this one today. We did kind of a tour of the town here, which is very poor, to say the least. Very eye opening for guys like us. Yeah. And we met a family, actually, whose daughter has benefited from the co ed program. Yeah. Maria. Maria, yes. And they invited us into their home. Yes. It's a very small home. You walk in, half of it maybe is roofed. We all assembled in this one room, and we found out that it was the room they sleep in. So it was obviously a really big deal for them. They straightened everything up for these gringo guests to come gawk and take pictures and ask questions about them. Right. But you could tell that they're very grateful. So welcoming, too. Yeah. And the dad, too. I mean, to put all of his kids through school, and he's doing it at his own detriment because he actually could use these kids to be productive money makers for the house. But instead they're off at school not making any money. And yet this guy was dedicated, and he didn't look like it to look at him. He just looked like some normal Guatemalan guy. Right. But there was something in him that said, you know what? I'm going to stop this with this generation. I'm going to send all of my kids to school. And he has yeah. And that's kind of the whole thing. And he wants his kids to exceed their own expectations, even. What do they say? The kids want to exceed themselves. Yeah, exceed themselves. I'm not sure what that is in Spanish. Right. I bet it sounds a lot better than that. But the only way to do that, we're learning, is to be educated. Because if you don't have an education in Guatemala and really anywhere, your options are extremely limited. And here more so than most places, probably. So that was a real eye opener. Yeah, it really was. And I can't get over the dad. He was about 3ft tall, all smiles, such a kind face. I don't think do they speak Spanish or did they speak no, they're speaking Spanish because we had the translation going. Okay. I thought it was being translated into, like, chichikao. Was it? I could just be making that up. But yeah, this guy lives in abject poverty. They actually rented the house that we visited them in. They rented a couple of rooms. The whole thing wasn't even there. Yeah. And instead of having his kids go work to support the family, like every other Guatemalan family, he's making sure all three of his kids go through school. Yeah. It's just really once it sinks in, what the guy is doing is really amazing. Yeah. That was very touching. Very gracious, actually. I like you. Yeah. And he hugged you back. He's very nice. So after that, we go back to the main town. They have set up some we should set this up. What they have in Guatemala, these little tiny little Toyota pickup trucks. The little ones. Yeah. And they have these little Aframes, wide open Aframes built in the beds of the truck so they can carry around like twelve people back there standing up. That's their taxi. And you just kind of hold on standing up to this little Aframe. That's their taxes. So they set us up for these trucks, coed did, so we could go out a little bit on the outskirts of town and see a couple of cool things. I felt like it was a real adventure. Yeah, it was. I mean, like, we had the wind blowing our faces and we were hip to hip. Yeah, hip to hip. Well, one of the sexiest cab rides I've ever been. Sounds good. The first place we went to was to see this. And I'm going to let you set this up because this obviously meant a lot to you, but we went to see someone or something called Mushiman. Right. And we had a choice. We could have either gone shopping or going to see Mashimon. Right? Mashimon. Yeah. We all went to see Mushroom. Well, Mashimon, we went to see him, actually, because it turns out he's my patron saint. Yes. He is called the man in black at the crossroads. Or the black man at the crossroads? Right. Papa Legba and Western African culture. But basically he's this guy. He's the god of vice. Yes. And actually, this is hilarious because I didn't know this at the time, but they keep him locked up definitely every year. But I think, like every couple of months they have a kind of a ceremony in his honor. And it's every year, and it moves from house to house and you never really know where Mashimon is. And they keep him locked up because his sexuality is too much. He's like the Antonio Banderas of gods. Wow. Yeah. So what service he offers to his flock, me included, is that you can come, bring him sacrifices and he'll help alleviate your vices. Yes. So we bought some or. Josh paid $0.20 for a half pint of the local swill. They called it Rum. No, it was like sugarcane moonshine. Yeah, but the local guys called it Rum. There was no Rum. It was not Rum. I looked it up. It's called Guaro. It's actually Costa Rican. Okay. But there's a sugar cane moonshine down there is serious stuff. And actually, I buy it and I'm like, well, Chuck, we should probably try this. Jerry declined. Chuck and I both tried it. Chuck shuddered. I didn't. Which I think made it. All the more reason I should dry out a little bit because I just shutter from this. You got some cereal I can pour this over, right? So I offer a cigarette to Moshe Moana as a sacrifice, and the guy takes it from me and puts it in Moshaman's mouth and lights it. And I'm like, yes, I just knocked a cigar out of his mouth. Now my cigarettes in there, right? This is going to be good for me. And then I go and get the liquor. And then go in there and you have to be very quiet. This is quite sincere. And I was very sincere, too. I was mocking in any way form. It's a little scary to help me, but it's this dark, strangely lit barn, tiny barn. You can fit maybe a donkey and a half in it. Right. And there's this acrid incense burning, I think it was Frankincense. And this crowded with sweaty people, and a couple of guys are running the show and people are on their knees and just praying before Moshe Moon. And he just carved probably three and a half, 4ft tall figure. So he was life sized, pretty much. And so they put the cigarette in his mouth. And then when I brought the whiskey or the moonshine, they actually put a funnel in his mouth, held a little bandana underneath his carved lip and poured it into his mouth. They didn't pour it all. And another reason why I know that I needed machine's help was because I waited around to see if they gave me the rest of the bottle back. Yeah. And they did not. Well, that's part of the little not in a wink you get is they take it very seriously. They also collect a lot of liquor in the process. Yeah. I imagine if you're running the mashamone ceremony, you get pretty lit. Yes, probably. So. That was a pretty big experience. Yeah. We're going to have pictures of that up too. Yeah. And we left there and that was pretty cool. Yeah, very cool. Because I was doing it because I want to be a dad and I need to get in better health. Sure. So it was cool, I felt good. And then we go straight to one of the most depressing places I've ever been in my entire life. Yes. Josh the mudslides from Hurricane Stand in 2005 devastating to this small town. Yeah. Village. Like 400 of the 500 people who live there. 1500 people. Holy cow. Died. Wait, just the village? Well, no, that's all over. That's in all of Guatemala. Okay. From the hurricane. I think this village is the worst hit, though, because it was like 500 people. There are 400 people that died, and then 1500 people in the whole country died from it. Right. They recovered only 77 corpses and 300 people are still missing and presumed dead. Basically where we were standing was what they say, like 15ft higher than it used to be. And below us was a mass grave of bodies. Yeah. A village. And a lot of people were sleeping. It was pretty early in the morning and you could actually look up the mountain and see still the trees hadn't fully grown back. It was like a swath cut where the mud came. It came right down, right over the village and just covered it. And it was pretty sobering because one of the kids that we were talking to well, we weren't, but our group was, was an orphan whose family was beneath his feet somewhere. And then to the right there was an old school police station and hospital and they're gutted and abandoned, but you could still see the high mud mark. And this kid, he was all by himself. He lost all his brothers and sisters and his parents and he was now taking care of these other kids. And he looked to be about like 17. I remember they said, no, he's like 13. And he lost his parents when he was like eight. And he's been taking care of these kids ever since. Yeah. Unbelievable. It really was very sad. Yes. And actually so is the next place we visited too. Yes. Josh. The next site we went to was the site of a massacre that happened during the civil war in 1990. The Guatemalan army opened fire on an unarmed crowd of between 4000 protesters that had finally kind of had enough. Yeah. The army had a garrison in a title on, right? Yeah. And just about every other town over a population of 10,000. And they used to just basically abuse the population. And one night these soldiers got drunk, beat up some guys at a bar, started breaking into people's houses and just basically being jerks and find the right way to put it. Right. So this guy who was injured in the bar fight, I guess went and told the mayor or something and everybody got woken up and went to the army garrison, demanded that they stopped abusing the population. And so I guess one of the guys who is heading the garrison said, well, what do you have to say? And somebody shot into the air and somebody else just started firing into the crowd. Yeah. They ended up killing 14 people in an age range from ten to 53, 21. Others were wounded. And we visited there and they literally have a sort of like a little open plaza in the woods and they have a little memorial at each spot where each person was killed. Yeah. They have the original steps that were there. Yeah, it's pretty again, sobering. Very somber place. I think once a month or something. Yeah. And they still do have mass there. But the good news is out of all that, two weeks later, as a result of the pressure and outcry over this, the army vacated the garrison there, at least in Atlanta, became one of the few communities that didn't have a military base. Right? Yeah. This one, for some reason, just stirred up the anger and resentment of everybody in Guatemala. Even the people who are running the military turned on the military for this one. Right. So at this point, we are like in Guatemala. We are really feeling like we got a handle on what's going on here after this day. Do you remember we were walking around a teetline and I was like, look, 20 years ago, there were gorillas sitting here with AK 47 shooting it out with Melissa, like where we're walking right now. You could feel it still had left some sort of impression on the air. Yes, it was very creepy. And those little tight alleyways. And I was just trying to wrap my head around coming around a corner and seeing a gorilla with a gun and kids everywhere. It was just awful. But at the same time, it was a really nice town, too. It was this kind of dual experience. Well, yeah, because Lake Atitlan is a place where grengo tourists go because it's so gorgeous. Right. So it's a little weird. Yeah. So we get back to the place, our little hippie cabana, and have a little happy hour by the lake. Yes, we did. Which was one of the other great things about these tours, is they believe in unwinding at the end of the day and fellowshipping with each other and having a cold one called Gallo. So it was a gorgeous setting. We have a great dinner once again, and we were able to get co founder Jeff Berninger in the cabin afterward for a little we lured him into it. Yeah, we lured him in there with a fire and beer and said, Come in here and speak to us. And we got to talk to him a little bit more about co ed. And we have a clip here of his thoughts on his initial inspiration to start this nonprofit. When did the first seed of I see a need here and part of me wants to do something about it. When did that first hit you? That started when I was looking for a volunteer opportunity. I think a lot of us, we come down, we see a beautiful country, we backpack, we try to learn a language, and we see the poverty. So what can I do to help? Right. Well, what I found out was that with my level of Spanish, there was very little I could do to help except maybe teach English. And I found a school that was willing to allow me to come in and teach English. It was a volunteer opportunity, and it was something I thought I could do well. Of course, I learned later that I learned later that I was not really cut out for teaching, but what I learned in the classroom was that the kids didn't have bucks. And the way this started was since I didn't know how to teach. I thought, well, the simplest way to teach would be just to get the book and follow it. Start in chapter one, go to chapter two, chapter three. Right. But since there was no books, I'm like, well, I've got to find books. I'll ask the math teacher and the science teacher where they get their books because obviously they want English books. It's a Spanish speaking country. Well, I found out the math and science teachers didn't have books either. I'm like, well, this is not how do you teach? So Josh, here's how the textbook program works. And I know you know this, but pretend that I'm telling you for the first time, okay, everybody in podcast land, here's how it works. What they do is it's a really cool program because it is self sustaining. They realize at some point that early on that dropping things off and leaving the cold drop and go, that's not the way to go. I'm sure that people need supplies and things like that, but in the end they feel like just to have something dropped and leaving isn't really doing them a lot of good. Well, it's not sustainable, okay? That's the point of the textbook program, is that it is sustainable. Starting out with the first bit of seed money. Exactly. So what happens is they are able to buy books really cheap in bulk textbooks, deliver them to the students. And the students actually, these very, very poor, poor students actually pay money to rent these textbooks for the year. Right. And we should probably say right here, it's like $2 a year per student. Per student, per book. Per book. Right. So what happens is these kids, they rent the books, that money goes into what they call a revolving fund, an escrow account. Right. And in five years, the collective money has grown to the point where they can now replace the original set of textbooks. Right. Or if when Coed takes these books to these schools, there's a program, a part of it is taking care of your textbook, right? Yeah. So these kids are taking care of their textbooks. We'll hear why in a second. Say the math books are in really good shape still. They can use that money instead of replacing those, they can get another subject. Right. With that money. Sure. Or they will replace those books and then the use textbooks become part of their used textbook program and can go to some of the scholarship kids who can't even afford the two books. Right. So it's a self sustaining program. Once these kids rent into the program, they've got textbooks for life, basically, or for their entire run of education. And here's Jeff talking about why he found the program works. Many people have told us that it would never work, they won't return the books. And that's actually a key piece of the reason why the fee program works. Because we've seen it. The school principals tell us that this is the case, that when someone has to pay, even if it's a small fee, that they respect what they receive a lot more. If someone hands you something in the street, a piece of paper, a small publication for free, the likelihood of you keeping it or valuing it versus tossing it in the garbage can is much higher, and it's much higher that you will not read it because you've not put anything into it. But if you have to pay a small fee for it, it's much more likely that you're going to read it or keep it. And chuck $2 a year per book, say three books, $6 a year. It's paltry. But times how many kids? Sometimes though, right? But you want to make sure that you're not thinking it is an American. Is it really paltry? So Jeff said that Coed did a study to find out how expensive it was to these families. Yeah. Whether or not they could actually afford it, they'd struggle with that for a long time. That's the question we've been asking ourselves for the last twelve years. And we started by simply asking the school officials, and they said the principal and the teachers and everything, and they clearly believe that. Yes, they can. But we're concerned about that because some people in the development community believe that if there's any cost to education or the benefit that someone is receiving, that it becomes a barrier of entry into education. That you're keeping kids out of school because you're raising the cost of them going to school. But we've actually found that not to be the case with textbooks. We've gone so far as to interview the students through a third party organization, through one of the universities in Guatemala City, interviewed the students receiving the textbooks after they've graduated from the program, and asking them on a simple scale, one to five, are the books very affordable, kind of affordable, mediocre expensive on that scale. Basically the results came back saying that the books were either cheap or affordable. So that's good news. They put a lot of work into researching this, and they did find that they were validated and that the parents can't afford it and that they believe in paying for it. And that's what really blew me away about this whole thing, is that something earned is much more important than something given to you. Right? And that's why the program has been so successful. Chuck so what we found this is when our eyes were really starting to open. Too jerry's Too like she was walking around there's like a little crusty drool on the side of her mouth. She's like, what is going on here? But what we found is this group that we're with goes down to Guatemala. They rustle up American money. They identify schools that say, yes, we want to be part of your textbook program. It's contractual. And they buy these books, take them down to donate them, and the kids rent these books. All this money is putting in an escrow account for the school. And then after X number of years, they can replace the books or add new books. And it's self sustaining because those new books are rented and rented and rented and rented. So this bit of seed money that buys these 200 books at first ends up spreading throughout the community. Right. And you know what? I just want to go ahead and say now, $5 is what it costs to buy textbooks for one kid for a full school year. And you will have your opportunity to give just $5 later on little teaser, you are going to take over after Jerry Lewis retires for the telephone. Yeah, I should. So we had a great talk with Jeff. It was awesome. Filled us in, and we really felt like we knew what we were in for. At the end of day two, our first really big day out, and we had a couple more guys and tumbled into slumber, and it was time to go to sleep. And it was time to go to sleep. So the next morning, dude, we wake up and we have a boat ride in store for us across the lake, which we are pretty excited about because just being on a boat on an awesome lake is exciting for me. Yeah. Lake a seat line, which we described, and actually, no one has any idea how deep it actually is. Oh, really? Yeah, I think some say it's like as deep as it is as its widest point. But it's like, lower. It sounds like lower. Right. So we take off, and the lake is actually much bigger than what we were seeing from our little cabana there. So it's like a 30 minutes boat ride to a village called I know. We're going to butcher this one. You're going to butcher this one. I'm not even trying. Panahachel. Nice. That's it. That's what I'm going to go panoachel. And you pointed out that it looked like the little village in the movie Popeye. And if you look on the internet under this, if you Google that P-A-N-A-J-A-C-H-E-L-I think you might agree. Yes, it's very cool looking. Yeah, it was. And we disembarked. We disembarked. That wasn't actually where we were going. That was just where we landed. Now I get the impression they just kind of wanted to show off. Yeah, sure. Because we went across the lake by boat and then got off and then got on buses. Yeah. So I think they're just like, hey, the wow factor. Yeah. Well, it worked. And it did work, for sure. And we took pictures on the boat. Those will be up on the website as well. We load up on the buses again and we set out for the Peachabaj Cooperative School. Yes. Because we were talking about how they come down with textbooks to donate to a school that agreed to enter into this program. Right. And this is our first donation we got to see because they make a big to do out of it. Oh, yeah. That's the main point of these tours that you go on. If you go to the different schools and you're welcome with open arms, you're welcome with dance and song. And we danced with some of the little girls there. They would come and grab our hands and dance with us. A lot of fun. Yeah. But you really feel special. And they really roll out. In this case, evergreen carpet, I guess, for you. Yeah. And at this school, we were able to learn about the corp program, the culture of reading program. Right. And Chuck, first, let me say this was the poorest of the poor as far as the schools and the areas we saw. Big town. There wasn't a discernible town because this is like the highest highlands that we entered into. And it was like road mountain, step farming on the mountain, which is really cool. Exactly. There wasn't really a town. It was all along this road. It was wide rather than condensed in any way. Right. But the people were very gracious and very happy to see us. Yeah. So when we say poor school, let's set up a mental image. Think cinder block rooms, kind of this ranted smell in the air. Dust everywhere. Dust everywhere. Desks that look like they were donated from some of the atomic experiments in New Mexico in the 40s. Yeah. And it's just like beyond poor, what you would think of as poor it is. But again, the people came from all over the community for this donation. And the kids actually, we were with the young kids in the early hours, and we were also there for when classes transferred, because it's young kids in the same school, young kids in the morning, older kids in the afternoon. And it's because, number one, they only have one school, but number two, because the older kids get up and work in the fields in the morning and then go to school. And when we say in the morning, they get up at like, 04:00 A.m. To make the tortillas and then to work in the fields so they can attend school. Unbelievable. The kids, we got to give out pens and pencils, which Jerry also brought some, like, stickers and things. But she brought seven stickers. I remember there were like 100 kids. I remember I set off the deluge. Yeah. I grabbed one of the kids and pointed and pointed to what Jerry was holding. And she just went over and all of a sudden they all just flocked Jerry. It was hilarious. She took to it, though. She was kind of like trying to instill some order. She was like, all right, everyone, calm down. Let's get this done. Which is funny, too, because a lot of these kids are monolingual and just spoke in their Mayan dialect. So Jerry's sitting there speaking broken Spanish to them, and even if they spoke in Spanish, they wouldn't know what she was saying. They definitely had no clue what she was saying. And yet they still formed a line. Yeah, they did. Yeah. The universal language line up. On a personal note, to see these kids clamoring over these pens and pencils like it was an Xbox made me want to slap American kids a little bit, to be honest. Is that what the kids are playing with these days? That's what they're playing with these days. Or the PS Three, I don't know, the iPhone. But they were treating these pens and pencils like they were precious, and then they are. Yeah. So they had a little ceremony like they did at all the schools, a little traditional symbolic dancing and performing. Of what kind of ceremony did they do? The corn dance that they performed. Oh, that's right. The Corn Dance. Yeah. It was about how the Corn was given to them by the gods. Right. Yeah. And it's pretty cool. And actually, by the last school we went to, Chuck, jerry and I could have performed the Corn Dance because we saw it at every single one. Yeah, I think I could probably roughly perform it now. I'm not going to do, but I could. You should. And then we got to meet a lady named Carolyn Johnson. She's from Portland, Maine. Yes, she's pretty cool. Lifelong educator, school principal that went on a co ed tour and went back and said, I'm going to quit my job. I'm going to go to Guatemala. Because they're not snotting, those little brats that don't appreciate things down there. Well, the experience of Guatemala really led you to disdain American kids, didn't it? No, that's not true. But Carolyn obviously didn't say anything like that. She's like one of the sweetest ladies I've ever met with. She's very kind and soft spoken, but with it and sharp. She actually went down on a tour like we were on and joined up and actually ended up creating an entirely new program that Ko Aid Institute. Right. And we asked her what inspired her to leave her life behind and go to Guatemala, and here's what she had to say. I think the thing that really spoke to me, we went to an elementary school just to deliver some pencils and books and miscellaneous kinds of things, and the principal found out that I was also a principal in the US. And came up to me and said, can you help? My teachers don't know how to teach reading. We appreciate all this stuff, but we don't know what to do. So I started talking to Joe and Jeff, and they said, we've looked into getting into education, all kinds of things, but they said, we're not educators, and we need somebody to help us. So I started volunteering with them and at one point decided working down here and working with these kids would be a lot more fun than continue to be a school administrator in the United States. And so here I am. So how awesome was she? She's very cool. Very cool lady. Doing great work. And how cool do the little birds in the background sound? Yeah, you could actually kind of hear how beautiful a day it was, thanks to the birds. That wasn't sound designed by Jerry no. Although it could have been. It could have been. So she works with the Culture of Reading program, and why don't we get her to tell us about what corp is instead of us doing it? So what does corp stand for? And what are the basic fundamentals of the program? Corpus Culture of Reading program. That Culture of Reading was something really important to us. We came to the schools, and we saw that if you gave a second grader or third grader a short piece of text, they could read the words off the page, but they essentially had no comprehension. Right. The words didn't have meaning. And without books in their homes, without books in their schools, reading is not something they do for enjoyment, and it's not something they see as valuable. They don't see picking up a newspaper as something that will help them, that will assist them, or going to look for information and text. So developing that culture of reading. So we want the kids not only to be able to read and develop those critical thinking skills, we want them to want to read. We want them to see that reading is something you do for pleasure, and it's something that you do that will enrich. So, Chuck, what Carolyn and the Cooperative for Education figured out was that teachers were teaching kids to read, basically just writing their assignments on the board, and then kids had to scribble them down real quick before they were erased. There was no comprehension whatsoever. So the court program that Carolyn created is part teaching kids to read, but it's also part teaching teachers how to teach kids to read. So instead of just standing there and reading very quickly from a book, it involves reading and a very big voice. And, like, you read the kids and showing them the pictures so that they're comprehending it's not just a string of letters. There's comprehension to the word. Sure. I mean, I wasn't in the impression it's more for the teachers because they've never seen books either. Well, no, it's part for the kids, too, because, remember, the books get translated into a picture book and then a play, and then, I think another big book. Right? So technically, this one book that they start off with, by the end of the week, they have three books, and they've made a play out of it. So they have a book down flat in a week. Pretty awesome. Yeah. So that's the end of part one of Sysc's Guatemalan Adventure. The exciting conclusion is coming up on Thursday, and stick around after these words to hear how you can buy student textbooks for life with just a $5 text donation. This episode of Stuff You Should Know is brought to you by GoToMeeting, the affordable way to meet with clients and colleagues for your free 30 day trial. Visit go tomeeding.com. Okay, folks, if you like what you've heard so far about the Cooperative for Education and you want to support them, you can do so with just a $5 text donation. And here's how it works. Just text the word Stuff stuff Two and you will donate $5 to help put a textbook into the hands of a Guatemalan child. You will receive a text back asking you to confirm the donation and just reply with the word yes to complete the donation and you will see a one time $5 charge on your wireless bill or deducted from your prepaid balance and data rates may apply. And if you stop and change your mind before confirming the donation, which you shouldn't do, you can reply the word STLP stop the 20222. Or if you need help, reply with the word help. Donations are collected by the Mobile Giving Foundation. For more info, you can call 866-810-1203 or go to hmgf.org t. So tune in Thursday for the conclusion and the exciting conclusion of Sysk's Guatemalan Adventure. Adios. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseworks.com. Want more housetofworks? Check out our blog on the Hastofworks.com homepage brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out. 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c5fbdfc4-5460-11e8-b38c-93f8d02f0110 | Selects: How Sloths Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-how-sloths-work | Everyone knows sloths are super slow, but do you know they’re slow because their bodies produce an astoundingly small amount of energy? And did you know that might be an adaptation that protects them from predators? Sloths are awesome and we prove it in this classic episode. | Everyone knows sloths are super slow, but do you know they’re slow because their bodies produce an astoundingly small amount of energy? And did you know that might be an adaptation that protects them from predators? Sloths are awesome and we prove it in this classic episode. | Sat, 29 Jan 2022 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=29, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=29, tm_isdst=0) | 52337760 | audio/mpeg | "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, all 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? 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, pep supplies plus, and select neighborhood pet stores. Hey, everybody, it's me, Josh. And for this week's, SYSK selects I've chosen our classic episode on sloths. Everybody knows that sloths bring the absolute best out of humans, and I suspect I'm working on a theory here that it's because we have some evolutionary memory of some moment where human beings were saved from extinction through the direct intervention of sloths. Like I said, it's a theory, and I'm still working out the details here, but I'll keep you posted. In the meantime, enjoy this wonderful episode on sloths. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of. iHeartRadio hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. There's. Guest producer Josh T over there. That's right. Thinking about the number 23. Sitting there thinking about it. Is he on 23? That's right. I forgot that. Yeah, he's in the Illuminati stuff, if I remember correctly. Look at this guy. He is so good, Chuck. He knows to just sit there and keep quiet even though he's dying inside. Right. Now to talk about the number 23. If I just pulled out some random show from our archive from years ago, could you say who the producer was? Oh, I don't know. Let's give it a try. Jeez. Now I have to think of a show that we did years ago. Well, since we're doing an animal show today, the only thing I can think of is animals. Elephants. I didn't that long ago, probably. Jerry, how about this? Can you name any shows that other guest producers were on off the top of your head? No. This game turns so lame so fast. I feel like, well, Matt Frederick is too busy these days, but we can't have Matt anymore in here because all Matt would do is sit there and nod his head like, yeah, either that or his hands would be clashed together with this look of sheer joy on his face just to hear us talk. It was great. It made recording that much better. The old days, Matt's older and more cynical. Now he doesn't care anymore about us. Right? Yeah. He said true. Released into the forest like a baby sloth. Right. Which is good. That's what you want to do. With either Matt Frederick or a baby sloth. You don't want to keep them in captivity because sloths don't do very well in captivity. Matt does okay in captivity. He's fine. But a sloth not nearly as well as what Matt Frederick can do in captivity. Yeah. And you were watching just before you recorded Everyone Should Know, josh was watching the 28 million view YouTube video of Kristen Bell. Can we call her friend of the show? Sure. I mean, she's probably not going to write in to object to it, so yeah, we could call her that. She's a Stuff You Should Know listener, or has been over the years, as is her husband, Mr. DAX shepherd, who was also a Movie Crush guest. And he has his own podcast, two Armchair Expert. Yeah. He's crushing it right out of the gate. It was a good podcasts, actually. I don't know if you listen to those are good. Very famously, he brought her a sloth on her birthday and she went on Ellen and they showed video, and it's still just one of the great videos you can ever watch. It is very sweet. She's like, having a meltdown. Fully melting down. Yeah. Like crying, like sobbing because she's so excited that there's a sloth in her house because this is something she wanted to meet a sloth, like, for her whole life. And now she gets to. Yeah, and I watched it again today, too, because after doing this research, I was like, wait a minute, was she holding the sloth? Because that's not good. And it showed a picture and she's not the sloth is on its little perch and she's very respectfully next to the sloth. Exactly how it should be. If there's any reason that kept Kristen Bell from being America's Sweetheart, which I can't think of one that erased it right there. Just knowing how to be around a sloth when you have meltdowns at the idea of being around a sloth, that's some serious self control for the benefit of the animal. That's great stuff. Yeah. Not touching the animal and literally offering for me to change my daughter's diaper in her restaurant booth. Yeah, that's right. Because she said the bathroom was dirty. She's a class act. Class act. So, Charles, you mentioned elephants. We did an elephant episode. And it's similar to the whole sloth thing. Like, you see a sloth, especially if you see a sloth in captivity at a zoo or something like that, you're like, well, I want to carry it around like a baby or something like that. It's a sloth. It's one of the cutest things on the planet. But you don't want to do that. Slots don't really deal with captivity very well, although they can live way longer in captivity. They're not necessarily happy. But I was thinking one of the things, one of the reasons why people seem to think that they are happy or would want to be picked up is because at least among one type of sloth, they're always smiling. Oh, man. They're smiling. Which makes them super cute. They also have a mullet. That's the three toed Brady puss sloth. Yeah. They have a mullet and they are always smiling. But if you look, it's just the coloring on their face that happens to resemble a smile. They have so little muscle mass that they don't have the capability of smiling, making their face smile. It's just the colorings on their fur. Yeah. Which can be very misleading to us dumb humans because they can be scared or stressed out of their mind. And it still looks like they are just chilling and smiling. Right. Look at smiling. I love it when I juggle it with two bowling balls and a flaming pitch fork. I could come up with wondering where that was going. Have you ever seen a flaming pitch fork? Only on the Simpsons. So let's get into this because the cuteness is just cute overload when it comes to sloths. They are ridiculously cute. Their whole vibe is just right up my alley, at least. Sure. Not that I'm lazy, Mellow. Well, you know me. The real me isn't super mellow, but I like to pretend to be sure. I strive to be. You get the sloth vibe. Yeah. It's an aspirational state slothness. Yeah. So I love the very first sentence of this research says they are highly successful. Which kind of cracked me up when I read it because I pictured sloss, of course, in business suits, like running a company. Right. Can you hurry it up? I have no time for this. But what that means is that for a very, very long time, slots generally have flourished in the world. Yeah. They think that they probably evolved. They're part of a group or a family or some taxonomic designation. It's like the weirdo group that's sloths anteaters, I think that's armadillos. Sure. Depending on whether you want to be classy or not or something tough. Sure. Zenartro. Okay, I'll go with that. But it's sloths anteaters armadillos. Oh, yeah. Pretty much any odd animal you can think of would fall into zenarta. What did you say? Zenarthra xenarthra. Zen arthur. So they all kind of formed together in isolation on what was once an island. South America is as long back as 80 million years ago. What? Yeah. Was it an island? Yeah. Like the whole continental drift and all that stuff. It decided to make friends with Central America. Yeah. And higher sea levels, that kind of thing. When the sea levels got locked up in ice or when a lot of seawater got locked up in ice, the land bridge that is Central America came along and said, hey, build some ziggurat's on me. So they are highly successful. They are very slow moving. Like everyone knows they are in Central and South America. Still no surprise there. And like you said, there are two kinds there. The two towed. Colippus. I was going colipus. Okay. That's a good way to remember it. Sure. And then the little tom brady puss, which is the three toads. But it's a bit of a misnomer because the two toad has three toes but two fingers. Right. That's how they're classified or separated from one another, the two toad or the three towed. Right. And technically, I read somewhere, chuck, that they actually don't have legs. They're a four armed creature. Oh, is that the designation? Four arms? Yeah, from what I saw. But they really just pay attention to how many fingers are on the four arms or the fore limbs. Got you. What we would think of as their arms, their front arms, but they're really all four arms. Okay. And the way that I kept the two separated so two toe is coloipus, three toad is bradypus. Is that I thought the brady bunch has more kids, so the brady punch has more toes. And it's been working all day, frankly. That's pretty good. That's the second mnemonic device you've dropped in the first ten minutes of the show. Yeah. What do you think? You're doing? Great. Good. As long as it's working. So the two towed guys and ladies, they roam, as far as loss go, a pretty great distance. They can forage in ranges up to 350 acres, whereas the three towed guys, they only have a range of about 13 acres. And then there's the cutest of all, sloth, the pygmy sloth that are just on one little island off the coast of panama. Right. And they're actually critically endangered as far as sloth goes. We'll get to later. They are so cute, it's ridiculous. But, like, as close as these losses, there's not that many differences besides the number of toes on their fore limbs, the fact that one has the smile markings, the three toe does the smile markings and the mullet haircut. The other one looks like there's a site called slothville. It's a conservation site run by a woman named Lucy cook, and she says that the two toed sloths look a bit like a cross between a wookie and a pig. And I think she absolutely nailed it with that description. Right. Yeah. One of them looked like a little what was the Christmas special? What was chewbacca? Sun. Oh, man. If you can remember that, chuck, I'll buy you a case of beer. Put your phone down. I know I can't remember, but that's sort of what it reminded me of. Norman. I'm pretty sure it was Norman. Norman? Yes. Norman baca be. Right. I can't remember. I can't either. I'm sure there's somebody out there. It's like you'll make case of beer, Josh. I only said that I was making that offer to chuck. So what can you pick? That's a pretty good descriptor. Right? So my point is this, though. As similar as two toed sloths and three toad sloths seem, there are some differences, but really in the grand scheme of things, they seem a lot closer than, say, a dove and a sloth. Yeah, agreed. A flaming pitchfork and a sloth. But they're actually really separate. They're multiple different species. They're not even in the same genus. And for comparison, humans and chimps are in the same genus. Yeah. That's great. Two different types of sloths aren't even in the same genus, so there's a big distinction between the two. And I looked up sloth news, which is fast breaking, strangely enough, but there's a study that came out recently where they did some molecular DNA studies on sloth evolution, and they found that the two toed and the three toed sloths may be even further separated and may have evolved independently of one another, that they may be even more distantly related than we think. So as similar as they seem to be, they're actually pretty different. Although they are really similar. It's a weird fluke of evolution all around. Yeah, characteristically, I think they're fairly similar. The two towed variety are a little bit bigger and hang upside down a little bit more than the three towed variety. Who. You'll see those sitting upright sometimes in trees. But I read somewhere that sloths can spend up to 90% of their life upside down. Yeah, amazing. They do everything upside down. They mate upside down, they give birth upside down. They do almost everything that they do upside down, hanging. And did you say it was the two toad that spend more of their life upside down than the three toes? Yeah, two toad, a little bit more hang time. Right. So that's one difference. But even still, it's not like the three tote are just averse to being upside down. I think both of them spend so much time upside down that the part of their hair, rather than being on their backs or their head, the top of their head, like ours is it's on their bellies because they're upside down so much. That's how gravity has forced their hair to part. Just like shrimp. Just like an upside down shim boy, shim's hair. Wow. It was something. It was something. Yeah. The original butt cut. Yes, it was, wasn't it? So the brady puss also has an extra neck vertebrae. So if you've ever seen a sloth seemingly turn its head 360 deg, it's because they can turn their head about 270 degrees and have almost a 360 deg counting their peripheral vision range of sight yes. Without moving their body. That is that is strictly from moving their head. They actually, again, they lack so much muscle mass and tissue that they don't have the muscles to move their eyeballs in their head. So when they look around, they have to move their whole head. But it has helped out for sure, especially after a hard night on Saturday. But the fact that they have that extra vertebrae helps them look around more. But it's just one more thing that make them an extraordinarily unusual creature, because only sloths and manatees are mammals that have more than seven vertebrae. Every other mammal on the planet has seven vertebrae, and sloths of manatees are the only two that don't. Manatee is a mammal? Yeah. All right. Yeah. They breathe air. They just spend a lot of time in water. They were probably some sort of, like, wolf or bear or something that eventually took to water. Well, speaking of bears and water, slosh are really good swimmers. If you look up a YouTube video slaw swimming, they can kind of get around and are somewhat graceful in the water. They can hold their breath for up to 40 minutes, and in order to do so, they can cut their heart rate by two thirds and their metabolism down, which is like they already will get into their metabolism later. But that's saying something if they can cut their metabolism down even more on purpose. Yeah, for real. Because the sloth metabolism is a thing to behold in your mind. We'll get to it in a little bit, but just know that I'm excited to talk about sloth metabolism. Okay. And then I mentioned, speaking of bears, their original predecessor back in the day was something called a giant ground sloth or a megaeum. And if you look at this thing, it looks sort of like a bear. Its face is a little bit different, but it kind of looks like just a big, giant brown bear. It looked like a giant beaver to me without the tail. Oh, really? That's what I thought. Well, a beaver without a tail is really just a tiny bear with big teeth. I guess so. But they found that just from examining its bones, they found that it could walk on its back leg, which makes it the largest bipedal land mammal that ever lived, which is pretty cool. And it was a sloth ancestor. Amazing. And we used to eat them, too. Chuck we found tool marks on some of the bones, and they think, well, humans probably hunted it to extinction. Yeah. Tuck Tuk, I guess. Although we determined he was a neanderthal. Right? Right. He's been designated officially as a neanderthal. Should we take a break? I think it's high time. Man all right, this is our slowest episode ever, and we'll be right back. What if you were a gigantic snack food maker and you had to wrestle a massively complex supply chain to satisfy cravings from Tokyo to Toledo? So you partner with IBM Consulting to bring together data and workflows 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, everybody. If you want a great quality website, you want to do it yourself with no must and no fuss. Then there's nowhere else to look. In squarespace. That's right. Squarespace has every single thing that you need to put together an awesome website. Everything from growing and engaging your audience with email campaigns, collecting donations for your cause through Apple, Pay, Stripe, Venmo, PayPal. Plus, you can also make your website optimized for mobile, which is great for your user on the go. That's right. And if you're into selling stuff, squarespace is everything to sell anything. They have all the tools you need to get your business off the ground. They have ecommerce templates, inventory management, really simple checkout process, and secure payment. So whatever you want to sell, you can sell it on Squarespace. Yeah, don't just take our word for it. Head to Squarespace.com SUSK and start your free trial today. And then when you're ready to launch, use our offer code SYSK, and you'll get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's Squarespace.com. SYSK. Squarespace. Okay, friends. So imagine you're in an accident and your injuries are extensive enough that not only do you have to spend time in the hospital, but you're going to need rehab, too. Well, you have insurance, so no problem, right? Well, not entirely. You get back from the hospital and notice there's a gap and that your insurance is only covering part of your bill. And it's a big bill. Yeah. And until you get back on your feet, you can't get to work. And now you have this financial burden hanging over your head like some dark rain cloud. So what do you do, Chuck? Well, if you have Aflac, you can worry less knowing they can help with the expenses health insurance doesn't cover. Aflac pays cash, which can be put toward expenses, which may be impacted by a covered medical event. Things like your medical bill, copays, or even routine things like rent, groceries, childcare and more. Yeah, that's Aflac in a nutshell. They care about what health insurance doesn't cover so those they insure can care about everything else. And care has always been part of Aflac's DNA. It's the foundation that the company was built on more than 65 years ago, and it's at the core of who they are still today. That's right. They believe the cost of health care shouldn't come at the expense of peace of mind, which is why they are on a mission to help close health and wealth gaps for Americans everywhere. So when the unexpected threatens your peace of mind, let afflac stand in the gap to help you to learn how Aflac can help with expenses health insurance doesn't cover, visit Aflac.com. That's Aflac.com. So before we get going on more real sloth stuff, I'm assuming you have not seen the movie Zootopia or have you? I don't think no kids movie. No, I haven't. There's a sloth scene where it's very funny and in fact, they made that a very big part of the original movie trailer where these animals are in a hurry to find out some information from the DMV. They go to the DMV. And of course, as sort of an injury to anyone who's ever been at the DMV, just notably slow. They had a sloth. It was completely run by sloths. And there's just this one great scene where they go up and try to get information from sloths and they really do it right. They take their time. And it's funny for kids and adults alike, I highly recommend it is. It's probably fairly accurate because everybody knows they're super slow housewives. It's not really an overstatement or exaggeration. They genuinely are extremely slow. I saw that they move on the ground, which is when they move about the fastest, aside from swimming something like half a kilometer per hour at top speed and that they'll move maybe six to 8ft up a tree in a minute. And these things are made to climb trees. And that's how fast or I should say that's how slow they move. Yeah. The actual term sloth dates back to the 12th century in Spain, or in the Spanish language at least, they were called los perezos, which translates to the Lazys, which is hysterical because Emily and I often call animals lazy. Look at those. Lazy. Because pets are lazy. Sure, yeah. They're not sloth lazy, though. No, they're not sloth lazy, but that literally translates into the Lazys. And then when the Spanish explorers started talking about the lazies, it was translated into the word sloth in English in about the I guess, early 17th century. Yeah. Because it was a cleric, I believe, who was like, oh, well, we don't talk about laziness, we talk about sloth, because it's one of the seven deadly sins. No, it's really kind of a downward when it's used as an insult, for sure. But it's like the sloths are the best. So I don't know. I like it. I know, but at the same time, it's like if somebody calls you slothful, you know that they walked right past lazy. Like they saw it and said, no, lazy is not enough. I really want to drive home how much I disdain your laziness. Yeah, that is a good descriptor. Like, if someone at work is slow with something and you describe them as slothful instead of just slow. Right. Because you're passing judgment on them as well. Like biblical style judgment. Like you're going to hell. That's how slow you took in getting this TPS report to me, tootoed. Sloths are omnivorous, so they can eat animals. I didn't see where they do that a lot. They mainly still eat fruits and leaves and twigs and things. But they will eat birds sometimes, and lizards, I would imagine. They have to be wounded or something because it's not like they I mean, surely they don't hunt. They're not fast enough. Right, yeah. They're not snatching a bird out of the air or something like that. They're not going after hummingbirds. It would have to be like maybe a recently killed, or an injured bird. And man, if you're an injured bird in the tropical rainforest of Central and South America, I'm guessing the last thing you want to see is a hungry two toed sloth slowly coming at you, because you know it's going to take a really long time for it to eat you alive. There's a funny YouTube video, actually called when a Sloth Chases You. It's just a sloth on the ground, like set to horror music. I watched a lot of sloth videos. Well, there's a lot of good ones out there. I recommend looking up sloth fight. Okay. You think it'd be sad or disturbing, but there's a bunch of different videos and it's actually in the grand sloth style. It's really cute when sloths fight. Yeah. Oh, bite. They look like they're taking it seriously and they're all agitated, but it's impossible for us to take the sloth fight seriously. It's just too cute and they're just too incompetent at fighting. Oh, dear. The three toed guys, they are very much more picky eaters and they eat generally these toxic leaves from just a few trees and they hang around, like, if they find a good tree that they like, they will hang around that tree for a long, long time. Yes. Apparently they know that some three toed sloths will inhabit the same tree for their whole life. It's rare, it's unusual, but even still, I mean, their entire range usually doesn't extend over like, 13 acres or five and a half hectares. Right. Like, it's a very small, limited area that a three toed sloth in particular will inhabit their whole life. Right. I think we can talk about the metabolism now since we're eating. Yeah. I'm so happy. I know what your fact of the show probably is, so just go ahead. There's like eight in here. That is true. So the reason slots move so slowly is because in part, they metabolize so slowly. Like, when you metabolize, you're converting, like, food into energy, right. And you're doing all sorts of stuff with that. You're moving your muscles, you're walking, you're laughing, you're talking, you're recording a podcast, you're digesting food. And spots are mammals, so they do have this metabolism that's similar to any other mammal metabolism. It's just way slower and therefore it's way weaker. Like, the human metabolism puts out about 80 watts of energy at any given time. Sloths put out less than four watts. It's just extraordinarily slow. And even compared to humans or compared to other animals the same size, they metabolize things way more slowly. So the reason that they move so slowly is because they literally don't have the energy to move much faster. Yeah. It takes a whole month to digest a meal. They have to do it that slow. If they would digest faster, it could poison themselves. Because they're eating these toxic leaves. Right. They don't have incisors, so they trim these leaves down, they smack their little lips together and trim these leaves down. And again, I hate to say the word cute again, but it's pretty adorable to see a little sloth chewing on a leaf. Yeah, but imagine you're a wounded bird and a toothless sloth is eating you to death. Yeah, I imagine it's not a quick death. No, you get gummed to death. And I think the fact of the show probably is this whole farting business. Sure, take it. Alright, well, here's the deal. They eat so slow that they don't even have gas that builds up in their system. That is how slow they are digesting their food. So the gas just gets reabsorbed through the intestines and into the bloodstream. And it says here that the gas is then expired out of the lungs. Does that mean that they mouth for it or does it? Yeah, that's what I saw is that they basically pass those same gases that they normally would out of their fanny in the American sense, out of their mouth through breathing. Interesting. So yeah, I guess they mouthpart. Worst band name ever. Maybe worse than Diarrhea Planet. I think you're right, man. No, it's actually worse than frozen poop knife. They should do a joint tour. Yeah. You know that Mouse Fart is going to be the opener. Always. They're never going to make it to the headline. You boys are never a headline. And I say boys because there's no way a girl band would be called Mouth Fart. They're way too small for that part. So they also have a multi chambered stomach, sort of like a cow, which is really interesting because that's like a third of their body weight if their stomachs are full. Yeah, the reason why it's so much of their body weight is because they digest food so slowly. They have to have this multi chambered stomach to get as many nutrients as they possibly can out of it. And even still it's a really terrible evolutionary strategy to evolve as strictly tree dwelling herbivore. That's a really bad strategy because you have to be small enough to exist in the tree. Right. But at the same time you have to be big enough to eat tons of leaves every day. Well, if not because leads don't give you they're not very energy dense so you have to eat a ton of them to get good energy. Well, the sloths involved a different strategy. They just slowed their metabolism down so they can be small, but they don't have to eat that many leaves. And in fact, they can go for days without eating. And because they digest so slowly, they only poop about once a week. But the central cog of this whole adaptation is having a big stomach that can very slowly digest every possible nutrient out of the food that they eat. Yeah, so they do. They defecate and urinate once a week, generally in the same spot, kind of at the base of the. Tree. I don't think they like to wander too far because when they're on the ground they are much more at risk than when they're up in their tree because they're super slow and they're at risk for attack for whatever any sort of larger mammal could come by and have a sloth lunch at any time. Right. In particular, the harpy eagle is like their main predator but also yeah, they're definitely vulnerable to ocelots and jaguars and virtually any other predator in the jungle because they move so slowly and they have such an inability to defend themselves. But some researchers think that the reason sloths evolved to move so slowly is because it's a defense mechanism for them that rather than the howler monkeys that they share the jungle with, when something comes along and gets the howler monkeys agitated the Heller's monkeys scream and run around and try to escape. Right. The sloths, who may be in the same tree as a halller monkey just stays motionless and silent and so they camouflage in with the tree. So that really slow movement is actually a defensive adaptation as well. Yeah, I think the sloth defensive motto is nothing to see here. We're just going to be really still let these monkeys take all the attention and no one will notice this. And that's kind of the idea. Yeah, that's exactly the idea and it works. It actually does work and it's misleading, I think to say, which means I accidentally misled everybody that sloths have no recourse if they are found out. I saw at least one video where a harpy eagle found a sloth and a tree and lands right next to it and the sloth just slowly lifts its arm up and kind of swats behind it with its claw man at the harpy eagle and the harpy eagle looked kind of puzzled but it worked like the harpy eagle left it alone. Interesting. Yeah, they can ward off danger, just not that frequently. Actually, yes despite the fact that they move super slow and they are lazy they don't actually sleep as much as you would think. In captivity, they will sleep a lot longer because they have no predators around, no jaguars. Right. And they understand that and they're like, all right, everything's cool. I can really dig in and sleep some but out in the wild they sleep a little under 10 hours, I guess. If you would have asked me beforehand I would have guessed 15 and up for sloth sleep. Well, they will in captivity, they sleep as much as 15 to 20 hours a day but in the wild they think, like you said, they got to be on point and they're not stinky either which is another great thing even though you definitely don't want to sloth as a pet for reasons we'll talk about later. They don't smell. They smell kind of like the trees they live in, which is kind of great. And another defense mechanism. Yeah. So the reason that they smell like the trees that they live in is because sloths move so slowly that algae grows on them in their coat, in their fur. Yeah. This is the other sort of amazing part. Like I had no idea. No, I didn't either. And I don't think researchers had much of an idea about this until recently. They knew that sloths got covered with green algae, especially during the rainy season. Normally they have like, a tan or a brown colored coat, but when it gets rainy in the tropical rainforest they live in, an algae growth will build up on their coat, which, I mean, you try to grow some algae on you, you can't do it. It I've tried. Even if you didn't take a shower, you move around too much, you couldn't get any algae to grow on you. Sloths can. And at first they thought that's hilarious. Yet another funny fact about how slow sloths are. But as they've researched more deeply into it, they found that actually the sloth coat is an amazing ecosystem in itself on the sloth, and that whether it's intentional or not, the sloth actually kind of cultivates a farm inside of its own coat that it uses to help feed itself, too. Yeah, I'd seen pictures of these green tinted sloths and always kind of wonder what the deal was. It helps act as camouflage, which is super helpful. And I don't know. Did you mention the groove in the center of the hairs? No. Yeah. So each hair has a little groove down the center, and that's where the algae is allowed to grow. And obviously, because they're not moving fast, you're going to get more of a chance to grow, too. But like you said, they are a little ecosystem into themselves in that fur. They did one study that found 980 beetles living on a single sloth just taking roost in there and their little jungle coats. Right. And then there's this moth species. This is crazy. The sloth moth, which is another great band name, by the way. Kryptosis. Koleppi. Koloipi koloii. I always say just the E. It's always OE. I think you're right. Yeah. Koluapi, kolaei, koloepi. Something like that. Tomato, tomato. Kryptosis koloipi. Dyer and they actually colonize exclusively in sloth fur. Right. That's the only place you will find that type of moth is living in the fur of a sloth. It's the sloth moth. Yeah. Like totally symbiotic relationship. They climb down once a week to poop, and these moths lay their eggs in that poop. And, yes, they can actually lay their eggs in dingleberries. Sloppy. Sure. Everyone knows what that is, right? Do we need to explain that? I don't know. I would say look it up. Okay. I think that's as far as we need to say. So the adult mouths emerge from this poop and they then say, mama, and they fly up and take rest in the sloths fur. Right. And then they mate and reproduce, and then they lay eggs in the sloth poop, and the circle of life continues. But again, this type of moth you won't find anywhere on earth except in the fur of a sloth. And then there's also beetles in there. And so as these things, like, grow and die and decay and other plant matter and whatever is floating around in the air in the rainforest all kind of combined and get stuck into these grooves in the hair of the sloth fur, it forms this algae. And they know that there is a relationship between the sloth moth and the algae in that the sloths that have the most moths also have the most algae. And they figured out it's just basically this decaying matter, and they're like, okay, this is too weird. Camouflage. That kind of makes sense. But the fact that there's a moth that only lives in the sloth fur and the more of those moths are, the more algae there, it's just too weird. And they tested this algae and they found that it's rich in fat. And for a very long time they're like, okay. The metabolism kind of explains how a sloth could sustain itself. It burns so little energy that it can live on very nutrient, sparse leaves, but it's still kind of a mystery. It doesn't fully make sense. And they think they figured out that the sloth, as it's grooming itself, eats this algae, which is high in fats, and that supplements its diet of leaves. And that's really the combination of these leaves and this algae are what keep the sloth alive over its lifetime. And in the meantime, their urine and their feces are fertilizing the tree that is their habitat, right. Where these moths are also laying their eggs. So it's just like this really unique symbiosis going on between plant, animal, and insect, and everyone seems to be doing great. Yeah. And one of the things I was like, well, how much does that really help? The sloth is pooping at the base of the tree once a week. Does that really help? Sure. And apparently it really does. It is slow. Really? So you just nailed it. So sloths are so slow, their poop actually slows down the decomposition in the tree because in the rainforest, decomposition happens so fast that the tree is actually nutrient depleted. Because the decomp happens so fast, sloth poop slows the whole process down and actually nurtures the tree even more. Yeah. It seems like everywhere the sloth goes, everyone just chills out. Basically, the sloth dingleberries are just little rainbows trailing out of its behind. That's what sloths have. You have to look closely, but you'll see it sounds like a story my daughter would make up. You do share a birthday. Yeah, we do. Hey. Which is coming up, actually, probably right around the time this is released. Yeah. Well, happy birthday, ruby. All right, we'll take a break. And we'll come back and talk about sloth sex right after this. What if you were a global bank who wanted to supercharge your audit system? So you tap IBM to UNSILO your data, and with the help of AI, start crunching a year's worth of transactions against thousands of compliance controls. Now you're making smarter decisions, faster operating costs are lower, and everyone from your auditors to your bankers feels like a million bucks. Let's create smarter ways of putting your data to work. IBM let's create. Learn more@ibm.com. Hey, everybody. If you want a great quality website, you want to do it yourself with no must and no fuss. Then there's nowhere else to look 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. Okay, friends. So imagine you're in an accident, and your injuries are extensive enough that not only do you have to spend time in the hospital, but you're going to need rehab, too. Well, you have insurance, so no problem, right? Well, not entirely. You get back from the hospital and notice there's a gap, and that your insurance is only covering part of your bill. And it's a big bill. Yeah. And until you get back on your feet, you can't get to work. And now you have this financial burden hanging over your head like some dark rain cloud. So what do you do, Chuck? Well, if you have Aflac, you can worry less, knowing they can help with the expenses health insurance doesn't cover. Aflac pays cash, which can be put toward expenses, which may be impacted by a covered medical event. Things like your medical bill, copays, or even routine things like rent, groceries, childcare, and more. Yeah, that's Aflac in a nutshell. They care about what health insurance doesn't cover, so those they insure can care about everything else. And care has always been part of Affluex DNA. It's the foundation that the company was built on more than 65 years ago, and it's at the core of who they are still today. That's right. They believe the cost of health care shouldn't come at the expense of peace of mind, which is why they are on a mission to help close health and wealth gaps for americans everywhere. So when the unexpected threatens your peace of mind, let aflac stand in the gap to help you. To learn how aflac can help with expenses, health insurance doesn't cover. Visit aflac.com. That's aflac.com. All right, chuck, you promised it. You have to deliver sloth sex blow by blow. So here's the deal. This is where things like, if you're like, all right, the sloth is the cutest thing. And this is all adorable, and they're just amazing. They are all those things. But this is when you might I just want to prepare everyone to be slightly disappointed, maybe a little bit, with the next couple of segments. Because, first of all, sloths, you want to just think they sit around and just hug and love on each other all the time. They're solitary creatures. They don't want to be around even other sloths. No, but this is something that you can have to kind of pick yourself back up after that devastating blow. Okay. In a square kilometer of rainforest, there might be something like 700 sloths. Yes. They're very dense neighborhoods of basically shut in. Weirdos. Imagine that. That's a sloth community. The most devastating thing is coming up later. I know you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, boy. But the males, like, let's say two sloths did find themselves on the same tree. They might get into a little fight, but more than likely, one of them will leave and they'll go find their own tree. And it might be a tree ten or 15ft away, it sounds like, but it's their own. They look for new trees. Also, when they're searching for a female partner, the males do, and they mate very quickly. It lasts just a few seconds. And then the males leave the female. They don't have anything to do with the babies, which I looked up and I was like, surely they have some cute name like sloth babies. But they're just called sloth babies, which is cute. Yeah, that's pretty cute. Not bad. So, you know, we're talking about fertilizing trees and everything when they come down and poop once a week. Yeah, I know where this is headed. So that was a big mystery. If you're a sloth coming down from a tree to poop. Uses up about 8% of your energy. That's a lot. Yeah. And it doesn't make any sense because it leaves you vulnerable to predation. Some researchers say, we got it figured out. They're leaving scent markers on the tree to signal to other sloths. Come on over here. I'm open to whatever freaky stuff you want to try. Sloth friend. Yeah. Anal secretions. So, like, a male sloth will literally just say, I'm just going to rub my anus here and I'll meet you back there at 11:00. At least a little rainbow trail, I guess. So the female can also and I heard these. I looked up some videos on the female mating call or whatever because they can also put out the call that they're ready. And it's described as a high pitched scream here in this article. But it sounds sort of bird like. If I was in the jungle and I heard this, I would think it was a bird. Yeah. It's not sexy, though. It's not sexy. It's animal. Did you get that reference or no? No, I didn't. But I appreciate you saying it was a reference. Beverly Hills Cop. Valkey. Oh, yeah. Little cameo in Beverly Hills Cop. He was one of the all time great. I never watched that TV show. I know you didn't. And, Chuck, you're missing out, remember? I keep going back to that piano moving episode. And it was just one of the greatest perpetrators of physical comedy ever. Really. But yeah, also and it wasn't just Balky. Like Balky and cousin Larry were really well cast. They were perfect foils. Seeing Cousin Larry, his last bit of patience just break and his eyes get really big because Balky did something. It was a beautiful thing to behold. Cousin Larry. We see the other guy, the main guy. Yeah. I see a DVD boxet in your future. Were they actually cousins in the show? Yes. Well, not in real life. I don't know the setup at all. Is it that he has this wacky cousin from another land that all of a sudden shows up on his doorstep? Yeah. Balky bar Takamos from I can't remember. They say it a bunch of times, but he's like a Southern Central European type guy from the Balkans or something like Latvia or something. And he comes over to America and he stays with his cousin Larry. I'll have to check it out. It's funny, all the great TV out that's mounting on a list, I'm like, I have to check out Perfect Strangers. Right? Exactly. It's on my list. It should be high up. So the woman puts out the mating call. The males, there may be competition for that lady who is in need. And if they do fight, they will fight upside down. And like you said, a sloth fight is, I guess, pretty cute, as it turns out, right? Yeah, it is cute. So, yeah, the males will fight to the hurt, bruised ego and then one of them will leave and the male that remains will say, okay, give me a kiss, baby. And then they'll do it like a few times. Yeah, but it's really fast. Apparently, I have enough pride to not look up sloth sex. But from what I read, it happens very quickly. And then that's that. Like you said earlier, the male just kind of moves along like, Good luck with our children. And then the sloth gestation period depends on whether it's a two toad or a three toed sloth. But it's somewhere between six and eleven months. And then a sloth mom will give birth to one sloth baby at a time. No litters? Nope. Just one cute little baby. So here's where it gets devastating. They do nurse their young for a little while but again, that takes a lot of energy to nurse a little baby. So they only do that for a couple of weeks before they wean that baby onto solid food. The mommy is passing along all the information that the baby needs to know about what food is and how to hang and live in trees. And they do cling to their moms, which is super cute, for about six to eleven months and then they are off on their own. Although this is sort of cute, they do share a range with mom and apparently will stay within calling distance of one another. And this is all great and I know I'm set everyone up for heartbreak. So here it goes. If a mommy sloth is up in a tree and baby sloth slips and falls down to the ground, mommy may just leave baby there. Yeah, that's really hard for me to accept. I know. Because a baby sloth is cute, adult sloths are cute enough, but a baby sloth is just like eye bleach. Right. So the idea of it just being like down there on their own, sorry kid, waiting to be it was a great three months we had together, but I'm not going to put myself in the risk of being vulnerable to some sort of deal. Right? Yeah, that's what they think is that the baby is just not worth it to the sloth, which is really sad. I would understand that if there were sloth litters, one of them fell off or that they didn't bond, but they clearly do bond during the piggyback phase of the baby's development. So they think that it's just like it's just too much of a risk for the sloth. And the sloth says, better you than me, kid. Yeah. This disturbed me because I was the same as you. I was like, if there was a litter, I get it. Or if they like, they're highly successful. So you would think that after up to a year of gestation period or if they pump babies out like every month or so, it wouldn't be a big deal. Right. But I don't know, it just seemed like it was worth that 8% energy. And maybe a risk of panther feed being panther feed. Right. I guess if the baby falling happened to coincide with the mom having to poop at the base of the tree, maybe the baby has a chance. Then I'm going to save you because I got to take a dump. Right? Oh man. So let's just go right past that because that is still super sad for me to think about. They do live for about 20 years in the wild, which is pretty good for a mammal. Especially when that slow and that seemingly defenseless. Yeah, that's the three toe? Yes, the three towed. The two tows live about twelve. In captivity, though they can live 30 and 40 years, including our old friend Miss C at the Adelaide Zoo in Australia, who just died a couple of years ago at the old age of 43. From what I understand, she's the oldest known sloth to live. She did. She looked great up to the end, like Phyllis Tiller. And the fact that sloths lifespans double or triple in captivity really kind of says a lot about just how frequently they fall victim to predators. Yeah, that's what kills sloth. It's not fighting with other sloths. It's not falling from trees. They can withstand that. It's being eaten by a predator. That's how sloths typically die. So when you take them out of that situation, they tend to live very long. But like we were saying at the top of this episode, they're not necessarily happy. They get very stressed out when humans handle them and they can actually die from stress. They look happy, but they would much rather be at their home in Central and South America for sure. They're really difficult to keep alive because remember, especially with the three toad sloth, they're real picky eaters and they learn from their mothers what constitutes food. And so whatever tree that their mom's been living in, basically that specific tree growing in a rainforest in South America, that is what constitutes food to this loss, not anything else you could possibly come up with. And so they'll starve in captivity pretty easily, actually, especially if they're kept in captivity outside of Central or South America. Yeah, so if they do, let's say you're a wildlife management professional and you come upon a little baby sloth that has been dropped, they will rescue that sloth if they can and try and rehabilitate it. But the goal is to get it back into the wild as soon as possible. Not like, oh, it's so cute, we're going to keep it around for a little while. I mean, there are clearly some in captivity, but it's not like a common zoo animal that you will see. Right. There was one other thing that was kind of a quirk of their metabolism. So they're mammals, which means they're warm blooded, but they're actually not really warm blooded because they produce so little energy and heat through their metabolism. They actually use the same kinds of strategies that like snakes and lizards do, where they use the sun to adjust their body temperature, which means that if it gets too hot, they can overheat and die. If it gets too cold, they can very easily freeze to death because their body temperature changes with the ambient temperature. So that combined with the fact that their food comes from a single tree in Central America, that makes it really difficult to keep alive in captivity. Which is why, like you're saying, they want to rehabilitate them back into the wild. That's the goal of it. Yeah. And while they are doing pretty well out there as far as their status goes, they are of course threatened in the sense that any animal in South America, in the rainforest is threatened because of deforestation. The sad fact, all animals, even if they're doing well, are going to be threatened if you're hacking through and leveling their habitat. Like is what is going on. Pretty much, yeah. That's the biggest threat is deforestation. Although for the pygmy sloth that lives on as Kudo Island off of the coast of Panama and nowhere else, because their habitat is so limited that any deforestation that happens there has put them in grave danger. But it's basically cutting down the forest and then building roads through the forest because sloths will go from tree to tree on the ground sometimes, which means that when they encounter a road, it's hard to get from one tree to the other aside from on the ground. So a sloth crossing the road is probably not a good gamble for the sloth. But the more roads we build through the rainforest, the more sloths get hit by cars, which is about the saddest thing. You get hit by a car with a car. Yeah. And you always hear about like a movie medicine man, like the cure for cancer may be in this one leaf in the middle of a forest somewhere in a jungle. They may not have the key to cancer in a sloth, but the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute did collect fungi samples, the algae that grows in their fur. And this is of the three toed sloth. And they found that some of these samples from the sloth coat help fight against malaria or the parasite that causes malaria and Chagas disease, which I know we've talked about. It's another tropical parasitic disease, stop your heart, MRSA. Cholera salmonella. And they were also active against human breast cancer cells. So pretty amazing. Yeah. Which, I mean, that's the stuff that they found in the algae growing on sloth fur. That is astounding. It's awesome. So we're all going to be chewing on sloths in the future. Yeah. Don't say that. They'll be alive. You don't have to kill them or anything. Gently suck on their fur. Okay. You got anything else? I got nothing. Well, if you want to know more about sloths, there's a whole internet out there about them. Although we did a pretty good job covering it, Chuck, if I do say so ourselves. I think so. Well, since I said internet, that means it's time for listener. Ma'am, I'm going to call this politics on your show. Hey, guys. Love the show. Been listening for several years now and I've learned lots of good stuff. And you've also introduced me to the End of the World with Josh Clark and movie crush. Yeah, how about that? All right, wilkins Deep. And he says this recently, I was looking through using comments on the show on Apple podcasts saw a number of people making critical comments about how you share your opinions on religion and politics. Too often. I am a politically conservative and religious guy, and I want to encourage you to keep sharing your opinions. I live in a smallish Midwestern town in a red state where I grew up and spent most of my life. Most of the people in my orbit either go to church with me and my family or hold similar conservative views. Your opinion serves as an important function of bringing some alternative perspectives that sometimes challenge my opinions and encourage me to reevaluate certain positions and views. Please keep interjecting your views, guys. Too many of us automatically dismiss any opinions, and unfortunately, people whose views contrast with their own. I used to work for an administrator. He would frequently say, if we're all thinking the same thing, then some of us aren't thinking. That sounds like something. That's a really great sensational poster. That's the first album's title for Mouth Farts debut. Great work and keep offering your views along with your well researched and fascinating topics. Well seasoned with witty humor and hilarious banter. Regards, Will. Well, that was a great, very nice, very kind email. Like, Will saw something said, these guys probably know about this and I want to make sure that they know it's cool. So thanks, Will. Okay. That's much appreciated. If you like to join in with Will's course, we love that. I would also be interested to hear other people who want to write in and explain why we shouldn't share our politics or views because I'm very curious to hear the other side as well. Sure makes me eccentric. Fairness, right? You can go to Stuffyouhinnow.com and find all of our social links there. And you can also 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 a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My HeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio App, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that we mean your dog. 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cae8330c-209e-49a5-963f-ae9300d2b60d | Selects: How Lizzie Borden Worked | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-how-lizzie-borden-worked | Everybody knows how many whacks Lizzie Borden gave her mother and father with that axe, but there is plenty about the infamous double homicide that remains unresolved, like who actually did it. Travel into the mystery of Lizzie Borden in this classic episode.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Everybody knows how many whacks Lizzie Borden gave her mother and father with that axe, but there is plenty about the infamous double homicide that remains unresolved, like who actually did it. Travel into the mystery of Lizzie Borden in this classic episode.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Sat, 14 May 2022 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=14, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=134, tm_isdst=0) | 40902765 | audio/mpeg | "What if you were a global bank who wanted to supercharge your audit system? So you tap IBM to UNSILO your data and with the help of AI, start crunching a year's worth of transactions against thousands of compliance controls. Now you're making small, smarter decisions. Faster operating costs are lower, and everyone from your auditors to your bankers feel like a million bucks. Let's create smarter ways of putting your data to work. IBM, let's create. Learn more@ibm.com. You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that we mean your dog. Halo Elevate is natural sciencebased nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leaving brands? Find Halo Elevate at Petco pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores. All right, everybody, this is going to creep you out a little bit because this episode is about murder. A very famous murder. This goes back to Jeez. I don't know why we released it on New Year's Eve, but we did from December 31, 2015. This is all about that famous lady and her famous axe. How Lizzy Borden worked. It's pretty grizzly. So warning about the content right now. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles. Of each of Bryant and Jerry's back. Wow, look at that fine looking lady over there. How's it going, Jerry? She gave us quiet thumbs up. Just like old time. Yeah. NOL is just quietly weeping outside. He is back outside. Noel. He's peeking in her little portal window, scratching at it. The stint of Noel a k. The rain of terror is over. Done. Yes. Noel has been deposed by Jerry. Yeah. So now it's not Null sitting there or nobody sitting there, which happened more times than I was comfortable with. At least four. Yeah. Jerry's like, wait a minute. We can do that. Yeah. I'm out of here. Yeah. So long, Jerry. So welcome back, Jerry. And we already said congratulations on little inez, but it just keeps getting cuter and cuter. Yep. I know things are going great, so we're happy to have you back. Liliana, you're being very quiet. Just stay that way. She's just rocking in her little swing. Yeah. How great would that be? Having babies in here? Yeah. If they shut up. Wouldn't that be cool? Oh, for sure. Good energy. I would just feel bad for him because it gets pretty gamey in here, even after, like 15 minutes. A couple of hours. I kind of stink today, actually. I was going to apologize. Yes. I didn't use deodorant by the time I showered, which was like two days ago. That's fantastic. I know, it's terrible. I even dressed up, man. That's great, Chuck. I got that for that. Yes. I'm going to take care of that tonight. That explains the sheen on your face. Yes. Okay. We're here. Jerry's here. I smell. Let's do it. Since you do smell, Chuck, I have to say, at least, at the very least, I'm grateful that we don't happen to be in Fall River, Massachusetts, on the morning of August 4, 1892, because that morning was particularly hot, unseasonably hot. It was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit by the time noon rolled around. Yeah. And that figures heavily in the case of Lizzie Borden and her 40 and 41 wax, which were more like 18 or 19 and eleven. Yes. You are familiar with Lizzie. Everybody knows Lizzie Borden, right? Yeah. Lizzie Borden took an axe, gave her mother 40 whacks when she found what she had done, she gave her father 41. Yeah. Wrong. There was no axe. Wasn't a real mother. Wasn't a real mother. There wasn't 40 and 41 wax. So all about that was just made up, they think, to sell newspapers? Yes, it's a children's nursery rhyme these days. Little sicko children. Sure. But they do think that it was possibly some newspaper hawker, a newsy if you watch Disney movies, who came up with it and it just took off. We should change it to lizzie Borden may or may not have taken a hatchet giving her stepmother 18 or 19 wax. Right. 13 of them. Crushed her skull when she saw what she had done, her father got home, she gave him eleven or so and then got away. Yeah. Scotfree. That doesn't have the same ring. No, it doesn't. But you basically did just sum it up pretty well. Pretty accurately, Chuck. Yeah. So for those of you who don't know who Lisa Born is, just settle down, buckle in, prepare for a wild ride. For those of you who do know, do the same. Okay? Yeah. Because we have new evidence that we're going to reveal, controversial evidence of exactly who carried out these murders, and the only people who have it is us, because we're going to make it up. And you'll find out in 35 ish minutes. Or 40. Apparently, two stuff you missed in history class did an episode on Lizzie board. Oh, I'm sure if this floats, your boat goes into that one, too. Yeah. I should point out to the very first thing we said, we told Jerry we were doing Lizzie board and she said lesbian. Yeah. And we said maybe. That's one of the theories. Yeah. This will all figure in. We're just teasing. Teasing like crazy. All right, so the morning of August 4, 1892, fall River, Massachusetts very cute town, by the way. I'm sure you mean. I visited recently. Did you go to the house? Yes. Why else would you go there? That's about it. Yeah. That was on your death tour, your murder tour. Yeah. Like I said, it was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit on August 4. Really hot for that area. And at about, I think about 10:45 A.m., wasn't it? Yeah, about 1045. The first murder? No, the father coming home. Oh. Yeah. They place both of these events within like, 30 to 45 minutes. Okay. There's a give and take there. So about 10:45 am. One Andrew Jackson Borden returns to his home at 92 2nd street and Fall River, Mass. And the house is in a part of town that was very popular among recent immigrants, specifically Irish Catholics and Portuguese, and I believe there's some Chinese immigrants there as well. It wasn't an upscale part of town by any means, despite the fact that Andrew Borden was an extremely wealthy man. Yeah. He was worth between seven and 10 million today dollars, I've heard. Twelve, let's say between seven and twelve then, of today dollars. Right. That's a lot of dough and also a good reason to kill somebody. Yeah. Despite having a lot of dough, he lived in one of the lower rent sections of town. His house did not have indoor plumbing, which was kind of odd by this time for that area. Apparently many of the people who are far, far worse off than his family financially had indoor plumbing. He did not. He also didn't have any kind of electric lighting. Instead, he used kerosene lamps and he kept doors locked. He was very afraid of being robbed. Yeah. Let's cover this bit real quick. I think we should read this. There's a lady named Angela Carter who wrote about the case. She actually factored into our fairy tales episode. She was the feminist rider. She rewrote. Wow. Fairy tales. What was that? Neil Jordan take on little ride ride in her hood. Yeah, I don't remember. She wrote the story. Same lady? Yeah. Wow. So she said the house was originally a two family home, and they converted it to a single family home, but didn't take a lot of time. Apparently just knocked down some walls through in a staircase, and it ended up being a weird house because of that. It is very weird. And she describes it as this way, a house full of locked doors that open only into other rooms with other locked doors for upstairs and downstairs. All the rooms led in and out of one another like a maze and a bad dream. It is a house without passages. There is no part of the house that has not been marked as some inmates personal territory. Inmate. Very nice. It is a house with no shared, no common spaces between one room and the next. It is a house of privacy, sealed as close as if they had been sealed with wax on a legal document. Creepy. No hallways or anything? No. Weird. No. Each room led into the next. And in fact, Lizzie's bedroom led right into her sister Emma's bedroom. For Emma to go to bed, she would have had to go through Lizzie's bedroom, and then her stepmother and father's bedroom was behind hers. But it was sealed off by a locked door and access through staircase that only her father used. That you could get to only with the key. Yeah. And to go up and down the stairs. They had to go through their parents bedroom, right? Yes. But they didn't do that. It was off limits. It was locked. They just jumped out the second story window? No, there was a front staircase. They actually built a second staircase so that their parents could come and go to their room without having to go through Lizzie's room. So for all intents and purposes, but this locked door, it was a wall that sealed off their parents room from theirs. Yes. And when we say parents, this is stepmother. Lizzie was born to Sarah Morris and her father in 1860. 3rd child had an older sister named Emma, ten years older, a second daughter named Alice, who died when Lizzie was two. Yeah, she died from hydro encephaly. You could just make up anything back then. Something believable. Right. And then her mother died in 1863 when she was just two of uterine congestion. And then when Lizzie turned, right before she turned five, he remarried to Abby Gray, who the daughters were in their thirties by the time the murder took place. Unmarried spencers and never seemed like they had a great relationship with Abby. They didn't. But they both adored their father, and he personally appreciated that for his benefit, they referred to her as mother. And they did for decades, until a time which we'll get to. But the reason that Andrew Borden kept the house locked all the time is because a couple of years before, there had been a burglary where some mysterious burglar had come in and made off with $100 and some Charlie tickets and some jewelry, I think. And it was basically pretty well known around town that it was Lizzie who'd done it. Yeah. Sounds like an inside job to me. She robbed her own father rather than accuse his daughter of this extraordinarily scandalous behavior at the time. Sure, he just locked everything and all doors were locked all the time. And he kept a key to his room on the mantle, basically daring anybody to even try it because he would know what happened, because the only way you could get in was through this key. The only way to get to the key would be to have a key to the outside doors. We say all this to say that when Andrew Borden came back home that day. On August 4. That morning. He was locked out of his own house and he had to be let in by the maid. Whose name was Bridget. But who Emma and Lizzy called Maggie because they had had another maiden named Maggie. And they decided that they just were going to call this one Maggie. Too. Sounds like. Do you watch the show? Another period. It's great. It's Comedy Central. Basically a reality TV spoof of like Downton Abbey. Nice. And the two lead, Natasha Laziero and oh, I can't remember her name from Garfunka notes. The blonde, she's the other I think they cocreated the series. Okay. But they're just these rich girls who renamed one of the maids Chair. She's I not even heard of this. I don't know, man. It's really funny. It's got a huge, great cast. Nice. Big fan. Have you seen Anthony Jezelnick special on Netflix yet? Oh, no, dude. Love that guy, though. Really great. Yeah. So awful, but wonderful. Yeah. So Andrew Borden gets let back into his own house. Yes. Not Anthony Josemik. No. And he gets let back in by the maid, and he decides he's going to lay down for a little while on the couch. Right. Apparently, the whole family was under the weather, including the maid, because they had been eating the same mutton for, like, five days. Mutton. They are so gross. Mutton is gross to begin with. Five day old mutton that had been stored in the heat in an ice box outdoors is not just gross. It's really bad for you. So the whole family had basically come down to varying degrees of food poisoning, apparently. So much so that Mrs. Borden, Abbey Borden, had gone to talk to the doctor the day before the murders and said, I think we're being poisoned by one of my husband's business rivals. Yeah. Or my stepdaughter. Right. Something like that. Yeah. That's not all the weirdness that was going on in the months and weeks before the murders. There was a lot of not strange, but a lot of financial goings on that kind of raise the ire of the daughters. Notably, Andrew started being fairly generous with other members of the family, giving away properties and things, including to Abby. He gave her a house that she let her sister live in. Yeah. Her sister was in big trouble, so he helped her out. Yeah. So he's got money. My daughters are like so he said, you know what? I'll give you each a property as well for a dollar, and you're welcome. And they ended up reselling that back to dad for cash later, which was kind of jerky. Yeah. Well, it was a rental property, and he had a bunch of rental properties, and apparently his miserliness was very well known. He also directed some mills. Right? Yeah. And Fall River is incredibly famous for its mills. It's a huge mill town. So he knew that if you worked in the mills and rented a home from him or a room from him, even, he knew if you got a raise, and if you got a raise, he would raise your rent. Yeah. So this is a rental property, one of his rental properties that he sold to his daughter so that they could have rental income. Apparently they didn't feel like doing that, so they just sold it back to him for, like, I think, 2400% increase. Yeah. Not bad for doing nothing. The other thing that happened, actually, the night before the murder is their uncle John john venicum Morris, who was their deceased mothers brother. He came a call in to speak about some business with Andrew, and there's a lot of speculation on what was going on here. Basically, they think that it just ramped up a tense situation. Even more like he probably had his hand out. I think it was fairly common for him to come by, and I don't think he was supplicant to Andrew Borden. I think they had business together a lot. Well, Lizzie didn't like him. That's news to me, too. Yes. She apparently didn't even speak to him. She said at the trial while he was there. Right. Like, when he came to visit and stay the night. She hadn't spoken to him the whole time when he came and then spent the night and then left the next morning because it's very important. He was not in the house when Andrew Borden came back into the house. Right. Yeah. She never called him Uncle John, which is the dead giveaway if you love your uncle. Yeah. I didn't realize there was animosity between the two. I don't know if they're necessarily was. Here's one of the problems that we're going to run into it over and over again, and it's also one of the reasons why Lizzie Borden's legend has remained alive for so long. We have a propensity to take very complex, complicated people and their very complex, complicated relationships with one another and boil them down into caricatures that we can understand and easily explain. And so yeah, so over the century or so, we've done the same thing to Lizzie Born case. So it's really easy to speculate on and it's also easy to interpret little things one way or the other, which also makes the whole thing a lot of fun. Yeah. Everyone loves a cold case. All right, so let's take a break and we'll get back to some of the nitty gritty deeds right after this. Capital One offers commercial solutions you can bank on. Now more than ever, your business faces specific challenges and unique opportunities. That's why Capital One offers a comprehensive suite of financial services custom tailored to your short and long term goals. Backed by the expertise, strategy and resources of a top ten commercial bank, a dedicated team works with you to support your success and help you achieve your goals. Explore the possibilities at CapitalOne. comCOMMERCIAL smartphones are getting smarter, faster, and that might freak some of you out. It's hard to keep up. Trust me. 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What used to take hours takes minutes, and you have an ecommerce platform designed to handle sudden spikes in overall demand, as in actual overalls. Let's create It systems that rule of their own sleeves. IBM let's create. Learn more@ibm.com Itautomation. So, Chuck, you were saying that the family it was tense in the house. To be certain, it sounded like it was always tense, but notably tense months leading up to the murders. Yeah. And apparently both Emma and Lizzie took off for several weeks right before the murders. When they came back, Lizzie didn't even come back to the house. She rented a room for a few days, I guess, to ease herself back into having to live in this house again. Like a halfway house? Kind of. That's weird. Maybe three quarters of the White House. And she and Emma both stopped calling Mrs. Borden mother all of a sudden, around the time that their father had given the house that extra house to her. Right. Yes. Her sister was living in. They started calling her Mrs. Borden, including to her face. That's pretty chilly, right? Yeah. So that's tense. Like you say, Uncle John Morris, might have increased this tension. And the house was very chilly. Civilly. Cordial, to an extent. But it was a house full of adults who were not getting along and, like you say, probably hadn't been for a while. Yeah. Then there was a matter of in June 1892, andrew the father killed a bunch of pigeons in the barn outside the house to make pigeon well, so Abby could make a pigeon pie. And supposedly Lizzy kind of thought of these pigeons as her pets. Right. So that would not have been a very cool thing to do if you knew your daughter loved these pigeons. So I'm in the mood for pigeon pie. Yeah. He apparently also defended his actions by saying that he was worried about intruders because local boys used to like to come let themselves into their barn and hang out with these pigeons and play with them. So he solved two problems dinner and boys coming over by just killing Lizzie's pigeons. That's right. And she also, beyond just liking these pigeons, she was also a huge animal lover. Yeah. She left a lot of money to an animal rights group. Right. And she died. So, I mean, she probably would have taken this fairly hard. Sure. On the flip side, though, so her father just that caricature thing I was talking about, her father's painted as, like, this ebony's a scrooge type, supermizerly tightfisted. He definitely was that. But it's very easy to extend this idea that he and Lizzie hated each other, and that's absolutely not true. Both Lizzie and Emma apparently very much loved their father, and their father loved them. As a matter of fact, he wore a pinky ring that Lizzy gave him when she was like 15 and he'd worn it every day, never took it off. Yeah, they seemed to like each other a lot. Only jewelry ever wore. There was definite affection there. That often gets overlooked when you're just kind of painting this thing in broad strokes. Yeah, but like you said, he wasn't beloved in the town. Because if you ask me, if you have money and you're a tightwad, it's like the worst thing. It is. If you have money, be generous. That's what I say. Sure. Pick up checks, be generous with your friends. If you have dough and it's not going to make any friends, let's just say that it's true and it didn't in his case. So also, if you think about it, it reveals a lot psychologically that the whole family has been eating the same mutton for five days, and the first thing that Mrs. Bordin thinks of is that their milk is being poisoned by one of her husband's business rivals. It's where her mind went. Exactly. It's not just inside this house, the tension, it's also coming from outside a little bit as well. Yeah. And I guess we'll go ahead and point out a few of the circumstantial evidence surrounding Lizzie. So one of the things was, in the days before the murder, she'd been seen trying to buy a poisonous priscic acid. She said she was ianied. Yeah, she said she wanted it to clean things, but other people in the trial said maybe she was trying to poison them. Although Autosis revealed no poison in the bodies, no poison in the milk. No. But the prosecutors wanted to use that to suggest that she had murder on her mind. Inadmissible. It was ruled inadmissible because they figured it would be too inflammatory. And it was entirely possible that she really did want to clean the seal skin coat with that stuff. All right, what else? The dress thing is pretty damning. Well, hold on. Before we get any further into that, let's talk about the actual murders. Okay. Are you ready? Sure. So it's August 4, her father's just come back in. He's laying down on the sofa, right. And he goes to sleep and he never wakes up. That's right. The reason he never wakes up is because, like you said, he got hit from behind and above about eleven times with an axe and hit in about the same area. So that basically his face was cut clean away into nothingness. Yeah, probably a hatchet, not an axe. Yes, you're right. I'm sorry, a hatchet. And at about 1110, Bridget was upstairs sleeping because again, she'd been throwing up from the mutton when she gets roused by Lizzie calling from downstairs, saying, Hurry. Something's happened. She comes downstairs, and she said, someone's coming and killed Father. So now this alert has just gone out. The first body has been discovered. Andrew Borden, who's still bleeding, right? Yes. And his face is hacked away. It's pretty grotesque. You can see the picture online. Yeah. So Bridget runs across the street to the doctor to get him, comes back with him, and they say, Where's your mother? She's like, Stepmother. They're like. Where's your stepmother? And she says, somebody came with a note or something like that. I think she went to go visit a sick friend. Who knows? Yeah. And then she goes, well, actually, I think I heard her come back in. Why don't you guys go look upstairs? And Bridget is like, I'm not looking upstairs. There's a dead body here. How do we know there's not another dead body? So a neighbor lady and Bridget goes upstairs, and they see from the staircase into the bedroom it's really cool when you go on the tour of the house, you can stand where they stood and see exactly what they would have seen. And there is Mrs. Gordon all, I think, \u00a3240 of her laid out on the floor with the back of her head just split wide open with something like 18 blows. And again, 13 of them have just completely crushed her skull. Now there's two dead bodies, and eventually they are dragged into the dining room, where they're autopsy, and rather than be buried before they're buried, they're decapitated and their heads are sent to Harvard. Yes. And then eventually buried at the foot of their graves. Yes. Like all decapitated heads. Exactly. So almost immediately, the cops went, lizzie was the only person in the house, right? That's right. Because Bridget was outside around the time that her mother would have been killed. Lizzie was ironing handkerchiefs with a little mini iron and a little mini ironing board in the dining room. Yeah. Emma was 15 miles away out of town. That's right. Uncle John Morris was away in town at the post office, I think, on business. Yeah. Because he doesn't use stamps.com. Right. Yeah. Andrew Borden was in town on his own business as well. So Leslie was the only one in the house at about 09:30 a.m. Around the time when her stepmother would have been murdered. She says that when her father came home and laid down around the time he would have been murdered. She wasn't in the house then. Yeah. She said she went out to that barn that she liked to hang out with the pigeons, and she was eating pears. Just hanging out in the loft. Eating pears. Eating pears. And the reason she was in the loft is because she's getting lead to make sinkers to go fishing with. Yeah. But while she was there, she's like, I like it in here. In the 100 degree weather. Right. Especially upstairs in this loft. I'm just going to eat some pears. Right. So she ate some pears for 20, 1520 minutes, and when she came back in, she discovered her father called Bridget Down, and the whole chain of events entered the public record around that time. Yes. So we already mentioned the prosoic acid. She was caught burning a dress. Yes. Family friend witnessed her doing that and then later gave testimony about that. And that's what led to her being indicted for murder. That's right. And she said that the dress was stained and that's why she was burning it. Stained with paint, though. Yes, stained with paint. Right. But this is three days after the murder. All of a sudden, she's pulling a dress out of the cold shoot and saying, this dress is stained with paint. I'm just going to go ahead and burn it. So this family friend Alice says, I wouldn't do that if I were you. And Lizzy said, Shut up, you. And Alice said, okay, and goes and tells the cops. So in the basement, they found two axes, two hatchets, and then a hatchet head that it had the handle broken off. They suspected that it was broken off recently, and that hatchet head, they say, look like it had been planted there and covered with dust and ash to make it look like it had been there a long time. Got you basically tampered with, evidence wise. One officer at the trial said the handle is actually there and we found it. Another officer says, no, we didn't, so who knows? Yeah. I think the consensus among historians is that they never found this handle. Yes. But it's never explained why the one officer said they did. Yeah. So that hatched that they did find, that Chuck, they never conclusively showed that it was the murder weapon. They just said, this is probably a pretty good standing. Right. And they never found any blood or anything on it, which that's kind of difficult if you think, to completely get a hatchet head clean. Totally. Yeah. Right. So it's kind of weird in a sense. They never found the murder weapon, essentially. Well, they said they did. Well, yeah, sure. The prosecution said that this was it. Right. But who knows? Right. Again, all suspicion is just immediately falling onto Lizzy, and there were a number of different hearings and inquests and grand juries before she was formally indicted, and each time, apparently, it looked like she was going to get off. Because despite what the cops thought at this time, in this place and era, victorian ladies did not murder people with hatchets. So that in and of itself was enough to get her off. Right, or to keep her from even being indicted. Yeah. But each time, her friend Alice from down the street would come in and say, I saw Lizzie Burn address that had some sort of brownish red stain all. Over it, and the jury or the judge or whoever would say, we think that's enough. And so finally it got to the point where I think the grand jury was indicted her for three counts of murder, right? One of her stepmother, one of her father, and then one of her stepmother and father, which is bizarre even at the time, but she faced three counts of murder, and they used the hatchet head. That was their big case. But they had some real problems. Number one, if that dress had been covered with blood, it was gone now. But number two, Emma, her sister, said that dress actually was covered in paint. That was just paint that had nothing to do with blood. Right. And the big problem here is, it almost goes without saying, if somebody murdered Mrs. Borden with a hatchet and then murdered Mr. Borden with a hatchet, they would be covered in blood twice. Yeah. So what do you do? How could you have gotten around that? One of the theories was that Lizzie Borden, stripped down, was naked, killed Mrs. Borden, put her clothes back on, and then when she had the chance to close back off and then killed her father, and then rinsed off both times and put her clean clothes back on. That probably didn't happen, though. Probably not. We need to take another break, though. And when we come back, we will wrap up what happened in the trials and what happened afterward. Right? For this, Capital One offers commercial solutions you can bank on. Now more than ever. Your business faces specific challenges and unique opportunities. 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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 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 sleeve. IBM. Let's create. Learn more@ibm.com It automation. All right, we're back. Lizzie Borden on trial, in big trouble, and a lot of circumstantial evidence, but no hard evidence at this point at the trial. No smoking gun, as they say. No, not even a smoking hatch. No fingerprints. They didn't do any fingerprinting at this point. Fingerprinting was new and not really trustworthy. So they didn't even bother. Well, yeah, pretty much every step of the police investigation was filed up. To begin with, the murders took place while almost the entire police force was off on the annual police picnic out of town. All these neighbors and look, he lose. Came through the crime scene and totally messed up. But the big thing was forensic science wasn't in widespread use at the time. Yeah, so at the trial, they point out a lot of incongruencies. Her story changed a lot during the questioning, which is a little weird. The cops went into the barn and they said, it's super hot in here. I don't see how anyone would choose to just sit here for 20 minutes and eat pairs. And we don't see any footprints anywhere around. Which is weird because two workmen later testified that they had been up in that place, like, the week before. Yeah, which well, who knows after a week what a footprint in a barn will do? And then the day before the murders, lizzie went to her old friend Alice and said some weird things that she felt like something bad was going to happen to her family. Almost like she said, I feel as if something were hanging over me and I can't throw it off. And she was frightened. So this sort of looks like she was setting up an alibi. Yes. She said she was worried something bad was going to happen to her father. That was the day before the murders, the night before him. Right. So for the prosecution, they took two pretty big hits. One, the prostic acid, the cyanide, got thrown out of evidence. And then two, so did Lizzie's own testimony, because the judge determined that she had been on copious amounts of morphine at the time. And they were contradictory. And even at their base, they weren't admissions of guilt. They were protestations. Right. So the prosecution didn't have a lot to go on. They had almost an entirely not even almost a completely circumstantial case that really had tons and tons of holes in it. That's right. It was a two week trial. Lizzie never took the stand herself, and it was huge. It was the trial of the century. She was deemed guilty while the trial was taking place in her town. Basically in her town. Newspapers all over the world at this point. So the impression I have, though, is that out of town, they had a different take on it, that these bumbling dummies, these yokeles in Fall River, were trying to prosecute a woman for a crime that clearly some maniac had carried out and that they should just leave her alone finally. Oh, really? Yeah. Interesting. During the trial, this helped the sensationalized aspect of it. They actually brought in the chopped up skulls and presented it and like it was out of a TV movie. Lizzie saw this swooned and fainted, which of course is going to get some sympathy from the jury. And it didn't take long. It was about 90 minutes. And the jury said, not guilty. Yeah. And she got away with it. So thinks many, many people. What do you think? I don't know. Well, here's some theories. One, that she was, like, in a fugue state and committed these murders. Yeah. But a fugue state that lasted 90 minutes, where she was able to conceal the murder weapon and her own guilt and wait for her father to come home and fall asleep. That's not fugue state. That's what they say. And it could have been less than 90 minutes. If you take the shorter side of both ends of the murders, of the time range. One was that she was gay and that she was having an affair with the maid. They were caught by the stepmother. She was really super mad. And so Lizzie killed her with a candlestick and then went and confessed this to her father, thinking that he might understand, and he got really mad. And so they killed both killed him. Okay. That's another theory. One that she was abused by her father, sexually and physically abused, although there's no evidence to substantiate this. Right. One is that the maid there was a deathbed confession from the maid to her own sister, which no one knows if that's true or not. Yeah, I mean, the maid was most likely not a lesbian. It's entirely possible that Lizzie Borden was, because later on, after the murder, she and her sister continued to live together. They bought a mansion in the well healed part of Fall River and Lizzy named it Maplecroft the Maiden, eventually remarried or got married. Well, she just totally falls off the map for five years and then pops up again in Butte, Montana, and gets married and dies in, like, 1948. But Lizzie and her sister lived together until 19 five. And then all of a sudden her sister moves out of the house and they never speak again for 22 years until they die. And some people say that it was because her sister didn't improve her relationship with this woman named Nancy O'Neill. Yeah, an actor. Yes, which is entirely possible. Who knows what happened? It could have been that her sister believed she was innocent and then finally Lizzie admitted it in and her sister was like, I am done with you. Who knows? One of the other theories is that William Borden, who is the illegitimate son of Andrew and also a butcher, basically he killed them because of failed extortion attempts. So was he proven to exist, William Borden? Yeah, I thought he was. Hypothetical, is he like, a real person? I think so. And then the final two was that Emma did it and had the perfect alibi in setting up that she was 15 miles away and that Uncle John did it, who was there visiting. So basically, anyone who had anything to do closely with the family, there's a theory that they did it. Right, yeah. And these are all theories. If you look at the evidence, I think you can basically get rid of everybody except Lizzie. And there are some big problems with their story, too. Even if you believe she's innocent, there's some stuff you really have to contend with. Like, for example, she says she was in the house at the time her stepmother would have been killed. Yeah. And her stepmother was, like, \u00a3240, and the police came and they dropped a 200 pound weight in the place where her stepmother had fallen when she would have been killed. And the cop downstairs, whose job it was to listen, to hear if he heard anything, said it felt like the whole house shook, I'm sure. Right. Yeah. And Lizzie's. Like, I didn't hear anything. That's kind of a weird thing. Right, sure. Then Lizzy, also, she behaved rather strangely here and there. Like, when the neighbor came over, she was like, oh, Mrs. Churchill, do come in. Someone's come in and killed Father. Like, come in for tea. There's just a lot of weird stuff that she's done. And then the dad was posed afterward on the couch. Yeah. His favorite coat was rolled up beneath his head. Yeah. And he had his arms folded over in his lap. This is creepy. Yeah. But if you really look at all the evidence, too, especially the prosecution's case, there's no way that that jury should have convicted her. They definitely did the right thing in acquitting her, because there was no case against her. Really? Yeah. She was little. She's like, five foot one, and basically one of the big defense points was, like, this tiny little lady just couldn't have done this. These were, like, brutal, powerful, forceful blows with this hatchet. And despite the fact that she has crazy eyes, maybe it's just that one picture, I don't know. But it definitely didn't do her any favors in history. Like, that one big photo of her. She looks like a psycho killer. She does a little bit, for sure. But they said that there's no way this little lady could have done this. And that was kind of one of their main defense points. But it didn't matter what happened because everyone thought she did it. And she would go to church and have people whisper about her and kids threw rocks at her windows for years and through rotten eggs at her house and ding dong ditch and basically was shunned by her local town folk as a murderous and even the people. All the out of towners who came and used her to promote their own stuff. Like the suffragettes. Like her basically a hero. By the time she died, most people had left her and she died a fairly lonely old woman. Despite having not spoken to her sister in 22 years, they died within nine days of each other. Lizzie died first, and then Emma, and sweetly, oddly weirdly, all of the burdens. Lizzie, Emma, Andrew, Abby, the original Mrs. Borden, and their sister who died as a child, are all buried next to one another in the family plot. Yeah, that's normal. It's not weird. That's just how they did things. Not weird. She did change her name, too, which I thought was, you didn't go far enough. She changed her name to Elizabeth Borden. I might have gone with something completely different without Liz even in the name. Yeah, that would be my recommendation. It's like Tammy Gordon or something. Or Tammy Smith. Oh, yeah. You could get rid of the board and all the whole thing. I thought about that. She's like, I want to disappear. How about Elizabeth Borden instead of Lizzie Borden? No I'll ever suspect that I'm Lizzie Borden. And she was pretty young. She was 66 when she died. Yeah, her sister is like almost a decade older than her. So she died at, I guess, a respectable old age. Lizzie died younger. Not bad. Her sister didn't even die of an illness. She fell on the stairs, supposedly with push marks in her lower back. So we've basically just given a really broad overview. You can dedicate all of your spare time to this case. It's really fascinating. And there's a lot of stuff on it on the Internet, too. And if you're ever in the Providence or Boston area, do yourself a favor and go down to the Lizzie boarding house and take the tour. It's pretty cool you can stay there, right? Yeah, it's a bed and breakfast that you can stay in. Supposedly haunted. Allegedly. Yeah, if you believe in that kind of stuff. Oh, wait, our new evidence, though we didn't reveal it. Okay, go ahead. I have none. I don't either. Okay. Man, you scared me. I thought, like, you really did after a second. No, that would be great. I wouldn't be sitting on that. And you can type Lizzie Borden and all you want in the search bar. It just turns up some lame definition of her, I think, on our site. So just go look elsewhere. And since I said elsewhere, it's time for listener mail. Greetings, gents and Jerry or Noel or empty space. I've recently developed somewhat of a novel biological effector. Remember we talked about those? And it's taught me a lot about how I did and how I should be carrying myself in the world. I'd like to believe I've been polite about it, but I'm definitely the type of person that has a hard time not noticing and having my attention drawn to irregularities about people, especially on their faces. About two weeks ago, I developed a bacterial infection of my skin that covers about half of my forehead and extends down to one eye, causing redness and swelling that makes the eye remain more closed and the other in a resting state. I was surprised at how many of my friends and strangers in public I could tell are distracted by it when talking to me, and it made me feel a little self conscious on top of my own hang ups about such things. I think I've learned a little bit from the experience about what it might be like to be someone that goes through their whole life in this situation, in my case at least, it's not as simple as just ignoring the condition, but it goes a long way for people to acknowledge it and be able to accept it without judgment. Thanks for the work you guys do, for keeping me company with a wide variety of topics. That is from Andrew in Utah. Thanks a lot, Andrew. We appreciate that. Yeah, sorry to hear about that, man, but I like your attitude about it and fresh perspective it's brought you. Yeah, if you got a brush with fresh perspective, we want to hear about that no matter what it has to do with. You can tweet to us. Oh, wait, Chuck. We Want To say Happy New Year to everybody. Yeah. Happy New Year. And Happy birthday. Yummy. Happy Birthday. Yummy. Okay, so if you want, you can tweet to us at s yskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comsteno. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast athousefours.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyhow.com. STUFFYou. Know knows 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. The Neogen Device, developed by Rst Synthesis, 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 Neogenreliefspain.com now for provider benefits. About the Neogen system, come chat with us. That's Neogenreleavespane.com. Your patience will thank you. 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 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 amazonandhalopeets.com." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2008/1227126229620hsw-sysk-thanksgiving.mp3 | How Thanksgiving Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-thanksgiving-works | Thanksgiving is an unusual holiday in America -- there's no religious connotation, and the only traditions are a good meal and a sense of appreciation for the good things in life. Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about Thanksgiving. | Thanksgiving is an unusual holiday in America -- there's no religious connotation, and the only traditions are a good meal and a sense of appreciation for the good things in life. Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about Thanksgiving. | Thu, 27 Nov 2008 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2008, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=27, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=332, tm_isdst=0) | 19327342 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from howstuckworkscom Kakar? Welcome to the podcast. This is Josh. There's Chuck. That's our best turkey. Yeah. That was not a turkey. I believe that was the signal the police are coming to. Owen Wilson used in bottle rocket the Call. That's right. Yeah. Nice. Sorry. Nice hipster reference, Chuck. Is it? Yes. I thought they may be a big nerd. No, it was a cool movie and everybody should know about it. Yeah. I'm not saying it. Say it. No. Let's talk turkey. Okay. So we are talking turkey. It's almost Thanksgiving. Yes, it is. And I'm getting a little hungry. Yeah. It's my favorite holiday. Yes. Is it really? That's weird. Is it? Yeah. Was yours Arbor Day? Flag Day? Flag Day. No. Really? Thanksgiving is your favorite holiday? Yeah. Why? Well, I enjoy the rituals of the football. I like the meal. I like the sentiment behind it. Giving thanks and being thankful. What about presents? You get no presents on Thanksgiving. My present is being off work for a few days and laying around and drinking water. That is the gift that keeps on giving. That's great. I had no idea. Chuck. And fantastic. You are the first person I've ever met whose favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. Well, that's cool. Get out more. My collection is growing more repeat. What's your favorite holiday, though? Christmas. Really? Oh, yeah. I like Christmas, too, but there's the whole shopping thing and the greed of the companies. It taints it a bit. In my opinion, the greed is only it only goes as far as you let it. True. If you buy somebody at present you think is appropriate, not too excessive, they're not going to shove it back in your face. And so you take this back and double what you paid for it. Right. I just mean more along the lines of the consumerism as a whole. I understand, but yeah, I'm off my soapbox. Well, let's get back to Chuck's favorite holiday, thanksgiving. And actually everything you know about Thanksgiving is wrong. Me, everybody, most people. Right. Well, actually, I shouldn't say most things. You know those elementary school pageants that a lot of us are going to be forced to go watch this season? Sure. Or have seen already? Scarcely enough. Those are actually fairly accurate. Yeah. As far as the Pilgrims and the Native Americans sitting down together. Yeah. That is very much the bare bones of the story. Right. The wardrobe is off, apparently. Yeah. No buckles pilgrims didn't wear they don't look like the Quicker Oaks guy or apparently they only wore black and white on Sunday. Yeah. And the buckles, again, didn't come into fashion until about 50 or 60 years later. Much later, yeah. So the buckles you almost never saw the cartoon turkeys dressed like a Pilgrim. Very rarely did you see that in North America in the 17th century. Right. I've been working on that one. It gets no laughs ever. You want to repeat it, move on. It might be funny the second time. So, yeah, there was a guy named Squanto. There were Puritan settlers, aka the Pilgrims, and they did sit down for a feast. Yes. And they landed on Plymouth Rock. Yeah. There was a lot more to the story, though. All right, so you want me to give you a little background here? Please do. Okay. So, basically, the Puritans and it wasn't just the Puritans who settled Plymouth. There's actually another group called the Strangers who thought the Puritans were complete religious wackos. Really? Oh, yeah. They did not really get along very well, but they were all in it together. They call themselves the Strangers. No, I think the puritans called them the strangers. Okay. Yeah. A lot of them were Catholic. Right. So they were all in it together because they were all in deep, really big trouble when they landed. It was November 1620, so they showed up just in time for a harsh northeastern winter. And within the first four months, 48 of the original 100 people died. We're talking dying of exposure, of starvation, like, horrible ways to die. And the people who survived the winter weren't much better off than the ones who died. They still had no idea what they were doing. Like, they brought some types of grain with them that wouldn't grow in North America. Right. They didn't know what they were getting into at all. No. They wouldn't have said, hey, let's land in Massachusetts in November. I bet it's nice. Exactly. So there was one big stroke of luck that would actually prove to be enormous luck. They found a deserted WAPA Noog settlement called Pawtucket. Right. Pawtucket. Actually, abandoned is a bad word. Actually, it was deserted because pretty much the entire population had been decimated by smallpox, which was courtesy of English explorers and traders who'd come through and said, hey, here's some smallpox. Right. Thanks for that. So it was abandoned. It was deserted. There's no one living there, basically just bones laying around. But the structures were still there. So the Pilgrims move into this village. It just so happens that a guy named Squatto had grown. That was his home village. That's where he grown up. Right. But he wasn't there when the smallpox hit, or else he would have likely died with everybody else. He was actually in England, depending on who you ask. He was either sponsored by an English trader and sent to England to be educated, or he was shipped to England as a slave, which a lot of people don't know this, but the Puritans actually help set off the slave trade in North America. Before we visited Africa, we use Native Americans as slaves, and we shipped them back to England commonly, either way, guano was educated in England, and he had been away from several years. He comes home to his home village to find a bunch of white people squatting there. Right. But it just so happens that this group of white people are starving, they're on the verge of death, and all of a sudden, one of the handful of Native Americans who can speak English on the North American continent at that time show up out of the wilderness and say, let me help. That's crazy how it worked out like that. Well, you can imagine the Puritans viewed this as if they viewed scanto as being sent by God. Right. Which actually ended up justifying centuries of genocide and all that. Because we were meant to be here, clearly. Sure. And you kind of have to wonder that if Squanto had been given a flash of the future, would he have helped? You know what I mean? Sure. We have Internet and menthol cigarettes, but at what cost? Right. It makes you wonder if he would have just kind of walked away back into the woods. Like, good luck. Those 50 may have died and changed the course of American history forever. He helps them. He basically teaches the Puritans how to survive in North America, how to farm what? To grow corn. Big one. Yes. Huge. Which we both know is enormous. And let's see, how to hunt deer, how to harvest shellfish. Right. From maple trees. Yes. So he saves this group of people, and it is true that, out of respect for his help, by this time, scanto had been adopted by or absorbed into a nearby Wapanoag tribe. So, out of gratitude, they invited Squanto and his family for a celebratory feast. Yeah. Which was the first Thanksgiving. Exactly. And that's the one that you'll see in elementary schools around the country this November, and historians think that it actually did take place in the fall, so that much is on par. It's probably not the fourth Thursday and Thanksgiving, and I doubt if they watch any football, or maybe they did sports were involved. Yeah. And they said they probably base the dinner on the Native American meal plan, which I did a little research into that. Let's hear it. And if you want to honor our Native American friends here at this Thanksgiving, then you can sit down and have a traditional Native American meal of a bean soup of fried mash. Nice. Not quite sure what that is. I think smush corn with probably, like, milk at it sounds good. You can roast yourself a rabbit and chow down on some mutton stew and a little sheep's head. I would eat all that. I would try sheep's head. I never have. But I would happily eat all the rest of it. Yeah. And that would be a traditional or those foods are traditional Native American foods. Yeah. Like Chuck said this first Thanksgiving much more followed the Native Americans tradition of Thanksgiving. Had it followed the Puritans version of Thanksgiving, there would have been a lot of praying and not dancing and basically just standing around being very solemn. Right. And the Puritans had days of Thanksgiving like crazy. The Native Americans in the Northeast, the Algonquin speaking peoples, they celebrate it six times a year. Right. And one of them was the Harvest, which is actually found world Round. Yeah. The bunch of ancient cultures and recent cultures celebrated Harvest Thanksgiving. Yeah. So that's actually kind of what we do today. We still kind of celebrate it a little more like the Indian version than the Puritan version. So that's the story of the first Thanksgiving. Right. And basically it led to I've read analysis on it, and people speculate that the Puritans were grateful, but at the same time, they did see Squanto sent by God. He had no choice in it. And ultimately, they were kind of getting along because they were about the only English in the area, and they were vastly outnumbered by the Native Americans. Exactly. Within 20 years, the children of both of these groups who were seated at the first Thanksgiving dinner were murdering one another in King Philip's War. And that was the beginning of that. Right. So let's flash forward a little bit, shall we, to the official Thanksgivings. Yes. The way we recognize it. Right. Well, if you're talking about officially recognized, george Washington started that. Yeah. That's the sporadic Thanksgiving celebration. Right. That marked actually, sadly, a lot of them marked victories over Native tribes. Yeah. Considering how things got started, that's quite a kick in the face. Yeah. Ultimately, if you are descended from immigrant from the east, specifically a European immigrant, and you're here in the US. And you celebrate Thanksgiving, sadly, what you're really giving thanks for is being on the winning side. Right. The Native Americans don't necessarily take Thanksgiving the same way that people of Anglo descent or European descent in general do. There's actually a day of mourning that they celebrate right. Near Plymouth. Yes. Just to drive the point home. Yeah. They didn't land on Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Rock landed on them. Right. That's the same. Yeah. But our modern version of Thanksgiving actually comes from a magazine editor. Right. Now, Chuck was saying, George Washington, he said, let's just consolidate all these Thanksgiving days into one. Right. It didn't really take off, though, but he was the first one to say it. A magazine editor named Sarah Hale started this letter writing campaign. She had actually come across the two surviving documents that described the first Thanksgiving. So she got some of it. That's pretty cool. But she really romanticized it and embellished it and gave us what we think of when we think of Thanksgiving today. Exactly. And what the little kids in elementary school are putting on. It all basically came from this magazine editor's imagination. Right. Take pumpkin pies, for example. I'd love to. I love pumpkin pie. I do, too. And I'm grateful that they're part of the Thanksgiving. I'm thankful for it. But did you know that it was literally impossible that pumpkin pies were part of the first Thanksgiving. Do you want to know why? My guess would be that there were no pumpkins. There were pumpkins. Okay. Pumpkins are kind of squashed and there was no pie. Native to North America, there was pie, but Europeans knew how to make pie. So what's the problem? They probably didn't have the flour. They probably didn't have the milk. Even if they did, still a year after they'd been there, the pilgrims hadn't managed to build a functioning oven yet. Right. So it's literally impossible if they had pies. And I know they didn't have the Cool Whip to dollop on top. Definitely not oil or cream. Right? Yeah, cream. That's my vote. Agreed. So Lincoln ratifies and makes it the really official every day. I think he made it the last day of November, but it was from Sarah Hale. From Sarah Hale's letter writing campaign. Right. And then the Thursday thing came along. I think Franklin Roosevelt moved it up a week. And I love this part. They actually started calling it Frank's Giving. It's just the kind of chat him a little bit because he changed it up. Yeah. Why did he? For Christmas shopping. He did it because the big national retailers were lobbying him to extend the Christmas shopping season. Right, I did. Should we talk about turkey? Yeah, let's talk about turkey. About turkey. I know you refuse to say talk turkey. I love it. Turkey was not a part of Thanksgiving initially. They pretty much said that. Correct. It was most likely venison or some other sort of foul. Was there another? There was foul. And actually at the time, if you talk to a puritan about turkey, that actually characterized any kind of foul. Okay. So even if they did use the word turkey, which they didn't, it could mean anything. But there probably were like ducks and geese on the table. Right. And we know there was also cranberry, too, which is one thing that still holds true today, which is nice. Go ahead with the turkey truck. Well, turkey was not a part back then, but it very much is now. 90% of Americans now eat Thanksgiving on turkey, and I would imagine the 10% who don't, a lot of those are probably vegetarian. I can't imagine you would choose another meat if you're not a vegetarian other than turkey. Yeah. You have to be some sort of communist. Yeah. If we have listeners out there who are not vegetarian and who opt for steak on Thanksgiving, I'd love to hear from you. Yes, that would be very cool. But tofurkey is what the vegetarians prefer because they like to keep it real, keep it traditional. Is anyone really prefer tofurky or is it done out of some sort of obligation, do you think? Like I said, I think it's trying to keep up with the tradition while still maintaining the ethics that the vegetarians hold. That's my guess. I understand. And I think we should talk about football. Wait, hold on. I got more on turkey. Okay, first of all, we're expected to eat 46 million turkeys this year for Thanksgiving alone. Wow, \u00a3700 million. That's a lot of turkey. And while we're still on the topic of turkey, can I tell you one more thing? Yeah. All right. So you know how tryptophan makes you sleepy? Yes. That's not the case. Tryptophan, you should explain, is a chemical in turkey. Correct. That supposedly makes you sleepy. Right. And actually, it does encourage the production of serotonin, which is a calming agent on the nervous system. The problem is, tryptophan is effective pretty much only on an empty stomach. Right. Okay. So they say, well, what is it about the turkey that makes you sleepy? It's not the turkey alone, it's actually the meal. Right, okay. The average Thanksgiving, the serving, this isn't like the whole spread. This is what you and I are going to sit down and eat. The average meal has 3000 calories wow. And 229 grams of fat. Wow. I looked it up, my friend. That's the equivalent of six Big Mac. I was going to say, I bet you're going to put it in Big Mac terms. I knew that was coming back. It should be a standard measure. Well, seven Big Macs. Six? Yeah. It's actually, calorie wise, it's about five big Max. Fat gram wise, it's about six Big Max. Wow. That would make me sleepy if I ate six Big Max. Exactly. The digestion. Chuck, you and I, we know and love the fight or flight response, right? Sure. If you remember when you're faced with danger digestion stops and everything well, this is the exact opposite. Everything else slows down. So your stomach can be like, I have to get rid of this. It's a carb heavy meal. Right. And actually, with that, with 3000 calories and 229 fat grams, we would have to run at a moderate pace for four straight hours to burn that off. And we don't do that. No, we don't. Instead, as Chuck was saying, we watch football. Yes. Even people who don't like football many times will watch football on Thanksgiving for the tradition of it. I love football. I love the NFL. I love the Atlanta Falcons. I'll just go and say that I'm more college football guy myself, but yes, I know, that's fine. I like that, too. But yeah, that started in 1934. The Detroit Lions played the Chicago Bears and lost in 1934. Yeah, but the Lions first year, the Bears were the national champs and they only lost 13 to 16. So pretty good showing for a first year club. Right. They only lost by three points and saved seven years from 39 to 44. They did not play football, and I believe they probably had something to do with World War II. I didn't look it up. Yeah, probably. But I doubt if that's coincidence. You know, I have a theory about the lines, actually. I think that they can never pull together a truly decent team because there are so many players out there don't want to play on Thanksgiving and don't want to play on Christmas. Wow. The Lions have to play on both days almost every year, robbing their families of fun. Exactly. And the Cowboys are the other team that traditionally plays, and they started at that tradition in 1966. They were Johnny come lately. Johnny come lately. And a couple of more things here the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade. I don't watch it, which is I'm just not a big parade guy. But if you're ever in New York City, here's a little tip around Thanksgiving, one thing that's really fun to do my wife and I did it one year is to go the day before the Thanksgiving day parade and watch the balloons being blown up. Oh, cool. You just walk around Central Park, they're out there, got the streets closed down. They're blowing up. You see kermit on the ground, they're blowing them up. And there's just kids everywhere and parents everywhere. And it's a delight. And it's not just the mob scene of the actual parade. I think it's a lot more fun. And that's Chuck's recommendation for New York City. Yeah, and I've learned over time that following Chuck around can yield some pretty cool adventures. You could see Thanksgiving day parade balloons being blown up. You might run into Tony Shaloob. You could find a severed head in a bucket. There's all sorts of crazy stuff that happens in Chuck. I sounds much more interesting when I start naming these things out loud. Yeah. So, Chuck, you got anything else? No, that's it. It's my favorite. I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving this year. Yeah. Happy Thanksgiving. Remember, with the stuffed turkey, that's 22 to 24 minutes per pound at 325. If you don't go to the trouble of stuffing your turkey, just knock that down to 18 to 20 minutes per pound at the same temperature. Or you could just forgo all that and sit down to a plate of six big Macs. Yeah, same result, right? Exactly. Well, till then. Happy Thanksgiving. And remember, the reason for this season is to give thanks for things you have in your life. It's a busy day. There's football, there's food, there's fun. Take a short time, reflect on things, and don't forget about the banquet. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast@housestopworks.com brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you?" | |
c345aa44-5460-11e8-b38c-9306d4a4523b | SYSK Selects: How Acne Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-acne-works | Over the course of our lives, 80 percent of us will experience acne. Ultimately, acne comes down to one thing, a blockage in the sebaceous gland. Learn what makes a blackhead black, and everything else about zits, in this pus-filled episode of SYSK. | Over the course of our lives, 80 percent of us will experience acne. Ultimately, acne comes down to one thing, a blockage in the sebaceous gland. Learn what makes a blackhead black, and everything else about zits, in this pus-filled episode of SYSK. | Sat, 25 May 2019 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=25, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=145, tm_isdst=0) | 41041582 | audio/mpeg | "Hey there, everyone. It's me, Josh. And for this week's SYSK Selects, I've decided to bring us all down into the disgusting world of acne. On the microscopic level, yes, it's kind of gross and no one wants it, but we all get it from time to time, some of us more than others. And it's great to know what's going on down there, because I got to admit, it is fascinating. So enjoy this episode on acne. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W, chuck Bryant that makes this stuff. You should know that's, right? Doesn't it? It does. When we're in this room, one thing happens. Anger. I was going to say magic. Oh, angry magic. Yeah. Right. Get out of the hat. I haven't seen that yet. The Angry Magician. No, that's a great idea. Yeah. There you go. The angry comics. Yeah, there are plenty of them. And for good reason, too. Yeah. Do you remember a while back we were writing a lot of articles that seem to share a common theme of skincare? Yes, I remember that too. I didn't write too many of those. I wrote a lot of skincare articles. Yeah, I did. And I learned that I'm fascinated by the skin. That's good. Yeah, it turned out to be very good. Like, you don't want to take too many showers in a day. You don't want the water you use in your shower to be too hot. I learned these things definitively. Right. Also, the skin on your lips is three layers thick, whereas the rest of the skin on your face is about 16 layers thick. Wow. And they're actually translucent, which is why your lips are reddish, because it's just the mucous membrane underneath right. Showing through. Yes. Look at that. Yeah. And you don't want to lick your lips too much because your saliva contains the digestive enzyme, which starts to break down a very thin and fragile skin on your lips. Yeah, I got chapped lips a lot from licking them. Stop licking your lips. I'm constantly just I have oral stuff. Bite my nails, bite my cheeks, bite my lip, all that stuff. All that good, fun, stressy stuff. But you don't smoke cigarettes, though. Good for you. Yeah. I guess I chewed my face off instead of doing that. Yeah. It's a good looking face. Thank you. Well, anyway, Chuck, I just wanted to say all that to say that I will be very interested in what we're talking about today, which is acne. I'm glad you are. I am, too. Although I never really got acne, so I'm a little less, like, enthused. It's so unfair. Look at this right here, right now. Yeah. I have a big old white head rush through my nose. It won't go away. Like, I was pressing it with my pinkies. I could pop aside. I get them. That's a tough spot, though. Josh is talking about the area right under the nostril set, no man's land. The nose kind of prohibits excess like you want. Well, it's not just that. It's very sensitive and I was pressing it and my eyes are watering and it still wouldn't pop. So I'll have to have you do it. Yeah. But I guess it's Method podcasting and following in your footsteps. Chuck. So you want to talk about acne first? I guess we should talk about the skin a little bit, right. In the process of how well, let's talk about the skin. Did you like Tom's description? I did, actually. I think most people know by now it's the largest organ, but Tom takes it a step further in a very Buffalo Bill way, and he says that if you skinned an adult human, there would be enough material to make a four by five foot area. Rug of skin weighs \u00a310. I'm glad he didn't say how many skin suits or lamp shades you would make, because that would be really creepy. Creepy enough. Yeah. \u00a310 of skin on an adult body. Right. And then most of the skin, there's three layers. There's the epidermis, the dermis and the subcutaneous layer. Right. I think the dermis is the fattiest layer, and the subcutaneous layer is like, the nastiest layer. Have you ever seen hair raiser? Yeah. Remember the woman, she was coming back regenerating. She regenerated from the inside out. So at one point, she just like muscles in blood. Just above that is the subcutaneous layer. I think the epidermis is kind of gross, too, though, because it's all dead. It is dead. This is one of the things that fascinates me about skin. All the skin I'm looking at right now that I can see, dead. Dead is disco. Yeah. You know, weird. Yeah. So, Chuck, your skin grows, like, beneath that outer layer, and it grows as keratinocytes, which are new skin cells. Yeah. And your skin is a constant it's constant motion, pushing that dead skin up and up and out through the pores, where they flake off into your bed, making your mattress heavier. Right. From, like, the moment it's born, when a cell divides, it starts making its way outward. Yeah. And it takes what does it take? About a month for a skin cell to be born and then make it out to the outer layer? That sounds about right. To the tune of 40 to 60 million skin cells per day. Yeah. 40,000 a minute. That's crazy. Are reaching the surface. Right. And so they reach the surface and they don't just fall right off along the process. They die. And they become cornified and become carotenocytes or cornea CYT. Sorry. And when they reach the surface, they provide a function for a while. They mix with sebum, which is the oil we produce. That I really produce. Oily skin. Yeah. And some fat. What kind? Lipids. Josh lenoleic acid. Okay. So they mix all together and they form waterproof skin that keeps out water. That's huge seem is why we don't soak up water when we walk around in the rain. Exactly. And it keeps bacteria out, which is why the skin is your first organ of resistance for immunity. That's right. So you've got all this process going on. Skin cells eventually do fall off and jump off and are sloughed off and then beneath all that you have the subcutaneous layer and that's where the hair starts growing. Right? Yeah. That's where you're going to find your hair follicle, which looks sort of like just a little tube with a little rounder. And I would say it looks like a sperm. A sperm going inwards towards your ear drop. Sure, maybe. And that is where the hair begins to grow from the bottom up and it grows out of this follicle and collects on the way out sebum, which we said was oil. That's why when you don't take a shower, your hair is going to look all oily. And actually, men, I think, have more sebum than women. And teenagers have lots of sebum. Yeah. It's almost equal among the genders. Yeah. Because that's why you get acne most often in adolescence, because we're taking you up through where acne starts, which is really sebum. Right. Well, it has a lot to do with it. At least the hair follicle is connected to a sebaceous gland, like you said, which is why your hair seems oily when it comes out. And so you've got this whole house of cards, I guess, just waiting to screw up. Well, they're trying to squeeze through this little pore right. Together those dead skin cells, that migration they make, the way they get out is through the pore, through the follicle, through the sebaceous gland, right? That's right. So when you have a lot of them coming together at once, all these dead skin cells are trying to get through the same door. It's like Three Stooges Syndrome from The Simpsons where Mr. Burns had everything, but nothing could kill him because they couldn't all get through the door of his health. That's exactly right. So when you have too many skin cells, things start getting blocked and things back up behind it and you've got trouble. Yeah. I mean, that's one way it can happen and they don't know why that the body would overproduce skin cells, but hey, it happens. Do we need to know why? Exactly? Another thing that can happen, you can have too much sebum, like we talked about in puberty. And puberty is when that's going to happen. Most likely bacteria, specifically propion, nice picnic that's found in acne lesions. And every type of acne that we're going to talk about, they're all lesions. Right. And then inflammation. Right? Yeah. The bacteria causes inflammation. When there's back up and there's bacteria, you're going to get inflammation. Yeah. Tom put it like these were different things that could happen, and I'm sure they are. But it also seems to happen, like, a sequence of events. Like, all of them, you've got too many skin cells backing up. Right. So the sebum backs up behind it. Well, this bacteria loves to eat sebum, which causes an infection, which makes you inferred. Yeah, I saw it as a sequence of events, too. All right, so, Chuck, there is a very long standing debate over what is worse a white head or a black head. What's the difference between the two? Well, one is an open comido, and one is a closed comido. Do you know what a comido is? I do. It's blockage. Okay. Do you know what the word is? Camidone is plural. What do you mean, what the word is? The word is Latin for glutton. Okay. Really? Yeah, and it's named after a worm. You know how when you do pop as it and the stuff comes out as, like, kind of a thin, worm like tube? Well, there was apparently a worm that looked very similar to that that loved to feed a parasitic worm that loved to feed on humans. That was considered particularly gluttonous. So the blockage came to be called the commodore, which means glutton. Wow. Isn't that weird and gross? Yeah. And true. Yeah. Pretty much everything about this, we're looking at acting on a subdermal level. Yes, it is gross. It is kind of gross. So, whiteheads, you might think, like, I just woke up, and there's a white head on my nose. That just happened last night. Not true. It could have been a couple of months in the making before you finally see it. Like you might emily calls them underground construction. When you can feel it and you know it's coming, but you can't see it or do anything about it yet. Yeah, that's infection, essentially. Yeah. Underground construction. Yeah. At some point, your skin cells started backing up. They didn't make their way out of the poor, and you're in trouble. So, whiteheads, anyway, have an open camido. Blackhead. I'm sorry? Closed comido. Blackheads are open, and the black that you're seeing is just melanin. It's just our skin pigment. Right. It's oxidized. It's not dirt. The reason it's black is because it's been exposed to air, whereas with a closed committee, there is no exposure to air, so everything stays white just beneath the surface of the skin. And you stopped me in the hall earlier and said, I can't tell the difference between, like, a white head and a pustule. What I found because you did find something. Well, the American academy of dermatology says that it's really confusing, so don't feel bad. It is confusing. Thank you. AAD. They're all lesions, but I think a white head, what we typically see as a pimple and a zip, is the pustule. Okay. Because in here, it says the ad says a whitehead is typically a raised bump that's the same color as the rest of your skin, whereas the zip clearly has the pus, but apparently that's not the hallmark of a whitehead. So I'm even more confused now. Yeah. Thank you. AAD. Thanks for nothing. Yeah, because I thought a white head meant it was the white pimple zit looking thing. Yeah, it says here that the same color as the rest of your skin. Okay. Well, let's go with that, though. I mean, that a white head is just pressing your skin up, so it's a raised bump. Whereas if it looks white, if there's, like, a clearly a white part, what has happened is this white head, or blackhead, has collapsed under the skin, and all that bacteria ridden sebum is now causing an infection. Right. That's what a zip is. That's right. Also called a pustule. That's a pustule. There's also a papule, and they are little small bumps. Little firm, small bumps. And they don't have any kind of white beauty center. Right. But they do feel like sandpaper, apparently, if you rub your fingers across them. Yeah. I get, like, little dry skin bumps in the back of my arm. I don't know if that's the same thing. No, that's not I don't think so. Okay. No, that's not sure. It's got a name. What is that called? What's really severe dry skin called eczema. Yeah, it's a mild form of eczema. All right. Maybe I have eczema. There are nodules which are larger and hard. A nodule is the kind of thing where you mash it and you mash it and nothing ever happens, and then it comes back and comes back because you're just breaking it down and stays in there. Did I have one of those? That was definitely a nodule, wasn't it? Yeah, because I would be, like, off of my first and then it would go away, or first it would go, and then it would come back. That thing was there for a while. Yeah, man. It kept coming back, and then it stayed for a really long time, and it come back. And I was wearing, like, turtles neck. I brought turtlenecks back inadvertently. Flapping and then Supervisor Jewels. Josh you may think your cister boils, and they might look like that, but cysts have different traits, one of which is the ability to contain a trapped gas, which I thought was pretty interesting. That is nuts. And pretty awesome. Yeah. So that means that's not assist. I'll bet that gas stinks to high heaven when it's finally released. Can you imagine? Yeah, I can, baby. Acne. Yeah. What is it called? Mila. Milia. Milia. Sorry. Mila is denise I think the point here was you can get acne from cradle to the grave. Yes. Sadly. Yeah. I mean, most people tom cited something like 80% of people get acne, and we should say everything we just said was a form of acne. Vulgaris. Yeah, I don't think we said that. Vulgaris is a Latin, I think, for common. Right. Most of us get it right. Eight out of ten people get it at some point in their life. You said most people. It starts during puberty and ends after puberty. For other people like me, it keeps going on here, there, and I mean, like, I take care of my face, dude. I got a regimen and it's still I mean, I can imagine it would be much worse if I didn't take care of that or you over registered because Simpson here. Are you over regimenting? No, I know what I'm doing, okay? I'm going to see a dermatologist soon. I need to find one, but I'm going to go see one just to make sure I'm doing everything right. Yeah, there's not other steps I can take. But no, I know what I'm doing, okay. Because the only reason I say that is later in the article. They point out that over washing. And I remember that as a kid. I think I went through a brief period where I got like a zip or two in high school. And so I got out like the buff. Puff. And then neutrogena for the first time ever and just scrub the crap out of my face. Started bleeding. It started breaking out. And I was like. Well. I don't get it. I'm washing my face and it's breaking out. But all these years later, I have an explanation. You're agitating your skin. Yeah, I think I just have sensitive skin. Yeah. But no, I don't use soap or harsh stuff on my face. It's like, I take good care of it. So, Milia, back to the babies. Babies can get melia. It's around the eyes or nose, little white bumps. It's really common if you're a new parent and your kid has this, don't worry about it. In fact, the doctor is probably going to tell you the same thing. Like, don't even do anything. It'll clear up on its own, right, in most cases. And you can actually get that as an adult as well. Really? Sometimes, yeah. It's far more common in infants and I mean, like newborns, too. Right. The cause generally is that the skin cells are already dividing and dying off, but the sebaceous glands aren't developed enough to carry the skin cells to the surface. So basically, when the doctor says, just wait, it'll clear up on its own, he's saying, just wait, your baby will grow and produce more sebaceous cleans to handle this. That's that well, that's good news. It's great news. Prepubertal acne forms. And children, this is basically when you're producing your androgens your sex hormones before you should be yeah, like from drinking milk? Is that what it'll do? It too, probably. Bovine growth hormone would do it, and that is when it's pre puberty, and that's in younger children. And that's something you probably should go to a doctor about. Yeah, because I think they take it more as like a sign, like, oh, okay, you've got this other stuff coming down the pike, too, like breasts and you're sick, you know, that kind of thing. So it's just a big androgen dump in your body, and your sebaceous glands go, oh, we're supposed to start working now, I guess. And in the box, little Timmy is only eight, right? I said six. Does it happen that young? I don't know. I'm sure it could. Yeah. I would imagine the younger, the more potentially problematic it is. That's the kid who ends up having the mustache when he's, like, in the third grade, the six year old boy with the breath and the mustache. What did you call him? Timmy. Timmy. Actually, I have a friend named Timmy, but my other friend Jim you actually know Jim did have a mustache when he was in the 8th grade. Oh, yeah. It was pretty funny. Yeah. Swarthy Jim. Yes. So what else? Chuck? Oh, there's rosacea. This is the one that is pretty awful on Google images. Really? Yeah. It can affect the nose, and, you know, it's everything from just redness of the nose to horribly misshapen bumpy nose. Okay. It can get really bad. Is that the nose where you see, like, divots missing from people's noses? Yeah, I got you. It can get that bad, but it occurs in bouts. Right. So you can kind of tell that you're about to have a bout of rosacea because you find that you flush more easily. Yeah. And it's because the veins in your face are dilating more wider, I guess. Yeah. That's it triggers acne. Well, it triggers acne vulgaris, or a lot like acne vulgaris, they said. And then I also got the impression from Tom that it's problematic and that people suspect that maybe you're, like, a raging alcoholic because your nose looks like that, like you have the gym blossoms, but it's really just rosacea. Yeah. And if you look up pictures of it, it looks like a gym blossom or worse. I don't encourage anyone to type in, like, puss jewels into Google images because, like, that body parts come up that are have these things on them and might not be something you want to see. You know what I'm saying? What kind of body parts? They had pictures of, like, just out of nowhere, just, like, feet, penises with bumps on them. I don't recommend it. Okay, well, that's fair warning if I've ever heard it. Anybody who does, go Google Image, what, rosacea, any of them, really? You've been warned by Chuck himself. You're a dummy if you do it, or you're on your own, at least. So these are generally the different types of acne, right. And their causes, but we missed at least one. Chuck pizza causes acne. I know it does. And that was play acting. I know. And I actually did a little more research on this and diet and acne. That sort of been one of the old things they say is like a greasy food and a lead to acne, but most doctors say that that's pretty much a myth. End of story. Yes. Although this one thing I found says that theoretically, there could be some impact. Like, diet has a direct effect on your insulin level, and that insulin is the master hormone, and it has to do with hormone production in a way. So in theory, insulin spikes could affect acne and also things that you eat, it can affect it in a good way. If you eat positively, like veggies and fruits and seafood got you. And potentially if you eat good foods that are rich in, like, omega three fats, like fish oil, it can be an antiinflammatory. And so part of the problem is inflammation, in theory could help with that too, but you want to watch, like, shellfish. They're high in iodine because that apparently can inflame acne vulgaris. Yeah. So here as we say that it doesn't impact acne, we're saying it does. Right? Yeah. I just can't believe that what you eat doesn't have any impact on the function of your cells. That's what I think. It's got to have some impact. That's what I think. Genetics is another big one. That it's overestimated the impact it has. Yes. The genes that you inherit from your parents and how they express the proteins that tell your sebaceous glands to function in this way or that way or whatever. Right. It's going to have an effect, but not as much as if your dad broke out a lot. You're not necessarily going to. Right. Or vice versa. Right. I don't know about my parents in acne. I don't either. It's not a conversation that you normally have with your parents more. It's like, was your dad bald? Right. That's the big question. That's what I think we care about as men. Dirt is not going to affect if you have a dirty face. I mean, it's not great for your skin, probably, but pimples and zits happen from the inside out, so dirt on top of your epidermis isn't going to really affect that. Right. They say and then make up this one. I don't know. I could see makeup definitely making you break out. Yeah. The wrong kind. Quit using that kind. Well, there's different kinds. There's hypoallergenic, which means low. Allergenic right. There's non comedogenic, which supposedly says, like, this won't make you break out. So possibly cheap makeup. Yeah. If you have skin issues already, then you should probably be aware of the types of makeup that you're getting. If you're a young lady or if you're a dude that's into that and leaving makeup on without removing it, at the end of the day, that can definitely cause you to break out because you are going ahead and blocking the pores from the outside in, causing backups. Yes. Stevie Nicks said that on might have been oprah. Yeah. Verbatim. I was quoting her. Really? No. She said they asked her why she always looks so great. And she said that she's through all, like, even her drug days of being on tour, she never, ever failed to take her makeup off at the end of the night. Stevie Nicks did drugs. Yeah. Back in the day. Big time. I know. So she said even if she was on a bender, she would still manage to take her makeup off. That is pretty good. Yeah. Wow. She's the Belladonna. So, Chuck, let's say you want to get rid of the acne that you do have, right? Is that right there? I'm good. You almost hold over there's really just two things that regular old acne vulgaris and not persistent, not supertive nodule type acne, but just plain old acne vulgaris can be treated with. One is benzo peroxide and one is salicylic acid. Right? Yeah. And those are pretty much it. Almost all of the over the counter acne treatments that you're going to find anywhere are going to have one or both of those. Probably just one. And anyone who's ever seen, like, an oxy commercial has heard the word benzo peroxide. Big time. What were those pads? Were they oxy pads? Yeah. There was another company, breeze Pads. Seabreeze came in like that was like an astringent. Yes. No, there are pads. I guess it was oxypid. Oxy pads in it. It come in like a little fancy oxy. Be like, yeah, I'm taking care of myself. And then you would look at it and say, look at all that stuff on the commercial. Yeah. Benzoyl peroxide specifically kills the pactinus bacteria. And it'll dry out your face, which can be bad. Yeah, you don't want a lot, too much. I think that moisture in your face is what breaks you out. Right. Your face being too dry can break you out as much, if not more. You want to keep your face moisturized. Cuts down on breakouts. Kid you not. Tea tree oil. Emily uses tea tree a lot to dry out a pimple, and that's a good natural way to do so. Salicylic acid basically goes in, and it's like liquid plumber for your pores. Like, it just goes in and destroys everything that's in that blockage. And there you go. It also takes off a healthy amount of the horny layer, which is the most external layer of your dead skin cells. The what layer? Horny layer. Really? Look at you. The other thing that you can do, I mean, those are medications you can take. What you really want to do is to gently wash your face with soap and warm water. Yeah. But again, you can't just use any soap. I mean, maybe you can. If you have, like, completely insensitive skin, then sure, maybe you can. And you'll find out pretty quick what kind of soaps you can and can't use. Well, most of the soap you get in the store is pretty crappy anyway, right. You get what you pay for with soap. Especially with face soap. Yeah. It's worth the extra few bucks. Agreed. If you're exercising, you want to shower right afterward. You don't want to let sweat be on your skin for too long. Yes. You got back knees. The reason back knee is so prevalent is because that part of your body is lousy with sebaceous glands. Is it head or face? Back and chest? I think so those are three areas. Yeah, because yeah. What about the butt? That's something entirely different. Those are just red bumps that no one knows what they are. Okay. They recommend loose clothing and they recommend chilling out, not being so stressed. Light not man. Be a type L personality, which is L, the long allele on the SLC six, a four gene, which basically creates this protein that ferries serotonin out of the synapse. It basically turns it off, which is so if you have the allele, you're more laid back person because you have more of this transport protein. If you have the S version of that gene, then you make less of the transport, meaning the serotonin stays in the snaps longer, which makes you highstrung and kind of angry because it activates your amygdala. So type A personality and type B is actually type S and type L. Sounds like somebody just wrote a blog post. Isn't that cool, though? Yeah, that is cool. I like to think I'm an L, but I'm probably less L than I really want to admit. I don't know. Somebody posted a comment on Facebook when I put that blog post up, and they're like, not everything can be explained so succinctly. But the point of the blog post was like, this one explains it succinctly. You just removed the comment and went about your day? Yeah, I banned them from Facebook forever. What else can you do? Let's say you got acne. Check. And what can you do to treat it? You can take antibiotics, either oral or topical. All right. And topical meaning, like, their current event type antibiotics. What about a chemical peel? That works, too? I would think that would not be a good thing if you were breaking out. It's a good idea if you're going to do that to, again, shell out the extra money and go to a professional who can tell you, now, this is the chemical peel I've done on your face. This is what's safe. This is what your skin can handle. Right. And then here's a product that will do the same thing at home. So don't go to the place where they have the ad on the subway, john's upstairs. Chemical peel and chicken processing. Plant and espresso. Have you ever done a chemical peel really well? Interesting. Yes, I've been known to get it. You come out like, is your face all red and stuff? No, it feels red, but it's more also, like, very refreshing. It's so nice to just kind of rub the back of your fingers. Along your face afterward, because your skin is just like what you're doing is just tearing that horny layer right off. Right. You're getting closer and closer to that new layer of skin cells. But it's still epidermis, though, right? Yeah. I think you'd be in big trouble being torn down to the dermis. That's a third degree burn, I think. Right. Apparently, birth control pills can help treat acne. Yeah. If you watch the ads for them, a lot of them will say, like and prevents breakouts. Like an extra bonus. Yeah. Because it probably cuts down on the androgens which cuts down on the production of sebum, which cuts down on pimples. I didn't know they had ads for birth control pills. Sure. Do they? Yeah. Am I living in Amish country here. Why am I not seeing these? There is this one ad I saw, like, several years ago. Yeah. It was really weird. First they had this version of it was, like, the cartoon version of this ad, and then that one went away, and then they had a live action version of the same ad. Really? Same everything? Same everything. But for some reason, they did a cartoon version, then they did a live action version. They released them one after another, but they were supposedly in no way related. I think that company was like, just how much are you paying attention? How much TV are you watching? Yeah. And at the time, I was watching a lot of TV, so I noticed wow. Yeah. What about lasers? You can get them lasered, right? Yeah. And I guess that's if it's really bad, then they can actually laser your sebaceous glands. They say not to squeeze them, though, which I think is kind of laughable. What do you mean? Like, not pop them yourself? Yes. They is Tom sheep pal. You can take that with a grain of salt. Yeah. Show me someone who doesn't pop their own zips. And it says in here to make an appointment with the dermatologist so they can pop your pimples. Right. Really? Well, that's the other thing, too. When you get like a chemical peel or facial or whatever, the esthetician will pop all the zits on your face. Really? And what's crazy is when you do it right, it doesn't hurt these gloves, I guess. Yeah. But I mean, the pressure they apply is minute, and they're doing it off to the sides of the zip. You're like, that was it. It didn't hurt at all. Like, I didn't cry at all. So it's kind of good to not necessarily go to the dermatologist. Just you could go do an esthetician and they'll do all the same things. You'll learn a bunch just by paying attention while they do it. Emily would never let me do that. Why? Because she loves to do it herself. Oh, yeah. I mean, she could have been an estimated she has that gene to where she just gets a lot of satisfaction out of making that white snake come out. Yeah, I do. In fact, she's a little disappointed at my lack of pimple production in life. Yes, she would love me. Actually, Yuumi loves me. She does it a lot too. She's kind of hooked. Yeah, a lot of girls are into that for some reason. I'm glad. I know Emily's not nuts. And that's a normal behavior for some reason too. I've never met a guy who's into that. Yeah, it's always girls for some reason I don't understand. Maybe they're more into skin, skin care or gross stuff coming out of your skin. Maybe. So that's it, right? Yeah. 17 million people in America every day on a given day have a zip. Is that right? Yeah, I think more than that. There you go. All right. All right. Well, that sounds acne. Which one? Well, I mean it's acne. It's the big word. Pimples. I just like sam pimple. Okay. I don't like sam pimple. I think it's a gross word. Do you like pustule? I prefer pustule over pimple or zit. I don't like zit either. Yeah, we were featured in the comic strip Zits, remember? Oh, yeah. That was very nice. Yeah. And then you know what? I need to find out. And I don't think they're blackheads. Emily calls them seeds because it's like a little watermelon seed almost. I know what you're talking like. A little white spike comes out. I wonder what that is. I didn't find that in here. I guarantee it's the same thing. You think? Yeah. All right. I think there's a very limited amount of acne. It just happens, and it just kind of looks different or comes out in different ways, or if it sits in there long enough, becomes a seed. I know you're talking about, though. Well, that's acne. If you want to learn more about it and see some cool cutaway illustrations of the skin. Yeah, that was a good part, actually. You can type in acne A-C-N-E in the search bar@housetofworks.com. And now, friends, it's time for listener mail. If I told you to hold on 1 second, would you indulge me? Would you do me a kindness? Yes. Okay, Josh, we have an audiobook that has just been released called the Super Stuffed Guide to Happiness, available on itunes. I know you have to shell out 399 for it. We promise. We think it's worth it on itunes. You just search super stuff guide to Happiness, right? And it'll bring that one up. It'll bring up our first audio book to the Superstuff Guide to the economy. You can get them both there, but check out the Superstep guide to Happiness. It's awesome. Interviews, in depth investigation of what is happiness, what makes us happy? How do we study happiness? Great sound design. My niece starts the whole thing off with a nice quote from the Dalai Lama. It's just a great little whirlwind ride that you want to listen to over and over again, all for the price of a latte at your favorite. If you're lucky, it's your favorite coffee place. You're going to have to probably go through your couch cushions to come up with the difference to get the latte. This thing is so cheap. That's true. Yeah. So there's our plug. And it's time now for listener mail. Josh, I'm going to call this email from an author that we actually referenced, okay? He listens to the show. Awesome. Min, Galaba, Josh, Chuck and Jerry. Hope you're having a good day. About three weeks ago. I was flying from Minnesota to Yangon, Myanmar. How you pronounce it? Yeah, it's Burma. Myanmar. But it's posthunta Burma. Look at you. I really had a pretty surreal moment involving your podcast. After downing as much free booze as I could, I was listening to episodes of your podcast trying to fall asleep over the Pacific Ocean. Imagine my surprise when I was coming out of my nap to the end of how shrunken heads work. You were finishing the story of your dentist friend when Josh said you've also received a Juma and Other Stories by Tyler Davis, which is a self published book and pretty awesome. Yeah. I couldn't believe it. Thank you so much for the shout out. This is from Tyler Davis. Yeah. Good. Well, I've been meaning to write an email and thank you guys for a while. We've been busy settling in. The Internet here isn't exactly the information super highway. It's more like an Amish buggy. I'm teaching English at an international high school, and I've already taught my kids what hinki means. I have no idea. How do you define that specifically? I would say hi means suspicious. Okay. So I would say stranger. Unusual. Yeah. Okay. So it could be three. There's three definitions. That's right. That's what Hanky means. Hinkie is everything. It's like Smurf, huh? Yeah. What's a cuss. I had time to write you today because I'm home sick from food poisoning. Which reminds me, you should do a podcast on whether or not you can poop your own skeleton. I feel awful. You and the rest of the gang and how stuff works. Keep me entertained, educated, and in high spirits. Thanks again, Tyler Davis. Yes. Well, thank you, Tyler. Thanks for the books, too. You have yours. I think you sent us two. Yeah. Juma and Other Stories. Yeah, I've got it. If you want, you can go on to the Stuff You Should Know Facebook page and post an Amazon link or something like that to your book, if you like. And also, I want to take this time to correct myself. We got several corrections. A failsafe. Yes. Failsafe is not something that you put that's designed into something to prevent it from failing. Like one prong being bigger on a two pronged plug. Yeah. It's, I guess, parts of the design that make it so when it does fail, it fails safely as possible. Right. So there's a bunch of different systems, maybe, that are redundant, that provide safety when it does fail. Right. One guy said the lawnmower that you have to hold the thing to keep it going. Yes. Like if you have a heart attack and fall over, it will cease to run. Right. That's a fail safe. You have failed, but you are safe from the mower running. Exactly. But you don't care because you're having a heart attack. Yeah. Anything else? Bread. Butter side up? No, I think the Mythbusters are great and I'm glad that they've had this incredible juggernaut run that they've had so far and continue to have. But yes, I don't think you can say, well, the Mythbusters proved it. Well. Shut up. Yeah. I think you have to also include one, maybe two peer reviewed studies as well that shows that this is right. Here's what I think, and I was not able to articulate it. I think you spread the butter side up so it's sitting face up, and when it falls off the table, stomach high counter, then it only has time to rotate half a turn and it will fall side down. If the counter were 8ft high, it might rotate fully and land it butter side up. It has nothing to do with weight, in other words. I disagree. I disagree. I just don't see how it can have nothing to do with weight, especially if you have if one side is clearly heavier than the other and the butter spread evenly across, then it's not going to turn back over. If it does turn back over, then there was more butter on one side that caused the bread to flip over again. It's just not it just makes it's common sense. You're going to battle this one. I am. So that's why I didn't bring that one up. Failsafe. I mean, when you're wrong, you're wrong. All right. Boy. That was good. Well, yeah. If you have any corrections, we don't want to hear about your acne. If you have any corrections for us or you just want to say hi, you can tweet to us anytime you like. Syscast is our Twitter handle. We're on Facebook. Comstuffychannel. Or you can go on any of the other Facebook stuff you should know sites. They're fan driven. They're awesome, too. Agreed. Or you can send us a regular old email at stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. Stuff you should know is a 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. 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." | |
7a30a60e-2332-11ea-b005-472f058c313a | Short Stuff: Why Does Time Speed Up As You Age? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-why-does-time-speed-up-as-you-age | It’s not just you – time really does seem to pass faster for people as we age. But exactly why remains a mystery, though some of the theories for why life passes by so quickly are make a lot of sense. | It’s not just you – time really does seem to pass faster for people as we age. But exactly why remains a mystery, though some of the theories for why life passes by so quickly are make a lot of sense. | Wed, 01 Jan 2020 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=1, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=1, tm_isdst=0) | 14056448 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I should say happy New Year and welcome to the short stuff. Chuck, it's 2020. It is. We're living in the future. Yes. Well, I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and there is guest producer JJ. Over there, and we're all living in the future. 2020. Time is flying. I've got my jet pack, my flying car. Sweet. And yes, time is flying. Chuck, do you know why it's flying? Hold on. I'm about you see this pill on my plate about to add water to it to make it into a Thanksgiving dinner? Oh, I thought it was a pot roast dinner. Yeah, exactly. It always was pot roast, wasn't it? Yeah, it really is. But Thanksgiving, that's a close second for sure, as far as future food pills go. Okay? I just had it. Delicious. Was it did it have any kind of blueberry dessert like Willy Wonka? Yeah, that was a compote. So you said something. You said, Time flies or time flying? I agreed time is flying. And then I asked you why time is flying. You didn't answer, so I'm going to answer for you. It's because we're aged. Yes. We're getting old, Chuck. I know, dude. As anyone who has ever gotten old knows, the older you get, the faster time goes where you're working. And you lift your head up and all of a sudden it's March, and then it's July, and then it's the holidays, and then it's the next March, and then the next July, and then you die. Pretty much. And you start to get a little panicky because you're like, wait a minute, wait a minute. These years are important. I need to pay attention to them. But everybody knows that when you're a grown up, you have so many more responsibilities than when you're a kid. Of course time is going to fly. The thing is, there seems to be objective evidence that time actually does speed up as you age relative to your experience. Like, subjectively, you experience time moving faster as you age, and that doesn't quite make sense. Yeah. And this has always been an interesting concept to wrap my head around because it's definitely something that you cannot avoid noticing as you get a little older. There was one study done, I thought, this is kind of interesting in the psychologist named Peter Mangan. Mangan, you butchered that. Peter Mangan. There you go. And he had 25 young people between 19 and 24 and then 15 older people between 60 and 80. I'm sorry, really quick, I also saw that he had some middle aged people, too, but go ahead. I would think so, because that's a big jump to estimate a three minute time interval just by counting out loud. Yeah. So he said, hey, you 16 year old, count out three minutes second by second by going 10 02, 10 00. Right. And so the younger set averaged three minutes and 3 seconds. They kind of nailed it. He went over to the older set, he woke them up and they went, okay, what? Three minutes and 40 seconds is what they average. So they were off by 37 seconds from the younger set and basically thinking that three minutes at a lapse. And the thinking here is that, hey, your brain's internal clock runs slowly if you're older. Right. And this proves it. Right. And that would mean that if your internal clock is running more slowly relative to the actual passage of time, then to you it would seem like time is speeding up because what you're counting off is way slower than what's actually going on. Which would account for why it would seem like time speeds up as we get older because it actually is relative to our own internal clocks. Yeah, and there's a few ideas behind this. One is that our biological internal clocks do slow down our metabolism, slows down our breathing, our heartbeat. I listened to my daughter's heartbeat the other day. I put my ear to her chest and she did the same to me. And her heart was going we were just hanging out. Right. And she listened to mine and it was like beat and it weaved and farted between every beat. That's great. Maybe like a cranky gear sound, too. Yeah. And I heard hers and I was like, did you just run a sprint? Like, what is going on? And that really hit me. It's different when you're a little kid. Yeah. Kids metabolisms are way faster. Their bodies are just operating way faster. And then as you age, all of these processes start to kind of level off and then slow down the ramp or death, basically. Exit ramp. That's another way to put it. But the idea behind this is that there's this internal clock, not our circadian rhythm, which is how we know when to wake up or eat or that kind of stuff. This is a separate internal clock that we actually measure time with. And it's theoretical. We've never found it. But they think that it's located in the dry atom in the mid brain and that it uses internal and external cues to measure time. And one of the internal cues that it uses is something like heartbeat or breaths. And so if you're a kid and you're breathing faster and your heart is beating faster, time seems to pass more slowly because your clock is speeded up. It's the exact opposite of what would happen if those breaths and those heartbeats slow down as you age and your clock slows down. So it seems like time is speeding rather than going slowly. Yeah, there's another idea. I mean, there's a lot too. Then it's probably all of these things combined. Well, yes, a lot of them do have to do with this brain's internal clock thing. Yeah, absolutely. Another idea is that a child has so many new experiences every day you hear about a kid being a sponge and everything is brand new. And as you get to our age and you have a job and you live in a house and you have a certain commute and you do certain things and you're walking the dog, in many cases, it's a repetitive circumstance of doing the same things over and over. So there's no newness there. And so all those new experiences aren't happening to us like they're happening to children. This one, I wonder if you did a test where you only experience new things still as an adult, as if you were a child, if that would counter the time of flying effect. You would think it would. I don't know how you would test that, but that theory says you have a lot of money, probably. Yeah, for sure. Plus, also, it'd be like, whatever you're doing to test this, I want to do, because that sounds like a lot of fun. But the idea is that you have, like, all of these it requires more brain processing to process these novel stimuli rather than just letting life pass you by, because it's all familiar. Right. And so kind of in the same way that your heart speeding faster and your breathing more, it makes your clock run faster, and so time seems to pass more slowly. It's basically the same thing, but rather than heartbeat, it's processing new experience. And that also really kind of ties into this other thing that you do notice in addition to time passing more quickly when you age, is that it's easy to just kind of be in a rut as you age, too, because there are so fewer experiences that are just brand new to you. Yeah, we've done it all. Seen it, done it. All right, let's take a break. Let's go do something new. Okay. And we'll come back and see how that feels right after this. I feel great, Chuck. I do, too. We'll never be able to replicate that. We shouldn't even bother telling people about it because I don't think anybody could ever do it. That's right. Okay. So one thing I did want to mention was the notion of and this is something I've noticed from being a kid to being adult, if you drive to a vacation, it always seemed as a kid, like getting to the vacation happened really fast because maybe you're excited about things you were going to do or no, no. It seemed super slow when you were a kid because the anticipation and driving on the way home went super fast. That is reversed for me as an adult is when I drive to a vacation, it goes pretty fast because I'm super excited. But on the way home, it's a slog. Right, because you know you're coming back to a recording session with me. No, not that. But it's weird. A switch happens at some point. Yeah. And I think that has to do with the same well, some of these theories suggest it has to do with the same thing, actually, that would be kind of new and on its own, huh? Yeah, I think it sort of flies in the face of that a little bit. Yeah, because I don't know what the answer is. I'm not even going to venture a guess. All right, what about this guy Steve Taylor, who wrote a book called Making Time? He has a theory that basically because we become more familiar with everything as we go by, not only are there fewer new experiences to be had, but the experiences that we have over and over again become so familiar to us, they barely even register when they do happen. Right. Which makes times seem to pass even more quickly because we're processing less new information. It kind of ties into that brain processing one. It just kind of really drives home how grim adulthood is. Yeah. It could be aided by the fact that you're not getting as many dopamine hits because this novel stimuli is not coming along as often. Right. So that all ties back into that brain clock thing again, too, which is the idea that part of our midbrain is learning to measure time. As it's doing that, it gets little hits of dopamine to help train it. Well, they found that your hits of dopamine decrease as you age, which also kind of correlates with the idea that time seems to go faster as we age and our biological clock seem to start to run slower. So they think that maybe that us getting less dopamine is part of the internal clock slowing down thing. Right. The thing that makes a lot of sense to me, and we're not going to get to in the weeds with what logarithmic scales are, but let's just say this. If you measure an earthquake on the Richter scale, that's a logarithmic scale and it's not the same as a linear scale. Right. So if you jump from ten to eleven on the Richter scale, it's like a tenfold jump, it's not a 10% jump. Right. Is that good enough for that? I think so. Yeah, it's great. So I think this can apply to life. And this one makes a lot of sense because if you are a ten year old, then you've experienced one year is 10% of your life, so that's a big chunk. But by the time you get to 20, it's only 5%. And we could keep going here and it just gets more and more depressing as you go. But they basically are saying you should think of it in terms of this logarithmic scale as opposed to a linear scale, because by the time you get to 60, 70, 80 years old, that's a big chunk of your life that's gone by at that point. Right. And so any new amount of time that goes by is proportional to the increasingly larger amount of time that has gone by. Right. And so if that's how we process and measure the time in our lifetime, then the longer you're alive, the longer it takes to seem like a lot of time has passed by. Like this guy, Christian Yates from University of Bath, he said the reason why the summer lasted so long or it took so long for a birthday to come and a new one to come is that that year, if you're, like, five, like, you're saying that's like, a fifth of your life. One year is a fifth of your life. If you're 51 years is a your life. So a year can just start to zip by and zip by and faster and faster the more you age. And he ended with something. He wrote a good article in the conversation, so shout out to him for that one. But he basically said, for you to experience what seems to you is the same amount of time between the ages of five and ten would require you to live from age 40 to age 80, proportionately speaking, it would be the same subjective experience of time for you. Yeah, because occasionally I will think, like, let's say I got 20 more great years left, and then I think, that's not much time. But then I think, man, from birth to age 20 was forever, so I'm good. But that's not how it works. Yeah. Because 20 to 40 seem to zip by a lot faster than zero to 20. Yeah, absolutely. I think they're onto something with that last one. All right, so I'm thoroughly depressed now. I am too. Let's go celebrate 2020, buddy. Actually, we don't need to be depressed. We need to take this as motivation to go really pay attention and be grateful for this year and live life. Let's do it. All right, short stuff out. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio's how stuff works. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
fe31b29c-6a1b-11ea-9d39-1b06b25054cd | SYSK Distraction Playlist: How Rodney Dangerfield Worked, Live From LA | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-distraction-playlist-how-rodney-dangerfield-w | Other comedians cry on the inside, but Rodney Dangerfield built his entire act around his sad life. Get to know this legendary comic who was nearing 50 when he got his break. | Other comedians cry on the inside, but Rodney Dangerfield built his entire act around his sad life. Get to know this legendary comic who was nearing 50 when he got his break. | Fri, 20 Mar 2020 11:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=20, tm_hour=11, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=4, tm_yday=80, tm_isdst=0) | 55140798 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, I guess I want to say hi and welcome to the podcast, but this is a little different because this is the intro to the podcast. Th that's right. We recorded a live episode at the La podcast Festival. Right. And this is it. Yeah, this is it. We did one on Rodney Dangerfield. It was September 19, 2015. The Sophie Tell in Beverly Hill. Very chic. Very chic. And it was a lot of fun. Great. So we hope you guys have fun listening to it and stick around after the credits roll, so to speak, because we have a little bonus track at the end of this one. How are you guys doing? Thank you very much for coming to our show. We do this normally, but it's usually just two of us and Jerry sitting here on Facebook while we record, like, eating miso soup. Yeah, she loves miso soup. And then we do live shows, too, but normally there's, like a gulf of a stage between us, and, like, you guys are right here, so we're watching you, too, I guess, is what I'm saying. She's got one of our shirts. Nice shirt. And she's the only one. Oh, I like that. Of course they are. It says, I listen to podcasts before cereal burned, and on the back it says, But I love cereal. We should also say hi to everybody in live oh, yeah. Streaming, folks. Hello. And of course, thanks to Audible and Squarespace and the rest of those people don't sponsor us. Does that count as a mid role ad? Sure. Okay, cool. Check the guy with a stack of money waiting outside the door right now. Mr. Monopolies just hanging out outside. Okay, so you got anything to start with? I got nothing to start with. I usually don't drink this early in the day, but the nerves and I felt it would be fitting as a tribute to our topic, which we're going to get into. So I decided to work up a heavy sweat because Rodney Dangerfield is known for drinking and sweating. Yes. You're basically missing the tie. Got everything else covered. Thanks. Are you guys familiar with one Mr. Rodney Dangerfield? Yeah. That's good. I'm glad to hear that. He's an increasingly underappreciated comedian. Like, I've talked to at least a couple of people who have not seen Back to School. I know his. And I was actually talking to someone who works here at the festival who said, Is he dead? And I said, yeah, that happens a lot to that. And she said, Why don't I remember that, Allen? It's no respect. No respect. That's the cool thing about the guy. Like, that was his whole shtick. That was his whole hook. Right. Well, we need to start in the traditional way. Okay, you ready? Very nice. Thank you. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Tuckers Bryant, and we are here at La Pod Fest and all you lovely people, give yourself a hand. Is that better? You feel? Yeah, a little more. You guys are happy with that, too? Good. Okay, well, now we have to start over. How many people have seen back to school? Great start. So, as we were saying, the weird thing about Rodney Dangerfield is that his whole stick about no respect was actually really close to accurate. As a matter of fact, not just while he was growing up, he had a really tragic, terrible childhood, but also as he got older and older. And even after he blew up, people just kind of took what he was saying and ran with it. He had this one story where he opened a club, which we'll talk about, called Dangerfields. So it's very obviously his club. And he was on his way up to the stage. He'd just been called up there, and on his way, some guy stops him and says, rodney, can I have your autograph and can you also give me some more butter? And like, this happened to this guy quite a bit, actually. Yeah. So it does turn out that you will see, even after death, the guy got no respect. But as Chuck will assert later, I predict he's a comedian's comedian and very actually well respected by the ones that count. Sure. And I don't know if you guys know this, but a lot of comedians have inner pain, which is the reason a lot of them get into comedy and the reason that many of them drink until they black out on many nights. Entertain is no secret to the comedy world, but you'd be hard pressed to find someone who was as legitimately depressed and sad as Rodney Dangerfield. He was like a crying clown. For real, he was. He often talked about the heaviness he felt every day when he woke up. He said he would wake up in every day, and there it was. Lingering above him was his heaviness, with a capital H even. Yeah. And if you ever want to go down a YouTube rat hole, just look up some interviews with the guy on YouTube from the he does a lot of interviews, just like local TV stations promoting movies and stuff. And when he's out of his stick element, it's one of the saddest things you've ever seen, man. It's really depressing. He just had this air about him. You could tell he had the weight of life on his shoulders. And it all pretty much stems from his awful childhood. Right, childhood. Isn't it hilarious? So far, everybody. So we should start at the beginning with him. He was born in 1021 on Long Island. Not in Long Island, Chuck tells me, and he was born to a Volvo and father who took off with one of Rodney's brothers to go hit the circuit, and that was that. I think he saw him like once or twice a year for a half hour, an hour or something like that. Yeah. He said he saw his dad literally, like, twice a year growing up, and he was born Jacob Cohen, and his dad was a juggler in a comic who apparently hit the road because of his wife. We were talking about what an awful person she was when we were going over this stuff and that she was, but the more I thought about it, she had a serious problem. It was back in the 1920s. You didn't diagnose things like they do today, right. You just ran off to the vaudeville circuit. Pretty much. But she was clearly depressed, like profoundly depressed and sadly, completely abandoned emotionally and neglected, I guess. Little Jacob, he was left on his own from the time he could remember. His mom literally never hugged him once, never kissed them once. He swore up and down. Yeah. And never complimented him or tried to build him up. She was a bad lady. And starting probably around age eight or something like that, he realized that if he's going to eat dinner on a regular basis, he's going to have to go get a job and go grocery shopping himself. Right. So he basically raised himself during about age eight or so. Yeah. And speaking of groceries, one of the great things that stuck out to him about his childhood, he had to get a job and after school job, he was still in school, and he lived in a fairly wealthy neighborhood, but he was not wealthy, so we used to deliver groceries to his classmates home, which kind of demoralizing when you're like, ten. And while he was out there running around on the streets, he wrote an autobiography the year he died in 2004, and he called this chapter Male Prostitute because he was, like, ten. And he was so unsupervised that there were apparently at least one or two local molesters that were like, hey, Rodney, come on up. I got a nickel for you. Yeah. And he swears up and down that it was just kissing everybody. Don't worry. The child was just kissed by the grown man for a nickel. And it happened a lot, and he was doing it because he needed the money. Yeah. So, anyway, Rodney Dangerfield, let's fast forward out of this horrible funk. By the way, we're going to pepper in some of his best jokes here and there, and I debated on whether or not to try and do it as him, because it's hard I've already promised certain people here and there. It's hard to do that. It's hard to tell a Rodney Dangerfield joke without kind of doing him. And I took a little informal poll last night with some folks, and they're like, yeah, you sort of have to. Yeah, I think so. It's not like it's a good impression, but plus it makes me delivering at my flat, weirdo aspect where I'm not even trying it all the weirder, so prepare for that, too. But one thing that he did, and that of course, a lot of comics do, is they turn that pain into funny. And he really relied on his jokes as a way to I mean, the only time he was happy was when he was on stage performing. And as soon as he left, that heaviness would come back. But he often joked about his mum. He would say, My mom never breastfed me. She told me she always thought of me as a friend, which is a funny joke, but when you know the real pain behind it, it's just like the saddest thing you've ever heard. It takes a tad bit of the funniness away from it. I've got a good parent one. You ready? Yeah. So I remember the time and this is my rotting dangerfield. I remember the time I was kidnapped. They sent a piece of my finger to my father. He said he wanted more proof. That probably did not happen, but it gets the point across. And plus, it's funny. And so if you're one more parent, Joe okay, sir. I tell you, my parents hated me. My bath toys were a toaster and a radio. Funny. All right, that's going over better than I thought it would. So starting about age 15, he realizes he's actually kind of hilarious and that he has a talent for taking all of this horrible, tragic stuff and turning into funny stuff. And he started writing jokes, and he got good pretty quick. He started selling jokes age 15 or 16 to establish comedians. Right? Yeah. And he kept him he had this duffle bag. He would write jokes by hand his entire career and put him in this duffel bag. So he literally had a duffel bag full of, like, thousands and thousands of jokes. And apparently, I think you said that during a typical performance later, once he hit the big time, he would tell, like, over 300 jokes in a set. Like 350. Yeah. In an hour. He ran it. There quick jokes, but still it's amazing. But he remembered them all and he knew which ones fit best. Like, the guy was a comic genius. Hopefully that's coming across here, or will by the end of this. Right. So he gets this big break at age 19. He's written jokes for a few years, and he's going to try this out. And he gets a job at a Catskills resort for $12 a week. Ten weeks, including grooming board, dirty dancing, that kind of scene? Very much so, yeah, but he's like the up and coming comic on stage, right? Have you guys ever seen Iron Man meets Dirty Dancing? That mash up? No. Go check it out. It's so bizarre. It's one of the better things you'll ever see that has nothing to do with riding dangerfield. That was just an add on, basically. So he's working. He's working hard. The stint and the cat Skills. I don't think he gets re up, but he keeps going back to the Cat Skills. It's one of his regular gigs, but on the side while he's working, he's a singing waiter at the Polish Falcons nightclub where Lenny Bruce's mom was the MC. He was an acrobatic diver. Right. But I don't know what you're all thinking. Triple nd no, he did not do the triple Indy in the movie. Obviously, for those of you who have not seen Back to School, that was an injury. Yeah. He was a diver in the movie. A competitive diver. Yeah. Well, I was going to punish them for not having seen it. Okay. Sorry. Just trying to drive him a point. So in, he gets married for the first time to a jazz singer named Joyce Endig, and he had a couple of kids and moved to New Jersey, which we all know is the death knell for any comedian trying to work in New York. Kind of means we've given up. But he didn't give up just yet. He did for a minute, for sure. Yeah. Not at that point, though. He was still trying to work, but when he turned 27, he quit comedy and literally did not perform from the age of 28 to 41. And at 41, he was like, let's try this again. Right. Well, he and his wife divorced, so he's like, I've got a little more time. I think I'm going to go try comedy again. They actually got back together, like, the next year and stayed married for another ten years or something like that. But this time around he was like, let me see if I can figure out how to balance home life with this. I'm trying to break into comedy. Right, yeah. And let me try and develop an act. I think the first time he floundered because he didn't know what kind of comedian he wanted to be. He tried singing, he tried impressions, he even tried prop comedy for a little while. But he also I mean, he had these jokes about how much his life sucked. He used some of the same jokes his whole life, but they just didn't hang on them quite right because he had his whole life ahead of him and he was young and full of promise. That second time around, he was right there in the sweet spot. Like age 41 ish little, desperate, kind of sweaty, and these jokes about how bad his life these jokes about how bad his life was or where it was going really just kind of hit a lot more. He adopted a persona, basically, and that definitely helped. Yeah, it was sort of him, but it was also a character. And when I was researching this, I was kind of thinking about that. You don't see a lot of character comedians anymore. No, that was the sort of heyday with like, Andrew Dice Clay and Rodney Dangerfield and Emo Phillips and it seemed like there were a lot of characters, but now it's just like, look at this thing that happened in my life and how funny it is with all these witty observations chuck Travolta about my life. I'd like to see some good character comedians come in. I can't think of it. Are there any out there? I guess Brent Weinback. That's kind of a character. Wait. What about, like, Larry the cable guy? He's total I assume he's a character. No, that is a character, because he started out as a completely different kind of comedian and then adopted that persona. Yeah, but I don't count him as a comedian. He's not watching. Don't worry. No, he's not. He's writing bad jokes. Gonna start a flame war with Larry the cable guy. I'll totally take him up on that. Flame war. Although he could squash me with his sacks of money. So he adopts his character. He changed his name legally at this point to Jack Roy, which was that his father's name. His father's stage name was Phil Roy. Yeah. So he changed his name legally to Jack Roy, and that was his real name till the day he died. And he was performing under that name for a while until he tried this second go and decided, I don't want anyone to remember Jack Roy. So he told this guy that was booking him at a club in Manhattan, could you just make up a name for me and put that on the I guess it wouldn't markey, but on the playbill. Yeah. Or in any ad they took out. Yes. So the guy who ran this place, the Inwood Lounge, I think, came up with Rodney Dangerfield. Right. But the weird thing is he had actually lifted the name from a Jack Benny character. Like there was an original Rodney Dangerfield, and it wasn't Rodney Dangerfield. Right. That's weird. It's a giant twist of the podcast. It's all downhill from here. So Jack Benny came up with this character and I think the 40s maybe or something like that, of this grade z Western hero named Rodney Dangerfield. And I guess the lounge owner remembered it and came up with that. Rodney Dangerfield had no idea about this. So he's walking around, like, using this name for years. And apparently he met Johnny Carson once at one of his shows. And Johnny Carson's, like, you know where your name came from, right? He said, no, what are you talking about? Yeah. Explain the whole Jack Benny thing. And later on, he saw Jack Benny, and Jack Benny wasn't, like, mad or anything. Actually said, I really love what you did with the character, and you did it just right. So no harm, no foul. Yeah, they hugged it out from the very famously. So on the second go round, he was making a living doing okay, but he got his real big break in 1967 with Ed Sullivan. He couldn't get booked on Ed Sullivan. But at the time, they would book other comedians for the run throughs as, like, just placeholders for dress rehearsal, basically. And so he got a spot booked on that and apparently did so well in dress rehearsal that Ed Sullivan took note on the side of the stage, which means he went like this, you're funny, right? That's how you knew I sold them and thought you were funny. As if he just told, bring him to me. That's good. Thanks, guys. It works for Nixon, too. It's great. Nixon, actually, that was the result of a huge long shot. He told his agent, just get me on Ed Sullivan. And it played out, panned out very well. He ended up being on Ed Sullivan, like 17 times or something like that. And it led to all these other late night appearances. He was on Carson, like, I think a record. He holds the record for being on Carson the most 70 times. Something like that, yeah. Merv, Griffin, Dino, all the dudes who are running late night. And basically where the taste makers for all of the comedians were suddenly promoting the sweaty, weird, coke up pothead boozehound, huge pothead name, by the way, rodney Dangerfield. Right? And he took it and ran with it. Like, right when he hit in 1967, he got to work. He was such a big pothead. Actually, the original name of his biography was going to be my Love Affair With Marijuana. And he was serious. He wanted to call it that because he smoked pot, he said, for 60 something years. But well, up until the day he died, I think from like 21 on, like, he was smoking pot in ICU, in the hospital, because he had an early medical marijuana exemption long before anyone even knew what that was. He just wrote his own no one even knew what that was. But if he flashed it in your face, you didn't ask questions. So he got his big break. Actually, Carson had blackballed him for a while because he accused Carson in a letter of stealing, or one of his writers of stealing one of his jokes. So Carson famously wouldn't have him on the show for a long time until they eventually met and worked it out. And then Johnny became, like the biggest fan ever. And if you want to enjoy yourself at home on the YouTube, just go look up Johnny Carson on Rodney Dangerfield. On Carson. There's a lot of clips where, I mean, Carson was just like the ultimate set up dude. It just let him do his thing. Yeah. And he would laugh until he was crying because he couldn't believe that Dangerfield is getting away with saying most of the stuff he was saying on TV on Carson's own show. It was good. So he's married. He's working a lot. And he decides that he doesn't want to happen to his own kids what happened to him. Which was to be neglected so he said. You know what I'm going to do. Even though no one's ever done this. I'm going to borrow a bunch of money. Quarter of a million dollars. And I'm going to open my own comedy club in New York City so I can stay home with my children. Brian and Melanie. I think. Right. And it's not like he had any money right then. This is a huge risk. He's doing okay, but he had to borrow all yeah. Not that. Okay. Right. So everybody tries to talk him out of it. He goes ahead with it, and it's such a success. He has the loan paid off in, like, 18 months. Just a huge success. And this club actually became venerable in its own right. Yeah. Still there today. Dangerfields in New York. Yeah. And it had this HBO special that it broadcast out of, and a bunch of comedians got their big breaks on that show, like Seinfeld, chris Rock, I think. Yeah. Jim Carrey, what's his face sagget. Jeff Foxworthy. Yeah. A lot of Jeff Foxworthy fans in the room. Rita Rudner. Of course. Sam Kennedy completely made Sam Kenneson's career. And that's why comedians love him so much, because it meant more to him to play father to these young comics and to give them their start than almost anything else. He really that was sort of his life's goal, was to seek out talent that he thought was original and really kind of boost him up. He was a huge Freudian. Yes. The whole father son thing. I wonder why. So, Chuck, where are we at? We are at Dangerfields. It is. And he decides that, you know what? I should start making movies because well, he made a few movies before that, but nothing that anyone would know. He was actually cast first by Stanley Kubrick in 1956 for the movie The Killing. The Killing. Great movie. Who said, yeah, wow. Yeah. Great movie. So he plays onlooker big part, and then he was in another movie. What was that other one called? The Projectionist. Yeah, it was a big part in a very small movie. He said that it was the type of movie where they went to go shoot on location by taking the subway. Which is probably true. Yeah, I think it was. But he played this movie projection as boss, and the projection has had quite an imagination, and he was a superhero, and Dangerfield was this archvillain nemesis. It didn't go very far, but he learned almost nothing about how to shoot a movie because this is 77. And apparently his huge breakthrough came in Caddyshack. Right. He was already very much a well respected comedian. But when he shot Caddy shack Harold Ramis. Right. Yeah. When he directed it, he said later on that clearly Dangerfield didn't know what he was doing. It was a live performer. So when Harold Raymond said Action, rodney Dangerfield would just stand there and be like, you want me to do my bit. Now, that's what action means, right? Do your bit. So then Rodney would just turn to the camera and do his whole bit into the camera. He's like, hold on, we got to get this right here. So pretend the camera is not there one. And he finally got him to do it because that was the thing that just broke him out. Yeah. And he hated making movies. Like you said, he loved performing live in front of people, and that's where he got his rush. And he once compared making movies to he said when you make a kid write something a hundred times on the chalkboard and they've done something wrong, he's like, that's what making a movie is like. He hated doing all these takes. He hated standing around and waiting. It's why he didn't make a ton of money. He felt like the live audience. He compared it to a heroin addict, like shooting up. He just loved that rush. And he definitely didn't get that from movies, which, I mean, you got, like, the crew standing around looking at you waiting for lunch. It wasn't his bag at all. It was not his bag. You found this description from Rolling Stone editor Ben Fong Torres, which I think describes him, like to a T. Do you want to read that, sir? Okay, so Benfong Torres, who is in Almost Famous, he had a quote. He says, Rodney Dangerfield looks like a midlife crisis. There's a surface orderedliness, he's groomed, and he's dressed like a businessman at a convention. Gray hair slicked back over a haggard shades of Mayor Daily face, dark suit, white shirt, bright red tie, silk stockings, shiny shoes. But the neatness gives way to what he calls the heaviness that looms over him. Life gives Rodney Dangerfield the jitters. He's in a constant sweat. He wipes his brow, incessantly, tugs at his tie, herky jerky as he recounts the horrors of his daily life. He shifts his shoulders uncomfortably and his eyes bug out of their bags. He moves the floor mike around as he roams the Comedy Store stage looking for sympathy, but all he gets are laughs. I just think that's fantastic, man. He nailed Rodney Dangerfield in that. Absolutely. And his shirt and tie, that came about because, well, he hated clothes and fashion. Yeah. Let's just go ahead and say that. I think it's time. He was a slob. He was a slob. He said in interviews how much he hated clothes, how he never cared about clothes and fashion and was comfortable in a robe, basically. But for one of his first acts, he put on the red tie and the black suit and dressed all dapper. And when it came for the second performance, he was like, well, they liked me in that, so I'm just going to wear that. And that became his stick, was this very dapper looking guy who's always very well put together. In fact, I just saw earlier today when he gave out a best makeup award at the 87 Academy Awards. Really? Yeah. And he walked up and he said, hey, nice tuxedo, everybody. Right. And he went underneath torn under shorts. You get the feeling that was the dead truth. Yeah, I'm sure. Probably had, like, holy underwear on it. I'm not quite sure. Yeah, you should look at it, too, man. That's great. I will. Because he basically does five minutes of stand up at the Academy of Awards and then gives out an award. So Iron Man versus Dirty Dancing. Yeah. Take some notes and then some dangerfield stuff. Should we take a break here, Chuck? Take an ad break. Yeah. And we'll be right back after this big announcement. Folks. It's called a podcast event called The Message. That's right. Thanks to GE Podcast Theater and Panopley, there is an eight part series out right now called The Message, and you can get it wherever you get your podcast. Yeah. And you know what? It's going to blow your collective scientific minds, because it's currently rocking our world. Yes. So the message follows the story of Nikki Tomlin, who's a PhD in linguistics. Right. That's right. At the University of Chicago. If I'm not mistaken. That's right. And she's following a team of cryptologists, which really if you say cryptology, you've really got me hooked already. Sure. They're a research tank. Tank called Cypher, and they're trying to decode a message received from outer space from 70 years ago. Yeah, it's from outer space, we think. And if you're not familiar with the story, well, then I guess you better go listen to The Message. You can get it on itunes. You can get it on any of your podcast apps. Just go search for The Message and subscribe today. Yeah. So thanks to e podcast Heater and panopoly for pushing the boundaries of the medium. You guys are doing a great job. Go subscribe to The Message and listen today. And we're back. All right. I told you that would work. So he makes Caddy Shack huge hit. He's allowed to kind of just do his thing in that movie. I'm sure most people have seen that classic comedy, which Josh said would stink if it weren't for Rodney Dangerfield and Bill Murray. The rest of it is like a tepid coming of age. Dramedy sucks. Ted Knight, he was fine, but, I mean, you can watch too close for comfort and get just as much as you want. I just don't think it needs to be in the movie, all right? I think it was Bill Murray and Rodney Dangerfield. That's what made Caddy Shack a classic little Chevy Chase. Ted. Ted, you know how I feel about Chevy Chase. My father raised me to hate Chevy Chase. Did he really? He really did. Your dad didn't like him. Oh, man. Still does not like Chevy Chase. Why? Didn't think he's funny or he thought he was pompous ass. Yeah, something about Chevy Chase sticks in my dad's crawl and he passed it on to me. Isn't that weird? It is totally weird. That's what you get when your dad's not a vaudevillian. They pass on weird stuff like that, too. So he makes caddy shack. It was a huge hit. Now he was legitimate. He was sought after for movies. And then in 1983, he wrote a movie called Easy Money. Has anyone seen that? Anyone? Yeah, it's actually a pretty cool movie. It's not bad. It's a little weird structurally, which kind of makes sense that he wrote it because he clearly did not have to write a script. He knew how to write a bunch of good jokes, though. So he played Monte Capilletti, an Italian American drunk. Pothead baby. Photographer Because this was back in the early 80s when anyone of any ethnicity could play anyone of another ethnicity. Sure, right. Because he was Hungarian born. But, hey, play an Italian guy. It's cool. So in the movie, his mother in law was the inspiration for Twin Beds and hated her son in law. And when she died, she said, all right, you can have all this money if for one year I think, like $10 million if for one year you quit gambling and boozing and smoking and doing drugs. So easy money was Joe Pesci. It was okay. Right? Like, the first half of this movie is just a series of vignettes to where he just completely screws everything up and your stomach's all upset and everything. And, like, you're really emotional, and then nothing comes of it whatsoever. Right. And then finally, halfway through, the plot arrives and then it gets kind of good, actually. Agreed. A lot of build up, not a lot of pay off in that one, but one roger Ebert liked the movie even though it was a little weird and said basically the movie was about watching Rodney Dangerfield. He said, Rodney Dangerfield gloriously playing himself as the nearest thing we are likely to get to WC. Fields in this lifetime. Right. And Rodney himself said, that was pretty much me on screen. That's as close as you can come to my real life in Easy Money. Yeah. Right? Yeah. He's a baby photographer. So 1986 is when he finally makes Back to School, which was his biggest hit. I think it costs like, 13 million to make 11 million a gross. Well over 100 million. Which in 1986 I mean, today, that's still good money. Yeah. In today dollars, that's $150,000,000,000. It's inflation for you. Right. And this one, he had the idea I think he got a story credit of a guy, a father that goes back to school. He was a big loser in life, so he goes back to school with his son to get his degree. And he told that idea to Harold Raymond, and he was like, that's good. But what if he was rich? What if he was wealthy and had it all and still goes back to school, like, knowing what he knows now with a lot of money and riding was like, okay, that's the movie. Yeah, it's a good idea. And actually that was a huge movie when it came out. It was the six biggest movie of 1986. It was behind Top Gun platoon. Karate Kid Two, star Trek Four. And there's one other one that's written down somewhere in here, but there are big movies and it was like the 6th highest grossing movie of the year. And it's Rodney Dangerfield, right? Yeah. And so he has hit it big at this time and is a huge, huge movie star in the biggest comic. I think they did a survey in the late 70s, right before his movies with college students that said that Rodney Dangerfield was their favorite comic and he was 61 years old. 58. 58 years old. Same thing, basically was when he hit it big as a comedian. 58 years old. Right. And like, college kids are like, into this guy. And actually, if all of you seen back to school, if that's all you've seen of riding Dangerfill, you don't quite have the understanding of what he was actually like. He was pretty edgy comic, actually, and pretty hilarious. And college kids loved him in the 70s. He hosted Sarah Live in 1980 when he was, I think, like 60 or something, 59. And he started to blow up like at about age 60. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. Should we tell a few more of his favorite jokes? I think it's high time to you guys look over a few of these. He has a great joke about his psychiatrist. I told my psychiatrist that everyone hates me and he said I was being ridiculous. Everyone hasn't met me yet. Classic. Yeah. Let's see. I like this one. It's lowbrow, but I like it. You know what class is? When you're alone, you fart, you say, excuse me. That's class. Isn't that weird? So if you haven't noticed a lot of his jokes, they were selfdeprecating for himself, but also about his family. He talked about his wife was dumb and fat and his son was stupid. And even when he wasn't, I mean, it was all a character. So even when he wasn't married, he was telling jokes about his wife, which must have made it a lot easier when he went home at night. Probably. So one of my favorite wife jokes was, I tell you, my wife can't cook at all. How can toast have bones? And your impression is getting better as we go along. Oh, I'm drinking whiskey. Yeah. I'm not saying that. Let's see. I've got one. Like I said, it's a little weird. And I like that in a comic. Just bizarre stuff. He was talking about the bar that he was doing stand up in that night. He says, what a joint. I asked the bartender for a double and he brought out a guy who looks like me. I missed those days, man, where comedians just wrote great jokes, set up punchline over and over. Yeah, I tell you, I drink too much. The last time I went to the doctor, I gave him a urine sample. I had an olive in it. Classic. And then another thing I've learned about Rodney Dangerfield, when you go back and listen to his stuff, he wasn't, like, mean. He was self deprecating. Even when he was targeting, like, his family, mostly nonexistent family, all of it reflected back on him and basically what a loser he was. Right. And he didn't have very many mean jokes. He didn't tell, like, many gay jokes. He didn't tell racist jokes or anything like that, which and this is like in the 70s when everybody was telling me, but he did have the fat joke that stuck out to me. Are you fat? Do you look at a menu and say, okay, love getting laughs from Rodney Dangerfield. Chuck, we should just do this. I was about to say, I think we have a new act. You should know one day. Talk about a rush. I got one more. I tell you, I was dating a woman. She called and said, come on over. Nobody's home. I went over, nobody was home. Good stuff. I have a new career. Reading Rodney Dangerfield jokes. That's a whole no one's done that cover comedians. Oh, man. Dude, sharknado. And now this. You're all aware of Chuck predicted sharknado, right? Okay, he did. You're welcome. Okay, no more. You got any more? You like the one about his dog? Tell that one. Okay, all right. My dog is lazy. He's so lazy. He doesn't chase cars. He just lays in the driveway taking down license plates. All right, so now we're in. That's enough. Stop laughing. In the early 1980s, he's making these movies. He won best comedy album Grammy for the album no Respect, beating out Richard Pryor, Monty Python, Gilder Radner and Father Guido Sardi. And in 1982, the Smithsonian Institution put his red tie and his shirt in the Smithsonian the American History national Museum of American History, right. Along with Jimmy Dranny's hat, RT bunkers recliner and Charles Lindbergh's plane. But the joke Rodney said was he got a feeling after they left, they were just going to use the shirt to wipe down the plane. Always self deprecating. Yeah, Andy, and when he handed them the shirt, he said, this is a big deal. I only have two shirts. Which may have been true. And also in the 1980s, who remembers the Miller Light commercials from the 1980s? Tastes great. Less filling. That man back there has his hand up. All right. They were great commercials. It was, like, named the 8th best advertising campaign in history for McCann Erickson, the ad agency. And I went and watched a ton of them earlier today, and I remember them all from being a little kid. And it was weird for those of you who haven't seen them. The premise was you would get a bunch of ex athletes and then Mickey Splain and Rodney Dangerfield and some other random pop cultural icons at the time and to sell Miller Light and get in a big argument about taste great and less filling at the end. Rodney would usually come in as the ship who does something wrong to spoil everything, screw everything up for us. Such a weird. Like Bubba Smith and Dick Buckets and baseball players. I get all that. I don't know. It was so strange. But they were huge and they were the one who could store the weed for everybody else. They let them. On January 1984, if anyone remembers, his hit rap single Rap and Rodney have you guys heard this? Really? It's something else. It is. And it was a big hit, actually. It was a top 60 hit, which is pretty big. Top 59. Chuck, give it its due. That means it was number 59. Yeah. So it was right behind Uptown girl. And it was Rodney Dangerfield rapping about being old, which sounds really bizarre now, but legitimate rappers at the time like, say, the Sugar Hill Gang were rapping about having dinner at your friend's mom's house. So it wasn't that far off the mark for the time, being nice to your family. That's what raps were about. At twice the good old days, he was on The Simpsons, I think, a couple of times. Would have he I don't know if he was on more than once. I think he's on twice. But in 1996, he played Mr. Burns illegitimate son Herb who got no regard. No regard at all. I wonder why they didn't say respect. Did they not? I think they were just a joke messing around. Okay. Yeah. The man himself was there. I would have been surprised if he was like, look, guys, it's one thing. I don't want to say respect. Maybe not. It was just a boy that I'm trying new things here, trying to branch out. Which actually he did branch out. He was actually a really creative guy. He had a live Broadway show that ran for a couple of weeks in 1988 called, appropriately, Rodney Dangerfield Live on Broadway. Exclamation point. For a couple of weeks? Yeah. He wrote a romance novel called Lock and Tessa. And if you Googled the image for this, it's disturbing. Yeah, it's basically like your typical it's Fabio, basically with a woman. Except it's got Rodney Dangerfield's face on it and it's available on Audible. Oh, is it really? Yes, it is. With Rodney Dangerfield reading it. No way. I kid you not. Would I joke? About what's? On Audible. Well, I looked up earlier to see if his autobiography was on there. It's the only Rodney Dangerfield thing on there. It's awesome because it has the album art, too. So you get that for free with the audiobook. He wrote and I guess he didn't direct it, but he produced and wrote the movie Rover Dangerfield, the animated classic about a dog who gets no respect. And then Mr. Oliver Stone called him up one day and said, I had this role for you in a movie called Natural Born Killers. And it's about this sadistic father who was molesting his daughter, raping his daughter, and I think he'd be perfect for it. And Ronnie didn't get it at first. She was like, Why do you want me for this kind of role? He's like, you'll see? Yeah. And did you guys see that? Natural Born Killers. You can get this scene on YouTube. It's when Oliver Stone did the phony sitcom. It's how they portrayed that part of the movie. So they have a laugh track, and it's really disturbing. It's like three layers of bizarre, right? Rodney Dangerfield is a sadistic, incestuous molester, but it's Rodney Dangerfield. That's the weird part. And then there's a laugh track to just throw you off that little extra bit. It is very jarring. It was pretty well done. But the notable thing about that is that Oliver Stone let Rodney Dangerfield rewrite all of his lines, and he got a lot of critical acclaim for everybody's. Like Rodney Dangerfield. We had no idea. And he's like, seriously, if you go today and just Google the Rodney Dangerfield of, you can find a whole list of things. He's such a cultural icon. That phrase itself has become a thing now. Like Petitzera is the Rodney Dangerfield of California wine or the Memphis, Tennessee City Council is the Rodney Dangerfield of local government. Seriously, that's the thing Avon saw guitar preamp was known as the Rodney Dangerfield of guitar preamp. Yes. My favorite is Palladium is the Rodney Dangerfield of precious metals. Isn't that stupid? We're not making this up. So, Chuck, right about now, let's step back a second, press pause on this and have a beautiful little message break. Agreed. So here's some more examples of the lack of respect. And here's sort of the thing. The irony is he got nothing but respect from his peers throughout his career. But outside of that, there was still just doses pepper throughout his life. And examples of times where he didn't get any respect. Like when he sued Star magazine. They published a story about him being in Las Vegas and said he would drink like tumblr fools of vodka and smoke pot all day long and do cocaine, which was all completely true, probably, but he knew that they couldn't prove it, so he sued them for libel and the court ruled in his favor, right? Yeah. So that's respect, right? So they awarded him one dollars for damage to his reputation and one dollars for personal distress. And then the judge went, yeah, sorry, live stream, people. I realize it's archive. He did get awarded $45,000 for presumed damages. And I did a little more research today on that apparently he solew it all in coke and weed. Apparently Star magazine showed that they didn't turn a profit, so he couldn't go after him. He couldn't appeal for more money. Right. So he tried to go after their parent company, and it went all the way to the Supreme Court. And they said, you didn't start the suit that way. They were now basically right. Yeah. No respect. And even in death, as we mentioned earlier, rodney Dangerfield is dead. Why didn't I know that? I have an example for you. Hold on. Before he dies. Okay. He was on Howard Stern the year he died. And somebody watched that interview. Yeah, I did. Oh, man, that's depressing. He's 81. He's clearly, like, at death store, but he still has his sense of humor about him. But somebody called in to Howard Stern and said hey, Rodney, it's Bob Hope. I'll see you in 15 minutes. And Howard Stern is like, well, that's not funny. Bob Hope is dead. So they were saying like, that Bob Hope was calling from behind the grave and would see Rodney Dangerfield in 15 minutes. And if you can't get respect from a caller on The Howard Stern Show, where can you get respect? So it's actually in that interview, which I said, it's like 45 minutes long and it's completely depressing, so don't go watch it. And not just because he was old, but Howard is trying to talk to him about his childhood and stuff. Well, he had just written his autobiography and really just laid it all out there. He'd alluded to the rough life that he'd had in interviews and stuff like that. But he published this book right before he died, and it was rough. Well, I think the saddest thing to me about his mom was that despite being completely neglected emotionally and getting no love at all as a child, he still wanted to be like a good kid. And he still worked to support her and apparently came home and showed her his report card. He worked hard to get good grades. She wouldn't even look at it. She just signed it without looking. And that was the saddest part, is he still sort of defended her in that interview, like, right before he was dying. And he made up with his dad before his dad died. Apparently, even though he never saw him, he said he forgave him for all that stuff. Oh, yeah, really sad stuff, though. He wanted to hear some more jokes. Well, actually, why don't you tell him how he died? Okay, well, in this interview, in the same interview he's telling Howard Stern howard Stern is like, he's about to go in for the should I pretend there's not a siren in the background? He's going in for surgery, and Howard Stern asks him, like, are you afraid you're going to die? And he goes, you know what? Dying in surgery would be the best way to go. They drug me up, I go to sleep, and then I just wouldn't wake up. That's, like, as good as it gets, right? Yeah. So he goes in for this very surgery. He falls into a coma during surgery, almost there. And then he wakes up, then he has a heart attack, then he dies. That's how Rodney Dangerfield went after that life that he had. That's how he went. He was so close to going the way that he wanted to go. No respect. You want to hear no respect? A year after he died, CNN tried to get in touch with him to get his reaction about the passing of Johnny Carson. If you read his obituaries, a lot of them, a shocking amount, mentioned that he was well known for his role in the Scout. He wasn't in the scout. I got to the bottom of that. Lay it on me. He was going to be in the Scout. Okay. The role was originally intended for him and Sam Kenneson, and he didn't do it for unknown reasons and ended up going to Albert Brooks and Brendan Fraser. Okay. But it was one of those things I think were one of those Internet neat things on the Internet where someone prints something than everyone else, just copies and pastes it. So I think one person wrote that because everything else I saw was worded the exact same way, like, listed movies as the Scout, which he was never in. No, he wasn't. Thanks for looking into that, man. Sure. That's what you get when you hang with Chuck. But he did find love, again, in a situation in 1993 that everyone probably thought was like, a typical gold digger. He was 61 years old and he married a 30 year old woman who was really hot blonde in La. But by all accounts, everything I looked into, it was not that she really loved them and was great for them and they were super happy together or as happy as he could be. And it turns out that it wasn't that kind of a deal after all, which made me feel good. Yeah. Like, for example, when he died, she made sure that his funeral wasn't until five or dusk because he always asked her not to schedule any appointment for him before 05:00 p.m.. So she made sure his funeral didn't come until after that. His funeral was a really big deal. Everyone basically came out in droves. His paw bearers included Jim Carrey, who he took Jim Carrey on the road for two years when he was a struggling comedian and he opened for him in Vegas and Jim Carrey was getting booed off the stage. Everyone hated him, and Rodney stuck by him for, like, a full two years, and Jim Carrey never forgot that. Chris Rock, Tim Allen, Larry David, George Carlin, Jay Leno, Adam Sandler and then your boy Michael Bolton. Michael Bolton. He was supposed to sing what he was, but he was too choked up to sing at Rodney Dangerfield's funeral. Apparently, they were really tight friends because Michael Bolton's song Everybody's Crazy was in Back to School, and I guess he parlayed that into a trip to the set where he got to meet Riding Dangerfield, and they became friends for the rest of their life. So Michael Bolton was too sad to sing at Dangerfield's funeral. And, you know, everybody was disappointed. I bet there were a couple of people there that were like, yeah, it's okay, Michael. We know you're upset. You don't have to do this if you don't want. Everybody will understand. That's what they said to us before we went on. So we're going to close this with a final nice little cherry on top about Rodney Dangerfield and sort of his outlook on his lack of respect when it comes to the Academy of motion pictures. Motion picture sciences? Yeah. Is that what it's called? Yes, as you guys call it in La. The Academy. Right. He applied for membership because he wanted to be in the Academy, and he had the credentials. He was in movies, and they said, no. You had to be in at least three major roles. He had 13 under his belt by this time, including Natural Born Killers, for which he received a lot of critical praise. Right. And they turned him down like jerks. Right. He even got a letter from Malcolm McDowell. Roddy McDowell. Roddy McDowell. Which one's Malcolm McDowell? He's the good one. Are they brothers? I don't know. Are they? No relation. Okay. It was Malcolm McDowell. Was Roddy McDowell and Clocker Gordon's or Malcolm McDowell. That was Malcolm McDowell. Okay, good, because I felt a lot better about this. Roddy McDowell was in Planet of the Apes. Yeah. Okay, good. I'm glad that those two are separated in my mind because I was like, I really like them. And Clock recourns. Yeah, good. Roddy McDowell, who everybody hates, wrote a letter to Rodney Dangerfield, this rejection letter that said that he had not had enough of the kind of roles that allow a performer to demonstrate a mastery of his craft. Basically, you're just playing Rodney Dangerfield, and we all know it. Even though he had all the credentials to get in. Right. So Rodney Dangerfield, he's like, let's see, what year is it? What year is it? What's new? What's on the horizon? The Internet. I think I'll build the world's first ever entertainment website. And he built his own website and realized that this would be a great place for his fans to come, like, vent their anger. And it was as a matter of fact, this guy think about that. This is and his fans came on and were like, the heck with the Academy, that kind of stuff. And the Academy actually relented and said, you're in, man. You're in, Rodney. Come on in. That's right. What did he say? No, he said, thanks, but no thanks. He still has a website, Rodney.com, and if you go to that I just found this out earlier. There's a section called Jokes and had audio clips. I was like, oh, this is great. But it's not him. It's some dude reading, like, as bad as me, really? Just saying his little one liners over and over. And it's not in front of people. It's like dead quiet, and it's just some dude saying his jokes. It's really weird. I can't tell you how much I'd love to cover comedian idea, just how stealing from other comics is such a taboo. We just need to just get out in front of it. Just own it. Yeah, mix up a little like Mitch Hebberg and rich little people's mind. Do a little Stephen right there in the middle. Yes, perhaps. Yeah, I like it. So that's Rodney Dangerfield, everybody. That's our show. If you want it anymore, you're so that's right. Yeah, you can clap if you want it's cool. Hey, that was fun, right? That was a lot of fun. Yes, we had a great time. And big thanks to the La podcast Festival for having us out. Yeah, please have us back. We'd love to. Yeah, it was really cool. We got to see other shows and we did our own and had a nice little crowd there. Very supportive, nice kind of people all the way around and look for the next La podcast. Best coming, I would imagine, next September 2016. Hopefully we'll be there. Yeah, keep your ears up for it. We'll mention it whether we are or not, because we're that kind of guy. That's right. No listener mail for me, buddy? No, but if you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstepyshennow. You can send us an email to stuff podcast@houseworks.com. And as always, join us at our super awesome home on the web, stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howsuffworks.com my psychiatrist said you're crazy. Oh, yeah. Hold on. I already messed it up. No, that's right. My psychiatrist said I'm crazy. I told him I wanted a second opinion. He said, okay, you're ugly, too. Yeah, he wrote that joke, and everybody knows that joke. It's a good joke. When my wife has sex, she screams, especially when I walk in on her. Boy, he wrote a lot of jokes about his wife cheating on him. Hundreds and hundreds of jokes because he wasn't married. If it wasn't for Pickpockets, I'd have no sex life at all. The football team for my high school was tough. After they sacked the quarterback, they went after his family. That's a good, clean joke. That's good. What else we got here? I solved my drinking problem. I joined AA. I mean, I still drink. I just use a different name. I'm getting old. Mia, shooting up means using an enema bag. I think there's one more about a dog. Oh, yeah. What a dog I got what a dog. His favorite bone is in my arm. I think that's it for me. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I want to say that I have another one hiding in here somewhere, but I can't find it. All right, go to the YouTube, folks. Yeah. Make sure look up. Iron man versus Dirty Dancing. You will love it. Anything else? No, that's it. All right. Thanks, everybody. Thank you very much. You too. 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." | |
a6ba5d0a-5462-11e8-b449-d780462c01c2 | Is yogurt a miracle food? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/is-yogurt-a-miracle-food | Yogurt has been touted as a health food, but is it? Maybe. If you eat it every day. We get into the rich and creamy history of this supposed miracle food in today's episode. Take a listen! | Yogurt has been touted as a health food, but is it? Maybe. If you eat it every day. We get into the rich and creamy history of this supposed miracle food in today's episode. Take a listen! | Thu, 08 Nov 2018 15:53:45 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=8, tm_hour=15, tm_min=53, tm_sec=45, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=312, tm_isdst=0) | 43748282 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from howstuffworkscom? Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry. And this is the Smooth creamy, tangy edition. And stuff you should know. Fruit on the bottom? Yeah. You don't like yogurt or food on the bottom? Yogurt. I don't like fruit on the bottom. Okay, but you do like yogurt? Yeah, I don't like any of the fruity ones. They taste fine, but I think they're just like, loaded with sugar, generally in sweeteners and things. Well, yeah, it's not fruit. It's like jam on the bottom jelly. Do you like yogurt compote? Yeah, I love yogurt. As a matter of fact, while we were researching this, I was like, I can't stand it any longer. I got up and got some yogurt. Do you eat it regularly? Not as much as I should, although I recently did a blood test and my protein was low, strangely. So I'm going to start eating more. Okay. You sounded like you'll believe that when I see it. No, I was just curious about what your yogurt intake was. What about you? You eat it everyday? No, I should. Like, I don't eat yogurt much. I'm constantly slapping it on my kids baby plate and she loves it and Emily eats it and I'm like, I need to eat more yogurt. I mean, I like it, I just don't think about it much. Yeah. What I do is sometimes in a hotel or anywhere where they have the sort of build your own parfait thing. Yes. Throw a little granola or granula in there, maybe a little bit of fresh fruit, and mix it all up. And I love it. And I'm like. I should do this every day because as we will find out. The benefits of eating yogurt. Which are sort of up in the air as far as hard facts. But it seems like sort of regularly eating yogurt is kind of one of the keys to getting the health benefits that seems to be generally agreed upon and not like. Oh. I ate yogurt today. That means I'm 8% healthier. Right? Yeah, that's not how it works. Yeah. Although I think it is like, just temporarily, you're doing better for a second than you were before. But what else? Yeah, let me give you a hint, buddy. Find a local beekeeper. And I mean local, like no more than five or 6 miles from your house. Okay. Got one. Okay, great. Take a little of that honey, drizzle it on some nice full fat Greek yogurt. Sit back and enjoy. That's all you need. That's it. If you want to add some other stuff, like some sliced almonds or whatever on it, that's fine too. Or fruit and granola, I find really good raw, local honey and Greek. It's just like you're eating health is what it feels like. Yeah, I mean, I like the taste on its own, but you get the health benefits from that honey too. You do? Yeah, I mean, throw some broccoli in there. Throw a little broccoli in there. The tonka truck, anything you can find, just put under your yogurt and start eating. We covered some of the stuff in our probiotics cast. Yeah, a lot. From how many years ago is that for 2014. Okay, four years ago. But I felt like yogurt deserved to live on its own. I was incredulous at first, but I came around actually. I was like, chuck's. Right. So let's get into it. I guess we should talk history. Yes. Because yogurt is one of those kind of great accidental discoveries that came from many years ago. Kind of like a beer and stuff like that. Because people, they think it's pretty clear that at some point many thousands of years ago in the Middle East, people were transporting stuff like milk, maybe like a goat's milk or whatever. Probably goat and sheep first. Yeah. And they were transporting that in whatever disgusting animal bladder or whatever they used, right. To transport liquids and things like that. They got there and they're like, this stuff has turned it stinks. But it's 1000 years from being civilized humanity. So let's just try this stuff, alright? Like, who's going to care or know somebody clark me some honey. Yeah, so they clarked themselves a little honey. They ate a little bit of it. It was thicker now and it had this kind of sour, tangy taste. And one of those ancient Middle Eastern people said, hey, this is not bad. Right? And I think there's this guy named Adam Maskovich who wrote a post on the Salt who basically said it's not entirely an understatement to say like civilization was in part built on yogurt. That was pretty neat. It really was. Because all of a sudden you have milk. And everybody at the time was like, I can feed this to my kid, but I can't keep milk down. I poop all over my saddle basically while we're out riding. Because this is the Mongolian steps. Right. But I have found that this weird tangy version, the sour version of milk that you call yogurt, that doesn't affect me at all. It's the weirdest thing. And so as more people were able to eat this stuff, which is full of nutrients, lots of calories and has a tanninizing taste, people kind of gathered around the areas that had yogurt and other stuff too, he points out, like cheese and things like that. Bread and beer. It's possible beer was the real reason that civilization was started. But yogurt played no small role in that. In its fermentation, it is transformed from something that people who are lactose intolerant can't take to something that people who are lactose intolerant can actually eat and benefit from. Yeah, so they had that conversation and at the end of it, one of them said also, is it weird that we're humans and we're drinking animal milk as adults. And they went, don't worry about that. Yeah. They said, Stop thinking yourself as more than an animal. You're an animal. It really thrived in the Middle East. They love the stuff like you were talking about. It's actually a Turkish word. Yogurt is. And it took a little bit longer to catch up to europe. I think. At the end of the 19th century is really when it started to spread wide in Europe and then here in the United States. It took to. Like. The middle half of the 20th century when it was mass marketed by Danny. And it's not like we didn't eat yogurt at all, but definitely not like in the Middle East. It's not like, oh, we'll just eat some of this for breakfast with fruit. It's in a lot of great dishes and dips and sauces, and it's kind of one of the staples of a lot of Middle Eastern food. So they're doing it right. Yeah. And so the Middle East seems to be the home of yogurt. It was the home of civilization. And they think that yogurt is as old as civilization, maybe a little older. And turkey seems to be some sort of, like, kind of fulcrum for the spread of yogurt throughout the world. And in fact, the word yogurt is a Turkish word. It comes from yogurt mock, which is Turkish meaning to thicken. And turkey, the fact that we in the Englishspeaking world call it yogurt suggests that it was the Turks who introduced the west to yogurt. But they're also pretty sure that Turkey was the one who introduced yogurt to India as well. And the neighboring areas around Turkey, like Bulgaria, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Iran, like, all these areas are pretty famous for eating a lot of yogurt and even having their own kind of yogurt or their own version of it. But something about turkey really seems to be the pivot point for the spread of yogurt in the world. Yes, here it is. Even today, it says that Turkish people eat about and this was like, four or five years ago, 282 cups of yogurt per person per year, which is definitely more than in the United States. Well, it was at the time. We've since caught up quite a bit. Yeah. I think that stat for us is poundage, though, right? Yes. How many pounds of yogurt do we eat? We ate \u00a34.8 billion of yogurt in 2017. What? \u00a34.8 billion in the United States alone. And, yeah, we're not like, the highest yogurt eating civilization on the planet by far, but that's like about \u00a315 per person. \u00a313.7 per person, which really it sounds like a lot, but yogurt weighs a lot, so it's actually just 36 servings per person per year in the United States. Wow. So that's in Turkey, 282 cups. Yeah. That's a lot. That's a lot. Yeah. So, Chuck, like you were saying, like, yogurt didn't really make its way over to the states until the 20th century, right? Yes. And I think it was and you said it was Daniel that brought it here. That's right. In the Bronx. Yeah. They moved their operations from Spain, Barcelona, I think, to the Bronx, which is really weird because America was not a yogurt eating culture at all. No pun intended. Not really, no. But they brought yogurt to they said, where in the world would be the hardest place to get a foothold business wise? Let's move our operations there. So they moved us to the Bronx and then just started slowly working on America. And it wasn't until they figured out the fruit on the bottom thing that America said, okay, we like this. It's sweet. It's not some disgusting, tangy sour milk. We can put like, compote and jam in it and it's good. And that is when it started to take off. And basically you have dan and yogurt to thank for bringing yogurt to America. And it wasn't until maybe 2010 or 13 before we finally started to shed, like, all the extra gunk and actually get into yogurt the way that the rest of the world has been eating it for thousands of years with like, what we call Greek yogurt, the way the good Lord intended. That's right. You want to take a break? Yeah. Cool. All right, well, we're about to take a break and we're going to come back with more yogurt. All right, so we talked about probiotics in the episode on probiotics. Yeah, it was a good episode, if I remember correctly. It was. So, as a brief recap, probiotics in food, they're like culture, concentrates in some foods. Sometimes they're in dietary supplements. Sometimes they're in things like yogurt and cheese, fermented, dairy products, and they're usually bacteria. Sometimes you can yeast connect as a probiotic, but when you generally think probiotic, you think of good bacteria use to ferment milk. And then sometimes with things like yogurt, they add in other bacteria on top of that. Right. Which is great, just add some more bacteria. As long as it's the good kind, basically. Yeah, but sometimes they add bacteria that's not considered probiotic, too. Right. I looked that up. I couldn't find what they were talking about unless it's actually a probiotic bacteria that just hasn't been shown to be probiotic at this time. That's all I could get from it with probiotics is kind of a quick overview. It's just basically like it's beneficial bacteria that's in your gut. And when you're born, you're not born with your own microbiome. I think you get it from breast milk, and you get a coating of it as you exit your mother's vagina. Okay. So you develop it pretty quickly, but it's kind of like gifted to you very shortly after birth. Yeah, you build it out. Exactly. So as you age and live, like, some stuff dies, some stuff gets pooped out of you, but it's constantly reproducing. But the point of probiotics, whether it's in pill form or whether it is a prebiotic like a banana, something that can feed probiotic bacteria, or if it's yogurt, is to replenish the bacteria. This good, healthy bacteria that lives in your gut and does all sorts of things from help you produce serotonin that stabilizes your mood to digesting your food and moving poop through your intestines faster. All the amazing things. I also want to direct people. We did a microbiome episode, which is one of the all time most fascinating episodes we ever did. Do you remember that one? The poopcast? No, the one that's our microbiome oh, right, that was just on how completely made up. I think like 90% of our cells are actually not ours. They're part of the microbiome of bacteria that live on us and interact with us. And what you're doing when you're eating yogurt is bringing in some friends, some reinforcements to the good bacteria. That's the point of probiotics. Yeah. So in order to we'll get into the health effects here in a minute, but in order to get that bacteria and have it survive through gastric acid, it's an inhospitable environment down there in your gut and in your intestines. Well, first of all, they do think that yogurt might be just a good vehicle for that period because it's thick and goofy and it acts like a buffer against that acid. But you also have to have a lot of it because a lot of it is going to die off. So there are organizations that set minimum standards, and one of them is the National Yogurt Association of the United States. Right. You don't want to mess with them, trust me. No. Break your legs just for even looking at them. Yes, they are tough individuals. They really are, collectively. So I believe the requirement is 100 million bacteria per gram if you want to have that seal on it, and this is if you want to eat yogurt, if you want to just go get a stick of yogurt and shove it down your throat and get a sugar rush, sure, have at it, sure. But if you actually want that live and active culture seal stamped on your yogurt, then you're going to have to have 100 million bacteria per gram. Right. And it has to be specific bacteria, too. The FDA decreed in 1981 that if you're going to sell something in the US as yogurt, it has to contain lactobacillus, bulgaricus, and streptococcus thermophilus we'll talk a little more about those later. But you have to have those, and then you have to have them in amounts of at least 100 million individual bacterium of those strains per gram of yogurt, or else, buddy, that ain't yogurt, that ain't yogurt, that ain't your mom's yogurt, that ain't your dad's yogurt. It's nobody's yogurt. No, not as far as the FDA is concerned. If you thought the National Yogurt Association was tough, boy, howdy the FDA will mess you up. So you want to talk a little bit about how they make yogurt? Yes, but first get this. So, you know you were talking about how yogurt or bacteria, some can survive in the gut, which can be inhospitable. I was like, how do they do that? Some are just coated in, like, a polysaccharide. That's fine, that's boring. But some bacteria actually have pumps that are designed to pump acid out of the bacteria. So when it's floating around in this bath of stomach acid and juice and digestive enzymes, it's just pumping it out and keeping it as happy as a lark. But it has, like, a mechanism for getting rid of the acid that should otherwise kill it. I just thought that was fascinating, man. Life sciences. What else? What's your other big one? Earth science. Earth science. Life science. Just science? Basically. Yeah. Also, it's my boat. What kind of science do you hate? Psychology. No, I find it fascinating. Okay. I don't know, man. I don't think I hate any science. Yeah, no, I don't hate any science. See their kids. No science is hate worthy. No, don't hate science. Be like Josh Clark yourself. Some Josh just spun my head right around. Did you see that? I did. That was strange. But it is October. It is the month of exorcism. It's the Dancing Headstone's best season. What's the name of the band? I can't remember. We could have just buzz marketed that guy so well. All right. When you're making yogurt, like you said, it was many years ago, it was just this curdled milk, and they were like, if you hold your nose tight enough, you can still eat this stuff and it doesn't really upset your stomach that much. But if you're going to manufacture yogurt, what you want to do is separate the milk into the cream and the skin. And this is automatically going to get a thicker texture going because it's got a lot of fat and it's evaporating some of the liquid anyway during this process. Right. But then they might say, you know what, let's add some milk powder or some gelatin. We really need to get this to the good yogurty consistent consistency that everybody loves. So now it's pretty thick at this point, and then they pasteurize it. And we should do a show on pasteurization and maybe even homogenization. Okay. Maybe they could go together. I think so, because homogenizing just basically means stirring. Yeah. Pasteurization. There's a lot to that, a lot of history and everything. But homogenized, I think they've really churched that up. It's just stirring something. Yeah. To make it more homogeneous. Right. It's pretty amazing. The word fits perfectly. It really does. So these high temperatures that you get through pasteurization is going to help make it even more thick. But you don't need to blast it at 300 degrees for 8 hours or whatever. No, you don't want to do thin. It's kind of amazing, actually, that it only takes about 15 seconds at 171 deg, and that will kill off the bacteria that you don't want there. So you know how both of our schedules are just insane right now? Yes. I was starting to feel a little worn down, so it's just the tiniest tickle in my nose and I was like, no, I'm not having it. So I busted out the old neti pot. Yeah, well, I got the double purified tap water out of my water purifier, and then I put it into a pot and boiled it for five minutes and stuck the netty pot in and left it in for another five minutes boiling. Then I took that out, boiled more water for five minutes, and then finally after it cooled, I put it through my nose and I looked it up. I'm like. Is that overkill? Is it not enough? It's overkill. It is overkill. From what I saw, what you really need is once the water gets to a boil, something like 99.99, 99% of any pathogen is dead. But I think I can't remember who recommends it. Maybe the CDC. Somebody recommends at least letting it boil for a minute just to be safe. And then if you're above 2000ft over sea level, you want to boil it for three minutes because there's a lower temperature required for boiling at higher altitudes. Right. So really boil it for a minute is even overkill. But I'm going to stick with my five minute boiling thing. I still don't boil it at all. Dude, do you know what would happen if you got just the off chance of a brain eating amoeba in there? No, I know, but I also don't get scared walking around during a lightning storm. I don't either, and I just feel like it's about as unlikely. Okay, all right, well, then promise me this. You will never need a pot with water that you just got out of a stagnant creek. Okay. All right. Is that a deal at least? Sure, but can I still pour that into my open wounds? No. Okay. Just steer clear that water altogether. All right, fair enough. All right, so at this point, Josh has boiled his water for 20 minutes by milk, let it cool for an hour, poured it through his nostril system. So I make yogurt. Now, after they boil for 15 seconds or heat that milk up for 15 seconds, your cream is separating at that point just naturally from the milk because of the temperature. That's when they stir it or homogenize the milk and create that consistent consistency because you don't want anything that has a consistency of curdling. No, you don't. So homogenization is just stirring it up. So you're breaking up the fat globules so that they're spread evenly throughout the milk, which just means it's not lumpy milk, it's smooth textured milk. And the same thing, I guess that translates to the yogurt. It makes the yogurt smoother, more consistently smooth. Because it's homogenized milk that it's made from. Yes. Okay. Bam. Homogenization. We just did the homogenization episode. That could have been a short stuff. It could have I don't even know if it would have qualified for that. Well, we're going to start releasing one called Shortest Stuff. It's just like 45 seconds long. That is our future. So here's the most important part. You think your yogurt is done, but it's not, because if you want it to be yogurt, you're going to have to pour some good bacteria back in there, and it kind of depends on which company you work for, what kind of yogurt they want, but they're going to select their bacteria accordingly. Dump it in there. Yes. All you have is hot milk up to this point. Homogenized milk, it's when you add that bacteria in to this warm milk that it starts to happen. And you want to let the milk cool a little bit first, because if it's too hot, they're going to die. But when it cools to something like, I think 115 degrees Fahrenheit or lower, then you can add your bacteria and they're going to start to go to work. And all they're doing is basically fermenting the milk into yogurt. That's it. Yes. Which is why if you're lactose intolerant, you can still tolerate yogurt because that bacteria gets in there, metabolizes that milk sugar, the lactose, and poops out lactic acid. And lactic acid is fine on the body. Yeah. So not only this is just amazing. This is when I started to get jazzed by the yogurt. Not only does it break down lactose into, other kinds of sugars that are more digestible by the human body, these bacteria actually deposit in your gut when you eat yogurt. They deposit an enzyme that helps you break down the lactose that is found in there. So they break it down themselves, and then they help you break it down, too, which is why people who are lactose intolerant can still usually eat yogurt. Unless you have a severe lactose allergy. I think it's just intolerance. You can usually eat yogurt. Yeah. And remember I talked about myself and my lactose intolerance, and like, am I lactose intolerant or should I just not eat a pizza and a pint of ice cream? Right. It turns out it's b. Is that right? Yeah, man, if I had a reasonable amount of cheese and milk, I'm fine. Yeah. Less farty, farty good. The whole world is thanking you, buddy, for coming to doing that experiment, or at least everyone in this room. So, pretty amazing that yogurt deposits an enzyme that helps you break down lactose, right? Yeah. Okay. It gets even more amazing. One of the other things, one of the reasons why people say you should eat yogurt if you need protein, first of all, it's from milk, so there's tons of protein. But secondly, the acids or the bacteria in there actually break down the protein. So it becomes what's called more bioavailable. It's easier for your body to take in, which normally your body doesn't have trouble absorbing protein anyway, but if it does, yogurt is your guy. But then also it actually synthesizes some vitamins out of whole cloth. Like, there may not be a lot of folate found in milk. There's more of it found in yogurt because these bacteria during fermentation produce folate, which is something that you really want and need, especially if you're pregnant. So there's just some amazing things going on during the fermentation process from milk to yogurt that makes it its own thing. It's much more than just sourd milk. It's like a new thing. And the fact that they found this accidentally from carrying sheep's milk around in some animal skin or animal stomach 10,000 years ago, it just makes it even more fascinating. Yeah, it's awesome. And the fact that you can add fruit on the bottom is really the well, Americans love a gimmick, and I think that was all about the gimmick. I'm sure then some boardroom, they were like, it's interactive. It's fun. Actually, I know the story behind that. Interactive and fun. It's probably the words they used. It was actually suggested in 1947, I think, by a young guy named Juan metzger, whose dad was one of the co founders of Daniel. And he was just a lowly bottle washer at the time, but he suggested that as a way to get Americans to eat it. But at the time, the USDA said you can't mix anything with dairy products. It's against the law. But somehow dan and convinced the USDA that, no, the fruit is on the bottom, so it's not really mixing. If they put it on the top, the USDA would have said that's mixing. If they had mixed it, homogenized it, I guess they would have considered that mixing. But the fact that it was on the bottom, that is why they got away with it somehow. It doesn't make any sense to me. It's like the jeopardy being somehow different from the typical quiz show. Right. It's the same thing. But USDA went along with it and that's why it was fruit on the bottom. Interesting. Yeah. And there wasn't, like, some senator from South Carolina that said, you're counting on the good people of America to mix their own fruit pretty good. I don't even know who that was supposed to be. It sounded like Leonardo DiCaprio and django unchained. He really did. Like he was the senator. Man, that movie, that whole sister wasn't even a subplot. That was so strange in that movie. Remember, leo DiCaprio's sister arrived or whatever? Oh, yeah. And he was just like, where's my beautiful sister? And it was just so over the top and strange. And it was never explained, like, are they lovers? What's going on? Yeah. So weird. I love Quentin Tarantino stuff, man. I love hate it. Oh, really? I don't hate any bit of it. I love it. I think he's far too indulgent these days. But you didn't like the Hateful eight? I like the first four endings. Are you looking forward to the Manson family when he's doing yeah, I go see all of them, and I think they're all worthwhile, and they're Tarantino movies, so I kind of just put my tongue in my cheek and laugh no matter what. What was the best one, in your opinion? Well, I mean, probably. Reservoir Dogs are Pulp Fiction for me. Yeah. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a hater, but there's clearly no one in his camp that's like, maybe edit some down, maybe don't be in the movie. That'll be the day. That'll be the day. Did you like true romance? Yeah, but he just wrote that. Yeah, but it's obviously his work. He didn't direct it. No, I love it. That's one of my favorites. That's a good one. I mean, like, who cast Gary Oldman for that role? Tony Scott, I guess. That's just so bizarre. But I think it was so cool. Sit down, have egg roll. It's a good movie. All right, so let's take a break, and we will get to the bottom of the fruit, on the bottom, if you will, about nutrition and if that's real or not right after this. All right, chuck, yogurt nutrition or just delish? All right, so here's the deal. Yogurt has really caught on in the United States in the last decade more than ever, largely because it's being touted and sold as a health food dude, big time. There are studies that are coming in that says it helps with everything from reducing obesity, type two diabetes, cardiovascular disease, respiratory diseases, improves pregnancy outcomes, reduces allergies, improves bone health and dental health. Basically anything you can think of. There's been a study that has found that. But from what I'm gathering, either there's not enough studies, which seems not the case to me, or that there are other studies that are finding contradictory evidence to what the pro yogurt studies are finding. There doesn't seem to be any study that's like, no, put the yogurt down, it's going to kill all of us. Nothing like that. But it just seems like the jury is still out on whether it's actually beneficial to you or not, at least over any kind of long term. Yeah. So here's what we know for sure, just ingredient wise, especially if you're lactose intolerant, you can get a lot of good calcium from yogurt that you wouldn't get or that you would get if you drink milk or whatever. But if you're lactose intolerant, you can get it through yogurt. Vitamin D, protein, potassium, riboflavin. These are all things that are in yogurt that we know are good for you. But it's like health claims that they're selling people now, which is what we're really talking about here, like you said, will it actually help. You lose weight. And there have been some studies that indicate that it could, but there are a lot of caveats attached. It feels like the International Journal of Obesity says that low fat yogurt could help you lose weight. But it's kind of like that's because you're replacing a meal with some yogurt as a substitution or for a snack, and it's kind of filling, you're going to be eating less. And all these things are kind of true, but it's a little misleading. It is. And actually, you also want to be careful. Like, okay, if you're on a diet and you're using low fat yogurt to diet with, but you're health conscious, you want to be careful because a lot of the low fat or low fat yogurts replace the fat with other stuff, like artificial sweeteners, like aspartame and saccharine. There's usually a lot of sodium in there to try to replace some of the flavor that's lost when you take all the fat out. So there's a lot of push and pull and, yeah, it does seem to be where if you are already healthy and you eat yogurt regularly but a lot, then maybe you'll start to see some actual health effects. But there's never been a study that showed, yes, yogurt is such a powerhouse that it can knock out rheumatoid arthritis. Right. And those are kind of the claims that people are making, and there's some basis there's some kernel of truth to it. One of the big things now with dieting is or not dieting, but eating right or eating healthy, I guess whatever you want to call it, is this idea that when you eat, your body becomes inflamed as part of the immune response. Like, what did you just eat? What is that? What is that? And it goes into kind of like, defense mode to sort things out. Well, the idea is that over time, if you're eating stuff that sets off your immune response, your inflammatory response, pretty much constantly, that has a terrible effect on your body and can manifest itself in things like inflammatory diseases, like rheumatoid arthritis. So the logic is, and they've shown that yes, yogurt can actually possibly maybe reduce your inflammatory response. So it's going from yogurt might be able to lessen your inflammatory response to some really bad food, to yogurt can cure rheumatoid arthritis. And that's the problem. Yeah. Especially in women. It seems to have a little bit better chance at reducing inflammation. They did this one study at the University of Wisconsin Madison. Go Badgers. Right? Wolverines boy, I think it's got to be Badgers, right? It is the Badgers. I'm just giving them a hard time. I didn't know if it was yeah, that's Madison. Of course. We need to do a show there, by the way. We do. Or we could just make everybody drive to Milwaukee. It's an hour away. I did like Milwaukee. It was a great show. That was a cool town. So they did a study where they had 60 women, half of whom were obese, and they had them eat 12oz of low fat yogurt every day for nine weeks in a control group, of course, eating nondairy pudding, which is like what is that, like snack packs? I don't know. And they measured levels of proteins, it says excreted by immune cells to determine how much inflammation was in their body. So they're trying to measure the inflammatory response that you're talking about. And they did find that the yogurt ladies, as they like to be called, saw improvements in some markers of inflammation. But again, that's a long way from saying it can help your rheumatoid arthritis. Right. That's part of the problem. I think people just want it. It's just such a great idea. This natural thing that's been with humanity since the dawn of civilization can actually help cure some of these modern ailments from our modern world. People want that to be the truth so bad. I don't see anything wrong with that, but it's not necessarily the case, I think. Yes, and it was also this study was funded by the National Dairy Council. And again, the doctor who performed it, of course, he was like, it doesn't matter where the money came from. Same conclusion, so you can take him at his word, I guess. I'm not saying he's like, in the pocket of big dairy. Right. Which we laugh, but I'm sure that's the thing. Well, the yogurt association, they're the leg breakers for the Dairy association. But like I said earlier, because there's a lot of protein and yogurt, it will make you feel more full and you might have fewer unhealthy snacks. So it's one of those things like, is it really making that difference, or is this causing you to change patterns? Right. Which is fine. Yeah. Again, there's nobody who's saying no, eating yogurt is bad for you. You do want to watch it if you are trying to lose weight eating full fat yogurt, too much full fat yogurt, especially if you're eating it in addition to other stuff, rather than using it to replace something, you can gain weight. I think the average weight gain in that one study you were talking about from both the yogurt and the pudding cohorts was like a kilogram, I think. Yes. A couple of pounds over, like nine weeks or something like that. So that's a significant amount of weight gain. But they were eating like 12oz. It's two full servings of yogurt every day. That's a lot of yogurt. It's a lot. I like yogurt, but it's not the kind of food you sit down and eat a bowl of. No, you definitely want it in its own little amount. It's like a grape nuts bowl. Yeah. And for parents, gogurt, not to pick on them, but they definitely market that. I used to do a couple of gogurt commercials back in the day as a PA. They definitely market towards kids. It's packaged in a little kid friendly, fun way to eat. And we're not saying you ever it's bad for kids, but that stuff is loaded with sugar and calories from sugar. Yeah. So just know that going in. From what I understand, the closest thing to actual yogurt that you can get in the United States is something like Greek yogurt that's only kind of eat I think it tastes best. It is. It's fantastic. Like plain Greek yogurt. And then you just add a little honey. Don't forget the honey. Chuck. I know. I got to call my beekeeper. There's also something called traditional Bulgarian yogurt. Bulgaria is very well known for its yogurt love. They have something called castello miliacco, which means sourd milk. And I just think of Balky Bartakamos saying it. Was that his last name? Yeah. From Perfect Strangers. Yeah. What was it? Balky Bartaca moose Bartacomus. Bartaca Moose. I don't think I ever heard that. Yeah, I didn't watch that show, though. Oh, you are missing out. Right. The episode where they were moving a piano up like, a couple of flights of stairs. Is that a real episode? Yes, it was, Chuck. And I will put my money on this. It is one of the greatest examples of physical comedy in television history. I mean, that's an old thing. Like, Friends had an episode of moving a couch upstairs. These guys make Friends look like piles of walking poop. That's how good this Perfect Strangers episode was. Like, Friends didn't even want to talk about it. Oh, man. But I mean, that's a classic bit like the Marx Brothers or 30 or something. Or Buster Keaton probably first came up with it. Yes. He moved to piano or two in his day. You want to talk about the In Soviet Georgia yogurt campaign real quick? Yeah, I actually did not get to see that. So you can teach me. Okay. So in 1977. Dannon. Who really is almost single handedly responsible for bringing yogurt and making it popular in America in the 70s. They came out with an ad campaign called In Soviet Georgia. Where they went to Georgia. One of the Soviet Union's republics at the time. And found like 100 plus year old people who were still vital and active and said. Hey. Can we film you like Baling Hay? And then afterward you'll eat, like, a nice cup of dan and yogurt, and people will say, hey, that's great. I want to beat Baling Hay at 105, like this person. And it was kind of risky at the time because this is the Cold War, the late seventy s. The Soviet Union and the United States were not friends. But to advertise to the United States, they sent their ad people to the Soviet Union, and it just went off. It was total hit. Like Dan and their sales were in the gutter, and all of a sudden, they're just back on top. And it's actually credited with kicking off. What we think of now is, like, normal. But the yogurt craze that started in the late seventies, early eighty s, and continued on, and it's finally gotten to the point where we're actually starting to eat healthy yogurt. That was that commercial in Soviet Georgia? Crazy. Yeah. They found one guy who was 89 and they said his mother was 114, and they filmed them in one of the commercials and they said he ate two cups and it made his mother very proud. But he's 89. That was the big joke. 114, man. Yeah. All from eating yogurt. I need to get on it. Got anything else? If I want to live to be 114, you got to start eating some sugar. And don't forget the honey. God, can you imagine me at 114? Yeah, actually I can, now that you mentioned it. Nobody wants that. I could totally see it. You'd be like, I'm back to the whole pizza and whole thing. Ice cream thing. You might want to stand back. Well, this one has a lot of fart and poop jokes. Yeah, well, that happens. Well, if you want to know more about yogurt, go eat some yogurt. Eat the good stuff, learn to love it and your stomach will be happy whether science can prove that it is or not. Since I said that, it's time for listener mail. All right, I'm going to call this self professed medievalist. This guy Steven Gray wrote in, and he's from Melbourne, Australia, but living in London now. And he says, I'm writing for some extra info to give you extra info for the Robin Hood episode. First of all, Josh talks about Richjohnnyfiche and says that Richard was a king of England for two years and that John was the natural heir. Richie was actually king for ten years. It's been only six months of his reign in England. While he was off on the Third Crusade, he left his chancellor, William of Long Champ, as regent, but his brother John was cranky about it and schemed against him in citing a rebellion. When Rich eventually got back, he forgave Johnny, named him heir to the throne. So the bad king, John, good king, Richard bit of the RH cannon is actually based in fact. Wow, that's interesting. Perhaps more interesting, he says, I set up, by the way. Thank you. When the Robin Hood story started coming out during the reign of Henry III, it was during a period where Henry was waging war for his lands in Gascony, France. Henry was not a very strong willed or charismatic king, so he didn't get along super well with his nobles. And as a result, to raise funds for the war, I've heard he had to rely more heavily on his foresters and sheriffs to raise some mega taxes. So the Robin Hood stories pit our hero against these extortionate representatives of a nasty villainous king. But of course, you can't directly suggest that's the current king. So you have to be not so subtle and point to our recent but previous scenario, which everyone will draw the parallels from. Wow. This guy is not just a self proclaimed medievalist. I officially confirm him as a medievalist, he says. Hope this helps your insatiable appetite to keep learning, as your podcast does mine. Nice. I love you guys. That is Stephen Gray. Thanks a lot, Stephen. That was a great email. We love you too. Let's hug. Yeah. There you go, Stephen. If you want to get in touch with us, like Stephen did, we want to hear from you. You can go to stephysioknow.com and find all of our social links there and you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstepworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetepworks.com. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means schools out, the sun's shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from exactly right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarif and Georgia Hardstarks, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | |
86d5c8d6-3b0e-11eb-9699-bba64337bc1b | How Embalming Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-embalming-works | The Death Suite continues! In this installment, Josh and Chuck go over what it takes to preserve a human body using chemicals and whether that’s such a good thing to do as far as the environment is concerned.
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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | The Death Suite continues! In this installment, Josh and Chuck go over what it takes to preserve a human body using chemicals and whether that’s such a good thing to do as far as the environment is concerned.
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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Tue, 14 Sep 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=14, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=257, tm_isdst=0) | 50009723 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And Jerry's here too. And this is stuff you should know. Oh, part of the famed and legendary death suite, which just rambles on. Yeah, we talked a little bit about this in a couple of them, but I'm surprised of two things that we haven't covered this in full yet me, too. And that you managed to find an article on our old Pals website households.com that we hadn't used or written. Dude, I scour the site frequently, and every once in a while, yeah. Sometimes you can find how did this slip by? That's why it just keeps you going. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. It's hard to believe. We still get a lot of our shorties ideas from there, which is great, but it has been a while, I think, since we were able to find something. It's just hiding in there. Hiding in the blood vessels of the body. Very nice. And speaking of bodies, Chuck, I don't remember where we talked about this before, but I do remember that we talked about the death of Abraham Lincoln yes. And how he was one of the first presidents to oh, it must have been lying in state. I'll bet it was the short stuff on lying in state, because I think he was one of the first presidents to lie in state in different places. And the reason he was able to do that is because he was embalmed. He was subject to some modern chemical embalming techniques that had recently been introduced by a guy named Dr. Thomas Holmes, and it allowed Abraham Lincoln to take a very leisurely 19 days to make it from Washington, DC. To his hometown of Springfield, Illinois, for burial, which is a long time for a corpse in the 19th century to be above the ground. And yet he was still fairly presentable by the time he got to Springfield when he was buried. And it was all thanks to the embalming process. Yeah. And we'll get to homes more in a minute, but this was during the Civil War, so great timing for Lincoln. Also. Terrible timing for Lincoln just in general, but as far as going on display, great timing. Previous to this, he would have been on literally on ice. When you hear, like, the bodies on ice, that's how they used to do it. The only way they could do it. Yeah. I have to say you mean I went to this thing called the Merchants House Museum in New York. It's the oldest house in New York, and it was owned by a sea merchant named Seaberry Treadwell, if I'm not mistaken, one of the great names of all time. And we just happened to go at a time when they were recreating what the house would have been like for the funeral. Seabury Treadwell. And they had like a casket set up and everything in the living room they had lilies everywhere, just stunk of lilies, which is one of the things they used to mask the smell of decay. And then they also had a little soundtrack playing of water dripping because he would have been on huge blocks of ice to kind of keep his body cold. But it's one of the coolest things I've ever seen in my life and walking around the museum, even when they don't have something like that going on, is pretty cool. It's definitely worth the visit. What part of town? Downtown? Somewhere in Manhattan. I don't remember exactly where. All right. But I'm pretty sure it's lower. I don't know if it's east side or west side. It's got to be. I mean, that was early New York. Yeah, but it's super cool. The Merchant House Museum, if I'm not mistaken. Fantastic. And while you're down there, check out the Tenement Museum. Yes. Which we have not I've not been to. Have you been there? I guess, yeah. Okay. Good stuff, right? Okay. Yeah, it's very cool. I mean, if you like old New York and seeing how things used to be. Right. And then going downstairs and having some tappas. Oh man, you had me at tapas or sushi. But this is embalming, however, is not something that was invented during the Civil War that was just sort of using more modern chemicals. This is something that people have been doing since ancient times. The word itself, embalm, just means to put on a balm. And that comes from the fact that in ancient times, like we're talking thousands and thousands of years ago, they would put spices and perfume things, kind of anything that they could think of to keep that body from becoming bones. Yeah. And apparently Thomas Holmes was inspired by some Egyptian mummies that he'd been studying and realized that they had done a really great job of embalming techniques. So he started coming up with his own embalming concoctions. I believe his was arsenic that he was using which came into wide use in the until the 1910s, I think. But his introduction of the chemical involving to the US. It just changed funerals in the United States to this day we still have things like viewings where you basically say come see the dead body with your own eyes before the funeral, the night before the funeral wakes. Just things that we wouldn't have done otherwise. We wouldn't have been able to do. Delaying funerals for until the weekend when everybody's available. All of the modern trappings of an American or Canadian or it turns out New Zealand funeral are based on the fact that Thomas Homes introduced chemical involving in the that allows us to do things like that now. That's right. If you want to go back through time and look at the beginnings, you could go all the way back about 5000 years ago to Spain. There were cadavers found there in La ValleyA, marion, la Valea. That's where I would go with. Sure. All right. And this is in Spain. And they were found to be covered in hundreds of pounds of ground up cinnabar, which is the most delicious way to be involved. Right. Although I don't know. Honey. Don't forget honey. Yeah, that's true. Oh, it's not cinnabun. I thought it was cinnabon. Cinnabar. Sorry about that. We talked about cinnabar before. Cinnabon will put you in the tomb. It might involve you from the inside out. And actually, now that I think about it, if you ate it now, yeah, probably so. I haven't had one of those in a long time. And this is like a suspected case, basically, if you want to know, like for sure that they were purposely embalming people, you can go back to 4000 BC with the Egyptians that you were talking about. People would be wrapped in cloth. They would sometimes be buried with charcoal and sand. They would be buried away from the Nile River or anywhere where the Nile River could reach via flooding. And the idea here is that in the afterlife, you were going to be physically resurrected at some point and immortal. So your body needed to be kind of recognizable so the soul and the shadow and the heart and the name of the individual could lure it back. They embalmed about 730,000,000 people. So it was a very common practice, even though the methods that we're going to talk about here in a SEC would be different depending on kind of what status you are. And just keep in mind, this isn't like modern day embalming that you would think like that kind of preservation. It's the kind of preservation to where you don't just rot into bones and eventually just dust. Right. But the body is like you've seen these embalmed into bodies. They look like sort of baseball gloves at that point. But it's still recognizable as a human body. Exactly. Which in and of itself is a triumph of embalming because without any involving, a human body, depending on the climate, is going to skeletonize, which is just the way into nothing left but a skeleton in anywhere from a few weeks to a few years. So the idea that, like you said, it's still a recognizable human with tissues still intact and sometimes hair and things like that, that was a successful embalming and then some. Oh, yeah, big time. We even have a description thanks to historian from Greece named Herodotus who described how they did it. And it makes sense considering what we know now. If you hunt an animal and if you're into that kind of thing, the first thing that you do when you're field dressing that animal is you take those organs out because that keeps the body very hot and warm and that is going to really just speed up the bacteria and the decay. So the first thing that they did was remove the vital organs to cool that body down, remove the brain, wash it in palm wine, and then you have all these different vases. At the time, they didn't have these modern chemicals. They had herbs and stuff like that. They had these canopic jars filled to the top with all these various herbs that they used. Yes. Then they would basically take the body and fill it with some myrrh or other resins, perfumes, that kind of stuff, stash it in some potassium nitrate for, I believe, 70 days to kind of desiccate it. And then after that is when they would put it in those famous bandages, wrap it up like what we understand as a mummy, and then put it in the coffin and inside the tomb. We did a whole episode on mummies. So if you're just like, I want to know more, tell me some more about mummies. We're going to take our leave for mummies here, but you can pause this one. Go listen to the mummies episode, maybe have a sandwich, and then come back and listen to the rest of this episode and you will be chock full of embalming. Yeah. And then maybe top it off with our cremation episode just for a full day. Oh, that's a good one, since you had the same one. Yeah. So this process was kind of with all the bells and whistles, was for people with a lot of money, maybe the royal family, even of the time. The further you went down the social ladder, the less complicated it got as far as having access to some of this stuff. So one thing they might do if you were sort of maybe middle class, was injected with cedar oil, store it in that potassium nitrate for the same amount of time, and then withdraw that oil. And I got the feeling that that just kind of pulls out a lot of the stuff with it, and then you've got skin and bones, and then if you really were sort of at the top of the totem pole, they would pull the intestines and then just cover the body in that potassium nitrate and probably not even for 70 days. Very nice. It was a beautiful early SYSK reference, too. I know, I can't wait to get emails. So I got that wrong. In fact, I'm right, right? You need to go further back in the catalog, friend. Yes, exactly. Do you want to keep going and talking about the ancient world or take a break first? I got a sandwich, so let's take that break. Okay. We'll be right back, everybody, and we're going to talk about, you guessed it more, ancient world embalming. All right, Chuck. So the Egyptians, the ancient Egyptians do get a lot of the glory and credit for embalming techniques, and rightfully so. I mean, they got really good at it. Apparently, the peak of their embalming prowess came from the New Kingdom, from 1570 to 1075 VCE. But it's kind of where people's minds go when they think of embalming. What's interesting, though, is there were other cultures that were totally detached from Egyptians at the time. The Egyptian influence and culture would not possibly have spread to these areas that were doing very similar things, in some cases, even predating the Egyptian embalming process. There was a group called the Chinchoros who were in, I believe, modern day Ecuador and Chile. I'm sorry, they were in Chile. And about 7000 years ago, they were disassembling bodies, treating the body parts with embalming, I guess fluids, resins, that kind of stuff, and then reassembling them with wooden structures so that they could still, I guess, move around, do the robot and stuff like that, covering them with clay and painting them. This is 7000 years ago, so it's clear there's a real impulse among humans to kind of preserve bodies. It's not a new thing. It's a really ancient impulse. It is. You mentioned honey earlier. I think it was the Assyrians that were using honey. Persians were using wax, I believe the indigenous people of the Canary Islands, the Guanchis is the way Google told me to say it looked that one up. Good job. Say what, Waukeshaw boy? They would remove the soft internal organs, and then it's kind of like food preservation techniques. In some cases, they fill it with salt and vegetable powder, and the same goes through for the Hivato. In Ecuador and Peru. They took their tribal chiefs and what it said here, they would slow roast them over a fire. I think they were kind of smoking them for preservation. There's really no other way to put it. And there was probably some part of the people around their brain who's like, that sounds really good. You think so? There's just no way. There are also instances of Buddhist monks being preserved, which is a little interesting because Buddhism usually calls for cremation, although I don't believe there's any prohibition on embalming. And they would pack the body and salt for a few months. And there was a pretty famous case of a Tibetan monk being discovered accidentally. This way, when somebody, for some reason, x rayed a Buddhist statue sitting Buddha, they found out that there was a mummified monk inside. Wow. Isn't that neat? That's pretty cool. Yeah. I mean, imagine being the guy to figure that out, just how surprising that would be. And by guy, of course, it was gender neutral guy. Sure. Not all cultures got into this, though. I think you mentioned Buddhist generally don't. Back in the day, Sumerians and Babylonians and Jewish people did not often use embalming. And these days, if you're Muslim or Jewish, if you're strict about it, they prohibit that. And I think it's pretty rare if you're a Hindu as well, because they usually cremate just pretty quickly. Yeah, there's not like a prohibition on it. It doesn't come up right. So from what I can tell, Chuck, going back to today for a second, the countries that have far and away the highest rates of embalming are the US, Canada, and, like I said, New Zealand. And I saw Australia somewhere and I double checked and it said no, it's not very common in Australia, so maybe listeners in Australia can let us know one way or the other. And then apparently it's also not common in the UK, but it's common enough that the funeral industry is very much interested in keeping involving processes as they are. So I guess some people get involved in the UK, but I guess America is the world leader in embalming corpses now. What do you mean? As they are like they just don't want to be bothered and regulated or something? No, I don't understand. I can't tell if they just are being resistant to change or if they're genuinely isn't an alternative. And they're like, we actually need these techniques to preserve people for people who want to be involved. I can't quite tell, but we'll talk about any controversy a little further down the road. All right? There have been some, aside from King Tut, there have been quite a few famous people throughout antiquity that have been involved, including, but not limited to Alexander the Great, Charles the Great, aka Charlemagne, aka CEO of the Holy Roman Empire, CEO of the HRE. That's right. He was involved and placed in a sitting position in his tomb, which is super cool. Yeah. And we know that because a couple of hundred years after he died, the then ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, Otto III, cracked his tomb open and went inside and tried he's sitting up super unsettling. Yeah, he's watching me. So they're using herbs and they're using salt and they're using smoke and they're using things that they could find at the time. Kind of like I said, how you would preserve an animal if you were to kill and want to eat that animal, because that's how we are anyway. Right. And it started to decline in the Middle Ages. It was costly. These herbs were expensive. Unless you were super upper class or even royal, then you couldn't afford it to begin with. And then religious opposition kind of starts to pop up in the Middle Ages. And it was sort of during this pause that they actually took a leap forward, I guess you could say, in the Renaissance, when all of a sudden people were like, hey, science is awesome, art is cool, the body is great, let's investigate it more. And it was DaVinci himself that actually developed, as far as I can tell, one of the first or the first to develop an injection method, which is sort of not sort of, it's exactly how we do it today, when instead of putting things inside the body cavity, you would actually inject something into the bloodstream. Right. And if you've ever been in an embalming room, you know, that they use exactly the same invention. DaVinci came up with wooden gears to power the pumps and a flying machine that goes around the room. I can't quite put my finger on what it does. I think it's mostly for show. I think so, too. So the French and the Italians really were the ones we talked about. Thomas Homes in the United States. And we do that because he was an American and this is America, an American podcast. But prior to him, the French and the Italians in the 19th century really kind of got into figuring out how to preserve corpses and the reason why. It had nothing to do with funerals. It had to do with the advancement of medical science to where all those gray, robbed corpses that were used by med students needed to be preserved somehow. And so that really kind of pushed chemical embalming to advance by leaps and bounds. And we have our French and Italian brothers and sisters to thank for that. That's right. And we also have a great live episode on grave robbing. Live from London. Yeah, live in London. That was one of the most fun trips we've ever done. That was a good tour, for sure. It was a great tour. Remember that we performed in a church in London. I can't believe they let us in that place. I know. I felt like, really? Like I can't curse here. And I just went out the window really quick after a couple of G and T's. And here's a little hint. London crowds, it wouldn't kill you to make a little more noise and ham it up a little bit. Sure. Because when you're on stage, you can't tell that people are enjoying it. No, but that was really the big problem, was mantle more than London. Yeah, that's true. But then when we talk to everyone, they're like, no, we loved it. We don't express ourselves like Americans. Yeah. All right. Get over yourself. All right, so where are you? We are in Italy. We are in France. Things are moving along. They are using chemicals now, like arsenic, like you mentioned, copper sulfate, zinc chloride, potassium carbonate. They're basically trying everything. Sure. Mercury. Is this a deadly chemical? Yes. Well, then let's use it for embalming and see what happens. Let's give it a shot. Yeah. And then in the US. Is finally, when we come back to Dr. Thomas Holmes, introduced on the battlefield of World War II because basically, people families wanted to go out and see their loved ones, and they had to preserve them because it took a while to get to these battlefields in these places, in these hospitals. Like field hospitals. Yeah. And in fact, I guess the Union Army hired and trained embalming surgeons to go out on the battlefields. They paid $80 for an embalmed body of an officer and $30 for an embalmed body of a soldier. And it was a big deal for families to be able to come and claim their dead relative and bring them back home. Sure. Which is, again, that just changed funerals in the United States. That process changed everything. And it has changed since then, which we'll get to. But one of the things that they needed to change was some of this stuff that they were using. Like, you were talking about these dangerous chemicals, arsenic, not the least of which is very dangerous when the body eventually does decompose and then that wooden box that they're buried in decomposes and all of a sudden you've got arsenic which doesn't decompose, just leaching into the soil. So if you lived near a cemetery, and if that cemetery was near groundwater, you had some trouble going on back in the day. You did. Now it's all fine. It's probably not still, right? I don't live near a Civil War cemetery, but it's probably not great. No, I did not see the threat of arsenic poisoning from cemeteries still today anywhere. But I don't know, it's possible. We put a lot of stuff into the ground, we bury somebody, and it's not all good as we'll see. I was being totally facetious that it's all fine today, though, because we're still doing the same process. We're just using different chemicals. That's right. And I guess that's where we are, sort of the more modern process. If you work in the funeral industry, I don't know if you know the words that they call themselves these days, funeral. They probably don't call themselves morticians anymore. No, I think they're funeral directors. You can be a funeral director, but if you're in the basement getting your hands dirty, like Arthur on 6ft under, then what is that title even? Embalmer. Embalmer, okay. And if you were a funeral director, you probably are also an embalmer. But there's also such things as trade embalmers, people whose job it is too embalmed. They don't hang with the families or plan the funeral or anything like that. They just embalm with their body. Right. There's one other thing, though, that I didn't realize about embalmers, and that it's way more than just their jobs, way more than just embalming the body. Like, embalming entails a lot of different components to where you basically take a corpse and turn it into a presentable version of a corpse. Yeah. I have a feeling if you sit down in a funeral home, they would say something like one of our restorative artists would take care of that process. Yes. I don't know if they call them that, like in the building. No, I have the feeling that's the terminology they probably use I don't know if you want to just kind of keep it legit. You might just use that all the time. I could see it, but yes, I think you might be on to something chunk. But these people are even though I am on record as not being down with this process and we'll talk about the real value, if there is any, for people to be able to view the body. It is still very valuable to a lot of people. And the people that do this do perform a great service for a fee, but they perform a great service and are very talented at what they do. And it's, I'm sure, not the easiest job to perform. No. And I was thinking about what it takes to perform that job and not be freaked out, not to have nightmares, not to be profoundly affected in ways where you just can't keep doing it. And I don't know, I think you're just maybe born a certain way. You're just a certain person. Like, if you watch 6ft under, it's just a job. It's a very common place. I don't remember which one was Arthur. I haven't seen it in a long enough time. He was Dwight from the office. Oh, wow. I didn't remember him being on there. Rain Wilson. Yeah, rain Wilson was our I have no recollection of that whatsoever. Yeah, he was just on at least one season, maybe two. But he lived in the Fisher home as a tenant and was there in Balmer and was sort of an oddball he ended up having this weird sort of relationship with the mom that bordered on sexual, but not quite the embalmer I remember is Ileana Douglas. Yeah, she was great early on. She just kind of worked at the Fisher house for a little bit. She was fantastic. I'm a big fan of hers, but the main embalmer was usually Michael. If you loved her in 6ft under, you would love her in the intro video to the Aerosmith ride at Disney Hollywood studio. I think she's great. It's one of the most bizarre cameos you will ever see. And before I retired movie crush. I know I mentioned it before, but if you were a 6ft under fan, please go listen to my great, great interview with Alan Ball for the 20th anniversary of 6ft under. For sure. It was a lot of fun. Okay, so we're talking about the modern process. Like if you're an embalmer, if you're a restorative artist, whatever you are, if you're Ileana Douglas, you have certain steps that you're going to follow. And apparently everybody is different, which is not really surprising, but I think it's worth pointing out, like, people die in all sorts of different ways and they arrive at a funeral home in all sorts of different states and different sizes. Yes. And because of all these differences, how you're approached and the stuff that is like, the measures taken and the steps undertaken to get you back to something like a peaceful lifelike presentation, they're just going to be different for every person. But there are some general steps and categories that everything's going to fall into. Yeah. My favorite part of this article was when they interviewed someone who did this. And they said, there isn't a standard amount of time it takes an embalming takes as long as it takes. I was like, no, it takes about a third of an episode of 6ft under. That's how long it takes. I'm a specialist. So the first things, and again, it's going to differ, but generally speaking, because hair can still grow some if you had any facial hair grow after you passed away or were just unshaven and are typically clean shaven, they will shave that hair off. If you have a beard or mustache or something, they're going to leave that, obviously. Sure you don't want to change radically your appearance on your wedding day or your funeral day? Yeah, that's a big if you're planning on getting married, don't let anyone talk you into shaving whatever you have on your face just because it's your wedding day. I mean, both of those are times you want to look like yourself. Look, recognize yourself. Yeah, do whatever you want. It's your life. Don't want to yuck anyone's. Yum, sure. But you should feel comfortable in looking like yourself. I got a cheesy 15 year ago goatee on my wedding day that I now look back on. I'm like, Why was I wearing that stupid goatee? Yeah, you're wearing that and some Oakley's backward on the back of your head. Yeah, but I was weird look for you, you know, you're like chewing gum talking like for rental shot. Yeah, my fly was down. That's just me. So you shave that face and I imagine the family has some say, so if they're like no, they always had a 05:00 stubble and that was their favorite thing. Yeah, he's super into George Michael. Exactly. Rip. So you close the eyes, but those eyes have got to stay closed. Yes, it's a big one. Sure. So sometimes they'll use skin glue, sometimes they use something called an eye cap. It's like a little fleshy, oval shaped kind of like your eye that sits on the eye and secures that eyelid in place because you want those eyes stay closed. Another thing you want to stay closed is the mouth. You don't want it suddenly falling open as if the cadaver is now going to address everybody at the viewing. And so they'll do pretty scary stuff to it, like wiring the jaw shut if it really wants to stay open or if it's just kind of like you just want to make sure it doesn't come open. You can just sew it shut. There's all sorts of sewing techniques, but either way the mouth is going to stay shut. And then once you have it shut like that, you can kind of manipulate it into doing whatever you want. Like kind of resting peacefully, smiling a little bit, blowing into a saxophone, that kind of thing. Yeah, I think a lot of times they'll put cotton in the mouth before they sew or wire it shut because I think that. Just fills it out a little bit. Like Marlin Brando style. Yes. He actually had a piece made for The Godfather, but did he? I think he auditioned with Cotton. Yeah. What a great idea. Like, it just made him that character and not Marlon Brando, even though it's still Marlon Brando. It's one of those really weird times where you can watch it and you're like, I'm watching Brando, but you're also totally buying the character. Yeah, I think he was in his 40s when he made that. Dude. Wow. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, that's a good movie. They aged him up, obviously. But that's one of those things where you realize you're older if you're older than something in pop culture. Oh, yeah. Oh, boy. I remember when it hit me when I started watching baseball one season and realized that I was older than all of the team. That was the first time I ever felt old, and I was only 22. But they were all like 19 at the time. Or when one of your favorite players, like, you're watching their kid play later oh, yeah. Or your favorite player as a manager, it's like, wait, when did that happen? Yeah, totally. It's the pit, for sure. The other one, too, that was going around the Internet for a while was when something about that moment you realize that you're older than all of the Traveling Wilburies were when they made that album. They seem so old. They did. They seem like they were 60. They were in their forty s, I think. Were they really? I think Orbison was a little older, but maybe not. I don't know. Okay, I meant to do that research for this episode, but I forgot. Well, I'll tell you some research I was doing. I talked about blowing into a saxophone with the mouth. I looked high and low for stories like that because surely somewhere, somebody was buried. Some sax guy was buried with his sax, and I couldn't find some, like, true tales of a mortician, you know, saying, like, I did that once or anything even remotely like it. So if you're a mortician or a restorative artist or an undertaker, I would love to hear any story like that. Who's? The saxophonist from leaving gums Murphy. Yeah, I bet he did. Yeah. Buried with the saxophone. Playing a saxophone and wearing sunglasses and sandals. All right, so you got the mouth shut, you got the eyes taken care of, and it's right here that we're going to take a break and leave you in suspense on what happens with the rest of the body. How about that? Very nice. All right, so the mouth is shut, eyes are shut. They're going to stay that way. I'm actually going to read this part, if I may, because I found a great interview with someone who does this for a living, I think from The Guardian. Oh, I saw that. Yeah. And it has a little more detail than the article that we used and it just sort of lays it all out there. So thank you to the guardian for this interview. They said they use a scalpel to make an incision near the right collarbone. And then there they're looking for the carotid artery and the internal jugular vein. They make a little nick in each of those. And they put these arterial tubes in the artery and you point one towards the heart and then you do another one towards the head. And then you have a drain tube, aka angled forceps. You put that in the vein to facilitate that drainage of the blood because that blood has got to come out. That's what you're doing, basically, is you're pumping in embalming fluid, which we'll get to what that is in a second, and you're removing all the blood. And that is connected to a machine that no longer is like a foot pump type of thing. It's powered by electricity. He uses wooden gears. He uses wooden gears still, though. And then that's connected to the arterial tube directed toward the heart. And then you regulate your pressure and all that stuff and get you the rate of flow going that you need. And you're kind of adjusting everything depending on who it is and like the body size and how things are going because every case is different. Right. And then that fluid starts going through the hose and it pushes through the arterial system and the blood is forced out through the jugular vein and then it is washed down the drain and you eventually drink it. Don't they have to sequester that stuff? Is it really just wash down the regular drain? No way. Just like your poop and pee blood goes down the drain into the waste system. Poop and pee goes down the drain. We did a whole episode on it. Blood too. Really? Yeah. I mean, obviously you have to dispose of the embalming fluid and stuff in a different way, but you are literally just draining that blood down the drain. Well, I remember one of our episodes what can be done with the dead body? One of the things they were talking about was using auto license so that it turned you into a goo that could legally be poured down the drain. I didn't realize your blood could be that's insane. Wow. Yeah. There's one 6ft under episode where they have a clog in their system. Oh, yeah, I remember the blood all comes up to the horror movie. So that embalming fluid is pretty special stuff. Most people associate it with formaldehyde and it definitely does contain formaldehyde, but it also contains some other stuff too. When you put it all together, the body is not only preserved, but it's also disinfected, which is not something you would think about. But if, say, somebody died of a contagious disease and you're sitting there kneeling on a little kneeler in front of their coffin talking quietly to them. If they hadn't been embalmed, you could conceivably catch that infectious disease because it would still be present in their body. Embalming takes care of that. The formaldehyde that's in the embalming fluid actually hardens and dehydrates the blood vessels that it's put through. And then some other stuff, like Gluta. Aldehyde, I believe is one, is a disinfectant and it actually kills bacteria in the body and prevents it from coming back. So it's preserved and it's also disinfected too. And that was just the arterial that you talked about. There's another part of the body, the abdominal cavity, that requires a separate additional procedure. Right? Yeah. And we should note that, again, not to bring up 6ft under again, but they really were pretty accurate in how they did it. Oh, yeah. They're doing like a soapy, gentle massage on the body. They're bending the knees and the legs and the elbows and sort of the limbs. And this all just sort of helps facilitate the flow through the body. It also restores movement to the body again, where after rigorous setting but yeah, they'll also sometimes I saw, add into embalming fluid dyes that kind of tint the skin a healthier color. Again. Less blue, I guess. Less blue, more peach. Right. That's what you want. More rose. Yeah, that's really not but sure. Yeah. So the cavity and this is from the same Guardian article they suction out the fluid from the hollow organs with something well, it's something called the trocar, which you might remember from our episode on the video game what was it? NightTrap NightTrap, look out behind you. So they use an axle trow car and then what he called a very high index fluid, which is the stuff that we're talking about, I think even more high index than what goes through the arteries and the blood vessels. And then the incision is closed with a little circular plastic button called a true car button. Yeah, that came from a Verge article about there's supposedly a woman in Russia who was embalmed alive and they got in touch with an actual embalmer, like a third or fourth generation funeral home person and got kind of a skinny on the involvement process. And his name escapes me right now, but if you look up Russian woman embalmed alive on the Verge, you will find the interview with him it was really enlightening, interesting. And what did that reference? The button? Yeah, that was the person who was talking about the trow car and the trochar button. Oh, from the guardian article. No, from the Verge article. Okay, well, I was talking about the guy from the Guardian article. Oh, got you. Okay. Yeah, I'm talking about a different guy. Okay, good for that person too. We should have an embalm off with our two different embalmers, see who wins. That's why I couldn't forget what you're talking about. You're like that's from the thing I was like no, it's not. What are you talking about? It's from the other thing you're like. No, it's from the other thing they say in general, although, again, everybody is different. Every process differs. But roughly about a gallon of embalming solution per \u00a350 of body weight is what it's going to take. Yeah. And depending on whether it's the arterial solution, which is pretty low index, it could be one and a half to 5% from aldehyde. Or if it's high index, it could be 50% from aldehyde for the abdominal cavity, which you said something earlier when you're talking about canopic jars about getting the innards out. And it would make sense you would want to use higher index, formaldehyde embalming solution in the abdominal cavity because that's just basically a bag of bacteria in there. So I would guess that's where your decomposition really starts to take off and center from is in your gut, wouldn't you? I would think so. But that's just so mean to the microbiome that's kept you alive from now. And now finally they get their great reward at the end and then they're wiped out by formaldehyde. Yeah. It doesn't seem fair. I know. Humans. Yes. Forget about the little guy. I guess we should talk about the pros and cons of embalming. We already mentioned that even though I'm not into it, that people still in America these days and I guess in Canada and I guess New Zealand want to see the body, and it can bring people peace and closure and all the things that we talked about and all of our other funerary podcast episodes. And that's really the main purposes are to disinfect this body, preserve it and restore it so people can look at it. So there's a question though, Chuck. Do people actually need to see the body foreclosure, or is that kind of like a funeral industry hustle? I can only speak personally in saying I do not, and I think it is personal. I don't think it's kind of thing you can quantify, although I know that you did find a study, and there's not a lot of studies like this, but you did find one that followed people after it was sort of a big tragedy and found that people that saw the body had better outcomes, but it didn't really say what that meant. I guess happier or more content. I believe less regret was one of the qualifiers that they felt less stuck in the grieving process. But it's like you said, it does seem to be personal. And what they found interestingly was that people who decided not to see the body and people who decided to see the body, and this includes bodies that were presented long before they ever made it to the funeral home, like through people who had the ID, like a family member at the morgue. So they were in like the worst possible state that both of them, both groups expressed, like almost none expressed regret for their decision. So the impression I got is like, whatever your gut is telling you, you should probably go with it. Like, if you just have a gut instinct that you need to see the body, even if people try to talk you out of it, and apparently they will, you need to just follow through on it. It's your right to see a deceased love one, not necessarily to touch it or to be alone in a room with your deceased loved one, but you have a right to see them. And if you want to, you should be insistent on that because you could regret not being able to or not deciding not to because you were talked out of it in the same way. Some people will tell you, like, you need to see the body for closure and if your instincts are telling you should not see this body, go with that. From what I saw in this British Medical Journal survey of people who had seen or not seen a body of a loved one that seemed to be kind of like the through line, like, trust your gut and just know you made the right decision one way or the other. Yeah. And there is more than one 6ft under episode where they tackle that very issue of either people not wanting to get involved or, you know, it's not a comedy. You keep laughing every time I mention it, but it's just so funny. Rainbows is such a goofball. It is really accurate, though, as far as I think they tackle so many real situations because there are episodes where people don't want to get involved and they're trying to talk them into it. And the reasons why I don't see it so much of a hustle as this is their job and they are salespeople, they're selling their service, so they're going to do that. I don't want to be involved and I'm not going to be if it's up to me and my rights being respected. But I just want to be cremated as soon as possible. I don't want to be filled full of stuff. If you die with your beard, you want your beard left on right. Yeah. You burn it up. Although now I think they're using they're dissolving people more, but yeah, not more than a number. More than cremation. Yeah, more than they used to. Well, so that's the thing. So the auto license process again, go listen to what can be done with the dead body episode, but it's where you basically sterilize the body into goo that couldn't, like I said, be poured down the drain. But even if you're cremated, Chuck, there's a good chance that if you are cremated in the United States, Canada or New Zealand, you are also embalmed too, and one of the big pushbacks. Unless you don't want to be. That's true. Right, but I'm saying, like, if you didn't state otherwise and your family gave permission, you might have been involved going through the whole funeral process, and then at the end of it, rather than being buried, you were cremated. And one of the big concerns, aside from religious reasons that people usually have in opposing embalming, is the environmental impact on it, because we talked about arsenic leaching into the groundwater. Well, there's a good chance that all the formaldehyde and glutealdehyde and methanol and ethanol and everything else that was pumped into your body is going to make it into the ground, too. And it's not an insubstantial amount of embalming fluid that is put into the ground through burials every year. I think there is enough to fill eight Olympic size swimming pools just in America alone every year. That's how much embalming fluid is committed to the ground in the bodies of people who are embalmed. But then it also can affect the air quality, too right. Because people can be involved and then cremated, and then all that stuff gets released into the air from the cremation process. Sure. And you're also working around it if you work in that industry. I think the EPA, the United States, and the World Health Organization list formaldehyde as a probable carcinogen and mutagen, so they take great precautions to do it safely. But you are working around very dangerous materials, and like you said, you were burning that stuff into the air, or eventually it will go into the ground. So it's not like the old wooden box caskets of old as far as how quickly they deteriorate. But eventually those things will deteriorate, too. Right, yeah. I mean, eventually the concrete will crack and it'll leach out. If it's not an immediate problem now, it's not like it's never going to be. You know what I mean? Right. Yes. And we're running out of space. Yeah, that's another one, too. So all good reasons to be cremated, I guess, to turn into cremated remains. Not cremains, right? No, not cremains. No. Remember, I think in our cremation episode, we said that was not classy. Oh, I don't remember that. So a couple of things. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Couple of things. The funeral director was named Caleb Wild, the guy who was interviewed in The Verge. I want to give a shout out to him. I also want to give a shout out to who is widely believed to have been the best embalmed body of all time, a Chinese noble woman named the Lady Die. That wasn't her name. That's her nickname. She died in 145 BCE. And you've probably seen pictures of her on the Internet, kind of on, like, an examination table with cloth striped over her breasts and genitals for modesty, but other than that, hanging out. And for being 2200 years old, she's in a ghastly state, but she's still, like, her skin is still there. It still has kind of some color to it. Her hair is still there. It's pretty amazing. So look up the lady. Die if you dare, but she's one of the best preserved bodies of all time. Amazing. And I do have one more thing. Since you looked up your person, I felt like I had to look up my person. Okay, fair enough. And from the guardian that is Jen Park mustachio oh, nice. Working as a funeral director and Embalmer, at least at the time of this riding in New Jersey. Okay. I think that's great, Chuck. We did a great job here. If you want to know more about embalming, well, ask a restorative artist and see if they look at you weird for calling them a restorative artist. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this email from Ron Swanson of Parks and Rec. Hi, guys. I've been listening to you for years and love your podcast. You always deliver interesting topics and fun ways, but I got to say, on the latest podcast about West Paul and Leo Fender, you mispronounce the city of Wakeya, Wisconsin. And, boy, we've heard it today, right? And we're going to for months to come, but this is one of those good people of Wisconsin are not having it. No, they're not. They definitely are kind of up in arms about it. What did we say? Wakeisha. And it's Waukeshaw. Yes. Well, I think we even made a nod to Kesha and said Wakesha. Oh, did we? I think so, brother. Yeah. You're like, at least I meant to, right? We heard from a lot of folks already, and it just got dropped, like, hours ago. I only email discretion because I'm a resident of Waukeshaw and even work for Waukeshaw County, and I'm used to hearing it pronounced the incorrect way a lot. It also gave me an excuse to finally email you guys to say, I'm such a big fan. Keep up the great work. That is from Ron Swanson, who works, believe it or not, at the Parks Department of Waka Shock County. Very nice. Thanks a lot, Ron. Quite a coincidence, and I'm sure Ron has to hear that all the time. Yeah. Why? Who? What's a coincidence. Ron Swanson. The name sounds very familiar. Is that Parks and Rectav show. Nick Offerman's character was Ron Swanson. No. So this guy is Ron Swanson, actually works for the world? Insane. Wow. That's amazing. Yeah, pretty great. Great. Well, great. Thanks for writing in Ron Swanson, if it is your real name, and if it is, that's pretty great. And if you want to be like Ron Swanson and be an amazing coincidence, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, My Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2008/1218575977902sysk-10-bungled-crimes.mp3 | 10 Terribly Bungled Crimes | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/10-terribly-bungled-crimes | Ten terribly bungled crimes throughout history are explored, such as drug deals gone wrong. Find out which ones are at the top of the list for Josh and Chuck in this HowStuffWorks podcast. | Ten terribly bungled crimes throughout history are explored, such as drug deals gone wrong. Find out which ones are at the top of the list for Josh and Chuck in this HowStuffWorks podcast. | Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:52:28 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2008, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=14, tm_hour=14, tm_min=52, tm_sec=28, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=227, tm_isdst=0) | 10928608 | audio/mpeg | "You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that, we mean your dog. 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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. Josh and Chuck. Here josh Clark and Charles Bryant, paris staff writers for Housetopworkscom. What up, Josh? How's it going? It's going good, man. TGIF. We record these on Friday? People might not know that. It's a great way to finish out our week, and I'm happy to be here. So, Chuck, you're telling me about a video you saw recently, something about a guy falling through the ceiling. Did you see that on YouTube? I did. I saw it on the YouTube. It's a really good one. It's a bungled crime. This guy was robbing a liquor store, and he snuck in, and they had video cameras outside that captured him going in through the roof. And then a video captured inside that showed this guy falling through the ceiling. Was there a star wipe when they went from camera? No, they should have done that, but he fell through the ceiling and was gathering up some cash or whatever he could find. And then he realized that he couldn't get out. So then it's a time lapse deal. It shows him over time, he gets a ladder, and he puts the ladder in there, and then it's still too high to get back through. And then the last shot of this video is classic. It shows this guy basically just sit down and smoke a cigarette until the cops come. That's beautiful. Yes. Chuck always has the best viral videos. He's always sending stuff out to everybody to everyone's delight. But you know, that guy sitting there with us, smoking a cigarette, resigned to his fate, waiting for the cops to show up. Reminds me of an article I wrote called ten terribly bungled crimes. Right. These are great. They really are. I think everyone likes hearing stories. Kind of like the Darwin words, except of the criminal nature. That's exactly right. There's plenty of great heists that were pulled off, right. Like Lufthansa. I know. You're a good fellow fan, right? Yeah. And that was Jimmy, right? The Lufthansa heist, which was in 1978, I think, like $5.8 million. Yeah. And I went on to the Department of labor. Department of Statistics? One of them has a website, Inflation Calculator. And I calculated it. It was $20 million in $2,008, which is nothing compared to what some guys did in 2006 in Great Britain. I think they made off with $92 million. And I don't think all of them were caught, either. That's quite a heist. So these are, like, at the high end of the spectrum. They're in, like, the ultraviolet range down in the we'll say yellows. Right. Are the ones in this article ten terribly bungled crimes? They have less, these folks? Yeah. They're just trying to commit a crime and like everyone else, and it's just not working out. Exactly. What do you suspect is the reason why people engage in these horribly bungled crimes? My personal theory is that unless you're a career criminal, unless you're one of those guys who pulls off a Lufthansa heist or a $92 million take or whatever, you're basically just lazy, which is why you're a criminal. I think most criminal acts are basically in a statement of laziness, right? Trying to get something for nothing. So, I mean, like, if you're just a burglar or whatever and you're so burglar it hasn't been caught, you're generally lazy. If you are a bundling burglar, then you're the laziest lazy. You're so lazy, right? You're so lazy you don't even commit crimes regularly. Exactly. Well, I think we should dive right in and talk about some of these incompetent people. Yeah, we'll talk about it. Chuck, what's your favorite out of these ten buckle crimes? And be forewarned, we don't have time to go over all ten, but you can read it on howstep works.com. Well, my favorite actually, I'll give you my second favorite. We'll Build Up. All right. My second favorite is this Atlanta. I'm sorry. Not Atlanta, but Rochelle Georgia. Woman man, you took mine. Yeah, this is a good one. She bought some crack cocaine, which is a drug that people smoke to feel better about themselves and their surroundings. Right. And so she stole this crack and got home, lit up, and I think she found out that it wasn't cracked. She thought it wasn't cracked. Right. Because there was nothing happening. So the smart lady we're not going to say her name? No, I don't think we can. Well, it's in the article. She called the cops to come over to her house and help her get her money back for her drug purchase. Yeah. And the police showed up, and they said, you're on your way. Thanks for the easy caller. Right? Yeah. So that was my second favorite. I like that one, too. All right, I'll go with my second favorite then, because actually, that was my first. Chuck my second favorite was the guy in Miami who was driving through an unnamed fast food chain. This is my favorite one. Awesome. You back. Yes. Okay, so this guy is driving through, it seems, late at night. I don't know if he was on anything or drunk or just maybe in a really bad mood. He ordered some food. It came to like $7.41 or something like that. And when the person told him through the little box that's how much it costs, he clearly told them that he was not going to pay more than a dollar. $75. Number one, apparently that's all he thought it was worth. Number two, coincidentally, that's all he had on him. Right. I love that this guy just thought that's all it's worth. You should only break even here on this transaction. Exactly. So that's what I'm paying. I'm not even sure if that's breaking even with the food costs these days. I think it would have been very much tilted in his favor. Don't get yourself I bet the number six is really worth about $0.75. Yeah, you're probably right. Sorry, Chuck. I get naive sometimes. So back to the story. The guy decides that he's not going to pay more than one dollars saving five. He tells them that. They tell him no, sorry. They go back to putting the burger or whatever under the heat lamp, and he drives off. But he doesn't drive very far. He drives into a parking space. This is where it gets good. And he runs up to the drive through window on foot and brandishes a weapon when they come to the window and he tells them that he wants their money, and apparently these were the baddest fast food employees around, because they turn them down again. And in retaliation, just to save some face, the guy grabs a handful of ketchup packets and runs off. Right. Peels off into the Miami night. That was my second favorite. Tied with the woman from Michelle, Georgia, who wanted the police to get her money back for the cracks. Right. That's a good one. And since you stole my favorite, I guess I'll pick out another one here. The guy in Phoenix, Arizona, on the police chase. Yes. Oh, he's good. Yeah, I can understand his pain, actually. He robbed a bank, and a lot of bank robbers in here, not very skilled bank robbers. And he was in a high speed pursuit by the cops and decided to make a little detour and get a pack of smoke. So he whips it in a convenience store, goes in and actually tries to pay for them, which is kind of cool. He robbed a bank, but he won't rob the convenience store. He tried to give him a 20, like, here's $20, just give me the package address. And the guy gave him the pack of smokes. He went and jumped back in his car, and the chase resumed as if it was in the Cohen brothers film. Yeah, the clerk apparently said he saw the guy drive off, and like, 30 seconds later, this horde of police just driving past and he figured out what was going on. Telling the absolute worst part of that story. Chuck cigarette to kill? No, even worse than that. When they pulled the guy, or when they finally caught the guy, the pack of cigarettes was unopened. Right? They hadn't even had a chance to smoke one of the cigarettes. Yeah, and chances are you would have been caught anyway. But at the very least, he could have had a last cigarette. Exactly. Because contrary to what they teach you on Oz, you can't smoke in prison. I thought they were trading. No, you're not supposed to smoke cigarettes in prison. It's against the rules. Chuck there are a couple that didn't make it in here. They bordered on the line of urban legend that I wanted to share. I couldn't get really good sources to site to back these stories up, which you kind of need when you're writing about these outlandish crimes. For one, the best source I could get was it looked like some sort of monthly newsletter of a sheriff's department in Missouri or something. And I couldn't find any other verification for it, but I had heard it elsewhere. What is that one? That a guy in Michigan supposedly goes into a convenience store robber, right? And he is really drunk. He tells them that he wants all of their money, and they say, no, he didn't have a weapon. He didn't have a note, even. He was just this loud, belligerent guy. And he told, I think, a parrot clerk, that he was going to call the cops if they didn't give him the money. It's a good one. So he calls the cops, and the cops show up and arrest him on the spot. But backfired. Yes, it backfired terribly. And I think this guy was too drunk to even resign himself to his fate and sit down and smoke a cigarette. Yeah, I think that should get a break. I agree. At the very least, not a baton to the head, but you should read all about this stuff. We haven't even cracked the surface. What do we talk about, like three, maybe at least seven more for you to go read. And ten terribly bungled crimes on how stuff works.com and stick around to find out what Star Wars character poses as a Dr. Pepper bottle on the HowStuff works site 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. Chuck, do you know the answer? I do not know. Well, I can tell you it's not Yoda. Weirdo. That was terrible, by the way. That wasn't Yoda. Oh. Well, I don't know. What was that? Chewbacca? Yeah, I just had a frog in my throat. Who was it? It was me. Okay, well, the answer is Lando Calrivian. Yeah, that's what I hear. Very ablely. Played by one Mr. Billy D. Williams. Yes. Now it's Lando. Dr. Pepper is the character's name. There is a video on how stuff works. Site the very little known video and you can find that video embedded in how the one man Star Wars trilogy works. I'm not going to go any further in explaining it. You just need to see everything for yourself. It is so awesome. Go. Type in how the one man Star Wars trilogy works on howstofworks.com you will not be disappointed. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstaffworks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast@housetofworks.com brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon Music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. 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The "Satanic Panic" of the 1980s | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-satanic-panic-of-the-1980s | In the late 1980s, the United States experienced a "Satanic Panic," leading parents to fear for the safety of their children. But were there any real examples of Satanic ritual abuse? Find out this and more in today's episode. | In the late 1980s, the United States experienced a "Satanic Panic," leading parents to fear for the safety of their children. But were there any real examples of Satanic ritual abuse? Find out this and more in today's episode. | Tue, 05 Jan 2016 14:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=5, tm_hour=14, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=5, tm_isdst=0) | 54089017 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles to be Chuck Bryant. And this is stuff you should know. Hail Satan. Man, that would have gotten you locked up a few years ago. Yeah. So I want to go ahead and say that I would like to do one on Satanism. Yeah, for sure. Religion misunderstood. It may include the Church of Satan or maybe those are two separate things. And the PMRC. Is that the Tipper core organization? Yeah. This brought back a lot of memories because we lived through the Satanic panic. For sure. And I remember it very distinctly. Can imagine a young Baptist. I was afraid, right. I can imagine. I was very scared. I remember growing up thinking, some of the big kids are sacrificing things in the woods. Yeah. That was just part of your normal everyday thing, like walking around thinking that was happening. But it turns out in retrospect, it was all almost entirely made up. Yeah. There was also and imagine every neighborhood or town had this that was off Memorial Drive. That was Satan house, where supposedly devil worshippers oh, yes. Did you have one in your town? Sure. Yeah. It's so funny to me to think about that now. They were probably just nice, normal people. It's probably some old shut ins, elderly folks who just couldn't get out of the house much. Right. They murdered anybody for a year. You ever noticed you never see anyone yeah. Or old, kind of dilapidated or run down. Yeah. Because they're old. And we want to issue a big COA here. Parents. This is got some pretty grizzly stuff in it. You probably don't want your kids listening to this even though it was all made up. Yeah. But there's some detail in some of this. I found myself even going, OOH, we have to say that. Yeah. So yeah, it's rated R, maybe even X for content. I'm thinking, Chuck. We should put together the Times America Lost Its Mind suite that includes this associative identity disorder. Deep programming cold deep program. Sure. Salem Witchcraft Trials. McCarthyism. McCarthyism, that's right. Yeah. We're going to do it one of these days. I'll actually put some of these suites together. They exist. They're mental suites. Right, okay. Thanks, man, for letting me off the hook. But I don't know if you guys have picked up on it or not, but I keep saying like, they never really existed. It wasn't actually true. It wasn't real. This whole idea that we're talking about from the roughly the mid 80s till about the mid 90s, about a ten year period, america as a whole was gripped by, again, there's no other way to put it, Satanic panic. This idea that there were cults of Satan worshippers who were very widespread, more than you would think, who were abducting, killing, raping, molesting our children, mutilating animals, and who had been doing it for a very long time in America was just now waking up to this reality. Yeah. It's your teachers, it's the cops, the mayor of your town. There's a battle between good and evil very much going on right now. Yeah. And somehow, some way, and people are still studying this, america clamped on to this idea and ran with it like it was for real. The idea that there were murderous, child molesting, satanic cults operating almost openly in the United States was a very deep and widespread belief, not just among religious people, although they were at the forefront of this, but among people who were writing academic papers and creating television shows and the news. People in the courts subscribed to this. It was what's called a moral panic. Yeah. And when I was reading this, even though I lived through it, I kept thinking, how in the world did this happen? In the 1980s? Not the 1640s. Right. Not the 1300s. Sure. And it turns out there's a lot of reasons why. And we got to go back in time a little bit to touch on the early reasons. We got to go back in time. That should be our way back. Machine Theme Song that was just too darn loud. What was? I was continuing with the Back of the Future references. What was too darn loud? Remember Hughie Lewis, when he auditioned, he said, I'm sorry, this is right. Thank you for that. And by the way, this is not just the United States. Apparently it was in the UK. Australia, Canada, South Africa. South Africa still has a cult crimes division. Yeah, I believe it. So Robert Lam wrote this article of stuff to blow your mind, and we're going to be drawing from other articles as well, which will name drop along the way, I guess. One from Slate. That was good. Boom. There's some name dropping. I've got one for you. I'll hit it up later. All right. So part of the groundwork was laid for this in ancient history, and Robert does a good job in pointing out that there is long, especially when it comes to Christian theology, long been a divide between us and them. Heaven and hell. Two sides. Good and evil. Good and evil. Light and dark. I was going to repeat that, too. What else? Yin and Yang. Yeah. Super Christian. No, actually, I think yin and Yang work together. Right, sure. Yeah. We should do one on Yin Yang. But a lot of people it's not just Christians, Chuck. There's humans subscribe to an in group, out group mentality. Yeah, absolutely. I took an anthropology class once and the professor was, like, trying to go a day without using words like us, them, we. Yeah. It's impossible. Virtually impossible. Politics. That's just the way our minds go. In group, out group. And our group is safe and good. Their group is potentially threatening and possibly bad. We don't know. Absolutely. So throughout history, this has come up again and again and again, and innocent people have been persecuted for doing nothing at all. One good example are the Jewish people. Christians accused Jews in 1475 of using blood for kidnapped Christian children in rituals, which is pretty ironic because the Romans just a few hundred years before, had accused the Christians of bathing and dining and feasting on baby's blood. US and them. Once again, baby's blood. It's a go to thing for vilifying and out group. Oh, yeah. You see baby's blood in a lot of these cases. Yeah, because that's, I guess, the hardest blood to get a hold of. Yeah. It's expensive blood and the most grizzly witchcraft. Everyone, of course. Did we do it on the sale of witch trials or just McCarthy, is it? We did one. I believe. Yeah. Well, let's say we have, and if we haven't, we will remember them being high on ergot. Yeah, we did something like that. Okay. All right, so 15th century, you had witchcraft persecutions all over Europe, innocent women being killed, drowned, burned, you name it. And of course, none of this was true in all cases. When it comes to art, they laid the groundwork in the 19th century, the French romantic artist loved painting stuff about Satan and witchcraft. And by the 1920s and the west, we had a pretty firm established groundwork for believing in things like demons and Satan and a fiery hell and people who worship this Satan. Yeah. And the weird thing is, Chuck, is there's still to this day there's this idea that at some point back in antiquity at least, there were devil worshippers who, like, killed for Satan. And all of this is born out of whole cloth, fabricated from people who are doing the religious persecution along the way and the people who are being tortured to confess into this kind of stuff. It was all just fabricated. But the fact that it was old, the fact that it was sensational, and the fact that it had been repeated so many times, it gained traction to gain this idea that it is historical fact. At some point, yes, people just take it as fact. But it's not true. No, it's not true. It's never been Satanic death cults in the United States or anywhere else. Right. These people have never existed. Now, that is not to say that people haven't killed in the name of Satan or anything like that, but there's never been any kind of Satanic death cult ever in the history of the world as far as we can ever tell. It's all made up. Right. And we want to go further by saying that these people who have killed in the name of Satan are actually an example of life imitating art. They're inspired by the fictitious myth because they're gullible and buy into it just as much as the people who think that this stuff is out there too. Like Richard Ramirez. Sure. And he was driven by Satan or something like that. There was a girl in the 80s in Georgia who supposedly killed a friend and then performed a satanic ritual. It's like this stuff did happen, but it happened as a result of the hysteria movie. It is a positive feedback. Yeah, absolutely. So now we're in the 20th century and the roots of Satanic panic can be found all throughout the entertainment industry books. There was one in 27 by Herbert Gorman called The Place Called Dagon, which was very influential and radical at the time. Complete fiction, of course. But that doesn't stop it from establishing former roots that this could be a thing. Right. That's something that kind of keeps coming up again and again. A movie or work of fiction will establish some storyline and then somebody will have read it and told a friend about it or something like that. And then it becomes a game of telephone. Along the way, somebody stops saying, I read in this work of fiction, or I saw in this movie, this happened. Instead it becomes this happened to a friend of mine's sister. Yeah. Which we'll get to urban legends is one theory, of course. Yeah. And I know we did a podcast on that. We did a couple of movies came out. One horror film called The Devil Rides Out with the great Christopher Lee because he was in every weird movie. He was great, man. He was the Tall Man in Fantasm, right? No. Who is that, then? Christopher Lee was sure. Was he? Oh, no. That's Angus somebody. You're right. Christopher Lee was the guy from The Wicker Man. And I mean, dozens and dozens of horror movies. Played Dracula a lot. Rosemary's Baby also came out that year, which was way more mainstream. Big hit. Great movie. Yeah, really good. Still very creepy movie with Mia Farrow and Casa Vettes and Charles Crowden. Weirdly, I guess. It's not weird, but I just associate him with comedy. Yeah, but he always plays a straight man, so he could go back and forth. Yes. He could straddle worlds. Yeah. So those movies were huge as far as planning and of course, other things like The Omen and The Exorcist and it was just a big time for talking about Satan and movies. Yeah, it's very popular. What's interesting is you can trace it back to initially that book, A Place Called Dagon, which inspired HP. Lovecraft. Yeah. That started at all, basically music, of course, which if we ever do one on the PMRC, we'll get to that and back masking more heavily. But satanic imagery and everything from, like, Iron Maiden to King Diamond and who else? Judas Priest. Yeah, Judas Priest. Remember they got hauled in the court for backmasking. Yeah, man. People. I know. And then you have some real life things, real life occults, like Alistair Crowley and Anton LeVay who really didn't help quell Satanic panic. Fierce, if anything, that helps set the stage. No, dressing up, like, with candles and being naked with cloaks and pentagrams isn't going to make people feel any better. No, but that's what they're doing. And like I said, we'll do one of Satanism. If you look at Satanism, it's not let's sacrifice animals and throw blood on each other. It's more like, hey, we're on this earth for a short time. Let's party and just live for ourselves. Right. More about Hedonism and being atheist than some weird dark occult. Alistair Crowley was darker and more occult. Sure. And Anton LeVay definitely dressed his brand of Satanism up in that kind of, like, dark theatrics. Sure. But the really ironic thing about both of those guys, the cult stuff, is that, again, it was life imitating art or life imitating fiction. Their ideas of the Black Mask or the witches Sabbath or wearing pentagrams, all that stuff came out of those witch persecutions from before. They were fabricated from whole cloth. So these guys were tapping into what was already part of the popular culture in the way of what people thought of Satanism and Satanic rituals. And we're just basically playing it up to the end of the year is what it was. Very much so. But to people who are scared to death of the idea that Satan is real and his worshippers are here on Earth and are ready to kill you, those guys scared those people and just proved that this is very real. See, look at those two. Anton Lavey, Alistair Crowley proved that they're a satanic cult. Exactly. And who knows what's going on behind that big, huge iron wooden door? All right, well, let's take a break here and we're going to come back and talk a little bit about the 1970s stranger danger panic, which factors in big time. All right. It's the 1970s and all of a sudden all you can hear about on the news is our stories about child pornography, rings, child murders, kidnappings, crimes involving children in general. And not just that, Chuck. Like, at that time, America was really waking up to just how widespread child abuse was. Yeah, the 1970s, which is crazy that it took that long. Yeah, it really was, because apparently it took just a couple of doctors to really stand up and be like, I'm not looking the other way again on these unexplained breaks to a child's arm. Yeah, it's the parents. You're breaking your kid's arm. The abuse that's wrong. Stop doing that. And as a result, the government stood up and was like, okay, we need some laws here. One of the things that they enacted were mandatory reporting laws. If you're a doctor and you notice signs of child abuse, you have to report it. And as a result, 1974 child abuse cases went from 60,000 nationwide to the year 2000. There were 3 million reported. Right. And it was because of public education, a lot more visibility, and then mandatory reporting laws. But it had this cumulative effect of saying, america, your children, they're in danger and you need to do something about it. And this child protection movement grew out of it. Yeah. And I also get the sense that for the late seventy s, I think the media it was unsavory to report on this kind of stuff. That's that family's business. Yeah. And just period it's like no one wants to hear about this stuff. It's awful. Right. And somehow it got transferred to probably to drive ratings. Like this is sensational is what it is. Sure. Yeah. Anytime America is scared, all you have to do is poke and prod it and you will get people to watch your TV show. That's right. And it's done very frequently. It's sad and despicable, but it happens a lot. Still does. There's another aspect to this too, Chuck, with the child protection idea. This is also a time, the 70s especially, is when women started to go back to work after they had kids, before they made work. And then they would have kids and that was it for their professional career. They would just stay home. They were mums'for the rest of their time, if they ever worked at all. Originally, right, right now in the women were having kids, going back to work and as a result they were having to leave their kids in more and more daycare. Workers care. Oh, yeah. And so this idea that their children were being abused or potentially abused really resonated with families where their kids were in daycare and weren't constantly under their supervision all the time. How well do you know the people watching your kids? How much do you trust them? Are they Satanists? And this fear took root because of that collective anxiety at the time with more and more families putting their kids in daycare. Right. Or they're just latchkey kids a little older, who I remember during the Atlanta child murders do you know where your children are? Where your children are? It was just a time of in a good way, people were more aware than ever of potential dangers for their children. So it's not like it was all bad, but when it goes into panic, we'll just see what happened. Yeah. It went from like zero to 120 in just a couple of seconds, basically. So what happened was during the Satanic panic, largely it is based around court cases where largely daycare centers and people who cared for children were now being accused of some of the craziest things you could ever imagine in your entire life. And like you said, one of the reasons this was fueled was very much because parents could relate to it. Should we go ahead and talk about a couple of these cases? Yes. The whole thing sounds crazy and weird and everything, but just innocuous, I guess, until you come across the court cases. Yes. And then you're like, oh, real people lost decades of their lives because of this, because gullible people were in position of power and locked them up. Yeah. All right, let's talk about the killers. What was the actual this is the one in Texas. Yeah, in Austin. In Austin, Texas, francis and Dan Keller ran a daycare center out of their home and were accused of the following things, among others drowning and dismembering babies in front of other children, killing animals, dogs and cats in front of children, and baby tigers. Baby tigers, that's right. Taking the kids to Mexico to be abused sexually by Mexican army soldiers and then brought back in time for their parents to pick them up. That's right. Dressing as pumpkin is my favorite. And shooting children in the arms and legs. Yup. Putting children into a pool with sharks that ate babies. Putting blood in their koolaid, forcing children to carry the bones of bodies that they had dug up. Sure. And this is just a few, and I'm getting most of this from this great Slate article. The Real Victims of Satanic Ritual Abuse S-R-A by Linda Rodriguez MC Robbie so the killers were accused of all this stuff, and here's generally what happens. Robert points out, a lot of times it starts with one perhaps credible case of child abuse, sexual or otherwise. Right. And then that snowballs. They tell the parents, maybe this is going on. So they tell the parents, hey, your child may be abused. The parents start looking. They start talking to other parents in that same daycare center. They start looking, they start asking their kids, right. And it all snowballs into these little preschoolers, basically making stuff up. And not only that, it's like, yeah, I've heard about that. Not just abuse, it's some Satanists that are, like, molesting children and murdering them. And the parents are like, what? Or that plays into something they'd already heard on TV, which will talk about the media's role in this. And like you said, it's snowballs and snowballs. And all of a sudden, once concerned parents get involved and start talking to one another panicked concerned parents. Exactly. Yeah. Then people can end up falsely accused of some pretty horrendous stuff. People stop thinking critically and you've got problems if you're on the receiving end of finger being pointed at you. Oh, yeah. Because if you're a parent and your child goes to this daycare center, another parent and the cops come and say, hey, this parents kid was sexually abused, what parent is going to be like, oh, I'm sure it's fine. No, you're fine. Quit complaining. I'm not going to check out my kids. Take a salt tablet. With the McMarton case, which happened in Southern California. Yeah. And actually ended up helping turn the tide against this. But the McMarton case and then the Keller case in Texas, both of those were bolstered, actually by bad medical testimony, by inexperienced doctors who didn't know what they were looking at, who, in their defense, a little bit at the time, no one knew. No one was looking at little kids like, three year old vaginas in describing what normal ones looked like. Right. So since you didn't know what to look for, but thought you were looking for evidence of sexual abuse, anything could conceivably look like evidence of, say, vaginal trauma or something like that. And in the case of the Keller's in particular, the little girl who was basically, I guess, accuser zero of this, was examined and found that her vagina showed some evidence of trauma later on. The doctor, after gaining decades of experience, saw that. No, it was totally normal, what I saw, and I basically gave false testimony, unwittingly. And I'm sorry. Yeah. And that was a huge thing because these people were locked away because of medical testimony. And again, the case against the McMartin's was also bolstered by bad medical advice as well. Or bad medical testimony. Yeah. So with the Keller case, patient or not patient, victim zero, christy chevy. Chevy, I don't know how you'd say it. She was three years old, didn't go to the daycare center much, and in 1991, told her mom that Dan Keller had spanked her. That's what started this whole thing. So all of a sudden, the mom says, and here's a key factor. The mom goes to her therapist. Kids therapist. Yeah, Donna David Campbell, who the little girl was seeing because she had been acting out. She's like a central figure in this whole thing, this whole snafu who the doctor? Yeah. So they go to her and say, listen, something's going on here. Can you talk to her about it? And all of a sudden, Donna David Campbell starts coaxing out all these really bizarre allegations about what's going on there. They made us take off our clothes and had a parrot Peckus and the peepee. That was the earliest accusation that formed the foundation of this whole case. The basis of the snowball. Yeah. So this is what begins the snowball. This is when the mom goes to the other parents. You hear what's going on here? Look at what's happened to my daughter. And what's really happening here is something called it was part of the recovered memory therapy movement, which was very big at the time in psychology. Basically, the idea that we have these repressed memories that of abuse many people do that they have no idea of, and it's up to the therapist to bring these out of us. Yeah. That's almost like a separate intertwine thread to this whole satanic panic thing. The satanic ritual abuse is the recovered memory therapy movement. Right. And so the satanic panic can actually trace its roots directly to a book from 1972 by a guy named Mike Warren Key. He was a Christian stand up comedian. He also was totally full of it. He wrote a book called The Satan Seller where he talked about his life as a former satanic cult priest, I believe, and drug dealer, and he was eventually exposed far too late by the Christian magazine. Cornerstone is almost entirely fraudulent and made up and just a liar, but his book just sold like wildfire through the Christian fundamentalist community and basically really established the groundwork, the idea that they were satanic cults operating in the United States, right? Yes. For the thread of the recovered memory movement that formed part of the Satanic panic. You can trace that back to a book from 1980 called, I think Michelle Remembers. Yeah, 1980. And this was by the way, I was on the cover of a Christian magazine in the Cornerstone magazine. I thought it was, but it wasn't. Guideposts. I've heard of that. That's a big time Christian magazine. Man, that was a cover. Boy, one month. Nice. What were you doing on the cover? I was at a church camp one summer, and that was just like it was like a four panel cover of just kids having fun at church camp. And I was one of them. The May 82 issue. Man, I wish I could track that thing down. That'd be great. If anyone out there has the issue of Chuck on the cover of Guidepost magazine, do you remember the year roughly? It would have been probably between 1985 and 1987. Okay, we need that, everyone. I want to post that cover. That would be awesome. So this book, Michelle Remembers, it was just like dropping a bomb in the midst of this. So everyone was transitioning from who can we start pointing at and persecuting now that we've decided the cults are okay and we're going to stop the programming them? What can we do next? And this book comes in the midst of that in 1980, and it's a book about a woman named Michelle and her therapist, Lawrence Pazder. Yeah, he wrote it, and he's he helped her uncover repressed memories of being richly satanically abused or satanic ritually abused in the 1950s in Vancouver. Yeah. He actually ended up marrying her, and he coined the term ritual abuse. It lies directly at his feet. And this thing had a lot of traction. I mean, this lady was on Oprah. She did the talk show circuit for years. The guy was used as an expert witness in court cases. He founded a whole movement in psychology. It was completely debunked. Yeah. And the whole idea is it's based on this premise that if you undergo a traumatic experience, your mind is going to try to repress that memory, but it's going to have all sorts of horrible effects in your life. You're going to be an alcoholic and a drug addict and maybe a child abuser, and you won't know why, but it's because you were abused as a child, probably by Satanists, and you covered it up, and you need to go to therapy to have it unlocked. That's right. And a lot of people went to therapy and had these memories unlocked, which only proved Pastor's point even further. Right. The problem is, when they were re examined and they were pseudo memories, through the power of suggestion and over zealous therapists, a lot of people form memories of stuff that never happened. Yeah. The problem is recovered memory therapy. There's little to no scientific evidence that it's a thing at all that people unconsciously repressed these memories. The Royal College of Psychiatrists in Britain, they have officially banned its members from using it altogether. The British Psychological Society says you can use it, but you can't draw any premature conclusions. You have to have evidence, not just, well, this is what they said in therapy. Right. So that's a repressed memory that came to the surface. Right. And the AMA I'm sorry, the APA and the United States, their official stance was issued. There is a consensus among memory researchers and clinicians that most people who were sexually abused as children remember all or part of what happened to them, although they may not fully understand or disclose it. So a competent psychotherapist is likely to acknowledge that current knowledge does not allow the definite conclusion without corroborating evidence. So, again, the general consensus is that people don't completely unconsciously forget everything that happened. Right. It's virtually impossible. Yeah. And so this idea that during therapy, while you're coaxing these memories out, you're actually forming pseudotherapy is backed up by a lot of follow up research. Pseudo memory? Pseudo memory. Sorry. It's backed up by research. There's a famous memory researcher named Elizabeth Loftus. She found that 90% of participants in the study came to believe that they had done something they hadn't when confronted with witnesses who said that they had done it. That's the real danger in all this. Sure. Is that these memories become just as valid as real memories and do damage because they aren't real. And there's actually a real life case that came out of all this. This one was crazy. Paul Ingram. Yeah. Paul Ingram was the sheriff's deputy and he was accused by his young daughter of Satanic ritually abusing her, and that he was a member of a satanic cult and that she had been raped by this cult six to 800 times. They had been involved in the murder of 25 babies, at least. And Paul Ingram said, I don't remember any of this, but you must be right, so I'm going to confess. He's a preacher too, wouldn't he? Yeah. He was a fundamentalist Christian, so he was very much primed to believe that there is a very real Satan roaming the earth. And if his daughter is telling him that he did this, what reason does she have to lie? He bought into it and took the rap for this, even though it never happened. No one ever showed that any of this stuff happened. Yeah. He served his full prison sentence of 20 years. 20 years, and maybe didn't even do it. Anything. Yeah, but. He himself said, well, I don't know, maybe I did. Yeah. And I think he fully bought into it over time. Such a weird reversal in that case. It is. Should we take another break? Maybe so. All right, we'll take another break here and talk about the media and then some other theories and cases in Satanic panic. All right, if you were alive during the 1980s and early 90s, which I was, then you remember Oprah, Geraldo, Bubbleyum, Sally, Jesse, Raphael, you name it, every single talk show. Donahue. Yeah. Doing lots and lots of shows on Satanic death cults. If it's 02:00 p.m. On Wednesday afternoon and you want to figure out how to get America to turn their TV to your station, you would have a choice of different shows to watch. Probably total covering Satanic. Yeah. On the same day, right? Yeah, everybody did Satanists. And Geraldo was the king of this. He actually had a two hour primetime special in exposing Satan's underground, and it is on YouTube, and I think about ten parts. I watched one of them where he had Ozzy on, and Ozzy is like, poor Ozzy. Ozzy looks like a pregolen girls. Dorothy is. The way he's dressed and done up, it's awesome. But he's like, I don't mean to freak anybody out with me music. He doesn't know what to make of this, but Herald is like, just sit there, we'll get back to you later. But there's this classic line in this, right? Geralda goes, they're talking about a murder that was carried out by this boy. And Heraldo says to this copy goes, detective, you're a cop, not a theologian. But let me ask you, was this boy possessed? Dead serious? And the cop was like, he hedges a little bit. He's like, I think that's a state of mind. But yeah, in that sense, yes, I think he was. Harold doesn't get what he's looking for out of the guy. So he goes to an actual theologian, a priest. He goes, yeah, you're charged with investigating these cases for the Catholic church. Do you think that this is a case of possession? He's like, Absolutely. And Harold was like, yes, that's what I was looking for. But that's the level of journalism that people were tuning into on NBC at 08:00 for 2 hours in the highest rated two hour TV documentary ever. And a third or a half of America is like, what idiot believes this is the most entertaining thing I've ever seen? The other half is scared to death and thinks that all of this is totally real. Yeah, it's easy to laugh about now, but shame on all of them. Well, Geraldo came out and said, I want to apologize for that bit of journalism that was really bad, and I'm sorry for it. But I mean, that's how he made his name, with stuff like that. Well, he was caught up in the moral panic. Everyone was doing it. Yeah, there was a book in a children's picture book called don't make me Go Back Mommy. A child's book about satanic ritual abuse. Yeah. To read to your children or if you were a therapist, to use in therapy. Yeah. Right. They also had, in many of the court cases, little anatomically correct rag dolls that they would use in court to show me where you were touched and things like this. Right. Which I'm sure that has valid use as well in sex abuse cases. For sure. It's not like completely poopooing that you have to use that. I would imagine you're training in how to do that correctly without inadvertently or advertently leading the child on into creating some sort of pseudo memory. It should be extensive, I would guess. Yeah. So the media was definitely complicit in all this. Really saw that there is a lot of ratings to be had in just fanning the flames of the satanic panic. And I think a lot of people bought into it as well. And then so too were things like the field of psychiatry and psychology very much complicit in this by allowing repressed memory therapy to really spread as much as it did without any kind of real verified research into whether it was real or not. Yes. And to defend them a little bit, robert also makes a point. They're probably well meaning, probably thinking they were doing this great work, like helping these kids. Well, sure, but with no scientific basis whatsoever. Right. And lacking a lot of critical thinking too. Yeah. And they dress as pumpkins and shot the kids in the arms and the legs. Where are the bullet wounds? How exactly did they get the kids to Mexico and then back to Austin in the average daycare day? Secret tunnels. Secret tunnels. That was an explanation. There wasn't enough critical thinking. So you can definitely take the media, psychology, psychiatry, and a lot of law enforcement investigators to task for this. But really there were a lot of hucksters and fraudsters making a lot of money as satanic experts at the time, both as like, legal representatives, expert witnesses, expert witnesses, authors going on shows like Geraldo and Sally, Jesse Raphael. And those people really should bear the brunt of this because they were just lying lying their faces off and scaring people to death and making a lot of money out of it. So we said it was widespread. There was a Redbook magazine survey in 1994 and this is at the end of the whole thing yeah, true. That found that 70% of Americans believed in satanic ritual abuse. And in 1993 this is the really scary one a survey by the American bar association center on Children and the law found that a quarter, more than a quarter of prosecutors said they handled at least one case involving satanic ritual abuse during that time period. 25%. Yes, 26% within that time, too. There was a very famous case in 1993 in West Memphis, Arkansas. The West Memphis Three, who were very famously exonerated thanks to crack documentary filmmaking on HBO's half, as a matter of fact. HBO really led the vanguard against this whole satanic panic. They released a 1995 documentary I think it was a bio pic on the McMarton trial. It wasn't a documentary. I think it was like dramatized. Oh, really? And that really started to change the tide of how academics, intellectuals and the media itself saw satanic ritual abuse, started to expose it as, this is not real. Yes. And this is after the McMarton trial had been the longest and most expensive trial in the history of the United States. That's right. $16 million spent with zero convictions because it didn't happen. Right. And that case actually was started with a woman who believed her child had been sexually abused. And the woman actually, sadly, went on to die from alcohol poisoning a couple of years later and was schizophrenic. She was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic in that time, and yet nobody stopped and said, oh, well, wait a minute, she was the center of the accusers of all this. Should we take another look at all this? It was like, no, let's spend $15 million of taxpayer money trying to prosecute these people and get zero convictions out of it. The West Memphis three were successfully prosecuted in Arkansas. I mean, railroaded. There is no other way to put this, thanks to something like a false confession by Jesse Ms. Kelly, which is mind blowing until you should go listen to our episode on false confessions, which I believe you did that one right? Either that or it was a part of another one. But yeah, we covered that topic for sure. All of that was based on the satanic panic thing as well. But you should definitely watch those again. HBO documentaries paradise Lost, One, Two and Three. Yeah. And they made the original In Paradise Lost the Child Murders of Robin Hood Hills. And I think they thought it was the same guy. Did you see Brother's Keeper, the other documentary? Yeah. About the love. That one, man, that's the same guy. Brothers Keepers will put them on the map. So I think he thought that Paradise Lost one was just the documentary and to his credit, Joe Biden burlinger. Sure. I think he really championed this case and followed it to its conclusion over the course of two more documentaries over the years. Yeah. And from what I understand, he changed his mind about the content or the crime mainstream, I think. Didn't he go there thinking he was just covering the crime and then actually saw what was going on? It was like, whoa. Yes. Because of him they were exonerated. Ultimately. Yeah. He got three people out of prison, one off death row. Yes, hats off. But again, this is part of the satanic panic scare and not that one. That kind of came at the end of it. But the McMarton movie on HBO started to change the tide, and so too did the exoneration of a woman named Margaret Kelly Michael in New Jersey in 1993. She was let out of prison after it was revealed how coercive the questioning was of the children who ended up accusing her of this. And that was true in every case. It seems like it was. It shed a lot of light onto this. And people started going like, wait, this is coercive. Let's look at these other cases. And you go back and look at the transcripts and see, like, okay, these people were basically telling the kids what they wanted to hear. They were using approval whenever the kids said something that pointed the finger. They were using disapproval when the kids refused to talk or whatever or implicate anyone. And if you go back and really listen to what the kids are saying, a lot of the times they're like, no, nothing happened. Well, and then they would follow that with, are you sure this didn't happen? Right. Are you sure this didn't happen? And you're not supposed to do that. And you're certainly not supposed to put people in prison for half of their lives. Well, and you're especially not supposed to do that to a kid who's highly suggestible and wants to please, because most kids want to please, right? And when you look at some of these allegations, it sounds like if you ask the three year old to make up what they think ritual abuse would be, here's what a kid would say. Yeah, they locked us in a closet with spiders and snakes. Yeah. They put us in a pool with sharks that ate babies and they fed us baby parts. Right? So the real deathnel of the satanic ritual abuse scare came in 1994 with a meta survey for the National Center on Child Abuse and Nicole Galact. And this study, it contacted prosecutors, regular lawyers, social workers, psychologists. I think that was it. Thousands and tens of thousands of them across the country ended up whittling it down to a sizeable sample and found all sorts of things. Specifically, what they found is there was no evidence whatsoever of any satanic cults operating anywhere in the US. Or a single crime carried out by a satanic cult. They said that they found a couple of crimes that were carried out by people allegedly in the name of satan, but that these were most likely inspired by the satanic panic itself and solo affairs. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah. But it wasn't a satanic cult by any means. No. They also found in this study that children of the ages where they would go to daycare weren't capable of forming the type of accusations against satanic ritual abuse that people have been convicted of, that clearly the adults were the ones who were channeling themselves through their children to accuse these people. The kids were saying things like, they locked us in a closet with spiders and snakes. They weren't saying like, they carved open a baby and sexually abused it and then we all drank its blood while everyone's wearing black ropes. They're not sophisticated enough to think of that kind of thing. So the study also proved that, too. And then, ironically, the same survey found plenty of evidence of religious based crimes, including murders, carried out things like exorcisms that went too far. That kind of stuff. They're like, that actually is real. And ironically, we have a lot of laws protecting people who do that, but we have laws that step up the punishment for Satanic abuse even though that doesn't exist. And that one really changed the tide of how people saw the Satanic panic. Well, yeah. And then experts later came out and said as far as the physical abuse and the doctors who testified at trial, like the type of physical abuse these kids were enduring, they were like a layman could look at a child and say, wow, what happened to this kid? But you will obviously never be able to reproduce because you're totally mangled, not this ambiguous, like, well, yeah, I think it seems like they had some marks where they could have been molested or something. It would have been so obvious because these allegations were so far out there. And of course, years later they say this. At the time, everyone was drinking the Flavor Aid. Yeah, nice. The blood drenched Flavor Aid and insult to injury, that same media. All of a sudden, the hot story became the outrage that was Satanic Panic. And what a bunch of crap that it was. Right. So now let's cover that story in full. Yeah. Even though he had a lot to do with it. Right? Yeah. So, Chuck, why did people drink the flavor aid? What was the immediate reason for the Satanic panic? Well, you found this great article. Which one? I found a lot of great articles. The three satanic ritual abuse as sociological article. Yeah. That was good. They have a few reasons as subversion ideology, as rumor panic, and as contemporary legend. And the subversion ideology, I thought was super interesting. I didn't even know what that was. I hadn't heard of it before. Yet they define it as a culturally constructed myth that gives shape and form the feelings of anxiety and uncertainty about the future that are experienced between periods of rapid, unpredictable social change. Right. So we're anxious. We're not even necessarily conscious of our anxiety, but we don't feel quite right. Everything's changing. We don't know what's going on. What exactly is making us nervous? How about that group over there? Satanists. Before it was Jews, and before that it was Christian. Exactly. We put the face to this underlying sense of dread we feel because the times are a change. Exactly. And it gives us an outlet at the expense of other people. But with the subversion ideology the hallmark characteristic of it is that the other group takes everything we hold dear and values the opposite of it. So Satanists use upside down crosses and evil is what's really good. And it's a classic example of subversion ideology. Well, and one thing I thought was really interesting in here is they contend, and I'm sure it's true, that subversion ideology actually ends up having a stabilizing effect because people then go, oh, okay, well, that's why I'm so upset and worried and anxious is because of the Satanists, not what's really going on, which is the end of the millennium, apparently. Oh, really? Yeah, whatever that was. Another explanation I ran across is that it was millennial anxiety. There is also another one. You said moral or rumor panic. Yeah, which we touched on before, but basically that is this idea that it's just buying into a rumor and like really buying into it. And the way you buy into it is because all of a sudden professional psychiatrists and psychologists and law enforcement people and people in the newspaper are talking about this stuff like it's fact. And with that, because we trust these people as being smart, intelligent people, it becomes fact in the eyes and the minds of just normal people. And that gives it veracity in and of itself. Once people start believing something as fact without any proof, a rumor panic is just set in. Well, and ironically, too, it seems like the more out there the panic is, the more readily it's believed, because the old like, who would make something like that up? Right? A three year old might being coaxed by police and her parents and her shrink. Yeah, and then the last one is an urban legend, which we talked about before, but this sociological article pointed something out that I hadn't thought of, that urban legends deal in metaphors, even though we don't think of them as metaphors. So in this case, the children that were being abused by Satanists were a metaphor for our future. Children, our future. Just go ask Whitney Houston. Yes, it's true. And then as people start to buy into it, it becomes a rumor panic and you can dress it up with some version ideology. So in the end, the McMartin's, I don't think they ever well, I think they never prosecuted. I think they were in jail here and there while the trial was going on. Yeah, but they were never prosecuted. But never successfully prosecuted. The killers were eventually exonerated, but they spent 21 years in prison. Their life was ruined. 21 years in prison, each based on these false accusations. I have to say, if you want to read one of the better articles I've ever read, it's called The Innocent and the Damned. It's from Texas Monthly. It was written in 1994 while this Satanic panic is going on. But somehow Texas Monthly took a critical eye to this stuff. It's really good article. I thought this was so fascinating because it's crazy as it seems now. And like I was saying at the very beginning, like, how in the world in the 1980s did we buy into this? Like it was salem, Massachusetts. Yeah. When you look at the reasons behind it, it was like the perfect storm coalescing. It sort of makes perfect sense when you look at everything behind it. It does, but doesn't it? Also, even if you take into account that you're using hindsight and the perspective that's afforded by that the gullibility I know that is involved in a moral panic is saddening. I bet Edward Bernays would have been all over this. Oh, yeah. Well, he Fomented those kinds of things. Yeah, it's sad. Also, if you want some yucks, go look up Law Enforcement Guide to Satanic cults on YouTube. It's a video series. Yeah. So weird. I'm glad to know that you had a satan house in your neighborhood, too. I think everybody did. Or rumors that somebody found a cat with its head cut off in a pentagram and he's like, oh, that happened. Yeah, because I'm ten. Which is okay if you're ten, but if you're 50, it's not okay. Especially if you're the local prosecutor. Yeah. And also one last thing, Chuck. It makes you wonder, what moral panics are we working on right now? Yeah, what's the brew? It's not like this is ancient history. No. If you want to know more about moral panics and specifically to satanic panic, you can type those words into the search bar athowstuffworks.com so I said, Search bars is time for listener mail. Here's what I predicted, that some people are going to write in and say, dude, we're in the middle of another moral panic right now, and it is blank vocal fry, perhaps the lady called me the fry master in the email. Did you see that? No, I didn't. She was like, Chuck always uses vocal fry. And then when I listen to my voice, I'm like, I totally do. Yeah, but I've noticed it a lot more since we did that episode. Yeah, whatever being me. Yeah, man, you should in the trendsetter. I'm going to call this guy sitting straight on these grocery store donations. Okay. Hey, guys. Long time listener. Love you guys. Never thought this would be the reason I have to reach out to you. At the end of the podcast on Tuesday, you said I don't know which podcast it was. At the end of the recent podcast, actually, I had to stop and say no, because my friends Josh and Chuck didn't just do that. He told people not to donate a dollar to buy the little hot air balloons at the grocery store because the company then uses those donations to get a tax credit. This is absolutely not true. That is not true what that guy said. He says, I have actually been working with Children's Miracle Network hospitals in Connecticut for about 20 years. And by the way, when I said the balloons, I forgot that was Children's Miracle Network specifically. I used to do a lot of work with them in La. So you weren't singleling them on video shoots? No, of course not. They're amazing. You're like it's? The shamrocks. I have a problem. I know, I just felt terrible after that. So he says, our corporate partners do not get tax credits for donations made by other customers. In fact, many of our corporate partners ring these donations through their registers, so the donation shows on the customer's receipt, allowing them to use that for their taxes. What a quick, fun fact about the Miracle Balloon that I referenced is that the first one ever sold in the entire world was at a small diner in downtown Middletown, Connecticut, in 1986. I thought he was going to say like 19. Yeah. Soon after that, the Miracle Balloon became a multinational program that raises money for more than 170 local children's hospitals across the US. And Canada. And its creator became very rich. As I mentioned, I've been doing this job for about 20 years and I have to tell that I always say I have the best job in the world. I get to work with amazing people like my coworkers and all of our partners, and I get to work for the most inspiring people, our patient families. Please help me get this corrected. The stuff you should know. Legion. Don't worry, I still love you guys. That is from Scott Organeck, the director of Children's Miracle Network hospitals. Wow. From the horse's mouth or a director. Yes. We're going to have to look into this a little further, I think. We got other people that said that's not true and other people said it is true for Children's Numerical Network. I'm sure he knows what he's talking about. Oh, yeah. But there are all kinds of things to donate, too. And he's also probably not a liar. I don't know, he seems like a regular guy, but not a satanic ritual abuser. No, not at all, in any way. Right. So we'll look into it. I certainly did not mean to disparage the no, I did it and I mean, if that's the way it works, I respect that, but I need to look into it a little more first. All right, the jury's out. Thank you very much. What's his name? David. Yes, david, you're awesome. Thank you for the work you're doing, too. If you want to get in touch with us to set us straight, we love that. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comw. You can send us an email to stuff podcast@howstepworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushinenow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetepworks.com." | ||
Do video games produce real-life violence? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/do-video-games-produce-real-life-violence | The disturbing trend of school shootings around the world has dragged violence in video games into the hot seat. But are violent video games actually more capable of producing real violence in gamers or is it just the latest victim of societal hysteria? | The disturbing trend of school shootings around the world has dragged violence in video games into the hot seat. But are violent video games actually more capable of producing real violence in gamers or is it just the latest victim of societal hysteria? | Tue, 29 May 2012 16:34:30 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=29, tm_hour=16, tm_min=34, tm_sec=30, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=150, tm_isdst=0) | 31515052 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetoporicscom. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark of Charles. Www. Chuck Bryant. You can probably hear his forehead scraping against his mic cover. Do not feel like doing it today? No, but we're going to do it anyway. I mean yes, we do not know. We do. You can't affirm with the negative. Yes, we don't. Well, there it is, Chuck, the cleverest banter we will ever have. Hi, how are you? I'm fine. Man, I'm feeling aggressive. I want to punch something. You've been playing violent video games? I've been reading about people playing violent video games. It's apparently the magic bullet. It's what really makes you aggressive. Reading about that kind of thing, about articles on that. Sure. That's what we need to be watching out for, right? Yeah. People who read like parenting sections on like HuffPo or MSNBC are like some of the most violent criminals now because of those chuck? Yes. Are you familiar with a little country called Germany? Javoll. That's Russian, isn't it? No, that's German. Yeah. I don't know if you've noticed this or not, Chuck, but over the last few weeks I've gotten increasingly dumber. Have you picked up on that? Who you have? I have. I don't really know the frequency of mispronouncing words has just gone up dramatically, which is really saying something. Getting language is wrong, as I just did. That's a big one. Yeah. Falling asleep in the middle of stuff like I'm about to right now. Okay. Chuck, you've heard of Germany in 2006, late 2006 there was something of a fairly radical proposal that came up from the representatives of Bavaria and Lower Saxony. Okay, get those two together. Things happen. Normally not in this case, but normally the representatives proposed a bill that would offer fines of I don't know how much the fines were, but the penalty of jail time up to twelve months. Okay, sure. Cruel violence on humans or human looking characters inside games. So creating a game inside games? Yes, is that what I said? Yeah. That's funny. Creating a game where there is violence, violence can happen. Or playing a video game and inflicting violence, virtual violence can get you twelve months in jail according to these guys. Wow. So you can't play Call of Duty in Germany. You would spend the rest of your life in jail if these guys had had their rather radical resolution passed by? No, it felt flat on its face, but the whole thing was in reaction to the prior month. The spree killing, or almost, I guess spree maiming by Sebastian Boss, who was 18. He was the worst school shooter in Germany he ever had and he wounded 37 people. Didn't kill anybody really, but he did kill himself. You remember it? Yeah, he played Counterstrike a lot. I find it interesting that he shot 37 people and didn't kill anyone. I'll bet he found that something other than interesting. Did he try to just wound? No. I know that's probably a dumb question. No, he went on a rampage and he just missed. Okay. Anyway, thank God. But he played a lot of counterstrike. That was his big thing. Nowadays, you have grown up since the you've been paying attention, so you know that anytime there's a spree shooting at a school by a teenager, one of the first things that comes out is what their violent video game of choice was. Right. And legislation like this out of Germany, it is radical. Like putting someone in jail for acts of virtual violence. But it's getting to be par for the course. Which leads us to a very big question, though. Before you start throwing people in jail for playing video games or for creating video games, we have to prove whether or not video games, especially violent ones, caused real life violence. And as I learned after reading this article, the jury is very much still out on that. Yeah. Although both sides have very persuasive arguments, and I think we should explore both. Yeah. I'm just going to go ahead and say it's probably hard to prove anything when it comes to this. Why? Well, because of all the reasons we're going to mention. It's a very complicated issue. Yeah. Whether or not that was the thing that pushed someone over the edge or whether or not it was an inspiration or whether or not it had nothing to do with it, it's tough to prove something like that. Right. And there's a lot of people who are like, yes, school shooters are horrifying. They're terrifying. The idea that your kid could go to school and get shot and killed by a classmate on a rampage, that would terrify anybody. So, yeah, of course we want to get to the root of it. But a lot of people are saying, don't stop at video games. Right. Even the APA, the American Psychological Association, who are very much in favor of the idea that violent video games cause real life violence, say, don't just stop at video games. Like, that's one part of a larger whole. Right. And we've not figured it out because video games, you just lay that at the feet of one thing and go back to work. Sure. Let your kids go back to playing video games. Yes. I got a quote. I was going to hang on to this. I might as well read it, though. There's a book written called grand Theft childhood the surprising Truth about Violent Video games and what Parents Can do. And this is by Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olsen, and they are co directors of the Harvard medical school center for mental Health and Media. They wrote this book, and they have a guy that they interviewed, a psychologist who specializes in media research called Guy Cumberbatch. Wow, sounds like a Simpsons character. Yeah, he's real though. And he says, and I'm going to quote the real puzzle is that anyone looking at the research evidence in this field could draw any conclusions about the pattern, let alone argue with such confidence and even passion that demonstrates the harm and violence on television, in film and in video games. While test of statistical significance are a vital tool of the social sciences, they seem to have been more often used in this field as instruments of torture on the data until it confesses something which could justify publication in a scientific journal. So basically, he's in a very verbose way, kind of what you're saying is that it's easy to scapegoat something like a video game by looking at anecdotal research. It is very easy. And also, I think, part of the reason why school shooters, not just because they're so sensational, they are sure. Also because most, if not all of them did play violent video games, but also because the school shooting rampage so closely mirrors video game action, even to the casual observer, that I think it's something that's really been zeroed in on. Well, the army uses it for training. It's bound to put you in that headspace, which makes a lot of sense. Sure. That's an argument on the side of people who say that, yes, violent video games create real life violence. Right. So let's explore that. Let's look at the side that says yes, obviously, Dingbat, if you play violent video games, you're going to be violent. And this isn't new, by the way. We should point out that before video games, it was late at the feet of TV. Well, comic books before that, even. Yes, before that. And I wondered, though, if you go back far enough, the media is a fairly recent thing, at least as far as entertainment media. So say the advent of big radio in like the 20, say, what did anybody blame violence on before that? Probably the real reason, which is that some people are sociopaths. Well, I think you make an excellent point, Chuck. What you're saying, I think I tend to agree with. Is that's possible in everybody? Sure. And then probably more possible in some of us than others. So it's just a convergence of large public schools where you have a lot of people who you don't like sitting like ducks in one place and converging with easy access to guns? Yeah. Is that all the school shooter is? It's a pretty complicated issue. Okay, so go ahead. Sorry about that. That's all right. I guess we can cite a couple of more cases that in the media at least, have placed the blame on video games. In 2006 in Alabama, devin Moore famously was arrested for car theft, suspicion. He's 18. Brought him into the station to book him, and he kind of went nuts. He attacked a cop, stole his gun, shot him, shot another cop, went down the hall, shot a 911 dispatch in the head, then grabbed the squad car keys and took off in the squad car. That's crazy. And what game did he play? He played Grand Theft Auto, which is pretty much how that game goes down. And reportedly after he was arrested, he even said, quote, life is a video game. Everybody's got to die sometime. And he was convicted and sentenced to death, and I could not find out if he's still on death row or if he was put to death. It's so frustrating when you can't find out something that should be so easy to find out. Did you try the Alabama Department of Corrections website? No. I mean, I was going to call somebody, but I just ran out of time. Yes. So at any rate, he was convicted and appealed, and I think that appeal was denied. But when this happens, a lot of times there are lawsuits filed. In the case of Columbine, one of the wife of a teacher there sued she sued Sony and Nintendo and Time Warner and Palm Pictures because Cleveland and Harris had also watched The Basketball Diaries. Yeah, you remember that part? Yeah. But what's strange is that movie came out in the late 90s, but The Basketball Diaries were written by Jim Carroll in, like, the 70s, maybe in the people were thinking about doing that back then, obviously. Well, and also wonder and boy, we're going to be all over the place here, but also wonder about what constitutes, as far as a lawsuit goes, a negative correlation. Like, what if someone made a movie about the Columbine massacre, right, and some kid watched that and then later on did his own thing, even if that movie decries it and shows the repercussions, which is one of the big points that a lot of parents make is these video games don't show the repercussions of these actions. It's all just fantasy. Right. So where do you draw the line there as far as the lawsuit goes? Well, that's also a really good question. Like, where do you draw the line as far as legislation goes? Because what we're talking about here basically is, say, ultimately the idea that if video games cause violence in just some people banning them altogether, it's the same thing like we did with booze and Prohibition. Sure, there are some alcoholics who couldn't help themselves, so the rest of us who weren't alcoholics could just give it up and let's just do that. Right, but are you going to ban movies and TV and comic books and everywhere else that has any kind of violence portrayed? I don't think so. I don't think that's ever going to be able to happen. And, no, I think ultimately, if you follow that argument to its logical conclusion, no, you come to where you and I are sitting, which is there's some crazy people out there and some are kids. Right. All right. So should we talk about a little bit of the studies and the science behind it. Yeah. So in the camp where they think that, yes, violent video games cause violence, their most persuasive argument is that, yes, TV has been linked to aggressive behavior in kids. Right. TV violence has been through other studies. They've been doing this for years and years and years. Video games are relatively new, but by extension, video games should be even more prone to generating violence in the player because playing video games is more immersive than watching television. You're interacting. Right. Also, though, they're based on the reward system of learning. Right. Classical conditioning. Exactly. So if I shoot you and behind you is like, this magic donut, and I get another life once I grab the magic donut right. I'm going to shoot you, and I'm going to learn the next time that I need to shoot you again, I get that magic donut. Last time, I got the reward. That's a pretty broad basic example. But the whole point of video games is based on, like you said, classical conditioning. They should have a podcaster game where it's like, us and Mark Marin and Iraqlass and Jesse Thorn, and we're all, like, out there trying to kill each other. All right. I think that would do us all a little good. Judge John Hodgman, like, presides over the whole thing. I don't know, though. Adam Carol going down. Yes. Who would you take on first? Probably you. It'd be like gold, and I just get trapped in the corner, and you just keep shooting me and waiting for me to come back. It's one of those things where we're supposed to be teammates and, like, you can kill your own guy sometimes in Call of Duty. Right. I think a lot of those games where you can partner up, you can still shoot your partner. It used to not be the case. So it would just, like, fire by you or something? Yeah, you just sit there and move a little bit, but nothing happened to you. It didn't have any effect on your life. Oh, good stuff. So those are two big ones. They're immersive, and they use classical conditioning. What else? Why else would a video game cause violence, be more likely to cause violence than just plain old TV? Well, they did one study where they actually hooked kids up to it. Didn't actually say what they just said they scanned the brain. So I'm guessing an MRI. MRI in 2006 at Indiana University. And they had them play two games need for Speed, Underground and Medal of Honor Colon. Frontline one is nonviolent. Need for speed, I guess. And Medal of Honor is violent. First person shooters we're talking about, if you don't know what that is, crawl out from under a rock. But it's the point of view of the person walking around shooting people is you, the gamer. Yes. Okay. And the brain scans showed that the kids who played the violent game showed increased activity in the amygdala, which stimulates emotion. Decreased activity in the prefrontal cortex or lobe, regulates inhibition and self control. Right. You realize what you just described, right? A zombie. A zombie. I think you're going to say that, but my question is, wouldn't it be more cause of concern if there was, like, zero emotion going on? If these kids are playing these violent games, the amygdala shut down. Yeah. That would freak me out. It's a really good point, because the whole idea behind video games is to trick the brain into thinking that it's actually experiencing the gameplay. Right. I don't play much anymore, but when I play Call of Duty, I would wake it into it and my heart would increase. Sure. And if someone snuck up behind me and it was like, it puts you there. But that's, to me, like, the fun of those games. Well, yeah, it's the point of them. Right. So your fight or flight response is aroused, right? Yes. Your heart rate is up, like you said, you're perspiring, you're jumping. But how does that translate to video games? And I guess an even bigger question is how long does that state of arousal last? Like, if it did translate to violence? Sure. Really, the only person who's in trouble is your big brother or your best friend who you're playing next to, who just killed you, and you lean over and you punch him. I've done that before. Well, that happens. Actually. I saw a bunch of cases where and it wasn't just violent video games. It was like people playing John Madden. Like, one guy, Wisconsin, I think, hit his buddy with a lead pipe. And then this one guy in England attacked a kid who killed them in Call of Duty. But they're like, these people are crazy and competitive, and they might do the same thing playing Monopoly. So maybe it's not violent, it's competitive. Video games make you violent. Maybe that's what we should be looking at. Maybe. So let's see what else? Chuck? Oh, I've got one for you. All right. These studies are just so awesome. So especially after Calling By, I get the impression that there was just a rash of studies like this. Oh, sure. And then now the trend is to go back and do meta analysis of these studies. But one study found that it took kids and scored them with basically inherent hostility. Right. And what it found was that kids with the lowest hostility score, they were just the nicest little kids. When they played violent video games, they were ten times more likely to get in a physical fight right. Than the kids with the lowest hostility scores who didn't play violent video games. So it was like they were 38%, 38% likelihood to get in a fight, compared to, like, four. So almost ten times. Right, right. And then even crazier, according to this study, the kids with the lowest hostility score who played violent video games were more likely to get in a fight than the kids with the highest hostility scores who didn't play violent video games at all. So it would make nice kids bad and bad kids who didn't play it. They would maintain that level or whatever. Yeah, the nice kids who played them were worse than the bad kids, worse than the worst bad kids. Interesting. Yeah. So studies like these are coming out and it's making it more and more clear like, yes, all right, video games do cause violence, but there's a lot of ground left to cover before that link can be made, if it's ever made. And there's a lot of people trying to put the reins on this, especially ones who are saying, well, you're looking you're barking up the wrong tree. Maybe so, maybe you're even right. But this isn't it. This isn't the one thing that's the problem. So what are some of the criticisms of this science, I guess explaining or showing a link between the two? Well, one is that it's a lot of anecdotal stories. The same guy, Cumberbatch says the strong link between video games, violence and real world violence in the conclusion that it leads to social isolation, poor interpersonal skills are drawn from bad and or irrelevant research, muddleheaded thinking and unfounded simplistic news reports. That's a big problem too. For instance, in the Malvo DC sniper case, Lee Malvau, remember that his attorney actually argued that he trained, quote, unquote himself to kill by playing Halo on Xbox. He was even quoted as saying he's trained and desensitized with video games to shoot human forms over and over. In actuality, Lee Malvo trained by shooting paper plates with human faces drawn on them with real guns by what's his face. Who's the guy? I can't remember his name, but yeah, his sensei. And in Halo you shoot this weird looking space gun at like giant bugs. Right. So this was even brought up in a court of law that like Halo led him to be a DC sniper. So it's definitely a lot of sensationalism going on. And another thing they point out is that video game popularity and youth violence has been going in the opposite direction statistically since it reached a peak. Violent juvenile crime reached a peak in 1993, has been in decline ever since. Between 94 and 2001, arrest for murder, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault fell 44% and had the lowest juvenile arrest rate for violent crime since the early 80s. That seems to fly in the face of the research at least. And the reason also people keep picking on kids is not just because they're school shooters, but one of the assumptions that people trying to prove that, yes, violent video games called violence is that if you are a child you still have a developing brain, so you're going to be more susceptible to that kind of classical conditioning that a violent video game provides. The thing is, like, 91%, as of, I think, 2011 survey, 91% of kids played video games. Wow. The average is about 9 hours a week. And then a great many of those video games are violent. Right. So with numbers like that, it makes you wonder why there aren't more school shooters, why they make this point in this book not a lot more common. Yeah. Why isn't the world, like, millions of people play these games? Why isn't it just violent, chaotic world out there? Right. Although some might say it is. So, again, though, we should kind of bring it back a little bit. The school shooters are just like the most sensational thing to point to. Sure. They're also worried that kids are punching each other more or knifeing each other more. And the idea behind that is that there's this thing called script theory, where it's an extension of this thing called affect theory, right. Where basically, like, something happens to us, we have an emotional reaction to something, and it triggers a response, a prescribed response. Right. And it's fairly specific to the human being, but it's also kind of predictable well, over time, because, remember, the brain is very lazy and likes to chunk things and do things as efficiently as possible. The same thing happens whenever we come across the same emotional stimulus. Right. Okay. Where we build a script. Okay. So if somebody comes up to us and we have been trained to where we've produced a script through violent video games, where if somebody's coming at us, we have to shoot it. The idea behind script, they're very crudely put, is that we would use violence. It would trigger a violent reaction because our script for dealing with this has been built and compiled through violence. Right. Through violent video games. Interesting. It is interesting. It's also totally unproven. It's the problem. So, like, number one, despite all the studies, there's not a lot of scientific data out there that shows, yes, violent video games cause violence. Well, they'll study like, 30 kids. That's a big problem. Another one is like, how do you quantify violence in video games? How do you say when you're giving people when you're testing pharmaceuticals, you can get it down to the milligram or microgram or whatever? How do you do that with exposure to violence in a video game? Well, yeah, because there's all kinds of levels of violence, from Mario Whacking, animals on the head with mallets. And that's one of the things that this book points out, is that they're kind of getting it wrong with the ratings. The ESRB is who rates video games ranging from early childhood rating, which is the sweetest of all ratings, all the way to mature and adults only. And like I said, one of the problems is people complain that there are no repercussions in video games, but they say they got it backwards and that in the lighter rated games, the dead bodies just disappear instead of showing, like, this is a dead body or the blood is like super animated and not realistic. And it's basically saying, no, these lighter rated games aren't showing negative consequences. Games that do show that are more likely to be rated M or A, which is adults only. Yes. Which is interesting, I thought. And also another point is that the average gamer these days apparently is 30. Yeah. But he's also probably not out there committing acts of violence either. Right. I will say when I played, like, a lot of Call of Duty or what was the driving one again? Grand Theft Auto. Grand Theft Auto. That was the same when I played Tetris, I had like, Tetris dreams. It gets into your dreams and it gets into your craw. And when I'm driving around, you have those thoughts of like, bump the sky off the road and make this move. It's in your head, but you don't do it. Right. People have thoughts all the time but that Clebold and Harris were suicidal depressed sociopaths. Right. You know, they weren't like just great kids who played college or whatever game they accuse them of playing and just decide to shoot up their school. But that's not to say it doesn't have some impact. That's why it's such a tough issue. Yeah, it's definitely not there's not one I don't think there's one side that's ever going to be proven right. I think it's going to be like, yes, okay, this does have this effect. It does have this impact on some people more than others because from the small amount of games that I've played, I know what it's like. Yeah. You get aroused, you get excited, fight or flight. And then you start thinking about ways to play it better when you're not playing it. So, yeah, it definitely does. It doesn't have just an immediate effect. It definitely extends to the rest of your life. But there is that line, and that's what we need to explore, in my opinion, is where that line is and how does that differ from some people to another? And how do you take people who have the line a lot closer than it should be and extend it further out? You, my friend, have hit on it. I think that's basically the summary of this book is we're asking the wrong questions and looking for the wrong causes. Basically. I'm going to quote again. Instead of looking for a simple direct relationship in all children, we should be asking ourselves, how might we identify those children who are at the greatest risk for being influenced by everything from movies to the freaking news that they watch on TV every night and then put them in jail prematurely. I just said, Freaking, man, can we do that now? I'm pretty hopped up. Yeah, I think you hit on it. These games aren't going away. Violent movies aren't going away. The History Channel, which shows more violence than anything on television isn't going away, right? None of these things are going anywhere. So maybe it's up to the parents to get involved a little more. Yeah, but, like, you have to stop watching TV to do something like that. You got anything else right now? I don't think so. Well, it's a tough issue. I get it. It is. This is definitely not one we're just going to explain everything, but I feel like we explain both sides, right? I think so. The people on the pro side saying, hey, here's all the science. The people on the con side saying, hey, you got to do a little better, right? Yeah. We'll see where we are in 2015. We'll come back here. Okay. If you want to learn more about this, you can type violent video games in the search bar@houseupworks.com. It will bring up this really good article. And I said search bar, which means it's time for the listener mate. Josh is going to call this gas chromatography mass spectrometer. Explained. Of course. Remember I brought that up in the body odor thing, and I didn't have time to look it up. Luckily, we have smart listeners. Guys, I just heard the body odor podcast. Nicely done, as always. In the show, you mentioned that you didn't have time to look up gas chromatography mass spectrometer. Is there not an abbreviation for that? You call it GCMS. Okay, this is exactly the type of situation I'd be glad to help with. And he's basically offering his services in the future, too, like, wherever. Like I don't have time. He said, Just pick up the phone. I'll explain it to you. Who is this guy? He's an associate professor of physics at Thomas Moore College in Kentucky. That's awesome. And he says in a single sentence, a gas chromatography mass spectrometer is essentially a machine for identifying the composition of molecules in a sample, which you clearly presume. In a brief essence, he says this, it has two parts, the gas chromatograph, which essentially breaks a sample into its component molecules and emits them on a delay based on their chemical properties, and then the mass spectrometer, which essentially finds the mass of the molecule. The combination of these processes identifies the molecular makeup, the amount of each type of molecule of the sample. And then he had a longer version, too, which I read, but I'm not reading now. He said, this took me about ten or 15 minutes to type out. Guys, I hope it encourages you to ask if you need a short overview of some minor detail. My goal in this offer is to maximize the number of times kids are exposed to the idea that the world around me is understandable, and he would be happy to donate his time to help us out in the future. This guy would make a great mascot. That's right. That is Joe Christensen of Thomas Moore College. The Fighting Jeez. I don't know. If they have it. Sounds like a smart school. I don't know if they have sports. Thomas Moore. He wasn't the social contract. Crestview Hills, Kentucky. Yeah, that's not where the social contract came from. But it's upheld there every day. That's right. Thank you very much, Professor Christensen, let's say. Sure. Thanks, professor. And I think we will take you up on your offer at some point. Let's see if you ever want to explain something to us. We're always in the market for that kind of thing. Specifically, I would love it if somebody can explain to me what's so great about Prague Rock, because I don't get it. You can tweet to us at syscast. You can go on to Facebook with a stupid timeline at facebook. Comstuffystoe and you can email us at stuffpodcast@discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you?" | ||
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2008/1227126173022hsw-sysk-einsteins-brain.mp3 | How Albert Einstein's Brain Worked | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-albert-einsteins-brain-worked | Albert Einstein is one of the world's most recognizable geniuses. But was his brain any different from that of an average person? Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about Thomas Harvey, the man who set out to decipher Einstein's brain. | Albert Einstein is one of the world's most recognizable geniuses. But was his brain any different from that of an average person? Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about Thomas Harvey, the man who set out to decipher Einstein's brain. | Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2008, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=25, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=330, tm_isdst=0) | 17844435 | 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've got a big brain. Chuck head has a big brain. Mine is smaller than yours. That's true. You know who had an average sized brain? I do. Who? Albert Einstein. Fantastic. So we've got a segway, right? Let's talk about Einstein's brain. Chuck that's a good idea. We'll start, apparently. All right, you're ready? Yeah. Einstein was very well aware of his renown. Right. He may have been a hyper intelligent person, but I don't think he had a big head. But he was aware of the kind of cult of personality that the world loves. Right. He was aware of his own fame. Yeah. And he didn't want to end up just venerated saint of mathematics. So he asked that his body be cremated upon his death in 1955. Yeah. April 18, 1955. The Day the Earth Stood Still. And he said specifically he didn't want people to come worship at his bones. Yeah, I was kind of taking it. I thought that sounded a little cocky, but a little but again, yeah, I don't think he was a very cocky fellow. I don't want people to worship my bones either, so something we have in common. I could live with that, actually. That'd be fine. You want people to worship your bones? Kind of, yeah. So Einstein's wish was 98% fulfilled, if we're speaking weight wise, because the brain actually makes up about 2% of the body weight on average. So it sounds to me like you're saying he's buried without his brain. Yes, he was my friend. Did you know that? I did. Of course you did. So, Chuck, this guy who was, as far as I could tell, a pretty standard pathologist working at Princeton University's Hospital, was charged with doing the autopsy on Einstein. And I guess he was kind of struck with this moment of inspiration where he realized that he was holding Einstein's brain. Right. And that surely this brain had some sort of secrets to some value to be part. Yes. There had to be something here. This guy I mean, Einstein was just as big as it gets. So many other physicists had come before him and were just had gotten all of their genius out very early on. Newton did it, and Einstein did it to a certain extent, but he also did continue working longer than was average. Right. And this guy just wanted to know he just couldn't bring himself to cremating the brain of the smartest man of the 20th century. I might have been with him there. Yeah. Thomas. Thomas Harvey. Thomas Harvey stole Einstein's brain. No one can sue us for that because it really happened. Oh, it did. So Harvey basically takes Einstein's brain, I imagine, throws it in some formaldehyde in a jar, and holds it hostage until he gets permission from one of Einstein's sons. To study it. Right. I saw a head in a bucket once. Tell me about it. Did you ever say that story? Little sidebar? Yeah. When I was working in the film industry in Los Angeles, and I was doing some work at I guess I won't mention the hospital. They might not frown upon hearing this broadcast, but a hospital in La. We were doing a job there, and one of the researchers pulled me aside and said, hey, man, you want to see a head in a bucket? And I said, yeah, I'd love to see a head in a bucket. No doubt. Took me in a room, brought out a bucket, and it had this elderly man's head floating in it. And it wasn't in a jet glass jar. It was an open bucket with no lid. And I looked down into it to his head. Was he looking up at you? No, he wasn't. That is the most amazing thing that anyone I know has ever done. I just wanted to get that out there. That is very surreal. Yeah, I'll bet it was. And slightly it doesn't haunt me, but I can picture it in my mind's eye still. And that was probably five years ago. Easy. How's he looking, milky eyes? He looks like an old guy without a body in a bucket. Wow. Okay. Sorry for that sidebar surprise. That was everybody else appropriate. I had no idea. Okay, well, Einstein's brain doesn't seem nearly as cool. Right? Well, I guess we'll just talk about it anyway, right? Yeah, let's do so Harvey's got Einstein's brain in a glass jar, and now he's secured permission to study it. So he cuts it into, like, 240 pieces, as far as I understand. Yeah, 240. And he encased them all. He preserves them in. Sillydon, right? Well, he weighed it first. He did a few measurements just to make sure. Photographed you're, right? Yeah, and heavily photographed just to make sure that there was nothing that stood out and nothing did. It weighed about the same in the other brain. He also, I think, did a study first of the brain cells. They were average size. There was an average amount of them. By all rights, Einstein's brain looked pretty average. Exactly. But Harvey quickly became obsessed with the notion that Einstein's brain was not average, that there was something fundamentally different about it that we could point to. And who knows? Maybe if we can figure out how Einstein's brain was different, we can start bombing geniuses or something like that. So Harvey cuts the thing into pieces after he's cataloged it and documented it, and he starts sending it to researchers whose work he finds interesting. These are people around the world. Each one, I imagine, was contacted first. I don't think they just got a piece of Einstein's brain in the mail, and they're like, what the hell is this? Right. So he contacted them and said, I think your work is interesting. I've got Einstein's brain. I want to send you some pieces to study and compare it using the view of your work. Yes. I bet he didn't get a lot of people that declined that opportunity. No, I wouldn't think so. I bet he got 100% rating. Yeah. So he's expecting very quickly that Einstein's brain is going to give up its secrets, and the waiting game began. It didn't. Still to this day. I'm going to go ahead and cut to the end, the big finish. We're still not entirely certain how Einstein's brain works. Right. But yeah, we'll get to that in a minute. Harvey under this obsession, basically turns into something of a weirdo, actually, kind of the Howard Hughes of pathology of brain savers. Yeah. Every once in a while, a reporter would look him up because he basically just disappeared with the brain. Right. And one guy found him living in Kansas, and the brain was in a jar in an old cider box behind a beer cooler. This guy Harvey is probably taking orders from his cats, and Einstein's brain is just sitting there chilling, waiting to be studied again. Finally, 30 years after Einstein's brain is stolen by Harvey, he finds out about the work of this woman named Doctor Marion Diamond. You want to talk about Dr. Diamond, Chuck? Right. Dr. Diamond worked at Cal Berkeley and studied the plasticity of rats brains. And she's always the rats. It is. It feels really bad for the rats. I don't she found out that rats that had more enriching environments had more robust brains, specifically the glial. G-L-I-A-L is how I'm pronouncing it. Glial cells. Yes. Is that correct? Yes, you're right. No neurosurgeon. I think it's glial. Yeah, we'll call it glial cells. Okay. So they had more glial cells in relation to their other neurons, and so she thought, let me take a look at Einstein's brain and see if the same thing holds. Now, glial cells are basically they clean up these potassium ions. Potassium is actually discharged by a neuron when it fires. Right. So after time, the potassium kind of builds up. It's a waste product. And if it builds up enough and neuron can't fire properly, it shuts down. Right. If you have enough glial cells to keep the neurons clean, then they should be able to fire properly. And by logic, the more glial cells you have, the more the smarter you should be, because the cleaner your neurons are. Exactly. And this is actually what she found, was that Einstein had a higher ratio of gliocells to other neurons, and she basically hypothesized that this means that he had more rapidly firing neurons than other people. However yeah, not quite answered, because she wasn't exactly comparing against, like, brains. Einstein was older than the other brains, and glial cells divide over the course of your lifetime. Einstein was, what, 76. 76 when he died. And she was comparing the average age of the brain that she was comparing Einstein's brain to? 64. Right. So that right there is terrible methodology. That's not the end of it. That's not the end of it. So, in theory, he would have more glial cells just because he's twelve years older than these other brains. And she didn't take into account IQ score either. Well, she didn't even know whose brains these were, as far as I know. Exactly. So she had no idea what kind of brain intelligence level that she was comparing Einstein to. And even worse than that, apparently, there's 28 ways to measure Glial cells, and she threw out any measurement that didn't support the hypothesis. Right. So I don't understand how this woman had funding. Yeah, she was at UC Berkeley, too. I mean, she wasn't like the Mexico City Upstairs Medical Clinic. This is like what I did in my 7th grade science fair project. If the results set glial cells well, no, but if the study, if whatever I was doing, if the results didn't match up, I just didn't use them. Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah. That's 7th grade science fair project stuff. Yeah. So basically throw that out of the wall. Yes. This comes out, and Harvey, I imagine, is a little dismayed by this, and it probably ruined Dr. Diamond's career. But Harvey was a very patient, obsessed man, as we've said, and he continued to wait. And then finally, about ten years after the diamond thing and this is Hullabaloo, I mean, this is huge. Like it was touted in newspapers all over the place, news media, everybody was like, we got Einstein's brain figured out. And then it came out like her methodology wasn't holding up. So there's a real high, and then there's an equal low, and then about ten years after that, another woman's work. This woman's name was Dr. Sandra Whittleson. Britt Anderson. No. Brit Anderson turned Harvey onto Woodleson's work. Okay. I'm sorry, Brit Anderson. Just for the sake of time, I cut you out of the podcast. I wanted to mention it. Yeah. There's a guy named Brit Anderson at University of Alabama, right? Yeah. You go ahead with Britt Anderson. Right, well, Britt was studying the size of men and women's brains and the differences and yeah, you're right. He turned him on to this other doctor right. Whose name was Doctor Sandra Whittleson. She's at McMaster's University in Ontario, a fair neighbor to the north. And she basically had a bunch of brains. Yeah, a nice collection of, like, brains. And she had data on all of them. She knew whether the people were insane. She knew what their IQs were. Yes, she had a lot of good data and some good brains to study, to compare Einstein's brain, too. And actually, she had quite a breakthrough. She did. There's this thing called the Sylvian Fisher, and it separates your parietal lobe. Right. Yeah. Your parietal lobe is responsible for mathematical skills, spatial reasoning, three dimensional visualization. All of which would come in handy for a guy like Einstein. Yeah. He was pretty much the master of all those. So if the sylvan fisher is absent or not pronounced as Dr. Whittleson found Einstein's was, the parietal lobe would be bigger. You could pack more brain cells in there. Right. And his was 15% wider than ever. My. Yeah. Assuming we have average price. Sure. Exactly. Which is assuming a lot because neither of us have been autopsies yet. So basically what Doctor Wilson said was, okay, we now know that Einstein had a 15% wider parietal load than the average person. That could account for we don't know. Right. Basically what she's done is set a benchmark where brain research is going to have to catch up to to either prove or disprove, because we don't have the technology to say or we don't have a fundamental understanding of the brain yet to say whether that's what it was or not. But it's nice to know what's out there. Yes, exactly. There was a difference, a physical difference. Yeah, there definitely was. Dr. Whittleson basically said, whenever you guys can catch up to it, here's what's different about Einstein's brain. Right. Disprove. But our esteemed colleague Molly Edmunds brought up what I thought was a very interesting point, and that is that is it dangerous to study things like physiological abnormalities. If you really look at Einstein's brain, the parietal lobe, especially with a lack of understanding of what it's exactly doing, then one could make the argument that a physician would have told Einstein's mother that her son's brain was damaged right. Which could have limited him for the rest of his life. He may never have become a mathematician. She may not even put him in school. Exactly. Why bother? So I thought that was a really interesting point and one worth discussing. Right. Because well, Einstein also had a delayed speech development and so coupled with that apparent might have been concerned. Yes. Apparently, he used to write his address down on his arm every day. Right. So when he inevitably get lost, he just kind of look and asked somebody if they could take him there. Right. He was a hell of a guy. Yeah. And just a nice little bow on the end of this gift to our listeners. Harvey actually returned the brain before he died to Princeton Hospital, which I thought he died in 2007 at the age of 94. And he returned the brain back to Princeton. He did. He actually kind of bequeathed it to the resident pathologist at Princeton University Hospital right. Who basically now is shackled with this thing to it around an extra little aside, which I thought was pretty interesting. A guy named Michael Paternity wrote a book called Driving With Mr. Albert. Michael Paternity? That's the way I took it. That's a great name. Yeah. He wrote a book called Driving with Mr. Albert, I believe, and it is about driving on one of the many cross country trips that Harvey took with Einstein's brain. Yeah, apparently he did it a lot. Sounds like a movie in the works. I think so, too. It's going to beat Tuesday with Maury, I can tell you. Yeah, so stick around, because it is correction time, and today we have a correction. For me, this is not Chuck. Actually, Chuck argued against what I said. I was right for a change. Chuck is supported by yet another person who mistakenly thinks my first name is Brian. My name is Josh. Chuck's last name is Bryant. But thank you anyway, misha Bailey pointed out in a podcast well, we'll play the clip. It's from how China's pollution sniffers work. Listen to this. Have you ever eaten jellybelly jelly beans? I'm not a jelly bean guy. These things are not jelly beans. All right. Anyway, if you get a bag of this I know what you mean. On the back, it says two blueberry plus one. I think toasted marshmallow creates the flavor of a blueberry muffin, right? So there's different recipes. You can come up with your own. It's very fun. Are these the ones that are kind of nasty, too? Like they have booger and no booger? I think you're confusing Harry Potter with reality again. As it turns out, Chuck, I was wrong. Right? Jelly Belly does indeed make a booger flavored jelly bean. I knew I hadn't imagined that in some fantasy that I had. So basically, there's a special edition called BeanBoozled and Jelly Belly has gone to the trouble of making identical looking jelly beans with radically different tastes, like black licorice, which is bad enough. There's another one that looks like the black licorice one, but it's a skunk spray. Right? And specifically, there's one that's juicy pear. And in other cases, it's flavored. They have ten different flavors. Thank you, Jelly Belly. Yeah, and thank you, Misha Bailey, for proving me wrong. If you want to prove either one of us wrong, or tell us what you think, what's on your mind, give us what for. Perhaps you have a man crush on one or both of us. You can send an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. And speaking of podcast, Chuck yeah? I wanted to give just a quick mention to one of our other podcasts called Brain Stuff from the founder of our awesome company, Marshall Brain. Actually his real last name. Yeah, he has his own podcast called Brain Stuff. And there's a really cool one up there now called what are hot dogs made from? Fascinating. Before you go to the next ball game and wolf down that hot dog, you should listen to them. Either that or if you really want to eat a hot dog, you should probably wait until afterwards. Yeah, I would recommend that. Yeah. So you can check that out, like our podcast on itunes, and you can learn even more about Albert Einstein's brain by typing in a combination of those words in our search bar on howtofworld.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseworks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast@housestepworks.com brought to you by The Reinvented 2012 camry, it's ready. Are you?" | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2008/1217601929387sysk-real-fight-club.mp3 | Are there real-life fight clubs? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/are-there-real-life-fight-clubs | The 1996 Chuck Palahniuk novel, "Fight Club," has been blamed -- and lauded -- by various groups for inspiring several real-life fight clubs. Take a look at our HowStuffWorks article to learn more about real-life fight clubs. | The 1996 Chuck Palahniuk novel, "Fight Club," has been blamed -- and lauded -- by various groups for inspiring several real-life fight clubs. Take a look at our HowStuffWorks article to learn more about real-life fight clubs. | Tue, 05 Aug 2008 12:04:40 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2008, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=5, tm_hour=12, tm_min=4, tm_sec=40, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=218, tm_isdst=0) | 7187879 | 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 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@houseworks.com with me is my fellow staff writer, Charles Bryant. Charles W. Bryant, right? That's right. Well, welcome, Chuck. How are you doing? I'm doing great, Josh. How about you? I'm doing pretty good, Chuck. I'm feeling a little jacked up. I actually kind of feel like punching you right in the face. Well, you know what, Josh? If you did that, I would probably just take it. Like every good pacifist, I would take it. See, I'm not necessarily pacifist. I'm more fear pain. Me too. Yeah. Okay. I think that means that neither one of us should actually join a fight club. No, I've never been hit in the face, and I don't plan to start now. At my advanced age, it's been many years since I was hit in the face, and I think that was the first and only time, and I quickly became scared of being hit in the face, which is my fear of pain. That it. Explains that. Right. So, fight clubs not for us off limits, but they are for some people. Yeah. And actually, they are real. Surely you've seen the movie Fight Club several times. Yes. Every guy that's a real man's man, I think, has seen Fight Club at least three times. At least. Maybe four, even. You read the book. I did. I read the book. I saw the movie. I put on a one act play for fight Club. It was great. I'll bet it was your own interpretation. It was. So the author of the book, Chuck Palaneyuk, right. I think he has been accused many times over, especially after the movie came out, because I think most people who start fight clubs don't read necessarily. Right. But he was accused of starting a trend of conceiving of these fight clubs, which he says that he made up, right, on the real thing. Yeah. Lots of people who like to fight their own fight clubs. Yeah. And actually, there are some out there. When I wrote the article are the real life fight clubs and found that a lot of them really mirror some of the rules in the setup that you find in the book. Did you read about Bloody Knuckles? Yeah, Bloody Knuckles in San Francisco, they have their one rule, which is the famous rule from Fight Club. If you show up, you have to fight. Right. You can't just be a spectator, and you have to say it like that. Yeah, exactly. Or else it loses its meaning. And you kind of wonder, like, what exactly would happen if you're like, okay, I'm going to go to Bloody Knuckles Fight Club. He lives in a hotel, I imagine, a really rundown, weird hotel, and everybody meets in his room. There's like a secret knock. You have to know somebody, and they take you down to a sub basement to fight. Right. What happens if you get to the sub basement? You're like, I don't want to fight. Right. It might quickly turn into a Pulp Fiction scene. Oh, yeah, that scene. Yeah. That's a bad one. And I think I'd rather fight. I would too. Just go ahead and go through with it because you're either going to be beaten and mauled or just fight somebody else. Whatever. So California seems to be the place to be for real life fight clubs. Yeah. There was another one in Oakland just on the other side of the bay called the SB Rats, or a gang of motorcycle tufts, or Vespa tufts. And they use it actually as a form of initiation. And apparently, like, hundreds of people show up to these sites. So you can be a spectator. Yeah. It's not just a form of initiation. And there are, like, hundreds of people. It's like the place to be on Friday nights if you ride a motorcycle. Right, right. So some gangs, including, I think the Rats, use it as an initiation for prospects. They basically throw them in the ring and have them beat the tar out of one another. I guess whoever's left standing is the new member, that kind of thing. Right. And if you lose, then I'm not sure what gang you remember what happens either. And actually, there's a really extensive article in the San Francisco Guardian, Bay Guardian, something like that. It seemed like an underground kind of newspaper or alternative press, at least. And this guy chronicled this Friday night at the SB rat fight club. There were girls fighting one another. Well, he went up and interviewed one of them, and she got about halfway through this quick interview and turned and started vomiting because she was beaten so badly. Wow. Some prospects got jumped in. That's when you're earning your money as a journalist. Yes. And this guy, you could tell it was very thrilling. But when you're writing about a cycle, the best way to do it is to go yourself. I unfortunately didn't have time to do that. Right. I didn't find any in Atlanta. Right. Although it would be legal. I know you found out that as long as two dudes or two women or whoever adults. Adults. Adults. And they have to be not paid, they can beat the snot out of each other and there's no repercussions as long as you're consenting, right? Yeah. And actually, I also ran into something that didn't make it into the article. It's called the pillow fight club. Have you heard of this? I've heard of National Pillow Fight Day. They have every year. They have, like, flash mobs. There was one in Tel Aviv, found one in Seattle where everybody just shows up at a predetermined time and starts beating one another pillow. Wow, that sounds like a lot more at my alley. It's much more of a love in. Yeah. As a lover, I think you'd appreciate that. I think anybody would appreciate all their real life fight clubs. So you should go read it now, or else me and Chuckle find you. And stay tuned to find out what The Brady Bunch and Hurricane Katrina vacuumies have in common 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, do you know what Hurricane Katrina, valuie, and the Brady Bunch have in common? You know, Josh. I don't. You've teased me with this one for weeks, and I've been dying to know. I'm finally going to reveal it to you. What? They're both exposed to formaldehyde through particle board. Do you know anything about this? Now. But how does the Brady Bunch the end? Well, The Brady Bunch had that faux wood paneling in their living room, and Hurricane Katrina evacuees were exposed to it through FEMA trailers, which the government recently ordered them out of because of health issues. Right. Yeah. That's a bit of a reach, but I'll buy it. Actually, it's not. I found the combination in one of our colleagues articles. Kristen Conger wrote ten everyday, dangerous things in your home, and you can find that on howstoughfworks.com learn about formaldehyde and nine other interesting things you should be very scared of. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast@houseworks.com brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime 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. Bye." | |
Is high fructose corn syrup bad for you? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/is-high-fructose-corn-syrup-bad-for-you | High fructose corn syrup gets a bad rap, but is it deserved? Tune in as Josh and Chuck discuss the origins of this ubiquitous sweetener -- and why it's not so sweet for your health -- in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. | High fructose corn syrup gets a bad rap, but is it deserved? Tune in as Josh and Chuck discuss the origins of this ubiquitous sweetener -- and why it's not so sweet for your health -- in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. | Tue, 28 Apr 2009 11:31:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=28, tm_hour=11, tm_min=31, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=118, tm_isdst=0) | 17355505 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetoporkscom. Join Josh and Chuck, the guys who bring you Stuff You Should Know as they take a trip trip around the world to help you get smarter in a topsy turvy economy. Check out the all news Superstuff guide to the economy from Houseupworks.com, available now exclusively on itunes. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Chuck Bryant. Right. Josh, do you want to bite? I thought you loved me. I do take two bites, but it's got high fruit plus corn syrup in it. Well, you know what they say about that stuff. What that? It's made from corn, has the same calories as sugar, honey. And it's fine in moderation. You only brought one. The end. And scene. Chuck, I feel dirty right now. Yes. We were clearly riffing on a popular commercial yes. Touting high fructose corn syrup. Yes. Which is kind of a big deal these days, right, Chuck? It is indeed. Yeah. So Chuck and I are going to talk about high fructose corn syrup and maybe some of the concerns what it is and whether or not it actually is bad for you. So we will get to that right this moment. Right. And welcome to Matt, our guest producer for the week. Yes, thank you for Matt for filling in for Jerry, who is on vacation, hopefully not enduring any life threatening circumstances, as it's usually the case. Right. And we love young and talented Matt, so welcome. Yeah. Young, talented, and well groomed Matt. Yes. How's it going, Matt? All right. So on the high fructose corn syrup, Chuck. Okay. So this stuff didn't exist before. Did you know that? I did. Okay, let me explain a little further then. Okay. So in 1957, some researchers figured out that you could take glucose and corn syrup. I think corn syrup is like, all glucose. Right. And glucose is one of our primary energy sources. Right. And did you know that insulin's job is to actually go in and basically open the cellular membrane to let the glucose in for burning? I did. Okay. Well, anyway, so if you want a lot of energy, you could basically pound a bottle of corn syrup. Right. Just plain old corn syrup. Right. But these researchers figured out in 1957 that if you added a couple of enzymes at different stages, you could convert glucose into fructose. Right. And fructose, Josh, as you know, is naturally occurring. It's a simple sugar. It's produced by a lot of different plants, and it's really sweet, and it's more soluble in water than glucose, which is also a simple sugar. So that's why it's good for things like soft drinks and products like that. Plus, it's also cheaper. Yeah, sure. And we'll get to the reason why it's cheaper in a minute. Did we mention my cold in this one? No. You have a cold? I have a terrible cold, everyone. I'm very sorry if I do that in advance. Right. But we also should say really quick, too, just so people have their sugar understanding. There's also table sugar is what people probably think of as sugar that is sucrose. And that's what you get when you combine fructose and glucose. Well, that's what high fructose corn syrup is as well. It's sucrose, too. It's just in a slightly different amount. There's about 10% more fructose and high fructose corn syrup than there is in common. Table sugar. Right. Which doesn't sound like a lot. Initially it doesn't, but we'll don't give it away yet. Okay. So they figure this out. There's the enzymatic action, and then bada boom, bada bing, you've got high fructose corn syrup. I get the impression that at the time it was probably a very costly process. Yeah, in the 50s, sure. And then in the 70s, people went back to it and they basically perfected the process, made it cheaper. Now, the concept of, like, using high fructose corn syrup really dovetails nicely with what we here in the states called the Farm Bill, and that is this massive bill, which they deliberate every five or seven years. I'm not sure, actually. I can't remember either. Anyway, the Farm Bill gives tons of money to corn producers. Yes, they do. To the point where you can overproduce corn. Corn we do not need because everybody's got a cob in their mouth and they'll still get money for it. Right. Plus, corn is useful in a lot of different ways, like corn syrup. Right. And ethanol and the list goes on. So we have an abundance and over abundance, really, of corn and chuck yeah, that's absolutely true. You can use corn and ethanol. You can use it in high fructose corn syrup. The thing is, we used to before the we started throwing corn into corn syrup production, we used to send a lot of that surplus corn to Africa as food aid. So in the 70s, on the day that they perfected the high fructose corn syrup processed, some poor Ethiopian shuddered and didn't know why that was. Why, really? Oh, yeah. Food AIDS definitely dried up. And people also make the argument that the same. We're going to have an even bigger problem with food, not just exporting it, but here, too, if it becomes a viable fuel, like ethanol. So they're basically going to be using up the corn for the high fructose corn syrup ethanol, and there's not enough to feed the world, is that what you're saying? They'll use it for whatever they can make the most money off of, obviously. Yeah, good point. Yeah. Okay. So that was my little aside, my little hippie liberal aside there. Chuck very nice. Okay, so in the 70s, we've got the high fructose corn syrup thing down and the world becomes awash in the stuff, right? It's in absolutely everything it is. And it's in products that you would never even think associate with sweetness, like it becomes corn syrup isn't very sweet initially, but high fructose corn syrup is really sweet, and it's in things like crackers that you wouldn't even imagine. And they're starting to put it in meats, too, because it's a great preservative. Again, there's only 10% more fructose in high fructose corn syrup than there is in regular table sugar. Right. And everybody knows you should eat sugar in moderation party. Right. So I guess approaching it in that respect, you wouldn't really think that there's any kind of problems with it. Right. But it's really taken hold. It has. And also, I think the thing that really started to generate concern is over the past couple of decades, it's become clear that about the time high fructose corn syrup replaced table sugar in products like soft drinks, that kind of thing, the incidence of type two diabetes and obesity in the US. Started to climb as well. Right. I got a stat for you. I want to hear it if you're talking how much it's really taken over the other sugars. In 1970, more than 83% of sweetener consumed in the US. Was sucrose. By 1997, it dropped to 43% almost in half. And the rest of the sweetener, 57%, was high fructose corn syrup. Yeah. And that was 97. Now I bet it's even off the charts. It's even more prevalent. Yeah. So public opinion is starting to turn, which is why the court counselor, somebody started the ad campaign. Right. And what's the problem? Well, the problem is I got another stat which kind of indicated they did a study in 1400 middle school students, and they found that nearly one third of their caloric intake was added sugars. And we're not talking about, like, fruits and vegetable sugars. No, those are called natural sugars. Right. They're not usually taken into account when you're talking about sugar intake. Added sugar is stuff like high fructose corn syrup is not naturally occurring. Right. So one third and so in 2005, they did another study. Another study. Sorry. And Americans that year consumed \u00a342 of high fructose corn syrup per person. Okay. But again, you can say, well, they could be consuming table sugar in the same amounts. They could be getting the same caloric intake from table sugar in the same amounts. What's the problem? Why is everyone picking on high fructose corn syrup? Do you want me to tell you? Sounds like a great set up. Okay, thanks. I just set myself up. You know, there's like self ali. Oops. No, you throw it up and then you jump up and slam it. You dunk it. I have no idea. A boomerang. I don't know. It's like a frisbee that you can play with by yourself. Well, no, it's not like that at all. It's basketball. Since Australians are riding in now. Yeah. We just raised their ire. Again, I'm going to set myself up. Okay. Do you want to know why? I'll tell you why. Here's the problem with fructose. Our bodies don't use it like we use glucose. No. Glucose is such a common energy source for us that we can metabolize just about any way. It can go to just about any cell or organ or anywhere in the body and say, hey, metabolize me, pal. Right. And all of a sudden, we've got some energy. Right. With fructose, there's only one organ that can possibly metabolize it, and that's the liver. That's right. And the liver has a certain limit of how much fructose it will process in their energy, and after that, it turns them into triglycerides, which we like to call fats. So that's one of the problems. And since it's in everything from, like, bread to crackers and things that seemingly in meats for preservatives, we're getting way too much of it. Sure. It's kind of like that episode of Seinfeld where, like, everybody's eating this low fat yogurt. I can't believe it's low fat, but it turns out it's not. They had it tested. Exactly. So everybody's putting on all this weight, and I think that's kind of what happened to America over the last couple of decades. We're unknowingly consuming this tremendous amount of sugar, and it gets converted into fat very easily, and all of a sudden, we're a fat diabetic nation. Right. I've got some stats. I love your stats, Chuck. Put your hand on my knee while you read them. I will. In 2007. And this kind of makes sense. Colorado is the only state in the whole country with less than 20% of its population qualifying as obese. Yeah, they're very healthy out there. Yeah, they hike and all that stuff, which is good. And another one as far as diabetes goes, between 94 and 2004, a new diagnosis of type two diabetes increased by 23%, which is a big jump. And a lot of people think that the HFCs has something to do with that. Yeah. Way to throw an acronym in there, buddy. You like that? Yeah, sure. Can I say one other problem with fructose? Yes. Okay. It is that there is 10% more in high fructose corn syrup than in regular table sugar. And when you start to eat a lot of it and it starts to appear in all sorts of different foods, that 10% really starts to add up. Absolutely. So that would also account for why we're much meatier country than we were before. Right. Except Colorado, of course. Everything's fine in Colorado. Right. But ultimately, again, back on the metabolic level, there's been studies that show that the taste of artificial sweeteners or added sugars, like high fructose corn syrup, actually make us want to eat more. It has nothing to do with what we're doing with it metabolically. It's the taste. We love the taste so much, it's, like, cracked to us. So when we eat something that contains glucose right. When we eat anything generally, there's this chemical that's producing the stomach called ghrelin. I know it's got a terrible name, but it's actually really important. Grelling travels up to the brain and says, okay, stop. This person doesn't need to eat anymore here. She's full. We got all the nutrients we need down here, so just cut it off for a little while, and then another chemical will let you know when we're hungry, right? Sure. We don't produce growls when we eat fructose, so the brain is never getting those signals that it's used to getting stopped. Right. Which is why you can sit there and eat Little Debbie brownies by the box full all day long. Nutty Bars. Yeah, those are too good. Twist Cake rolls ain't too bad either. They're all good. Yeah. Not to pick on Little Debbie. Little Debbie is a fine, fine company, and far from the only company using high fructose corn syrup. It's everywhere. It's everywhere. We love you, Little Debbie. So, Josh, I think we're at the point now where we can talk about what you can do if you're worried about something like this late on them. Well, clearly, everything in moderation, just like the cheesy Little commercial says that we mocked. But what you need to do is you need to start checking the packaging of your foods. Better yet, you can try to start avoiding packaged foods as much as you can. That's really where it's at. I mean, I had a friend that had high blood pressure, and his doctor said, you can do a couple of things. You can either get on this medication, or you can start eating fresh foods and avoid packaged foods. Do you go with the medication? No. Yeah. Absolutely no. He controlled it through diet, dude. And he quit buying anything in a box, anything in a package that he found, like, in the yard. Yeah, he ate fresh fruits and vegetables. He ate meat, and his blood pressure dropped dramatically. Meats he found in the yard? Yeah, he cat. He raised cattle on his back. But, yeah, it's always best to avoid packaged foods. When you look at any kind of packaged food ingredients, it's kind of frightening. What's in there? Well, one of the problems is that high fructose corn syrup is substantially cheaper than regular sugar. It is. So that means the food prices are cheaper, which is, I guess, by extension or my hypothesis or theory, I would say, because I'm sure it's been tested, while the poorer classes also tend to be the most malnourished. Right. Because the stuff that they're eating is so processed, so packaged, and so chock full of not just stuff like high fructose corn syrup, but all sorts of other preserved chemical additives that we shouldn't be eating, but are cheap and allow companies to produce cheap food. It's a horrible, vicious cycle. Try eating organic in this economy, pal. You can't do it. Well, true. You have to be, like, filthy rich to eat organic these days. That's not true. But you know what's not cheap? What? A diabetes. No, that's true. It's an excellent point. In hospital stays and heart attacks. That's great. Do yourself a favor. You'll save some dough in the long run if you eat better and take care of yourself. Plus, you'll keep your foot. Yeah, true. So there's high fructose corn syrup. I guess we'll just sit back and expect an angry cease and desist letter from the Corn Council or somebody, right? We love corn. Corn is great. I love corn on the cobweb. You would not believe me. Me too. It's one of my favorite. Anyway, that's high fructose corn syrup and followed by our disclaimer that Chuck and I actually do like corn and American farmers and America in general. So there you go. Are we plugging to anything these days? We can give a quick mention to the blog. We have the blog on the website you can access, and I think most folks are catching on now. We're getting some good numbers. Let's plug the thing that we're making money off of. Well, yeah, sure. Okay. The Super Stuff Guide to the Economy with Josh and Chuck. You can buy that for $4 on itunes and learn about economics and get a little better understanding of what's going on in the world. And is it time for listener mail? Yeah, Chuck. So, Josh, I was impressed with this one. This is not a haiku, but it is a poem, and a 17 year old named Daniel in Colorado wrote us a sonnet. There's, like, more than an 80% chance he's not obese. Oh, really? Okay, because he's in Colorado, of course. All right, so here we go from Daniel. I would that there were just one reason why the podcasted delight me fully, so that I might be in hasty time supply. A nicely packaged blurb so you might know. Alas, no single reason will suffice. The podcast is a pleasure labyrinthine. To try to craft a reason too precise would make a burly rope of stingy twine. But in those fleeting moments in the night, one wonders, does one really need to know whether one can really die of fright or if how anger works is apropos? But though it may be triviality, the podcast comes to us completely free. How about that? That was great. I couldn't write one of these. Oh, no, definitely not. Try fitting labyrinth on it. So Daniel in Colorado, 17 years old. Is he an adult? He's 17. Oh, okay. Great. Good to know that he may or may not be an adult. Either way, thank you very much, Daniel. We appreciate the effort. And we've always also said you can only grip so much because it is free. Right? Sure. Thank you for supporting that point. If you want to send us a gorgeous poem or just type the word labyrinthine in an email and send it to us, you can shoot that over to stuffpodcast@howstepws.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry, it's ready. Are you?" | ||
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2016-10-11-sysk-hibernation-final.mp3 | Hibernation: Not a Snooze | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/hibernation-not-a-snooze | When animals are faced with scarce food in the winter, they have two choices to stay alive: migrate or hibernate. For hibernators, their bodies undergo some mind-boggling physiological changes in the coldest months. Could humans ever do it too? | When animals are faced with scarce food in the winter, they have two choices to stay alive: migrate or hibernate. For hibernators, their bodies undergo some mind-boggling physiological changes in the coldest months. Could humans ever do it too? | Tue, 11 Oct 2016 07:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=11, tm_hour=7, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=285, tm_isdst=0) | 43502598 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry. So this is stuff you should know. The podcast. And I'm I start off with a request of advice. Of advice. Some advice, which is in the form of a request. This sounds passive aggressive. No, it's not. It's to our listeners. We often get people that say, hey, I'm years behind. I'm writing you about the episode from 2008, 2009. And we love it when people go back and listen to all the podcasts in order. Right. But what really helps us out is if you want to start at the beginning and also listen to the most recent episode. Does that work? Yes. I call it Sandwiching. Oh, really? That's the term for it, yeah. If you want to start at the beginning, that's great. But it also really helps us out if you listen to the most recent one. Right. So I just want to throw it out there. We don't want to tell you how to listen. I see what you're doing. Just a request. Or you could just go buy yourself a 2012 camry. That's very true. Right. But it does help us, and if you really don't want to do that, of course, listen how you want. But sure. It's good for us that the most recent episodes get listened to. And I think it's kind of cool then, because you can flash forward through time and see how bad we were then and how bad we are now and just compare how little different things. Yeah. All right. Well put, man. Yeah, just the PSA. Appreciate that. That's good. PSA. Thank you. How's your Facebook page? Wait a minute. It just occurred to me that people aren't listening to this recent one anyway. Then they're not going to know to do that. Maybe the people they live with who sandwich will tell them, hey, man, you should be doing it a different way. I didn't think this through. What did you ask me? I asked how your Facebook page is going. Oh. Charles W, chuck Bryant. Yes, it's going well. Good. I'm on there a little bit and putting an insider stuff right. Like, occasionally even say what we are recording that day, which is oh, yeah. We've usually not. We guarded that with, like, Fort Knox. Right. But occasionally I will throw that out there. Yeah, that's good. And then other stuff. Insider heads up on performances and ticket sales. Nice. Dog and cat pictures. Right. That's what I'm doing. I've got my own Twitter account to Josh Clark. Yeah. And where can they find you on Facebook? Same place. I don't even bother. Okay. Just go to Twitter. All right. You're the Facebook guy. Sure. What's yours? Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Yeah, it's like behind the scenes or just other stuff. Things that strike your fancy. Yeah. That's a lot of admin stuff for us today. Yeah. Do you want to do administrative details right now while we're at it? No. You want to talk about hibernation? Yes. So, Charles chuck, if you will. Yes. Right now, you're sitting there, you're thinking yes. You're moving your papers around. Sure. Looking up and down, breathing, heart speeding a little bit. You got an eye on Jerry. Always eating her, eating her fritos. Jerry's burning a lot of energy, too, but she's also taking it in. Sure. And all of this energy expenditure requires a ton of energy input. And in fact, we humans in particular are not really great at energy conversion. Right. We lose like 60% of the energy. We break down glucose into CO2. And I think ATP and ATP is like this really powerful molecule that powers ourselves. Yeah. When we do that, we lose like 60% of that potential energy to heat. What a waste. You'd think so? But it turns out we have evolved to channel that waste heat into keeping our bodies warm. Which makes us warm blooded. Right? Yes. The thing is, we have something really important, maybe one of the most overlooked important technologies humans ever came up with. Clothing. Which allows us to live outside of our normal habitat, which is the tropics and sub tropical areas. Yeah. That's why we spread about the Earth. Exactly. Thanks to clothing in large part and shoes to a lesser. But that's part of clothing any important extent. Sure. But it depends on who you ask, isn't it? Accessory. But if we were warm blooded animals that didn't have clothing and had kind of spread out into colder climbs, one strategy that we might have when it got really cold and food became scarce, therefore the energy input was a lot harder to come by. Might be hibernation. That's right. Which is something some animals do. That's right. It's funny, I think a lot of people think of bears immediately when they think of hibernation. But not only do a lot of animals hibernate bears. If you want to get technical, let's get technical. Oh, boy. That will be in the brain forever. Now, technically, bears do not hibernate. We are going to call it hibernation. And a lot of people do say any animal that undergoes a sustained period of body temperature drop and metabolism change is hibernation. And that's what I think. Sure. But technically, if you get a pedantic biologist up in your grill, they might push the glasses back on their nose and say, that it's. When the temperature is significantly decreased, long term state. This is a 60 biologist you're doing, metabolism slows drastically and the animal enters a coma like condition that takes some time to recover from. And bears are a little different because they aren't really in that coma like state. You can wake them up pretty easily. Yeah. You should not their temperature. Yeah. I think that's important to add. You wake little bear. Right. Hey, you hibernated, you stupid bear. And the body temperature of the bears don't drop very much compared to some other animals. Sure. But yeah, for our intents and purposes, since we're going to dig into the whole thing, when we say hibernation, we mean anytime an animal goes into this kind of state beyond sleep right. With the goal of surviving a rough period of the year. Yeah. Whether it's shortage of food or weather and it could be cold, usually associate hibernation with wintertime. But actually in the tropics there's something called estimation, which is hibernation during the hottest or driest times of the year. Pretty cool. Never knew that. There are also reptiles who hibernate is called brumation and there's also torpor, which is a great word. It's another confusing term, though, right? For sure. Torpor can mean it can be an umbrella term for any hibernation strategy. Yes. Right. Or it can refer to a specific type of hibernation that usually happens on a daily basis. Yeah. Like a few hours, maybe. Right. And so you're hearing all this chuck. I can put myself in the mind of people listening. They're like, you guys are talking about sleep. Your dummies. It's called sleep. This is not sleep, actually. No. And that's very important to point out, because I think if you don't know about hibernation, like I probably used to think, yeah, bears go sleepy time for half the year. Right. It's like none of that is correct at all. So it's very different from sleep. Sleep is when you hibernate, you're really undergoing some pretty drastic physiological changes. When you sleep, you undergo a little bit of a change. Like, even when we sleep, our heart rate slows a bit, body temperature drops a little bit. Yeah. Breathing slows a little bit, but nothing it's not anything drastic at all. It's more of a mental change. Right. Yeah. That's the big difference between sleep and hibernation. With sleep, your brain is taking time to rest. Even though there are plenty of phases of sleep where your brain is active, it's also very inactive for large parts of it. With hibernation, apparently, when an animal is in even deep hibernation, its brain is still reflecting the same type of waves, I believe, alpha waves that has when it's wakeful. Totally never knew that. They're just somewhat suppressed. And actually, when animals come out of hibernation, they apparently have sleep deprivation and have to sleep for several days afterwards. Yeah. That's the fact of the show for me. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry for taking that one. No, you wake up from a six month hibernation like, Chipmunk, I'm sleepy. Yeah. I got to get some reps from laying around like this for six months. Right. But it's all because of those brainwaves. I think it's pretty interesting. Yeah. If you're in a zoo, you probably don't hibernate. I'm not talking about a guest and visitor at a zoo. You're an animal living in a zoo, you probably don't hibernate because they're regulating your environment, your food is not going to be scarce, but in order sometimes to give these animals a more natural lifecycle, they will trigger hibernation on purpose. Yeah, they just blast them with an ice ray or something. An ice ray, yeah. And as far as when to hibernate, it all depends on the animal, on when they do it. And it depends on the animal and how it's triggered. Like when they know to do it. Yeah. So actually there's a biologist whose name was Jurgen Ashoff, and Dr. Ashoff, I'm assuming doctor sounds like a bad Bond villain almost, right? Or an actor playing a Bond villain, too. Dr. Ashoff came up with a term for all the different kinds of triggers that can trigger hibernation and sleepy triggers. Zeitgeber. Oh, yeah. Does that make sense to you? Because you're a German yeah, like zeitgeist. Right. So this wonderful term probably does mean in German, sleepy time triggers it's. It's a good German band name, too. Yeah, because there's not a third word. The three word band names bother me. They're really tough to pull off, and when they are pulled off, well, great. They're usually done very well. But it's also really easy to fumble a three word band name. I'm trying to think of three word band names now. Like Bachmann Turner, Overdrive. Yeah, great one. Brian Jonestown Massacre. Great one. Fleetwood, Big Mac. I'll bet there's a cover band out there named that. I actually just saw a Fleetwood Mac cover band. Oh, yeah? What were they called? I don't go to those tribute cover bands ever. You just came to in the middle of one? No, I noticed there was a Smith cover band playing, and they were opening up for Rumors. They're from Atlanta, actually. The Fleetwood Mac one. And the Smith one was tough. I had a hard time watching the guy. No, that stinks. I mean, the band was great and he sounded good, but what was the problem? He was Morrising around the stage, and you can't Morrisy around the stage unless you're Morrissey. Sure. So I just had to kind of look at the guitar player. Right? Was he? Johnny Marring on the stage. No, he was fine. But Fleetwood Mac rumors. They are great. Are they? Dude? I mean, unbelievably great. Really. And if you like Fleetwood Mac and you don't want to pay $200 to go see them right. Pay 15 to go see Rumors. That good. Yeah. I mean, he sounds just like them anyway. Shout out to Rumors. I guess so. I might be on a new cover band kick, though. I found myself kind of perusing, like, what's coming in Atlanta? Thinking that was kind of fun. Right? Who's coming? ZOSO. Are they coming? No, but there's a night of it with AC DC, Van Halen and one other, like, classic rock band is going to be all playing together. I think I might be featuring the real Sammy Hagar, maybe. You never know. And Michael anthony, too. Yeah. Although my hats off to Sammy Hagar for stepping up to defend Michael Anthony, like, a year or so ago. Oh, I thought you're going to say hats off to him for not driving 55. Well, that too. Yes, he did take up for Michael Anthony. Yeah. All right, we're talking about Zeitgeber. And again, this is all the ways that hibernation could be triggered. And I think you said temperature is like the big one, right? That's the main most common one. We talked a little bit about food supplies. There are many animals who are triggered by food supplies, birds, most notably. Right. Although there's only one bird that goes into true hibernation. Oh, yeah, the chickadee. Now, the common poor Will that's a great name, actually goes into, like, real hibernation for, like, five months. And other birds just have a torpor, like you were saying, right? A few hours a day. It's all they need to conserve a little bit energy. Yeah. I mean, again, that's the point. Like you're trying to save calories, right? Yeah, that's the whole point. Exactly. So there's also something called photo period, where the days start getting shorter and it triggers a hibernation response in animals, too. Yeah. And a really cool thing that this article pointed out was that it they've done experiments where they've had animals in capture locked away, studying animals that have no triggers like this going on, and they have this weird ability they don't understand, triggered by their circannual rhythm, where they just know this, like, internal biological clock where they just know it's time. Right. Pretty amazing. It is amazing. And that's in contrast of the circadian rhythm, which we all know and love, that makes us sleepy when the day ends. That's right. Let's take a break, man. All right, are you ready? Yeah. I'm going to go listen to some Fleetwood big Mac. Josh starting your own business can be quite a chore, my friend. 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All right, chuck so we were talking about ways that animals know, and like you said, they just seem to know naturally when they go hibernate and when they start getting these triggers. They're like, oh, it's starting to be time. Yeah. One of the first things they do is prepare a place to stay. They fluff the pillow, shake out the sleeping bag. Yeah. What else? If they're the Hair Bear Bunch, they just basically settle into their awesome den. Do you remember them? The Hair Bear? The hair bear bunch from early 70s. They lived in a zoo, but they had, like, the coolest they had, like, a TV and great recliner. Sure, okay. Yeah, the hair bear bunch. You remember the bear with the crevasse and the big Afro? One of them had, like, a camouflage hat that covered his eyes, like the guy from Cypress Hill. No, I don't remember that at all. Chuck, you got to check out the hair bear bunch. I think you might like them. That was my generation, too. Yeah, that was right there. Interesting. Maybe my parents didn't let me watch it. They're like bears, obviously, on the dope. Who knows? But you are correct. They prepare their little area. It depends on the animal and what they do. It might be a cave, a little ground squirrel or a lemur might dig out their den and put some insulating material around it. We talked about polar bears. Yeah. The polar bear moms kind of combine hibernation and birth. Yes. Right. They got, like, a snowden, which, again, great movie. Sometimes they don't dig out a big area. Sometimes they'll just find a little tree hollow or a little shallow cave and they're kind of partially exposed to the weather. Yeah, because I was thinking about that. When you think of bear's hybrid and you think of a bear hybrid in a cave, they couldn't be too far into the cave because the same triggers that put them to sleep and trigger hibernation also bring them out of it. Sure. So it would make sense that they would need to be partially exposed to the weather. So as the day started to get longer, they would wake up, or as the temperature got warmer, they would kind of come out of it and think about that. Food storage is a big deal. Sometimes if it's non perishable foods, you can actually keep it in there with you. And we bring this up because it's a bit of a misconception that some animals do knock out for months and months at a time, but some will wake up occasionally just to shove some food in their mouth and then go back to sleep. Well, not sleep, go back into hibernation mode. Yeah. So they should have some food in there. Or maybe they've just eaten so much prepared fattened up for the winter months that they don't need to eat at all. Yeah. I saw somewhere that some bears go from eating an average of 8000 calories a day to 200 calories a day to fatten up and, like, the week leading up to hibernation. So we talk about brown fat now, I guess, yeah. Sounds gross. It's delicious, though. Brown fat is different than white fat. When we typically process fat for energy and heat, there's something called shivering that it facilitates that helps us well, yeah, shivering. Shivering, right. Yeah, just muscle contraction burns energy and releases heat. Yeah, but brown fat is great because we don't need the shiver. The brown fat is oxidized directly and it instantly produces the heat. It gets that whole middle part. Nice. So you don't need the shiver. It doesn't waste energy on muscle contraction? Not at all. Oh, that's pretty cool. It's called non shivering. Thermogenesis nice. So that's why you want the brown fat. Yeah. And that's what the bears bulk up with, I guess. I guess all animals do, or maybe not all animals, but I know it's handy. Well, when you do have to burn that fat, whether it's brown fat or otherwise, you use up a lot of that stored energy. Yeah, because fat is a great energy store. Right. And if you're a pretty large animal, if you let your body temperature get too low, because again, most of the time this is in very cold climates in the winter, right? Yeah. If you let your body temperature get too low, it's going to take a lot of energy to get it back to its normal warm blooded state, even its normal hibernating temperature. So animals have astoundingly something called a set point, and it's like an internal thermostat setting that says when my body temperature gets to this temperature, burn some fat and warm me back up. And I guess all warm blooded animals have this set point, right? Yes. But for the larger animals, it's higher because again, it requires so much energy to restore it that their body temperature never gets too low. And their set point is being activated pretty frequently during hibernation. But if you're a much smaller animal I think the Arctic ground squirrel is like the best example of hibernation, especially in this respect. The Arctic ground squirrel, a warm blooded animal, their body temperature will get below freezing amazing. During hibernation. And you would think, well, that's got to be pretty terrible for them. Yes, it is. They lose bone density, they lose their teeth, their brain actually lose like parts of it and they come very close to dying or being dead. Unbelievable. And then the thought comes and they're aroused from their hibernation and all of a sudden they start growing all that stuff back. Yeah, it's pretty remarkable. I just want to say move. Right. I go through that every year. All this is controlled mostly by the endocrine system, and we have these glands in our body that alter all these hormones and it can really control with great precision all these physiological changes that they need to go through. Yeah, I say we, but I'm an animal too, I guess. Sure. Party animal. Should we talk about some of the specifics of that? Right. And again, this is the reason why things like temperature changes and the changes in the amount of sunlight during any given day can trigger hibernation because those are capable of affecting hormones. Right, that's right. So you're picking up things like when to grow your coat. It triggers melatonin production, which triggers a coat thickening. Yeah. Right. Your pituitary gland is going to control that fat, build up the heart rate and the breathing rate and metabolic functions. That's a big one. Pituitary gland takes care of a lot. Oh, yeah. You lose that, you probably can't hibernate thyroid, that's going to control your metabolism somewhat and your levels of activity. Right. And then finally insulin, as we all know, is going to regulate your glucose. Right. There's also something that was isolated. It's an opioid called DADLE. DADLE. And they found that it lowers heart rate and respiration in animals, and that if you give any animal this, they kind of start to get into hibernation mode. Oh, really? I don't think it's a hormone, it's a chemical. But it has like a hibernating effect on animals. Wow. Yeah, it's pretty cool. So some of these changes can be pretty drastic. The heart rate can drop to as little as 2.5% a chipmunk, for example. Five beats per minute, as opposed to 200. That's pretty significant. Listen to the bat. Some species of bat go from 1000 beats per minute to 25 and they only breathe once every 2 hours. Wow. Amazing. Yeah. And the box turtle doesn't breathe at all. It completely shuts down breathing. But I mean, that makes sense when you're running off of stored fat, right? Yeah. You don't have the need to power cells like normal your hibernating. Your metabolism is slowed because your cells aren't requiring the same energy that they had before, which means that you don't need oxygen or nearly as much oxygen, so you don't have to breathe as much. And since you're not taking in that much oxygen, your blood doesn't need to pump nearly as much either, because that's the point of the heart in your blood, is to spread oxygen through your body, at least in most part. And the box turtle takes in air through the skin. So like you said, it still needs the oxygen, but it just doesn't need to breathe to get it. Right. And it doesn't need much because the box turtles heart beats about every once every ten minutes. Go. Then ten minutes later. All right. Pretty amazing. And then most animals, probably all animals that go into any sort of deep hibernation, they have like X amount of fat stored up that should carry them through the winter. Right. That's why you should never, ever mess with a hibernating animal of any type, because you will basically have killed it. Yeah. If you rouse it from its hibernation, it will take a tremendous amount of energy to come back to wakefulness. Right. Yeah. And to bring that temperature up right. And so it just spent way more than its budget for the winter. So even if it can get back into hibernation, it will starve to death because it used up a bunch because you, some jerk woke it up from its hibernation. Yeah. Why did you do that? I didn't do it. I'm just saying. Waste, if you're wondering. I know we kind of gave it away a little bit in the Polar episode about the poopoo and peepee. Most animals that go into deep hibernation don't do either one. There is no poopoo because they're not eating. Right. All that food has been digested already and turn into fat. Yeah. So there's nothing going through the intestines at all, which must be a wonderful feeling. Oh, yeah. You know, when you empty out real good, but the body does produce urea no matter what, and that's the waste product in urine and hibernating animals actually recycle that. Bears in particular break it down into amino acids and use it. And if you think, well, they're not drinking, how are they not dehydrated? That comes from fat, too. Pretty unreal. It really is. Yeah. This whole thing is just like it's unbelievable that animals evolved to do this to survive. Yeah, but I mean, it makes utter incomplete sense. It's like, oh, the food supply dried up for five months. Well, then just go to sleep. Don't eat any food. And again, they're not sleeping. Yeah, it's really tough to avoid that. I know, but just go hibernate. Yes. I think we put it about that earlier. We mentioned estimation, which is hibernation and hot weather. This is something I did not know existed until the last few days in the desert. If you live in the desert or a tropical climate and it gets too hot, or if the food is getting low, you may not be able to survive unless you dig a hole and dig down into the earth where it's cooler and a more stable temperature down there. Right. Or if you are a fish or a primitive fish that has lungs, like a lung fish, you may live in an area where your body of water dries up annually. This is a good reason to estimate, too. Right. So long. Fish actually produce mucus. They create a mucus stack around themselves that dries on the inside but stays wet. No, dries on the outside, stays wet on the inside. Yeah, they're like down in the mud. Right. But the light can completely dry out around them and they still stay hydrated and they don't dry out. They're lung fish, though, so they breathe through lungs. So they also make a tube of mucus unbelievable. That reaches into the air so they can breathe while they're sequestered away. And that's good eating, too. I don't know. Lungfish? Yeah, those are maybe. I doubt it. We're related to those. We're both tetrapods. Did you know that? We're related to the lung fish. I don't think I did know that. Although it makes sense because they're the only fish I think that breeds that way, right? I believe so. But they're also probably one of the first fish that start to come out of water and produce what became amphibians. I just had to look up a lung fish real quick. You've seen it before? Yeah, it looks sort of like an eel. A little. But they have like foot like appendages almost. Yeah. Interesting. Just like us, I have a foot like appendage. You can do two of them. So we talked a little bit about torpor with birds. The black capped chickadee has a daily torpor that it undergoes for a few hours. And like we said, that's all it needs. Just a few degrees lower in their body, just for a few hours a day to conserve that little bit of energy that it needs. And only that poor wheel. They have a 93% drop in energy needs, the poor wheel does. And then back in the spring when things warm up, the poor wheel needs about 7 hours to stretch it out. Wait, 7 hours of torpor? No, 7 hours of getting back to the speed again. Oh, I see. Like after they wake up from hibernation. Oh, got you. Because a lot of animals it takes a long time days. But this little bird needs about 7 hours and he's like, all right, let's do this. I'm up and at them. Exactly. He's like that guy from Jerry Maguire. Which guy? Remember the guy who had the interstitial interviews? He was like, every morning I wake up and cut my hand. Let's go. Yeah. Cameron Crow tried to get Billy Wilder for that role. Really? And there's a great story that he told because he just revered Billy Wilder, the great filmmaker and writer, directed The Apartment, among others. Did you do Sunset Boulevard, too? I don't know about that. Maybe. Okay, go ahead. So Billy Wilder said no and Cameron Crow was like, please, this would really be awesome. And he said no. So Tom Cruise was like, let me come to the next meeting and ask him, because I'm Tom Cruise. Right. So the Cruise rolls in there and asks Billy Wilder and he says no. And Cameron Crow, how he put it was I could tell from the look on Tom's face that no wasn't a word he heard often. Wow. And that stuck with me all these years that Tom Cruise was told no by Billy Wilder and was just like, what? Right. His smile didn't change. The entire change took place in the light in his eyes. Yeah, pretty funny. Billy Wilder did direct Sunset Boulevard, by the way. He did. All right. And Hummingbirds, we should mention, because those little dudes and due dates are very active, as you know, if you ever seen them flutter around. In order to do that, they have a heart rate up to 1200 beats per minute. So when. You see the hummingbird and it looks like they're going, like, all over the place. They are. It's not just their wings. Right. Like, they are in a constant state of high heart rate, and their consumption is so great that they use daily torpor even when they're in the tropics. Like, every hummingbird, you know, has a daily torpor. And I think it's like, more torpor than other birds, even. Right. So it has nothing to do with weather in their case. Yeah. They're just juiced up. So if this whole idea of hibernation is like a really kind of ancient mechanism right? Yes. And we're all connected far back into the tree of life, it raises the question, can humans conceivably hiring? Right. It's not just us asking that. That's right. So let's take a break and we'll talk about that right after this. All right, Josh? Can humans hibernate? Probably not. Well, it's a pretty controversial thing because there are some scientists that say, absolutely, we have this latent ability that we could tap into, and then other scientists say, Absolutely not. Right. Asleep. Yeah. We did a whole episode on therapeutic hypothermia. They touched on a lot of this. And actually, NASA's got a contract with a company from here in Atlanta called Space Works. Space Works has something called Rhinocill, where they introduce chilled liquids up your nose to cool the base of your brain. That's where you lose me. Well, yes. Well, you would lose consciousness. Right? Yeah. And apparently it slows metabolism and induces, like, a hibernation like state, and they're looking into it to see if they can use it for long distance space travel. Like a trip to Mars or something. Like in the movies. Exactly like in the movies, yeah. NASA is very much looking into this kind of thing, and apparently has been since the 50s, since the movie said they basically yeah, but this idea of entering hibernation, or it's also frequently called suspended animation, that kind of thing, it would help tremendously, because not only would you save people from the boredom of a six month space trip sure. You'd save them from going a little crazy from that. Save on food supplies, save on space, because the people don't need to move around or exercise or anything. I guess it's slowing their aging as well. Right? I don't know. That'd be the interesting thing. I would guess so. Yeah. Because I would think the process of aging is the wearing out of your body from metabolism, and if your metabolism is slowing, you're not aging. Sure, yeah. I'm sure it doesn't shut it down, but I guarantee you there's a formula. Right. So there is actual interest in this kind of thing. You found a cool thing from the British Medical Journal from Jeez. How long? 110 years ago? Yeah. 1900 on the nose. 116 years ago. It was an article titled Human Hibernation, and they reprinted it about 16 years ago, and they talked about these Russian peasants that did something called lotska. Nice. You nailed that. Which is essentially six months during the hardest winters, the family will kind of hibernate. Like they don't do anything. They sleep as much as they can, eat a little hard tech, drink a little water, and someone stays up to keep the fire going. They take turns doing that. Right. But otherwise they are just bedded down, conserving their energy. Yeah, that's it. They wake up once a day, like you said, eat a little bread, drink a little water, go back to sleep. I imagine that's got to I'm sure it's not so drastic like some of these mammals that we've talked about, but it's got to have a physiological effect, the desired effect. I mean, think about it. That's why they tell you if you're trying to lose weight, don't eat for hours before you go to bed because all you're going to do is you're not going to burn any of that energy off because you're just laying there sleeping. Same thing with this. It's kind of like a forced pseudo hibernation. Self induced pseudo hibernation that they're like. It's a strategy. We're not going to use up as much energy. We're just going to lay here. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah. And I think these survival shows that you see, too, they do a lot of laying around when the food is scarce as well. Yeah. I mean, that's what you want to do. Yeah. Plus, I think you're kind of forced to sure, yeah. Because you lose energy. Yeah. You have no food energy, so you can't do anything. There's one other thing I wanted to mention, too. You got something else? No, I mean, just I remember a few years ago, I guess it was ten years ago now I remember, when that Japanese man was lost in the woods and claims that some scientists agree that he went into a state of hibernation. Yeah, we talked about him in the therapeutic hypothermia episode. Yeah, I think we might have done one of our old video things on him, too. Oh, yeah, seems like it. Man, a while ago we've covered everything dear. But there have been other cases like that from people like stranded in cars. A Swedish biologist who like, yes, for all intents and purposes, drowned in an icy creek. It was revived. Yeah, I guess that's a little more like the therapeutic hypothermia. But no, the same thing with the Japanese man and the woman in the trunk of the car. They were both exposed to below freezing temperatures and it lowered their metabolism. Pretty amazing. And then there was this guy who was not in freezing temperatures back in 1973. There was a journal article, I can't remember the name of the journal. They did a study with a yogi Satya Merti, and for eight days he went into a state of basically like meditative hibernation. As far as they know, he didn't eat or drink anything he lost \u00a310.04 and a half kilograms. His body temperature dropped down to 94 deg, which doesn't seem that much, but apparently that was the ambient temperature of where he was sealed off in. They had EKG sensors detecting his heartbeat, and apparently his heartbeat went up to like, 200 beats a minute and then started to taper off. And after the first day and for the next seven days, they basically couldn't detect a heartbeat. He lowered his heartbeat so much, and I've seen it mentioned here, there, or whatever, but I've not seen anybody say, well, this is how he did it, or, this is the trick. Yeah. It seems to be one of those weird curiosities of science that is just kind of over there. You know what I mean? I think I remember that. That's incredible. When I was a kid. Oh, yeah. Remember that show? Sure. I think I remember a piece on this dude. Right. I wouldn't be surprised if they did. You have his name, yogi Satya murti. Different guy. There was another Yogi, though, on that show. Yogi Bera. No, he could do the same thing right there on the bench. Dugout, should we talk about the hydrogen sulfide real quick? Sure. There's a cell biologist named Mark Roth at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. NCL. And in 2005, there was a big experiment where scientists induced hibernation and lab mice by giving them hydrogen sulfide gas. And apparently it shut down it really induced hibernation. The body temperature shut down their metabolic processes, and then they gave them normal air, and then they were fine again. Right. And they're thinking they're trying it now on Roundworms, which apparently we have the same reaction humans do. What's it called? Nitrogen sulfide? No, the effect. Yeah. It's kind of like you gas somebody and it knocks them out. Right. And they're doing experiments. They think that might be the key to inducing this in humans, whether for space travel or I think what was one of the other things they said it would be good for is Oregon transplants. Right. That's it. And by that I meant Oregon. Not oregon. Transplants. Yeah, like people moving from Northern California. I think they mentioned something, too, about people in vegetative states. It could help them out if they kind of shut their metabolic functioning down while they wait for a cure or something. I'm not sure. The thing I saw about that gas is that if you remain exposed to it, you die. Right. Which I guess is like some sort of, like, inert gas asphyxiation. But it seemed different than that. I don't know why that would mean that it showed promise for hibernation. Maybe if you expose somebody to it and then let off a little bit and then expose them to it and let off that you could keep it up like that. Yeah, like a good dentist. We'll go run our own experiments after this. Great. Okay. If you want to know more about hibernation. You can type that word in the search bar, and it'll bring up this article, which was a grabster article. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Mark of quality. And since I said grabster, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this wine growing. Hey, guys, enjoyed the episode on Ice Ages and commend you on your ability to once again distill a complicated subject into an informative entertainment piece. That's what we do. As a quick note from the wine industry, we often, and I often personally prefer the term wine growing. You both chuckled the phrase in the episode, but actually conveys the job better than anything else. Grapes grown for wine are generally different varieties held to different standards than grapes grown for eating or juice production. Berries are smaller, contain less juice, more acid and sugar, and have bitter skins and seeds which make them less appetizing than the grapes you find in the supermarket. But these are the qualities that make good wine. In fact, many professional associations in the wine industry refer to themselves as wine growers. Unfortunately, the vines don't grow in finished bottles. Wine is made there in the vineyard, though it gets me every time. The goal is to bring out the best in the fruit. Once it is inside the winery, I keep up the good work. I encourage you to try some of the wines from around Delanoga, Georgia. Great. Wine is made everywhere. You may be surprised what is just down the road. Steve, steve. Steve. Send us some wine. Yes, man, that's how we can go. Try some wine. I'm in the wine industry. Go try some. Send us some wine. Yes, Steve. I like big beefy reds, full bodied reds, dry whites. What do you like? I love rose. Okay. I like reds, I guess fruity reds. Like Zinfandel's and Sarah's. Sure. And I'm cool with any whites. Like champagne, too, Steve, or any kind of sparkling wine, I should say. Yeah. I recommend to you, Dan and others out there to watch this great documentary. Did you see Som, the original So M documentary about the Somalia master Somalia testing process? It was good. There is a sequel now from the same makers called Som Inside the Bottle, where it's just a look at wine. There are ten different topics they cover about the wine and the wine industry. And it's really good. Oh, check that one out. Yeah, you can learn a lot from it. Okay. It'll make you thirsty. We need to do a whole episode on wine. We still have yet to do it. Yeah, Emily asked me that when we were watching it. She's like, have you not done this yet? And I said, that's the one I might be most afraid of, period. Oh, yes. Worse than soccer for chess? Yeah, we did soccer and chess. I'm more intimidated by the wine podcast because I care so much about it. And you could have a podcast series on wine. I'm sure there are. Yeah, there are plenty, so it would be tough to sum it up in 45 minutes to do this. We'll do it. We're doing wine. All right? It will be great, Chuck. You'll love it. So scared. If you want to get in touch with us again, you can hang out with me on Twitter at Josh Clark. You can also hang out with Stuff You Should know in general at SYSK podcast. You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook at charlesw. Chuck Bryant. You can hang out with Stuff You Should Know on Facebook@facebook.com, stuffyshow you can send us an email to stuffpodcast athowstoughfworks.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 houseoffworks.com." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-06-29-sysk-standardized-patients-final.mp3 | How Standardized Patients Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-standardized-patients-work | Even the most brilliant medical minds need a good bedside manner, and thanks to standardized patients, they can improve their skills. What are they? Part-time workers who pretend to be real patients so doctors can practice on live humans. If you're rememb | Even the most brilliant medical minds need a good bedside manner, and thanks to standardized patients, they can improve their skills. What are they? Part-time workers who pretend to be real patients so doctors can practice on live humans. If you're rememb | Thu, 29 Jun 2017 15:13:04 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=29, tm_hour=15, tm_min=13, tm_sec=4, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=180, tm_isdst=0) | 48578224 | 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. What if we could change the world one relationship at a time? Don't miss the second season of Force Multiplier, the awardwinning podcast from iHeartRadio and Salesforce.org about tackling some of today's biggest challenges, like climate change, education, access, and global health. Listen in is host baritoon de 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. Hey, everybody. It's us, Josh and Chuck. And we want you to know we are coming somewhere near you. We're sure if you live in North America this year. That's right, we're going on tour. And why don't we just rattle through these dates, okay? Toronto, August 8 at the Danforth Music Hall. Chicago, August 9. The next day at Harris Theater. Then we are taking some time off to recover. After that two day grind, we're hitting Vancouver, the Vogue Theater, September 26, followed by Minneapolis. We're going to be at the Pantageous Theater again on September 27. That is correct. Yes. And then Austin Chuck on October 10 at the Paramount Theater yes. And very special show in Lawrence, Kansas, at Liberty Hall on October 11. Yes. And then we're going to do a three night stand, october 22, 23rd and 24th at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn, New York. And then, Chuck, take it home. Well, take it home literally, because we are finishing up November 4 right here in Atlanta, the Bucket Theater. And this is a very special benefit show, and all the proceeds will be going to Lifeline Animal Project of Atlanta and the National Down Syndrome Society. Yes, and for more information and to buy tickets, just go to sysclive.com. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, welcome to the podcast. My name is Josh Clarke, and I'm proud to introduce my partner, cohost in crime one of those two. Mr. Charles W. Chuck Wayne. Chuck Tran. Bryan. Chuck. And this week, Chuck, we have a very special guest producer filling out the seat. That's right. It is the rump of Noel Brown. Yeah, Jerry's. She's at the beach because she needs a vacation. I'm getting pale, guy. Yeah. Jerry's Romping at the beach with her wife and her daughter and a bunch of friends, and I think that sounds lovely. Well, yeah, the beach rocks. Who doesn't like the September? Even Miley Cyrus likes the beach now. I don't get it. She's got this new single out about how her boyfriend introduced her to the beach. It's a pretty sweet song, actually. You know this stuff? My wife introduces me to things sometimes that I otherwise would never, ever have come across. Like, I can pick on you for that, but I would never pick on you, me for that. Right? Sure. What are you, a monster? Yeah, you don't pick on a man's wife. Right. So, yeah. It is a cute, sweet song, though. I can give it a hearty endorsement. Emily has her little secrets, too, from even Me. She was singing the song the other day that was on some TV show. I was like, how do you know this? I've never heard the song. And she said, no, it's a song. I know. So it's a song. I don't even know what it was. It was just some kind of bubblegum poppy thing. And that's kind of not her. But you never know. Yeah, she might have learned from her boyfriend. Sure. Todd, Todd, todd's into bull gun pop. He's a jerk he's got frosted tips on his hair he's got a severe ombre. So which one are we doing? We're going to do standardized patience. And it's funny, the thought occurred to me to go through this entire episode without mentioning Seinfeld at all, just to make people really angry. Man, we would have gotten so many emails, though. But that's kind of like you can't not mention the very famous Seinfeld episode where Kramer and who's the other guy? Mickey. Oh, yeah, I forgot Mickey was one, too. Was that his name? Yeah, his friend who was a little person. Yeah, and they were I think Mickey got him into it. And I didn't even know they were called standardized patients. I doubt if they said that on the episode. Right. I don't remember what they called them. Surely they called them something. Well, they have a few names. Simulated patients, standardized patients, care actors. Well, some of those are different. They're generally under the umbrella of, say, like a simulated patient. Yeah, but there's slightly there's little nuances there that make the whole thing revoltingly. Fascinating. Programmed patients. And that what the first guy called it. Yeah. Man, if that's not like a brain doctor's name for it, then I don't know why. Well, should we start there? Yeah, let's go back to that guy, a doctor named Howard Barrow. He worked out at USC. Gotrosions. And he was teaching back in the early 60s, late fifty s, I believe. And apparently at the time, Chuck, they would just teach you everything and then say, okay, you've graduated, you're done. Goodbye to practice medicine. Good luck with a live human. Exactly. You've never encountered one throughout your entire training, but you are a doctor now. So we wash our hands of you. Right. And so this guy was teaching neurology and realized, I think he had a friend who had come to start, like, observing his graduates in a clinical setting, but, like, after they graduated and were practicing doctors, and we were like, whoa, whoa, you guys are doing this all wrong. Who taught you this? And like, you did. And he's like, all right, well, we got to do something different. So that doctor figured out that he could sit down and go through, basically observe a doctor doing an entire patient history and exam and everything, but each one took like, two to 3 hours, and they're like, there's got to be a better way to do this. Sure. So Barrows was his idea and his idea alone. Right. From what I understand. I came across another doctor, a woman, pediatrician woman named Paula Stillman, who came up with this idea also seemingly independently in the early 70s because it didn't catch on big time in the 80s. So I think she and Barrow are kind of like the earliest practitioners of this thing. Well, it wasn't a big hit at first. Like, people kind of made fun of them. I know. In this one article you found, there were newspaper articles, one in the La. Herald examiner that had a headline that said, Hollywood invades USC medical School. Right. In the San Francisco Chronicle, of all places, they said scantily clad models were making life a little more interesting for the USC medical students, which is really I guess it's a sign of the times, but really kind of a crappy way to they made it sound like it was some titillating sexual thing. Right. Because they had these people that are really doing what I learned was a super valuable service. Oh, yeah, for sure. I think they were just trying to sex it up for the paper, you know what I mean? Of course, for their reading audience, because they were like, Zodiac Killer coming soon. What's that? Stay tuned. But he wasn't around yet, so they had to do something. So they were just trying to take something that was actually a valuable service and pretty straightforward and again, sex it up a little bit. But it actually kept it from catching on for a while, at least at first. It wasn't until, I think, the mid 80s that Barrow was able to get it to start to become adopted throughout the medical universe, in the United States at least. Yeah. And you know what? We've done that thing again. Yeah, I know. Where we haven't said what it is yet. No, you had to have seen Seinfeld and know how to read between the lines of our conversation. Yes. So a simulated patient or a standardized patient is sometimes you're an actor. Sometimes they have no acting experience. Sometimes it will get to who these people are. But they're generally people looking to make a buck who fit the profile of being a fake patient to a medical student. So they can get a real practical human to human experience in medical school. Exactly. Because there's a big difference between book learning and real life. Right? Yes. And if you're a doctor, a huge part of your job, especially nonsurgical doctrine, is conversing with a human being, a patient, and on the one hand, treating them as a human being, not a set of symptoms. That's a big one. But then also getting out of them what's wrong with them so that you can diagnose them. Yeah. I thought this was all sort of just about bedside manner because it's a big part of the job. You want a doctor. If you've ever had a doctor that had a poor bedside manner, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, then you might take it for granted that everyone's like that, but that's not the case. Right. But the second part of that I didn't really think about. But the director of the standardized patient program at University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, valerie Former, who they I don't know if they interviewed her for this or if she was just they pulled some quotes, but I never really thought about it. She said, communication is at the root of proper diagnosis. Patient safety and patient satisfaction and miscommunication can lead to medical error. So a big part of the job is drawing out of the patient what the heck is wrong with them, because they can examine until the cows come home. But they need words. Right. So a patient who comes into the doctor's office or the Er isn't going to be like, I have an abscess on my right kidney that needs to be treated or else I'm going to die of sepsis in the next 12 hours. My side hurts. That's what you get. Yeah. So you have to ask more questions and know what questions to ask. So, yeah, it's diagnosed, it's learning how to diagnose from talking to people and drawing info out of them. But that bedside manner, that's not to be overlooked. That's a big part of it. Because if people start to think every doctor I've ever interacted with treated me like I was just a bag of organs and bones which we are. Sure, but you're not supposed to let on that we all have to pretend in a big, grand manner. Right, exactly. But it'll keep you from going to the doctor, and if you stop going to the doctor, then health problems can start to accumulate and it's all the doctor's fault for being a sociopathic jerk. Well, yeah, but you also in that which one were we talking about? Doctors being too empathetic. The empathy one. Oh, okay. There you have it. Yeah. You didn't want a doctor who fell to pieces. No. You need to learn to walk that fine line between being too clinical and too much of an empath to where the patient feels at ease and taken care of, but you feel confident and they're not like, breaking down and crying because they have to tell you that you may be dying, let's say. Yeah, but that lady from the University of Pittsburgh who was interviewed in this article points out that she remembered at least one medical student who did break down because of an interaction with a simulated patient or standardized patient. And that's the point of a simulated or standardized patient, so that you can go ahead and break down like that and get it out in basically a classroom setting so that when you encounter this in the real world, you'll have already gone through that. Yeah, and we'll get into the nuts and bolts of it in a bit. But if you're wondering if you want to go do this if you have to get a prostate exam, you don't have to. But if you're open to that kind of pure, Intaction, you can sign up for a more intense and I imagine those are the ones that pay a little bit better, but you can go in and volunteer for a prostate exam or breast exam or anything that involves something a little more invasive. Yeah, but you're not going to get cut or you're not going to get a needle or anything like that. They're not going to practice that kind of stuff on you. Right. I was reading the FAQ on the University of Pittsburgh side about their simulated patients and they point out that patients, simulated patients will not be given drugs. Yes. They're not going to inject you with like a cocktail of antipsychotics for the simulation. This may be a good way to score right. But it's on you as the simulated patient to act as if you're going through a psychotic break right. Then potentially so that the doctor can learn how to deal with that kind of thing. That's probably one of the more dramatic examples. A lot of them are a lot more pedestrian, but that is definitely in the mix as well. Well, even though, as we'll see, it's not scripted, you do have to be an improviser of sorts, but you're supposed to stick to kind of I don't think you're supposed to throw any just curve balls that you think of in the moment. Right. Which is what I would want to do, which is probably I would not be a good SP. That's what Kramer did. Yeah. He's going to make it into like a real acting gig. Right, right. And they say that actors can be good at this, but it's not acting like they point out that you're not searching for moments of drama, you're not there to entertain, you're not playing to the audience. So, yes, it could be helpful to learn, say, I don't know, would it be character acting or method acting in this one? Probably method acting. So it would be useful to learn some nuts and bolts of that. Just practice and rehearse that type of acting. But you're not going to go get your big break or something doing this. That's not the point of it. No, I think I would try and fart a lot or something. Just something very subtle. That'd be your trademark. Yeah, because in the lounge afterwards, they'd all be like, did you get the guy? I think he was farting. Right. Was that on purpose? That would be your standardized patient card. It says Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Ask about my trademark arts on command. All right, that was dumb. So we should take a break so I can get it together. Okay. Hey, everybody. If you want a great quality website, you want to do it yourself with no must and no fuss, then there's nowhere else to look in Squarespace. That's right. Squarespace has every single thing that you need to put together an awesome website. Everything from growing and engaging your audience with email campaigns, collecting donations for your cause through Apple, Pay, Stripe, Venmo, PayPal. Plus, you can also make your website optimized for mobile, which is great for your user on the go. That's right. And if you're into selling stuff, square space is everything to sell anything. They have all the tools you need to get your business off the ground. They have ecommerce templates, inventory management, really simple checkout process, and secure payment. So whatever you want to sell, you can sell it on Squarespace. Yeah, don't just take our word for it. Head to squarespace. 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.com sy only 45% of high school students feel they are prepared for college or careers. Stride career prep is helping change that. Stride Career Prep lets students take charge of their education and their future. By combining real world skills training and traditional academics, students can earn college credit while in high school or get the training needed to land a job right after graduation. Stride Career Prep prepares your team for indemand careers in business, tech, health, science, criminal justice, and more. Students can take courses developed by industry professionals, prepare for certifications, get handson, experience, network, and most importantly, gain the confidence they need to succeed. Stride Career Prep is backed by over 20 plus years of experience in online learning and education. Take charge at K twelve. Compodcast. That's K twelve.com podcast and start taking charge of your future today. So, Chuck, let's get on to the nuts and bolts, the nitty gritty a little bit, right? So I said earlier that all of this kind of falls under the umbrella of a standardized or a simulated patient. And then underneath that umbrella, which we've kind of been using interchangeably but really shouldn't, is the standardized patient is largely what we're talking about, and then, I think, synonymous with the standardized patient and is the program patient that first term that George Barrow used for. Right, right. And the reason that it's called Standardizer Program is because, like you said, there isn't a script. Like, you don't memorize a script if the doctor says this and then you say that. But you do have, like, you are given a specific set of criteria, and it can be really detailed as well. And you're expected to stick to that role, that character. You take on a character, and your character is sick. Your character has a backstory. There's certain things that your character is capable of doing and incapable of doing because of the medical condition, maybe because of a prior medical history. And then you go in there and you remain in this character, and you do it virtually the same way, as close to the same as possible for student doctor after student doctor after student doctor, usually up to about ten in a day. And each student doctor is supposed to get the same experience from you. And the reason why they want it that standard is because they're being graded on this, they're being tested on this. It's the closest thing to scientifically reproducible that something as objective as bedside manner could be made into. That's the point of standardized patients, specifically. Yeah. And the case that you've gotten is either something that's just made up, like, hey, we need somebody that has maybe a ruptured appendix or whatever that's kind of a run of the meal, meal, run of the breakfast, run of the mill situation. But sometimes it's an actual case, like a real case that they base it on. Like, someone has actually experienced this, it's been recorded, and they had this case study, and they want the doctor to go through this very specific thing. And in that case, they want to really replicate that right down to, like, the age, gender, and ethnicity of that actual patient that had that actual case to begin with. Right, exactly. I think George Barrow, the guy who came up with this in the 60s, he based his first standardized patient on an actual case that he handled because he knew exactly how it presented, exactly what the medical history was, and it was something that he felt could be reproduced pretty easily again and again. And there's this really interesting essay that was run in The Believer, but I think it made it into a collection in the writer's book by a writer named Leslie Jamison, and the name of the essay is The Empathy Exams, and it's about her experience as a standardized patient. Oh, wow. And it's really interesting just how she's really investigating the character that she's given. Like, I think her main character got more than one, but her main one, the one that she seems most attached to, her brother drowned after tailgating at a football game and then jumping into a river and he drowned years back, and she's, like, still grieving over the loss of her brother and it's led to seizures. But even she, the character doesn't know that these seizures are basically coming out of grief. Right. So it's for the doctors to suss out. That's just one of at least a couple of standardized patients that she's played. But it's really interesting. It's a great essay. Well, yeah. In this article that you dug up, it said that there are a lot of reasons someone might want to do this, but one of them can certainly be that they had, like, a family member that died of a certain disease or maybe was misdiagnosed even. So they feel like this is like something they can do to kind of help out that kind of research or whatever. Right. I ran across, though, that one of the pitfalls of standardized patients is that the people who do it, they can have a hidden agenda sometimes, and it may be as benign as if my brother was misdiagnosed. I want to make sure that doesn't happen to anybody else. Or I ran across in the comments section on the biomedical blog about some doctor said that while he was in training, he came across a standardized patient who was sure to list all of the herbal medications that she was taking right then. And then she later said that it was because she wanted to make sure that these medical students were made aware of alternative medicine as well. She had, like, a specific hidden agenda that she wanted to get across to these med students without going to the trouble of going to med school herself and becoming a doctor teacher. It just kind of came in under the radar, basically. And apparently they try to root people like that out because it's not the point of the whole thing. But it's kind of funny how they slip in there sometimes. Yeah. And you know, you're in character unless you're doing and we'll talk about this later, but that one thing that you found and sent me that seemed like a little bit of a different process where they might have a really specific goal in mind where you kind of do almost like play acting back and forth with the student doctor, but generally they're trying to diagnose you. So you walk in the room and you're in character. So if you've got kidney pain or bad back or a limp or whatever, then you don't walk in and say, all right, let's get started, and then go, oh. Like they try to make it as real as possible. You walk in there in character with holding your side or whatever your ailment is. Right. You don't run your face over or your hand over your face, smiling, frowning to get in character. No, you don't do that. No. And apparently I've seen that if standardized patients really good, they'll be basically indistinguishable from some of the patients that the doctor will eventually run into in their clinical practice. Right. Yeah. It's tough, man, because you have to if you're not an actor, you might have a talent you didn't know you had. If you're good at this, because you have to memorize and internalize and study all this stuff, because you have to be just as real as someone who is experiencing something. And you would be the best actor if you literally become that person that you're playing. And that's kind of what you have to do for this. Right. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Like, these people, if they aren't actors, they might want to look into it. Sure. If they're good at it. Yeah. So let's talk about that. Being an actor is not a prerequisite for this, right? No, but you could be an actor and be good at it. You could be an actor and become very quickly frustrated by the whole thing because it's not acting, necessarily. It's a very specific type of acting. Right. Yeah. It's literally medical acting, but just that's not enough. You need to apparently be ceaselessly upbeat, endlessly upbeat. And the reason why is because you're going through this thing, say, up to ten times in a row, and these things last, from what I saw, about 45 minutes. Sure. So you're doing this for 45 minutes? Well, plus they make you wait a half an hour to an hour in the waiting room beforehand. Exactly. Filling out forms. Yeah. Because you got to get angry before you go in there. Some guys like, coughing along up next to you. It's like, oh, I'm not contagious. It drives me crazy when people are like, I'm not contagious. Like, you don't know. You have no idea whether you're contagious or not. Right. So you have to do this maybe ten times in a row. It's about 45 minutes per from what I saw. And that 10th one needs to be as great a performance as that first one, because those are two different medical students. There's ten different medical students seeing you, and each one needs to get your best, because as far as they're concerned, this is their training. They're not looking at your day like, oh, I'm one of ten, this is my big test or my big training. So you need to give each one your all. True. In that sense, you have to have a lot of energy, a lot of spunk, a lot of positivity, and then you also have to be very comfortable dealing with medical professionals, which is not necessarily always the easiest bunch to deal with, from what I understand. Well, no, I mean, if you have a phobia of doctors, then this is not the gig for you. Sure. And I think if you are easily crushed by pushy, arrogant people, it might not be the best gig for you either. Why is that? Well, doctors can be ted arrogant sometimes. I mean, we all saw malice. I don't think I saw that. Yeah, you did. When Alec Baldwin is like, Do I have a God complex? I don't have a God complex. I am God. I just thought that was Alec Baldwin. Right? Probably wouldn't he tweeted it right? No, I never did see that, actually. I remember the movie, though. Yeah, it was good. 80s movie, late 80s movie. But yeah, so you can't just be like a wilting flower when a student gets all mad or pushy or whatever. And you also have to be the type who could conceivably take charge and take control if a med student is doing that and kind of maybe guide them back a little bit toward where they should be. Or at the very least. Being willing to give them feedback to their face about how they just royally screwed this whole thing up because they're over aggressive or because they were under assertive. Who knows? I think you run into all of that stuff and you have to be prepared to do this. So that brings up another point, too. You have to have a really good memory. Yeah. Because depending on who you ask, a lot of the simulated patients will also be required to give feedback. Some of them, I got the impression, has something to do with the scoring or grading process as well. Really? So you have to be in character. You have to have your character's history, symptoms, everything memorized. You have to stay in character. You have to respond to the doctor's questioning, and then you have to be paying attention to all the stuff the doctor should be asking, all the stuff the doctor is failing to ask, and the doctors just behavior in general so that you can give accurate feedback afterwards. And then you have to do it ten times in a row in a day. Yeah. And this serves a very specific need beyond the obvious, that well, there's a few things, and they're all somewhat obvious, but it bears going over in experience of medical students, you don't want them practicing on a real sick person, because if they mess up, that's not good. Right. So having almost like a live recessa Annie on your hands is good. I had a live resistant Annie. My mom used to bring those homes. She used to teach CPR. What would you do with them? I tried to teach and then I learned a kiss. I knew something weird went on. I tried to learn CPR here. I think I've learned it like four or five times in my life. I just keep forgetting it. The one thing I do remember is you want to do it, you want to press the what is it called? Where you give chest compressions to the beat of staying alive. And then apparently you don't give breathing aid. Like, you don't pinch their nose and breathe into their mouth for a couple of reasons. One, you're exhaling carbon dioxide directly into their. Lungs, so that's stupid. And then two, they don't really have a way to expel it. So now, apparently, from what I understand, they just recommend chest compressions until paramedics arrive. Is that the latest accurate? I don't know. I should probably look it up before we publish this. Yeah. We should say, too, that we're not trained medical professionals. No, we're not even trained medical actors. And you are now taking life saving advice from a guy who learned to kiss from a lifeless synthetic. She wasn't lifeless when I was kissing her. Little curly wigs fun on her head. All right, so the first thing is inexperienced. You don't want a medical student to be messing up on real people. Number two is availability. They have to run the gamut of medical issues, and you just can't count on being able to source real patients with that specific problem. So it's really easy just to teach someone to act like that. And finally, a real patient isn't supposed to provide feedback, constructive feedback for their doctor. I suppose they could, yeah. Even if they could, though, they're not necessarily like they're going to be like, again, my kidneys abscess them and a lot of pain. I don't really care about your medical career. Just fix me. Yeah, you call Sean at the end of this thing, and then they go, all right, now, like you said, let's talk about it. I'm really not in pain, so I'm fine to have this conversation. Sure. Whereas the patient would be like, I got to go urinate blood real quick. I'll be right back, and I'll give you feedback, doctor. Correct. So that's standardized patients, right? Yes, but there's plenty of other kinds. Let's take a break and then we'll come back and talk about those, okay? 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. 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But I kind of did wonder, like, how do surgeons even practice these days? I know they probably cut on cadavers cadavers in med school, but you can only get so far. We've come a long way from the days where med students were forced to rob graves. Now we've got $100,000 Cadillacs of robots ready for surgery. Yeah, I mean, they look like I mean, some of them don't have if they don't need it, they don't have legs and arms, but they cover that up just to make it a little more realistic. Sure, but they have guts. And this one dude I saw had, like, kind of a 05:00 shadow beard. It was creepy and awesome that they have this stuff that's so lifelike. Oh, man. So I was on Twitter the other day, shout out Twitter and Atlas Obscura had this tweet where they had a picture of this. It was a decapitated serial killer whose head was pickled in a jar from, I think, a teaching hospital in, I believe, Portugal, possibly Spain. I think it was Portugal. It was Portugal's first serial killer, and they had his head pickled, and it was from 1840 when he was executed. Wow. And, man, it looks like he was from the 70s, maybe. Like, it's just so lifelike, still completely undergraded and just creepy. His eyes are wide open, just kind of like his mouth is a little slack, but he looks like he could be thinking about something rather than being headless. Well, that's where the old phrase comes from. A pickled head never loses its looks. All right, so if you're a recruiter, let's say, at the University of Pittsburgh, and you're trying to find these people and source them, you're going to be very picky, because it's a big deal. It's not like a fly by night job. This is something that medical students take very seriously. You have to be intuitive. Like you said, you had to weed through people that you might think have some other sort of weird motive, but you're going to have to weed through a lot of people because this is also the kind of thing where you can make twenty dollars to forty dollars an hour. Obviously people want to get paid, but their motives have to be more than just money, I think. Well, yeah, I mean, it's tricky too, because you expect high caliber of commitment and skill from your teachers or your special standardized patients. Right. Yeah. And they're very highly trained and there's a lot of like ongoing education that happens, but at the same time, yeah, you're paid handsomely if you look at it per hour, but if you look at it over the course of a month even, you're probably not even going to be able to make rent off of this. No, it's a part time gig, if that yeah, but you have to be a good listener as well as all the things we mentioned, like memorization and be a decent actor. You have to be able to take direction well. You have to be flexible. If they change something up on you. It says in here if the simulation isn't achieving the desired goal, they may come in between sessions and say, hey, listen, I think we had the wrong approach here, so can you do it this way? Act better. I think that was Christopher Walken said that was the only direction there was. Really? Do it better. Yeah. I love that guy. Yes, don't we all? It's probably something you get into if you have a desire to help people, if you just have a zeal for interesting jobs. Maybe if you have an interest in medicine or psychology or being an educator, like you are an educator in some ways. And in fact, I think some of them call them educators. Like medical educators. Yeah. There's a national association, a national group called the association of Standardized Patient Educators, and I think they have ongoing education and core curriculum. It's pretty interesting to see just how much training you can get in this. And I imagine if you're really good and really highly trained, you're not going to be some part time adjunct employee of a local medical school. You could conceivably go around the country or possibly the world, especially if you have a specialty. Sure. One of the downsides of this is that, and this is kind of a shame, but there is no controlled randomized trial that can actually prove the effectiveness. But by all accounts across the board, everyone says this is super important and highly, highly effective as per student. They just can't prove it. Yeah, that drives them crazy. Probably. So you've got standardized patients. One of the other ones you touched on, that's worth diving into a little more care actors, right? Yeah. They fall under that same umbrella of a simulated patient. But these guys are whereas, like, a standardized patient is really going to help a second or third year medical student who has no clinical experience whatsoever and is learning the very basics of like, physical exams or bedside manner and all that stuff. A character is much more useful for somebody who's already in practice and has a lot of experience, but just wants to get better at it. Sure. Right. So, like, a character will basically be there to add lib a little bit based on whatever the doctor wants to work on. Say the doctor wants to work on empathy, right. Rather than go through the whole history and the whole patient encounter from beginning to end, they're going to focus on that one part of the patient doctor interaction and they're going to do it over and over again. There's an ability, rather than having to start at the beginning and finish at the end, you can stop and try something over again if you didn't like it or you want to repeat it. Like I said, there's a lot of ad living and the doctor can say, okay, we're going to do a patient who has psychosis and is in the midst of a psychotic break. And it's on a scale of one to ten, it's an eleven and I need to be empathetic, so let's try it. And then they're going to go from there and they can just kind of switch it up as need be. Yeah. And I think this is really cool because the doctor can get as specific as they want. They can say, like, you know what, I feel like I have a pretty good bedside manner, but I have a really hard time dealing with patients when they get angry at me. So they'll say, all right, let's dial up and exercise. Yeah. They're like, oh, you want some anger? Exactly. You asked for it. And they'll bring someone in there. Or like you said, if the doctor was like, hey, I do pretty well even with patients who have a psychotic episode, but maybe not right in the middle of a psychotic episode. I've had some real trouble there. So again, they come in there and like you said, this is different. They're not surprised on what they're going to get. This is just a very specific training method. Or the doctors like, I'm fine with kids unless they turn their eyelids inside out and then I can't I just completely lose it. Did you ever do that? No, I wasn't one of those either. I can roll my tongue perfectly and wiggle my ears. Yeah, I can do those things too. I can't turn my tongue into like a clover or a club, though. You know that kids who could do that. Yeah, I can do that. I can't do that. I didn't know you could do that. Yeah, I haven't pulled that one out in a while, though. No, you got you but the eyelid thing, there's no reason you do that unless you're not I'm not impressed with Annie. You're not going anywhere in life. If you're going up to the girls in class with your eyelids turned inside out, there's no way to woo a girl. No. Young boys, if you're listening to this, don't do that. You know what you do? Be nice to girls and listen to them and trust me on that. I'm still learning that one right as we grow. Now, I'm always nice, but I could always work on the listening. Sure, ma'am. That's personal. That was good advice, Chuck. Nice of you. If you start a fifth or 6th grade boy out on the right track like that yeah, it can be good. Humans, I feel like girls are inherently good. Sure. You don't see girls running around with their eyelids turned inside out. Never. Not even Wonder Woman would do that. That's true. What else? So you got standardized patients, care actors, and then I ran across another one called Unannounced standardized Patients. I'm not kidding. They're basically you know what a secret shopper is? Yes. They are highly trained standardized patients who are secret shoppers at hospitals and doctor's offices and stuff like that. To go in from beginning to end to rate the experience from the patient's eyes. Yeah. That's scary. Yeah. But it's cool, though, that any hospital would do this because, you know, it shows a bit of a dedication to customer service. Yeah, for sure. Which I think that people forget that when you go in for medical care, you're the customer. You should be treated well. Like, we demand to be treated well from cable providers, from car dealers, from grocery stores, from everybody. But we just go into a hospital, like complete supplicants. Like, please don't murder me. If you demand to be treated like a good customer, well, then well, then they do kill you. It's a conundrum. They're like, oh, I guess somebody shouldn't have mouthed off. And then the pillow goes over the thing. You said that one cool article of the doctor. What did he call himself? The Muda. The guy who basically has recruited medical professionals that are self not actors, but they're medical actors. That dude wasn't even a doctor. He was just a doctor. No, he was a freelance teaching actor or teaching patient. Right. And he got really good at it. And he specialized in male Eurogenital exams. Right. So prostate exam, testicular exam. And this guy would travel the country doing this, and he set up shop, actually, in Atlanta, a company called Clinical Skills USA. Right. Yeah. And recruited other people. And these people just go around the country allowing medical students to give them rectal exams, breast exams, vaginal exams, cervical exams, so that these students can practice on a live person. But more than just a live person. Because in this article, this article is by Elizabeth Coles and I think, vocative, these medical models use their own bodies as teaching tools. It's really great. But she makes mention that apparently medical schools to train med students on gynecological exams back in the day they would hire prostitutes. Did not know that. I didn't know that either. I thought these people though, had medical background because they're training them as well, aren't they? Yes. Like a little to the left, little to the right. There it is. Yes. So these people are trained in the exam. They're not medical professionals. One that they interview is a real estate agent, or no, an insurance agent. One guy is retired from the GM plant, which I suspect probably the one in Doraville. Yeah. They know what the exam is supposed to be like and then they've subjected themselves to the exam so many times that they can that they know the right way to do it so well that they can teach med students how to do it. But this is still under the supervision of trained professionals. Right. I have the impression that the med school teacher who brings these people in says, listen to what this person has to say. They're the trained professionals. All right. Wow. That's interesting. Yeah. So this one guy who's a male genital teaching associate that they interview, Mike Manning, he said that he estimates he's had somewhere around 4000 prostate exams. Oh, man. In nine years. Wow. So, yes, that guy probably knows more about how to give a prostate exam than anybody in the world. Well, I saw the one picture of the guy, like, being over the table and it's from his front and then the student doctor behind him and he's kind of looking back like that's it. That's correct. Yeah, I think that was the guy. I think that was Mike Manning or Mark Manning. Yeah. Isn't it interesting? Yeah. I don't want to call it weird, but just what a fascinating thing to have a knack for and not mind and just be like, yeah, 4000 times, let's do it. Yeah. It's pretty interesting that the people who all work for them too, they've kind of become a bit of a family. I love that they like, go to bars and go to dinner and hang out. Yeah, they do. One of them is actually she would be considered a gynecological teaching associate at GTA rather than the Muta. Her name is Katie Patterson, but she travels the country teaching med students how to correctly insert a speculum. These people are literally donating their body to science, but while they're still alive. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing. And yeah, they're getting paid, but I mean, they're not getting paid enormous amounts of money. They're getting paid something between 35 and $50 per student per day. So say you have ten students, you make $500 in a day. It's not bad at all. Sure. But you're only working 30 days out of the year, maybe maybe 50. Doesn't add up to much. So clearly these people are driven by much more benevolent thing than money plus their hearts. Yeah. You know? Yeah. You got anything else? I got nothing else. It turned out better than I thought. Chuck? Yeah? I think maybe if you're out there and all this sounds like, hey, I could probably do that and have a desire to help people learn. And I don't mind being poked and prodded, and I want to make a few bucks look into it. We should reiterate that the people who are the male Euro Genital Teaching Associates and the ladies who are the Gynecological Teaching Associates, they're very specific. And, yes, you could say, I want to sign up for rectal exams, and they'd say, Come on in. We need rectal exam volunteers bad. But just becoming a simulated patient of some sort, you could say, I never want to do rectal exams. I just want to do Bedside Man or something like that. And they would probably just stick to that. Yeah. They're not going to force you to ever do anything that you're not comfortable with. No. And again, regretfully, they don't give you any drugs. But if you do want that kind of thing yeah. If you are interested, check out your local med school. They probably have some sort of program. Or again go to the association of Standardized Patient Educators. Pretty neat. Yeah, if you're an actor. Beats waiting tables. Yeah. And in the meantime, you can type standardized patients into the search bar@housedefworks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this South African Canadian. All right. That piqued your interest. Yeah, but I know what this one's about. Hey, guys. I never really had a reason to get in contact into now, since you announced your tour up to Canada, and that fired my cylinders into action. Listen to you guys for a couple of years, probably from early 215 2015. 215. Been listening forever. I was then living in South Africa. At 19, fresh out of high school, I made a daring decision to leave my family and friends to try and make something of myself. I have Canadian citizenship as well, due to my father being born in Toronto or Toronto toronto. So I landed there in Toronto early last year and made my way a little east and then a lot west to Vancouver, where I would be seeing you in September of this year. The point is, being away from family and friends is brutal at a nine hour time difference. And brutal turns to lethal. I often feel lonely or anxious of the future, and when this happens, stuff you should know. And the three of you lovely people make it not seem so bad as it feels like there's someone right here with me, chatting casually about some neato topic. That is great. It is. So I just want to say thank you for making this move tolerable when it feels sometimes not so great. Who's that? That is KH. And I don't know if K-E-Y-A is yeah, Kaya kia. Kia H. I don't know how Kia identifies on the gender spectrum. Well, who cares, right? That's right. K H. The H stands for how are you? I just want to use the right pronoun, you know what I'm saying? Sure. So what is that one? Is it CIS? Cisgendered? Like gender neutral? I'm not sure. How about they sure? I think they are making a big push right now. Well, a nice email from they. Yeah. Thanks a lot, Kaya. That's pretty awesome. Congratulations for striking out on your own. It's pretty amazing. And thanks for coming to our show in Vancouver. And even more than that, thanks for giving us a reason to plug our show in Vancouver and the rest of our tour where people can get tickets@sysclive.com. Right? All right, well, if you want to get in touch with us, like Kaya did, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook. Comsteffyshno. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast athouseuffworks.com and as always, join us at our home on the web stephyseneau.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Hey everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and 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 are Pet moms. Two, we make natural, high quality pet food that's rooted in science. It's the world's best food for the world's best kids. Learn more@halopets.com." | |
c30914c6-5460-11e8-b38c-1bd6fe60a8b2 | SYSK Selects: How Lewis and Clark Worked | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-lewis-and-clark-worked | They may be the most famous explorers in U.S. history, but there are plenty of interesting details to the Lewis and Clark expedition that history has allowed to fade. Learn about the origin and the aftermath of America's first early push Westward in this episode. | They may be the most famous explorers in U.S. history, but there are plenty of interesting details to the Lewis and Clark expedition that history has allowed to fade. Learn about the origin and the aftermath of America's first early push Westward in this episode. | Sat, 23 Feb 2019 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=23, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=54, tm_isdst=0) | 50773355 | audio/mpeg | "Hi, SYSK friends. It's me, Josh. And for this week's, SYSK selects I've chosen how Louis and Clarke worked a great episode from 2013. It reveals that the famed expedition could have changed the history of relations between Native Americans and European Americans. But sadly, the European Americans in charge ended up going a different way. I hope you enjoy this eye opening episode about what could have been starting now. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Lewis Bryant. Yeah. I thought you were going to call me Lewis. I thought I thought about it. You're like, chuckle do that dumb joke. I wondered if I was related to Mr. Clark. Oh, yeah. I'm just going to say I am from now on. Have you heard of William Clark, the explorer? Clarke? Yeah. Well, I'm Josh Clark. Yeah, because Clark is the unusual name. You might be. No, but I mean, like, his family was from the Ohio River Valley. I grew up in Toledo. Hey, there you go. I wonder. You have an explorer spirit. You're a laidback guy. Yeah, he was laid back. Not like Lewis. He was semi literate. Yeah, I'm fairly literate. Yeah, that's the big distinction. It is funny. Like, have you read some of his verbatim journal entries? Who, Clarks or Lewis's? Well, both of them, but Clark is way worse. Yeah, Louis is a pretty good writer, I thought. Yeah, but he had some weird spellings, too. Clark was just like frontier Kentucky boy writing in a journey. Yeah, they were a good pair, though. Yeah. And this isn't one of those podcasts or stories where you look back and you're like, oh, history has really pumped this up. And they were really kind of like this and like jerks. No, this is really a great story. And they were actually true American heroes. Yeah. One semi tragic, I would say. Well, the ending is pretty tragic. No, but Lewis is manic depressive. Yeah, by all accounts. Yeah. Back then, they called it prone to fits, but modern people say, no, he was probably manic depressive. Right. And I prepped by watching the four hour Ken Burns documentary last night. 4 hours? Yeah. I thought it was 2 hours, and I was like, I got this. And then I got to the two hour point and I was like, wait a minute. They just hit the continental divide. I don't think I'm at the end. That's so funny, because in the email you emailed me to suggest that I watch it. You called it a six part, not four hour. Well, they had it on YouTube in six parts, but in actuality it's twelve parts. It's hilarious. All right, so let's do this. This is one of my favorite stories in history. Is it really? Yeah, man. And again, I've said this before. Why isn't this a movie? Like a really good movie? Not this. Have you seen almost heroes. Yeah, right. There you go. All right, so Chuck Lewis and Clark Merriweather Lewis, William Clarke, pair of army folk turned explorers, thanks to a little bit of, I guess, serendipity. It would have been somebody else had it not been these guys. Because really, the whole idea of this expedition, which was called the Core of Discovery yes. It sounds like a soccer team. It was the brainchild of Thomas Jefferson. Yeah. And the brainchild of TJ, because he's like, hey, I just doubled the size of our country by buying a bunch of land from Napoleon. Do you know the background on that? The Louisiana Purchase? Yeah, I know. It's the greatest land deal in the history of the world. Probably. Yeah. But what do you mean? Well, it was the French land, and they were about to get it from they were about to give it to the Spanish. Well, the Spanish were west of them, so probably. And the French lake had barely any presence in this area, but it was their land. But the Spanish, had they taken over, there would have been a real problem because the Americans had access to the port of New Orleans because the French were basically absentee landlords there. And so the idea that the Spaniards were about to get it, that was a big problem. So Jefferson sent some people over to France to try to negotiate something. Right. And it turned out Napoleon was having all sorts of problems, and it had been recommended to him by his people. Like, just sell it to the Americans. They're coming over. They want to talk. So I think James Monroe was sent by Thomas Jefferson with a limit of $10 million to do something to buy Florida and New Orleans. Or New Orleans for up to $10 million. Monroe found out he could get all of the Louisiana Territory, which went up to Canada. Yes. Louisiana is really undersells. It was they went from the Rockies all the way over to the colonies yeah. And then up to Canada and down to the Gulf of Mexico. Yeah. It was double the size of our country. Yeah. Overnight. So Monroe was like, I'll give you $15 million for it in the French sold. So he bought 827,000 sq. Mi of North America. Yeah. About $0.03 an acre. And that was a chunk of change, though, I think that was double what our gross economy was at the time. But it's a pretty good investment. That's a great investment. Yes. Could you imagine, though, how weird that would be if it had gone a different way? The United States could have ended it about the Mississippi River, which it did at the time, and just beyond that, on the other side, could have been Spain. Right. Or not Spain, but you know what I mean? A Spanish colony. Well, it could have been a lot like Africa. Like, all these former colonies that are just, like, adjacent to one another. But this is a French colony. This is a Belgian colony. This is a British colony. And I think the Brits controlled Canada and like the Oregon Territory at the time. Yes. We were all sandwiched kind of in there together. Yeah. So we buy from the French, we go fight the Spanish for the rest of it. And in between all of this, we sent Lewis and Clark to go check out what had just been bought. And this expedition was going to happen anyway, but we thought that we were going to have to ask for permission to go through this area. Right. But now, all of a sudden, it was America. And that added a facet to this expedition that hadn't been there before, which was basically informing the Indians that they were now living in America and they had a new great father, which is how Merriweather Lewis put it, how he described TJ. Yes, you have a new great father who lives in a lodge in Washington, DC. And you can come visit him and see how great it will be to live under his patronage, but not really sign this treaty. He was his private secretary. Lewis was his kind of personal aide, and he knew what kind of dude he was, maybe drank a little too much, was prone to depression, but he sort of gave him this job to help him out. He thought he'd be good for it, don't get me wrong. Right. He groomed him for the position, but yeah, he thought it would be he'd have vested interest in the man, and he's like, this is going to be really good for Lewis. This is what he needs. Right. He's 29 years old, which is remarkable to me. Good sharpshooter. He said, you pick your partner. He picked William Clark, who was his former captain, I believe, in the army, a couple of years older. And he looked up to Clark quite a bit. I was like, I need you, brother, because you compliment. You complete me. Right? Which, by the way, we should probably say there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Louis and Clarke were ever gay. Clarke definitely wasn't. Is that a rumor? Yeah, there's a lot of conjecture about really Merriweather Lewis. He courted several women and was rejected by all of them. He was a total eligible bachelor. Never married, never was engaged or betrayed or anything. So, of course, as time wore on, people were like, well, he must have been gay. There's been a lot of conjecture. And they've come up with the idea that he probably wasn't gay, but that he was bi, that he had something of an aversion to women that was not necessarily based on any kind of sexual orientation. He just didn't know what he was doing and he didn't feel comfortable around women. Yeah, and we'll get to that. The main goal well, there are a couple of main goals. The main goal for Jefferson was hey, I want to find this all water route to the sea that's really important for trade. And also, hey, let's check out this thing we just bought and go out and record as much of it as you can. Animals, plants, people. What the heck is out there? Basically come back and tell us. Right. And Lewis wasn't exactly a slouch when it came to this kind of stuff. His mother was a celebrated herb doctor in Virginia. Yes. She knew what she was doing, and she kind of raised him in the woods. So he was pretty good at botany. But to kind of further his education and not just that, but all sorts of other things that would come in handy on the expedition, jefferson sent him to the American Philosophical Association, which was the first learned society in North America. And basically he underwent this grueling crash course of everything from astronomy to cartography to geology, medical training, everything you would need, they basically just filled Lewis's head with. And he in turn filled Clark in on a lot of it, too. Yes. Also a lot of what they might encounter in ways of we'll call them Indians for the purposes of the show because that's what they call them. Right. And Jefferson was like, and don't forget to call me great father. It's awesome. So Louis is in Pittsburgh or in Philadelphia getting this training. He writes to Clark, says, please join me on this, and you are my captain. I'm a captain now. We're going to be co captains on this. Just so there's not any kind of weirdness or anything like that. I was chosen to lead the expedition, but I'm choosing you for help. But let's do this evenly. Which is unheard of, and it actually even more unheard of. It worked out really well. Yeah, it did. There wasn't any kind of like back biting or problems. They actually ran. It a bit like a democracy, too. Yeah. In the end, they were kind of described as a family, like really tight knit. I kept waiting for the story to go off the rail. Right. But it didn't. They really hung together and stuck together after some initial discipline problems, once they kind of weeded out, I think from summer to fall, they kind of weeded out some of the bad apples. Well, what's funny, one guy got discharged for mutants axe, and another guy got discharged for desertion. But this happened in the middle of the first leg of the trip, so they had to stay on until they could get them to a place where they could go back. So they just had them doing hard labor the whole time. Wow. So they brought along a couple of people of note. One, Clark took his slave York, that he had had since he was a kid. He was only black guy and only slave on the party. Right. On the Adventure Party. We'll call it. He was technically a man servant, I guess, like a valet or something like that. To Clark, outside of the expedition, but on the expedition, york was basically just a member of the party. Yeah, he was a member of the party. He played a really great role in diplomacy because the American Indian had never seen black people before, and they didn't have hangups, obviously, like white people did. So they're like, this guy is awesome. He's huge, and he's strong, and look at that amazing black skin that's even darker than ours. They really thought he was great, and I'm sure all the white people are like, oh, yeah, look at me. What about me? My pale white skin? I'm friends with the great father, but he played a great role in diplomacy and, like you said, was generally treated pretty well, although he did get sort of some of the crap duties. Well, plus, he also got royally screwed over at the end of the expedition. Yeah, we'll get to that. Okay. And so we have York with Clark, and then Lewis purchased a dog for $20 named Seaman. And they used to think it was scanning because these guys handwriting was so bad. Really? Yeah, basically a century. Like, everybody thought it was scanning for two centuries, and then somebody figured out, well, wait a minute. Why is one of these rivers called Seaman's Creek? Right? And then they realized, wait, that's the dog. That's the dog. Everybody, by the way, had something named after them, and they had trouble coming up with names for everything, like the York Islands of Montana. Like, everybody on that tour had something named after them, which is kind of neat. He was a Newfoundland dog, and he made it the whole way. We're happy to go ahead and spoil that one. Yes. Which is great, because they ate dogs, by the way, at some point on this trip, they ate a lot of horse. Yeah, they did. So, like you said, they started in Pittsburgh, but the official start was really in St. Louis in December of 18 three. And they were like, all right, let's hit the river. The Missouri River. Well, that's where they assembled camp in wintered, St. Lucia. They started all their people and ran them through, like, army training and took the best of the best. They officially started in May, the following spring. Of course, you wouldn't start in the winter, right. So they had a big keel boat and a couple of smaller canoes and said, let's hit the river. And they did. So they said, let's do it. Because, again, ultimately, Jefferson was looking for a Northwest Passage across the continent to the Pacific, and he wanted to see if you could basically ride a river all the way across the country. Yeah, by the time I think there were about 45 people at first, but when they eventually whittled it down, the official core discovery was 33 people. Right. So they head out and they start going upstream up the Missouri River. And it was rough going at first. They were literally pulling their boat out from outside the water, waist deep by tow rope against the current. Again, they're going upstream the whole way to the source of the Missouri River. Yeah. So the first Indians they encountered well, not the first. The first situation they encountered were the Titansoo or the Lakota. And they're actually warned by previous American Indians, like, watch out for these guys. They're basically the mafia of the Missouri River. Oh, yeah. Like, they'll demand payment. They'll take your goods, they'll control the trade. Yeah. They wanted them to trade exclusively with them. Yeah. And they had done this to the French and the Spanish for years. And I think Lewis called them the pirates of the Missouri. But when they did reach them, it came to a standoff over a canoe. They gave them their gifts. The first thing they would do whenever they encountered a new tribe was to give them these trinkets, tell them about the Great Father, give them handkerchiefs and things like, we come in peace. And with the Titan Sue, though, there was a standoff over a canoe that they wanted, and they're like, we're not giving this canoe. And it literally came to a point where guns were raised, and, like, hundreds of Indians had their arrows pointed at them, and it was about to go down, and Chief Black Buffalo intervened. I was like, you know what? Let our women and children tour your really cool boat that we've never seen and meet all you guys, and then you all can have safe passage. So they managed to get through their unscathed, but that was their first run in where they're like, man, this could go down pretty badly. Yeah. And luckily, that was one of just a few. I think as far as cross country unchartered expeditions uncharted Expeditions go, this went about as good as you could possibly hope for. Yeah. I mean, it was super peaceful. They were the core of discoveries, other than the core of bloodshed or something. Well, they only shot one bullet in anger the entire trip. Is that right? It's pretty remarkable. And that is neat. So they hit the Great Plains, and that might as well have been Mars to them, if you think about it. If you've never been west of I think there's a saying that a squirrel can jump from tree to tree until it hits the Mississippi. Oh, yeah. And so when they hit the Great Plains, they had never seen anything like it. Like, there were no trees. This is planes. It's just plains. And they were absolutely blown away by this. And there they encountered the Mandan and Minotauri or Hidaza Indians. Right. And they decided, all right, this is a pretty good place to build a camp. Stay here for a few months. And they built Fort Mandy, which they named after one of the local tribes, and they were buddies. They had, like, lived together in harmony. Right. They forged friendships. They were visited by locals, and something big happened here. Okay, Chuck, so we're at Fort Mandy, which is where? In South Dakota, I think. Yes. They were having a good time, hanging out, having lots of sex with the local ladies. Yeah. There was a big problem with venereal disease on the expedition because they were having a lot of sex with Indians, and the Indians had syphilis, which was something that was unknown to Europeans, and Europeans contracted it very easily. So that was a big thing. Well, that was another thing about Lewis, too. Apparently, like everybody else in the expedition, he had sex with Indian women, and he stayed away from it. His journal entries about Indian sexual practices were very interesting, I think is the way one person put it. Yeah. He's an odd ducket. I get what if he tried to put on low that he was just cleaning up and they're like, Louis, it doesn't hurt when he pees. Like something's going on. It doesn't burn. I don't think he's having sex. He's an outlaw. He says he had sex with all those women. Right. Yeah. Burns when I pee is a burn when you pee. Doesn't burn when Lewis Peas yeah. Apparently, burning when you pee was a big thing on that core of discoveries. Discovered syphilis, too. All right, so the other important thing that happened here, which is I think what you were getting to, was they hired a French Canadian trapper named Tucson Charlie, but they really what they were doing was hiring his wife. Yeah. Sakagawiya. Sakagaway or Sakagawa. I didn't mispronounce it. You didn't mispronounce it. There's a lot of pronunciations. Yeah. But there's only one that's right. And the right one is based on the journal entries of Lewis Clark, everybody else on the expedition. Because this was an expedition, everyone was expected to make notes. Yeah. They were all turning stuff down. Right. Yeah. And Sakagoia is mentioned dozens of times in these journals because she did do some outstanding stuff. Oh, yeah. And she's mentioned phonetically, so it's Saka Gawill. Also, at some point, it's also mentioned that her name is Shoshonee for birdwomen. And in shoshani sakaga is bird and wiya is woman. So it's sakaga wiya not saka joya. That's right. Well, I mean, that's a big point. It's true. Although in the Ken Burns thing, these historians all pronounced it differently, which was sort of frustrating. Yeah. There's Saka Kawayka. Yeah. And then Saka Julia. Yes. One of the ladies called her straight up sakaja julia. I was like, straight up, sakajuia. So she was very important because she was a translator. B. She was essentially a white flag everywhere they went. And I don't think we said this, but by the time they broke camp to leave, she had a baby. Yeah. She actually gave birth to her first child in Fort mandy Jean Baptiste Arbonough yeah. Who is pretty cool. Grew up to be pretty cool, for sure. But Sakawea, if we say Sakajawa, too, I think that's fair. Okay. She was 16 at the time, and she was married to Charbono. She's one of two of his wives, and I didn't hear anything about the other. I didn't even show any woman. Did she not go along? I don't think so. Okay. All right, so she, John Baptiste and Tucson were a family. Even though Sakaguia was Tucson's slave wife, he purchased her. Yeah. But she was Shoshone. And the reason why she was so valuable is because the expedition leaders had found out that the Shoshone were known for their horsing abilities, and Expedition had two horses that they set out with. And we're like, we're going to need a lot more. Sure. At some point, we need to trade with the Shoshone when we make it to the Rockies, and we will need this woman. And she comes in handy to a spectacular degree in this sense. Yeah. And not only was she a white flag, she was just great for the spirit of the camp to have a woman there. Yeah. The baby was a charmer, too. Of course, you can't pull up with a woman and a baby and say, like, we're warring people. Exactly. Apparently across all tribes along the plains, if you have a woman and a baby in your party, you're automatically not a war party, and therefore you come in peace. Yeah. And she was also pretty awesome. Chardonnay himself was described as quite average, but Chicago A was the real deal. Like, one of the bravest members of the expedition, and at 1.1 of the boats overturned and they lost were losing a lot of their important records and things, and she was the main one that was like, boom, in the water, retrieving this stuff, while Charvino was I don't know what he was doing. Oh, who knows what Charvino was doing? But psychic away was swimming, retrieving the stuff. This is after she gave birth. This is why she's breastfeeding walking scores of miles in any given week. She was pretty tough. Yeah. And, you know, we'll go ahead and spoil this. That baby, like we said, lived it, made it all the way there and back, this brand new baby, till the age of about, I guess, two and a half. And he just stole William Clarke's heart. Yeah. He loved him. He ended up adopting him. He did. He adopted him and educated him in St. Louis. Yeah. After she died, he adopted both her kids much later, but yeah, his name was Jean Baptiste the Baby, and he was nicknamed Pompey because of his pompous little dancing antics. Right. Clark found him to be quite the little dancer. So the other way that Sakura Gawao was helpful to this expedition was that she was a translator. She could speak Sashane, obviously, she could also speak HiData and so her husband could speak hedata so if she was speaking to a Shoshone, let's say they encountered a Shoshone person. The shoshone would speak to Sakuraway. She would say what they said in Hadada to her husband. Her husband would say in French what had just been said in Hadhta to another man, who would in turn tell William and Mary Weather what had been said in English. Yeah, that was the translation line. And Sakuraguaya was the pivotal point of this as far as speaking to Plains tribes went. Yeah. And you would think that setting it up to say in, like, big problems arose because of it, but it really worked pretty well. No, because they were also trained in plain sign language, too. Apparently there was a lot of gesturing that was fairly universal that a lot of the people who were recruited in St. Louis originally were familiar with. Too. They got along pretty well. They did. Okay. All right. So after the Mandan villages, they broke camp and went on to the confluence of the Yellowstone with the Missouri and entered a land where they started seeing like, when they hit the planes, they started seeing these crazy animals they'd never seen before. It's important to say they didn't discover anything. Yeah, it's very important to say that they were just the first white guys to record it for science. Yeah. But prairie dogs and elk and buffalo by the tens of thousands, antelope all kinds of things to them that were just these weird animals. They actually sent a live prairie dog back to Jefferson, which is pretty interesting. It's hilarious. And it made it all the way. Grizzly bears. They encountered those for the first time on this expedition. Yeah. They were warned of the grizzly by the Indians, and they were like, we've hunted brown bear and black bear. We know we're talking about bear. And then they were kind of like, holy crap. In their journals. They were like, I've never seen anything like this. It took ten shots and we almost died. And the grizzly bear is to be reckoned with. Louis said something like, I'd rather fight two Indians than one grizzly bear. Yeah. So here we are in early June. They reached the point where the Missouri divided that they weren't told about this fork. So we're like, right, what should we do here? It went in equal parts north and south. Yeah. I mean, it was like a hardcore left and right. Hardcore. Basically everyone in the party agreed on one Direction except Lewis and Clark. They were like, we're old school. We, like, in sync. Yeah. So despite the fact that everyone disagreed, they followed them. And that just shows how united they were. They were like, you know what? We don't think you guys are right, but we're going to follow you because you are our captains. Right. And we want to see your faces when you realize you're wrong, which actually would happen, but it wouldn't lead to eating each other. Like the Donner party. No. So they keep mosing along and they're doing pretty well, apparently. They got to a point where Clark looked down one day. I think it was Clark. It was possibly Lewis, too. It was Lewis. And he realized that a little stream at his feet was running west. And he realized that they just crossed the Continental Divide. Yeah. That was the mouth of the Missouri. That they were literally straddling with their feet. Yes. And that meant that now they just left the Missouri and were going to hook up first. They went onto the Snake River, but that would take them to the Columbia River, which by their reckoning, would take them to the Pacific Ocean. So they'd made it like a substantial amount of distance. Yeah. That was a depressing moment, though, for Lewis, because he thought when he reached that ridge, that he would look and see just downhill to the ocean. And what he saw was Rocky Mountains, Nevada. Yeah. And he was like, oh, man, this is not going to be very easy. No, we didn't know about the Rocky Mountains. No. Even still, when they finally do think that they see the ocean, they still were 25 miles away from it when they finally get to that point. Yeah. Which we'll get to. Oh, sorry. That's right. So what they ended up doing, they made a mistake because there was a shortcut they could have taken. Oh, really? It would have taken four days. And instead they had to go work their way around the Great Falls of Montana, which took 53 days of portage. Uneasy portage. Yeah. Because this portage was like carrying these boats, but also these guys were in, like, moccasins and stuff, and they had a huge problem with prickly pear, which would just go right through your moccasin. And it's basically like stepping on nails the whole time while you're carrying a very heavy boat. Yeah. And all your supplies, whisky and food, salt. So on July 25, they arrived at another fork, three Forks. They named them the Gallatin for the Secretary of treasury, the Madison for the Secretary of State, and the Jefferson, and decided to follow the Jefferson. There was more to it, I think. Yeah. And I think they were like, this is the one that is going to head west. Right. So they follow that, I think, at this point, either right before or right after they meet up with the Sashoni. Have they met the Sashoni yet? Well, at this point, Lewis went off by himself and a couple of more people to find the Shoshani, including Sakura Gaulle. Right. Or no, she wasn't there yet. I don't think she was there yet. Okay. But he did find them, and he basically said, hey, we come in peace. We have a camp back here. We want you to come hang out at. Well, they were in bad shape. Apparently this is going to work. Oh, they were yeah. They were pretty worse for the wearer and very docile as a result. So he met these women and children and told them all that stuff, and they came back and hung out with them. And at Camp Sakaguaya recognized one of the women that Clarke was it Clark or Lewis? I think at this point, it was both who they came back with and said, hey, we found some Shoshoni. And she said, hey, that's actually my BFF from first grade. Yeah. Because remember, Sarcas away, I had been kidnapped and sold. So there were still members of her tribe living around the Rockies, and she actually met up with them and with her brother, who is now chief. Yes. She was like you're, chief. And he said, you know it, little sister, and you're married to a French trapper. She's like, that guy? Not really. He bought me. Which is not funny at all. So then they proceeded across the Continental Divide to the main village with the Shoshonees and hired on a tour guide, Old Toby, which is a great name for an Indian tour guide, and said, Toby said, I'll lead you through these mountains, but we're going to need some horses to eat because it's going to be rough and to travel with. Right. But this is where they were really eating a lot of horse meat. Yeah. The Bitterroot Mountains, it was pretty rough through Montana and Idaho, and that was when their spirits were never broken, but that's when they were dampened, for sure. So when they make it through the Bitter Route, I don't remember why they did or where, but there was a point where they said, we can't use these horses anymore. I guess it's when they got onto the Columbia River. Right. Well, maybe is this where they were eating salmon and the salmon was making them sick? Yeah. So they come to a Nez Pierce village with Old Toby, I believe, at the lead. Yeah. And they're celebrated. Welcome. They throw a feast for them, and it makes everybody violently ill in the expedition. Yeah. They're like, this salmon is awful. Yeah. Or these roots or whatever. I'll bet it was the roots that got them. Yeah, I think it was. So apparently everyone recovered, but they say, okay, well, here's the Columbia River. We can't really use these horses anymore. I think one of the things that's very much overlooked in the history of this expedition is just how much the Card discovery relied on friendly tribes. So, like, when they hit the Columbia River, they said, hey, Shashoni, or no, Nez Pierce friends, will you watch our horses for us? And then Nez Pierce said, yes, you guys go to the Pacific Ocean. When you come back, we'll have your horses. Go ahead and brand them so you know which ones are yours. And they did. They left their horses with the nest. Pierce. Yeah. I mean, it was kind of a best case scenario story for most of the trip. Yeah, it's pretty cool. And that is actually too, where they traded for dog to eat, which was one of the only disappointing parts of the story for me. Yeah, that and what happened to York. All right, so at this point, it's mid October. It floated down to the Great Falls of the Columbia, which is now solely falls. And think about how much easier it was at this point. Like, they're not going upstream any longer. They get with the current. True. But it was the Oregon Territory, so they were getting rained on constantly. It was pretty brutal conditions. But you're right. It wasn't like, slugging through in the summertime, pulling that boat upstream, stepping on prickly pear. Exactly. So this is where on November 7, they thought that they saw the ocean. It's actually a bay about 25 miles inland. And one of them said, ocean in view. O-C-I-N-I love the ocean. Otean in the same paragraph. They misspelled ocean two different ways. Give them a break. Come on. Finally, by mid November, they strode upon the sands of the Pacific. And this is the really sad part, is that Mary Weather called it tempestuous and horrible. Like, he wasn't like, oh, we made it. He's was depressed. And he was like, this isn't like the Atlantic Ocean. This is rocky and beating us with waves. Like the Oregon coast is rough. And he didn't cotton to it. But what he did cotton to was being an accurate dude. By dead reckoning, over the course of over 4100 miles, he was only off by 40 miles. Wow. And charting this ride, that is pretty amazing. It's pretty remarkable. So, Sakuraguaya, one of the reasons she signed on, aside from being a slave to her husband, who signed her on, was that she wanted to see the Pacific. She'd heard about the great waters. Oh, yeah. And so when they were getting closer, she petitioned Louis and Clark, saying, like, there's no way you can't let me not come with you to see the Pacific Ocean itself. Right. And they let her come along. They had word from some local tribe I'm not sure which one it was that there was a monstrous fish on the beach. And Louis and Clerk were like, I bet they're talking about a whale. We should go get some blubber and take a way. It's like, I'm there. I'm coming with you. So they took her along and they all got to go see the Pacific Ocean that first time. Yeah. They got a bunch of blubber and oil and stuff from it, and it died first. So you can keep liking Lewis and Clark so they can't there on the Pacific for a full four months. Yeah. Basically, they were trying to two things. They were trying to decide what to do. And technically, they were waiting for a boat to come by, say, a letter of credit from Jefferson that said, hey, if you're a boat, give these people a ride back, and we'll pay you, like, good money. Right. I read that they never seriously thought that they were going to take a boat back. Well, that was the deal is, technically, they were supposed to be waiting for a vote. What they were really doing was just sort of weighing their options as to how best to go back and win. And this is the really cool part. They put it to a vote. They did put it to a vote. And it was a vote that included an African American and a woman and a Native American. Yeah. Soccer, gaweya and York. Both their votes were given equal weight to everybody else's. Yeah. It was very cool where to set up camp for the winter. Yeah. So they elected to cross the river to the south, where they were informed that there was elk and deer. You can hole up here, you can hunt all winter. And they did. And prepare yourself for the return journey home. All right, so here we are at Fort Clattsop, Oregon. Oregon. Yeah. Named after the Clattsp tribe. They were hunting. They were storing up. They were getting their provisions in order, getting ready to go back, and they haul butt on the way back. They did, yeah. You know how it is. Sure. Plus, it doesn't take as long, because now you know how long it's going to take. Yeah. And they weren't stopping to record everything they did. Actually, prairie dogs. We've already seen it. Been there. But the group wasn't as happy. They were irritable. Especially Lewis. He kind of fell into a depression on the way home. Did he come out of it at all while they were at the Pacific, or did it just stick the whole time? Well, I mean, I think it was up and down. Basically, they believe when he was not recording in his journal, he was depressed. Okay. But he is remarkable in that he soldiered on like this is a manic depressive who was still getting up every day and doing this. And the worst thing he did was not journal. Actually, the worst thing he did was on the way back, he stole a canoe at one point, which is really out of character, and he was described as kind of like, cracking at the seams at this point, which is really sad. So March 2318, six. They started back up to Columbia with these new canoes, bartered for some horses, and camped with the Nez Pierce for a month. No, they got their horses back from the Nez Pierce. Those horses, those were theirs, the ones they branded before they got back there to the Nest Pierce. They bartered for some horses and then eventually hooked back with the Nest Pierce and camp for, like, a month. And got their horses back. Got their horses back. I think that's your favorite part of this thing. It's cool. They're like, hey, guys, we can hang onto this fort. They also sunk their canoes at a certain point, and that was neat. Went back and got those yes. To keep the canoes from being sent down river. They just sunk them and then they came back and got them. That's pretty cool. So they basically retraced their trail through the bitter roots. Only one retrograde march on the entire journey. Which means you have to double back, basically, which is in itself pretty remarkable. And then on July 3, 18 six, they separated back where they were at that original shortcut that they should have taken and said, hey, let's send off some different factions here and do a little bit more exploring and a little bit more recording of things they're like, we slacked off. Well, yes, because they were kind of like I said, they were Holland. But on the way home, this is where they ran into their first kind of violent episode with the Black Feet Indians. And a dude shot at Lewis. He shot back, hit the guy in the belly. Another guy stabbed the Black Feet indian or is it a blackfoot Indian? I think Blackfoot. Okay. And they rode away like the Black Feet did, but two of them died. And it was sad they had gone all that way without violence. And they finally kind of had to. Their hand was forced, essentially. Chuck also, there was another shooting that took place during this period, but this one was accidental. Oh, yeah. Lewis was actually shot when he was mistaken for an elk while he was out hunting with a member of the expedition, Pier Cruzet. And Cruzette didn't fess up to it immediately. He was like some Indians. It must have been those black feet. Yeah. And finally, when they searched the area and found no sign of Black Feet, cruise out, was like, I'm sorry. I thought you're an elk. I'm blind in one eye, don't forget. But I'm this little player and everybody loves me. And Lewis was like, we'll just let it go. And apparently was really in a lot of pain. It hit him in the sky. And he had a very long and difficult recovery for the rest of the time. But it was about this time when everybody came back together. Yeah. And we're sort of simplifying this part of the story. But they eventually did all meet back up pretty remarkably. Like I think the story is. One of them rounded a bend, and right as they did that, the others were rounding the bin and they were like, oh, hey, it's you like it's you out here in the middle of nowhere. So they eventually went back to the Mandan villages. That is where the Charboneau family left the expedition. And that is where Private John Coulter, who was one of the men, said, you know what St. Louis like. I didn't like it there. I really like it out here. Can I go back? And they're like, sure, man. Go west, young man. Exactly. And he did. So he did. He was going to work with some French trappers, and they had a following up pretty quickly after. And then this guy, Coulter, he went off on his own, and I think he was the first white person to enter what's now Yellowstone Park, and he was the first to recount the geysers. And even still, there's part of it called Coulter's Hill. Oh, cool. The Geyser area of Yellowstone. Very cool. So reportedly, the only thing they did not run out of on the way home was powder, lead paper and ink. Wow. Or at least that's what Ken Burns as. You know how they put a little cherry on top of everything. Right. Finally, in September of 18, six on the 23rd, they arrived victorious in St. Louis, and the river was lined with people cheering for them, shooting their guns in the air. And, like, we should point out, everyone thought they were dead. Oh, yeah. I mean, for a long time, they were sending messages back and prairie dogs. But then at a certain point, that just wasn't possible. Right. So even Jefferson had given up hope. They've been like, they've been going for two and a half years. Like, we're not going to hear from Louis and Clarke again. And then they did. And then they did. And covered about 8000 miles over two years, four months and nine days. Discovered. I'm sorry, not discovered. So recorded 122 animals that they had never seen, 178 plants that they had never seen, and did a pretty darn good job of cartography. Right. Cartography? Is that even a word? Yeah, I think it is. Drawn maps. That was great. Describing the Rocky Mountains. And Geoffrey was like Rocky Mountains. I have mountains now. What are those? And they were like, they're snow capped even in the summer. And they've never seen any of this. They were blown away. So after this, Clarke sets up shop in St Louis. Yeah. They doubled everyone's pay, which was nice, and gave everyone a bunch of land. Right. You got, I think, 320 acres. Louis and Clark got 1600 each, but the rest of the guys got, like, 320, almost. The rest, two people did not get any land or any money, and that was Sakagoea and York, which sucked. Yeah. And apparently York had a difficult reentry into slavery. I can imagine. So can you think about, like, living like that and then going back to being a slave? Yeah. And so he asked Clark for his freedom. He's like, I know I don't get land and all this stuff, but how about my freedom? And Clarke was like, no. And not only that, he wrote his brother a letter and said, York has been kind of uppity since he got back. He's not being a good slave, and he's having trouble and so I had to beat him. No. Yeah. That was the one time where I was like, oh, man. Yeah, that's pretty awful. This was really headed in a good direction. And all that had to happen was he could have just said, yes, you are free. And then it would have been the best story ever. Man, that's really awful. I had no idea about that. Yeah. And then there were various accounts that he might have been freed a few years later or perhaps escaped. No one is quite for sure. Even though I've noticed Ken Burns does a lot of factual stating of things that are disputed. Like, he just said straight up that he was freed five years later. And I read up on it, and people are like, oh, maybe not. Ken Burns just does whatever his haircut tells him. I'm a sucker for those things, though. I mean, I know a lot of documentary filmmakers kind of poopoo him. Yeah, well, it takes a certain interpretation, and that's that exactly like you said. Wait, hold on. I'm really disappointed in Clark. I know. That stinks. What do you want me to do? I don't know. It is very difficult, I guess. Talk about Lewis. Yeah. I mean, Clarke went on, we should say, to have a very successful rest of his career. Well, hold on. You want to bright side? Okay. Bill Clinton in 2001 gave Eposhimus rank as Sergeant in the army to York. Oh, great. So that's kind of nice. Way to go, Clinton. Today there are some statues commemorating York. One in Louisville, Kentucky, I think. There's one. At Lewis and Clark College in Portland and Kansas City. There's one. So he's definitely been smiled upon, historically as, like, a great man and adventurer. Great by everyone but William Clarke. Yeah. And his family, who is like, no. So Louis had some difficulties. Upon returning home, he's made appointed governor of the Upper Louisiana Territory. And things started out well, but then he kind of got into financial trouble, I think his territory got into financial trouble. Right. Yeah. He was going to Washington. He wasn't able to complete the big thing was that he wasn't able to complete what he was supposed to do, which is come back and write about the whole thing. Yeah. Those weren't published until 1814, which is eight years after they returned. And even then they were published after his death. Yes. By all accounts, pretty depressed. He was on his way to Washington, supposedly to plead for more money for the territory. Yeah. He had been called out on some finances, and he wanted to go clear that up. And supposedly he had some of his journals that he wanted to turn in. I got you. It's like here, I've got this. Right. And he fell out of favor a little bit with Jefferson because of all that, which kind of stinks it is because he was groomed by Jefferson. It was a family friend. Like they were friends. So Louis, I guess, is on his way to Washington? He's following the Nachos trail. Nachos trace. And he stops in Tennessee at a place called the Grinders Inn. Yeah. Near Nashville. And that's where he died. He was found while apparently crawling toward the innkeeper's. Wife shot, bleeding, asking for water, and she just, like, screamed and ran away. Yeah. And this is another disputed thing. Was he killed or did he commit suicide? If you Google death of Merweather Lewis, it comes up suicide, but it is definitely in dispute. Yes. And Ken Burn straight up said he killed himself, and it was very sad. Well, the reason why it's in dispute is because he was shot in the abdomen and in the head. He was also an expert marksman. Yeah. And the suicide people, I think, reckon that back then, with guns, if you really want to do it, you would .1 at your chest and one at your head and squeeze at the same time. Oh, really? Yeah. I hadn't heard him, but he said he was murdered for money and what are you going to say? Nothing. Okay. Sadly, even though this story had a happy ending, it was sort of the beginning of the end of the American Indian. That's a pretty big thing to point out. Yeah. There was a great quote from one of the people in the documentary. It said, they left his students, came back as teachers, and sadly, America failed to learn the lessons that they had brought back with them, because if everything had gone the way of Lewis and Clark, it would have been awesome. They were basically like, hey, you got the great father. Like we said, we're going to live in harmony. And they believed him and they believed themselves. They weren't, like, pulling one over on them. And it's just sad that it went down a different way from that point forward, basically. You know what I'm saying? There was one brief moment when it could have gone a different way. Yeah. And that was it. Yeah. But Clark and Louis also, I guess, kind of paved the way for the idea of Manifest Destiny. True. Although that wasn't coined until about 40 years after the expedition. They are always held up as this idea, and this is an idea that people subscribe to for a very long time, that America was destined to take up the area between the Pacific and the Atlantic. It was our destiny, and therefore anything that stood in our way should just fall before us as we swept outward toward the Pacific Ocean. Justifies the means. And Lewis and Clarke was like, look, they're an example of that. Yes. Clarke eventually died of natural causes in 1838. Most of the rest of the party sort of just faded into history. Jean Baptiste well, yeah, he didn't he became like, not a cortisol. That would be a lady, a courtier. Right. He was prince with a German prince. A German prince. Prince Wilhelm. Okay. And I think the oldest survivor lived to be 99. Lived all the way to the Civil War. Oh, yeah. And at the age of 90 volunteered to fight for the union. And I don't know if they took him up on it or they're just like, we get it, you're a legend, but we got this, so who knows? So that's the Lewis and Clark expedition. The core of discovery. The dog lived. The baby lived. Yeah, the dog made it all the way. They only lost one person on the entire trip, charles Floyd, and he died early on of what they believe was probably appendicitis. Yeah. Burst appendix. And it's pretty amazing. Yeah. They didn't have to eat each other. No, they didn't even eat the guy who died of the birth appendix. No, just dog and horse. You got anything else? No. If you want to learn more about Chuck's favorite story from American history, you can type in Lewis and Clark in the search bar how stuff works. And since they said search bar, it means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this diplomatic immunity. Hey, guys. Last week the Dutch police arrested the Russian diplomat Dmitri Borodin and his home. They were called in by concerned neighbors because the diplomat was drunk, hitting his kids, dragging them by their hair through the house. The police arrived and was witnessed to the brutality against the children and also established that Mr. Bordin was extremely drunk. They had no choice but to arrest him to protect the children from further abuse. Immediately the Russian government came into action and Putin the devil incarnate if you ask me. This is from Jasper. Demanded his release and apologies from the Netherlands. That same afternoon I started listening to the latest stuff you should know. Lo and behold, it was about diplomatic immunity. As a podcast through to a close, I received a news update on my phone that the Dutch government had apologized to the Russians for the arrest because it violated the Treaty of Vienna. Immunity won out again. Since then, UNICEF has issued a statement that the well being of the children should be more important than diplomatic immunity. Maybe something will finally change. Probably not. Personally, I hope we declare Boridan persona non Gratata, but that seems unlikely. Anyway, wanted to share this actuality of your podcast with you. It's pretty weird that it happened when it did and luckily it wasn't about floods or earthquakes. And that is from Jasper in Amsterdam, one of my favorite cities. Thanks a lot Jasper. That's pretty interesting. I love it when things happen like Sympatico. Like that. Yeah. Confluence. Yeah. Well, if you have a Confluence email you want to send us, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@housestepworks.com. You can also hit us up on Facebook. We have a page@facebook.com, we have a Twitter handle. We're verified now. It's pretty awesome. That's Syskpodcast, and you can join us at our good old home on the web. It's called Stuffunioneo.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | |
How Icebergs Work (Very Cool) | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-icebergs-work-very-cool | "
Icebergs: floating chunks of ice. True, but whoa there. Scientists are learning that there's a lot more to icebergs. Appropriately enough, we've only come to understand the tip of the iceberg and recent research shows there's plenty more to uncover. | "
Icebergs: floating chunks of ice. True, but whoa there. Scientists are learning that there's a lot more to icebergs. Appropriately enough, we've only come to understand the tip of the iceberg and recent research shows there's plenty more to uncover. | Tue, 19 Jun 2012 17:15:45 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=19, tm_hour=17, tm_min=15, tm_sec=45, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=171, tm_isdst=0) | 36762934 | 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 houseupworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, chuck Bryant. And that makes this stuff you should know. How's it going, everybody? It's a joyous day, Josh. Oh, yeah? How's that? Oh, I don't know. It just been a joyous day, don't you think? I'm very glad you think it's been a joyous day. What do you think? You haven't had a computer, so you don't care. I know my laptop has been apparently too full of data to operate, whatever that means. Yeah, you stuffed it up with 250 gigs of shady stuff. That's right. Yeah, it's called research. I guess so. Every single bit of that was hard facts, buddy. And songs, bell, cheapo videos. Well, there you go. Videos tend to stop stuff up. Yeah, especially high resins. Yes, that's probably what it was. I would imagine so. On your work computer, no less. Well, what am I going to do? Carry on to computers? Why are we talking about this? I don't know. You started it. Let's hear the intro. Chuck? Yes, I'm quite sure that you'll think I'm kind of stupid for mentioning probably the most famous ship ever to be sunk by an iceberg, but humor me. Of course, we all know the wreck of the William Carson, which in 1977 went down off the coast of Labrador. It had a number of cars on board, but more importantly, 109 sold. Right? Which is what they call you in your op to see a soul. Yeah, like 109 souls lost. I never really have heard that or paid attention. Really? Yeah, really. I thought they would say lives lost. They say souls. They say souls. Or they used to. Old time UI got you before Kennedy and the separation of church and state, I guess, right? Yeah, I guess now they call them lives before they were souls. All souls lost. That's sad. Yeah, it makes it even sadder. It's like the saints crying, right? Under certain circumstances. But luckily, 109 sold were not lost. Zero souls were lost on the William Carson, as everybody knows. The cars went down, though, which is a tragedy for the insurance company covering those cars. But as I said, every school child knows the story of the William Carson. Did you know that there were other ships that have hit icebergs. I was not aware of any. It's true. The lady of the Lake. Okay. Yeah, I didn't know about that one. Went down in the Grand Banks. Didn't make a movie about that. No, you're thinking of excalibur. Okay. The lady of the Lake went down in the Grand Banks on its way to Quebec with 70 people on board. 70 souls. 70 souls. The SS off the coast of Greenland in 1959 on her maiden voyage. Can you believe this? That makes it so much worse. That it's a maiden voyage. 95 people dead, all because of icebergs. I mean, there's been other ships that have hit icebergs, but all because a chunk of floating ice took out an entire ship. Souls and souls and souls were lost. Yeah. You know, we have a young fan named Shelley Stein right now that is about to throw her ipod through a window. Is that the person who always wants to hear about that other ship sinking? Yeah, she's been begging for, like, two years leading up to the anniversary. That's right. Anyway, what's crazy is that all of these ships were lost. As a matter of fact, between 1882 and 18, 9014 passenger liners went down in a place called Iceberg Alley. But it was only the last 25 years that we started tracking icebergs. What's even more amazing, though, is that we have learned a tremendous amount in those 25 years, and we're still learning. And we will dispense with the learning forth with that's. Right. This is interesting. Is this a graph, sir? Yeah. Well, he puts together a nice article then. He does. He knows what he's doing. He's a professional. I never feel bad about his about where we're headed with this. Do you feel bad about some of them? Yeah. Like the ones I write. Sure, the ones you write. They're very adventurous. They were for the Adventure Channel, right? Yeah, at one point. So, Chuck, I think people there sitting at home thinking right now like they're talking about icebergs, and it's just a chunk of floating ice. And you're absolutely right. It is just a chunk of floating ice. Not just a chunk. There's so much more to it. Sure. For example, iceberg. Saltwater. No. Fresh water? Yeah. Why? Well, I learned virtually everything I've ever known about icebergs within the past 48 hours, by the way, it is ice, but it is not sea ice. Or pack ice. Like when you see deadly sketch and they're motoring through that sea ice. Those aren't little chunks of iceberg. No, that's saltwater. Right. That's frozen seawater. Frozen seawater. An iceberg is a piece of a glacier that has busted off or calves. Calves. Calves. Like having a calf. Like giving birth to a calf. So it's calving. Calving? Yeah, man, I had it until you threw me off. Well, I thought it would be calving. Yeah. Away from a glacier. I don't know how many times we just said calving and a glacier. Let's talk about glaciers for a second. Glaciers are packed snow, basically. Well, yeah. But they're a little more interesting than that. Well, yeah. That's the base route, though, right. In certain latitudes, it never gets warm enough for snow to fully melt all the way in the summertime. Sure. So what you have is an accumulation of that snow that builds up over and over and over again over the centuries, over the eons as old as 10,000 years old, sometimes. Right. And that's a glacier. But glaciers are also additionally interesting in that they become so heavy that they over this freeze and thaw cycle and the accumulation of layers that all of the air bubbles are pressed out of them. So glaciers are blue. It's the color of frozen water with no air in it. And they also move under the force of their own weight. They move downhill towards sea level, because sea level is as downhill as it gets until you hit the sea. That's right. So because of this, they are this ultra dense form of ice. Yeah. So slips down, floats out into the sea. Tidal motions eventually will cause little cracks and fissures, and then a piece of the glacier will break off, and boom, there's your iceberg. That's an iceberg. It's a freshwater piece of a glacier. Yes. Freshwater glacier chunks. Right. And it's freshwater because it's made of snow, not seawater. And when you said that it floats out into the sea, that's called an ice shelf. And up north and northern latitudes, the biggest ice shelves are found on the western coast of Greenland. Was there Arctic or northern icebergs that are formed up there off of those glaciers down south in Antarctica, where there are penguins. But it's not the only place there's penguins. I want to make sure everybody knows. I know. And no polar bears. No. Only a fool would say that. Yes. Pretty much. The continent of Antarctica is ringed with ice shelves. Yeah. And there's a lot of open sea, so the icebergs can get really big. Yes. They tend to keep extending, extending, extending. But then, like you said yeah. They break off, and then you have an iceberg. Talk about ice. Yeah. This is fascinating. Like, I went over this again and again and again until I finally got it, and I feel like I got it. It's so easy, though. I was making a lot of it. Yeah. Ice, as we all know, is the solid phase of water. You have liquid, solid gas. Ice is a solid phase. 32 degrees Fahrenheit for fresh water. Celsius yes. Salt water is going to need to be a little bit colder because there are basically salt molecules getting in the way of the ice forming. Well, they move faster, I believe, than water molecules, and it takes a lower temperature to slow them down. And also it's greater density, if you're talking saltwater. Right. Which is important. Very important. But ice also is peculiar, meaning unique, in that it's the only solid phase of any substance, I believe, that is less dense than the liquid phase. So ice is less dense than water, and then sea water is denser than fresh water. Well, and it's easy to remember that ice is less dense, because when you put a little ice cube in your little chardonnay this summer, if you're a redneck, it'll float, because there's little ice forms in a crystalline shape. So that leaves area for gaps, I guess. And so what is the air in there? Yes, I'm sure there's areas basically, if you take water and freeze it, you can think of it as spreading out. Sure. So it gets bigger. It has a larger volume, but it'll weigh the same as that lesser amount of water. Right. And when you put something, say, ice in water, it's buoyant in that the amount of water it displaces has to equal the weight of the ice that's displacing it. Yes, but since there's more ice than an equal weight of water, there's some leftover that floats. And that is what we call the tip of the iceberg. No wonder you get confused. Yes, the tip of the iceberg, that is the part that sticks out. And it's about depending on the iceberg, about one 6th to one 9th. And I'm sure everyone has seen those awesome pictures on the interwebs of the top of the water and under the water of the iceberg. It's pretty cool, right? You seen those? I have. Very nice. And the reason there's a variation between how much iceberg is showing is because of the variation in the concentration of salt in seawater. Sure. Any particular part of seawater. And also some icebergs are denser than others. As more as he said, just like people. Yeah, exactly. 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'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. You mentioned earlier. The glacial ice is blue. That is true. During different melting and freezing cycles, though, they will turn white because the air gets trapped in there. And then sometimes these really old icebergs that have formed at the bottom of these thick Antarctic ice shelves like that have been around for thousands of years, might actually have a greenish hue because it's just soaked up organic matter under there over the years. Right. Which is kind of a dirty yellow brown. But icebergs have the tendency to roll over without warning, which is one reason why you wouldn't want to camp on an iceberg. No, they're dangerous to be around. They are. And actually, there was one that floated down to New Zealand, and some helicopter charters were selling flights to go check them out, and one of them landed on the iceberg, and they realized pretty quickly they shouldn't do that anymore. But did they like getting charged? Did it? No, they made it out okay. But when they got back and told people, I'm sure some scientists like, wait, what did you just do? Right. Don't ever do that again. TC. But the iceberg will roll over, and so you've got the green part up with the light reflecting up through the blue part, and you get this brilliant emerald green. And that's some old ice right there. Bubbi. Yeah, it is. Bobby. Yes, Bobby. I've never said that before. The life cycle of an iceberg is pretty interesting, too. We mentioned they can be as old as 10,000 years before they ever reach the ocean. And this is like, centuries of compression. So that's why it's so dense, that's why it's blue. And then once it calves off, though, and from the glacier, you got about three to six years on average. Right. If you're in iceberg, like, say it's up in Iceberg Alley and never strays below the 48th parallel, which is apparently where the water starts to get a lot warmer. 40th parallel goes for Americans through the tip of Minnesota in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. People below that are like, it's still pretty cold. Yeah, I imagine so. Ones that stay up there and never come back down can float around for like, 50 years. Yeah. And just kind of melt away slowly and quietly. Right. Ones that make it further south, like, one made it to Bermuda once, which I'm sure was quite a surprise. Yeah, sure. Those go away fairly quickly. Yeah. And I enjoyed this one account of this expedition. What was the guy's name doctor Gregory Stone witnessed and wrote about in his book Ice Island, which I believe the largest ones are called Ice Island sometimes. Right. His quote is in this iceberg basically became destabilized, and it sounds like it exploded. Yes. Like, right in front of his face. Yeah. He said that there was an ice debris field across 2 miles. Yeah. And he said it was like shards of crystal shattering. Right. But if you think about it, that's what happens when you put an ice cube in water. Yeah. You hear that noise, right? It's called thermal shock. Yeah, it's pretty cool. And it's also because ice is less dense than water, as it's liquefying, it shrinks. Because think about it, it's contracting and it's pulling apart the outer warmer layer from the inner colder layer, and the cracks forming the ice cube essentially explodes. It sounds like that's the same thing that happened yes. When you pour that twelve year old scotch on top of your single cube of ice, if you're into that. I don't know if you should be doing that, but okay. I'm not a neat guy. I like it a little cold. Okay. And I'm not so hardcore with the single malt. So to remove that bite just a bit is good for me. So you don't like, take it neat through your nose? No, that's not the way to do it. Yeah, you drink it with ice through your mouth. Yeah, I know. Scotch, Pierre. Scoff at me, but scoff away or whatever, just do what you like. Exactly. That's very supportive. I meant you as like, people in general. Okay, that wasn't supportive. Let's talk about some factoids. And this is to me, the fact of the show is that there are actually six official classifications for their size. And the first two, it sounds like they were having a lot to drink when they had the naming party. Right. They sobered up. Sobered up a bit because the smallest ones, about the size of a car, maybe a little smaller, called growlers. And then the next one, maybe about the size of your house, is called a burgie bit. I put the emphasis on bit, like a burgie bit. A burgie bit. Either way, it's pretty cute. It is very cute. And then they got, I guess, sobered up or got bored or ran out of whiskey. And then they said, all right, then the next ones are small, medium, large and very large. Which is really boring compared to burgie bit. It is. But the very large ones are kind of interesting and they just keep going and going. The largest one ever recorded is the B 15 iceberg. Yeah. Broke off of the Ross Ice Shelf down in Antarctica. Apparently it was about the size of Jamaica. Yeah. I think it's broken apart into smaller pieces since. But I think the original area was about 6800 sq mi. That's a big chunk of ice. Yeah, that's the upper limit. Like, it can just be as big as they're going to get. There's no cap or anything like that to call it super extra large, but very large. You have to be about 24 stories tall and a little longer than two football fields. 670ft to be classified as very large. Yeah, that's big, man. If you think about that. It's huge. I'm sorry, it's very large or it's huge? Huge. The other two classifications the icebergs can fall in are equally boring as the last four size names. They really could have done better than this, if you ask me. But the two shape classifications are tabular and non tabular. And Tabular is basically just like a well, it looks like a table, like a tab tablet, a writing tablet on the back. And it's, like, tall with steep sides and a flat top, like a floating plateau. And those tend to come off of the ice sheets down in the Antarctic, I believe. Yeah. I think they have to have a width five times greater than their height to be Tabular. And then non tabular have, I think, five different classifications. You got blocky. Okay. Flat top, steep sides. They sound like Dick Tracy characters. They do. Wedged flat with a steep surface on one side and a gradual slope on another. So it's like the high right haircut. Yeah. The gumby. The gumby. The dome, which is round and smooth pinnacle, which means it has at least one big tall spiral sticking up. And then the ones that deteriorate to where they form a big canyon. And it looks like two different icebergs, but it's really connected underneath. Those are dry docks, so that means they have two tips sticking out, but they're connected underwater. It's like mind blowing. It's pretty mind blowing. It was pretty neat, at the very least. Yeah. So we've got northern icebergs, southern icebergs, and there's plenty of icebergs, like, elsewhere, but for the most part, northern icebergs, like we said, form off the western coast of Greenland, because Greenland, apparently I read this, that Greenland and Antarctica are the only place where there's ice sheets. Oh, really? Glacial. True glacial sheets. Glacial sheets. Boy, that's a tough one. That was. It surprised me, too. I wasn't expecting that. And in Greenland, there's about 20 glaciers that cap the majority of the icebergs. Yeah. That was, I thought, pretty cool. I thought it was cool, too. Roughly 40,000 medium to large cab from Greenland glaciers each year. Is that right? And they are about 10% as strong as concrete, which I thought sounded not super strong, but apparently that's like, way harder than your freezer ice. Oh, yeah. Like this ice is different than the ice you put in your Scotch. Right. Which is why when icebergs run into one another, it tends to break it up into smaller icebergs. Yeah. They're very much subject to wave motion, storms. Other icebergs land when they run into things, like they break up. And it's one of the things that has a big delete effect on their lifespan. But it's part of the iceberg lifecycle. Yeah. Okay, good. They are pretty slow. But to give you an idea, like, a fast moving iceberg goes about 2.2. That's Holland. Oh, I'm glad you bring this up, because that raises a very important point, because we see the tip of the iceberg and because we're so anthropocentric sure. We assume that wind drives icebergs. You'd be dead wrong in assuming that since most of the iceberg is underwater, it's currents that drive iceberg. Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. And so that's how icebergs can be trapped, like in the Antarctic, because they're trapped in that current, or up north in the Labrador Current, they kind of stay trapped up there. But it also makes them subject to wave motion currents from other far off storms. Yeah. And I guess getting hung up on things underwater. Yes, as well. So another good point is they apparently strike the bottom of land a lot. Yeah. And they can wreck the sea floor, can't they? Yeah. But if you think about it, like, there's plenty of parts of North America where glacial movement carved geological features out of the land. The icebergs do the same thing. When they're dragged along by the current and say one's 1000ft tall underwater and it hits a patch of sea that's less than 1000ft, it's going to strike New York City and fast. Go to Central Park and look at the rocks there. Oh, yeah. They got all those little grooves cut out. That's ice, baby. No, that was not nice. The ecology. This was sort of surprising to me because I just figured they're just floating along, maybe they melt a little bit. What's the big whoop? But I didn't really consider the fact that it's melting this glacial freshwater. A lot of it at times, depending on the size of the iceberg all around in the sea water. And that's got to have some sort of ecological effect. Yeah. I couldn't find anything anywhere that said, like, there's a lot of life that's adapted to living in freshwater, even though it's home in seawater and they live around icebergs. I couldn't find anything like that. But apparently it has little effect on these animals because icebergs are basically like floating, time release nutrient capsules. Yeah. It's like teeming with life around it. So they must love it, these little krill and plankton. It's like a lot of small stuff, generally. Well, there's a definite what's that chain called? Food chain that iceberg support. They bring a lot of iron rich nutrients from the land sure. As a gift to the sea. And as they melt, they slowly release this stuff. This supports algae. Right. So there's a lot of algae that grows on there. Krill, these little tiny shrimp like things eat the algae, and then all these other animals eat the krill. And then the birds prey on the other fish that are eating the krill. So this whole food chain develops around this iceberg. Yeah, it's pretty cool. But even something that I think they've only recently begun to figure out is that icebergs are they're a sign of climate change. Like, everybody's worried about all the icebergs melting and the sea levels rising, and for good reason. But they're also figuring out that they also aid in carbon sequestration in the ocean. That makes sense. So this algae and all this stuff is they're eating this iron. There's a transfer of carbon from the land to this life that eventually will die, fall down to the bottom of the sea and keep the carbon trapped with it. So algae that wouldn't be there is soaking up carbon and then being eaten and passed along in this undersea food chain. And they found that the carbon absorption around an iceberg is twice what it is elsewhere, because this algae wouldn't be there if it weren't for the iceberg. Wow. So it's soaking up the CO2. That's crazy. But they also taketh away what icebergs giveth, and not just boats and ships like the Titanic. Like I said, they can clog up shipping lanes. In the case of B 15, I think it actually had a pretty deleterious effect on emperor penguins. Yeah. In March of the penguins. What happens in that sad movie? I guess what, they have to walk around it? Yeah, they really have a tight schedule. When they hit an iceberg that's taller than penguins don't fly, remember, and is really wide. They have to go around it. But they should learn to fly. Yeah. That would just solve a lot of problems. I really would. So, yeah, it can have negative effects on the little penguins, the cute little penguins. And it can rake the sea floor and just destroy it, basically, over the course of many years. Yeah, no good. Another cool thing. Okay. And this I don't know, I couldn't find if they're actually moving on this, but the United States military called up the Rand Corporation and said, hey, boy, these things are huge chunks of awesome drinking water. Totally safe to drink because it's like from the water. Boy yeah. Glacier water. Oh, really? Yeah. I never saw that all the way through. That's pretty good. They called the Rain Corporation and said, hey, can we study these things? And how viable is it to I know it sounds crazy, but how viable is it to get one of these icebergs over here and provide fresh drinking water for people who need it? Right. And it sounds like it's not the most ridiculous idea in the world. Their study said that a system allowing a 10% yield could provide water for 500 million people at a cost of $8 per 1000 m\u00b3, which is not too bad. I mean, it's way more expensive than it should be. I think we pay for water now. Right, but our water is artificially cheap. Yeah. So as water becomes more expensive, if there's any icebergs left, we may want to go do that. And they say, I guess they just nudge it through the water closer and closer. And this is where it gets a little hanky. It says in the article, using massive insulating sheets to slow the melting. I don't know what that looks like, but it looks like my lawyer, like you used to reflect the sun on your car. That's what they would use. Sure. That's all it will take, like those sun blankets or whatever? Yeah, just something to reflect the radiation. Well, it's also moving into warmer water, though. It's not going to melt it from below. Yeah, it will melt it from below, for sure. Yeah, but I mean, protect what you can, I guess. I guess if you're harvesting icebergs, you're right. They're not the only ones looking at this. I ran across an MIT proposal of building a pipeline from Alaska where there's plenty of glaciers that make western US. Makes sense. But the author concluded it's like $487,000,000,000 to build the pipeline and keep it going, and that just wouldn't be worth it in canals, too. Another group studied that and suggested a canal. Well, in the United States, it's exactly hurting for water. It would be nice if they did some of these studies and pushed it to where they don't have fresh water right now at all. Right. It's been a little money for them, like lifestyles. Well, I guess we already went over. Well, iceberg alley is actually a little more interesting. They started studying it. They formed the international ice patrol way later than they should have, I guess, but they probably didn't have the equipment they needed back in the day to do what they do now. The coast guard, us. Coast guard administers it, and they warn ships. They kind of run it through their little program and say, we think this is where it's headed. This is how big it is. If you're in this area, you might want to watch out for this guy floating your way. Well, they basically say, like, there's ice up here. Don't go above these coordinates. Called the limit of all known ice. Wow. And the coast guard also does some other stuff for the I should say the ice patrol. They do other things like bomb icebergs. Yeah. Did you find out more about that? No, I looked it up on YouTube because I was like, surely somebody's video somebody dropping a bomb on an iceberg. I couldn't find anything. Plenty of calving stuff. Oh, yeah. And they also spray paint them with very bright paint, which it seems wrong to me, just so you can see them. Yeah, that's like tagging, like a new car or something. Yeah, a beautiful new car made by nature. Yeah, that was a good analogy. Or putting, like, radio transmitters on them, which makes sense. But then when they start to break up, it's like, well, there's a little chunk that has the radio transmitter. What about the rest? 3ft big. Right? Yeah. Hey, everyone, when you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office when you could be using stamps.com? Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable. For over. 1 million businesses because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need right from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off ups. So stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the homepage and enter code stuff. So I got nothing else. I don't either. Oh, I've got something else. All right. What you got? So I became interested in the idea of this article mentions a nautical mile. Sure. Why is there a nautical mile in a mile? And I found out why. So nautical mile is 1.508 miles. And the reason why is because a nautical mile, when going around the equator, takes into account the curvature of the earth. A regular mile, or a statute mile is what it's called, goes from one point on the map to another through a straight line, which means that it's not taking into account the curvature of the earth, which means that the nautical mile is more accurate and thus a little longer than the regular mile interesting. From minute to minute along a degree. So a mile is really not a mile, is what you're saying on land. No, no, it's not. Because it's like if you take the earth, cut it in half of the equator and turn it over, you've got the two halves and you're looking in the molten center. Yeah. And you divide it into 360 degrees, divide those degrees into minutes, and then measure a minute to a minute. If you do a straight line, it's not as accurate. If you do the curve line, it will be accurate. And a kilometer is just way out there. In 1791, the French academy of sciences said, okay, we're going to designate a kilometers the distance from the north pole to the equator through Paris. Yeah, sure. Divided by 10,000. Pretty clever. So there you have it, nautical miles. I love it. Thanks, man. I really went all out on this. I think so, too. Kudos, sir, if you want to learn more about icebergs, you can type in that word, I-C-E-B-E-R-G-S in the search bar howstep works.com. I'll bring up this fine article by Edgaravanowski, and I said, search bar how stuff works, which means it's time for listener mail before listing mail quickly. Oh, my God. I know. We're going to ComicCon. Oh, yes, we are. This is exciting. It is very exciting. We've never been. San Diego, California. Right. July 12 to 15th. We will be there, I believe, on the first day. Yeah. And we will be presenting and we are not quite sure the deeds yet, but as we find out, you will find out. Excellent. So if you're going to be there, come see us. Yeah. Come say hi to us. We're pretty friendly. We're going to be pressing flesh, as they say. Yeah. Handling weirdo. Okay. So I'll do listening on now then. Okay. Wait again. Hold on. Yes. We have a huge announcement, dude. Yeah. We are running a pretty cool contest if you ask me. Agreed. Chuck, you know how every Halloween we read a short story? So far we've read one by HP. Lovecraft the Tomb. Yeah. We read berenice by Agground. Powell. That was fun. We thought, hey, why don't we see what our listeners can do? This is your brainchild and a great idea. Thank you very much. Sure. So we're holding a horror fiction contest by our listeners, and you can send in your submission. And if you win, we will read your story as our Halloween episode. That's right. Let's get down to brass tacks here. Here's what we're going to be ranking on a scale of one to five in the following categories. It's all got to be on the level, right? Interestingness applied, awesomeness of characters, well paced pacing. Yeah, it's going to be well paced, scariness and overall quality of writing. And it's actually going to be a bracket. You can follow this we'll have URLs later where you can follow this bracket on the House support site. Well, so you and I are going to judge all the submissions and we're going to select based on these criteria. The top 16. Yes. And the top 16 gets put onto the bracket. And then it's up to everybody to read and vote. And then the one that's picked Democratically is number one. That's the one that wins. I'm really, genuinely excited about this. Yes. And speaking of genuine, I want to see genuinely scary stuff. Agreed. I don't want to give too many hints, but if you're creeping into like torture porn territory, you're not going to be impressing anyone with your literary skills. Agreed. Get creative. I'm glad you pointed that out. So if you want to submit your stuff, your junk, you want to send it to Housetofworkcontest, plural@discovery.com. To qualify, the email has to have the words, by participating in this contest, I agree to abide by the contest rules. Kind of a mouthful. But it has to be in the email that you send in your submission with, and emails that don't have that in it are going to be disqualified, I'm afraid. Yes. And what is our limit? We have a limit here. Word limit. 3000 to 4000 words. 3000 minimum, don't go under disqualified. The 4000 maximum, don't go over disqualified. Yes. We got to be sticklers on the rules here because he's official, right? Exactly. So the whole thing starts Monday, June 18, and it goes until 11:59 p.m., friday, July 20. Okay. Within that, time to submit your stories. And after that? After the deadline sorry, it's closed. Then you and I get to judge him. I might submit under a pseudonym just for fun. Okay. I don't know if pseudonyms are okay. No, as a matter of fact sorry, no pseudonyms allowed. Chuck. Oh, is that in there? Yes. No pseudonyms allowed. You have to be 18 to enter. And it's open only to America. It is, as usual, yes. One submission per person. We'll post all the rules on a blog post and put it on Facebook, but that's generally the criteria. So get to writing. See if you can scare our socks off, and we look forward to reading. This is going to be awesome. Yeah, this is going to be really cool. Make Halloween wonderful. Wow. There we go. You ready? Yes. Now I guess it's time for listener now, indeed, Josh. I'm going to call this one good. Email from Chicago guy. It's a terrible title. Just yesterday, guys, I was finished reading a book Robin Dunbar wrote called Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language. Her argument is that language evolved out of a need to keep up social relationships with group members, put it in its most basic form. Over time, our brains evolved to be larger, which made our average group size increase at the same time once our group size became large enough. Today, our average group size is about 150. We didn't have enough time in the day to groom one on one with that many group members to keep up our social bonds with them. So we evolved language so we could use language as a way to verbally groom with more members at a time to keep the group strong. That's interesting. It was my understanding that our brains have actually decreased in size over the last, like, 200 years. Oh, really? Because of group size? Because it's increased, and we have to rely less on our instincts and run from thunder and stuff like that. I smell a cage match. Another interesting experiment I read about is this two scientists were studying vervet monkeys in their natural habitat. They started recording the sounds of the vervets and make notes about what they were doing when they made the noise. After examining a large sample of noises, they found a correlation between the sound they made and what was happening when they made it. I believe the noises were difficult to distinguish by the naked human ear, but the pattern was obvious when they compared large numbers of them together. The verb it made a different noise for when an air predator was spotted, when a ground predator was spotted, when approaching a dominant mail, et cetera. It's not quite language or lack syntax, but it's still more advanced than I thought they were, and that's pretty much it. Hope it wasn't too dense but if it was, then that is revenge for the sun podcast. That's the listener right there. That's right. That is from Matt Shunka from Chicago. Thanks, Matt. Shinka. Goberz. Yeah, gober. I guess I always like to hear about new books that I should be reading. Oh, sure. Like we have any time for that anymore. Did you hear that? That was the limit. It was. Send us your book recommendations, Sakura. You can turn it into syskpodcast on Twitter. You can send it to facebook. Comstuffychildnow. Don't send it. I guess you post it on that. Or you can send us an email. Good old fashioned electronic mail. Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom and send it off to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out. The sun is shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right Media, my Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarif and Georgia Hardstarks, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more. Before you know, listen to new episodes of My Favorite Murder one week early on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | ||
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2016-09-15-sysk-stradivari-violins-final.mp3 | What's the deal with Stradivarius violins? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/whats-the-deal-with-stradivarius-violins | The Strad violin is noted for its tonal qualities and superior craftsmanship. And for its price tag. There are many theories why the Strad sounds so great, from the wood to the lacquer, to the simple fact that Antonio Stradivari was really good at what he | The Strad violin is noted for its tonal qualities and superior craftsmanship. And for its price tag. There are many theories why the Strad sounds so great, from the wood to the lacquer, to the simple fact that Antonio Stradivari was really good at what he | Thu, 15 Sep 2016 07:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=15, tm_hour=7, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=259, tm_isdst=0) | 38458608 | 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 Roland. Yeah, yeah. Jerry said right before she pressed record, I'm Sleepy 3210h. Really? Yeah. I didn't hear you didn't notice that, didn't you? I was just memorizing or practicing what I was going to say. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. I just did. I was successful. You're practicing. Hey, welcome to the podcast. Should we talk fiddles? Yeah. Chuck Fiddle, DD. Let's do. I bought one a few years ago, by the way, and took one lesson. And you became an expert? Yes. No, that's just me, man. That's how things go with me. I have a lot of things that I've been like, I'm going to do this. Got a lot of balls in the air. Yes. Specifically, musically. I bought a steel guitar and didn't learn to play that. I bought a keyboard and was going to learn to play piano. I didn't do that. Okay. Bought the violin. I'm keeping the violin, though. Okay, so you're stimulating the economy. Yeah, pretty much. And I usually just, like, sell that and use that money to buy the next thing. I don't play. Yeah, but I don't know. I know how to play guitar, so I'm kind of realizing at my age, like, maybe that's all it's going to be. You're a guitar man, like Bread said. Yeah, but I used to want to be like, man, by the time I die, I want to be able to play all the stringed instruments. That was my goal, and I've learned one. That's more than some people. I don't know how to play any string instrument. Yeah, but you don't care, too, it sounds like. No. So you consider the piano a stringed instrument. It's got strings. Is it percussion or is it string or is it both? Well, a little hammer hits the string. Right. Percussion. Interesting. Whereas the harpsichord is plucked. Yeah. Talking piano. Yeah. I wish I could play the piano. I'd like to learn that one day. Right. My brother took lessons as a kid and my sister but I didn't. Scott can still play a little bit today. Of course. Hey, Scott. Super bro. So the fiddle a little history here before we get into the man. The fiddle or violin, there's no difference, by the way. Is that right? Yes. One is pronounced one way and the other is pronounced the other way. Yeah. And I thought there was a difference when I bought mine, I was like, well, what's the difference? Just in how you play it. They're like hillbillies play fiddles. Yeah. Other people play violin. Exactly. So the fiddle at first was not a well regarded instrument. It was thought of as a sort of a cheap tavern instrument. Like, you'd get drunk and hop up on the table at the tavern really? And beat out a little Irish jig. Really? Yeah. And it didn't have a good reputation when well, I mean, this is the 16th century. Okay. So then initially yeah. Okay. I'm with you then. I'm with you. Okay. Hanging on. And even in parts of Italy, at first, the church ordered the destruction of violins. They were so, like, looked down upon. And then a lady named Catherine Dimadici got on board, and she's like, this thing is wonderful. Sure. I'm going to order 38 of them for my court from this guy named Nicholas Amati, who is the grandson of the great violin maker Andrea Amadi. Actually, she probably bought them from Andrea if it was $1,500. Right. And that was it. Things started to change, and that's literally what kind of led the violin down a path of respectability. Yeah. Once you introduce it into court sure. People tend to follow suit. Yeah. So the Amates lived in a place called Cremona, Italy. Right. And Cremona, because the amateurs lived there who were basically the de factor inventors of the violin, cello and viola as we recognize them today, because that's where they were from. Cormona became the center of violin production, string instrument production, plain and simple. Yeah. Which is pretty neat, the idea that that's where violence came from and that they're that recent in origin. And of course, it goes further back than that. Like, loot were obviously around long before the violin. But again, if you look at a violin today and say, oh, it's a violin, you can thank the Amate of Cremona for making that recognizable to you. Yeah. And here's another cool little fact. The fancy, beautiful shape of a violin is not for aesthetics. It is all about the sound that it makes. The violin doesn't give a damn. Weather, you think it looks good? Well, it turned out to look beautiful, but all those curves allow for equal resonance of all the notes, which, if it was more basic shaped, certain notes, would sound better than others. So that allowed the entire fingerboard to sound wonderful. Well, plus, also, if you look at a violin face on sure. If you go down the sides in the middle, it's cut in. Those are called seabouts. Those actually have a practical purpose, I'm sure, in addition to helping produce sound, but it allows the boat to play the strings on either side without hitting the body of the violin. Pretty clever. It's really hard to play. I can't stress that enough. I thought, this is not so different than a guitar. Like, I'm just holding it under my neck and a bow instead of fingers. That's got to be a pretty big difference. It's a huge difference, yeah. Fingers, bows, totally different. You're born with one, the other you have to buy. Well, it's a combination of pressure on a string angle of the bow on the string pressure from your parents placement of the bow on as far as how far down it is, up and down the violin speed. Sure. It's like there's like ten different things that go into making a sound on a violin that you have to do successfully all at once. It's really hard. Yeah. I was intimidated and went in the closet. You go, maybe my daughter will play one day and it will be waiting for her. Nice. So we'll see. But should we go over the parts? I know you mentioned the SEabout. Sure. SEabout is my favorite. So you take it from there. Well, if you look at violin, you got the very above those little tuning pegs, which are contained in the peg box. You've got the scroll, which is kind of a curvy, lovely fancy piece at the top. Then you have the neck and the fingerboard. The neck goes from basically down to the body of the violin, but the fingerboard continues on through it, the upper bout, the lower bout, and then that C bout you mentioned, which is also called the waist. And you have your two F holes cut on either side. The fancy holes. Yeah. They look like FS. Then you have your bridge, which is the very thin piece of wood that keeps the strings off of the violin body itself. Okay. And taut. Then you have your tailpiece at the bottom, where the strings end, and then the all important chin rest. And that's a violin. Bam. Go make one now I'm leaving. So again, there was the Amate that came up with the violin you just described. That's right. And one of the amateurs, the grandson of Andrea Amate, who I think is credited with inventing the violin, basically. But his grandson Nicholas taught a young man by the name of Antonio antonio Strategy. That name sounds familiar. Yeah. Antonio Strategy was born in Cremona. They're not sure when they think probably about 1644. His life is a bit of a mystery. His young life, at least. Right. Not a lot of great records on it. You know what? This just jog my memory. We never explained why Alexander Hamilton would shave two years off of his age, even though we specifically said we were going to. Well, that's awesome. Should we follow up now? Probably not. Okay. I think people would get mad. Yeah. If you want to know, right in and we'll tell you. Or maybe we'll post it on social media. I think that's better. But who cares? We're talking strategy right now. Yeah, we've moved on. Right. So strategy. There's not very good records about his youth, I think, as you said. But he pops up in at the very latest. That's right. A violin pops up in 1666, I should say. It has an inscription on it and a label, actually. And if you translate it to English, it says, made by Antonio Stere de Veri of Cremona, pupil of Nicolo Amadi. Well done, Year of Satan. And that means he was either a pupil, which it clearly says sure. Or a bit of a stretch of the truth and a bit of a ruse and a career move, really. Yeah. There's some people that say and that's why I was wondering. It says people believe some people believe he was a pupil. Yes. I didn't get what the well, it says he was a pupil on the inscription. Right. But the other thought is that maybe it was a bit of a career move to say, I was taught by the great Amatti right. Who's dead now and can't say otherwise. Maybe. But who knows? I bet he was probably a pupil. Actually, he wasn't dead. So that would have been pretty gutsy to have done that, because Ahmadi didn't die for many years, many more years after 1666. So I think that the common consensus is that he was a pupil of Hamadi. He would have said, he's stealing them my business. So what happened with that? Right, man, this thing is going to be lousy with that. All right, so 1666, you are correct. He builds his very first violin on his own. He continues to build violins on his own in his attic, which was apparently the tradition. Attic violin building, was it? That's what it said. I guess that was just like where you would put your workshop. Okay. Who knows? I don't know. Have you ever seen the movie The Red Violin? Yes. Great movie. Agreed. Stick with it. I think I might have seen that on your recommendation years ago, probably, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. Really good movie, though. So he's making violins. He moved into a home in 1680, and he started to get some recognition as a great builder and maker of violin. He's a great craftsman. He did. And he was still kind of living in the shadow of the amateur. But when Nicola Amate died in 1684, by this time everyone said, this guy is Crimona's best maker of violins, which, since Cremona was the world capital of violin making, they were made elsewhere. But criminals like the place where the best were made, the Creme of the Cormona. Right. That made him the world's best violin maker. And he hadn't even entered his golden period yet. Yeah. And he was making more than violins. He's making cellos and guitars and mandolins and harps. Pretty much anything with strings, except harps accords. Who knows? He might have made a harpsichord. I bet that'd be worth a lot. Probably so. All right, should we take a break here? Yes. All right. We'll get into more craftsmanship right after this. All right. So Strativari is following in his footsteps, but he's also like, you know what? I'm going to start tweaking this thing and craft my own brand of violin. And he does. So he said, I'm going to use some new materials, maybe some new finishes. I'm going to make that C bout a little straighter than you're used to. Yes, make the F a little straighter. The F holes. Oh, is it straighter? Was that the deal? I think so. And then we altered the fhole sum and something with a scroll, too. Is that right? He made it more amazing, and he made the scroll larger, bigger scrolls. The f holes, not only straighter, but longer, larger scroll and a straighter and stronger SEabout. That was like mechanically, those were the biggest differences. Right. But he also, crucially, came up with his own formula for a varnish. It's a very easily recognized, deep red, brown varnish that's right. That his violins have. It's very handsome. But a lot of people, as we'll see later, believe that it's possibly the Varnish that makes strategies violins so great. Because when he made these changes, not only was he making these changes to the shape and appearance of the violin, he was also like a master wooden layer. Like, the craftsmanship that his violins had were just unparalleled. They were flawless works of art as musical instruments. So in addition to just being a flawless work of art, they also sounded better than anything that could possibly compare be compared to it. And what's really exceptional about strategy is it's not just one of those things where, like, oh, the name is actually driving it. A strategy violin that's 300 years old today is probably better than any violin that's been produced in the last 300 years, including a brand new one. They're only now getting to the point where they've discovered techniques where they can start to replicate the sound of a strategy is. Yeah, that's how good this guy's violins were. It's not a joke. It's not hyperbole of how great the strata of various violins are. They are still the ones that this guy made by hand are still the best violins in the world. Yeah. Really saying something, for sure, considering how much progress we've made in the last 300 years on just about everything. And these are for the finest tuned ears in the world. Clearly, there are flawless, amazing instruments and violins being produced since then. But for the true, like aficionado, they can spot the difference, apparently. Yeah. Like you and I can't. No, but people whose job it is to identify and appraise strategies, violence, say that comparing it to a non strata various, like a knock off or something, is like comparing a Ferrari to a school bus. It's like that obvious for them. People like saying things like that. It's a great quote. We're just a couple of schmps. What do we know might be a new gag. So he and his first wife had six kids. He was good at having kids. He and his second wife. His wife sadly, died in 1698. He got remarried and had five more kids with wife number two. He was great at making violins and making children. Yes. Crafting children who are great at it. Crafting little babies. Yeah. They call them the maestro in the bedroom, you know what I mean? And I think a couple of his sons even went on to follow in his footsteps. Is that right? From his first marriage. Right. They were on that second lot. They were schmumps, though. They couldn't hold a candle to their father's work. So let's talk about the golden period from 1717 20 to 25, depending on who you talk to. This was the golden period where these violins I mean, he had really honed his design at this point. And the materials that he used and everything kind of all coalesced into making the best violins in the history of the world. Right. It was like LeBron's tenure at the Heat. Well, we'll see. His career is not over yet. Yeah. Wow. You're calling it now. I mean, he made a case for a resurgence this past season, but we'll see if he can repeat it. Okay. He was playing on 500 cylinders with the Heat. It was just perfect because he didn't have to be the team leader. He could be one of, like, the leaders. That team had several leaders, and he could be one of them. It wasn't like the whole team just pushed upward toward LeBron. See, a lot of people have the opposite view. That was anyone can get on a team of superstars and win championships. But no, not necessarily. To be the one leader is a bigger accomplishment. I'm very curious to know how, say, like, the Golden State Warriors are going to be next season with Durant and Steph Curry and Clay Thompson on there. Thompson knows so much, but, like, Steph Curry and Kevin Durant, they're, like, two of the greatest players that have ever lived. Ever lived. Not just their playing right now. How are they going to gel the idea that Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh and LeBron James were all able to keep their egos in check and come together to work together and lead a team together? I think that's harder than just being like, forget it, I'll do it myself. Yeah. All right. So strategy is making his mark on the world, getting his reputation, and he's making a lot of money. He wasn't one of these. It's like, after he died, they later realized how great he was. He was a rich man making and selling these violins. Yeah. Apparently there's a phrase richest strategy, like, richer than an astronaut is what we would say today. Yeah. He was one of the more famous guys in Italy at the time, for sure. Yeah. And rightfully so. His crowning achievement, supposedly, is in 1716 when he built the Messiah. And this is the only violin that he never sold that he kept in his workshop till the day died. It was his head Stash violin. And this violin has rarely been played. Apparently one of the sort of things, unspoken rules when this thing's been sold and passed down, don't even play it. This one should remain pristine. Yeah. It's basically as close to a mint condition strategy as you can find in the world. It's not close, it's mint. Yes, a couple of people have played it. Oh, really? Yeah, it's not been unplayed. Okay. A couple of bad eggs in there. A couple of super lucky violin players that screw your unwritten rules. Yes. This is before the ashmolean got their hands on it. Okay. So post 1720, post golden period, he still produced violins and things, but apparently his eyesight was going, his hands were not as steady and they weren't quite what they were during the golden period. I'm sure they were still wonderful violence. Oh, yeah. He's still churning out the good stuff, but nothing like that golden period. And he worked into his 90s. He was building violence for 70 years. He worked up to his death, as far as I understand. I think so, yeah. But that golden period stuff there was the Messiah from 1716, the Alarm from 1715, the bets from 17 four. Those are just a few of the ones that he made during this period that are still around a day. I saw 1000 I also saw 1500 stringed instruments during his career. Amazing. About 650 survived today. And they tend to have names, especially the ones from his golden period, as you just heard. They have names and they're usually the name of the most famous player who owned it. Right. They weren't like Skippy and old Roy barnabas. Barnabas, the violinist. Right. So there's a superstition among violinists that the more you play a violin, the more a particular person plays violin, the more that violin takes on the character of that player. Right. So much so that a violinist, or even a cellist or a violinist can come along afterward and play that person's violin and it will sound much more like the person whose violin it is than the person playing it. Well, and there's a further superstition that the more you play a violin, the better it sounds. Well, that's not a superstition, that's fact. Right. With any instrument. So there is a study from, I think, 1996 that I came across that found that the more violin wood is vibrated, the more the dampening coefficient is lowered. The lower the dampening coefficient, the longer a note resonates, the longer a note resonates, the richer the sound. And so just playing it right, because you're vibrating the wood when you're playing a violin, the more you do that, the more frequently you do that, the better the violin is actually going to sound. So astoundingly the more you play a violin, the better it sounds. Well, that's true for any instrument. Yeah, it's called breaking it in. It's like a pair of jeans. You can identify with that. Sure. I love jeans. A pair of jeans five years in are better than they are when you take them off the shelf. Yeah, it's the same thing. It's breaking it in. Especially strings with anything with the fingerboard, the fingerboard just wears in. Those frets wear down a little. And it does get a little bit attuned, I think, to your style. Yeah, for sure. Very interesting. I'd like to do more on musical instruments here and there. Okay, I'm putting it out there. All right. All right, well, let's take another quick break, and we will get into all the controversy surrounding just why these things sound so good and all those theories. Pretty interesting stuff. So, Chuck, I got to say, you did a good job putting this one together. I'm interested in it. I had that stuff from the B side podcast for, like, two months back in the day. People still called for it, and we covered this very briefly. Oh, really? Yeah, and we didn't do right by it. So that's why I was like, you know what? That's a good topic. Nice. Let me dust that one off. Nice. So there have been many theories over the years. Like, if the Strad is so revered and legendary that people, experts, scientists are bound to want to crack that nut. Yes. Like, why? Yeah, what's the deal again? It's objectively better than other violence. The ones that Stretch Berry made. Correct. Some of the theories. The old theories back then was that he would soak the wood in salt water not true. That the wood was coated with volcanic ash. Not true. The dragon's blood was used in the varnish. That may have been true. Okay. George R. Martin came up with that one. Probably so. And then we'll get into the more modern theories. Well, there's a couple of leading theories. One is the wood, the ice age wood, which we'll talk about. And the other is the varnish. Go. Okay. Well, strategy was working during what's known as Europe's little ice Age, which is a period of very unusually colder temperatures. And I think they're still trying to figure out what the heck happened. And as a matter of fact, we need to do, like, a regular ice age podcast. We'll talk about it then. Yeah, but the upshot of it was that because of the colder temperatures, the spruce that was used by strategy in the manufacturer of these violins grew slower but more evenly steadier, so that the wood that was harvested from the spruce trees was much more uniformly grained. Right. So just basically, really high end wood was produced by this little ice age. The problem with that being the reason that strategies violins were so great is that the wood was also available to violin makers elsewhere in Europe, and their violence don't sound anything like a Stradvery. So the little ice age theory, while still, I think, out there, I think that really kind of goes a long way to undermining it. Yeah, people were really excited about that at first, and I think they're, like, not proof. It's a cool theory. It is cool. Little ice age. There's another dude at Texas A and M named Joseph Naguari. Nagyvery. What a unique name. And he said it's all about this varnish, this cremeise varnish. Is that not right? Yeah, cremenis. Yeah. I think that's what they say. Start your morning right with cream. Andes so he published an article in Scientific Journal, public Library of Science. One, it's capitalized for some reason. And he says, you know what's going on here? It's this varnish that he used. Let me analyze it chemically. And what he found out was it's very unique in that it has these things in there that you would not expect to be in a varnish like borax and chromium. And he said, So what I think is going on is this stuff he added this stuff to the varnish to protect that wood against damage and infestation. But what it really did was actually weakened the wood and made it porous where it should not be. And that created more tone, a more booming, rich, powerful tone. Right. He got a lot of pushback. Well, his theory is not entirely out of left field. It's pretty much accepted that if you put the wrong kind of varnish on a violin, it's going to ruin the sound. Sure. So his whole thing was, well, why couldn't you stumble upon some varnish that actually enhanced the sound? And that was his idea. That accounted for straitivaries violin sounding like that. Yeah. I think he did get a lot of pushback. Even if he's right, there seems to be a desire among the people who collect and play straight of various violins is that we'll never understand what makes it special. We don't really want to know what will make it special. There's a guy who was widely quoted. He's a violinist from America. His name is James Eames. Well, James, his whole view is that he's played a number of strategies, violins and other string instruments. And he said that there's probably 1000 things that make them special. And we can never possibly know what all those thousand things are. And there's never just going to be just this one thing that is the key to what made strata, various violence so great. Yeah, I think I watched the BBC documentary that was really pretty great. And they interviewed another violin maker and he said it was the right place, right time thing like this guy came along, maybe they had this good wood that was special. Maybe he had this varnish that was special. Yes, but they were in the hands of somebody special too. Well, that was his point, was that other people were using some of the same things and they turned out very different. He said he was so good at what he did. That's the secret. He was just better at doing this than other people. Right. Like how Chris Bosch and Dwayne Wade brought the best out of LeBron James. Well, where I think this Texas A and M professor aired was that he was so bold as to even posit the idea that it may have been an accident. I would say bold is an appropriate term. Yeah. They turned out this good on accident. He didn't know this varnish was going to do that, or the wood may have been even pretreated with these chemicals. And he kind of lucked into what it ended up being. And not that he wasn't talented, but that's why they are where they are. And people are, like, blessed for me yeah. Out heretic. So how much do these things cost? A lot. I mean, the numbers are all over the place. Like, one thing will say that the record was $3.54 million, and then later on, the record was broken with $3.6 million with the Monitor strategy is owned famously, by Milwaukee brewer Paul Mollitar. That's where that one got its name. Well, yeah, I agree. And then this says, in June 2014, the Croitscer had a presale estimate of seven and a half million to 10 million, but it failed to reach the reserve price. Right. But then later on, another one sold in 2011 for 16 million. So apparently nobody's really keeping tabs here. I looked on the Internet. I couldn't find anything approaching a comprehensive list of how much these things have gone for. But the fact is, millions of dollars, tens of millions, in some cases, from what I understand. And there are collectors, very wealthy collectors, who are driving the price of Strat of various violins and other stringent through the roof, where if you were smart enough to buy one for a few hundred thousand dollars 2030 years ago, it's worth easily 1020 times that now. Yeah. And it's kind of a shame that these aren't in the hands of the great players of the world. Well, they're in the hands of the great players of the world who come from very wealthy families. Yeah. Or who, like you said, bought 120 or 30 years ago, and that's their go to. But yeah, it's just another fat piggy thing to buy and own and possess. The one I have is the most expensive one. Right. Fortunately, the one that's so valuable that it's frequently cited as priceless is the Messiah, and that is owned by the Ashmole and Oxford University. Yeah. So that one's not up for grabs. Which is cool, because all the other ones are just operating under that level. Yeah. And the lady in the BBC documentary is a violinist, and she got to hold the Messiah with gloves. And it's called that because there's a Nativity scene and laid on the back, I believe. Oh, I don't think it's the back. I think it's in the little tailpiece. Okay. But this thing is gorgeous. And she was allowed to hold it with gloves, like white cotton gloves. And the whole time, even though I knew that wouldn't happen, I was like, don't drop it. Yeah. Those slippy little cotton gloves. Sure. And it just made me nervous watching it. Did you ever see that video of things. That were very expensive things that were accidentally broken that I made years back. I remember that. Yeah. It was tough to make, I bet. Tough to watch, too. Yeah. So, over the years, there have been many fakes. As soon as he died, they started pumping out forgeries. And not even forgeries, like, just mass produced violins that they would throw a label on. At the time, in the 19th century, 18th and 19th century, the people buying the violins knew that they were, like, knock off manufactured fakes. Yeah. Largely in Germany. Right, right. But they weren't like yeah. They weren't being duped. It was like, this is in the style of strata various or whatever. Yeah. Largely in Germany and Czechoslovakia. And the thing is, though, is over time, these were now pretty old violins because they were again made in the 18th and 19th century. They had labels on them that would say, like, Strategus, Crimonysis, Fatiga, Ono, and then say, like, 1679, or something like that. Right. So if you find one of these violins in your attic and it looks pretty old, it literally says in Italian, this violin was made by Stradivarius in 1679. You could be forgiven to think that you have just found a strategy violin and all of your money problems are over. Yes. You can go buy more meth than you'll ever be able to do in your entire life. It might say Made in Germany too, though. That's a big giveaway. It is. Apparently, if you're an appraiser of this kind of thing, you're so sick of people calling you that you can't even hide it. When you're interviewed in an article yeah. The one guy even said that he's like, people get angry when you tell them it's not he said, because they think they got a lottery ticket and you have to break it to him. And he said they get mad on these phone calls. Right. And they're like, well, do you have $20 for meth? That's pretty funny. Do you have anything else? Yeah, if you find a violin and you look it over and it says Strategies, and you look even further and it doesn't say Made in Germany fake if it doesn't say that. I know, but it's still probably a fake. Well, there's a Smithsonian article about it that has basically step by step what you can do and who you can submit photos to to get it. Basically preapproved. Well, not appraised, but just looked at. And they can usually tell from the photos, like, no, it's a fake. Like, step one, leave it out in the sun and let it get rained on a couple of times. Right. If ants are attracted to it. Not as straight. Exactly. Yeah. But one of the appraisers makes the point, like, they're about 650 in the world and they're all basically accounted for it. Right. We know where they are. Yeah. And even when we don't know where they are, we would know the ones that we don't know where they are when they surface. Like a stolen one. Yeah. There was one that was famously stolen 30 something years ago from a concert violinist, and it was a shred of areas, and it was in the attic of a Milwaukee thief's house. Wow. And I guess he died and his girlfriend took it to an appraiser who's like, this is stolen. I know who. This is crazy. So it's a very small community. So the idea that somebody's just going to walk up with, like, a real strata, various that had previously been unknown is most likely not going to happen. Yeah. One of the other appraisers said, it's like finding a new Rembrandt. He said, we know what he painted. Right. We know where they are now. They got computers, painting, rembrandt. Oh, yeah, I remember that. I think a guy left his Strat in the cab a few years ago, too. Was it Joshua Bell? Sounds like something that guy would do. Wacky. I can't remember. I believe that happened, though. Remember? Did he get it back? I think so. Only in New York, right? Jeez, can you imagine? No. Because, again, these are concert violinists who have almost been entrusted by humanity with these things. Like here, this is a very expensive violin. Yes. But we are giving this to you because we think you will enrich this and honor it with your playing. And maybe someday it'll be called your last name. Strategarius. Play it well. Right. Don't leave it in the back of a cab. And then that guy had to get on Craigslist and buy a $100 fiddle to play first chair at the Philharmonic. Yeah. Chuck? Yes. You got anything else? I got nothing else. I don't either. Good job putting this together, man. Thanks. If you want to know more about strategies, you can search the Internet for it because we don't have an article on how stuff works. Since I said Internet, it's time for listener mail. We call this from my good buddy Becks, rebecca Bloomfield. She's one of my Pin pals. Okay. From the stuff you should know. Is she in prison over the years? She sure is. No, she's not. She's a delight, though, and she backed me up on my comments about women in science, so I felt good about it, so I wanted to read it. She made me feel better. I hope you guys had a great time in the UK. By the way. She just missed our show in London by a couple of days and she was very bummed out. Did she live there or was she visiting? I think visiting. She now lives somewhere else, so she said. I know you did. I just listened to the delightful history of steam. Anyway, I'm writing to say bloody well done. Is that a curse word? I think it's like, very okay, great. Well done, Chuck, on your comment on what we could have achieved of women had been allowed into the Stem fields from the start. I know this sort of comment can be a minefield for a guy, but I can assure you, you made your point really well. I'm normally the first to jump on non feminist comments or mansplaining. That's what I was afraid of. So she said, I'm usually the first to jump on the mansplaining. And when you said it, I said, yes, Chuck, very loudly in my office. I even startled the dogs. Raising children is very important, but men can do it too. All humans of any gender should have a choice as to what they do with their lives. They should not be predetermined because of their gender. So good on you, Chuck. Makes me happy to know that the next generation of women are being raised by men like you. And that's from Becks Bloomfield. And she is a graphic designer for Little Red Robot Design. Oh, shout out. Just a nice lady. Nice. Well, thanks a lot, Becks. Can I call her that or should I just call her Rebecca? No, you're in the club. Okay. Well, thanks a lot, Bex, for that email and for shouting. We appreciate that kind of thing. Certainly, if you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast or Josh Clark. You can hang out with us at Charlesw Chuck Bryant on Facebook or Superjohnclark on Facebook or facebook. Comstuffystemup. You can also send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at home on the Web stuffyouknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstepworks.com." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2008/1223404071041hsw-sysk-living-off-grid.mp3 | How Living Off the Grid Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-living-off-the-grid-works | If you're tired of paying utility bills or relying on fossil fuels, it might be time to consider living off the grid. Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about the techniques and strategies used by people living off the grid. | If you're tired of paying utility bills or relying on fossil fuels, it might be time to consider living off the grid. Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about the techniques and strategies used by people living off the grid. | Thu, 16 Oct 2008 12:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2008, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=16, tm_hour=12, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=290, tm_isdst=0) | 13520642 | 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 chuck Fear. I'm here. I'm Josh Clark and Chuck Bryan. We're both here. Yeah, we are, Chuck, aren't we? Yes. Chuck I've been really getting battered around by my electric company lately, man. Do you know that for the most part, electric utilities just kind of guess how much you've used. How much electricity you've used? Yeah. Like, now, I think maybe once every quarter, they send somebody out to actually check, but I don't think they ever go back and say, oh, well, we owe you some money because we were wrong. They just guess how much you're using. So you can conserve as much electricity as you want. It's actually good if you're doing that, environmentally speaking, but financially, it may not help you at all. You may actually pay more. It's a lot of times it's based on the previous year's usage. And I went through some nightmares with the water company here, man. Yeah, that'll happen. Oh, boy. Ridiculous. Do you want to give us details about your nightmare? Yes, I could give you some quick details. We moved into this house we bought, and after being there a month, we got a $5,000 water bill. Holy cow. Yes. So it set off a chain of phone calls for just months. That's not when you just kind of swallow hard and go through it, right? Yeah. No, it was bad. They're not fun to deal with you. No. Did you finally get it knocked down? I'm not afraid to say that either. Okay. They're not fun people to deal with. Oh, no. And you also have to think about it with the water company specifically or the water utility, you have no competitor to go to. You can't just be like, oh, yeah, I owe five grand. How about this? I'm going to go to your competitor. Right. They'll say we don't have one, so good luck with that. You have no power. The power is all exactly. You know what this makes me want to do, man? Go turn on a faucet? No. It makes me want to just live off the grid, scrap it all, get the heck out of town, and shun public utilities altogether. Okay, so I've heard of this. It's the Back to Earth Movement, generally living off the grid. What is it? Well, yeah, it's one name for it. Back to Earth Movement. It's basically people that want to take the solar energy and wind energy and conservation a step further and completely be not tied to their power utilities and their water and their sewer gas. So, Chuck, I'm pretty excited about this prospect of not having a power bill anymore, clearly. Or a water bill, and I'm quite sure other people are, maybe even some of our listeners when we talk a little bit about living off the grid, because it's pretty precise, actually. It has a very precise definition of what it entails. Right. And starting usually with electricity. Yeah, there's a plan, you just don't go into it all. Willynilly. What do I do? I don't want to get a bill anymore. Now, that's not how it works. What happens is there are a few major bills. Cutting your phone is easy, because if you just decide you don't want to live with the phone, you cut your phone off. Cut your cable with cable, same deal. Have you ever actually lived without cable TV? Yes. It's odd, isn't it? It takes a little getting used to, and then all of a sudden you find out about reading and having conversations. I did, too. I went cable for a couple of years and, yeah, same thing happened. I didn't miss it after a little while at all. So it takes a little getting used to, huh? Yeah. But eventually I did. Cable is not always cracked up to be. Although I do love my reality TV. That might be a little hard now. I'm just kidding. Brett and Michael's rock of love. Sorry. Yeah. The grid basically referred to the power grid. So you're talking about power, water. Your major utilities are the ones that you're really going to have to work to get around if you want to cut those off. Yeah. And the obvious answer for power is solar power. It's obvious, but it's also fairly expensive, isn't it? I mean, this is kind of a financial obligation one is making here to see it's one of those deals where you pay some upfront, but in the long run it pays itself off and then you're making money, basically. Yeah. I wrote an article once where I came across this company called SunPower. They're out of California. They make these things called sun tiles, and they're actually roof shingles that are individual solar cells. And they look just like roof shingles. They're just as durable as root shingles, but they actually connect to a power grid on your roof. That's a cool idea. And apparently they provide or they convert, like, 50% more electricity or convert solar power into 50% more electricity than a traditional solar cell. Really? Yeah. So, I mean, I don't know how expensive they are, how much mass production they're in yet, but it seems like a pretty good idea to me. That's a great idea. And wind power is another awesome idea. A lot of people are getting their energy from the wind, and it's kind of the same concept at work, except the wind blows a turbine instead of collecting energy from the sun, and that produces energy that's converted to usable energy. And a lot of people are kind of hooking these things. You don't need batteries. They're hooking these things into the grid. But you're technically not off the grid then, right? Well, yes, there's a couple of ways here. If you have solar power, and that's pretty much all you have going on, it's stored. The energy you create is stored by the power company. And this is actually kind of cool, and I think many people know this. If you create more power than you're using and you're still hooked up to the power system, you get a check from them every month instead of having to write a check. Yes. How cool is that? That would be very cool if Georgia Power sent you a check for, like, $100 every month. That'd be nice. That'd be great. But at the same time, you're still on the grid. On the grid? Yeah. If you want to completely cut ties, that means you need to store the power yourself. And you do that like most people have, like, a shed or a garage and just a huge supply of batteries all hooked together. Basically, it's really a pretty simple system. How is the electricity stored in the batteries? As, like, DC. Right. And then there's, like, a converter, right? Well, an inverter. Yeah. And it converts the DC to AC, which is what you can use in your house. Hey, so quick fact about AC and DC. Not the band, but actual electricity. Right. When you're being electrocuted, actually, if you see someone being electrocuted, you can tell whether they're being electrocuted by a direct current or an alternating current. Do you know how I can't wait to hear this. With a direct current, you're frozen in place because your muscles are seized up. Right. And it's just electricity running through you. Then alternating current, you'd be shaking from the spasms and contractions, and your muscles spasming and relaxing over and over again as the current alternates. Wow. Yeah. I would say that's the complete opposite of living off the grid, is dying. Dying. It's good, though. I like that. You're welcome. All right, so we've covered your power. Then there's water. You got to get your water somehow, and you do that through you can have a well, or you can have a cistern system. Cistern is basically like a slightly more sophisticated system of rain barrels. Right. Includes a pump, and it's tying into the plumbing in your house where rain barrel might just have a spigot. Yeah, it's basically just a big water collector. And a lot of people you can have them under your driveway. It's just like a big cement tank. And not always cement. They can be plastic, too. But it runs off of your roof. Yeah, it runs off your roof. And I wonder if the sun tiles are good for allowing water to run down them and collecting them, because I know you said in the article just regular tile shingles. Right. Not that good, because you get all the little crystalline you don't want your asphalt. I think it's made out of asphalt. You don't want that. I think they talk about clay shingles and stuff like that. And metal shingles. Yeah. Okay, so you got water. Most people who are living off the grid as far as water goes. Have a well, though, right? Like 15 million Americans have a well. Yeah, that's the number. And wells aren't cheap. Like three grand to 15 grand, depending on how deep you have to go. And the deeper you have to go, the more expensive. And it's cleaner water, though. Better water. Yeah. Because you're hitting like an aquifer or something, right? Yeah. Groundwater, basically. Okay, but what do you do with your waste? I mean, you get a septic system, right? Yeah. Okay. And a lot of people have septic systems as it is. A lot of people are on septic and well and might not realize that they're partially living off the grid right now. Exactly. They live in the city. Right. They moved into the trailer or the house that had the septic tank. But I guess the question is the question that was on my mind until I figured the answer out was, is it a good idea to have a septic system which uses a leach field, which is basically the waste just goes into the soil? Right. And a well, isn't that like the ultimate recycling, where you're drinking your own waste over and over again? That's a good question. Did you find an answer then? Yeah, it's actually okay. And I think that is kind of what's happening to a degree. But the soil acts as a natural filter. Right. Again, the microbes, all these things in the soil that eat all the waste products, and basically all that's left is purified drinking water. Right. And really green grass. Exactly. Apparently if you have the septic system and it goes on your yard, it's like incredibly rich soil. Yeah, exactly. So then you can grow your own. That's part of the living off the grid thing, too, is a lot of these people on the Back to the Earth movement, they grow their own crops, so that eliminates the need for the refrigerator. And another big thing, if you want to be off grid is your garbage pickup. Not many people think about that. So if you have chickens and you're getting your eggs from your chickens and you're growing your own vegetables, you're not dealing with egg crates or if you're milking your own cows, you're not dealing with milk containers. And just a lot less waste is produced. So is that an essential aspect to living off the grid? No garbage collection? Yeah, if you really want to be completely off grid, then you're going to have to get rid of your waste pick up. But the people that are into it can recycle enough and limit their waste and compost enough to where they say they can limit to like a bag of garbage a month. And I learned something new. I didn't realize that you could compost animal waste or byproducts like chicken skin or something like that. I thought it putrefied and that's not what you were supposed to do with compost. That was just supposed to be plant matter, but I looked it up and found out that you can you have to turn your compost a lot more. Right. It can't just be a pile that you throw stuff onto, or else all of a sudden you do have rats and that kind of thing. Right there. I have it. Yeah. That's cool. There's all kinds of things you can compost. If you go to websites about composting, it's pretty cool to look into. So, Chuck, tell me. I realize a lot of people are doing it because they want to get away from the power bill or maybe they're getting back to Earth. Is this like a trend you're seeing? Maybe not complete living off the grid, but at least partial living off the grid? Well, I mean, I lived in Los Angeles before I came back here to Atlanta, and it's a lot bigger in La. If not completely off the grid. Solar and wind power and cistern systems. Really? Yeah. Some people trying to augment and not pay as much, I think. Okay. Were you doing that? No. Okay. But I click rainwater now just because out of your AC unit, right? Yeah. And my air conditioner is water, and we use it to water plants. It's mainly just because we're under a watering ban and we don't want everything to die. Yeah, that's good. But the final one that we need to cover, I guess, is gas. If you get your propane, you'd have to switch to propane. Sorry. Right. Yeah. Gas has to be piped in through the grid. Right. But you can just have a big old truck come and fill up your propane tank. There were some other backup power supplies, like electric generators that run on biodiesel. Yeah, that's pretty cool. That's the augment. Like, if you are off grid and it's overcast for like, a week straight or rainy, you might not be getting the energy needs. So most of these people have, like, backup systems. Yeah. And those steps that seem minute and almost useless to people like us on the grid. Like, if you make sure your windows are sealed and caulked properly, you can save $100. And you're like, who cares about $100 over a year? But really, electricity is so cheap that $100 equals a lot of electricity. Right. So I imagine that if you're living off the grid, it's best to take steps to steal your home's envelope or use passive solar construction, which is the placement of trees to kind of keep your house shadow trees and what color you paint your house, where the windows are placed. Yes. A lot of people do that because then you won't need your lights as much. You have more natural light. And the way they have it set up with the windows is you open some during certain parts of the year and others in other parts of the year, and it encourages either cool air or warm air to flow through. And I know that a lot of these folks, when these hippies, when it doesn't rain for a long time, they'll take really quick showers or not shower, or not flush the toilet. If it's yellow, let it mellow. And they'll do just conservation techniques like that to help. You know, water is the next oil. These people are going to be down with it when the grid goes down. Yeah, it might be nice. I'd love to not get bills. I'm with you. That'd be great. Yeah. Well, before you cut off your garbage service, first go on to houseetworkscom and read How Living Off the Grid Works by Charles W. Bryant. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseworks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast@houseworks.com brought to you by The Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon Music come in. 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." | |
6e1cf2e2-33f3-11ea-9a53-5f022cd7798a | Short Stuff: Byford Dolphin Incident | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-byford-dolphin-incident | In 1983, what may be the worst diving catastrophe in the history of deep sea oil exploration took place when a pressurized chamber was opened, instantly killing four divers inside. | In 1983, what may be the worst diving catastrophe in the history of deep sea oil exploration took place when a pressurized chamber was opened, instantly killing four divers inside. | Wed, 22 Jan 2020 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=22, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=22, tm_isdst=0) | 12731506 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. There's JJ. Let's get started. It's one of the most gruesome things that has ever happened in the history of the world. Yes. And probably the most gruesome thing that's ever happened on this show. Yeah, I don't think there's probably about it, and we've talked about some gruesome stuff, but we should probably give a little COA here. The stuff we're going to talk about is kind of graphic of people dying and being mutilated. So just heads up on that one. Yes. I just looked at the pick. Thank you. Yes, anytime. I can't believe you hadn't so far. Yeah, I avoided it. You see the full color one? Is that the one you looked at just now? You're talking about the tray of yes. Okay. All right. So everyone knows what we're talking about. There was, and still is it sounds like a drilling rig called the byford dolphin. Now it looks like it's contracted out by BP. I think so. And on November 5, 1983, there was in the North Sea a very horrific accident, an explosive decompression accident that occurred on the byford dolphin, or not on the biford dolphin, but very far under the sea. No, it was on the biford dolphin. But does that mean I thought this happened below deck. Let me take this. Let me take this. You ready? All right, good night. So the whole thing centers around saturation diving. Yeah, sure. Okay, so, well, let's explain to the peeps at home with saturation diving is then okay. It means you can live down there, basically, and work. Yeah. So, like, if you're working on the biford dolphin, you could be drilling into thousands of feet of a bedrock under the sea to get to whatever gas or oil you're after. And so you might be working hundreds and hundreds of feet down every day, which means that when you come back up, if you listen to our cave diving episode, you got to decompress. And if you're going to decompress, that takes time. So that means that it could take hours and hours every day after your shift to decompress before you can finally come up to the surface. So since that's just so ridiculously inefficient, they've come up with this thing called saturation diving, which kind of gets around decompressing every day. Yes. Plus you got to keep them on the clock while you're decompressing. You got to pay for the decompressing. Yeah. All right. So the way I understand it is, like you said, it's more efficient to stay down there and work, which they do, but they don't live down there necessarily, like, in the abyss. Right. They come back up to the ship. But the whole journey from sea floor to ship is pressurized at the same pressure. Is that right? It is. And then once they get to the ship, they have to live and stay in these pressurized environments so that they don't have to decompress every day. So they're working down on the sea floor and then they're living on the ship, and then they're traveling between the two in a pressurized diving bell. But the point is, everywhere they are for weeks on end during their shift or their stint or hitch. That's what they call it, their hitch of working the sea floor. They're living in this pressurized environment, whether it's on the ship, in the dining ball, or down on the sea floor, it's all pressurized to the atmospheric pressure of the work site down on the sea floor. Okay, this makes a lot more sense now. I was under the impression it was like The Abyss and they all just lived down there and played cards and made pithy remarks and complained about the food. It was a good movie, though. It was a great movie. So this does make a lot more sense. So basically, the hatches of the diving bell and the ship chamber are all lined up and clamped together by these divers that are on the outside. Dive tenders. Yeah, dive tenders. And that's where it becomes a little bit like a movie. You move from one to one and then make sure everything is super tightly clamped together, obviously, because it's all super pressurized. Yeah. And to hook the diving bell up to the pressure chambers where they live and eat and play cards and give pithy remarks to one another on the ship, that's all pressurized as if it's at nine atmospheres down on the sea floor, even though outside of those chambers on the ship, it's at 1 ATM, it's at sea level pressure. You can't just pop out and have a smoke. No, you cannot. You have to stay. And what is that gerbil habitat called? You know what I'm talking about? Sort of. You can put like a bunch of tubing and stuff together and let your gerbil run around. Yeah. So this is basically what these divers lived in, and it was all pressurized. And so when you're traveling from the sea floor up to the chambers on the ship and this diving bell, and you clamp the diving bell onto the pressurized chamber, you need to make sure that the tunnel that connects the two is pressurized. And then you can open up the hatch and then move into the chamber, shut the hatch, depressurized that little tunnel, and then remove the diving bell and you're fine. It's just a lot of extra work and thoughtfulness to live like this for weeks on end for saturation diving. But it means that you only have to decompress once at the end of this several week hitch before you go out into sea level atmosphere. Right. And given what's going on, you would think that there is a robust system of fail safes and check marks and hand signals to make sure that everything is hooked up and sealed tight in order to maintain that pressure. And today, you'd be right. But in 1983, not necessarily. That's right. So we're going to take a break and tell you what happened on November 5 of that year right after this. All right, so here's what happened on November 5. There was a team of four divers down there working in the Frig gas field in the North Sea. There were two divers in a bell. And we talked about I think we did a whole podcast on the diving bell, didn't we? Yeah, we did. We totally did. Which is kind of weird to think of, but yeah, I remember, because remember that one cook on that ship from Nigeria that went down? He managed to live in a little air pocket for a couple of days. Yeah. So the diving bell is the chamber that takes people back and forth, it's the taxi, basically transporting them from the work site back up to the pressurized chambers on the ship. It had just been cranked up to the surface, and they were crawling through this passageway it's called a trunk, to this attached, sealed decompression chamber, which is where they lived and worked in eight and made busy goats. Exactly. Don't forget the cards. Right, the cards. And you got to complain about the cooking. Sure. And then there was a chamber, another chamber pretty similar nearby, that had two more of the diving team, and then each of these chambers, this trunk, the bell and the chamber were all completely pressurized. And again, the system was in place. And it had worked pretty well up until this point. Yeah. But for some reason, on this particular day, one of the two dive tenders, one of the divers who were outside in the normal pressure atmosphere outside of this pressurized chamber, their job was to assist in making sure the diving belt was clamped up to the trunk correctly and opening and closing the valves and stuff like that. One of them unclamped the diving bell from the trunk before the hatch had been shut, closing off the divers in their quarters. They're pressurized quarters. This was catastrophic. What it did was it introduced the normal 1 ATM of atmospheric pressure into the pressurized dive chambers, which were pressurized to nine atmospheres, and then a fraction of a second, the pressure inside of these things went from an extremely compressed nine atmospheres to an extremely decompressed 1 ATM, again in less than a second. And, again, catastrophic is the only way to put it. Yeah. This is something that they would take 910, 1112 hours to decompress, usually. Yes. And it happened in under a second. It caused an explosion. A decompression explosion killed all four of these divers and the dive tender immediately. They did a follow up study, of course, in 1988, they found that the three of the divers were literally killed instantly. And I guess we need to say this, right. Yeah. So the diver, their body is ruptured, basically, the diver closest to the door, his organs, spine and limbs, it says, were ejected and his remains exploded through a narrow gap in that chamber door yeah. Before this happened so fast and he was pulled apart so violently that before that chamber door that he hadn't gotten shut yet could slam shut, about half of them shot out in a burst of, like, blood and gore through that narrow opening as the hatch door was slamming shut from the pressure. Yeah. They said that they found his liver on the deck of the boat, quote, complete, as if dissected out of the body, in quote. Right. And so they think, what happened? So the other three, they all died instantly, but the other three, their bodies were intact, but what had happened is their organs and their blood vessels had all ruptured because the gases that were dissolved in their blood at that moment suddenly just expanded and just burst everything inside of them. But the guy who was pulled apart exploded so violently because he was the closest to that pressure gradient in between 1 ATM and nine atmosphere. And he was pulled apart by that pressure gradient. Like part of him was a little further away from the door than the rest of him. And that difference was enough to just be pulled apart by this explosion. Yes. The only thing that I can say that is good about this was that it was so fast, there was not even a moment of panic of what just happened. There was no fear, even, much less pain. It was just you're going back into the chamber and all of a sudden you wake up sitting on a cloud going, what just happened? Where did I get this? Loot? Yeah, basically. Or harp, at least it was that fast. There certainly was no pain involved, but also no fear or anything. It was just lights out. Right. And so you might think, like, well, wait a minute, how did this guy even begin to get this clamp open that allowed the pressurized chamber to depressurized catastrophically? Well, that's what a lot of people said afterwards. And so the Norwegian Oil Directorate and the regulations body, Norse veritas, basically said, this can never happen again. If you have an old saturation diving system set up, you have to retrofit it, following these new specifications that make it this impossible. Like, you couldn't possibly open a clamp before the trunk has been depressurized, before the hatch has been shut, before all this stuff happens. So it's an actual fail safe. Yeah. And the thinking all along was that it was a human error. That's what the report said. Fatigue or just somebody made a mistake. But it seems like years later, some of these relatives of the gentlemen that were killed got their hands on a report that said it was actually faulty equipment. Yeah. So there you go. Yeah. And where did this come from? Who do we have to thank for this? We got a lot of people to thank, everybody from History Channel. There was a guy on Reddit actually named Spectromero who did a great job of explaining saturation diving in this particular accident. So got a handful of people to thank for this one. Good stuff. Yeah, well, terrible stuff, but interesting nonetheless. Yeah. There you go, Chuck. I think you saved us at the last minute. Well, thanks a lot for joining us. We hope that you can carry on the rest of the day without shuddering. Good luck. In the meantime, short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is the production of Iheartradios how stuff works. For more podcasts my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
How Monopoly Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-monopoly-works | Since more than 1 billion people have played it, you're probably familiar with the board game Monopoly, but we bet you don't know its secret origins as a left-wing socialist teaching tool. Learn about the history, rules and cultural impact of Monopoly. | Since more than 1 billion people have played it, you're probably familiar with the board game Monopoly, but we bet you don't know its secret origins as a left-wing socialist teaching tool. Learn about the history, rules and cultural impact of Monopoly. | Thu, 03 Jul 2014 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=3, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=184, tm_isdst=0) | 60356301 | 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 Roland, which makes the stuff you should know. That's right. That's my top ten at my cane. Monocle. Does he have monocle? I thought it was Mr. Peanut. Oh, yeah. Not Mr. Monopoly. And I think Mr. Pringle has a monocle, too, doesn't he? No, he just has an outstanding yeah, Mr. Monopoly doesn't have a monocle. I don't think so. You'd think we'd know. We do not. But I do know this. Mr. Monopoly is a nickname for that man. That's right. His born name. His given name by his parents is Rich Uncle Pennybags. Three names. So uncle would be his middle name. Yeah. Well, he even has a regular name, too. Oh, not that I saw. Yeah, it is. Milburn Penny Bags. No. Yeah. There was a book published, and this is one of those after the fact deals called The Monopoly Companion. And they named all the characters on the board. Melbourne penny bags. And then the jail guy is Jake the jailbird. Okay. And the police officer and go to jail is it's a bit of Cyrus, isn't it? Officer Edgar Mallory. I knew it. Really? You just get that? Yeah. That's pretty funny. We're talking about Monopoly, by the way. Oh, yeah. This is not about anything else but Monopoly. No. And I was just remarking to you, sir, how I've never seen one of our this had more supplemental information than most shows that we research. Yeah, I can explain why, because this was written there was a whole suite of game articles written, like, just how to play certain games. Sure. So it kind of came out in this mentality of, this is the game, and here's how we explain how to play it. This article is done, whereas Monopoly, this is more like McDonald's or Twinkies or something like that. It's like a cultural cog. Yeah. There's so much extra junk history, and you talk about the different versions, it's ridiculous. Melbourne Penny Bank. Yeah, and like I said, that was a post that he wasn't originally called that. I think Monopoly probably wanted to sell a little book or two. I'm sure they did, because if one thing we've learned about Parker Brothers and now Hasbro is they love selling different versions of this game. Yeah, they do. They like licensing it all a lot of money. Do they like making some changes here, there releasing a brand new game, but it's all still the same game. And all of it came from a left wing Quaker intellectual at the turn of last century. The Fendis vehicle. Yeah, I'm saying that right. Yeah, sure. Okay. I think it sounds right. And it's interesting to me that the game of Monopoly, which is all about capitalism and bankrupting our neighbor, was stolen. The game was stolen from a leftist intellectual Quaker in the original version of the game. It was to teach against monopolies and how they're bad. Right. So let's talk about this Monopoly. Actually, if you trace it back to about the literal beginning of the 20th century, it's what's considered a fault game. There are a lot of people playing versions like this in cities all over the country, but again, they all shared some pretty common viewpoints. I guess today you would kind of call them socialist, but for the most part they were followers of a guy named Henry George. Yeah. Georgiam. Yeah, he came up with this thing called Georgiam, which is based on some other philosophies. But the idea of it is that if you produce something through your own labor, your own work, you own that that should not be taxed. Right. What should be taxed are things that everybody owns. If somebody's taking something that belongs to everybody, say, a parcel of land, technically the land belongs to everybody. Well, that was his notion, was that you shouldn't even be a landowner. Like whole concept of owning land to him was ridiculous. And that's based on this idea, the law of the commons, which is around for centuries, if not millennia. And then once people started taking land, he's like, okay, well, if you're going to own land, it belongs to everybody, so that should be taxed, and then that tax will be given back to the community for the greater good. So that's Georgiam. And that was kind of the philosophy that formed the basis of Monopoly, what was originally called the Landlords game, which was created by a lady named Lizzy Maggie Magymagiemagie. Yeah. Almost magpie without the P, right? Yeah. And she basically that was on her card. Right. And she came up with us, like you said, to kind of teach so you could go and be a rich landowner and bankrupt other people and exploit the poor who need your help, who need a decent place to stay, and you could see yourself, like, the evils of capitalism. But she actually came up with two sets of rules for the same game. One was where you got as rich as you could at the expense of everybody else. The other was basically the community benefited. And you can kind of see that today in these weird things like community chest, why would I want to pay into this pot? I don't care about the community now. It's a bad thing. In her original version, it was a good thing, like the community one. Right. And that was the basis of the whole thing. Yes. Which is really ironic. It is, yeah. Like you said, she created two versions, and she said one of the quotes from her is it is a practical demonstration of the present system of land grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences. So it's kind of to teach people lessons. And she had it stolen from her, basically. Luckily, Lizzie Maggie was smart enough to patent this game it became just kind of a trendy thing again. Like, if you were into socialism at the time and you were on the East Coast, you probably hung out at a friend's house and played this game at some point in some incarnation or another. Yeah, it was really popular. Like you said, people made up some of their own rules. But if you look at the original Landlords game board, it looks a lot like the current Monopoly. I mean, similar, at least. Yeah. And apparently a lot of the rules that make the game a lot more enjoyable today came from Lizzie's Quaker Friends. Like, for example, the original plots of land were up for auction for bid. Yeah. Quakers prefer silence, so they just put a fixed price on the piece of land so there would be a loud, obnoxious bidding war. They also instituted tokens, fun tokens. Before, they were just boring ponds. Yeah. Like household objects, which that's why the thimble is in there. And originally the iron. We'll get to those in a minute, but I know it's pretty exciting. And then so this thing's being played, and Lizzy Maggie holds the patent, but she's not exactly, like, cracking down on any kind of infringement, really. No. Well, she pitched it to Parker Brothers and they said no. Yeah. So she just kind of went on doing her own thing. So there's another lady, actually, that figures into this lady named Ruth Hoskins, and she was one of the ones who caught on in the Philadelphia Atlantic City area with her Quaker friends, two of them in particular, Jesse and Eugene Rayford. And they are the ones who change some of the rules to make it look more like the Monopoly we know. They taught it to a friend named Todd, and Todd taught it to his friend named Charles Darrow. And that's where the story takes kind of a seedy turn. Well, actually, that's where the Parker brothers official version begins. Ironically. Yes. Things turn seedy. If you go to the Parker Brothers, it's like, hey, this is where our story begins. Yeah. The inventor of Monopoly. Charles Darrow. Right. So he was like, a radiator salesman during the Depression. This is the 30s, right? Yeah, it was, ironically, again, during the Depression, this game really caught hold. Well, supposedly that's what caught the Parker Brothers attention, was that this guy came to him, came to them to sell him this game, which he had stolen. Yes. Apparently, he didn't innovate it at all. He kind of just copied it and packaged it. Right. And said, hey, what do you think of this? And the Parker brothers said, we don't think too much of it. Like, how does the game end? We don't know what's going on here, so let's just go your own way. So Charles Darrow went off and started selling it at this one makers department store in Philadelphia without patenting it. Right. And the Parker brothers said, you know, what? It's the depression. Can you believe it? We're not going to have any kind of economic woes like this for another 80 years. And this guy is selling these things like hotcakes. You know what, sir? We will buy your idea from you. And Charles Darrow apparently said, well, that's great. Yeah, give me the money first, and then I'll tell you the second part of the story. And they gave him a bag of money with a dollar sign on it, much like the ones that rich Uncle Pennybags likes. And he said, okay, we also need to buy the patent off from this lady named Lizzie Maggie. Yes. Which they did. The game was still stolen, I say, even though they eventually did pay her money. But part of the deal was they said they agreed to buy her patent and said, you know what? We'll sell a few of your other game ideas, too. None of those ever went anywhere. And she was sort of lost to history except for people who do a little bit of digging. Yeah. And we actually have a guy named Ralph to thank for doing that digging initially. We'll talk about him later. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, because he's the one who came up with the unofficial history and really tracked it down. There's a lot of teases in this one so far. So the Parker brothers now in the game and it becomes a huge hit, virtually off the bat in the 30s is when they bought it and started really printing it. Yeah. And the game is based on Atlantic City. Those are the properties. And that's because that was the area where it became popular. Right, but this excellent New York Times article you sent, what was the name of it? Monopoly Goes Corporate. Yes. It was written by what's the lady's name? Mary Pillen. She is a monopoly expert. There's a lot of those out there, I've learned. Well, she wrote a lot of the articles you'll find. Oh, really? Yeah, she's good. Well, she pointed out that it's interesting that it mirrored sort of the cartography of the day in Atlantic City. Like, Ford Walk was clearly like a rich area, the Baltic and Mediterranean. The cheapest properties were in African American neighborhoods. There was a reading railroad that transferred people between Philly and Atlantic City. And little known fact for our friends in the gay community, new York Avenue was one of the earliest gay scenes in the country. Yeah. So buy that one up and support the LBGT community. That's what you're playing? Monopoly? Yeah, that's what I would do. And maybe just don't charge anybody when they land on it. Yeah. Just be like, this is the party place, everybody. Exactly. And Marvin gardens apparently, is misspelled. Yeah. E instead of an I or I instead of an E. Yeah. On the board it's an I and it's supposed to be an E. Yes. There's a lot of Monopoly facts dropping all around us right now. I know, it's raining symbols. Before we go any further, though, you want to do a message break? Yes. Okay. We'll be right back, everyone. All right, so we were just talking about Atlantic City. I guess we can go ahead and point out now that there are hundreds of versions of Monopoly out there now. One for your hometown, probably one for your favorite sports team. Personally. My version is a Star Wars Monopoly. Nice. Which is pretty fun. Nice. Yeah, I guess hesbro is. Like, you got some money? Sure. You can license this, make your own Monopoly game. Go ahead. There's a Simpsons Monopoly. I haven't played it, though. And in addition to the licensed versions that you can find, like, everywhere, they also have official versions, too. Like, there's a US version, there's a UK version. There's a new version that's called Monopoly here and now. What does that even mean? Super corporate. Oh, is this the corporate one? Yeah. Okay. Everything is multiplied by, I think, $1,000. So the dollar amounts are way higher. Is this the one where they replaced the railroads are replaced by airports. Yeah. Is this one where they replaced corporations for all the properties, though? Yes. Like McDonald's and Sony and god, who would want to play that? Some people do. Yeah. I mean, I'm not a purist because I have the Star Wars version, but it's no fun to me to play as Paramount Pictures and to buy the McDonald's property. Yeah, it's just me. So there are a bunch of different versions, but the one we're going to talk about, we'll just talk about the normal version with the 2008 rules. Yeah. And there's actually coming soon, later this year, you can go online at my Monopoly and you can design your own board. Is that right? And do, like, your own neighborhood. Wow. And then they will make it for you. And I think it's like $150 or something. Wow. Money bags. I'm not going to do it. Do the East Lake Monopoly. No, I was talking to whoever went and got it. Oh, sure, yeah. Uncle Rich penny bags. That's what you should have said. Rich uncle Pennybags. Penny bags just sounds not that wealthy. Well, actually, I have a bag of pennies on me right now. Forbes has their silly fictional 15 list of fictional characters. Wealth in 2013 was number 13 of the Jeez. His stars declined to him. Huh. Guess who the richest fictional character is? The Incredible Hulk. No, he was not. Rich Scrooge McDuck. Oh, yeah. Well, dude, he had that gold vault, apparently 65 billion. Number two was Smaug, which I thought was kind of silly. Smaug from like, one of the rings, the dragon, I think I had, like, a bunch of gold. Got you. Carlyle Cullen, number three. Tony Stark, four. Charles Foster Kane, number five. Who is number three? Carlyle Cullen from Twilight. Who is that? He was the vampire dad of the vampire family, and he's been alive forever, so I guess he just keeps accumulating. Well, Bruce Wayne, Richie Rich, Christian Gray. Richie Rich. I forgot about him. He's number seven. He had a robot made and a crazy, weird scientist friend, didn't he? Sure. Like a richie rich robot of himself. I think he had that, too. But no, it was made. It was a robot, wasn't it? That was the Jetsons. No, he had a robot made, too. I thought Monty Burns at number ten was pretty good. Oh, yeah, it's good. Although I would guess Mr. Monopoly would be wealthier than Monty Burns, but yeah, 13, and they put it out each year, and it's dumb. Can we just admit that I was thrilled by it? Okay? We just spent three minutes on it. Yeah, well, that's true. Okay, so checkers. You want to talk about the rules of the game again? 2008 rules. If you are a Monopoly purist. And I'm sorry, it's just what we're going with. Yeah. Well, let's talk about the game board itself. Just so if you haven't played it, I'm surprised because I think, like a billion people have played the game. But if you have it, when you get your Monopoly game, you're going to open it up and you're going to have a board with all these different properties. In a square, you have two dice. Twelve. They call them tokens. That's not the right amount either, is it? No, there's eight. Yeah. I don't understand where they got twelve from, unless they're counting ones that maybe were retired or something like that. But when you open the box, there's only eight there. Can we go over? Sure. There's a wheelbarrow, a Scotty Dog top hat, a cat, which replaced the Iron in 2013. Yeah. There's a big to do because Parker Bros. Hasbro is like, we haven't made a lot of money off of this for a couple of months, so let's just do something. Well, they let people vote, at least, which is kind of cool. Right. But it was also did you see the other ones that they were voting for? Like a robot's main guitar. A guitar, yeah. They didn't make the cut, though. No, they got voted out and the cat got voted in. But the iron got booted. Yeah. I only got 8% of the vote. There's the classic shoe, of course, or boot, which is modeled after a 1930s working shoe. And I think they've kept it the same. That's one of the original ones. The Scottie Dog was not one of the originals that came in. The Think that was supposed to be the companion of Milburn Money. Is that right? Penny bags. Penny bags. I know not. It should be cash bags. Fat stacks bags. There was a Cannon, which has since been retired. Yeah. And they thought it was two military well, the Cannon and the Battleship. Yeah. They were from a failed game called Conflict, and they were like, well, we got all these pieces. It's just throwing a Monopoly for now. Right. It's pretty smart. But they face the cannon out because it's just too overtly violent. It just says without any fanfare or vote for campaign. So probably yeah, that would be my guess. If it's hush hush yeah. It's probably because of violence. There's a conspiracy afoot. There's the race car. Yeah. It's every little kid's favorite, which apparently had a number three on the side for a little while. Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. Daler and heart, I guess. So purse has been retired. Yeah. The rocking horse was retired. Yeah. The lantern was retired. Oh, yeah. I'm doing my best benbola impressing. Did you get wheelbarrow in there yet? No. Yes, I did. It was the first one I said. Did we say top hat? Yeah, that was always my favorite. Actually. I don't remember what my favorite was. It said on my pinky and I used to draw faces. Oh, yeah. The horse and rider, which is retired, which I didn't know. That's one of the best pieces to me. What you didn't know was retired. No. It's kind of sad. Yeah. And the sack of money was retired as well. The sack of money and a purse. Those are a little similar. Yeah, the cat. Come on. Yeah, cat people. That's exactly right. I guarantee that's why they got cat voted in. And I am a cat person and even you think it's stupid. Exactly. So those are the tokens, some of those tokens that we mentioned you're going to find in the 2008 set. Yeah. And that is your piece. That is what represents you in the game again for the three people who have never played Monopoly. Right. Yeah. Because supposedly, at least as far as Hasbro calculates, over 1 billion people have played Monopoly. And frankly, I'm surprised it's that low. Sounds like an old number. Yeah. Okay, so you've got the box open. Yeah. You got the board, you got two dice, you got the tokens, 32 houses and twelve hotels. 16 chance cards, 16 community test cards, a title deed card for each property. It's got the information on it, like how much it costs to purchase. Sure. How much rent is depending on how many houses or hotels you have on it. Yeah. What the mortgage value is worth. That's right. And then you've got your play money, your Monopoly money, which hand I think that's where it grabs kids because and they even pointed out in this article that's kind of the first time a lot of kids have money to play with. Yeah. Especially the $500 bill one. Oh, man, that gold bill is orange. Is it gold? Yeah. Okay. One is definitely golden rod, like yellow. But I remember the 500 it was yeah. I guess gold is the way to go. Yeah. See, I was a cashorder, which is no way to win a Monopoly. No, I thought it was can't save. No, that just figures for me, though. You got to spend money to make money. Yeah. I was like, look at all this cash that I will soon be paying to everyone else. You just keep wandering off from the table and try to buy stuff with it. Did not work. So, Chuck, you've got the board laid out, and if you count them, if you're that kind of person, you're going to find that there's 40 squares. That's right, I believe. 22 of which are no. 28 of which can be purchased. Yeah. 22 are properties. You've got your electric company and waterworks. Yes. Suckers bet. And then you got the four railroads. Four railroads, yes. So that's 28. That's right. There are others that you can't buy. So, for example, there's a luxury tax square. Yeah. You got to pay about $100 when you lend on that, I believe. So just right out of your pocket, there's an income tax square. Yeah. No good. There's the Go square, which is where you start, and then when you come back around, you collect $200, which is in Monopoly, called your salary. That's right. I never knew that. I didn't either. And there's a lot of rules in here. I guess it's a good time to point out monopoly is one of those games where house rules are highly encouraged and a lot of the fun of the game. And in fact, to make more money, monopoly this year incorporating the top house rules as voted on by fans as official rules for this one version in a $70 hard back book. I don't see why a lot of people were in sense, they were like, no one plays by the real rules anyway, so why bother packaging it and selling it? Right. And they went, I think you just said the word sell. Did someone say sell? Therein lies the answer. There are 40 squares, but there's actually 41 places you can go to on the board because jail is divided into two squares. That's right. You got the jail with the jailbird. What's his name? I can't remember. Johnny Jailbird or something. Jake the Jailbird. Right, okay. Which is where Jake the jailbird is. And then you've got the lower part of it. It's just visiting. Yeah. If you want to visit Jake, give him a Bunt cake. Put the nail file in. It'd be very old school. Or a Monopoly set with maybe a map with an escape route embedded in it. Hey, that sounds familiar. Yes. POWs in World War II are given such monopoly sets. True, which is strange to me. It's like where the Nazis allowing Monopoly sets to be delivered to POWs. Is that what I'm seeing here? Maybe it's the Burmese. You've seen The Great Escape on the prison camps in World War II? It seemed like a lot of them, they let them, like garden, and they were kind of chummy with him. You saw Hogan's Heroes? I saw hogan's Heroes. I didn't put a lot of stock into it, but yeah, no, I just figured I played soccer. Maybe the Japanese or the Burmese. Or the Italians. I could see saying like, yeah, bring some Monopoly and who cares? But the Nazis I would think, would I just don't see that. Yeah, I'm not saying it was a walk in the park, but I think from the depiction and like I said, The Great Escape, it's not like Vietnam prison camp. Oh yeah. They weren't playing soccer or Monopoly. They were playing survive another day that game. I'm not making a lot of that, by the way. Oh, I didn't think you were. And I'm basing everything on more movies, so I'm probably wrong. I've seen Uncommon Valor. That was a good movie. That was a great movie. It doesn't age well though. Really? No. Remember that menu with the gun silhouettes on it and when you're twelve, you're like, oh my God. Yeah, it's like I would buy that one and that one. Yeah. All right, so where were we? We were talking about the board itself and the different squares. Yes. There are the cards that you can draw as well. Community Chest and Chance Squares. You land on these, you draw a card from one of those two piles. And there are various things in there. Like you want a fashion modeling contest, you get $10. Is there a dog show one in there too? I think there's probably a dog show. And there's also street repairs. Those are big time general repairs. And that's based on your properties that you own. That's right. Percentage. They can hit you pretty hard, like in real life. That's right. And that's funny because the Monopoly what was the name? Lizzie. Maggie. Yes. In an interview she gave with some leftist magazine at the time, she said she basically called the thing the Game of Life. Yeah, that was already taken out. I don't know. Was it? Yeah, that's around since the mid 1800. Okay, that's old. I thought she was being prescient. Now she's being glib. She was making a pop culture reference for the time. Yeah, exactly. But did you know apparently there used to be a square on the Game of Life board for suicide? Really? It was the way you could go. I never really played that. I think I played a couple of times. I never did either. I always thought it was kind of like you get the whole family in the car and it's like, whatever. Yeah. We weren't the biggest game players as families, but we did Monopoly some and Yahtzee was a big one. Yachtsi is great. That I still enjoyed today. I love yachty. Sure. Yeah. We also played this game called Bull and it was like a stock trading game with cards. And it's just now occurring to me that all these games are just teaching you about life. Yeah, it's like real monopoly is nothing but real estate. The game of life is everything, right? This game, bowl, was about the stock market. Yeah, sorry. It was about sarcastic. Sorry you had to say it like a jerk. Right. Candyland. We know what that's all about. Yeah. Drugs, right? Probably. Suits and Ladders tell you to stay away from snakes. Yeah. Operation tell you how to be a doctor. Oh, yeah, that's right. That's where I got my MD. And then, of course, Battleship taught you how to be a warmonger. So the risk you take, great pride. Risk taught you to be the antichrist. Yeah. Risk we should do. There is an article on Risk. I saw. I looked it over. It didn't seem as interesting as this one. Yeah, I don't know if the history is as interesting, for sure. And I mean, isn't that what's interesting about any game? The history of it? Yeah, I think so. Let's talk about the rules, dude. Okay, let's start at the beginning. We'll start at Go. Go is where you start. And that's where, like you said, you collect the 200 every time you land on it or pass it. Sometimes, house rules, you get 400 for actually landing on it. Oh, yeah. And only 200 for passing it. We never pass. That makes sense. It's good. But free parking is where we had house rules. That is a space on the corner of the board where you supposedly, per the official rules, don't do anything. Yeah, there's nothing. It's just a space. But what we did was we donated all the collected taxes and fees and put it under free parking. And if you land on that, that was like a lottery win. Oh, yeah. And a lot of people play that way. I think I've heard of that one before. I liked it because it allowed you more money, which is my favorite thing. Solatto yeah, exactly. We got ahead of ourselves. Let's just start at the real beginning. Okay? So everybody sits down at the table. Somebody gets a drink. Maybe you have to wait because somebody has to go to the bathroom. So you're all sitting there quietly. And then when everybody's finally at the table, you guys select the banker, and the banker distributes the Monopoly money. $1,500 to each player. 2502, 100. That's $1,000. And the goal of the game that you're getting to here at 30 minutes in is to bankrupt all of your family and friends. That's the whole point. Pretty much. Some people put a time limit because this game can go on forever. And other people say, no, you got to finish it by bankrupting everyone or until everybody. The last person is like, I give jeez, I've got $8. I hate this game. Yeah, that's usually me, right. And Emily usually has her foot on my throat. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We played two person Monopoly, which is just not fun. Yeah, because you know one of you is going to lose. No, that's not why. It's a game that's more fun with more people, I think. Yeah. I got you. Yeah. Everybody's got one. $500. You roll the dice to see who goes first. Whoever rolls the highest goes first. Classic move. Then you roll, both die, and you start moving from the Go Square, and you go clockwise around the board. Yeah. And when you land on a property this I didn't know, which is kind of a basic rule, I guess, but I never played it this way. When you land on a property, you have the option to buy it. I knew that part. Yeah. But if you declined to buy it, then the property goes up for auction. Not only have I never played it away, I've never heard of anyone playing it that way. Okay. So it's not just me. Not just you. All right. So I guess during an auction, not only everybody else, but the banker and the person who declined to buy it can bid on it, which didn't make sense. Unless you're trying to get it for lower. Yeah. Can't you start the bidding at wherever? Yes, you can start the bidding anywhere you want, so you could consumably get it for lower. And if you're playing against somebody who declines to buy something and then starts bidding on it at a lower price, keep an eye on that person. That's a sharp yeah. To win. Yeah. I hate that rule, because to me, it's just like, what's the point in rolling and landing on something, I guess, right. Of first refusal. But I don't know. I don't like it. No. And plus, the Quakers were like, we specifically put a price on these things so there wouldn't be a lot of yelling. We don't like yelling. They had another game to follow called the Quiet Roof Raising Ceremony. Those are not Quakers. It was fun. That was the Amish. They're different. Right. Don't you think Quakers raise some roofs? Yeah, they do. They know party like a Quaker party. That's right. All right, so let's say you buy all of the properties. They're divided into different colors. Like, there's three green around green ones, orange ones, blue ones, light blue. If you buy all of the properties that are tied together by a single color, then you have what's called a monopoly. And that means you can then charge double rent. Although we never do that. We just keep it single rent. And you now have the option to buy houses. And then once you have enough houses, I think three, you can then buy a hotel. Right. And that's called improvements. You're improving your land. Possibly. Once you start to do improvements, things change a little bit. Not only can you start making more money, but it's actually harder to mortgage your properties if you find yourself in debt. Right. Because this is how crazy complicated it is. I don't think I was ever paying that much attention to monopoly that I ever mortgaged a piece of land. Oh, really? I think it was like started to get into debt or whatever. I was just like, I'm done. But apparently so if you find yourself indebted and let's say you have a monopoly and you want a mortgage, you can mortgage just one of the spots, right? Yes. But to do so, let's say you have a hotel on that piece of land that you're mortgaging. You first have to sell the hotel back to the bank at half price. Yeah. And then you can mortgage the land. Are you collecting rent on that land or does it go right to the bank? No, that's where you just turn the card over and you still technically own it. Right. But you can't collect any rents on it. But you can't collect rent and everything on the other two pieces of property or the other one, depending on which one you own. I don't know. Really? You can I looked it up. So that doesn't bust up the monopoly? No, it doesn't. Okay, so you still own the monopoly. That one is mortgage. And then to get it back, you have to pay the bank the mortgage plus 10%. Right. And this is where you can get silly with your house rules if you want, as far as mortgaging and stuff like that, because supposedly it's a rule too, where you can't the only thing that is not allowed is a personal loan. And I did all kinds of personal loaning because I was Mr. Cash. What were your interest rates? I don't remember. Do you break any Usury laws? No, I was a kid, so it was probably just like just pay me back whenever, 10% or something. I got you. I'm not the right? I'm not enough of a you're not the shark cap one now. You're not the one who declines to buy something so you can bid on at a lower price. I'm playing Candy Land. I love Candyland, actually. I never played that. It was a great game. Was it because of the art? That's crazy. It was beautiful stuff. And then nowadays you look at the Candy Land board and you're like, poor kids, they don't know what they're missing. I just got a Ticket to Ride game that I haven't played yet. Have you heard of that one? No. It was a German game. That's like one game of the year. It's a train game. Like you establish train routes between cities, but it's supposedly like it sounds like really? That's fun, but it's supposedly great. I just bled a tier. Did you have to think of it? Yeah, it does sound pretty bad. But no, it's one game of the year, right, that's German. And watch people Ticket to Ride enthusiasts will be like, dude, it's the best ever. Oh, I'm sure. No, I've heard like, German game night is like a thing now. Yeah, I think they're a little more heady. Is that what it is? I think. So this seems like I read over the rules the other night just so I would know what to do. Because the purchaser of the game has to be the game explainer as well. Right. You have to listen to craft work while you play. Yeah. Well, you don't have to, but it helps. House rules. Yeah. And we said you can do anything but give personal loans. Right. That's what the official rule states. So, like, I can buy from you on the side or something like that, or you can hold something up for auction whatever anybody's doing. Yeah. And we always played where you had to do that when it was your turn. That makes sense. And then that would take your turn as well, right? Yeah. But again, the whole point is to be the person who owns the most stuff so that you can bankrupt all of your family and friends. That's right. And those are the rules. But there's actually strategy to it and people pay a lot of attention. There's a Monopoly World Championship roughly every four years, although it's been the last one in 2009. Yeah. So we're due an American lawyer one, right. In 2009. No, I think it was a Swede or Norwegian man. Okay. Maybe he was the North American that's what he was. The North American champion. Yeah. And he represented the US. And the World Championships. It sounds so silly. Weird. Yeah. Well, he used the iron. That was the iron. Yeah. I think the American used the thimble got. You just laughed. She was like, really? That's a fact that people need. Well, we're trying to really appeal to the purists here, too. We want everybody to be engaged. Yeah. Okay, chugger. So again, the point bankrupt everybody, but there's like techniques that you can use to more efficiently bankrupt people overall. The best strategy, the basic strategy is to buy everything every chance you have. Yeah. I mean, I looked up there's a lot of different people's strategies and opinions online. I did find this one from a guy, and that was his strategy, is buy everything. It doesn't matter what it is. Even the suckers bet, the electric company and the water works. Yeah. Which I don't pay off. Really? He said buy it all and never have more than $100 in cash as his rule. Wow. He says the number one mistake people make is hoarding cash like I did. Yeah, you're making the number one mistake. That's right. And he says that buy everything and do whatever it takes to get a monopoly, even a bad one. He will trade to get a bad monopoly and give someone a good monopoly, even as long as he gets the monopoly. Got you. And he says it's fine because then you too will probably take out everyone else. The point is just to get a monopoly and improve it as fast as you can. So supposedly, though, a general rule of thumb among hardcore monopoly players is that while you're improving your monopoly, your properties by adding houses or whatever, you want to stop at three houses because the jump from the third house to the hotel is financially it doesn't pay off. Usually it's over improvement. Yeah. Just like in your home, don't build that $80,000 kitchen because you're not going to get your money back on that. Right. So three houses, this guy doesn't subscribe to that. He buys everything and puts hotels on it. Yeah. He says as soon as he gets his first Monopoly, he mortgages everything else to get cash back. Right. And then uses that cash to improve. Wow. Which I thought was a little risky. Couple of bad roles. It's a game of strategy. At the end of the day you're rolling dice and so it is very much a game of chance. Although that guy feels like he's on the back of a Pegasus through the whole game. Like he's just thrilled. He claims to have been there on the edge. He claims to have won a game in twelve minutes one time, which I thought was tooting his own horn a bit. Yeah, sure. But real regular strategy. You're right. They say three houses is the max you should go. And then there's also some that you should avoid even though they seem like very tempting. We already said the electric company and the water company, the utilities, the most you can get for rent from landing on them is ten times the roll of the dice, which is $120. But it also max roll. It could be as low as $20. Yeah. I mean this guy would probably say, well, hey, it was worth it, I still own them and I'm still making money if somebody lands on them. But again, the monopoly purists say just stay away from them. Yeah. And you also may want to stay away from the most expensive ones. Boardwalk and Park Place. Yeah. They're only two of them and they just don't get landed on very much. Yeah. So think about it right out of the gate when you're thinking of probabilities. The fact that there are two of these properties rather than three means that another player is less likely to land on your monopoly because there's three or two instead of three. That's one problem. Yeah. The other problem is placement. Where they are. They're right after Go. Right before right before go, yeah. So it's at the end of the board essentially. No, I'm sorry, they're right before jail. No, they're right before go. They're right before go. Okay. So that means that most players are going to while they're going to pass them for sure whenever they hit that go directly to go. Exactly. Yeah. So that means that your monopoly is going to be passed over. The likelihood of making your money back recouping it, especially if they're improved to the hilt like a really fancy hotel. Sure. Means that's a lot of money. Yeah. You've probably sunk a lot of money unwisely into those. You want to go for some other ones? Yeah, supposedly. And there are people that have done this one guy, if you really want to get into Monopoly, this dude, I don't even know his name, but just look up probabilities in the game of Monopoly and Scientific American in the mid ninety s at an article that talked about probabilities of landing on different spaces, but they excluded Community Chest and chances and being sent to jail. So this guy said, I took all of that and included everything. And he has statistical charts, long term probabilities for ending up on each square. Expected income per opponent role. Yeah. Average income per role, expected number of opponent role to recoup incremental costs to recoup mortgages. The name of his website, by the way, is Monopolywasfun.com. It totally should be, but if you just want to do some basic probabilities, the orange properties are landed on more than anyone else. Yes. And why, Chuck? Because they are after jail. So six, eight and nine spaces after jail. Yeah. So if you get sent to jail, which is going to happen at some point, and actually we didn't talk about jail, we'll talk about that, then chances are you're going to hit one of those orange squares on your way out of jail. Yeah. Because you're rolling with two dice, so you're much more likely they'll roll like a six, eight or a nine than you are like a two or three or a one. Yeah. It's not even possible to roll one. Try it. You can't. You can't. Unless you eat one of the dive, in which case, unless it's a house rule, everybody's going to yell at you and have to wait around until you poop it out to keep playing. Actually, our rule was you had to roll the child in. The what? The child who ate the dice. Oh, yeah. Take them up. All right. So jail is in the corner of the board, and there are a few different ways you can go there. You can draw a go to jail card. Right. You can throw three doubles in a row and go to jail. Yeah. Which I never understood, because that's a good thing, I guess. But it's also the sign of the devil. So that's why you have to go to jail for a little while to be cleansed. That's right. Or there is a square march. Go to jail and you can land on that and go to jail. You can also get out in three ways. You can have that get out of jail free card. If you draw that, you can hold on to it. We could sell it. Although I think that's a house rule. You can sell it to a friend or enemy, whoever has the most cash. Right, exactly. And then the other way is to roll to either pay your way out with $50 or to roll your way out. The way we played it was each turn you had one chance to roll your way out of jail by rolling doubles. Rolling doubles, right. Yeah. And then under official rules, if you don't roll doubles for three consecutive turns, like you get three consecutive chances, you roll doubles. And if you don't on any of those turns, then you have to pay $50 to get out of jail. We just played where you just got out and you didn't have to pay. Well, then you guys weren't following the rules. I told you. The house rules. The house rules. So there's actually a strategy to jail. Yeah. If you go to jail early on in the game, you want to pay your $50 to get out immediately. Yeah, just pay the $50, because then you can keep going around the board and there's more stuff available to buy, but later in the game you want to just kind of hang out in jail. Yeah, like Josh is bought all the orange spaces, and you've got hotels on each one. So I'm thinking it might be good to sit in jail for a few rounds. Yeah, because you can still collect rent on your properties, but the fact that you're in jail keeps you off of my property. Yeah. And another Brian rule we played where when you're in jail, you could not collect any rents. Yeah, I mean, that makes sense, but according to official rules that's right. You just make as much money as you want there. And apparently in jail, officially, you can also buy and sell properties and improve your inclinator and build hotels and houses, which I thought, I don't know, if you're in jail, you can lose. That right. Seems like in real jail, that's the way it is now. It's not. You can own a house and be in jail. I guess that's true. And technically, you could probably charge rent to somewhere. You could sublet it like, I'm going to be gone for three to six. No, it's true. But what happens when dishwasher breaks? Try to get let out of jail to go fix it? They're not going to let you do that. That's very funny. But it's true, too. Probability experts also say you get a good return on buying all the railroads because they're pretty cheap. There's one on each side, and once you own all of them, they're $200 in rent. So that's not too bad. Not too shabby. But to me, a monopoly is the reason monopolies are valuable, but it's because they're in a row, whereas the railroads are spaced out. Right. And our friend, the strategist who thinks he invented the game, says, but what you have to remember is none of these strategies matter because you're playing it's a game of people and personalities. So he said, you got to sit back and watch the different personalities emerge, and then you manipulate. That got you. Like the cash horder versus the shark. And he was like, you're really playing against people, man. That's interesting. I thought so. Okay, so let's talk about another friend, an economist friend. His name is Ralph Ansbach. Yes. And he, back in the seventies had a game called Anti Monopoly. Yeah. He was an econ professor in San Francisco state. That's right. And made his own real game. He didn't just draw it up on paper. Like, he started a little small business. Right. And manufactured it. Apparently sold about 200,000 copies of it right out of the gate. It just hit a nerve again, it was called Anti Monopoly. And the whole point of it was to break up monopolies rather than build monopolies. Yeah. At the beginning of the game is essentially the end of a regular game. Like, everyone starts off with monopolies and instead of real estate and utilities and Anti Monopoly, they had their individual businesses that have been brought under a single ownership. And you take the role of federal case worker and bring indictments against monopolized businesses. That's right. In order to return the board to a free market system, you have to wear sensible shoes. It sounds awesome. Yeah, well, and he came up with this because he was trying to apparently explain to his son what was wrong and bad about monopolies. Right. And I suspect capitalism to a certain extent. And he came up with this game instead, like I said, sold a substantial amount, 200,000 copies of a game, especially back in the 70s. That was pretty good as a startup. Yeah. And it caught Parker Brothers attention enough that they sent him a cease and desist letter, took him to court, got a court order for him to hand over his 37,000 copies that he had in his warehouse and Parker Brothers went and unceremoniously buried them in a landfill in Minnesota. Ralph didn't cotton to this very much. He doesn't like to be pushed around, I get the impression. No, I mean, a guy who makes Anti Monopoly is not going to cave in the courts initially. And he did so, like, very much at his own financial detriment. He had a very expensive team of lawyers at first and spent quite a bit of money fighting Parker Brothers for the right to use Anti Monopoly. It wasn't really going anywhere and he was losing a lot of money. So he started to do legwork himself. Found a lawyer friend who worked on the cheap for him. And that's when things started taking off. Yeah. I mean, he basically uncovered the lie that it was invented by Charles Darrow. He found out that the game was essentially in the public domain, or should have been. And went all the way to the Supreme Court and won. Yeah, he won at the Supreme Court. This ecommerce professor who came up with the game called Anti Monopoly, won in the Supreme Court, won the right to name his game Anti Monopoly. Yeah. I mean, he deposed the two Quakers that were Friends of Hoskins, that were old at that point. They took the stand. He deposed the CEO of Parker Brothers, and he took the stand and had to admit under oath, like, yeah, we did kind of steal it, the idea from that lady, after all. And so, as Ralph says, the whole point to him was for this true story, the true origins of Monopoly and how it came about. The whole point of it originally could still be told openly what he said couldn't be bought at any price, in his opinion. That's right. The way to go, Ralph. Yeah. He wrote a book awkwardly titled the Billion Dollar Monopoly in Swindle Colon during a David and Goliath battle. Anti Monopoly. Uncovers the secret history of Monopoly. That's a little clunky. Little clunky, but it's still around. In 1000, 1984, there was a new version called Anti Monopoly Two where you could actually be a monopolist or a competitor. So you got to choose, which I thought was interesting. And if you chose the competitor, you charge lower rents and you can improve property at any time. But if you're a monopolist, you have to own at least two properties in a group before building houses and charge a lot higher rent. So I think you're like playing against the two systems within the same game. That's really interesting. Yeah. I might grab one of these and see what it's like. Yeah. Maybe tell everybody it's German. You got anything else? I got nothing else. I do. The longest Monopoly game of all time, 70 days. I played a game of Risk that seemed like it lasted that long once. It may have. It didn't last that long, but it lasted a weekend. Okay. And Monopoly, I don't have the patience for that. I'll just give up. I'll take my cash, pay cash, and go home. You're heard of it? Yeah. Like, oh, I saved all this money. That's right. And I own the utilities. If you want to learn more about Monopoly, including how to play, if you don't like house rules, but you also don't feel like looking at the official rule book, you can just go on to how stuff works. Yeah. And check out the rules. That is in this article to site Monopoly in the search bar@howstepworks.com. And since it's a search bar, it's time for Chuck Facebook questions. So, people, this is what we do sometimes when we don't have a listener mail prepared, we will go on Facebook, ask for questions, and then over the course of a couple of episodes, we will read those out in rapid fire like fashion. We don't do anything in rapid fire fashion. I couldn't even explain rapid fire fashion in rapid fire. No. All right, so I'm going to start this off with Louise. Benjamin says with as many shows as he recorded, how many would you like to go back and redo? Just a small handful, I would say that I was literally kind of like, I'm really disappointed with that. Yeah, you're a little harder honest than I am, though. What's weird is anytime I do say, that was terrible, you're like, it wasn't bad, and I'll go back and listen and be like, it's way better than I thought. That's what Jerry says when you leave the room. She says, they're always better than he thinks. Oh, really? I didn't realize Gerry talked about me when I wasn't here or spoke at all when I wasn't around. She was not allowed. All right, you got one. I do. Let's see. Do either of us have a preference as to what type of vacuum cleaner you use that's from Taylor Jean Warner with the most pedestrian question anyone's ever asked. Not if you were into vacuuming, my friend. Okay. Very important. I love vacuuming. I have electrolux canister vacuum. Oh, really? I call it Luxey. And Emily's not allowed to operate it. Wow. Yeah. You mean I have a Dyson? One of the little not the big one, one of the smaller ones. The yellow ball. Just a regular upright back. Yeah, I got on the canister thing years ago. I love them. I don't know why this thing took like they're like, we never lose a suction. It's very powerful, or whatever. I accidentally rolled over the cord to charge my phone. It sucked the rubber off of the cord. Wow. Yeah. I had to put electrical tape back on. Wow. It does suck. All right. That's some buzz marketing. Joseph Campbell, what is your advice on how to have a successful marriage? Joseph Campbell asked us the question. Yeah. Wow. He should know this question. All right. Answer. Mary, your friend is my biggest piece of advice. That's a good one. Because if you don't like your spouse, then you can't love your spouse. Yeah. Marry the person you want to hang out with the most. You should write a self help book. The end. I have another one for you, Chuck. Ready? Yes. Bethany Jackson asks, are you ever going to get another pet goat? No. Well, never say never. Yeah. One day I will. All right. When I retire, like, to the country, I would love another goat. Consider the best. That answers that. Josh Kari overmax says, what is your favorite Simpsons episode? That's a tough one, but I'm going to have to go with the old standby of Mr. Sparkle. I'm going to go with monorail. That's a good one, too. Or any of the Halloween, like one through ten or so. Yeah, those are just great. Robert Browning, justice League or Avengers? I don't know what that means. Really? Yeah, you do. As a kid, I was Justice League. I was way more into that. But here as an adult, like, that Avengers movie is great. I'm into that. Justice League is DC. Yeah. Superman, Batman. Although I like the Super Friends. That was all justice League, wasn't it? Yeah. Okay, well, I have a coherent answer then. Okay. For live action animation. Well, not live action, but for animation, I prefer Justice League. For comic books. I preferred Avengers, Marvel Universe. Well, in the new movie, they're doing the Superman Batman movie and then a full on Justice League movies is leading up to that. So we'll see juries out. Yes. On motion pictures. Okay. But it's going to be hard to stop. The Avengers maybe that not was pretty motion pictures cartoon only. No, I'm talking about the new movies that are coming out soon. I got you. Billy Schultz says, were there rejected titles for the podcast before you landed on Stuff You Should Know? Since you named it, I think you should answer. I came up with a bunch of ideas. One of them was McNeil lair NewsHour. That was already taken. But stuff you should know is in the original list of ideas. Yeah. What terminator to Judgement Day. That was one. Yeah. All right. You want me to go next? Yeah. Let's see. Oh, this is a good one. Christopher Mark Reese. Which of the two are your favorite person for promoting sites? Bill Nye or Neil degrasse Tyson. Good one, man. They're both so great. I say N-D-T. Yeah. Cosmos is awesome. It is awesome. He also is totally comfortable. Like rocking a shirt unbuttoned at the top too. Yeah, he's like the Billy D. Williams assigno. Tyson. Yeah. And he was on her TV show, which is really nice. You kind of have to go with him. All right. He's a good guy. Naomi Hartman Garam. Oh, this is from her son Jackson, aged nine. What was your favorite book when you were kids? My favorite book when I was a kid was like around your age or younger was The Great Christmas Kidnapping Caper. It was about a bunch of mice in New York that move into Macy's during Christmas time and Santa is kidnapped and they solved the cakes. Wow. It was a great book. What is it called? The great Christmas kidnapping caper. And it wasn't like a little kids book. I mean, it was my first novel. It was long form. That was your favorite book when you were a kid? Yes, my favorite book when I was a little kid was a Christmas book. I think it was a golden book called something like a Visit to Santa's Workshop or something. It was so cute. And then, strangely, the first series of novels that I ever loved were Ramona Quimby books. Oh, really? Man, I used to eat those up. And I would take Flak too, at school. I didn't care. I loved those books. Yeah. I loved Encyclopedia Brown. Oh, yeah, he was good. And then when I was younger younger. You can't do better than Dr. Seuss and Chelsea Silverstein and stuff like that. Yeah, the classics. I've got one. All right, go ahead. This is from Alejandro. Sandy. She could live in any era of history. Which time would you live in? Why that's always so hard? I'm going back to what I said before me. Yumi. Cuba, 1920s. Okay. I'm going to say New York and like, I don't know, maybe the 1930s. That'd be pretty fun. Cool. Lots of drinking and dancing. Yeah, well, that's Cuba in the 20s, too. Yeah, exactly. He just had the Latin flavor. Kevin Kinsey. Which pickled thing do you prefer most? Eggs, cucumbers, peppers or cauliflower or anything else? I don't eat pickled things, so that's you. I love pickled everything. It's so good for you, too. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. It helps you digest fats a lot more easily. Nice. It's just really healthy, like eating pickled stuff. You don't like pickles? No. Don't I have one more? Aslan Bradl boy, there are some weird names on Facebook. How do I make a ten year old more responsible? You're getting all the heavy questions, like secret to successful marriage. How do you make your kid good? I think you got to put them to work or give them a pet. You make them responsible for something and that they're interested in. It would be my advice. I agree with both of your pieces of advice. Marry the person that you want to spend time with and get your kid a hamster. Yes. Put them to work. Charge money. You got any more? Yeah, I got too many more. Pick one. Okay. Are you ready? Yes. The one that I pick is as follows from Mike reels, Arnie or Stalone. It depends on the year. I'm going to have to say I would go Schwarzenegger. Yeah, 80s Schwarzenegger nowadays. Who cares now? But if we're, like, taking the time, work back to the was. Kona and the Barbarian. The original terminator. Raw deal. Total recall. Yeah, they're all pretty great. Yeah, I'm a huge first blood fan. And Rocky fan. Yeah, it was tough not to go with Stallone, although he made some really bad movies, like Tango assassin type movie. Tango and Cash and the Dolly Parton when he's a country singer. Oh, rhinestone. Rhinestone cobra. Wait, those were awful movies. What? What? You didn't like cobra? How did you yes. Not for me. Must have been the age difference. Yeah. So I'm going to go arnie too. Okay. How about that? There you go, Arnold. If you want to ask Chuck or me questions, you can go on to Facebook anytime at facebook. Comstuffysheaknow. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. That's our Twitter handle. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshonow.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 podcast. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today." |
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